This document is part of an archive of postings by John Ray on Australian Politics, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
This is a backup copy of the original blog
30 November, 2022
An Australian actor who has had relationships with many attractive women
Stories like the one below could be pretty damaging to many men. Many men have difficulties finding partners, to the point where there are many "incels". One cannot entirely blame incels for the diffuse anger that they sometimes feel. And that anger can be expressed in very destructive ways.
I have been married 4 times and have at the momnent a chic chick in my life so I am not at all upset or envious about the story below. But I think there needs to be some way for stories such as that below to be somehow contextualized by stories about the relationship failures celebrities sometimes have. In the meantime, incels should probably steer their reading away from celebrity sites
And while details of the couple's relationship remain a mystery, Dominic's colourful dating history is well-documented.
From a 90210 star to billionaire James Packer's ex, the burly Aussie star has managed to woo very well-known women around the world.
Dominic, 52, was previously married to Australian film producer Rebecca Williamson between 1998 and 2008. The couple welcomed four children during their decade-long marriage: sons Joseph and Augustus, and daughters Audrey Lily-Rose.
Dominic went on to briefly date Baywatch star Brooke Burns, 44, from April to June 2008.
In 2011, he started began dating 90210 actress AnnaLynne McCord, who was 17 years his junior.
AnnaLynne previously revealed how BDSM played a major role in their on-and-off relationship, describing Dominic as a 'big, strong, angry Aussie' in a 2021 interview with sexual health platform Giddy.
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Labor's disastrous jobs bill: At best, businesses will be hit with substantial bills from specialist lawyers and consultants. It will discourage productivity improvements and deter investment
Tweaking the definition of small business will do little to fix the inherent problems of Labor’s industrial relations amendments, Secure Jobs, Better Pay. This is the key message for independent senator David Pocock as he agrees to pass the government’s complex and poorly drafted bill.
Not only is there a lack of clarity in some of the provisions that will result in high levels of uncertainty, there is also the risk that businesses and workers will be badly affected. At best, businesses will be hit with substantial bills from specialist lawyers and consultants. The amended act will discourage productivity improvements and deter investment.
Steep costs for taxpayers are also likely in the context of ongoing budget deficits and rising government debt as a result of multi-employer bargaining for low-paid workers in feminised industries such as aged care, childcare and disability services.
But consider first the definition of a small business.
Notwithstanding the fact there are multiple definitions within government, the Fair Work Act defines a small business as one with 15 or fewer workers. That’s heads, not effective full-time workers. A relatively small cafe or service station could easily have more than 15 workers. What if a proprietor operates three small but separate outlets, each with six workers on the books? Would this mean that business is not considered small?
Increasing the number from 15 to 20, a concession made by Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke, will make little difference as it doesn’t sort out the problems outlined above. Permitting businesses with fewer than 50 workers to argue their case to be excluded from multi-employer agreements looks like an expensive, bureaucratic ruse.
Hapless Small Business Minister Julie Collins would have us believe more than two million, or 90 per cent, of businesses would be exempt from the provisions. What she fails to understand is most of these businesses don’t employ anyone apart from their owners and more than 60 per cent or about eight million employed people work for larger businesses.
In addition, what happens in large and medium-sized businesses affects small businesses. Small firms do business with larger ones as suppliers, or buyers, or both. They have an interest in the outcomes for larger businesses, too.
The principal flaw in Labor’s amendments is not the definition of small business but the incoherence of multi-employer bargaining pasted on to a system based on national employment standards, modern awards and enterprise-level bargaining.
It should not be overlooked that Object (f) of the Fair Work Act is “achieving productivity and fairness through an emphasis on enterprise-level collective bargaining underpinned by simple good-faith bargaining obligations and clear rules governing industrial action”.
What is often not understood is that for those employers who are not bound by enterprise agreements or have given them up, there is nothing preventing them from paying some or all of their workers more than the pay stipulated in the relevant awards and/or boosting conditions. In fact, the most common method of setting pay is individual arrangements; it’s not awards or enterprise agreements.
While the government claims its main aim is to “get wages moving”, it’s clear wages are starting to move. The latest figures on the Wage Price Index point to overall annual wage growth of more than 3 per cent, with private sector wage growth well ahead of wage growth in the public sector. (This latter feature is the result of earlier enterprise agreements locking in modest pay rises.) Other data sources point to even stronger wage growth as workers enjoy rapid promotion and other perquisites. A tight labour market is the surest way to lifting wages.
Where award rates of pay are close to market rates, there has always been less incentive for employers to bargain with their employees and/or representatives. This is because there is not much scope to increase wages to compensate workers for productivity gains that could be achieved. Most of the services industry fits into this category, as does retail and fast food.
By contrast, there are some other sectors where award rates of pay are fractions of the going rates. It is in these sectors, mainly highly unionised, where enterprise bargaining has found its natural home, even though the ability to secure productivity concessions in recent years has become difficult as the unions have dug in their heels. Some companies have also required the assurance of prohibited industrial action during the course of enterprise agreements in order to secure finance.
This background partly explains why enterprise bargaining under Labor’s Fair Work Act has been only partially successful. It was never really suited for companies for which the award rates of pay are close to market-related pay. Note here that award wages are adjusted annually through the national minimum wage review, with the latest increase between 4.6 and 5.2 per cent.
Add in the complexity of the bizarre interpretation of the better off overall test and the pedantic interpretation that members of the Fair Work Commission have placed on the required bargaining steps and agreement-making procedures and it was hardly surprising that enterprise agreements fell out of favour.
The preferred solution is to fix the rules governing enterprise bargaining rather than jumping to an unjustified and untested shift to widely available multi-employer bargaining. The case for an ill-defined “single interest” bargaining stream has never been made – apart from it being something demanded by the unions.
Not only is the shift potentially inflationary as all firms covered would lift prices simultaneously, it is also unlikely to lift productivity as workplace variations can never be covered by such agreements. Sector-wide strikes also would be highly damaging. There is no doubt that the Reserve Bank would take a keen interest in such developments when considering lifting the cash rate.
It was always a forlorn hope that Pocock would realise the bill shouldn’t be rushed through parliament this year.
The cliches of the government were always likely to carry the argument over careful analysis of the arcane features of our IR system and the damaging impact of the proposed changes.
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The Victorian election result highlights how wishy washy Australian conservatives have become
Remember these two analogies.
First one. At the start of the pandemic hysteria in Florida, the uncritical press had petrified the voters of Florida into big-scale support for lockdowns. Even the bulk of Fox News was in favour. But Governor Ron DeSantis read the data. He read the Great Barrington Declaration authored by three of the best epidemiologists in the world. After a very short lockdown he opened up his state of Florida. He fronted the press and answered questions. He stood for something. He directly took on the lockdownistas. Later on, he flat out refused to impose any sort of mandates, mask or vaccine. He was regularly labelled a ‘granny killer’. But he continued on to implement an anglosphere version of Sweden’s (now world’s best) response. Principled. With values. Prepared to take on a near uniformly left-wing press and the few righties who revelled in lockdowns. We now know that virtually every call he made was correct. Oh, and when Disney was pushing a bizarre ‘teach kids in kindergarten and years one and two sex education in the usual Woke way’ he took away the unique tax advantages this virtue-signalling corporation had enjoyed for decades. We’re talking tens of millions of dollars each year. In the recent midterm elections, Governor DeSantis won a massive victory with 60 per cent of the vote, compared to in 2018 when he had barely snuck home by a few thousand votes.
Second analogy. When Campbell Newman was Premier of Queensland, he took on every vested interest going. He reduced the size of the civil service. He went after the doctors. He took on the legal establishment (albeit in an incompetent way without seemingly asking any, you know, actual conservative legal types how to do it). His government was unashamedly for smaller government, non-Wokery, and fiscal responsibility. Sure, he probably opened too many fronts at once and when he went for re-election he lost. But this is what no one says. His government won 41.3 per cent of the primary votes in that losing effort. Since then, every LNP Opposition government has played the ‘let’s be a centimetre to the right of Labor’ game and has lost to Labor far far worse than that Campbell Newman losing effort. And this repeats itself in other states. Standing for something pays off. Occasionally you’ll die on your feet, but of late the Liberals have been dying on their knees everywhere, all the time, in the dire grip of Stockholm syndrome.
Right now the caste that advises Liberal politicians is uniformly in the Mark Textor mould of ‘conservatives have nowhere else to go so park yourselves way over there to the left beside Labor’. It’s a really bad strategy. It destroyed the Western Australian Liberal Party. It allowed the Coalition to lose again last night to Dan Andrews. I’d bet big money that Dominic Perrottet and the Libs will lose next year. The LNP and Crisafulli in Queensland are yet another iteration of this woeful strategy.
Look, I think anyone would be hard-pressed to put a piece of paper between my views and those of John F. Kennedy (save that I’d probably have fewer hookers in the White House each week). But those views are now categorised as ‘hard right’ or ‘extremely ideological’ not just by the ABC (which is wholly to be expected) but also by half of the MPs in a Coalition partyroom. This is the worst cohort of right-of-centre politicians in my lifetime. They stand for absolutely nothing, Mr Morrison being exhibit A in the case for the prosecution. There is nothing they’d fight for if it risked them losing the chauffeur and perks.
Frankly, it beggars belief that the Victorian Opposition under Matthew Guy could have been this wholly useless. Did they attack relentlessly on the world’s worst lockdowns? You know… The weaponised police. The destroyed small business sector. The brutal and ineffective vaccine mandates. No. No. No. Instead, Matthew Guy sounded as though he more or less agreed with the Andrews’ playbook. And don’t forget that Scott Morrison never once said one critical thing about how Dan Andrews imposed the world’s harshest, most thuggish pandemic response on Victoria.
I guarantee you that had Ron DeSantis been Victorian leader – even allowing for how many Victorians clearly must have no clue about the data surrounding how badly Australia has done (for instance, our cumulative excess deaths are worse than no-lockdown Sweden’s by some way) – that he would have made huge inroads on the Labor vote on that front alone.
Then there’s Victoria’s debt that is massive. Guy says a couple of trite things about this and then offers highly subsidised public transport. And what about the patent corruption? The imploding credit rating? The list goes on. Don’t tell me the press acts as Labor’s praetorian guard. Of course it does. Have you seen our universities and journalism schools? But they did in Florida too, even more so. Know your stuff and take them on. Fight and you can win.
The Libs aren’t offering a fighting Opposition. It’s more of a tame, complicit, ‘we agree with you Danny Boy’ affair. It pains me to say this, given that Dan Andrews behaved shockingly during the two and a half years of Covid. But the Libs were so awful and so lacking in any coherent values or beliefs that they deserved to lose. The NSW version of Team Liberal deserves to lose too. And so does the Queensland version. The party has been infiltrated by too many people who don’t hold any of the longstanding small government, pro-freedom values. They actually share much of a centre-left type ideology. They agree that those like me whose views line up perfectly with JFK’s really are ‘hard right’ or ‘ideological extremists’. Just look at the advisers who went on TV after it became clear Matthew Guy had been slaughtered. Their take? The Libs need quotas for women. Know what you morons? I will never, ever vote for any party that imposes quotas. I believe in merit. And I think there are a lot like me. The problem is advisers and value-free hack politicians with a focus group obsession that is premised on being hollow, value-free vacuums waiting to suck up what this poll or that poll indicates. Ron DeSantis ignored polls and went with principles. He won people over.
This party right now is an absolute disgrace. I like Peter Dutton. I’m really hoping he stands up to the appeasers in his partyroom and throughout the adviser class. Because it’s not going to be long before the only Liberals in government will be in Tasmania. Make of that what you will.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/dying-on-their-knees/ ?
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Barrier Reef in danger? The fight’s on again as Australian government prepares to lobby UN
Australia faces its second fight in less than two years to prevent the Great Barrier Reef from being declared “in danger” by the UN, as Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek prepares to lobby her global counterparts against the move and scientists say the reef is improving.
The expert panel of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee has released a report recommending the reef be placed on a list of World Heritage sites in danger as it faces risk from climate change and degrading water quality from agricultural run-off.
Farmers within the Great Barrier Reef catchment area have warned they will lobby hard against any extra regulations after the report recommended a reduction in run-off from banana and sugarcane farming.
Ms Plibersek faces a battle to stave off a formal ruling when the report is considered at the meeting of the World Heritage Committee in mid-2023. Having recently met with UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay in Lisbon, she will speak with her international counterparts at global environmental talks in Montreal next month.
The Australian understands Ms Plibersek is prepared to lobby hard if a formal proposal to place the reef “in danger” is made.
Ms Plibersek and her Queensland counterpart, Meaghan Scanlon, sought to distance themselves from the report’s findings, arguing they were the result of the former Coalition government’s failure to act on climate change.
“The reason that UNESCO in the past has singled out a place as ‘at risk’ is because they wanted to see greater government investment or greater government action – and since the change of government, both of those things have happened,” she said.
“We’ll clearly make the point to UNESCO that there is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way.”
Former Coalition environment minister Sussan Ley only last year successfully fended off an attempt downgrade the health status of the reef. She flew to Europe last July to directly lobby World Heritage Council members.
Steve Edmondson, a reef tour operator in Port Douglas, said the UN-backed report relied on old information gathered during a monitoring mission in March while the reef was going through a mass coral bleaching event.
“I don’t think it considers that there are a lot of positive things that have happened in the past year,” he said. “The reef is in excellent condition at the moment and that’s what our guests are experiencing every day.
“It’s actually doing better than it has done for a very, very long time. It is fragile, but I do feel encouraged by the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef.”
An August report from the commonwealth’s chief independent marine science agency found the northern and central parts of the reef have the highest amounts of coral for 36 years, despite another bleaching episode earlier this year.
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29 November, 2022
Controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson savages Qantas over Acknowledgement of Country played on board his flight to Perth - slamming it as 'corporate propaganda'
From the first time I became aware of him, I have agreed with most things Peterson says. So I am delighted that he has denounced this self-congratulatory nonsense. If Aborigines have some claim on white Australians, the Palestinians also have some claim on Israel. It's very much a matter of opinion and should not be forced on us all
And nobody is mentioning that the Aborigines are themselves conquerors. They over-ran Australia's original pygmy race to the point now where the pygmies are found only in up-land areas of far North Queensland. Last time I was in Kuranda, a pygmy walked right past me as I was sitting in an open-air cafe
Jordan Peterson has slammed Australia's national carrier for playing a message onboard his flight to Western Australia recognising the land's traditional owners.
The controversial clinical psychologist, podcaster and best-selling author, in a tweet after stepping off the plane, called the Indigenous Acknowledgement of Country 'corporate propaganda'.
The Canadian, 60, is currently embarking on a speaking tour of Australia and touched down in Perth on Monday.
'I could really do without the land acknowledgment propaganda delivered to me by a corporate behemoth @Qantas,' he posted.
'I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. Stick to (1) flying and (2) making money.
'I don't want or need moral lessons from you or any other corporation.'
What is an Acknowledgment of Country?
Acknowledgment of Country is a ceremonial statement that recognises the traditional ownership of Australian land.
An Acknowledgement of Country may take the following form:
'I wish to acknowledge the [collective traditional owner's name] people as the traditional owners of this land.
'I would also like to pay my respects to their Elders, past and present, and Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be here today.'
The post sparked a flurry of angry tweets with many Australians firing back at Dr Peterson for not respecting the custom.
'Such a negative bloke you are constantly complaining about everything do you ever laugh?' one person wrote.
Another said: 'With the greatest respect, this issue is way beyond your domain of competence. Recognition of Traditional Owners is a practice widely accepted across the Australian political spectrum. It is not propaganda. There are some issues you as a visitor should leave alone.'
A third commented: 'Can you explain this? I'm not for or against it, but it's a acknowledgement of this country's history and traditional owners. It respects history. Is there something inherently bad about that?'
Acknowledgement of Country announcements, along with Welcome to Country announcements at events, are now a common custom throughout all levels of Australian society, including government.
Qantas, along with many other major Australian companies, have a firm policy in place to acknowledge and celebrate Indigenous culture.
'As the national carrier, we are uniquely positioned to connect people to the world's oldest living cultures through our domestic and international networks,' the airline's website says.
'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are integral to the Spirit of Australia and we seek to amplify this throughout our customers' journeys.
'We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work, live and fly. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging.'
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Bombshell as two Aussies WIN their Supreme Court case over Covid fines - and it means as many as 45,000 penalties could be struck down
Thousands of Covid-19 fines worth millions of dollars could be ruled invalid after two Sydneysiders won a landmark test case in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
The man and woman claimed their infringement notices were issued in such vague terms they could not be legally enforced and would be difficult, if not impossible, to challenge in front of a magistrate.
On Tuesday morning, barrister David Kell SC for the Commissioner of Police told the Supreme Court the pair's Covid penalty notices would no longer be enforced.
'These two notices do not sufficiently state or describe the offences in general terms,' Mr Kell said.
The two claimants, Brenden Beame and Teal Els, will have their fines refunded. A fine issued to a third claimant, Rohan Pank, had already been repaid.
The ruling could set a precedent that sees many of more than 45,000 unpaid penalty notices for Covid-related public health order breaches in NSW withdrawn.
Kate Richardson SC, for the claimants, said there were 32,648 fines - totalling almost $33million - issued for the same reason as that given to Mr Beame so 'in all likelihood' they too would be declared legally invalid if challenged.
She has asked Justice Dina Yehia to publish detailed reasons for the fines being declared invalid to make it 'absolutely plain' why they were withdrawn.
'This is a case that has ramifications beyond Ms Els and Mr Beame,' Ms Richardson said.
Ms Els was fined $3,000 for unlawfully participating in an outdoor public gathering.
A class action in NSW could now go ahead and similar law suits would likely be pursued in other states. There were 19,000 fines handed out in Victoria for breaches of Covid lockdown laws, and tens of thousands across the rest of Australia.
Redfern Legal Centre ran the case against the NSW Police Commissioner and Commissioner of Fines Administration on behalf of Mr Beame and Ms Els.
Mr Pank had his $1,000 fine withdrawn in July after the administrative law court action was launched.
When the matter was before in court in July it was heard if the claims succeeded fines worth millions of dollars issued across NSW could be invalidated.
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A Tasmanian tribunal has rejected the right of same-sex attracted people to hold social functions that exclude transgender people
This gets crazier and crazier
Launceston lesbian activist Jessica Hoyle had sought an exemption from Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act to run female-only “drag-king” shows and other lesbian events.
The exemption was denied by Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Sarah Bolt in July 2021, prompting Miss Hoyle to appeal to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
In a ruling late last week circulated on Monday, the tribunal rejected Miss Hoyle’s appeal, finding the desire for female-only lesbian events was insufficient justification for an exemption.
“While the applicants may not wish to comply with the Act and find aspects of its application to transgender and transsexual women irksome, particularly in the context of the event they would like to hold, that is not a sufficient justification,” ruled tribunal member Kate Cuthbertson.
Ms Cuthbertson SC said arguments by Miss Hoyle claiming “patterns of criminality and nefarious motivations” for transwomen attending female-only events were “not supported by empirical research or compelling evidence”.
Miss Hoyle told The Australian she was disappointed in the decision and would fight on, if necessary all the way to the High Court, believing same-sex attracted females should be able to exclude “people with penises” from social events.
“This decision erases the rights of women and freedom of association for lesbians,” said Miss Hoyle. “It is harmful to everyday, average lesbian women and gay men, who just want to be able to meet one another in a safe environment, and not have members of the opposite sex harass us.
“I’m all for transgenders and transsexuals having their own events, their own spaces, but (they ought) not force themselves on to anybody else’s rights. We are seeing in this country the erasure of women’s rights.”
However, Rose Boccalatte, of Equality Tasmania, welcomed the tribunal ruling. “This decision upholds the integrity of our gold-standard Anti-Discrimination Act and sends the message that trans and gender diverse people are equally protected by that Act,“ Ms Boccalatte said.
“It is very welcome to see the tribunal calling out misinformation about transgender women.”
Miss Hoyle said she was seeking further legal advice but was likely to reapply for an exemption taking into account aspects of the tribunal decision.
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Climate reparations are sycophantic, virtue-signalling lunacy
Mike O'Connor
Summer, praise the Lord, is all but upon us so what will it be this year – fire, flood, cyclone or perhaps a plague of locusts?
Whichever is visited upon us, it will be hailed in apocalyptic terms as presaging the end of civilisation and a vindication of the beliefs of the wild-of-eye zealots who shriek “climate change” at the approach of every passing shower.
Reporters will stare sternly down the barrels of TV cameras with well-practised frowns and declare that we are experiencing the hottest/wettest/coolest/driest summer in history.
History shows that it’s all happened before and is guaranteed to happen again, but climate change and its attendant mantra of net zero emissions are the new religion, the opium of the people, with the federal Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Chris Bowen its anointed high priest.
To suggest that the end is not nigh is to court mindless wrath and tiresome self-righteousness so better, perhaps, to sit quietly and wait for the lights to go out as our little nation of 26 million souls seeks to save the planet and destroy our children’s future.
Our latest commitment is to pay climate reparations to developing nations for the damage as a developed nation that we have allegedly caused them to suffer.
Lots and lots of free money, it seems, will go some way to assuaging this hurt.
China is classed as one of these so we will be in the happy position of paying one of the world’s biggest emitters for our alleged sins.
If anyone can find a better example of sycophantic, virtue-signalling lunacy, I’d like to hear it.
As well as the imminence of extreme climatic events, these being those previously known as tropical and sub-tropical weather, the onset of summer signals the end of the parliamentary year, reason enough to crack a coldie and utter a silent prayer of thanks that we will be spared the self-congratulatory, chest-thumping crowing of our leaders for a precious few months.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese continues to enjoy the support of the electorate, but the storm clouds are beginning to gather as the unions call in their markers and Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke dances puppet-like to their tune.
How lovely it would be if all you had to do to create a workers’ paradise was to give everyone a pay rise and entitle them to work fewer hours.
It’s amazing that no one has thought of it before.
More paid leave is also a sure way to lift productivity – paternity leave, maternity leave, domestic-violence leave and now a campaign for menopausal and menstrual leave.
The cost-of-living “crisis” will continue to make headlines through summer, a ”crisis” apparently lost on the millions of Australians who rushed out to buy things they didn’t need on Black Friday because a lot of retailers told them that they would save money if they did so. The more you spend, the more you save. Brilliant!
In sunny Queensland, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli must be looking at the Daniel Andrews victory in the Victorian state election as confirming what he suspected, which is that it is possible to fool most of the people most of the time as the Palaszczuk government staggers from one disaster to another, arrogance building on arrogance.
Crisafulli keeps jabbing away, but the only person on the Opposition benches whose punches appear to do any damage is his deputy Jarrod Bleijie.
The fact that Health Minister Yvette D’Ath and Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll have not resigned in disgrace says everything you need to know about this government.
Police Minister Mark Ryan should have joined them but could be spared, perhaps, in the light of his emerging talent as a stand-up comic.
As evidence mounted that your average goldfish would have a greater grasp of the police portfolio than his good self, the minister fired back by saying that Crisafulli should change his name to “Crisa-full-of-it.”
The cut and thrust of such a rapier-like wit is truly a joy to behold. I don’t know who is writing his lines, but I would suggest that they seek another line of work. Please!
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28 November, 2022
The Nationals will oppose a voice to parliament
Well, that's it. Referenda in Australia never succeed if there is significant opposition to them. With the National party opposed, the referendum will be lost. Good riddance to racism. Many National Party members will have seen Aborigines close up so will have no illusions about their high levels of dysfunction. It's the last thing any reasonable person would want privileged
After a partyroom meeting in Canberra on Monday morning, the junior Coalition party has decided to oppose the proposal in a referendum. The issue is expected to be discussed in the joint Coalition partyroom on Tuesday.
Nationals Leader David Littleproud said the party had consulted with architects of the Ulu?u Statement from the Heart Pat Anderson and Professor Megan Davis.
CLP Senator for the NT Jacinta Price said the Party would not support a “failed model”.
She slammed Minister for Indigenous Australians for going to Indigenous communities “dripping in Gucci” and telling First Nations’ people “what they need”.
“We have to stop dividing this nation on the lines of race,” she said. “We will not be supporting a failed model.”
“It’s not racist to disagree with a proposal … that lacks detail and divides us on the lines of race,” Senator Price said. “I hope the Voice is not successful.”
Mr Littleproud said the Liberal Party’s position was a “matter for the Liberal Party”. “We are two separate parties. We have different values, different principles, different constituencies,” he said.
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Chicken Little propaganda dressed up as science
The Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO have delivered their biennial dose of depression about the climate in their latest State of the Climate report. The climate has warmed by 1.5C and there is barely a single benefit – it is all disaster.
It is often said, “if it is too good to be true, it probably is” and you are being conned. What about too bad to be true? Can a gently warming climate have no significant benefits at all? The only marginally encouraging part of the report is about northern Australia. There might have been a slight reduction in cyclone numbers, and there has been a bit more rain in the recent decades.
Apart from that, the report reads like the Book of Exodus – one disaster after another. Only the frogs and boils are missing.
But it is significant that the period when Egyptians were building pyramids, which was hotter than today’s climate, is often called the Holocene Climatic Optimum. The word “optimum” was an indication that scientists working in the era before climate alarmism could see some advantage of a warmer climate.
A sure sign that the report tries too hard to find disaster is when it discusses coral bleaching and the Great Barrier Reef. It stresses that there have been four bleaching events in the past six years, which it implies were devastating. But for some reason the report fails to mention that this year the reef recorded its highest amount of coral since records began in 1985.
This proves that all the hype about the coral loss from bleaching was greatly exaggerated. But the report writers were obviously untroubled by the contradictory evidence. They ignored it.
And they also ignore the fact that corals grow about 15 per cent faster for every degree temperature rise, and that almost all the corals on the reef also live in much warmer water near the equator. We should expect better coral, and it should extend further south. That is not too bad, is it?
Why doesn’t the report mention that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere improves the water utilisation efficiency of dryland plants, which occupy most of Australia, and that this has caused plants to thrive? According to NASA satellites, there is a “greening” of Australia of at least 10 per cent. Overall, the world has seen the area of green leaves expand by the equivalent of twice the area of the United States in just 35 years.
In a changing climate, there will be winners and losers, and it might be that the net effect is a major problem. But if the report writers will not even mention the good bits, how can we have any confidence in its findings?
The latest report should ring alarm bells – but not just about climate. Is this an excellent tool of propaganda, or is it a scientific statement?
We should all worry about whether groupthink has taken hold of the BOM and CSIRO.
We should worry when the BOM says it has recently adjusted all the temperature records reducing the temperatures a century ago by up to a degree. Can we have any confidence they did this with a good scientific reason?
And we should worry about the BOM’s claims that the fire seasons are now much worse than in 1950. Why is all the information on huge bushfires before 1950 ignored – like the devastating 1851 Victorian bushfire and the 1939 fires? It is not like there is no data before 1950.
Did they ignore that data for a good reason? Is this similar to the US fire statistics, which are often reported by authorities as having a major increase in fire acreage burnt since the early 60s, but fail to mention that there was almost 10 times more acreage burnt in the “dust-bowl” period in the 1930s?
In the next decades, Australian governments plan to spend hundreds of billions attempting to prevent climate change. Before we do that, maybe we could spend a few million doing an audit of BOM and CSIRO reports.
Maybe we would find that adapting to a changing climate is by far the best way to proceed. We might even find that some of what we have been told is wrong.
Why will the conservative parties not commit to an audit? Who would argue against a bit of checking of the science, when the Great Barrier Reef statistics prove scientists got something badly wrong?
And the latest report is a sure sign that the BOM and CSIRO are drifting into political advocacy rather than science, observation, and objective prediction.
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Victorian Liberals have become a spectacular example of why pandering to global warming alarmists and woke causes doesn’t work
Andrew Bolt
THE Liberals must finally realise that cringing and pandering doesn’t work. Their humiliating loss in Victoria is their third beating this year for being cowards.
Is federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton watching?
Victoria is the most spectacular example of the new Liberal disease of following the polls, not their principles, but also just the latest.
In March, South Australia’s Liberal government was also flogged despite going green. It banned fracking – a safe form of gas extraction – in the state’s southeast. It offered rewards to the rich for buying electric cars. It promised emissions targets even tougher than federal Labor’s.
Yet it still lost. Yes, global warming was just one issue in that election, but it goes to the heart of the Liberal problem.
The Liberals are scared. Scared of criticism, particularly from the media left. Scared of opening their mouths to fight for their principles.
In May, it was the same pathetic story. The Morrison government also lost, despite going green and signing up to the absurd net zero emissions by 2050 target long touted by Labor.
In the end, it still got smashed. Labor beat it with a lie – to cut power bills by $275 by going even greener – and half a dozen Liberal seats fell to teal independents pushing the climate scare.
Incredibly, in a post-mortem at a Liberal party room meeting in July, party strategists and pollsters told the survivors the lesson was to go even greener.
As if. The Liberals tried exactly that in Victoria and are now destroyed.
Under Matthew Guy, they went so green that they promised to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2030, although even the Albanese government promises just 43 per cent.
They even preferenced the Greens above Labor, and didn’t stop there in stealing the left’s clothes. They also endorsed a “treaty” with people identifying as Aboriginal, selling out the fundamental Liberal principle of putting individuals above the collective.
But all this me-tooism just made them look weak, second hand and unprincipled, and, of course, it all failed.
Victoria’s Labor government on Saturday lost 6 per cent of its primary vote, but none of it went to the Liberals. The Liberals didn’t pick up a seat, on the count so far, and in Hawthorn a teal independent nearly beat one of the party’s’ most rah-rah warmists, former MP and favourite John Pesutto, who’d promised energy policies so green Victoria would see “probably the most important transition we are going to make in human history”.
Once again, the pandering failed. Yet I still hear Liberals demanding even more of that futile same, claiming so many voters believe in the climate crisis so religiously it’s suicide to resist.
It suits a certain kind of modern Liberal MP – careerist, lazy, a little stupid, without convictions – to believe that. Who wants the bother of thinking for themselves? Who wants to be booed on an ABC panel?
And let’s be frank, the Liberals no longer attract many people with the smarts to argue well. But what has go-with-flow surrender got the Liberals except failure?
If they cower, and now argue for what the left has said for years, they look like fakes.
If they now agree there’s a “climate crisis” that will cook their children, all they’ve done is tell voters that the Greens and Labor were right all along.
No, the Liberals must realise global warming – like Labor’s racist plans for an Aboriginal-only parliament – is a battle they can’t keep dodging.
They can never be greener than Labor, the Greens and the teals. And unless they tackle the lies of those climate catastrophists, they can never properly tackle their disastrous fake fixes.
We saw that in Victoria.
The Liberals were so scared of looking like “deniers” that they didn’t dare criticise Premier Daniel Andrews’s main election promise – for a new government-owned State Electricity Commission to run the state completely on green power in just over a decade.
Guy didn’t dare say this was bonkers: the technology wasn’t there, prices would explode and the difference to the climate would be zero.
Yet there’s an audience for the truth, even if not where Liberals usually look for validation.
On Saturday, the Liberals won huge swings in safe Labor seats in Melbourne’s north and west, home to strugglers who must pay for the mad climate plans of the rich.
I know, opposing today’s great Labor causes – global warming and racially dividing Australia – will take years. It’s hard and painful work.
But the Liberals will never win an argument they still don’t even dare to put.
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Climate Council report finds Queensland bears highest cost of climate disasters in Australia
To attribute weather events to global warming is just assertion. Even the IPCC says you cannot validly do that
A Climate Council report released today has examined the financial, social and economic costs of climate change-driven weather events.
It found Queensland has lost a total of about $30 billion from extreme weather disasters since 1970 — about three times that of Victoria.
The economic cost to Queensland from the floods in February and March alone was $7.7 billion, with an estimated $5.56 billion in insured losses across south-east Queensland and coastal NSW.
Brisbane suffered about $1.38 billion in insured losses from this year's floods, more than any other local government area in Australia.
It comes in the wake of the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology's biennial State of the Climate report, which found changes to weather and climate extremes are happening at an increased pace across the country.
And more extreme weather is likely to come this summer.
The BOM's official summer outlook suggests eastern Australia will see above-average rainfall with more flooding expected.
Professor Lesley Hughes, a co-author of the report and a professor of biology at Macquarie University, said with the amount of rain falling in some areas, there's not enough time between disasters for communities to recover.
"We've got a situation where the catchments in many parts of eastern Australia are already saturated, so they can't really absorb more water."
Emergency services stretched to the limit
The emotional toll of seeing your home flood multiple times in one year is hard to fathom, but the people working to coordinate, sandbag, rescue and help clean up these disasters are also feeling the strain.
Former Queensland Fire and Emergency Services commissioner Lee Johnson said disaster-management and emergency service systems are under a great deal of pressure and "have been for some time".
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27 November, 2022
A picture of a tree in regional South Australia has sparked a wild climate change debate
The photo posted on social media shows the tree littered with markings from recent floods.
Well above the current flood level is a marking from 1956.
For some, it was a smoking gun that climate change isn’t real.
“And the climate change back in 1956 was caused by what?” one person joked. “I wonder if they were talking climate change in 73, 74 and 75,” another added.
Others pointed out an obvious issue. “How tall was that tree in 1956?” one person questioned.
“Trees grow upward from the top, not from the bottom. Their trunks spread outward, not upward,” one person correctly stated.
Others said the one tree was just a bad data set.
“Using one tree as evidence to suit your agenda shows what level of intelligence we are dealing with,” one said.
“There are many factors why areas have worse flooding. There is no denying though, with mass land clearing as one factor, flooding will only get worse under extreme climate events such as La Nina,” he continued.
Hundreds have flocked to the seemingly innocuous post to duke it out in a debate about climate. In fact, 1956 was the worst flood on record for the area, with the ‘Great Flood’ described as “the greatest catastrophe in the state’s history”.
According to the Adelaide Advertiser, the flood was a culmination of two years of a La Nina, which had brought three months of heavy rain to Queensland, Victoria and NSW.
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Climate and human rights kill Clive Palmer’s coalmine
Clive Palmer should be blocked from building a massive Galilee Basin mine because the burning of its coal overseas would worsen global climate change and limit the human rights of Indigenous people and Queensland children, a landmark court judgment has declared.
The Land Court ruling is the first time a Queensland judge has recommended rejecting a mine based on the climate impacts of coal burnt overseas, a precedent conservationists say will make it “almost impossible” for any new thermal coalmines to be built in the state.
It is also the first time Queensland’s Human Rights Act has been used to object to a mining project on climate change and Indigenous cultural rights grounds.
Land Court president Fleur Kingham on Friday recommended the Queensland government deny Mr Palmer’s Waratah Coal’s applications for a mining lease and environmental authority for an open-cut and underground thermal coalmine near Alpha, in central Queensland.
“This case is about Queensland coal, mined in Queensland, and exported from Queensland to be burned in power stations to generate electricity,” Judge Kingham said.
“Wherever that coal is burnt, the emissions will contribute to environmental harm, including in Queensland.”
She added: “The climate scenario consistent with a viable mine risks unacceptable climate change impacts to Queensland people and property, even taking into account the economic and social benefits of the project.”
The Weekend Australian understands Waratah Coal will appeal the ruling.
The proposed mine site is on cattle-grazing land and a major nature refuge, Bimblebox, and would export coal to South-East Asia to burn for electricity.
Waratah Coal’s lawyers had argued Judge Kingham had no legal right to consider the emissions from burning coal overseas, because the Queensland mining applications did not cover the coal’s combustion.
She also ruled Queensland’s Human Rights Act – introduced three years ago – needed to be considered because the mine’s climate-change impacts would harm the property rights of the Bimblebox owners, the cultural rights of First Nations people, and the rights of children.
“I have decided the importance of preserving the right … weighs more heavily in the balance than the economic benefits of the mine and the benefit of contributing to energy security,” Judge Kingham said.
She also found that if the mine was approved, it would make it more difficult to meet the Paris climate change goals because burning its coal would emit an estimated 1.58 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide between 2029 and 2051.
Judgments of the Land Court are not binding on the state government, but ministers traditionally abide by court decisions once appeals have been exhausted.
A group called Youth Verdict, representing Queensland young people, and the Bimblebox Alliance brought the court action, represented by the Environmental Defenders Office.
EDO senior solicitor Alison Rose said it was not the first time that a court had considered the impact on the Queensland environment of burning its coal overseas, but it was the first time the Land Court had made a decision to refuse a mine on that basis.
“The key difference is that, in previous cases, the coalmining companies were quite successful at arguing that if this coalmine didn’t go ahead, then another coalmine would just go ahead – the market substitution argument,” she said. “However, the science of climate change is really rapidly advanced and we also used a coal market analyst, and they were able to demonstrate that based on Waratah Coal’s own modelling … that essentially, we can have a safe climate without the coalmine but we can’t have one with it.”
Where other judgments have focused on direct impacts on Queenslanders from projects based on considerations such groundwater and wildlife, the Waratah case expanded to consider the human rights of Queenslanders who would be affected by climate change.
The judge’s decision will set a precedent for future Land Court hearings but its application is still at the discretion of Resources Minister Scott Stewart and the Environment Department.
Ms Rose said it would be extraordinary for either the minister or the department not to follow the court’s recommendation. “Both those decision makers have always followed the recommendations of the Land Court in the past, so the chance they won’t is fairly low,” she said.
Asked if the decision would spell the end of new thermal coalmines being built in Queensland, Ms Rose said it would make coal companies think twice.
Youth Verdict First Nations co-director Murrawah Johnson said the court had heard evidence for the first time in the Torres Strait and Cairns about the loss of Indigenous culture due to sea-level rise and heatwaves.
“All environmental approvals or mining leases should have to consider their impact on First Nations’ cultural and human rights,” Ms Johnson said.
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Victorian election: Daniel Andrews’ crusade against Christianity
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews runs the most dedicated and consistent anti-Christian government in Australian history. And Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, a profile in political cowardice, has given in on almost every case.
In legislation and abusive rhetoric, the Victorian government has acted to restrict Christians from teaching and living their beliefs.
It’s not quite a crime to be a traditional Christian in Victoria but it’s not quite legal in lots of contexts either.
The Equal Opportunity (Religious Exemptions) Bill makes it much harder for Christian schools to employ Christian teachers.
The Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill makes it an offence not to affirm someone’s gay identity or desire to change their gender.
So a school that says to a kid: we’re here to help but maybe slow down on this decision and don’t do anything irreversible for a while, is liable for prosecution.
Similarly, a Christian minister who is asked by a parishioner to pray for or with him over sexual orientation is subject to prosecution. The law has reached the extraordinarily perverse situation in which it’s legal to change your gender but illegal to even think or talk of changing your sexual orientation.
No Christian that I know of anywhere defends former barbaric practices of gay conversion therapy, but in outlawing a practice no one undertakes, the law has intentionally overshot to make it almost illegal even to teach traditional Christian teaching.
In 2016, the Andrews government also made it compulsory for priests to break the seal of the confessional to reveal child abuse – yet lawyers are allowed to retain client confidentiality.
Confidentiality in confession has been Catholic doctrine for more than 1500 years and has strong scriptural basis. As recently as World War II, priests went to their death rather than reveal secrets of anti-Japanese guerillas in The Philippines. There’s no evidence that breaking this doctrine would help in the righteous fight against child abuse but Andrews was happy to make core Catholic practice illegal.
Catholic Archbishop Peter Comensoli was foully abused in the Victorian parliament for defending the confessional.
Andrews’ rhetoric is often inflammatory and foolish. He abused Tony Abbott for visiting Cardinal George Pell in jail but Abbott was right. The High Court unanimously found Pell innocent. Andrews refused to say he respected and accepted the verdict. Next day there was vandalism against Catholic churches in Melbourne.
When Andrew Thorburn was forced tor resign as Essendon chief executive because of decade-old sermons of a pastor in a church with which he is associated, which preached traditional Christian teaching on sex being moral only within marriage between a man and a woman, and against the practice of abortion, Andrews labelled these Christian beliefs as hatred, bigotry and intolerance.
Guy is almost as bad. He expelled MP Bernie Finn from the Liberal Party for being pro-life, then expelled candidate Renee Heath for the views of a church she is associated with, not for anything she said.
This is a dangerous turn for Australia. Andrews is leading a charge of intolerance and bigotry against Christianity, and Guy’s Liberals are too cowardly to offer an alternative.
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There's an overdose crisis happening in Australia. Is drug decriminalisation the answer?
In October, the ACT announced that it had passed legislation decriminalising the possession of illicit drugs. It's the first jurisdiction in Australia to do so.
"The ACT has led the nation with a progressive approach to reducing the harm caused by illicit drugs with a focus on diversion, access to treatment and rehabilitation and reducing the stigma attached to drug use," state health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said.
Under the changes, which come into effect in October 2023, the possession of "small amounts" of drugs like heroin, MDMA or cocaine in the ACT will be treated as a health issue, rather than a criminal matter, and will result in a caution, a fine or a health intervention.
"This sensible reform is based on the expert advice that a health-focused, harm reduction approach delivers the best outcome for people using drugs," Stephen-Smith said.
Drug-related arrests have soared in recent years. Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that there were a record 166,321 drug-related arrests nationally in 2019-2020. This represented an increase of 96 per cent in the last decade.
Yet at the same time, Australia has seen a significant increase in the number of fatal drug overdoses. Earlier this year, the not-for-profit drug and alcohol research centre, the Penington Institute, said that the number of deaths in 2020 could exceed 2,440 once all the data has been collected.
In 2014, that figure was 2,043.
Data from the institute also showed that 2020 was the tenth year in a row where there were more than 2,000 fatal overdoses in Australia.
So while advocates say decriminalisation will reduce harm to drug users, can it help to reduce the number of fatal overdoses? And is decriminalisation indeed the best outcome for drug users?
How will decriminalisation help?
In August, Professor Mark Stoové from Victoria's Burnet Institute said that reforming drug laws, including decriminalisation, would help to reduce fatal overdoses.
Is decriminalising hard drugs the solution?
In a statement, he said: "The criminalisation of drug use generates and perpetuates the overdose crisis through stigma and fear. Evidence suggests that people who avoid a criminal record have improved social, educational and employment outcomes. People who fear arrest, incarceration, stigma and discrimination are also less likely to access health and harm reduction services."
Other advocates agree, saying decriminalisation will remove barriers for those who need help for drug-related health issues.
The Australians struggling to access drug treatment
Leah's doctor told her if she did not go on methadone, she would likely lose her baby. But why are many Australians struggling to access the same support?
"The new laws will make a huge difference to people who use drugs in the ACT. It means that people who casually use drugs won't have criminal conviction as a possibility," Emma Maiden, the general manager of Advocacy and External Relations at Uniting, told ABC RN Breakfast.
"But hopefully what it will also mean is that people who use drugs and perhaps have more of a drug dependency issue, are more likely to be less isolated, have less stigma and are more likely to reach out for help and support."
The criminalisation of drug use, Maiden said, creates unintended harms for affected drug users, limiting their ability to maintain a normal life.
"It can impact on their ability to get employment to rent a property, and so it does have impacts on their life aspirations," she said.
She added that this impact is worse for those who are drug dependent.
"So for those people, the fact that it's criminal, it really isolates them. It means they don't have conversations with doctors, with their loved ones, with the people that are in their lives about their drug use."
This isolation could also be a factor in drug-related deaths. Research has suggested that the stigma related to drug use may increase overdose risk. A 2016 study found that one barrier to opioid overdose prevention programs was the stigma attached to drug use.
Maiden said that it took approximately "19 years" for someone who uses drugs to reach out for support.
"So what we see overseas and other jurisdictions is [when we] remove the criminal penalty, we create more connections and we make it more likely that people will reach out for help."
'No silver bullet'
However not everyone agrees that there is a link between decriminalisation and a reduction in fatal overdoses.
Dr John Ryan, the CEO of the Penington Institute is one of them. He said there's no single remedy.
"From the Penington Institute's perspective, there's no silver bullet solution to the overdose problem. That's why we want a national overdose prevention strategy … also known as bringing the various threads of activity that need to be taken [together]" he said.
"One of which is improving community understanding and education around overdose, the signs of overdose and how to respond in an emergency," he added.
He pointed to other measures such as greater access to naloxone, a medicine that reverses opioid overdoses, as well as the introduction of "safe supply", a harm reduction initiative that has developed momentum in places like Canada.
In recent years, academics have flagged that a safer supply of opioids could address the number of fatal overdoses in North America.
Dr Ryan put the rise of overdoses in Australia down to a lack of action in this area.
"I think the biggest factor is that we're not paying appropriate attention to it," he explained.
"In a nutshell, if you don't actually attend to the problem, it's only going to get worse. And I think what we're seeing is a failure to actually address the underlying issues in relation to overdose and therefore, the toll continues to rise."
Underlying causes
Other academics also doubt that decriminalisation would reduce fatal overdoses.
"I don't think we have enough evidence to comment on how good [decriminalisation] is, other than the big naturalistic studies that have happened in countries that have decriminalised [drugs] like Portugal," Dr Jonathan Brett, a specialist in clinical pharmacology, toxicology and addiction medicine at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, said.
Portugal introduced decriminalisation in 2001 and reportedly saw its fatal overdose rate drop from 369 in 1999 to 27 in 2016.
Like Dr Ryan, Dr Brett pointed to a more action-based approach as a means to reducing fatal overdoses, including a greater focus on naloxone availability and the consideration of poly-drug use or the use of more than one substance.
He added that the most effective measure to reduce overdoses would be to better understand the reasons why people are using drugs.
Research has pointed to a relationship between environment and drug use, as well as drug-related harms.
For example, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan published a working paper in December 2020 that suggested the isolation of the pandemic may have led to a rise in fatal overdoses. This echoed a similar claim made by the US Centre for Disease Control that same month.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-25/drug-decriminalisation-australia-overdose-crisis/101624286
************************************25 November, 2022
Abo teen gets her just desserts
It's true that she herself was probably victim of a lot of violence. Abo men are very hard on their women and children. I have seen it myself.
There has been no admission in the media (that I have seen) that she was Aboriginal but pictures of her assault clearly show the skinny brown legs of an Aborigine
A 15-year-old girl who violently attacked a pregnant mum by slamming her to the ground with her hair as she pushed her two toddlers in a pram will spend at least a year in jail.
The teenage girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, faced Perth Children's Court on Wednesday and pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery following the September 5 attack.
Judge Hylton Quail described the attack, which was captured on CCTV footage, as 'sickening'.
The girl was charged with six other offences in Ashfield, Midland and Midvale areas between August 30 and September 5 - including an attack on an 11-year-old girl.
The 15-year-old girl admitted to trying to rob the woman but claimed she was coerced into a series of crimes by her cousin while high on marijuana, WAtoday reported.
During the sentencing, Judge Quail addressed the normalisation of the girl's violent and anti-social behaviour caused by her dysfunctional upbringing.
'From very young she was exposed to a high level of alcohol and substance abuse,' Judge Quail said.
'She experienced a great deal of neglect and has been hospitalised on a number of occasions for serious injuries as a result of that neglect.'
The 15-year-old was sentenced to 12 months behind bars.
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Greenie hatred of sheep and cattle
Having flown to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop 27) in Egypt, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has been at pains to point out the Albanese government’s commitment to US President Joe Biden’s international pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
The pledge will impel greenhouse gas-intensive industries like agriculture which, owing to the digestive systems of sheep and cattle is responsible for about half of Australia’s methane emissions, to curb their methane output.
If the target is legislated, the door would open for punitive regulatory measures to be placed on graziers running cattle and sheep.
Across the ditch, New Zealand is planning to impose a ‘burp tax’ on farmers by 2025 which, according to its own modelling, would force an estimated 20 per cent of cattle and sheep farmers and 5 per cent of dairy farmers out of business.
Such a policy in Australia would have the same result, with farmers compelled to de-stock, leading to a decline in food production and a skyrocketing of meat and dairy prices. The inevitable farm closures would devastate regional communities.
Why the Albanese government would commit to any measure that risks destabilising Australia’s agricultural industry beggars belief.
In the current geopolitical climate, the lesson could not be clearer: food security is inextricably linked to national security – a point emphasised in a recent report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute which outlines that ‘robust and resilient food and fibre production systems are critical to political and social stability’.
One need only look as far as Ukraine to see the horrific results when food supplies become weapons of war. By mercilessly blockading Ukrainian cereal exports, Vladimir Putin has plunged millions in chronically malnourished regions in Africa and the Middle East into food scarcity and starvation.
Fortunately, Australia is one of the most food-secure nations on earth. Our $83 billion agricultural industry produces enough food every year to feed Australia threefold. Surplus supplies go to our neighbours in the Indo-Pacific region – home to half of the world’s undernourished people.
The war in Ukraine, therefore, is a salutary reminder that, in any crisis to come closer to home, Australian farmers will play a crucial strategic role in bolstering not only our national resilience but peace and stability in our region.
The ASPI report argues that government and policymakers should take heed of ‘Putin’s war on global food security’ and examine how ‘national security can be threatened as well as enhanced by how we approach agriculture policy, investment and production’ in Australia.
Despite its strategic importance, few industries are as demonised by the urban green lobby or as burdened by environmental regulation as Australian agriculture, particularly the livestock sector.
Even before the methane pledge, Australian farmers were up to their neck in cumbersome environmental regulation.
Recent research from the Institute of Public Affairs has shown that the weight of Commonwealth environmental red tape, known as ‘green tape’, that farmers are forced to wade through, has grown 80-fold since 1971.
The effect has been to stifle the efficiency and productivity of Australian farmers.
IPA research shows that the Commonwealth’s environmental bureaucracy has grown at nearly three times the rate of the agricultural sector since 2000. In the same period, for every one job created in the environmental bureaucracy, 14 jobs have been lost in agriculture.
The excessive regulatory burdens placed on our farmers border on the ridiculous. To build a single irrigation pivot on private land requires no less than eight different permits.
Excessive green tape risks hampering our food security which, in times of crisis, is one of the most critical requirements to national resilience.
All of this reflects the growing tendency among policymakers to place lofty climate ambitions above the practical needs of our nation.
Despite paying for our social services, healthcare, and infrastructure, farmers – like miners – are increasingly enemy-number-one for the green climate lobby who paint them as environmental vandals. This despite the seemingly obvious fact that sustainable land management is unquestionably in the interest of every single farmer.
The reality in modern Australia is that fewer and fewer Australians have any connection to farming, agriculture or our rural regions. Worse still, few recognise that Australia is a secure, stable and safe nation largely thanks to the efforts of our farmers, both past and present. Not to mention peace in our region.
Our agricultural industry sits at the heart of our nation.
Recognising this, the Albanese government should act to cut unnecessary green tape, commit to no new taxes on farmers and, most importantly, celebrate the noble work our farmers do, not only feeding and clothing their fellow citizens but millions around the world as well.
This is now a national security priority. Just as Australia was built on the sheep’s back, so too will we rely on our farmers in any dark times to come
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/australian-notes-324/
*************************************************Why we need nuclear power NOW: Entrepreneur Dick Smith reveals the only way Australia can reach net-zero
Millionaire businessman Dick Smith has savaged Anthony Albanese's government and demanded Australia introduces nuclear power immediately.
The philanthropist told Daily Mail Australia the government was risking 'destroying the landscape' and 'ruining people's homes' with its push for more energy through dams and wind turbines.
His intervention comes after Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen previously admitted that, to meet the government's net-zero goal, Australia would have to install 40 large wind turbines a month and 22,000 solar panels a day.
Meanwhile, Patricia McKenzie, the chair of the country's biggest coal-fired power generator and CO2 emitter AGL, has warned it would need about 98 gigawatts of new capacity to speed up the closure of its coal power stations.
She said that new capacity would be needed by 2030 to 'keep the lights on', which would put 'unacceptable pressure on energy security and affordability'.
The nation has added only about 2.2GW of capacity over each of the past five years.
Mr Smith says that nuclear power is the obvious answer to the crisis and says Australia needs a government that embraces it.
'There's no alternative to nuclear power,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'I'm a big fan of renewables but the longer we delay going to nuclear, the more carbon we'll have in the atmosphere.
'It will take 10 years to get the first nuclear power station going so we can't delay but I know this government will and that will cause problems.
'It is too expensive to store energy from renewables. For water, we'd have to have dams in our valleys, which would destroy them and then dams at lower levels. You'd need a hundred dams across the country.
'For wind, we'd destroy the landscape and people's beautiful homes with wind turbines.
'We also have to think about wind droughts. Even if we had turbines all over the country, droughts would be inevitable and with the weather changing as much as it is, it'd be impossible to predict them.'
As well as criticising the government directly, he also hit out at CSIRO, the government science agency.
'There are claims from the CSIRO that renewables plus storage are cheaper than coal,' he said.
'That is just a complete lie. Storage costs would have to come down 40 times to make renewable cheaper to store than coal.
'The claims that renewables are cheaper are just not true.'
Mr Smith did not back up his claims, which are in direct contrast to a CSIRO report from earlier this year that said solar and wind continue to be the cheapest sources of new-build electricity.
Mr Smith also rejected nuclear safety fears and pointed out that 75 per cent of France's electricity is derived through nuclear power.
Australia has just one nuclear reactor, at Lucas Heights in Sydney. The government-run facility does not produce power, it instead mostly creates chemical elements used in medicine and scientific research.
'There is a nuclear reactor in Sydney. In France, the attitude to nuclear power is completely different,' Mr Dick said.
'I know I'm fighting against the tide but the younger generation are more accepting. My generation, that lived through the Cold War, they are terrified of nuclear power. But I speak to my grandchildren and they are more understanding.
'We need a government that accepts nuclear power. Did we ever think we'd have nuclear submarines? No, but we do and now we need to embrace nuclear power. We'll have to go there one day.
'We have a serious climate change problem and we need to make a serious decision on the solution.
'Not moving towards nuclear will lead to higher temperatures, ice will melt and water levels will rise.
'It's a very hard decision to make but the whole world needs to embrace nuclear power before it's too late.'
The rapid shift to net zero emissions is now the 'law of the land' thanks to the Albanese government's ambitious climate change bill passing in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
However, commentators have begun to question if we are speeding towards a renewables wreck.
'No-one in authority has the courage and intellectual honesty to explain the magnitude of the power transition this country is forced by law to embark on and the dire consequences of its likely failure,' Peta Credlin, Tony Abbott's former chief of staff, wrote in a column for The Australian.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen admitted Australia will have to 'mine, move and manufacture immense volumes of material, energy and equipment… and to train and mobilise hundreds of thousands of skilled workers (in a) collective endeavour that is almost of unprecedented scale' to meet the government's targets.
At a forum in October, featuring chief executives from the country's top electricity companies, Alinta CEO Jeff Dimery warned power prices would rise by 35 per cent next year, pointing out it would take an $8billion investment in renewables to replace $1billion worth of fossil fuel capacity.
Origin Energy CEO Frank Calabria at the same forum said, based on current wholesale costs, electricity prices would increase sharply when new tariffs are set next July.
The government's climate change bill requires greenhouse gas emissions to drop 43 per cent by 2030 and hit net-zero by 2050.
'Coal will have to drop from supplying 60 per cent-plus of our power needs to under 10 per cent within eight years. And renewables will have to rise from supplying about 30 per cent now to more than 80 per cent,' Credlin wrote.
'In practical terms, that's 28,000km of poles and wires with the trained trades to erect it, and necessary access to farming land and property across the country.'
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Australian iron miner diversifying into rare earths
Fortescue Metals executive chairman Andrew Forrest has signalled the company hopes to open up a business mining and refining rare earths, as the iron ore giant looks to reshape its mining portfolio around metals needed for a global energy transition.
Speaking at Fortescue’s annual shareholder meeting in Perth on Tuesday, Dr Forrest said the company had “kicked off a global stream of work in South America” aimed at securing access to critical minerals.
Dr Forrest did not give any details of Fortescue’s plans to join Lynas and Iluka Resources in the race to produce rare earth metals, but suggested the company was looking for projects it could use as an integrated part of its push to deliver renewable energy generation and renewable hydrogen across the world.
Rare earths are used in a host of high technology applications, but are essential ingredients in the high intensity magnets needed to make wind turbines.
“We’ve kicked off a global stream of work in South America which secures the critical minerals, the global suite of projects which we have across the world in renewables hydrogen manufacturing, which will kickstart the green energy economy,” Dr Forrest said.
“I’ve just returned from saying really large deposits of these critical minerals.”
Fortescue’s shareholder presentation includes a slide on rare earths as part of its exploration efforts, saying they would be critical to Fortescue Future Industries projects in manufacturing, renewables and hydrogen and that entry into the industry would “bring added value for our shareholders”.
The presentation follow similar comments made by FFI boss Mark Hutchinson after the company’s September quarter production report, when he told analyst Fortescue eventually hoped to integrate its mining and manufacturing operations in a more vertical structure.
Mr Hutchinson said in October the company would initially buy batteries and other renewable energy equipment from existing suppliers, rather than developing its own manufacturing capabilities.
“But we are looking at lithium longer term and batteries and seeing what we can do, particularly with the mining capabilities in the company, and also looking at other alternatives as well like using hydrogen and even pumped storage,” he said.
Fortescue is already exploring for lithium in Portugal, and last year pegged large tracts of WA’s south west region believed prospective for nickel, lithium and other battery and renewal energy technology metals.
The company has previously been linked to the potential acquisition of operating lithium mines such as Greenbushes in Western Australia. It is also exploring for copper in the Americas and Kazakhstan.
Neither Dr Forrest or Mr Hutchinson gave further details of Fortescue’s planned move into rare earths in their presentations to shareholders.
But any move into rare earths could add to an increasingly crowded capital spending budget for the company. Iluka’s WA rare earth refinery is tipped to cost at least $1.1bn, and the company already has a ready-made deposit of high grade feedstock for its refinery contained in waste product from its former mineral sands operations at Eneabba.
Dr Forrest also flagged an acceleration of Fortescue’s spending at its Belinga iron ore project in Gabon, saying its 80 per cent owned subsidiary in the company was “closing in” on the grant of a preliminary mining licence in the country.
Fortescue first signed a deal granting the company access to the deposit in December 2021, and said in August would commit $90m over the next three years on exploration at the giant iron ore project, once owned by BHP.
“The third mapping campaign is happening right now in-country and as we speak significant areas of new mineralisation have been identified. Results are very promising and we plan to commence drilling early in 2023,” Dr Forrest told shareholders.
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24 November, 2022
Lying journalists stripped of Award over lies about conservative politician Andrew Laming
Not before time. They alleged that Laming upskirted a woman. But she was not even wearing a skirt. She was in shorts. Fiction masquerading as news is not new these days but this was blatant
For the first time in its 67-year history, the Walkley Foundation has rescinded one of its prestigious journalism awards, ruling that a report into the alleged misconduct of one-time federal MP Andrew Laming was undeserving of the top industry honour.
Nine Entertainment’s Peter Fegan and Rebeka Powell won the 2021 Walkley Award in the television/video news reporting category for their reports on Dr Laming’s alleged misconduct; the pair also won a Clarion award (at the Queensland media awards) for their investigation into the MP.
One of the central allegations of Nine’s reports, which aired in March 2021, was that Dr Laming had committed the criminal act of “upskirting” – taking a sexually intrusive photograph of someone without their permission.
That claim — that Dr Laming had “upskirted” a woman at her Brisbane workplace — was subsequently proven to be untrue. The politician, who vehemently denied the accusation, was never charged with the offence.
In September, Dr Laming settled a defamation case against Nine in the Federal Court, during which the network accepted that the “upskirting”claim in one of the reports which was included in its Walkley Award-winning entry was untrue.
The Walkley Foundation sought independent legal advice from Will Houghton KC as to whether the award should be rescinded, and Mr Houghton delivered his advice to the journalism awards body earlier this month.
However, the Walkley Foundation opted not to release its decision on the matter until after its annual gala dinner, which was held last Thursday.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Walkley Foundation said: “The Directors appreciate that parties settle defamation proceedings for any number of reasons. The Federal Court proceeding settling on confidential terms and the limited apology by Nine was not decisive by itself to justify the withdrawal of the Award, but in all the circumstances the Board resolved the award could not be maintained in respect of the third report.
“The first two reports in this series contained allegations that were very serious and raised important issues of public interest, but the award could not be maintained solely upon those allegations.
“Accordingly, the Directors have resolved to withdraw the award.
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Tropical cyclones reached Sydney in the 1950s and they could return
It's terrible weather but is NOT due to global warming
NSW could be impacted by destructive tropical cyclones this decade, and it's not because of climate change.
While only two cyclones have directly struck NSW since 1974, the state was pounded by a cyclone every two years from the 1940s to the 1970s, many leading to record flood levels and deaths.
What's concerning is the Pacific pattern behind the abundance of cyclones last century has now returned.
Tropical cyclones can reach Sydney
Studying 27 NSW cyclone tracks between 1887 and 2013 shows most storms impacted the state's north-east but some survived down to Sydney and the South Coast.
What's irregular is the majority of cyclones arrived in just a 30-year window from 1945 to 1974, including eight in the 1950s.
While cyclones continue to annually make landfall over northern Australia, during the past 48 years only Cyclone Nancy (1990) and Ex-Cyclone Oswald (2013) reached NSW, both bringing significant flooding and a damage bill in the hundreds of millions.
Where have the cyclones gone?
The inordinate frequency of cyclones from the 40s to the 70s and the disappearance in recent decades is not random variability.
A 2020 report in the Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems links NSW cyclone activity with changes in the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).
The current state of the IPO and other cyclone influences has rapidly shifted in the past three years to resemble the 1950s. Meaning, the current phase of the Pacific is conducive to tropical cyclones impacting NSW.
How the IPO can impact weather for decades
The IPO is a shift in Pacific Ocean temperatures but unlike the annual La Nina and El Nino oscillations, the changes extend outside of the tropics and last from years to even decades.
A negative phase of the IPO occurs when waters along the equator are cooler than normal (region 2) while waters are warm off Australia's east coast (region 3) and in the northern Pacific (region 1).
A negative IPO phase was behind the flood dominant 1950s to 1970s and a period when tropical cyclones regularly visited NSW.
A positive phase led to drought dominant weather in Australia from the 1980s to 2000s.
The lowest IPO values during the past 100 years were in the early 50s, and 1950 was not only the wettest year on record for NSW but also a year when a tropical cyclone made it to Sydney.
The one year average IPO in 2022 is running at the lowest value since 1917 and the 11 year average is plummeting as a result.
Deadliest cyclones to reach NSW and Sydney
Before tropical cyclones were regularly named a system in January 1950 — labelled TC119 — made landfall on the Gulf of Carpentaria coast then tracked south and reached Sydney as a category 1 system about three days later.
Sydney recorded its second lowest pressure on record at 988 HPa and 114mm of rain in 24 hours. Ten people died and seven yachts were wrecked in Sydney Harbour.
This kicked off what became the wettest year on record, before 2022.
In February 1954, TC137 also dropped more than 100mm on Sydney after crossing the coast near Tweed Heads as a category 3 cyclone with wind gusts in excess of 165 km/h.
TC137 caused disastrous floods in Lismore and Casino, destroyed houses and led to 30 fatalities, the deadliest cyclone in NSW post 1900.
Dorrigo received 809mm in 24 hours from TC137, a NSW 24 hour rain record which still stands today.
Going back even further to 1911, a tropical cyclone made landfall in the Gulf of Carpentaria on January 5.
It travelled south to NSW before moving out to sea again near Wollongong about the 15th.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology wind gusts of 137 km/h were recorded in Sydney, equivalent to the speed of a category two cyclone.
Could cyclones return to NSW this year?
There is obviously no guarantee, especially considering the recent climate change induced reduction in cyclone numbers around the world.
However, if the IPO remains strongly negative for several years, a major cyclone striking NSW would be far from unprecedented. And with the population more than double that of the 1950s the potential damage from a tropical cyclone is higher than ever.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-24/tropical-cyclones-could-return-to-sydney/101689762
***********************************************Senator Kerrynne Liddle warns of huge rise in Indigenous heritage claims
Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle claims the long-accepted test to establish whether a person is an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian is being “tinkered with” in favour of self-identification.
Senator Liddle, an Arrernte woman from Alice Springs, told parliament on Wednesday she was concerned that an “astonishing” increase in the number of Australians who consider themselves Indigenous would have consequences for government policies and programs and the people who needed them most.
The South Australian senator made her remarks as a regional NSW land council pushes for Labor’s proposed National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate what it says is the scandal of non-Indigenous people and organisations claiming contracts, jobs and benefits intended for Aboriginal Australians.
Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council chief executive Brendan Moyle has asked the joint select committee on the National Anti-Corruption Commission Bill to insist the watchdog has a mandate to pursue what he says are clever workarounds by enterprising individuals.
Mr Moyle believes some government agencies are accepting statutory declarations from job applicants as proof of Aboriginality, a breach of rules in departments that are supposed to abide by the accepted three-part test.
That three-part test says a person is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander if they have Indigenous heritage – sometimes this is confirmed in writing by a land council or other Indigenous organisation – if they consider themselves Indigenous and if the community in which they live accepts they are Indigenous.
Senator Liddle said the test was not perfect but there was no evidence that it was broken, nor was she aware that it had become irrelevant.
“I am alarmed at tinkering with this definition and its impact and consequences for program and service delivery for the people who need it most,” Senator Liddle told parliament.
“There should be no place in government or in policy for a self-identification test or for fluidity in the definition, depending on program or policy application.
“With self-identification, there’s no validation, no accountability. It counts people who should not be counted; it relies on the box-ticker having a moral compass.
“It risks greater access to specialist services by charlatans to those services designed for the those who need it most.
“It fails, fails, fails every test.”
Ms Liddle cited the most recent most recent Census which showed an increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians that was far greater than the birthrate. On June 30, 2021, there were 984,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, 3.8 per cent of the Australian population. This is an increase of 185,600 people – or 23.2 per cent – since June 30, 2016.
“That is possibly explained by the reply email sent from Ancestry tracing sites that tell people they are indeed Indigenous through a relative where there is no lived connection, no lived experience, no life experience and not for maybe even more than a century,” she said.
“What should be occurring is accountability of the government its agencies and community organisations ensuring the bona fides of Indigenous claims and we better get it right before we ask Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to elect representatives to the Voice, should that be successful at referendum.
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Insane video from the height of the Covid pandemic reveals the absurdity of Australia's overzealous lockdown laws - as a man is thrown to the ground by cops for sitting on a park bench without a mask
In an authoritarian State even sitting on a park bench can be a crime. More Pol Pot than Soviet, sadly
Two police officers on July 24, last year, approached Edwin Paz, 31, and another unnamed man sitting on a bench in Victoria Park, Camperdown, in Sydney's inner-west.
There had been a Rally 4 Freedom protest in Sydney earlier that day when the virus was spreading rapidly and the Harbour City was under strict stay-at-home orders and mask mandates.
What started out as a general enquiry ended with Paz on the ground shouting out 'I can't breathe', while surrounded by police officers.
On Tuesday at the Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court, Paz was sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order (CCO) for assaulting an officer and a 12-month CCO for resisting an officer.
He was also fined $2,000 for not wearing a face mask and not complying with a Covid direction.
The footage played in court begins with one of the officers telling Paz their conversation was being 'audio and video recorded' and that he was allowed to do so in a public place.
Paz refused to cooperate with the police, telling them 'I can't hear ya'.
The officer informs Paz to 'get up and leave or I'm going to place you under arrest.'
'Are you trying to intimidate me?' Paz asks. 'I do not consent to talk with you, I haven't entered into a contract with ya, so stop speaking with me.'
Paz then asked the officer what crime had been committed.
The officer replied that 'If you're not within your local LGA (local government area) or you're not exercising, you are not in a public place with a reasonable excuse.'
It later turned out that Paz, who is from Smithfield in Sydney's west, was out of his LGA.
The officer told him he was placing him under arrest and that Paz was also committing an offence by not wearing a face mask.
Paz said that he didn't have to wear a mask, but would not produce an exemption, which was another reason for getting arrested.
He then said 'I'm free to do whatever I want, I'm a free man.'
The other officer then spoke and told Paz to stand up so he could be handcuffed, while the first office said they did not want to use force. But they did use force as Paz continued to refuse to cooperate.
As the police picked him up he can be heard saying 'Don't you dare f****** touch me' and threw a punch at one of the officers.
The scuffle continued for another two minutes as more police officers arrived to help their colleagues.
After handcuffs were finally put on him, one of the officers said 'We've got control here,' while Paz can be heard saying 'I can't breathe.'
He was then told that he was also under arrest for assaulting police.
Paz is heard calling the officers 'f****** criminal c***s' after he was handcuffed.
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Let’s hear it for legal equality instead of a voice
If you think the race-based voice will be divisive, just wait until it starts negotiating a treaty to rip apart a nation that we’ve collectively spent generations in trying to unite. As Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney was forced to concede recently, a referendum that fails will set back the cause of reconciliation. And she’s right. But that’s why a referendum doomed to fail should not be put up, rather than, as Burney intended, trying to use the prospect of failure as a weapon to shame Australians into supporting the indefensible.
Already the idea that the voice will merely be an advisory body on legislation has been shown up as a lie. The Prime Minister has conceded only a “brave” government would go against its recommendations, meaning it will have a virtual veto over what the government and parliament does. But it’s Burney who has belled the cat on its real work with her admission last weekend that the voice would play a leading role in any negotiations for a treaty or series of treaties between the commonwealth and Australia’s 500-plus Indigenous tribes or clans. This is already happening in Victoria, which has created a First Peoples’ Assembly to be a voice to government and to “design a framework for future treaty negotiations”. The assembly was set up in 2019, although fewer than 8 per cent of Victoria’s 30,000 eligible Indigenous voters cast a vote.
Then, last year, the Andrews government set up a “truth-telling inquiry” to examine the “ongoing effects of colonisation” on Indigenous Victorians. And in August, at the behest of the assembly, the government established a Treaty Authority to “address the racist legacy of invasion” to be funded to the tune of about $20m a year until a statewide treaty is achieved, plus an extra $65m tipped in last month in a pre-election push.
Because the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart didn’t just call for a constitutionally entrenched Indigenous voice to the parliament, but also for “truth-telling about our history” and for treaties “between governments and First Nations”, and because what happens in Victoria tends to be the template for other Labor governments, it’s almost certain any federal voice would follow the same pattern. Only a national voice, unlike its Victorian counterpart, would be entrenched in the Constitution, making it effectively impossible to abolish. Once something is in the Constitution, it’s beyond the ordinary reach of our democracy because no parliament can repeal it and no government can ignore it. The precise meaning of anything that’s entrenched in the Constitution is simply what the High Court says it is: seven unelected judges accountable only to their own professionalism, unless, of course, one constitutional change is trumped by a further one.
So, here’s the question: do we really want the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia, including the establishment of treaties, the rewriting of history, and eventually reparations for dispossession – because according to the Uluru Statement sovereignty “has never been ceded or extinguished” – to be more in the hands of the High Court than the parliament? If this is too important to be decided by judges, then any Indigenous voice should certainly be left out of the Constitution.
The almost unavoidable consequence of establishing a constitutionally entrenched entity that only Indigenous people can vote for, that only Indigenous people can run for, and that deals with whatever impacts Indigenous people, which is everything, is a form of co-governance.
This is already happening in New Zealand, where the Maori are about 15 per cent of the population and where the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi has always been part of the founding compact.
Only in our case, co-governance would mean that everything our government does for 100 per cent of the population would have to be negotiated with the representatives of just 4 per cent of the population.
Liberal democracy rests upon the equality of citizens. Rich or poor, old or young, male or female, immigrant or native born, religious or not, all have equal standing to vote, equal responsibilities to contribute, and equal rights before the law. This was the principle that human rights campaigners fought for generations to achieve; and finally did, in countries such as ours, over the course of the past century. Now though, if the voice proponents have their way, the old discriminatory hierarchies will be replaced by a new one based on how long a citizen’s ancestors have been in Australia. It would upend decades of multiculturalism that’s told us we are Australian not by dint of time here, but by our willingness to join the team.
Voice proponents say it’s simply a matter of courtesy. We need a voice to ensure Indigenous people are properly consulted over decisions affecting them. But does anyone really think there’s not an abundance of consultation already, especially now there are 11 individual Indigenous voices in parliament ranging from Lydia Thorpe to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price? Already we can see how much their views differ, as they do among non-Indigenous MPs, but somehow this voice will all just agree? It’s racially offensive.
With $2 trillion a year in climate reparations now being demanded of richer countries by poorer ones, the supposed victims of the global West’s environmental vandalism, it’s hard to imagine any voice not soon insisting upon reparations for the Indigenous people dispossessed by settlement. Already federal spending on Indigenous citizens is roughly twice that for everyone else with an aggregate of $30bn a year spent on about 500,000 Aboriginal Australians, as confirmed by the Productivity Commission.
Naturally, the Albanese government will deny that the voice would have any such consequences. But it won’t be up to it or its elected successors. If the voice demands treaties or makes reparations claims, it will be up to the High Court to decide whether the government or the parliament has adequately dealt with them. And make demands the voice most assuredly will.
While it’s conventional wisdom that referendums fail without clear bipartisan support, don’t be so sure on this one. The government will try to shame people into voting yes on the basis that anything else is somehow disrespectful to Indigenous people and perhaps even racist. There will be massive funding for the Yes case from woke public companies and billionaires eager for the public acclaim they think it will bring. Plus, the indications are that the government won’t fund either the Yes or the No campaigns, preferring to fund instead, a supposedly neutral education campaign. This will be end up being as neutral as the government’s recent decision to give tax deductibility for donations to bodies in favour of Indigenous constitutional recognition but not those against.
This will leave the No case scrabbling for support from those quiet Australians who could be bothered to send in their modest donations to defend the system that has served us well for over a century and that has made us less racist than ever before and less racist than almost any other country on earth. I can’t think of anything we could do to ourselves that would damage our country more than dividing ourselves by race, and entrenching that division in our founding document.
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23 November, 2022
Australia 1.47°C warmer than it was when national records began in 1910, State of the Climate Report reveals
Let's try a little logic here. If the Australian temperature is .37 of a degree above the global temperature of 1.1 degree then a significant part of the Australian warming is NOT due to global influences. That being so, how do we know that ANY of it is due to global influences? Both the global and Australian temperatures could be random fluctuations and probably are. Fluctuations are common in the long-term global record. Temperatures over the last 100 years or so are just a recent uptick from the Little Ice Age
Australia is 1.47°C hotter today than it was just over 100 years ago, putting it ahead of the global trend of 1.1°C of warming, the biennial State of the Climate report released on Wednesday reveals.
The report, from the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, revealed Australia as a whole is 1.47°C warmer than it was when national records began in 1910, although there is a margin of error of 0.24°C.
Most of that increase in warming has taken place since 1950, and every decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the one preceding it, the report stated.
Australia’s warming trend was seen across all months of the year, in both day time and night time temperatures, with a marked increase in the number of extremely hot days.
In 2019 – Australia’s hottest year – there were 41 extremely warm days, which the report said were “about triple the highest number in any year prior to 2000”.
While the temperature trend for the country has been uniform, with regards to rainfall the results are more mixed
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Rising energy bills may derail green transition, cautions Origin Energy
Rising household energy bills this decade could spark a backlash against the move to renewables, Origin Energy said, while warning the exit of coal power plants may need to be delayed to safeguard the power grid.
Treasury has warned of a 56 per cent jump in power prices in the next two years, while Labor will intervene in Australia’s domestic gas market before Christmas to calm soaring prices.
The industry needs to invest $76bn by 2030 to achieve the energy transition under Labor’s Powering Australia policy, but Origin argues companies face a challenge meeting that goal while also keeping a lid on high energy costs.
“Delivering the energy transition, given the scale of investment required, will undoubtedly create upwards pressure on energy bills,” Origin chief executive Frank Calabria told a CEDA forum on Tuesday.
“I fear rising energy prices could erode community support for the transition – a task that can only be delivered with co-ordination and commitment across governments, the private sector, market operators, regulators and communities.”
Origin, juggling a $18.4bn takeover bid from Brookfield and EIG, said the industry must be upfront with consumers over the cost of the move to green energy.
“We must be honest about the likely impact on bills over the short- to-medium-term to reduce bill shock,” Mr Calabria said.
“We must consider what levers are available to ease cost inputs right across energy bills, while implementing additional support for those in our community least able to pay.”
Gas consumers also face a big financial hit, with tariffs expected to increase by 20 per cent this year and in 2023-24 due to an ongoing supply crunch on the nation’s east coast and near-record LNG prices filtering through to the local market following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Origin raised concerns over a planned intervention in gas markets by the Albanese government, warning it was worried about the “unintended consequences” of a price cap being introduced.
“We want to be a good international player. We want to make sure supply is available. And I think we don‘t want to have unintended consequences,” Mr Calabria told reporters on Tuesday.
It also weighed in on the vexed issue of coal plant retirements noting coal closure time frames had accelerated this year with some 17GW of supply expected to exit the market by 2035.
Origin itself brought forward the closure of the nation’s largest coal power station, NSW’s Eraring, by up to seven years to August 2025 to meet green goals and focus on clean energy generation. A decision on whether to keep the plant open would be made several years in advance, according to the Origin chief, suggesting a mid to late 2023 deadline.
Mr Calabria said the scale of coal exits out through 2035 may require a reversal of some retirements should not enough replacement supplies be in place.
Consideration “must be given to the cumulative impact of these closures on the market alongside the prospect of delays to new infrastructure coming online,” Mr Calabria said.
“There may be a requirement to delay the exit of some of these coal units, and only for as long as needed, to maintain the security and reliability of the national electricity market.
“These policies will need to be flexible, with consideration given to commercial factors like compensation for costs incurred in running uneconomic plants, as well as the need to retain coal plant workers, secure coal supply contracts, and many other related matters,” Mr Calabria said.
Origin said it was worried about the nation failing to achieve its renewable supply targets against a backdrop of having to triple capacity by 2030.
“We must execute projects with greater urgency,” Mr Calabria told the forum. “I’d argue that we’re still not moving with enough urgency to build the replacement infrastructure needed within the next seven years to manage coal closures and achieve the nation’s objective of 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
“As each day passes, not only does the urgency and complexity of the challenge increase, so too does the cost.
“We need to deliver utility scale renewables faster than we’ve ever done before. The national electricity market currently has 3 gigawatts of renewable capacity slated to come online. This is good, but we’ll need much more – an expected 28GW by 2030.”
Brookfield has pledged an extra $20bn of spending on renewables should it prevail with its joint bid for Origin. Mr Calabria said the company would be able to fund its way through the transition if it remained as a public company, but said the Canadian’s cash injection may speed up the process.
“What I feel Brookfield has been clear about is that feel they have an opportunity to accelerate it even faster. So I don’t feel constrained but they’ve presented an opportunity which is obviously material.”
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Insane moment charming Muslim driver leans out of the window and lashes another car with a chain - as road rage victims reveal 'we thought we were going to die'
The victim of a road rage attack thought she was going to die when another driver leant out of his window and started striking their car with a chain.
Kirsty, 27, and her partner Lawrence were almost run off the road on Thursday by an aggressive Toyota Corolla Seca driver as they drove from Roxborough Park to Somerton in Melbourne's north.
The bizarre and terrifying ordeal lasted more than 15 minutes with the man tailgating, brake-testing and swerving towards the couple's car to try and get them off the road.
'Don't f****** come here,' the man in the early 1990s Corolla shouted out his open car window at the couple who were on their way to a gym.
He then lashed the chain at Kirsty's car, with the clanging sound being heard on the video filmed by Lawrence.
Kirsty can be heard asking her partner, 'Is he serious? Is he serious right now?'
She told 9News: 'He started actually swinging a chain at my car and damaged my passenger side.
'He was yelling at me, threatening to kill me and my partner.'
Lawrence said the man in the Toyota 'was driving so erratically that he ended up on the other side of the road and was continuing to pursue us'.
In part of the clip Kirsty is heard telling Lawrence that she does not want to pull in.
'I'd rather go in the gym and f****** get them to f*** him up,' she said.
As both cars pulled into the Somerton gym car park, CCTV captured the Corolla closing in on Kirsty.
When they parked, Lawrence immediately ran into the gym's reception area and summoned help from other customers and the owner who went outside with him.
Gym owner Maythan Sheriffi said he was shocked. 'The guy literally had a chain in his hand and it looked like... a long chain. 'He threatened us with the chain,' he said.
Kirsty has been so traumatised by her horrific ordeal she has had difficulty sleeping and was forced to take time off work to recover from the stress.
'I've just been terrified that it happened so locally, close to where I live and close to where I work,' she said.
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Labor has an election mandate to boost wages but multi-employer bargaining is a stretch
A new and curious argument crept into the industrial relations debate recently
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke both sought to justify their push to introduce multi-employer bargaining by the end of the year on the grounds they have an election mandate.
"The fact is that the government that I lead was elected with a mandate to increase people's wages," Albanese told parliament. "We went to an election and can't have been clearer. We can't have been clearer either in a speech I gave to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Sydney during the election campaign."
Workplace legislation change
The federal government makes concessions to its contentious industrial relations legislation in a bid to pass the workplace bill before Christmas.
Burke cited the same speech, when Radio National's Patricia Karvelas reasonably asked, "You didn't take multi-employer bargaining to the election, did you?"
"Hang on," the minister protested. "The Prime Minister squarely put bargaining on the table and said that to get wages — it was at a speech at an Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry meeting in Sydney during the election campaign — and he said we need to get wages moving."
So, the references during the campaign to "increasing wages" and "bargaining" apparently amount to a mandate for the legislation Labor is now trying to push through parliament in a matter of weeks. Legislation which would allow unions to negotiate deals across multiple employers.
Not everyone agrees Labor has a mandate
Business groups certainly don't think Australians voted for this. Nor do the independent MPs and crossbench senators demanding more time to properly scrutinise a complex reform.
There may be strong arguments for multi-employer bargaining, particularly to help workers in low-paid sectors like childcare. Few deny they deserve a better deal. But the argument that Labor has an election mandate to apply such a change in any sector, let alone economy-wide, deserves some scrutiny.
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Gay marriage has given our society little to celebrate
This week marked the fifth anniversary of Australia supporting same-sex marriage in a postal vote. Now we are being reassured by same-sex marriage advocates that “society has not fallen apart”.
Think again. If the punitive coercion suffered by people who did not support gay marriage during the period preceding the vote didn’t convince you that this was not just about marriage, but about the gradual imposition of a radical agenda on the whole of society, then look what has happened since.
If the dissolution of society as we know it was an exaggeration, a furious expression of frustrated Christians angry at seeing the social verities of the past falling away, people might start looking at their local school and see what sorts of things are being taught to their children. The notion that our sexual identity is fluid and not fixed is now accepted in most government schools, and challenging that view is impossible.
It has already been raised as a problem if a religious anti-discrimination bill is ever passed, and activists are now fixated on making it harder to challenge the trans agenda even in private and systemic Catholic schools. In Canada, despite assurances and a preamble to the law, Catholic schools are having a very difficult time teaching Catholic precepts on marriage and sexuality, and in the US many individuals and groups are being punished for what amounts to thought crime, prompting a conservative backlash.
The real problem with the Marriage Equality fight was the fight itself. It was never a civilised discussion in a civilised environment. It was bare-knuckle and nasty from the Yes side, from daubing vile slogans on church walls to ridiculing and denouncing people on social media. I know, I went through it. And it goes on.
It has spread beyond marriage, to the trans agenda. I recently wrote a column about a woman who started an app for women and girls called Giggle. This woman was threatened with a human rights action over the very nature of the people for whom her app was intended, women, by a transsexual person who thought they should not be discriminated against because they identified as a woman. These are the two great mantras of the new society” “Discrimination” and “Identity”. It will only get worse.
Go back to the case of Israel Folau. Freedom of expression was not available to Folau who as a believing Mormon did not support same-sex marriage. Not only did he lose his job as Australia’s star rugby player but other players who supported him and did not support SSM were told not to say anything. Meanwhile, those who supported the Yes vote were allowed to speak out. Rugby Australia undermined their freedom of expression about conscientiously held views, becoming, in effect, the arbiters of their conscience.
An even graver case was Archbishop Julian Porteous who, as a preliminary salvo to the same-sex marriage vote, was dragged before the Human Rights board in Tasmania for disseminating a booklet outlining Catholic teaching on marriage to Catholic students. The complainant was not protesting about the church’s ban on remarriage after divorce or any of the teachings about marriage and fertility tied to the vows which married Catholics must make. No, this was an opener in the battle for same-sex marriage. The agenda of the Equality movement was not about equality at all: it was about trying to muzzle the view that the family, based on a generative relationship, is the bedrock of society which has been common to all societies of all religious persuasions since time immemorial.
Meanwhile, the trans agenda has inserted itself into the centre of right think. Who says society as we know it hasn’t declined?
Consequently, the number of cases of well-meaning ordinary people being denounced on social media, or to the human rights apparatuses and even pushed out of positions for stating quite ordinary views on marriage, the family and sexual identity is increasing, and freedom of expression – and particularly of religious expression – is being undermined.
Andrew Thorburn is an ordinary man who happened to be at a church nine years before when his minister expressed moral views not in line with the Equality mantra. Thorburn is chair of the City on a Hill church, which Essendon football club pronounced has views in “direct contradiction to our values as a club”. So, a football club, assuming a prior moral authority to the church, forced his resignation as the club’s CEO.
Not surprisingly, it was this case that has awakened the general public to the danger that now awaits anyone. Not only could someone dig up a sermon a pastor gave nine years before and still hold you to account, but how long before, Torquemada-like, you are taken to the inquisitors of the board of the company for which you work, or the school where you teach, or any governing body?
It is well known that in most echelons of the public service various topics of conversation, especially those dealing with sex and family issues, are off the table. The endorsement of Thorburn’s removal by the AFL and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews highlights the frightening seriousness of this. It has made a mockery of the idea that we have equality of expression, and the real fault line is freedom of religion.
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22 November, 2022
New plan to take gas out of Aussie kitchens
At a time when the electricity grid is under great strain from Greenie meddling, this is insane. I personally remember occasions when my gas stove allowed life to go on unimpeded during an electricity blackout. These days I have multiple oil lamps in addition to my gas stove. I did use them during a late-night blackout recently
I have also noted that most chefs seem to prefer gas stoves. They give immediate and visible temperature control
They’ve been a staple of our kitchens for generations, and it seems Aussies will not give up their gas appliances without a fight.
On Tuesday, property firms Lendlease and GPT Group will come together to help launch the Global Cooksafe Coalition, with plans to phase out gas ovens and stovetops, citing health and environmental concerns.
The property giants have plans to stop installing gas kitchen appliances in new builds in all OECD countries by the end of the decade, and to only do all-electric retrofits in existing properties by 2040.
The campaign has the support of high-profile chefs including Neil Perry, Darren Robertson, Palisa Anderson, Rob Roy Cameron, William Gleave and James Edward Henry. At least one other major Australian property developer is expected to join the Coalition in the next few months, sources said.
But readers have rejected the idea, with a masive majority saying people have the right to use natural gas in their own home.
With more than 1900 readers voting in our online poll by 11.30am AEDT, more than four in five (83 per cent) said they opposed the plan to phase out gas kitchens.
Just 11 per cent said they were in favour of the campaign, while 6 per cent of readers said they were undecided on the issue.
Readers also expressed their opposition to the gas plan in comments, with some labelling it “insane” and “idiotic”.
One reader commented that gas “has been the saviour of many people duting the floods when power was out”, and that “we demonise everything these days”.
Some 76 per cent of poll respondents said they cooked with gas at home - slightly higher than the estimated 65-70 per cent of Australians who use gas domestically.
Chef Neil Perry said electric was “definitely the future of cooking” in both homes and commercial kitchens.
“It’s just cleaner, it’s more efficient and it’s definitely more beneficial for the environment. Everything tends to be neater and cleaner without gas,” he said.
Lendlease Global Head of Sustainability Cate Harris said electrification across operations was “essential” for the company to hit its goal of absolute zero carbon emissions by 2040.
“While the transition to electric cooking powered by renewables will take time, it’s already underway at our new commercial development Victoria Cross Tower in Sydney, and we’re looking forward to working alongside our Coalition partners to drive and accelerate industry change,” she said.
Dale O’Toole from GPT said all-electric kitchens “potentially present financial savings in new developments” and suggested moving away from gas would protect owners from having outdated appliances as the transition to renewable energy picks up momentum.
While the Global Cooksafe Coalition targets appliances in the kitchen only – so gas hot water or heating in the home would still be possible – several Australian jurisdictions are aggressively pursuing plans to electrify homes completely.
From next year, ACT infill developments will not be connected to the network, while Victoria has plans to take gas out of schools and hospitals, and from 2023 it will drop incentives for gas home appliances.
Why the moves against gas
The moves have been prompted by concerns over the health impacts of gas in the home, as well as the greenhouse emissions caused by natural gas.
Dr Kate Charlesworth from the Climate Council said cooking with gas was estimated to be responsible for up to 12 per cent of the childhood asthma burden in Australia, and a recent California study showed home gas stoves were associated with elevated levels of benzene, a known carcinogen.
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Seriously harmful vaccines and negligent medical advice
Julie Sladden
I was recently accused of lying. This was a little hard to swallow as it was over a directly referenced quote. At the same time, I found the accusation understandable. So much has happened over the past two and a half years, it’s difficult to know who to trust anymore.
Take this example: Pfizer recently admitted they didn’t test for transmission because they were too busy moving at the ‘speed of science’ (to be honest, they really didn’t need to admit it – just ask any double, triple, quadruple jabbed person whether they’ve had the virus yet). Yet we were repeatedly told by authorities the vaccine would stop the virus in its tracks. Trustworthy?
Or this example: The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) revealed it did not know the myocarditis risks of the Pfizer and Moderna products until five months after provisionally approving them for use. Five months! Trustworthy?
Meanwhile, adverse event reporting systems around the world indicate more adverse events in Covid vaccines than all previous vaccines developed over the past 50 years, combined. Yet we were subject to months of multimedia messaging that claimed the vaccines were both ‘safe and effective’. Trustworthy?
It turns out that for a small (but significant) number of people, the vaccines are neither safe nor effective.
People like Tyson Illingworth (known to his millions of fans as ‘tyDi’). He is an acclaimed composer, songwriter, and DJ with a swag of awards. Like so many others trying to ‘do the right thing’ he stepped up for his first dose with ‘complete faith and trust in (Australia’s) leadership and medical system’.
What happened next was alarming. He writes, ‘Within days I started to feel severe and unbearable shooting pain and paralysis in my hands and feet.’
Soon afterward, Tyson was rushed to hospital. ‘I couldn’t believe the vaccine could do this to me, especially when we were all told it was safe and effective and if there was a reaction it would be minor.’
But there was worse to come. Before release from hospital, Tyson was strongly advised to get the second vaccine by the neurologist. ‘I acted on the neurologist’s advice and ended up taking the second vaccine… in hindsight I cannot believe I listened to her as I have always thought of myself as a critical thinker, and instead I took advice from a doctor who had no regard for my personal situation.’
Tyson’s symptoms were further exacerbated by the second dose, and he was rushed to hospital once again. ‘I was unable to move, my hands felt like they were on fire, and I struggled to get through the day… I thought my life was over…’
A couple of months later he contracted the virus, sending him to hospital yet again.
Tyson’s life has changed immeasurably. Where there should be touring, performing and interviews, instead is terrible pain, medications and doctor’s appointments, and a new understanding of the state of medicine in Australia.
Vaccine claims and censorship
The COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme was established to help people receive financial support if they’ve experienced harm because of a Covid vaccine. The application process could be described as complicated, at best. Many patients find they are ineligible to claim due to the limited list of recognised adverse effects. In addition, submitting a claim requires a doctor to complete a 10-page report documenting their medical opinion and link to vaccination – something many doctors are unwilling to put their name to.
Tyson experienced this also, ‘I had 5 different doctors confirm that my condition was caused by the vaccine, and they all said they cannot go on record.’
Thank you AHPRA position statement…
(The position statement makes clear that any health advice which undermines the national immunisation campaign may result in investigation and regulatory action. Result? Many doctors are too scared to report an adverse event for fear they might be investigated.)
Despite these limitations, the claims scheme budget is set to blow out to almost $77 million by July 2023. That’s a lot of claims.
Un-informed consent
Tyson rightly questions the advice he was given recommending he take the second dose of the vaccine. ‘One would think that when a patient presents with severe neurological issues in hospital a specialist would think first, “I will do no harm and disclose the risk”… The information about neurological side effects was available to every clinician at the time, a simple Google search would have revealed this.’
A formal complaint from Tyson to the QLD health ombudsman returned a letter acknowledging that although the doctor advised him to get a second vaccine, despite being injured by the first, the practitioner was (conveniently) indemnified.
However, an April 2021 letter from Greg Hunt to both the AMA and the RACGP released under freedom of information outlines the parameters of this ‘indemnity’ and confirms ‘as with all vaccines, informed consent is required before the administration of each vaccine dose’.
The Australian government’s six-page consent form lists only a handful of potential and ‘rare or very rare’ side effects including blood clotting and heart inflammation. No mention of neuropathy or potential for other serious side effects emerging or not yet known due to incomplete safety data of these provisionally approved injectables.
So, what exactly is informed consent?
Every health practitioner should know ‘consent is a process, not a form’, says medical professional insurer Avant. ‘Gaining consent from your patient means more than just going through a checklist of risks… you need to understand the risks that are material to your patient.’
Medical professional insurer MIPS agrees that it is important that professionals ‘identify the risks that the patient is most concerned about.’
Given the nature and severity of Tyson’s reaction to the first dose it would be reasonable to be concerned about the risk of a reaction to the second.
This ‘un-informed consent’ story is all too common and one I have heard repeated time and again. Being simply handed a form to read and sign does not equate to informed consent. It never has. Especially when administering a provisionally approved medical product.
If the government’s indemnity scheme is dependent on informed consent, and informed consent didn’t happen, what happens when the patient suffers a vaccine injury? Where does the buck stop?
It stops with the patient, the person at the receiving end of this bureaucratic mess. In this case that person was Tyson who now suffers debilitating symptoms.
How bureaucracy undermines trust
The recently amended National Law, which regulates medical practitioners, is set to give AHPRA even more power to silence doctors if they are deemed to be undermining ‘public confidence’. This means if doctors disagree with public health messaging, like a ‘safe and effective’ mantra, they risk disciplinary action.
How then will patients be able to trust they are receiving the best health advice for their individual circumstances alongside up to date evidence, and not the government-endorsed public health message of the day?
They won’t.
For someone who used to trust our medical system, like Tyson, I’m not sure that trust can be earned back. And with the way things are heading, I wouldn’t trust it either.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/dont-trust-me-im-a-doctor/
*************************************************Brainless politics
Getting the nation moronically into debt to placate Covid panic merchants may be the best thing the Liberals have done in decades…
They have left behind such a flat purse that, for the first time in almost thirty years, the federal government has piddling discretionary funding with which to buy support (or silence) from interest groups.
Labor will have to stand or fall on how its policies affect the majority of Australians’ day-to-day lives.
It is no wonder that parliamentarians are spending their waking hours trying to cover up what a vulnerable position the sparse kitty puts them in. Their endless summits, roundtables, working groups, and ‘listening’ exercises get tarted up as inclusiveness. These ego-fests are actually about trying to ‘duchess’ as many interests as possible until the day when cash giveaways can return.
It is also a desperate attempt to come up with ideas for cheap (and popular) policies that can be flogged to the masses.
Labor’s long-time playbook is of zero help on that count. It reads: capitulate to the most maniacally unhinged of activists and promise whatever it takes to keep them feeling the love.
Not at all coincidentally, this usually involves profligate spending.
Labor’s brains trust is not helping either, as it is dominated by self-aggrandising journalists, pompous academics, and overly-entitled brats who think that spouting trite undergraduate garbage about gender politics places them on par with the great thinkers of the Enlightenment.
Such hubris has Labor scuttling about, struggling to hide that without handouts it has little of real substance to offer the public.
The idea that most Australians spend their days fretting about an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, working conditions for highly paid women, or any of the other elite froth that Labor has adopted to bolster its inner-city credentials, is laughable. For a government to attempt to pass off such fringe distractions as if they are central concerns of the nation should give a resounding free kick to any credible opposition.
On that front though, there is only tepid humming and hawing rather than any serious alternatives.
The Liberals are not only letting Labor choose the battlegrounds, but are also too scared to say when one of Albanese’s policies is just window-dressing. If they were fit to lead the country, Dutton’s opposition would expose Labor’s shallow rhetoric and then calmly move on to talk about practical ways to make the majority of lives better. Their failure to do so reveals a complete lack of intellect, gumption, and spine.
The real problem is that both major parties suffer from the exact same rot at their core. Over decades of unimaginable prosperity, both parties have fallen into lazyiness and expedient policy-making that relies on largesse rather than merit to get over the line. Neither has had any incentive or need to do serious thinking because they have been able to simply spend taxpayer’s money instead (or promise to).
Both parties have encouraged the view that government exists chiefly to serve the whims of the loudest groups of whingers and ‘I’m a victim’ rent-seekers. It is no wonder that identity politics has risen swiftly and with such toxicity: it is the quickest way to get rewarded, and it plays to the divide and conquer mentality that lies at the foundation of payment-based politics.
Throwing money around is nothing new, but adopting that tactic at the expense of far-sightedness and real direction – qualities both Labor and Liberal willingly surrendered during Australia’s run of good economic times – is no way to govern for the common good. All it does is popularise the notion that there is no truly shared interest, only a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction and payoff that cunning grifters disguise as ‘reflecting modern values’.
Both parties have lost the courage to say that constant government charity is unacceptable, because it has been advantageous for them to pretend otherwise.
Both parties have ceded the ability to develop – let alone deliver – tangible, practical measures that go to the heart of what the majority of Australians really care about.
This is not rocket science. Humanity’s basic desires have changed little over millennia: shelter, food, meaningful work, and the ability to raise a family while living in relative peace and privacy.
The secret to Labor becoming a government in the true sense of that word, and the Liberals earning a way back from opposition, is identical for both parties. It will not be found in the ‘progressive’ obsessions of Labor’s loony left or the return to Christianity favoured by the Liberals’ bible-thumping faction. Instead, it lies in re-learning how to develop policies from a position of austerity, maturity, and broad relevance.
Sadly, with Labor already dropping come-hither hints about being able to spend more if they win a second term and the Liberals happy to ride along, it looks like rewarding a patchwork of petty gripes is a future that suits both of them just fine.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/cashed-up-come-hither-politics/
******************************************************'Accidental' homeschoolers are rising as some parents feel they have no choice but to withdraw their children
Gemma didn't set out to homeschool her daughter, Bonnie. Bonnie had loved kindergarten and Gemma assumed that, the following year, school would go just as smoothly.
"We entered prep very excited and full of wonder, ready to start the mainstream [school] experience," Gemma says.
But it was 2020, and Bonnie's start in school coincided with the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schoolyard conversations, and restrictions like social distancing and mask-wearing, had Bonnie concerned.
"She came home full of questions and then full of worry," Gemma says. "And that's where the anxiety started to build."
It was the beginning of Gemma's journey to becoming an "accidental homeschooler".
That's the term used by Rebecca English, a Queensland University of Technology researcher and lecturer specialising in non-mainstream education.
The term describes a cohort of home educators that Dr English says is growing. Accidental homeschoolers are those people who have tried one or several different schools that haven't worked for their child, "so they have found themselves home educating or distance educating", she says. "They just felt they had no choice."
It's a decision that carries implications beyond a child's education. Overwhelmingly, it's women who take on the homeschooling responsibility in a family, Dr English says.
"The short-term impact is the loss of possibly a woman's full-time wage," she says. In the medium-to-long term, it might equate to lower superannuation, and a drop in how much money a family can spend in their local community.
Rising figures mean these are issues that need addressing, Dr English says.
In Queensland, where she is based, there were 900 homeschooled students a decade ago. Today there are about 8,500. In the past year alone, Queensland homeschool registrations have jumped 69 per cent.
Dr English believes the figures reveal a system in need of change. "There are reasons that all of this is falling down. And we need to have a broader conversation about this as a country."
After Bonnie's anxiety about school "started to dial up to 10", and she was diagnosed with anxiety and autism, Gemma says she tried to make the school experience work. She sought external specialists as well as extra in-school support.
None of it was enough. "[Bonnie] was so worried and she was so scared that she wanted to be around us and she didn't like the separation from us. "For us, it just became a point where we had to try something different," Gemma says.
Bonnie's school was nurturing and well-intentioned, but Gemma says teachers were under-resourced and over-worked. They didn't have the specific skills needed to help her daughter feel safe and comfortable at school.
The family finally made the decision after term one this year to withdraw Bonnie and homeschool her. "It wasn't the [fault of the] school and another school wasn't going to be the answer. It was the system as a whole. And we had to make a change," Gemma says.
She argues that schools need more flexibility — and more time — to be able to focus on the individual needs of students.
Dr English agrees. She argues that schools need better support to be able to manage issues such as bullying, as this is one of the main reasons parents choose to home educate, according to her research.
Her research also highlighted the indirect factors leading some parents to choose to homeschool. Some of these include social and emotional issues a child might face, such as anxiety or depression, or because they identify as being on the autism spectrum and find classroom noise difficult or overwhelming. "And so they're much happier at home," she says.
Dr English argues that an uptick in homeschooled children is something that "can't be disconnected from the teacher crisis" — that is, the widespread shortage of Australian teachers.
"Realistically, schools are really pressed. The institution of schooling really needs to be looked at more deeply … There just isn't the time to do that support work," Dr English says.
She argues that teachers are too stretched and that too much of their working days are consumed by "data-driven" work demanded of them by education departments, leaving them insufficient time to devote to individual students.
"If teachers were better supported, more people would join the profession [and] less parents would feel disaffected and would be resorting to home education," she says.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
21 November, 2022
More Covid-19 alarmism from Leftist "doctor"
For someone who calls himself “Australia’s most trusted doctor”, Norman Swan sure gets a lot wrong. His multiple misdiagnoses during the pandemic at least provide a public service by reinforcing the virtue of seeking a second opinion.
Just over a year ago, I highlighted Swan’s many erroneous predictions as the ABC’s medical reporter and pandemic analyst. Predictably enough his mistakes are always to the alarmist side, exaggerating the threat of Covid-19 and forecasting disastrous outcomes that never occur.
Swan has defended the harshest and most futile pandemic crackdowns in Labor states, such as repeated lockdowns in Victoria, while criticising the less draconian responses of the NSW Liberal government. It is hard to fathom how partisan preferences might infect something like pandemic commentary that should involve only rational and practical considerations – but there you go.
Yet Swan has outdone himself this week with a frightful intervention that broke all the standard rules about personal intrusion, public fearmongering and basic fact-checking. It is a potent example of how some people are desperately seeking to prolong the period of crisis, for whatever political, professional, or personal motivations, consciously or not.
Speaking on ABC breakfast television, Swan was eager to warn the public that even after they had been infected with the virus, and recovered, Covid might still kill them. He cited a study based on 2020 cases – before vaccines, antiviral treatments, the arrival of what are now the most common variants, when we knew much less about the virus – and he illustrated his point with a couple of prominent and tragic deaths from earlier this year, Shane Warne and Senator Kimberley Kitching, both just 52 years old.
“My view is that it’s too much of a coincidence that Shane Warne and the Labor senator in Victoria died not long after a Covid infection,” Swan told viewers, “And people are reporting sudden death after Covid infection. It’s not benign.” Talk about telehealth, this TV doctor was happy to fly blind and stoke anxiety.
If Swan had bothered to check, he would have discovered that Kitching had, in fact, never been infected with Covid. Warne, on the other hand, had seen off the virus twice, but was exposed to other, well-documented heart disease risk factors, including smoking, drinking and poor diet.
Yet Swan was happy to use these deaths to put the fear of God into anyone who wanted to listen. Official figures show at least 10.5 million Australians have been infected with Covid, and scientific studies suggest it might be closer to 16 million, or two thirds of us.
All those people who have survived the virus at least once, the vast bulk with mild symptoms, were being told they were not in the clear. Rather, Swan wanted them to consider that they might suddenly drop dead.
In the furore that followed, the ABC had no choice but to concede their medical reporter had breached editorial standards. The national broadcaster had a breakfast television host read an apology on Swan’s behalf: “Dr Norman Swan has issued an apology after suggesting there may be a Covid link to the deaths of Labor senator Kimberley Kitching and cricket great Shane Warne. He made those comments during his interview on our program yesterday. Dr Swan says he’s personally apologised to Senator Kitching’s husband yesterday and that he made an error he regrets.”
Hang on, where was the apology to the public? Did the ABC and Swan not understand the substance of this transgression or were they just playing dumb?
Sure, Swan needed to apologise to the Kitching and Warne families. But the far greater infraction was the spreading of baseless fear among ABC audiences.
Swan continues to register himself as a doctor, even though his original medical training occurred almost half a century ago and he no longer practises. All the same, he surely would be aware of the dictum, courtesy of the Hippocrates work Of the Epidemics, which urges medics “to do good or to do no harm” – often simplified as the crucial rule, “first, do no harm”.
Warning people, unnecessarily, that they might drop dead anytime because of a virus that is now endemic in our population is not doing good. It is doing harm.
The hysterical response by some to the pandemic is still evident in people wandering around outdoors in masks, elderly people still isolating at home, bureaucrats considering a return to compulsory masks, and some employers still insisting on redundant vaccine mandates. The ABC should get Swan to pull his head in.
It could invite real experts on to ABC programs more often; people who practise medicine and are sensible and articulate. The infectious diseases experts Professor Peter Collignon, Professor Catherine Bennett, Associate Professor Nick Coatsworth and Dr Clay Golledge have all been generous with their time for media during the pandemic, as well as accurate in their predictions, and sober in their advice.
But the ABC has preferred the gloomy, sensationalist, interventionist, and often erroneous analysis from Swan. I guess it makes for a better story.
Shane Warne’s manager said it best, telling The Australian it was “totally disrespectful” for the ABC to air Swan’s “asinine” post-mortems. “Why would anyone take any notice of what this guy has to say? What on earth would he know about Shane’s health?”
Fair call, and then the kicker: “Maybe he (Swan) could tell us who really killed JFK.”
But Swan alone is not to blame. As is typical at the national broadcaster, the lack of restraint, lack of editorship, and lack of perspective has been evident as the organisation has encouraged and followed Swan along the catastrophist path.
When the history of the pandemic is written, the constant stream of alarmist misinformation from the ABC (and most other media) will be central. The symbiotic relationship between hysterical journalists and power-stuck politicians sucked the lifeblood out of a normally vibrant society.
Instead of comparing responses around the world and coming to the obvious conclusion that we inflicted greater social and economic costs on ourselves for no greater benefit, some commentators and politicians want to continue the paranoia. They would prefer we still behaved like communist China, where major city lockdowns are provoking violent street protests – even in a totalitarian country – which could lead to all sorts of unintended consequences in coming weeks and months.
The pandemic panic merchants have a lot of explaining to do. Having supported lockdowns, curfews, rings of steel, border closures, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and having warned we cannot live with the coronavirus, they are left with all the evidence of overreach, with so much of the tumult and trauma exposed as unnecessary, as we proceed to live with the virus. Only the communist regime in China continues to pursue the impossible Covid-zero goal that many aspired to in this country.
Perhaps we will never see an appropriate reckoning because the main culprits dominate our media, politics, and bureaucracies. We need a national royal commission to investigate our pandemic response but there is precious little impetus for it because this would amount to the media/political/bureaucratic elite calling an inquiry into themselves.
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Up to 33,000 jobs at risk due to Labor's new taxes, bargaining changes, mining companies say
Mining companies have warned that up to 33,000 jobs are at-risk from new taxes and multi-employer bargaining changes, with critical minerals, lithium, copper and other resources projects valued up to $77bn imperilled by increasing investment uncertainty and contagion.
Resources giants have told the Albanese government that projects underpinning its Powering Australia energy transformation plan will come under threat if miners are hit with new taxes, industrial relations rules, emissions and environmental restrictions.
Senior industry sources said a “slow down” in critical minerals, lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper projects would put the government’s 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by mid-century targets in jeopardy.
Facing a re-run of the 2010 mining tax campaign and calls from coal, gas and iron ore producers to rule-out new levies and multi-employer bargaining, Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Sunday said it wasn’t the government’s “preference” to impose a temporary tax on thermal coal and gas.
Anthony Albanese, who returned from overseas on Sunday, will convene Cabinet meetings this week in Canberra to finalise the government’s pre-Christmas plan to support manufacturers and households facing massive hikes in power bills.
“Our priority is on the regulation side rather than on the taxation side. But at this stage of the process, it makes no sense to take options off the table until or unless we can make progress on the regulatory side
Dr Chalmers said the government was pursuing a regulatory solution, anchored by a mandatory gas market code of conduct that includes pricing considerations. The Prime Minister also left the door open to a cap on gas prices.
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable, backed by member companies including BHP, Rio Tinto, Whitehaven and Glencore, said a mining tax would “slow down Australia’s energy transformation”.
The mining sector has identified 140 projects subject to pre-final investment decisions which could be at-risk from tax and IR changes, including 46 critical minerals projects.
Across the country, there are about 200 major minerals projects currently in the pipeline over the next five years, with an estimated value of between $73 and $95bn. The MCA warns that 22,000 construction jobs and more than 11,000 ongoing jobs could be at-risk.
Mr Constable said “to build the amount of renewable energy technology required to meet our emissions targets, Australia needs more critical minerals out of the ground”.
“More lithium for batteries, more copper for solar panels, and more cobalt for electric vehicles. Not more uncertainty and risk that will simply chase away investment from our shores, at such a crucial hour,” Ms Constable said.
“By targeting the mining industry, the federal government risks undermining its own climate ambitions.
“Combined with a rushed industrial relations policy that will lead to more strike action, this dual attack on mining will put countless mine developments at risk of cancellation or delay, at a time when we need more investment in our economy, and more jobs.”
The lack of clarity over taxes, multi-employer bargaining, environmental planning changes and a crackdown on heavy emitters has sparked a national campaign by cashed-up miners and exporters concerned about investment and sovereign risk impacts.
The campaign was launched after The Australian revealed the government was considering a proposal for a new temporary tax on thermal coal and gas to help subsidise skyrocketing electricity bills.
Dr Chalmers on Sunday said “we are conscious of our international relationships, we are conscious of investment in the industry” after mining companies and Japan – one of the nation’s biggest LNG and coal export markets – raised concerns about regulatory and tax changes.
Greens leader Adam Bandt will this week ramp-up pressure on the government to impose a windfall profits tax on energy companies and continue his push to end subsidies for oil, gas and coal.
Mr Bandt and resources spokeswoman Dorinda Cox will on Monday move a disallowance motion in the Senate to block federal money for a new Victorian gas project.
The motion targets a $32m commercial loan provided by the Morrison government to GB Energy to accelerate the Golden Beach gas production and storage project.
Mr Bandt said “Labor can’t keep backing new coal and gas projects”.
“The big gas corporations are making giant profits and the public shouldn’t be on the hook for a new gas project that will make the climate crisis worse,” Mr Bandt told The Australian.
Ms Constable said resources companies need “certainty to make long-term investment decisions”.
“Why would companies risk investing in Australia if the rules keep changing, long after investment decisions have been made?”
The MCA, NSW Minerals Council and Queensland Resources Council last week launched an advertising blitz based on the $22m mining tax campaign, which led to the demise of Kevin Rudd.
“The decision to emulate the opening salvo of the 2010 mining tax campaign was deliberate and calculated,” a senior NSW mining source told The Australian.
“Preparations are well underway to escalate things if necessary in the weeks ahead. It’s hoped the government learns from past mistakes and rules out a tax, which will do nothing to bring down power prices but would significantly hurt the Australian economy.”
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Canada’s nuclear power turns heat up on energy ignorance
Late last month, energy company AGL lodged an application to blow up its Liddell coal-fired power station in NSW. It’s a shame it can’t be dismantled and packed into shipping containers because the Germans would take it in a flash.
At Garzweiler, near Cologne, the demolition crews are chopping down wind turbines to get to the coal beneath the ground. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced the reopening of five power plants burning low-grade lignite. The life of three nuclear generators is being extended.
Yet Australia, apparently, has so much energy to spare that it can close its fourth-largest coal generator in five months’ time and the lights won’t even flicker. We’ll see.
In June we witnessed a dress rehearsal of Liddell’s closure. A series of outages by coal generators coinciding with rising winter demand brought the National Energy Market to the brink of collapse. The situation was so dire that NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean went on the radio to plead with customers to avoid using their dishwashers until after the evening peak.
At 6.55pm on June 12, the Australian Energy Market Operator ordered Queensland coal generators to turn up the throttle. By 6.30 the next morning, the interconnector from Queensland to NSW was running red hot. At 7am electricity was flowing at three times the safe capacity.
As the sun rose, solar panels offered some relief, but the emergency was far from over. At 6.30pm on June 13, desperate for every megawatt of dispatchable power it could muster, the AEMO ordered Snowy Hydro to crank up its turbines at Colongra on the NSW Central Coast. In normal circumstances, Colongra runs on natural gas. Since the price of gas had gone through the roof, however, the turbines were running on diesel.
READ MORE:State’s coal export bonanza to thrive until at least 2050|‘Don’t go there’: PM warned on new tax|Gas crisis forces Germany to flatten wind farm for coal mine
So much for a smooth transition from hydrocarbons to clean energy. NSW avoided blackouts last winter by turning to one of the dirtiest forms of fuel available. What happened on June 13 was far from an isolated incident. At the peak of the grid crisis in the second week of August, diesel was generating 2 per cent of dispatchable power in the NEM.
If any grounds remain by which the federal and NSW governments can prevent AGL committing this act of industrial vandalism then it must use them, because even if Liddell stays open, the grid will be stretched to the limit. Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen should insist demolition is postponed until AGL replaces like with like. Instead, we’re being fobbed off with puffery about AGL’s investment in wind and solar and its plans for green hydrogen.
AGL scrapped its plan to install gas generators on the site some years ago but it isn’t abandoning Liddell completely. The company has promised to install a 500MW lithium-ion battery in partnership with Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries.
Even if it were up and running by the time Liddell closes, which it won’t be, it will be virtually useless in the kind of emergency that came close to blacking out NSW in June. A 500MW battery stores the equivalent of 0.01 per cent of NSW’s weekly energy consumption.
Blowing up Liddell will be just the start of our woes. In August 2025 the country’s largest generator at Eraring will be replaced with another fizzer of a battery. Others must follow if the AEMO is to stay on track with its plan of retiring 60 per cent of coal capacity by the end of the decade.
For a moment, let us put scepticism aside and assume Bowen’s plan to install 64 million solar panels, erect 3800 wind turbines and string up 28,000km of transmission lines is the solution. But unless he can get them up and running by April, Bowen must abandon wishful thinking and face facts. The laws of physics and the challenges of engineering mean the near-instant shift to zero emissions many expect simply cannot occur. The modern world was built to run on hydrocarbons and transition will take much longer than we have so far imagined, if it can be achieved at all.
Not every Western country is making such a hash of things. The government of Ontario announced the closure of its coal-fired power plants in 2003. The Thunder Bay Generating Station, the final coal plant in Ontario, stopped burning in 2014. Today the province remains the powerhouse of the Canadian economy and a centre for manufacturing.
Ontario seized the advantage by investing in nuclear power and a relatively light touch with wind and solar. The province is home to five of six Canadian nuclear reactors including the largest nuclear power station in the world.
Ontario has become an early adopter of small modular reactors, the first of which is under construction at Darlington Point, adjacent to an existing nuclear reactor. The first SMR could be in operation by 2028 and will have a life of 60 years. Australia’s wind and solar infrastructure will need to be replaced three or four times in that period, if we were foolish enough to persist on that path.
SMRs would be the best possible replacement baseload generators for Australia’s remaining coal-fired power plants if we had a government bold enough to rise to the challenge. Four SMRs, stacked in sequence at Liddell covering as little as 18ha, would comfortably cover the gap left by the withdrawal of coal.
Bowen claims the adoption of nuclear would push up power prices and crowd out cheaper and cleaner technologies, insisting that firmed renewables are quicker to build and cheaper to operate. “Those who say otherwise are either dangerously ignorant or simply seeking to perpetuate the climate wars,” he says.
In fact, the retail electricity price in Canada was about the same as the price in Australia in 2005 before the renewable energy investment boom began. Today, Canadians are paying half as much as Australians and enjoy the third-lowest prices in the OECD. Energy ignorance runs deep.
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Another false claim of Aboriginality?
A relative of a Victorian Labor candidate who has described herself as a "proud Yorta Yorta woman" has said their family has no Indigenous ancestry and has never identified as Aboriginal.
Lauren O'Dwyer is running for election in the battleground seat of Richmond in Melbourne's inner north at this weekend's state election.
The ABC understands Ms O'Dwyer said her Indigenous heritage comes from her great-grandfather, Graham Berry.
However Mr Berry's daughter, Joan Keele, has told the ABC her father was not Aboriginal and never identified as Indigenous.
"My father was not … Aboriginal. His father was born in Swan Hill and his mother was born in Richmond," Ms Keele said. "So he's nowhere near Yorta Yorta country. "We had a good relationship. We could chat about anything and everything, but [he] never, ever mentioned that."
Yorta Yorta country is concentrated at the centre of the Victorian-NSW border, taking in towns including Echuca and Shepparton. Swan Hill lies 100 kilometres from its westernmost boundary of Cohuna.
Ms Keele said she found out Ms O'Dwyer had described herself as Indigenous after seeing campaign advertisements on Facebook. "I was really surprised when I read that on Facebook that she was … a proud Yorta Yorta woman," Ms Keele said. "I can't understand her. I really don't."
In a statement provided to the ABC, Ms O'Dwyer disputed the allegations. "I know who I am and am proud of my heritage," Ms O'Dwyer said.
Growing concerns and questions about Ms O'Dwyer's heritage have continued to build in the lead-up to Saturday's election, with the local Aboriginal corporation saying she has failed to follow cultural protocol and consult with elders. "She cannot say she's Yorta Yorta until she actually comes to the Yorta Yorta," Ms Morgan said.
"I'm not against this woman per se, but it is very clear that she has no right to procure an identity as a Yorta Yorta without going through the proper channels and going to their elders."
The YYNC has clear guidelines about who can identify as descendants of the 16 families who moved to the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Mission, near the Victorian-New South Wales border, when it first opened, making up the Yorta Yorta Nation today.
Ms Morgan said neither Ms O'Dwyer nor Mr Berry were found anywhere along the line.
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Fascism: We're well down the path to it in Australia
In recent years Australians have been exposed to a succession of natural disasters and a global pandemic. These episodes have seen government powers greatly increased and state dependence become a substitute for personal responsibility.
Perhaps because it all seemed so innocent the people’s reaction to this growing interference in their lives has been muted. They reasoned desperate times call for desperate measures. They tolerated poorly administered disaster relief and obediently observed harsh Covid lockdowns because, ‘they kept us safe’. Official scaremongering, based on uninformed or withheld medical advice, was sufficient to excuse multiple affronts to our Constitution and values.
Our constitutional guardians, from former prime minister Scott Morrison down, watched our liberties being abused with cold indifference. Not even the abridgement of free movement between the states, the arrest of a young pregnant mother for protesting against draconian lockdowns on Facebook, the death of an unborn child because ‘Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders’ or police firing rubber bullets at fleeing demonstrators, could stir the people’s representatives into protecting our Constitution and way of life. And while the emergencies have receded, emboldened governments remain.
This development is eerily reminiscent of 1930s Germany when journalist Sebastian Haffner wrote in his secret journal, ‘There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and, those like me, watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theatre’. Like Australians today, Germans believed talk of authoritarian rule was alarmist until it wasn’t.
Australian sceptics should note how the Racial Discrimination Act is being increasingly used to silence free speech. And how, in the public square, critics of the incessant wave of woke orthodoxies face demonisation as right-wing extremists, racists, climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers. Fear of being socially ostracised intimidates most. A tentative, ‘I probably shouldn’t be saying this’, is as far as most will go, even in private.
It’s the same in the corporate world. As Haffner observed, when an organisation’s future is inexorably linked to being on one ideological side, close attention is paid to the new doctrine.
So as guilt for past sins sees the NSW government commit $25 million for a token Aboriginal flag to fly permanently on Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, retailer, Coles Group ‘gets the vibe’ by acknowledging on its shopping dockets, ‘the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia’.
Similarly, big-business executives demonstrate their Green credentials by demanding limousine companies drive them to the airport in electric vehicles so they can take their umpteenth CO2-emitting flight.
It doesn’t take jackboots anymore. Spooked by social media and ‘ethical’ investors and wooed by government incentives, most boards and management have embraced ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ with alacrity. It includes the notion of a ‘social licence to operate’, a term invented by the political class to advance the goals of environmental sustainability in business practices. After all, serving ‘the people’s community’ sounds more noble than the maximisation of financial return.
But don’t be fooled. Going Green is a trillion-dollar industry and a way in which virtue and profit can nicely intersect. Like moths to a flame, rent-seekers have quickly appeared and become part of a new privileged, self-reinforcing elite.
Indeed, having access to the political class is today’s pathway to fame and fortune. It requires a different skill set to the economic risk-takers of the past. It is a system which demands obedience, entrenches privilege and restricts social mobility. Bureaucracies may claim intellectual superiority, but their record demonstrates that intellect and competence are, too often, inversely correlated.
For example, no profit-seeking enterprise would have invested in unnecessary desalination plants, an obsolete NBN, or a poorly conceived Snowy Hydro 2.0, and inland rail, let alone waste $240 million on a now mothballed Queensland quarantine facility. Indeed it’s only because we still have a capitalist system that we recognise bureaucratic ineptitude parading as public interest. Capitalism ends waste. Governments perpetuate it.
We have reached the stage where big government now enjoys a life of its own. It continues to attract a growing army of self-interested, unaccountable, group-thinking bureaucrats. They are inward looking and process driven. They are difficult to fire or demote. Those who actively seek power over others do well. They are essentially anti-liberal and anti-market and pursue regulatory powers wherever possible. The more they intervene the bigger and more powerful they become.
Looking to the future, education bureaucracies are preparing today’s children to become state dependent. Schools are transmission belts for self-loathing propaganda. Students are indoctrinated through required-reading textbooks, anti-capitalist teachings, critical race theory and the vilification of Western society. As our international proficiency rankings in literacy and mathematics tumble, the emphasis is on ‘well-being’. In primary school everyone gets a gold star wherever they place and, in team sports, there are no winners or losers lest self-esteem should suffer. When adults, these children will hardly know disappointment and will lack the necessary resilience to deal with it. They will turn to Big Government for support.
Yet the bigger governments become the more disappointments there are. Prosperity and equity for all are ever-receding horizons. Indeed, a Productivity Commission report reveals economic growth and income per person over the past decade has slipped to its slowest rate in sixty years. Moreover, the wealth of the top 20 per cent of Australians has grown 68 per cent in the past fifteen years compared to six per cent for the bottom 20 per cent.
But like Haffner, we watch silently as high-minded, highly educated bureaucrats, arbitrarily drive the economic and social agenda, leaving politicians to market illusory fantasies with empty catchwords. We are assailed internationally and domestically with promises that big government is the solution, when even a cursory glance at the evidence reveals the opposite.
So we face a stark choice. Coercion and compulsion or freedom and self-determination. There is no third way. A revolution is taking place here and now and it’s not a stage play.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/it-couldnt-happen-here-could-it/
***************************************************20 November, 2022
Conservative principles should have prevented vaccine Fascism
Instead our elites followed the Chinese Communist example, with predictably destructive results
In July 2021, when ‘vaccine passports’ were still a crazy conspiracy theory, I wrote an article for The Spectator Australia arguing that Australia must not become a checkpoint society based on proof of Covid vaccination. To allow such tyranny would be illiberal and draconian, and contradict everything that the Liberal Party, as conceptualised by Sir Robert Menzies, stood for.
Not long after that article was written, many unvaccinated Australians were barred from public places, doctors’ clinics, hospitals, and even from working because they turned down the jab. Our health bureaucracies and state premiers told us that this was essential for our safety to ‘stop the spread’.
Contrary to the current claims of these backpedalling authorities, following the admission of a top Pfizer representative that their product was never tested for its impact on viral transmission, the assumption of our health departments was that the so-called vaccines would prevent the transmission of Covid.
South Australia’s Chief Health Officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, told parents that, ‘Vaccination is the best way to protect you, your family, and your friends from getting sick, and reduce the risk of outbreaks and school closures.’ As recently as January of this year, Premier Daniel Andrews told Victorians, ‘At the moment two doses are protecting the vast majority of people from serious illness, but it’s only with three doses that you’ll be prevented not just from serious illness but from getting this virus, this Omicron variant, and therefore giving it to others.’
State governments made Australia a checkpoint society, but when the Covid cases continued to mount on the daily media tallies, it became obvious that the injections did not prevent transmission. Many so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ already knew that would happen. Yet it didn’t prevent the establishment media, politicians, and health departments from pushing the lie that the injections were necessary to stop the spread. To this very day, many workplaces still have private injection mandates in place.
People’s lives have been shipwrecked, sometimes ended, because of these mandates, which have turned out to be based on a lie just as the ‘conspiracy theorists’ had warned. This is the greatest political and public health scandal of our time. If Pfizer had no data on viral transmission, on what basis were the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the Department of Health, and state Chief Health Officers making this claim from the moment the rollout began?
I am disturbed by the fact that this has taken place in this country, and by the hostility with which those who were cast aside as ‘anti-vaxxers’ were treated. The reason I am a member of the Liberal Party is because I believe in its foundational principles. Namely, ‘In the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples … a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative… In those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy – the freedom of thought, worship, speech, and association.’ There is no way that mandatory injections to keep one’s job, even if the mRNA injections were the safest and most effective vaccines ever developed (which they clearly aren’t), would be justifiable to anyone who believes in these principles.
Sadly, many found this too difficult to understand, or were not brave enough to speak out, lest their reputation suffer. Sometimes doing the right thing requires being called a fool.
In November 2021, after many Australians had either lost their jobs for not getting jabbed or had been coerced into doing so, I took the view that what was happening in our community was so serious, that I could leave no stone unturned to try to help and along with my Queensland colleague Senator Gerrard Rennick I advised the Prime Minister that I would be withholding my vote in the Senate until such time as the federal government intervened. This was not a position I took lightly but it was a hill I was prepared to die on.
Mandates were state driven, but there were many actions that the federal government could have taken to assist such as, legislating against discrimination in the manner proposed by Senator Pauline Hanson (a Bill I supported), withdrawing the states’ funding, or removing their access to the Australian Immunity Register to name but a few.
I also gave a speech in the Senate calling for an end to the mandates, in which I quoted Sir Robert Menzies:
‘The rarest form of courage, I think, in the world, is moral courage. The courage that a man has when he is prepared to form his view of the truth and to pursue it, when he is not running around the corner every five minutes to say, ‘Is this going to be popular?’
I took courage from Sir Robert’s words but sadly, there was no appetite to change course.
The reason I drew a line in the sand was simply that it was the right thing to do, and the only course of action consistent with the values of the Liberal Party. Those of us who didn’t allow ourselves to be bullied into silence and compliance have been vindicated. Others have woken up to the fact that they were lied to as the bureaucratic tyranny expanded.
Courage is contagious, as they say. The quiet Australians are speaking out. The pushback against Covid authoritarianism has been, in many ways, tremendous. The protests in Victoria, Sydney, and Canberra were the largest I remember seeing in Australia, and drew many people from all walks of life, despite the legacy media’s best efforts to smear the peaceful protesters as dangerous weirdos.
The Covid narrative has been exposed. Conservatives who grasp the concept of liberty know that the mandates were both medically and morally wrong. Australians are ready for leadership that is unconcerned with the banal criticism of the craven establishment and courageously pursues the truth. Let’s give it to them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/a-hill-to-die-on/
**************************************************Scholars shed light on Bruce Pascoe’s claims about Aborigines in "Dark Emu"
It took seven years for Australia’s anthropologists and archaeologists to test the claims in one of the most popular books ever published about First Nations people – the best-selling Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture, by Bruce Pascoe.
And it’s telling that Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, who somewhat reluctantly took on the task of challenging Pascoe’s thesis that pre-colonial Aboriginal people were agriculturalists who built stone houses and cultivated the land, are freelancers who work outside the academy.
Their book, Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, published last year, has been short-listed for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, in the running for the $80,000 top prize in the history section when winners are announced on December 13.
They were late to the fray, partly because they didn’t take Pascoe’s 2014 book very seriously and were busy with other work, but Sutton thinks the silence from the universities stemmed from fear.
“You can lose a job (if you challenge an Indigenous issue),” Sutton tells Inquirer from his home in South Australia. “You can be vilified in public or in social media. It’s notable that both (of us) are retired. Most people didn’t have the stomach for the fight because you are cancelled if you have a view that’s not liked by certain people, you are cancelled simply on the basis of being white.”
He says if the “relevant scholarly professionals” had reviewed Dark Emu – said to have sold more than 250,000 copies, generated a children’s edition, and on school curriculums – they would not have had much of a future.
Instead, says Sutton: “What happened was that Bruce developed more and more of a public image. In fact, he became someone with instant brand recognition among the middle classes.
“(As) part of the genre of anti-racist literature in this country, (Dark Emu) appealed to people who were concerned about the wellbeing of Indigenous people.
“There were lots of stories of gaps that wouldn’t close and other depressing things about children not attending school. So here’s something that comes along with a positive message. It’s anti-British, anti-colonial.”
Sutton says Pascoe’s identification as Indigenous didn’t hurt either: “No one would have bought a book … written by a white fella from Mallacoota.”
At 76, Sutton is one of the nation’s most significant social anthropologists and linguists who has worked in the bush for more than 50 years – recording and learning Indigenous languages, mapping Aboriginal cultural landscapes, and working on a total of 87 land claims.
He has written or co-written 15 books on Indigenous issues, including his controversial 2009 challenge to public policy, The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the End of the Liberal Consensus.
Born to working-class parents in Melbourne in 1946, he went to “the only school for Christian Scientists’ children in Australia”. He became “devoted” to the metaphysics of the religion and as a young adult spent two years as a Christian Science practitioner, or healer, someone others seek out for “assistance and wisdom and things to read and also for healing”.
Later, armed with his degree in literature and linguistics, he did bush fieldwork, recording – and learning – endangered Indigenous languages in Queensland. He is still in touch with the great great grandchildren of the Old People he sat with 50 years ago.
“There are many (descendants) who don’t speak the language but want to know more about the very big movement in Australia and Canada and the US for language revitalisation,” he says.
In 1970, he made an extensive field trip across the eastern Gulf country of Queensland to Palm Island, working there with Indigenous man Johnny Flinders – one of the last speakers of the Wurriima or Flinders Island language. Johnny is dead and Sutton says that he is now the only person alive who can speak the language.
Back in the city, Sutton spent a couple of years in the sound section at the then Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra before heading bush again in 1974 on a long ethnographic mapping trip. It was a “much more muscular activity (than the language trips) involving some fairly strenuous fieldwork” and Sutton loved it.
The next year, he was out again, mapping hundreds of sites across 300km from the Lockhart River settlement south to Port Stewart. He spent three years from 1976 on field work with the Wik people in Cape York, first for a PhD in anthropology then anchoring the anthropology for the Wik native title case. In 1979, he went to work exclusively on land claims for the Northern Land Council before moving with his young family to settle in South Australia.
Since then he has been largely self-employed, working continuously on land claims, publishing widely, and attending professional conferences. He spent six years as head of anthropology at the South Australian Museum and holds an honorary position with the University of Adelaide. He has done casual teaching, but has never had a permanent university job.
Sky News host Chris Kenny says a book which “completely demolishes” claims by Bruce Pascoe that Indigenous… Australians practised advanced agricultural techniques before European settlement was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award. The book by authors Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, ‘Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu More
You get the sense he could have done without writing the Dark Emu critique but felt it important to refute an author he accuses of “cherry picking” evidence to suit his thesis. He says: “Scholars have extensive libraries and it took me a few seconds each time to go to my library and pick up most of the sources … and check whether they were correctly used.”
Sutton has written most of the forensic examination of Pascoe’s claims but asked Walshe, who worked at Flinders University and the South Australian Museum before leaving to pursue her own research, to add her archaeological expertise to the book.
Walshe had found Dark Emu impossible to read. “I couldn’t actually get through it … I just began seeing so many problems with it,” she says. “But I could see the pace of the narrative was exciting to some readers and it almost had the thrill of an adventure. I could understand people getting captivated by it.
“But in the end, I was confounded because (the excitement around the book) suggested the average reader, even a well-informed one, doesn’t actually have a good grounding in Australian Aboriginal culture. That was really quite alarming. People seem to be so taken with it … seeing it as a truer history, or perhaps the only history they have ever absorbed.”
Walshe anticipated being caught in the culture wars – “that the Andrew Bolts of the world would latch on to it” – but says it’s not been as bad as she thought. She has been disconcerted, however, when meeting Indigenous people who are unhappy with Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers but who confess they haven’t read it. In the main, those who approach her have felt uneasy about Pascoe’s work and are “deeply grateful” for a cautious, science-based critique.
Did the academy, who know so much about pre-colonial Indigenous life, fail to explain this to Australians? Says Walshe: “In Australia we struggle to popularise academic work. There’s a real gap in the publication market. I don’t think it’s the fault of academics because they’re under enormous pressure to keep up their own profiles via research and they don’t have time to write a popular book.”
Sutton is more direct: “There were heroic efforts to penetrate the wider society for the past 60 years. If people say that we weren’t told about this, they are just showing that they are ignorant … Unfortunately, Pascoe was not aware that many of these issues had been gone into.”
Walshe contributed two chapters that include a refutation of Pascoe’s claims that Aboriginal people have been present on the continent well beyond the generally accepted span of more than 60,000 years.
“Some of his claims were pretty wild, getting up to 100,000 to 120,000 years, for which there’s absolutely no evidence at all,” Walshe says.
She also challenges Pascoe’s claims that western Victoria and the area around Lake Condah was a region of complex eel farming where permanent populations built stone houses and preserved food.
Walshe says western Victoria is “a fabulous place, and archaeologically it’s really interesting, there’s no disputing that, but the claims for the processing of eels I have always felt were exaggerated and unfounded. Certainly, people were trapping eels and catching eels. It was a seasonal activity that people flocked to and really enjoyed. It was a chance for high protein and plenty of food. So I could imagine that a lot of people would have gathered at that time of year. But they did not preserve yields, there is no evidence for this whatsoever. They did not smoke eels in trees, and then store them somewhere for the rest of the season so they could be sedentary in that area.”
And the stone houses? She says rocks were used as a base for scaffolding of tree branches and foliage to create a “warm, snug, cozy little hut” but there is no evidence of more significant dwellings. Nor does there need to be: “(The area) deserves the World Heritage nomination and status. We don’t need to exaggerate it, it is already incredibly impressive.”
Pre-colonial Aboriginal people were great conservers, she says. “People took what they needed for the purposes of not just feeding yourself but for that communal living. To come together as hunter-gatherers was so important, to be able to share food, because in sharing food, of course, you share story, you share culture, and you create cohesive groups, but there wasn’t any excess … there’s no concept of long-term storage.”
Sutton and Walshe reject Dark Emu’s implication that agricultural society is more developed and “better” than that of hunter-gatherers. “I don’t go with the hierarchies,” says Walshe. “I don’t think it’s a linear progression: we don’t start off as hunter-gatherers anywhere in the world and then finally find our way into agriculture. I think that’s a complete fallacy. There is never any need for a group of people who are living a highly successful and sustainable life to suddenly become agriculturalists.
“It’s certainly not racist to say that hunter-gatherers who were living here were among the best, if not the most supreme, hunter-gatherers in the whole world. Most hunter-gatherers on other continents have had to cease undertaking their way of life or compromised and taken on bits of agriculture and so on, but it was here in Australia right up until almost 1800 that they were living as complete complex hunter-gatherers. That’s remarkable.”
For his part, Sutton is scathing about the idea that “people were actually closer to being British farmers” and thus more advanced. Such thinking, he says, “is the road to hell, because it’s going back to social evolutionism. It’s also a bit insulting to kind of (say) who’s the clever boy now, or they’re so clever. That’s demeaning.”
He concedes Dark Emu has reached a whole new audience and encouraged people to think about Indigenous issues. But he says: “The trouble is there is so much misinformation and disinformation in Dark Emu that someone has now created a body of people whose ignorance or blankness has been replaced by a mixture of fact, fantasy and untruth. That’s an awfully big job to get that undone.”
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Religious leaders in the NT urge government to revise proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws
Leaders of several religious groups in the Northern Territory have joined forces to raise concerns over proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws, warning the NT government of a voter backlash if the changes are legislated.
The Territory's Labor government is expected to pass the reforms when parliament sits this week, with LGBTQI+ groups saying the legislation includes important protections.
But speaking on Saturday out the front of St Mary's Cathedral in Darwin, NT Bishop Charles Gauci and Christian Schools NT chief executive Phoebe Van Bentum said the proposed changes could end up removing faith from religious schools.
"We are not about discriminating against people ... but when they come to our schools, the teaching they uphold in the public stance needs to be in line and respectful," Bishop Gauci said.
Ms van Bentum said the changes would "completely remove the protections for religious schools to employ people of the same belief".
Among those backing the comments were members of the Islamic, Sikh, Hindu and Buddhist community.
Chief among the religious groups' concerns is the repealing of existing laws which allows churches and schools to impose a religious requirement for teaching jobs.
"[The changes] are completely contrary to the longstanding tradition we have had in Australia. That tradition is for religious schools being able to operate schools in their own ethos and religious principles."
Bishop Gauci said the proposed reforms risked imposing a form of "reverse discrimination" in which schools would be unable to hire teachers and executives based on their adherence to the religious beliefs.
"No other jurisdiction has proposed or enacted laws as strict as this present law is enacting," he said.
Bishop Gauci said looming elections would allow religious groups to present the facts to voters, warning there were thousands of Territorians who attended church.
"I am not involved in party politics and I want to stay above party politics, and I'm not about supporting one party versus another.
"I'm about speaking the truth as it is and letting people decide for themselves."
Pride group praises changes
While religious groups are expressing their concerns, the reforms are being praised by the Territory's LGBTQ+ community.
Top End Pride Committee member Paige Horrigan said protecting against discrimination based on sexuality would create more-inclusive learning environments.
"It's going to greatly impact the community and provide more opportunities for LGBTQ+ people in the education system, that in the religious education system … haven't previously existed, which is going to be really great to see and create a lot more acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community," they said.
They also added the harm for students at religious schools — to see gender or sexuality diverse people rejected for employment — could have a negative impact on their wellbeing.
"A young person seeing that someone like them being rejected from a job that they are so often around, it can be quite disheartening and [they can] think, 'Oh, will I not be able to get a job when I'm older just because of who I am?'"
In response to questions from the ABC, the Northern Territory's Attorney-General, Chansey Paech, held firm on the the proposed legislation, saying it had been "extensively consulted since 2017".
Bishop Gauci rejected this, and said the government had done "very, very little" consultation over the changes.
Mr Paech pointed to exemptions within the existing legislation that would allow religious schools and all employers to select candidates for roles based on "genuine occupational qualification".
"This [legislation] is not about eroding religious freedoms, it's about enhancing protections against discrimination so that staff at faith-based schools have the same protections against discrimination as staff at non-faith based schools, and workers generally," he said.
"The reforms ensure our anti-discrimination legislation is reflective of contemporary needs, and builds upon the objects of the legislation which includes equality of opportunity."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-19/nt-religious-discrimination-reforms/101674820
************************************************************Demand for Queensland metallurgical coal set to increase despite global trend
Metallurgical coal is coal that is used to convert iron into steel -- in a blast furnace
Despite global demand for coal continuing to plummet by 2050, the need for Queensland metallurgical coal is expected to increase during that time, state government analysis shows.
Queensland Treasury has painted a picture of what future international demand for the state's thermal and metallurgical coal could look like in a new report based on the International Energy Agency's (IEA) World Energy Outlook, released this year.
The IEA's report looked at three different scenarios for future coal demand to 2050.
One was based on current policies international governments had in place, the second factored in governments achieving climate-related policy commitments, and the third modelled the outcome of global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 being achieved.
Under all scenarios demand for coal by 2030 was predicted to fall — ranging from 10 per cent to 45 per cent depending on the scenario — and between 2030 and 2050 demand was expected to decline a further 25 to 82 per cent.
Despite this the IEA expects Australian coal exports to increase 10 per cent by 2050, largely driven by metallurgical coal which is used for steel making.
Queensland Deputy Under-Treasurer for Economics and Fiscal Dennis Molloy said the government expected demand for metallurgical to remain strong, but the need for thermal coal – used in electricity production — would suffer.
"We know from analysis that's been done by organisations such as the International Energy Agency that with the adjustment to a lower-carbon economy, that that will mean that thermal tonnages will come under pressure," he said. "But what Queensland has the advantage of is that we're predominantly metallurgical coal.
"There's still a very bright outlook for metallurgical coal because of the industrialisation in India, which is going to be very important for us.
"The quality of our coal, where we are positioned geographically, our supply chains, our skilled workforce and the incredible resilience of the industry, really positions us so well to be able to make sure that we've still got very strong volumes of coking coal into the future."
Queensland Treasury's report noted demand for metallurgical — or coking — coal would continue for some time due to the lack of current alternatives to coal in the steelmaking process.
Queensland is the world's largest seaborne exporter of metallurgical coal, and produced 90 per cent of the country's coking coal in 2021-22.
The report highlighted that record hard coking coal and thermal coal prices drove the value of Queensland's coal exports to a record high of $79.7 billion for the year to September 2022.
India picks up export black hole left by China
The Queensland Treasury report also looked at the impact of China's unofficial ban on Australian coal imports which took place in October 2020.
The ABC previously reported Australia exported close to $14 billion of coal to China in 2019 — most of that coking coal.
Mr Molloy said China used to be Queensland's largest export market for coal, but the losses had now been largely filled by India.
"Obviously, when those informal bands came in place in 2020, that required a very significant adjustment by the industry," he said.
"But the industry has been extraordinarily resilient and responsive and has been able to diversify away into other markets including India, and also Japan and Korea.
"What that has allowed the industry to do is replace over 90 per cent of the tonnage that was lost to China."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-19/qld-energy-coal-exports-steel-china-treasury-report/101673222
************************************18 November, 2022
Drug offers hope in fight against Covid
At last: Immunotherapy for Covid. Immunotherapy saved me from stomach cancer: Completely wiped it out
Australian scientists have taken a critical step towards developing a one-stop Covid-19 therapy to combat existing and future strains of the virus.
In what it described as a “very significant” development, a team at Brisbane’s Translational Research Institute repurposed an existing oral drug that acts on cholesterol receptors, activating the body’s immune response rather than attacking the virus. The drug reduces inflammation in the lungs and associated coughing and breathing difficulties.
A study involving mice, published in the European Respiratory Journal, found the virus that causes Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2, triggered the production of oxidised cholesterols.
In response, the body creates immune cells to fight the infection, which have a cholesterol-sensing receptor named GPR183. While white blood cells are important to fight the infection, having an excess of a particular type called macrophages is a hallmark of severe Covid-19.
Recent tests on infected mice found the drug was effective in blocking the cholesterol receptors and reduced the number of macrophages cells within the lungs. It also reduced the mice’s viral load. Associate professor Katharina Ronacher realised the significance of oxidised cholesterols in respiratory illnesses while researching tuberculosis six years ago while in South Africa. When she realised the two viruses worked in similar ways, she tested her findings on Covid-19.
“It was actually initially very intuitive,” Professor Ronacher said. “Once we understood the mechanism and studied this in mice infected with tuberculosis first, I knew it would actually work well in Covid-19.”
She said the reason the discovery was so exciting was because the cholesterol receptor had never before been targeted with a drug. “It’s a completely new therapy and this really opens up the research in other areas,” she said.
The study took two groups of mice infected with Covid-19 and gave one group the drug and the other a placebo. Mice given the treatment lost less weight, appeared happier and had less inflammation in the lungs. Researchers were also surprised to find the medication also caused them to carry less of the virus.
The treatments would not need to target a specific Covid-19 variant as it worked to trigger the immune response of the body rather than target the virus itself like typical antivirals.
With the fourth wave of Covid-19 expected to hit over the Christmas period, Professor Ronacher said it is important to have alternative treatments.
“At any time, a new variant can emerge that can be so different that our current immunity does not really help us much, and vaccines don’t really help much, then we definitely need other drugs,” she said.
“We also need drugs that are not necessarily antiviral, because viruses produce resistance to those back very quickly. We really need host-directed therapies … like a type of immune therapy.”
Patients with other severe respiratory illnesses and transplant recipients could also find relief with the drug, although this has not been tested.
“It has really far-reaching implications,” Professor Ronacher said.
The study was a collaboration between Mater Research, the University of Queensland and the University of Copenhagen, and was funded by the Mater Foundation, the Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre and Diabetes Australia.
Human clinical trials have yet to be locked it, with more funding needed.
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A new food fanaticism
On a recent Qantas flight from Sydney to Melbourne, I opened the inflight magazine and after flicking past interminable articles about sustainability, I landed on the restaurant section in the hope that it might be free of the virtue signalling at which our national airline excels. My eye was drawn to a new Torres Strait Islander restaurant called Big Esso which opened in Melbourne’s Federation Square a couple of months ago and my interest was piqued.
Big Esso’s chef-owner says that her mission is to ‘make indigenous ingredients and cuisine more accessible’ and so has put together a menu which features such dishes as ‘Kangaroo tail and pepperberry bourguignon, island fried scone’, ‘Kebi Ebur-wattleseed crumbed spatchcock, Congo pomme purée, quail brown sauce, yam crisps’ and ‘Charred emu, kutjera (desert raisin), pepperberry, molasses, cassava crisps.’
So far so good. It all sounds quite delicious. But on closer inspection, I have realised that I will never be able to sample the complex flavours of wattleseed crumbed spatchcock paired with Congo pomme purée. This is because Big Esso informs prospective diners that ‘We are working towards a sustainable and socially driven supply chain. Where possible, we source from First Nations, queer-led, women-led, and environmentally conscious producers who align with our ethos.’
I have a great many questions for the management, none of which are adequately addressed on the website. For instance, how will I know if my emu was sourced, packaged and shipped off to Melbourne by a queer producer or a First Nations producer? Will the quality of the pepperberries indicate whether they were sourced by members of the LGBTQ+ community or just plain old heterosexual men? Does the producer’s sexual orientation or skin colour improve or diminish the quality of what is on my plate? If the berries were sourced by a queer Indigenous woman, does this make them taste better than if they were sourced by a queer Indigenous man?
Welcome to the Foucauldian world of ‘food justice’ or ‘postcolonial food politics’ which has been simmering away in Western humanities departments and is now being served up in our restaurants. The central thesis is that Western food production is just another oppressive system which needs to be deconstructed in order to put an end to social inequality, discrimination, racism and sexism. Agriculture is considered patriarchal, white supremacist and heteronormative and colonial food production serves the interest of the dominant hierarchy. It suggests that there is an ethical responsibility to deconstruct and challenge how food is sourced and produced, and the way to do this is to prioritise other systems.
Unsurprisingly, Australian academics have embraced ‘postcolonial food politics’ with gusto. In his book Unsettling Food Politics. Agriculture, Dispossession and Sovereignty in Australia, Christopher Mayes, Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the Alfred Deakin Institute posits that ‘the industrialised global food system erodes democracy, perpetuates injustices, undermines population health and is environmentally unsustainable.’ Mayes believes that colonial agricultural practices have caused historic injustices and that ‘contemporary agricultural practices reflect racism and the dispossession of indigenous peoples.’
It is of course, entirely in keeping with the restaurant’s ethos that it also makes sure to ‘acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are based in Naarm (Melbourne); the Wurundjeri and neighbouring Boonwurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation, and we pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.’ Finally, it declares in no uncertain terms that ‘Sovereignty was never ceded.’
If that is the case, I would like to know how much of the proceeds of this business, including the shop which sells stubby holders and tee-shirts, is going to the descendants of the Wurundjeri and neighbouring Boonwurrung people from whom they believe that the land has been stolen.
And while Big Esso means ‘the biggest thank you’ in Torres Strait Islander slang, it seems to me that any customers who cannot trace their lineage back to the Traditional Owners are also being told that they are not really welcome. Sorry Big Esso, but unfortunately, it’s the Biggest No Thank You from me.
The hyper-politicising of everything in our lives is becoming intolerable. We are no longer permitted to go out with friends and family to enjoy good food without being told that we are racist oppressors occupying stolen land. Nor, it seems, are we allowed to appreciate good music without being harangued about reinforcing forms of inequality, the gender pay gap, systemic injustice, and social inequality.
A UK-based organisation called ‘Donne, Women in Music’ which is ‘dedicated to achieving gender equality in the music industry’ recently published its latest research report which analysed the repertoire of over a hundred orchestras from 31 countries, including the Adelaide, Melbourne, Queensland and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. Its purpose was to look at equality and diversity in concert programming in 2021-2022.
The report’s main finding was that less than 0.1 per cent of the classical music pieces performed by 111 orchestras were written by non-binary composers. Shocking! Of the 20,400 compositions examined, 92.3 per cent were composed by men but only 7.7 per cent of the works were written by women. 87.7 per cent were composed by white men and 76.4 per cent of those men were dead. So, there you have it. By going to a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, you are oppressing women and other minorities.
What kind of person worries about if their food has been sourced by queer-led producers, or makes distinctions about composers based on race and gender? The same kind of person who makes divisive group identity the only thing that matters, and who has rejected the notion of a shared humanity. It’s the person who has lost the idea of what it is to participate in something that transcends human nature, and who is trying to drag the rest of us down with them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/suss-tainable-cuisine
*******************************************************Cut the fat in the curriculum. There’s a lot in the curriculum kids can live without.
The recent release of the 2022 NAPLAN results were met with a collective sigh of relief from governments and the education sector after the doomsday prediction of students suffering significant learning setbacks due to the Covid pandemic did not occur.
While it is undoubtedly a good thing that the damage to our students was limited from the catastrophic public policy failure that was Australia’s pandemic response, the latest NAPLAN results should surprise and concern us all.
For example, the national Grade 3 reading results placed 95.5 per cent of students at or above the National Minimum Standard in 2022, compared to 95.9 per cent in the previous two tests in 2021 and 2019. Likewise, Grade 3 numeracy shows similarly consistent results with 95 per cent, compared with 95.4 per cent and 95.5 per cent in 2021 and 2019, respectively, and writing, equally consistent, with 96.2, 96.7 and 96.3 per cent of students at or above the National Minimum Standard.
Based on these figures it would appear that almost two years of lockdown made no difference to the Grade 3 cohort. The results also suggest that those parents of Grade 3 students – who during Covid were likely working from home, juggling family responsibilities, are unqualified, and lacked access to usual teaching resources – did just as well as their child’s school could have.
But how can that be?
Given the knee-jerk lockdowns in Victoria, often announced with less than two-hour’s notice, teachers were asked to perform miracles and provide a curriculum for parents to teach their children with no notice and achieved this by focusing only on the core items.
A Melbourne Prep teacher told the Institute of Public Affairs’ Class Action program about her experience immediately after hearing her school would be forced to close due to a snap lockdown;
‘I ran off heaps of worksheets for parents focusing on numbers and I gathered a selection of appropriate readers for each child and sent it all home in folders. It was pretty basic, but I knew it would do the trick. There’s a lot in the curriculum kids can live without.’
The Grade 3 NAPLAN results are testament to the great job teachers and parents did and, yet again, reinforces that foundational skills are pivotal to setting students up for success.
Yet, the very same NAPLAN results also highlighted what happens when the basics are not taught to students. Of all Year 9 students, 23.5 per cent are at or below the minimum national standard and shockingly, almost 15 per cent of Year 9 boys did not meet the National Minimum Standard for reading.
Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, sought to dismiss these worrying figures by saying, ‘It’s not clear whether that’s Covid, but I would suspect that’s a big part of it.’ Sorry Minister, the standard ‘Covid caused it’ excuse doesn’t pass the test here.
While the current crop of Year 9 students has shown stable results in numeracy every year since they were first tested, their reading and spelling results tell a different story. The percentage of this cohort at least achieving the National Minimum Standards in reading when in Grade 3 was 95.1 per cent, in Grade 5 was 94.9 per cent which has now fallen in Year 9 to 89.6 per cent. Spelling shows a similar decline from 94.4 per cent when they were in Grade 3 and 5, which has now fallen to 91.8 per cent.
If the pandemic is to blame for these worrying reading and spelling results, as Jason Clare suggests, then why did these students’ numeracy results stay consistent?
Could it be more fundamental? Could it be the teaching methods these students have been exposed to since the time they started their schooling?
This cohort of students have been exposed to the widely used teaching method of ‘whole word’ and ‘inquiry’ approach to learning to read and spell. These methods have rightly been criticised by many as the culprit of falling standards for failing to provide students with the necessary foundation and analytical skills required to understand more sophisticated language.
NAPLAN is sometimes criticised as a myopic view of a child’s development because it only tells part of their story, and there is some merit to this argument. However, what it does provide parents is an independent and objective radar for whether their child is grasping the basics, and the truth of the matter is that many students are simply not.
Just throwing more money into education as some teachers’ unions would like to see is clearly not the answer. Institute of Public Affairs research shows in Victoria, since 2014, spending on education has increased by 30 per cent, yet critical reading and numeracy results have not increased in a commensurate manner.
And Covid is definitely not the culprit the Federal Minister of Education would have us believe.
If we learn anything from the pandemic, it is that students need to be taught the basics if they are to have a solid foundation for future study. Under pressure to produce lesson plans before being locked down, many teachers recognised the amount of unnecessary fat in the curriculum and when given the freedom to dismiss it, achieved great results.
We need to get serious about fixing the curriculum taught to our children, and it’s time we got back to basics.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/cut-the-fat-in-the-curriculum/
******************************************************Novak’s mandate: How dangerous are the vaccines?
This week, Labor immigration minister Andrew Giles quietly confirmed on Tuesday 15 November that the ban on Novak (No Vax) Djokovic would be dropped but refused to comment ‘on privacy grounds’. Whose privacy? Presumably that of the minister, frightened of a backlash from zero-Covidian zealots. So far, it hasn’t materialised.
The tide is slowly turning in Australia. The latest True North Strategy Compass polling of Australians, released on 16 November, showed that despite the fact that 95 per cent of Australians over the age 18 had been vaccinated, almost half of all Australians surveyed, 46 per cent, said governments should not have the power to mandate vaccines and 8 per cent of those who were vaccinated regret it. On a national scale, that would equate to around 1.5 million Australians over the age of 18. Of those who got vaccinated most (48 per cent) said they were glad they did it because it allowed them to escape lockdown sooner. Only 44 per cent were glad because they didn’t get Covid.
The polling comes as the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) quietly confirmed for the first time on 12 November that it was unlikely to approve another booster for people under 30 due to the increased risk of myocarditis and the fact that there would only be a ‘minimal’ reduction in transmission from a fifth jab. ATAGI member Professor Allan Cheng said ‘the more doses you get, the less benefit you derive from them and then we start to worry about causing side effects’. That’s a rare confession.
Woolworths, Australia’s largest retailer, which employs 180,000 people, announced on 15 November that it would end its vaccine mandates for staff effective 22 November.
But Australian Football League star and nurse Deni Varnhagen and fellow nurse Courtney Millington have lost their second legal challenge to the South Australian vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and their application to appeal the decision was dismissed.
Refusing to hire unvaccinated nurses is testimony to idiocy of the Australian health establishment which has belatedly admitted that vaccination doesn’t stop transmission and infection provides protection. So why persist with a mandate when the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation says there is a nationwide shortage of at least 8,000 nurses?
Varnhagen who was working in intensive care and has just given birth to a baby girl was particularly concerned about the impact of the vaccine on her fertility. She is not alone.
In the US, on 10 November Dr James Thorp, an obstetrician gynaecologist with over 40 years of experience including on the board of the Society of Maternal Foetal Medicine and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, author of over 200 publications and a reviewer for major medical journals, wrote that Covid vaccinations are ‘the greatest disaster in the history of obstetrics and all of medicine’, should never have been used in pregnancy and were promoted unlawfully, with ‘falsified data’. He notes that it was known as early as 2012 that lipid nanoparticles concentrate in the ovaries of rats, that in the Pfizer trial on rats, vaccine concentrated in the ovaries 118-fold in 48 hours and may permanently damage the human genome for multiple generations. Thorp writes that he has witnessed a dramatic rise in foetal morbidity, malformations and mortality since vaccination commenced, a 75-fold increase in miscarriages and a 12,000-fold increase in menstrual abnormalities.
In France, Mélodie Feron has formed a group of 10,000 women called ‘Where’s my cycle’. She organised a rally in Paris attended by Dr. Laurence Kayser, a Belgian gynaecologist who told investigative journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer that, ‘The injections didn’t create a new disease, they revealed… dormant pathologies, and allowed them to explode…’. In October, a committee of the European Medicines Agency recommended that heavy menstrual bleeding in menstruation be acknowledged as a possible side effect of mRNA vaccines.
Dr Kimberly Biss, an obstetrician gynaecologist in Florida, said in October that since the vaccine rollout she has seen a 50 per cent rise in infertility and miscarriages and a 25 per cent increase in abnormal Pap smears and irregular cervical malignancies.
Michelle Gershman, a whistleblower nurse in Fresno California reported an increase at her hospital in stillbirths after 20 weeks (foetal demise) from one to two every two or three months to 22 in July and 22 in August. Gershman released an email she received from the hospital which said stillbirths were projected to increase stipulating babies must be put in a white bucket and adding callously, ‘I know that it feels disrespectful to many of you to pour a bottle of saline over the baby, so you can wrap the baby in a saline soaked Chux if it feels better to you.’
Is it happening in Australia? The Australian Bureau of Statistics won’t release data on births for 2022 until December. So far, the Therapeutic Goods Administration has received more than 5,390 reports of menstrual disorders, 891 incomplete abortions, 844 spontaneous abortions, 235 reports of premature babies of whom 11 died, 176 foetal deaths, 88 cases of foetal distress, four of whom died, 90 stillbirths, 88 cases of multiple congenital abnormalities of whom 11 died, 62 cases of congenital heart disease of whom 10 died. The TGA says none are related to the Covid vaccines although it does admit that at least 14 Australians are likely to have been killed by the vaccines and at least 700 hundred injured by myocarditis.
Vaccine injuries are still a taboo topic in Australia. The federal government has only offered a maximum of $20,000 compensation for vaccine injuries but it will cover funeral costs. The October budget revealed the scheme has paid out less than $1 million but that is projected to increase to $76.9 million next year, the equivalent of 3,845 claims at the maximum rate. That is not going to be the end of it. So far there have been 136,529 reports of adverse events including 946 deaths, more than any other vaccine in history. In the absence of any longterm safety data, or evidence of efficacy, that should be reason enough to end the vaccine mandates.
Don’t hold your breath.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/novaks-mandate/
************************************17 November, 2022
Idiotic: WA patients stuck in hospital despite being fit to leave
Surely some hospital funding could be diverted into setting up nursing homes. It would greatly reduce overall running costs
Auditor-general Caroline Spencer found some patients stay in hospital months, and even years longer than medically necessary when often they would be better served in aged, disability or other care.
It is not a new problem and there is a myriad of complex cross-agency, cross-sectoral and cross-governmental issues behind it.
But Ms Spencer found WA Health faces one major hurdle getting in the way of addressing any of the underlying problems.
The report sets out that WA Health lacks any real-time monitoring system to show when a patient should be discharged or why discharge is delayed.
As a result, the report states the Health Department has a limited understanding of the scale, cost, and impact of long-stay patients on public hospitals.
"And then they can manage their patient cohort on a systemic level, they understand why people are there, and who to actively help transition out of hospital.
"If the Department of Health, as system manager, doesn't have real-time information on how many patients no longer need to be in hospital, they are not able to identify best patient flows, where those people are best to receive care, also where best investment in additional bed capacity is made, or if it even needs to be made."
'Snapshot' reports of limited use
While WA Health does not have real-time data on long-stay hospital patients, it does conduct periodic "snapshots" on some cohorts of long-stay patients.
Ms Spencer said because the information is static it has limited usefulness, but it does suggest how significant the problem is.
The report looked at two "snapshot" studies across 2021 and 2022 which indicated at various times over that period 486 people were stranded in Western Australian hospitals while they waited for NDIS or aged care services.
Using basic analysis, the report found if that cohort of patients were in more appropriate accommodation it could have freed up capacity to allow over 14,000 more people to access a hospital bed and saved the state $71.8 million.
In addition to blocking access to beds and the significant financial burden, the report found patients staying in hospital despite being medically fit to discharge suffer personally in several ways:
Long-stay patients often do not have enough stimulation and activity, leading to reduced physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Extended hospital stays may also increase the risk of hospital acquired infections and falls.
Ms Spencer said the concerns about WA Health's data system for long-stay patients were not new. "This isn't a new issue, we have commented through successive audits on WA Health not using to best effect the data it has to make evidence-based decisions, both around patient flows and investment decisions," she said.
"This really is about best patient care and making sure that patients are in the best patient care setting for their needs, so that they're not in higher cost settings that don't meet their needs."
The report found a new WA Health committee and working group focused on long-stay patients had an impact for "some individual patients" but there was "little evidence to suggest a system-wide improvement on the size of the problem".
The auditor-general noted the limited data available showed that between March 2021 and March of this year, 377 long-stay patients waiting for NDIS care were discharged.
But during the same period 379 new long-stay patients in that cohort were identified, suggesting "the underlying causes of the issue have not been effectively addressed".
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-17/long-stay-patients-stranded-in-wa-hospitals/101662200
**********************************************Unjustifiable vaccine mandates did a lot of harm
In the 1980s movie Rain Man, the autistic Dustin Hoffman reliably informed Tom Cruise that Qantas was the safest airline in the world. Indeed, our national carrier has safely transported generations of Aussies around the world. The ‘flying kangaroo’ is our de facto international mascot and one of our most respected enterprises. Yet the ‘spirit of Australia’ now resides in a man who likes to tell members of the Australian public to ‘eff off’.
This occurred the other day when a disgruntled former employee attempted to ask Qantas CEO Alan Joyce about the vaccine mandates still in place for the airline’s employees.
During the same-sex marriage debate, Mr Joyce developed a taste for political campaigning and even encouraged people travelling on Qantas to wear a black ring on their finger to show their support for same-sex marriage – presumably so cabin crew could easily distinguish between those who were morally superior on supporting LGBT issues and those who were not. One Anglican archbishop complained that this sort of campaign was nothing short of corporate bullying of everyday Australians.
At the time Peter Dutton also maintained that it was completely unacceptable for Mr Joyce to use the Qantas brand in this way, saying, ‘Don’t use an iconic brand and the might of a multi-billion-dollar business on issues best left to the judgements of individuals….’
And that is the point. Whether it is political or cultural issues or medical interventions, the same principle should be true in a democracy: corporations and businesses should wherever possible leave judgment on non-corporate matters to the individual. But instead, Covid provided many corporations the opportunity to behave like the worst schoolyard bullies – imposing mandates and restrictions on loyal staff and customers despite then prime minister Scott Morrison insisting that there were no vaccine mandates in this country and that companies could only apply mandates that were ‘reasonable’.
Coerced vaccination is offensive and wrong under any circumstances. And the sort of draconian mass mandates imposed by Qantas, Woolworths and many other corporations were certainly not ‘reasonable’.
As we now know, and many writers in this magazine anticipated, the vaccines do not and never did protect other people from catching the coronavirus. By definition, all compulsory vaccine mandates and restrictions – which potentially damaged people’s mental health or income yet did not stop transmission – were futile and therefore unreasonable.
Many loyal long-serving employees of these companies had their lives, careers and livelihoods completely turned upside down. Ex-Qantas pilot Graham Hood who was forced to lose his career thanks to Mr Joyce’s unreasonable mandate was one, Alan Dana at Jetstar another. There were many, many others.
Woolworths appointed its own chief medical officer in August 2020 to ‘provide expert medical advice to help shape policies’ around Covid. In October last year, Woolies implemented a mandatory vaccination policy similar to that of Qantas and other large firms. At the time their chief medical officer stated that, ‘A vaccinated team member is far less likely to get Covid, much less likely to pass it on [our italics] and also significantly less likely to become seriously ill.’
But that was simply untrue. As was revealed in a recent article by the left-leaning Washington Post, the Biden administration knew in the early northern summer of 2021 – several months prior to that statement – that ‘the vaccines did a far worse job of blocking infection than originally expected.’ Similarly, Pfizer have also admitted that they never tested the vaccines for immunistation.
So Woolworths need to explain who specifically informed or advised them that the vaccines did stop transmission? As with so many other companies, where did this advice come from and what was it based on?
Furthermore, what steps were taken by each individual CEO, health officer or HR officer to verify that that information was factually correct before forcing people to lose their jobs because of an unnecessary mandate? Wasn’t there a duty of care to the mental health and wellbeing of all those individuals who lost their jobs because of reluctance to take the jab? A reluctance that with each passing day looks more and more understandable.
Indeed, read Rebecca Weisser in this week’s magazine on some of the disturbing questions that are now surfacing around issues of women’s reproductive health and potential vaccine injuries.
All of which is why we need a royal commission into the abuse of political and corporate power during Covid
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/unreasonable
**************************************************************The Queensland Public Trustee again
QCAT seems to be covering up for them
The Family of a victim of the Queensland Public Trustee has written an open letter to the Premier of Queensland asking her to unblock the blockage to justice in their case before the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT).
The victim is a forty year old Aboriginal man with disabilities living in Brisbane. He cannot be identified for legal reasons but his QCAT file number is G8252. His family has made a financial compensation claim on behalf of G8252 against the Public Trustee for its maladministration and loss of G8252’s assets. QCAT has reserved its final decision on the claim for over fourteen months.
John Tracey, the spokesperson for the family, said –
“We have been repeatedly complaining to QCAT about the length of time the decision has been reserved. We complained to the Ombudsman and the Attorney General and were told by both that they had no jurisdiction to investigate QCAT and referred us back to QCAT. We have nobody else “up the right channels” to complain to except the Premier, so we have asked her for help”
“The QCAT reserved decision policy is to release a decision within three months of the final hearing. QCAT has a duty under the QCAT Act to release decisions in a reasonable time. The decision in our case has been reserved for over fourteen months so far”
“QCAT is deciding on a major life issue for a person with disabilities, it is cruel to keep him and his family waiting so long for a decision. Hopefully the Premier will show some compassion and ensure justice is done and seen to be done soon.”
“QCAT is responsible for ensuring and enforcing the legal rights of people with impaired capacity. If QCAT is so dysfunctional that it cannot administer justice then the legal rights of Queensland’s most vulnerable people are effectively denied to them. I hope the Premier will take this situation seriously”
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Older asset-rich Australians in the firing line for taxing challenge
There’s a lot going on in policy land, especially with the vogue for intervention. In case you missed it, the fuse has been lit on tax. As a nation, we’re going to pay more – it’s simply a matter of how much more, by whom, and when.
This year’s election recklessly skirted the fundamental issue of how to pay for Canberra’s bipartisan compact: to succour an ageing population, deal with a geostrategic miasma, service debt after a pandemic binge, make more things here, pull off decarbonisation and keep a life-changing disability scheme from imploding.
The campaign’s policy void betrayed a homegrown cargo cult: in the misty out years, superior growth and productivity would be dispensed from above the clouds to make evil deficits disappear.
There’s been some truth-telling since May. People who claim growth and spending cuts, as necessary as they will be, are sufficient to fixing the budget are likely to be spectators in the main arena. We need to talk about tax.
In a prepared statement to the Senate this week, Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy outlined a path to “rebuilding fiscal buffers”. He welcomed the Albanese government’s return of much of the upgrade in tax receipts to the bottom line and its “constrained spending, significantly lowering near-term deficits and debt”.
If we get more tax receipts, it would be “prudent to take the same approach”, Kennedy informed the budget estimates hearing. “However, beyond the near-term, the budget pressures are more profound and will likely require a combination of spending restraint and increases in taxes to reduce deficits and lower debt,” he said.
Jim Chalmers is on the same page, adding “reform” to the mix, while ruling out avenues to raise taxes, including the GST. Closing loopholes for multinationals and extending compliance programs for locals is fine. But it’s small beer. The fiscal strategy needs more meat on the bones.
At last week’s Economic and Social Outlook Conference, hosted by The Australian and Melbourne Institute, the Treasurer vowed to target the cost-effectiveness of tax concessions. How could he not? The dollars are huge, at about $200bn a year, or 8 per cent of gross domestic product. The budget papers note “tax expenditures” are tricky; fiddling with them changes taxpayers’ behaviour. For instance, Treasury calculates the revenue forgone each year from the family home’s exemption from capital gains tax ($33.5bn) and the pension asset test ($29bn). But abolishing the concession would not translate into an equal gain to the budget.
The government will soon publish an enhanced tax expenditures statement, showing their cost and who benefits. Chalmers will use the fresh evidence to lead the conversation about whether we can afford them.
The idea of trimming superannuation tax breaks for the very wealthy was floated by Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones. He said 32 self-managed super funds had more than $100m in assets, with the largest valued at more than $400m. Asset management firm Mercer estimates the tax concessions on a single $10m SMSF could support 3.1 age pensions.
These are lurid examples, but cover few taxpayers. The industry is comfortable with a discussion on tax breaks for the super-wealthy, drawing a line at balances of $5m, with about 11,000 people above that. Dropping the cap to $2m would affect 80,000 people and, according to the Grattan Institute, would save the budget $2.8bn a year.
The salient issue for super concessions is lifetime tax-free status on investment earnings Peter Costello gave retirees in 2006. They cost $26.4bn a year, or about 1 per cent of GDP. Across the next 40 years, Treasury estimates their real cost will double.
Concessions on employer and personal super contributions cost the budget $23.2bn a year, but as a proportion of the economy are not expected to rise, according to the Intergenerational Report. Labor’s hitch on budget repair, like the overreach in its workplace relation bill, is it did not prepare the electorate for the taxing challenge ahead. In fact, it ruled out changes on super, as the Opposition is gleefully reminding us.
In 2016 Scott Morrison, the treasurer at the time, put a $1.6m cap (now $1.7m) on the tax-free amount people could have in pension accounts and cut from $180,000 to $100,000 (now $110,000) annual non-concessional super contributions. His star shines in Treasury as a staunch revenue saviour, especially brave as it was a poke in the eye to the Liberal base.
With a 3.5 per cent jobless rate and bumper export prices (historically high compared with imports), it’s dispiriting to confront a decade-long $50bn budget deficit.
In his prepared text at Senate estimates, read by a Treasury colleague, Kennedy noted Australia was fortunate to begin fiscal repair with a relatively lower level of debt than in many countries. But difficult decisions lay ahead: “I am hopeful that having so fulsomely laid out the fiscal challenges in this budget, the subsequent policy debate will be productive, considered and understanding of the need for trade-offs.”
Taxing is an art. The guiding principles are simplicity, efficiency, fairness and sustainability. It’s a delicate matrix, where you never reach policy nirvana, but the evidence is in front of us about how to improve the system.
Raising more from income tax on individuals and companies is not the way to go. It invites tax planning, already a national obsession. Two-thirds of all revenue comes from those sources, pretty much the highest income-tax burden among rich countries. The OECD advises a greater reliance on land tax would ease the burden on ordinary workers.
A report by the Australian National University’s Trevor Rose and Robert Breunig, published in July, examined eight revenue options to reduce debt over 33, 20 and 10 years, taking into account economic efficiency, equity and simplicity. They found a federal land tax on unimproved land value, set at a rate of 0.1 per cent over 33 years, was the best option.
As well, Rose and Breunig recommended three alternatives: including the principal residence in the pension assets test, introducing an inheritance tax, and reducing the capital gains tax exemption for the principal residence. The ANU authors concluded reducing the CGT discount on other assets and increasing the rate of the GST were reasonable options but rejected increasing personal income tax and corporate income tax. Even though all measures could do the job over the medium to long term, and most over the short term, or used in combination to address the debt, they said “a single dedicated revenue-raising option is more politically feasible than any scattered combination”.
A federal land tax is not unprecedented. The federal government imposed one in 1910 and removed it in 1952. Its primary functions, Rose and Breunig noted, were to encourage more efficient use of land and to serve as a quasi-wealth tax.
“Government responses to COVID-19 disproportionately benefited older Australians and Australians who own assets,” they said. “Most of the reduced mortality generated by lockdowns and economic restrictions occurred at older ages. The benefits of surging house and other asset prices generated by government policy have accrued primarily to wealthier and typically older Australians. It seems fair that those who benefited most should pay most for the induced debt.
“This suggests that older and asset-rich Australians do their part to pay down the debt and that the burden on younger people should be smaller. In terms of income and job loss and reduced opportunities for human capital accumulation, younger people were, and remain, victims of COVID-19 policy.
“Under current tax system settings, they will disproportionably bear the burden of future debt repayment. One massive and growing weakness of the Australian tax system is that it does a good job of taxing income but a poor job of taxing wealth.”
Ahead of last month’s budget, former competition watchdog Rod Sims said Australia needed higher taxation to fund community preferences, to make the carbon transition and to rebuild fiscal buffers to cope with the next shock. “Only by raising taxes will we get our debt and deficit under control,” he told The Australia Institute event.
Sims argued personal and corporate income tax was “maxed out”. He proposed five areas to focus on: stop transfer mispricing, where companies fudge obligations on inbound loans and outbound commodities; raise more revenue from energy and mining companies; impose a carbon tax; have all states and territories introduce a broadly based tax on land and replace stamp duty; and introduce a new way of paying for roads.
“I think many good ideas are put to the community without sufficient explanation and dwell time so that the arguments can be sensibly weighed,” Sims said.
“Ideas are often mentioned, there is an instant negative reaction, and so the ideas are dropped. Public policy change requires a serious investment from politicians and others.”
Anthony Albanese declares a new era of adult government is here. It’s certainly “issues-rich”, as they say at the lobbyists’ trough. We’re about to learn how able he and his Treasurer are at leading debate about the fairness and fitness of taxing, creating consensus not rancour, and showing courage amid the political tumult to come.
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16 November, 2022
Doom for Albo: Reserve Bank says inflation expected to last for another three years
He will be tossed out at the next election for failing to control it
The Reserve Bank has admitted hiking interest rates aggressively doesn't necessarily bring down inflation quickly.
Australian inflation grew by 7.3 per cent in the year to September - a level unseen since 1990.
It was also more than double the Reserve Bank's longstanding two to three per cent target.
A new RBA 'forward guidance' paper released on Tuesday admitted fulfilling an inflation target was difficult.
'Experience in Australia and elsewhere has shown that inflation is difficult to finetune within a narrow band,' it said.
The Reserve Bank's statement on monetary policy released earlier this month forecast annual inflation remaining above its target until 2025, after falling to 3.25 per cent in December 2024.
Should that forecast materialise, Australia's inflation rate would have remained above the target band for three years.
Beyond the introduction of the GST in July 2000 and the mining boom in 2008, Australia hasn't experienced a long run of inflation outside the target range since the RBA adopted a two to three per cent target in 1993.
Even then, inflation remained above the target for a year, not three as the RBA fears with this current bout of consumer price pressures.
In another quiet mea culpa, the RBA admitted it made a mistake last year suggesting interest rates would remain on hold at a record-low of 0.1 per cent until 2024 'at the earliest'.
'Forward guidance on interest rates will not always be provided, although the board will continue to outline how monetary policy settings are adjusted in response to evolving economic conditions,' it said.
RBA Governor Philip Lowe last year suggested interest rates would not increase for another three years but those statements were made before Russia's Ukraine invasion led to higher crude oil prices.
But since May, borrowers have been dealt with seven consecutive monthly interest rate rises, taking the cash rate to a new nine-year high of 2.85 per cent.
This has seen a borrower with an average, $600,000 mortgage grapple was a $839 surge in monthly mortgage repayments, this month rising to $3,145 from $2,306 little more than six months ago.
This occurred as a typical Commonwealth Bank variable rate rose to 4.79 per cent from 2.29 per cent in May, as the RBA embarked on the most aggressive monetary policy tightening since 1994.
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The disturbing Australian school environment today
As described by a 13 year old girl -- below
School is a great place to be with friends and learn new skills. I am a student in Year 7 and I want to tell you about the stressors I have been finding at school and in every day for those who would like to listen.
Firstly, living through Covid, lockdowns and new vaccines has been a scary time. There was a lot of talk about Covid, with adults often scaring us kids with the things they told us. A teacher in primary school told us that we could die from getting Covid. After that, I was worried about my family and I thought I would die if I got sick which made me scared to go to school.
The vaccines came out for people who were working. My mum got vaccinated for her job, but she got really sick after and it has changed her and now it feels different. I don’t think people understand how much stress we have been through in the past year. I didn’t get vaccinated in case I got sick too.
One of my friends was so worried about me not being vaccinated that she begged me to wear a mask even when I was eating, which is a pretty tricky thing to do. She has since had Covid and said sorry for being so worried about catching it from me.
At school, masks were required to be worn no matter how hot it was. We would have problems breathing and felt like we would pass out. I felt like I would gasp for air when I was allowed to take it off and so did my friends. How is getting Covid any different from getting the flu before? We used to get really sick before, but no one was forced to wear masks at school. We just practiced good hygiene and stayed at home when we were sick to stop the spread.
Lockdowns were really hard on all us kids. We worried about our families and friends and also missed them a lot. One thing that affected me the most was working from home. I know the teachers were trying their best, but they were unprepared and we didn’t get to learn as much due to the technical issues. I felt stressed because I wanted to catch up with my learning before Year 7, but I am still finding gaps in what I should know.
Secondly, cultural discrimination. Learning about Aboriginals and their culture is so cool! But the information is now a weapon of discrimination. When I was younger, teachers guilted me because of my skin colour, making me think it was my fault that half-blood Aboriginals were taken from their families. I cried and felt ashamed to be who I am. This year, when I entered Year 7, I met this girl whose grandmother is half-Aboriginal and looked similar to me. She called me European and excluded me by saying hurtful comments about ‘European people’ followed by ‘no offence’. I felt hurt.
Another lesson the teacher taught us ‘white people’ was that only Aboriginals could do Aboriginal art. They also said that only Aboriginal people could have a deep connection with their land. I felt hurt. Growing up in the bush and loving the flora and fauna of my area had become so much part of my life. I felt like a local connected with the land. I appreciated the Aboriginal culture, but felt that we were being pushed away like we were not good enough to appreciate where we live or the culture of the Aboriginal people.
I have always loved Australia, where I feel I belong. I had an assignment about Aboriginals and my thoughts. In my response I wrote, ‘I feel a connection with this land, I was born here and raised here and lived here.’
If I don’t belong here, then where do I belong? I know this place I call home is a home to all no matter what race. If someone shames me for the people of my ancestry, I feel I should stand up for who I am and what I experience.
My father was not a good person. He did bad things to me. Thankfully he is not in my life anymore and I am loved and cared for. That makes me ask though, am I to blame for his actions? I am not my father and I am not my ancestors. I should not be blamed for anyone else’s actions. I can only be the best person I know how to be.
In a class at the beginning of the year, my teacher was very political and made me feel uncomfortable to be around her. She would voice her opinions in class. She stated ‘women are much smarter than men, and that’s why more women were at university and women are the key to our future’. She also said men are abusive to women and said women should have more rights than men. It didn’t make sense to any of the students. We were all extremely uncomfortable. I found it rude and unjust to state her views with such anger. I felt sad for the boys in my class and also felt angry because I have a brother who I love and don’t like people pulling him down because he is male.
I believe that equality for men and women would mean no one pulls down the other sex, and that we appreciate the differences and similarities between each other. I hope that we can all find a place to appreciate both men and women and not criticise each other because of skin colour, ancestry, sex, or sexual preferences – where we can learn to be kind to one another instead of judging and lumping everyone into a category.
Sexualized themes are being pushed into very young people. I am in Year 7 and over 50 per cent of girls believe they are bi, pan etc. 100 per cent of the boys in my class believe they are gay. I have no problems with what they want to do, but I am in Year 7… Why are so many people worried about their sexual preferences? I have felt pressure to identify my sexual identity at school and I am just a kid. I was bullied because I was not interested. I thought school was about Maths, English, History, Art, Science etc. I feel that there is so much talk about this stuff that kids are being pushed into something they don’t understand. Shouldn’t that be for when they are older and ready to date? I’m only 13-years-old.
My cousin has two friends who are very particular about their pronouns and get angry when my cousin accidentally gets them mixed up. One prefers she/them and the other they/them. I thought pronouns are referring to another person and not to the person directly, so why are they offended, unless the person is saying mean things about them. I feel really confused. Going from primary school to high school has been difficult with all these changes and I feel I have needed to grow up before I am ready. I think the kids are too worried about things that don’t matter. People get my name wrong all the time and I don’t mind. I just don’t understand why it wasn’t an issue in primary and now it is?
Since starting high school, I’ve been really stressed with all of the things that I have been talking about affecting me daily. I have developed high anxiety. I struggle every day. I feel unsafe and uncomfortable and I don’t want to go to school anymore. I am a good student. I work hard and want to learn, but now I feel under attack. I feel excluded and constantly worried that I will say the wrong thing or be judged because of my ancestry, and not wanting to be involved in gender or sex talk. I just want to learn and feel safe and included. My Mum has decided that I need to change to distance education due to my anxiety.
At this time, I do not wish to identify myself as I have been bullied enough for standing up for my beliefs. However, I am willing to consent to an interview if you believe that my voice will make some difference to the situation that my peers and myself are being burdened with.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/my-thoughts-about-school-politics-and-the-vaccine/
**************************************************Student at one of Australia's top universities lost marks on final engineering exam - because the paper didn't include an Indigenous Acknowledgement of Country
Coerced speech! Certainly not free speech. Leftist arrogance knows no bounds
A student's final year project was marked down because it didn't include an Indigenous Acknowledgment of County.
Melbourne's Monash University recently introduced a policy requiring students to add the message recognising traditional owners at the beginning of all assignments - or face losing marks.
But the rule has since been overturned after the engineering student made an official complaint.
The university has agreed to reinstate the original marks and says students will not be deducted in future for failing to include it.
Monash made the concession even though it argued that including it showed 'the standard of professionalism required of an engineer in Australia'.
'Monash respects the rights of students to respectfully and appropriately decline to provide an Acknowledgement of Country if they believe it conflicts with their right to free speech or academic freedom,' a spokeswoman told the Herald Sun.
'Monash will continue to encourage students to include the Acknowledgement of Country where relevant and appropriate.'
On the university's web page it states that 'recognising traditional owners is important and that all staff and students are encouraged to do so.
It is the second major backdown by Monash this year in linking academic grades to recognition of Aboriginal land.
Following an outcry generated by media reports the university removed the threat that students who did not complete a mandatory module on 'Indigenous Voices' would not be allowed to sit exams or graduate.
The university said the module was to 'ensure students fully understand Monash values' and 'contribute to a society that respects Australia's Indigenous Peoples, cultures and knowledges'.
While the institution quietly dropped the threat of denying academic awards to those who fail to complete the course, anyone who does not finish it remains locked out of Monash's online learning system.
A spokesperson for the university confirmed Indigenous Voice remained a compulsory unit along with units on academic integrity and respectful relationships.
Victorian shadow education minister David Hodgett said although universities should offer courses on Indigenous people it was wrong to force students to study them.
'This is really yet another mandate by stealth as students are going to be punished and lose access if they don't complete,' he said
'Universities are about education. If they can't present this information in a way that encourages take up, then it's almost an admission of failure by the university'.
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WA: democratic freedoms for religious schools under attack
On August 16, Western Australia’s Attorney General John Quigley tabled in Parliament the Law Reform Commission’s report into the Review of the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (Project 111). As stated on the website of the Western Australian government, the Commission, which authored the report and where I served for five years (2012-17), made 163 recommendations including anti-discrimination protections to those that identify as ‘trans, gender-diverse, or non-binary without the need for recognition from the Gender Reassignment Board’, as well as strengthening legal protections for ‘LGTQIA+ staff and students in religious schools’.
The understanding in this recommendation to portray religious schools as somehow different from other social institutions is unfortunate. When recruiting staff or appointing officeholders, a political party could be expected to display discrimination resembling that practised by religious bodies. It is reasonable, for example, that a politician from the Labor Party might discriminate against individuals with conservative views when recruiting staff for her office team. Likewise, environmental advocacy bodies such as Greenpeace or the Australian Conservation Foundation might reasonably be expected to discriminate against Climate Change sceptics when appointing scientists to their Scientific Advisory Committees.
Why then is it considered necessary, in some quarters, to curtail the ability of religious organisations to follow positive discrimination practices when seeking to develop their organisations according to their core values? This is why the general exception guaranteed under the present legislation in WA should continue to apply to all employment positions of religious schools, and include all attributes of employees except for race, age, and a person’s responsibilities as a career. Of course, some religious schools may only need protections for some employment positions, but the State should still provide these schools with the same right to make these decisions and protections that are often provided to other organisations whereby membership is strictly based on other relevant attributes such as gender, sexuality, political opinions, or race. As law professor Patrick Parkinson writes from a Christian perspective:
‘The issue of Christian issues is not the right to ‘discrimination’. That puts the issue in negative and pejorative terms. The core claim is a right of positive selection. Christian schools and organisations only ask to be treated equally with other employers that may have legitimate reasons for wanting to appoint only those with certain characteristic relevant to the identity of the organisation. It is quite understandable that gay bars might prefer to appoint only gay staff, that Thai restaurants might prefer to have Thai employees, and that government ministers would want to staff their officers with people sympathetic to the values of their political party. Recognition of minority group rights on an equal footing is another version of equality. A right of positive selection is rather different from discrimination. It is easy to see the problem if a restaurant advertised for staff of any nationality, so long as they were not Thai. That would be discriminatory. However, it is quite different if a Thai restaurant advertise for Thai staff. Selection based in part on the characteristic which is relevant to the employment is not discriminatory.’
This, of course, is very much about protecting freedom of association, which plays an important role in promoting democratic pluralism by supporting an authentic environment of social diversity. To show due respect for this important right of every true democratic society, the government in Western Australia must avoid interfering in the internal matters of religious schools and allow their adherents to retain the capacity to determine these issues for themselves. As noted by law professors Rex Ahdar and Ian Leigh in their insightful book Religious Freedom in the Liberal State (Oxford University Press, 2013):
‘Freedom to associate with others of like mind necessarily involves freedom to exclude people who do not share the beliefs in question. In a liberal society, those so excluded are free to join other religious groups (or to form their own group) and so this should not be seen as harmful. On the contrary: if the State were to prevent exclusivity through its non-discrimination laws, this would amount to denial of a basic aspect of religious liberty. Paradoxically, perhaps, exclusive societies add to the diversity of society.’
In this sense, it would be deeply regrettable if these LRCWA recommendations were accepted by the WA government and incorporated in the relevant legislation. These recommendations reveal an illiberal mindset which is uncomfortable with the existence of religious diversity within Western Australia, and favours a dominant public system in which young Australians are educated according to a particular, state-sanctioned perspective. After all, the establishment of religious schools is an effective way that people of faith can freely educate their children (and other members of the community) of the merits of their religion.
Rather than fostering diversity in the educational sector, the recommendations made by WA Law Reform Commission will produce an educational system where people of faith are forced to have their children educated in light of the secularising hegemony of the State. Of course, this would be inconsistent with Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which declares, ‘The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.’ And also Article 19 which states that the right to freedom of expression ‘shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart ideas of all kinds’.
William Wagner, who is an emeritus professor of US constitutional law and retired US federal judge, explains that the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children ‘rests upon deeply rooted common law foundations’. This right, according to him, aims to ensure that parents maintain the primary role in educating their children, whilst being able to delegate part of that role to other bodies of their personal choice. Accordingly, a significant way in which governments can protect this right is by providing religious diversity by providing religious schools with sufficient freedom, so that they can employ persons compatible with the school’s worldview.
Demonstrating a genuine respect to equality in our culturally diverse community necessitates a protection for the choices of people of faith, and affirming their expressions of religiosity. Of course, a key way that the WA government could achieve this important goal is through allowing religious people to create supportive educational institutions, and permitting them to manage group membership so that they remain committed to the values and principles of their founders. As noted by law professor Ian Benson:
‘Religion is an equality right itself and religious people are entitled to non-discriminatory treatment in terms of their religion as well, so placing equality and non-discrimination over against religion or placing some forms of non-discrimination (say, sexual orientation) as things more important than the religious person’s freedom against non-discrimination is an error – though an all too common one.’
Of course, educational institutions that are committed to the preservation of their religious identities may eventually decide to employ persons with poor mission fit due to operational necessity, or because some diversity in the staff body may not have a significant adverse impact on the religious environment of the school. However, these decisions do not constitute evidence that mission fit is not important for teaching and non-teaching employment positions at these schools. On the contrary, a person’s mission fit is often quite crucial for a religious school as it allows the school to promote its own religious identity as an authentic religious institution. The Rev Dr Mark Durie, an academic who writes on relations between human rights and religious freedom, explains as follows:
‘For a secular person, teaching mathematics has nothing to do with religion. However, for a religious person – and indeed for a religious organisation – all actions can be considered to be worship. What distinguishes many religious organisations is that they see their whole actively as a corporate act of worship, done in devotion and service to God, in accordance with the doctrines and principles of their faith. One reason they want to employ people of faith is that they want the whole organisation to corporately serve God through its activities. The secular judges regard faith as an essentially personal and individual affair, and cannot understand this perspective because their religious worldview cannot comprehend it.’
This goes without saying that religious schools also play an important role in protecting the rights of minorities. They assist minority groups with the enjoyment of their religious culture, acting as positive measures of protection, and for allowing the participation of these minorities in decisions that affect their own communities. This is why the general exception guaranteed under the presently legislation should continue. Of course, some religious schools may only need these protections for some employment positions, but the WA government still must provide these schools with the same democratic freedoms to make decisions and protections that are often provided to secular organisations whereby membership is often strictly based on other relevant attributes such as political opinions.
Above all, it is essential for these religious schools that they can freely choose people of likewise persuasions during the appointment of non-teaching officeholders and recruitment of teachers. And since no government should have a right to disrespect not only religious freedom but also freedom association and the right to equality, the WA government should reject, and not endorse as it has done, these recommendations of the WA Law Reform Commission about strengthening protections for LGTQIA+ staff and students in religious schools.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/wa-democratic-freedoms-for-religious-schools-under-attack/
************************************15 November, 2022
Muslim woman accused of killing a grandma when she 'ploughed into her home while speeding with a baby in the back' later allegedly attacked cops
They had to claim that she is mad. Must not say her behaviour comports with Muslim lack of respect of "unbelievers" and scorn for the rules of non-Muslim society
Grandmother Robyn Figg, 62, was sleeping in the front room of her home in the western Sydney suburb of St Mary's and died at the scene.
Three other family members who lived at the property were uninjured.
NSW Police on Friday charged Ms El Dirani with a litany of offences including aggravated dangerous driving occasioning death, failing to stop and assist after a vehicle impact occasioning death and assaulting police.
She and the baby were uninjured in horror crash, and were stopped by officers nearby later that day.
Ms El Dirani, following her arrest, was taken to Nepean Hospital for mandatory testing where she remained for at least a week before being released.
Penrith Local Court last Friday heard she needed to remain at the facility because she was suffering a psychotic episode and hallucinating.
It is during this time she allegedly attacked two police officers.
She has since been released on bail under the care of her husband Abdallah Allaou who works in the financial industry as a business planner.
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Home education popularity soars in past year as state school attendance sunk by floods, Covid
The Queensland Education Department has been slammed for failing to engage and retain students with the number of home school enrolments more than doubling in the past four years.
State school attendance rates plummeted this year, while home education registrations soared, according to Department figures.
The data revealed a gradual increase in home education registrations from 2018, with 3232 home school enrolments to 2021, with 5008, before a leap of almost 3500 to bring the 2022 level to 8461.
Shadow Education Minister Dr Christian Rowan said the state government had failed in student engagement and retention.
“Between 2017 and 2021, (Semester One state) school attendance rates have declined in every single educational region and it’s even greater among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander state school students,” he said.
He said Queensland families had experienced “profound difficulties” in enrolling their children in distance and home education.
“The time it takes for processing applications is leaving students at home and not learning. The lack of consultation and ongoing delays has caused parents immense distress,” he said.
The Department of Education said it does not fund home education programs and registrations still only accounted for one per cent of all enrolments.
However, it has commissioned research “to better understand the likely future demand for home education registration services”, due to be completed at the end of the year.
Home Education Association state leader Samantha Bryan said she was surprised by the jump in registrations, describing the 69 per cent increase as “staggering”.
“The pandemic did a few things,” she said.
“People have chosen to home educate because a family member is vulnerable and they wanted to minimise the risk, some did not want their kids to be subjected to the directions around vaccinations and masks, while others found they liked homeschooling during the pandemic and decided to keep going with it.”
Meanwhile, department data also showed a slow decline in Semester One state school attendance rates from 2018-2021, before a nosedive in 2021-2022.
Education Minister Grace Grace described the past few years as “disrupted”. “For large parts of 2021, Queensland’s schools were the only ones on the eastern seaboard that had face-to-face learning,” she said.
“Like everyone, students were asked to stay home if they were sick, and that’s exactly what they did. Widespread flooding and an influenza outbreak also impacted attendance figures this year.”
Elizabeth Galbraith pulled her children out of private education in October 2019. The family lives on acreage in Redland City, 20 kilometres southeast of Brisbane.
Ms Galbraith said 13-year-old Rebekah was getting lost in the crowd, 10-year-old James wanted to be around older children, and seven-year-old Patrick preferred to work on vehicle engines. “I felt the system was failing them,” Ms Galbraith said.
“For their individual needs, I felt the best way to meet them was independent learning, allowing them to work at their own pace on their own interests.”
“And once the children are done for the day, they can ride their bikes, or the two older ones go horse riding as part of a job-ready program.
“I used to do three pick-ups and drop offs, so this has also relieved so much stress, particularly because my husband works remotely.”
Ms Galbraith sends her children’s tests into Australian Christian Homeschooling every month for marking and they then receive an end-of-semester report card.
“The children say the only thing they miss about going to school is not playing sports, but they can still play sports at private clubs,” she said.
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Older residents are defying ageism and returning to the workforce
Along the waterfront in Queenscliff on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula, is a restaurant where customers are more likely to be served by someone over 60, than someone in their 20s.
All because one day, owner Barry Iddles had an innovative idea. Like thousands of other restaurant owners in Australia, Mr Iddles was struggling to fill shifts. Out of desperation he sent hundreds of postcards specifically asking retirees to come and work for him.
They didn't need a resume or experience in hospitality. They just had to turn up for a chat to see if the work was something they would enjoy.
Now, he has 12 people on the books aged over 50. "We've got two 74-year-olds, a 70-year-old, and then we've got [people aged] 57, 60, 64, 66 and 67," Mr Iddles said.
"There is a labour shortage and a labour crisis, [but] I don't have one. I have five too many staff at the moment. And I could actually open another venue to keep them all gainfully employed."
One of the new recruits is Kenton Savage, a 67-year-old who always thought he would retire comfortably with his wife after selling his distribution business.
But then the pandemic hit and the business went bankrupt. Without any superannuation and with the cost of living continuing to bite, Mr Savage and his wife had no choice but to find a job.
"The pension just didn't pay enough. So I looked around for a job and Barry was hiring," he said.
The benefits have been more than a boost to his back pocket. "I think it just keeps me fit and healthy and happy. Being able to get out and about, it's really been good for me," he said.
Ageism 'alive and well' in workplaces
The Council for Older Australians (COTA) chief executive Ian Yates said experiencing discrimination often kept mature aged workers from applying for jobs.
Mr Yates said Mr Iddles's technique of specifically asking older workers to apply, was what was needed to show older Australians they were wanted and needed.
"Many older people will have experienced a lot of knock backs and not being taken seriously as prospective employees," he said.
"The labour market is so tight, that employers are being forced to look at channels and groups that they wouldn't normally look at, including older Australians."
Alysia Blackham is a researcher at Melbourne Law School and agreed more employers needed to target their job ads to older workers.
"We do see that people who experience age discrimination and other forms of discrimination a lot, are less inclined to put themselves forward," she said.
"Businesses that are creative and open in their recruitment are going to see significant benefits from having a more diverse workforce."
COTA's latest Mature Workforce Survey of about 830 people aged over 45, found ageist attitudes and behaviours were "entrenched in many Australian workplaces".
Eighty-eight per cent of respondents said ageism was "alive and well in Australian workplaces" and a significant number of respondents said they had both a personal experience of, and had witnessed, workplace ageism.
One respondent said they felt "powerless" to change how others at work viewed their age, and that "well-intentioned jokes" about their age left them feeling "depressed" and "worthless … as if I had outstayed my welcome".
Pension limits work for some
Mr Yates said while employers were increasingly looking to hire mature aged workers, the limits on earning income before it affected the pension held older workers back.
Earlier this year the federal government raised that limit, allowing those on the aged pension to earn an extra $4,000 a year before their government payments were reduced.
Mr Savage works about four shifts a week and is no longer eligible for the pension. Under the current limits, workers can only work about one shift a week on the minimum wage.
"And that's not enough. I mean, that [policy] was all window dressing in my opinion. The pension just gets wiped out by the extra income," Mr Yates said.
"I think the government is putting its toe in the water to see what kind of reaction that generates."
Respondents to the COTA survey frequently said the pension was not enough to live on. One person said they would be able to last longer on their part pension and super if they were able to work a few shifts a fortnight.
"If this was to happen, I doubt I would ever have to apply for a full age pension," they said.
Not just about the pay cheque
While there are obvious financial benefits to working more into older age, Mr Yates said the social aspects should not be overlooked.
"Cost of living certainly bites for older Australians … but for many people there are other motivations as well; keeping connected, having activities that you want to be engaged in, making a contribution," he said.
Susan Burston, 73, also applied for a job at Mr Iddles's restaurant after receiving a postcard in her letter box and thought the work would boost her confidence.
"COVID made a lot of people depressed. And I know amongst the older ones, we're all saying we're actually finding it quite difficult to get out and about again," she said.
"[Working] makes me feel better. And I love putting in, I love contributing."
Ms Burston said employers were often surprised at how loyal older workers were. "How well we work and what a good ethic we have. We're reliable. We're not trying to get out of the work," she said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-15/defying-ageism-older-workers-fill-gaps-in-workforce/101651806
***********************************************Extreme rhetoric about climate doom raises the temperature
The reception for Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has been exceptionally warm, unquestioning and optimistic. There are a number of obvious reasons for this.
The political/media elite, progressive to a fault, always welcomes the arrival of a left-of-centre government, especially after spending years demonising its Coalition predecessors. This was probably exacerbated by the nation coming out of the pandemic and looking for a period of reopening and renewal.
And to give credit where it is due, Albanese and his team did not frighten the horses. On the contrary, they made a sure-footed and reassuring start on foreign policy, an area where many, myself included, feared weakness and regression.
Yet now the trajectory for this government appears clear, and it suggests a path to economic hardship and political chaos. When the scales fall from the public’s eyes – and that might be a year or two away – the reckoning will be savage.
There are two outstanding questions. How much damage will be visited upon the country? And will the Coalition make the hard decisions to present the necessary alternative for repair?
Jim Chalmers neatly summarised the nub of the problem while attacking the Coalition this week. “Before the government changed hands interest rates were rising,” the Treasurer said, “real wages were going backwards, inflation was going up and a big part of the reason for that was the electricity price and energy market chaos that the shadow treasurer should come to the dispatch box and take responsibility for.”
A reasonably factual analysis. But the missing fact was that on each measure the situation has become significantly worse since the election and, worst of all, Labor’s climate and energy policies will turbocharge the harm.
The hubris of Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is extraordinary. His evangelical zeal for a renewables-plus-storage model as the enlightened path to lower prices, more supply, green jobs and a cooler planet ignores the simple fact that, despite numerous attempts, no country has achieved this.
In fact, all that have tried have ended up in an energy supply and cost crisis.
The International Energy Agency warns that net zero cannot be achieved with current technology, and even net-zero and renewables advocate Kerry Schott, the former chairwoman of the Energy Security Board, admitted this week that the government’s renewables plan might be beyond our wit.
“It may not be possible,” she told the ABC. “But I think we’ve got to try.”
That such an admission from her did not generate broad news coverage goes to just how delusional the debate has become. Media, climate advocates, politicians and diplomats are sticking to a script of unchecked climate catastrophism while promoting implausible energy solutions.
When this bubble bursts it will get ugly. For a debate that is supposed to prioritise “the science” the biggest missing elements are scientific facts and rational arguments.
As an illustration, consider these numbered quotes:
1: “We are facing an existential crisis in our region, which is climate change.”
2: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”
3: “We need radical change to save the planet.”
4: “There are no actions too extreme to take at this moment to draw attention to the urgency of fixing this problem now.”
5: “We are the developed country with the most to lose from unchecked climate change and natural disasters – floods, fires, and cyclones – all of this is at stake.”
These quotes are all of a likeness but come from the most radical protesters and people charged with implementing policy. We expect hysteria and hyperbole from the radical fringe but should see factual arguments and rational approaches from responsible politicians – yet now there is no difference.
The fearmongering from those who glue their body parts to roads at protests is indistinguishable from the speeches of the UN secretary-general or our own Climate Change and Energy Minister.
For the record, those quotes belong to Bowen; UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; Mali Cooper, who locked her head on to a car’s steering wheel as she blocked the approaches to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel; retired teacher Tony Gleeson, who glued himself to a Picasso in an Extinction Rebellion protest at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; and International Development and the Pacific Minister Pat Conroy at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
It should be deeply worrying that the fact-free alarmism is indistinguishable between this lot. It is as though the nation’s energy policy is being run by Greta Thunberg. (By the way, feel free to guess which quote belongs to who; I’ll include the quiz answers at the end of this column.)
Consider what this means for this country which, like every other developed nation, has built its prosperity on the foundation of cheap, reliable energy. We are accelerating an impossible renewable energy transition that has already constricted our electricity supply and elevated prices.
Through deliberate policy choices driven by ideology, we will further damage the reliability of our supplies while continuing to increase prices.
This is an act of national self-harm not seen since Kevin Rudd surrendered our borders – but the economic consequences will be much more severe and take longer to repair.
When the power shortages hit home, most likely over coming summers, the repercussions for the government will be dramatic. Ever-increasing power prices will cause household and business trauma along the way.
Two great lies are being perpetrated – and no, this is not climate denial, this is the opposite; this is recognising the supremacy of science, facts and rational analysis.
One is the gormless idea that renewables in countries such as ours are a practical solution to global warming, even as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise globally, thanks especially to China.
The other is the promotion of all natural disasters and weather events as being “unprecedented” and attributable to global warming. Scientists cannot make such links for our most recent droughts, floods or fires, but that does not stop some insinuating as much, and certainly it does not stop politicians and journalists leaping to conclusions.
This week the Prime Minister said: “We’ve had the devastating bushfires, including in areas of rainforest that had never burnt ever before – ever before!” This is typical of the alarmist claims we hear that scare our children and, presumably, help to justify radical but largely futile energy policies. They are simply wrong – yet stand uncorrected.
I have been through this in detail in these pages previously. Back in the spring of 2019 retired NSW fire commissioner and former NSW climate change councillor Greg Mullins told ABC radio that fires were “breaking out in places where they just shouldn’t burn … the west coast of Tasmania, the world heritage areas, subtropical rainforests, it’s all burning. And this is driven by climate change, there’s no other explanation.”
But the South Australian Chronicle of February 1915 reported lives lost and the “most devastating bushfires ever known in Tasmania sweeping over the northwest coast and other districts. The extent of the devastation cannot be over-estimated.” And The Canberra Times in 1982 detailed a “huge forest fire” burning out 75,000ha of dense rainforest in that region.
Around the same time Mullins made his claim, Guardian Australia linked bushfires in Queensland rainforests to global warming.
“I never thought I’d see the Australian rainforest burning. What will it take for us to wake up to the climate crisis?” asked Joelle Gergis, of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, who was then a member of the Climate Council.
“As a scientist, what I find particularly disturbing about the current conditions is that world heritage rainforest areas such as the Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland are now burning,” she wrote.
Yet the Cairns Post reported on October 25, 1951: “A bushfire in Lamington National Park today swept through a grove of 3000-year-old Macrozamia palms. These trees were one of the features of the park. The fire has burnt out about 2000 acres of thick rainforest country.”
We live at a time when clear, recorded, easily researched precedents do not preclude the use of the word unprecedented and do not prevent concocted hysteria. And on the back of this fabricated alarmism, we undermine the reliable energy sources that underpin our industry, agriculture, economy, health, education and prosperity.
There is a lot of science denial going on. And it is on the climate action side. Most of the media that has been complicit so far will not apologise for their role. Rather, when the reckoning comes they will pivot to the interests of their audiences and amplify the assault on governments.
There will be economic, social and political disruption. Then we will have to embrace gas generation or nuclear power, or even carbon capture and storage to reclaim our plentiful energy endowment.
Meanwhile, China will have continued its economic and military expansion, perhaps with the assistance of “reparations” from the West. Spike Milligan could not have conceived of such satire.
Of course, I could be wrong. We might see $1 trillion invested to build 28,000km of heavy transmission lines through landscapes where communities welcome them, linking tens of thousands of hectares of wind and solar farms in places where their aesthetics are appreciated, and they could be firmed up by massive battery installations yet to be invented, and all this could be delivered to us at a colossal loss to the investors so our prices do not increase dramatically. And the former coal and gas workers, and those who used to work in manufacturing, could all have jobs mowing the lawns between the rows of solar panels, or collecting bird kills from under the wind turbines.
And all the while heatwaves will subside, floods diminish, droughts will shorten and fires will be quelled. It sounds too good to be true.
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14 November, 2022
This is war: Renewables vs the West
The future of renewable energy is laid out before us, bound by inevitable consequences and engineering restraints. It is a failure of concept, buoyed by trillions of dollars in public money and the artificial destruction of its market competitors. The result is an energy crisis which is hastening the end of virtue-seeking energy systems that have benefited nobody except crafty investors and billionaire green playboys.
The public will pick up the bill for their hubris, as is always the case with political errors. Australians have been left sitting at the table with the scraps of the meal that was ‘renewable energy’ – bones picked clean by bankers, mining giants, bureaucrats, and diplomats.
State Premiers lie whenever they describe solar and wind as ‘cheap energy’, conveniently restricting their costings to the initial construction of the project while ignoring the required backup battery farms, re-wiring of the grid, and cyclic nightmare of the ‘rip out and replace’ reality of technology with a 20-year lifespan. Experts call this ‘re-powering’. Normal people call it madness.
This delusion is how we end up with the embarrassing antics of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk declaring Brisbane Airport will be running on ‘100 per cent’ renewable energy for the bargain deal of $4.5 billion – except for the planes, of course. And no, the airport is not going to operate on an isolated renewables-only grid to prove the point. Are you crazy? What if the wind died in the middle of the night?
The ABC are too friendly with green ideology to ask the obvious question: why are the Pacific Islands and other third-world despots asking for billions in reparations while selling their fossil fuel and rare earths assets under the table to the world’s largest polluter, China? Or the follow-up: what happens if we end up at war with China over Taiwan and they won’t sell us any solar panels? Or the follow-up to the follow-up: will Australia be able to defend the Pacific with a ‘made in China’ sticker on our power grid?
It is a contradiction that speaks to profit, not apocalypse. The insulting paternalism of Labor’s attitude toward ‘those poor people’ on ‘sinking flooded islands’ leaves Australia as a victim of politicians who are more concerned with ‘looking good’ and shaking all the right hands at the United Nations than taking care of the Australian people, whose money they throw away like confetti at the monstrous wedding of globalism and eco-fascism.
As the human population grows, civilisation requires an energy grid with a dense fuel source – something that takes up as little of our productive land as possible. Covering river deltas and prime agricultural fields with solar panels and wind turbines is the work of morons who have confused steel bird mincers with chapel steeples. These are not monuments to the Green religion, they are symbols of inexhaustible human idiocy that will be rusting long after the climate apocalypse fails to manifest.
Why must we be polite about the vandalism of Western Civilisation? Why do conservatives tolerate the gutless, mute, spineless, and soulless Liberal Party playing along because they are too embarrassed to apologise for trying to gain political traction from the same green fibs as Labor?
Climate Change has drifted into a religion of convenience – an ‘Edenism’ that ignores basic geological history and makes unkeepable promises about the fate of humanity. We have transferred our personal fear of mortality onto the Earth, terrified of a terra hellfire (or is it another Noah-style flood?) instead of the metaphoric flames of the old religions.
The planet is not a sentient being, it is a self-destructive rock that cares very little for our survival and would sooner hurl an asteroid or open a flood basalt rift than thank us for the sacrifice of university virgins.
Try telling that to a screaming activist glued to a Renoir with bits of horse and petroleum…
Instead of transferring the innards of third-world mountains to Australian landfills – or listening to scientists talk about melting wind turbines down into gummy bears for our children to eat – why not skip to the end?
The answer to our energy woes was revealed last century – a solution so simple, clean, and practical that its existence threatens the survival of all other energy sources. Nuclear. With billions of years in fuel reserves, nuclear will outlive humanity.
It doesn’t matter that the argument in favour of nuclear is unshakable, whether you believe in the apocalypse or simply want to restore light to the West, nuclear must first win the culture war that was started by jealous fossil fuels companies and is being continued by renewables barons.
We have seen conflicts like this before.
In the 19th century, a clash of profitable scientific ideas slammed into the middle of another culture war. Society was turned into a stage upon which charismatic showmen, backed by competing corporate interests, fought for the future of human civilisation. Energy was then, as it is now, the most valuable commodity.
The War of the Currents between beloved American Thomas Edison and competing energy merchant George Westinghouse changed the world, in large part due to outspoken Serbian migrant Nikola Tesla. It was a showdown between Direct Current electricity and the mysterious Alternating Current motors devised by Tesla that came with distinct advantages. Merit won out, but the battle was an expensive mess that claimed many lives. Friendships were destroyed, fortunes lost, and barbaric acts committed within the hysteria.
Edison championed Direct Current. His business interests, and those of his corporate investors, were entrenched in the technology. Alternating Current was a superior product and the obvious answer to the technical issues that plagued Direct Current systems. From a logical perspective, if America wanted to become an energy empire, it would have to rip up its old DC systems and replace them with an AC infrastructure.
Obvious solutions are often hated.
Unable to dismantle AC with sensible arguments, Edison sought ways to frighten the public over to his side – playing on the cheapest of human emotions in the hope that public fear would put political pressure on the scientific realm and cause lawmakers to act as AC’s executioner. To spread fear you need victims, so Edison Electric arranged public demonstrations in which AC current could be shown frying animals to death. Eventually, AC was used in the creation of the first electric chair, ensuring that the technology became synonymous with killing.
Edison took the culture wars too far. His antics painted him as unhinged and childish, deliberately contriving acts of cruelty for corporate interest while Westinghouse and Tesla improved the safety profile of their generators. Westinghouse secured the contract for the Niagara Falls system with Tesla’s motors, finishing the argument. The loss was so complete that the war is often forgotten.
We see a similar level of moral panic levelled at nuclear, with the combined forces of international bureaucracies and the corporate elite inciting the useful idiots on social media to arms. Propaganda and political power are the glue that holds renewables together. A bit of sensible jostling would easily snap it apart.
Anyone in love with renewable energy should be afraid of nuclear energy. It is coming to murder the solar, wind, and battery industry. As Europe is swiftly learning, nuclear is the only solution to our immediate energy crisis – the way for humanity to advance with its standard of living intact.
Those who get themselves caught up in this new war of the currents – misguided citizens who lean into fear porn, apocalyptic rhetoric, and socially destructive activism – will look as foolish as the men electrocuting small animals to scare the mob.
Yes, this is a war, but it has already been won in the eyes of history. It is only the final bill that remains to be counted.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/this-is-war-renewables-vs-the-west/ ?
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Gender quotas have no place in science funding
CLAIRE LEHMANN
The latest Leftist policy of destruction
To fund their medical research in Australia, male scientists may have to start identifying as trans or “non-binary” to get a fair shake.
This is because the nation’s largest body that administers medical research funding – the taxpayer-funded National Health and Medical Research Council – has decided to impose gender quotas on the awarding of funding for research, even though female researchers are already more likely to receive funding.
The NHMRC typically awards about $370m in investigator grants to medical researchers every year. Starting from next year, these grants must be awarded equally to male and female researchers, even if applications are not evenly split. The NHMRC also has announced: “For the first time, non-binary researchers will also be explicitly included in this and other measures to foster gender equity in NHMRC funding, recognising the systemic disadvantage that they experience.”
Of course, nobody wants women to miss out on fair opportunities for research funding. And if high-quality applications can be split perfectly down the middle to ensure a perfect 50-50 ratio between male and female researchers, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it. If 70 per cent of applications were from female scientists and only 40 per cent of the grants were awarded to them, I think all of us would understand the policy’s rationale.
But that is not the case. According to an editorial recently published in Nature, last year only 20 per cent of the applicants in the most established research group were women. How the NHMRC will achieve a 50 per cent gender ratio out of a 20 per cent female application rate at this level has not been made clear. (At least they’ve included the non-binary category for some wiggle room.)
What is clear is that when women apply for funding, they are just as likely as men to receive it. According to Nature: “From 2019 to 2021, more applications for investigator grants at the earliest career stage came from women – who were awarded 137 grants, compared to 123 for men.”
And according to table five of the NHMRC’s Investigator Grants 2022 Outcomes Fact Sheet, women are already more likely to be funded. This year, although the total number of female applicants was fewer at the top level, when they did apply 41.7 per cent of women won grant funding compared with 23 per cent of men. At the mid-career level, 26.6 per cent of women were successful in getting their research funded while 12.6 per cent of men were. And at the junior level, where more women apply for funding than men, 11.8 per cent of women were funded compared with 8.8 per cent of men. If women are already more likely to receive funding then the disadvantage that the quota is apparently correcting for is ambiguous.
The usual argument is that there are fewer women applying for grant numbers at the top level because they have faced disadvantage throughout their careers and so it is justifiable that some form of affirmative action is required to even the playing field.
As a working mother I am sympathetic to the argument that women face challenges that are unique to their sex. But while it is true that women once faced systemic barriers in the past it is not clear that these barriers still exist.
More women than men earn PhDs, including in science, technology, engineering and maths disciplines, and female doctoral graduates out-earn men. In the early stages of their careers more women than men apply for grants and receive them. The NHMRC’s data shows that last year 181 junior women applied for funding compared with 167 men. If more women earning PhDs, applying for grants and winning grants counts as structural disadvantage, then the patriarchy really does work in mysterious ways.
Two research scientists writing in Quillette, the online magazine of which I am editor, have argued the reason for the discrepancy at the top levels is simply an artefact of a generational shift.
Decades ago there were fewer women earning PhDs and undertaking science careers. This discrepancy shows up today when looking at senior levels of the profession. But this discrepancy is not necessarily evidence of unfair treatment. It could be, but to assert that it is without conducting the appropriate study is unscientific – not what we would expect from a leading scientific body.
Former NHMRC grant recipient and University of Melbourne emeritus professor Anthony Jorm writes in Quillette: “The new policy championed by the current CEO (Anne Kelso) means that gender equity will override quality. Any adjustment of grant outcomes by gender necessarily requires that some women with lower quality applications will be favoured over some men with higher ones.”
We already have dubious research being produced within scientific fields from “feminist glaciology” to “the Racialisation of Epistemology in Physics”. We hardly need incentives for more.
And it is likely the public would prefer that its money were spent on the highest quality medical research – regardless of the gender of the lead researcher. Funding for scientific research is a public good, not a mandate for preferencing one set of researchers over another. The prestige of science rests on its perceived impartiality and meritocracy. While bias can and does exist in any human endeavour, custodians of our institutions have a duty to reduce bias, not exaggerate it.
The high status afforded to science in our society exists because it is seen as being above politics. Enforcing quotas to satisfy political objectives such as gender equity erodes the perception that science is above politics and reduces its status. By awarding funding for any reason other than merit, Australia’s leading body of funding for medical research undermines the principles on which the scientific enterprise rests.
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Australia's education trainwreck
Our economy is jittery, so new workers must be exceptionally prepared just to get a job covering inflation. That green jobs transformation arising miraculously from the ruins of fossil ruins will greedily demand students with advanced techno-scientific competencies. Globally, we need Australians so skilled they can compete with brainboxes from Taiwan and Germany, not just the kid in the next suburb.
So, in challenging times, it is deeply concerning we have either wrecked or are wrecking every component of our educational system. TAFE is a smouldering ruin, schools overrun with outdated education practices, and prestigious universities more interested in self-aggrandisement than the national good.
Of course, TAFE is the starkest example. Governments have trumpeted for years the importance of skills-based TAFE, so naturally it has been left to rot.
The problem politicians have with TAFE is that good TAFE is expensive. You cannot train sophisticated workers for the tech industry, let alone boilermakers, from pocket money. The paradoxical result is that governments have funded the vital TAFE sector like an importunate beggar.
As costs for things such as technology went up, politicians forced funding down. Foolishly, they opened the market to shonky private competitors who undercut public TAFEs by providing two-dollar shop training. Many of these were simply fronts for dodgy immigration schemes, and dragged the entire sector down in scandal and confusion. High-quality public TAFEs with decades of reputation wept.
Now, every government promises to support TAFE, including the new Albanese government. But each year it sinks further beneath the water.
Saving TAFE will involve more than the occasional budget handout and a few kind words. There needs to be a comprehensive strategy. That strategy must guarantee long-term funding, protection against educational leeches and strong incentives for universities to partner with TAFE for valuable, mutually advantageous dual credentials. This involves hard work, not flowery commitment.
Schools’ education is less in flames than an intense slow burn. The heat is not so much from a dumbing down as a hollowing out of curriculum. The packaging is fine but the contents problematic.
A central issue is that actual education in deep capacities such as language and mathematics has been neglected for much vaguer, almost conversational techniques. Note that the terms literacy and numeracy are not used here. These are mere thresholds to attainment. We do not want a population that can just add up and read. We need one that grasps mathematics and is grounded in English, history and geography.
For this, students must be challenged. Personally, every form of mathematics is an existential challenge. But in language, why do we feed students second-rate novels, fifth-rate plays and no poetry? Why do we assume no kid from Kellyville could respond to Yeats?
Tests of literacy and numeracy such as NAPLAN are interesting, not as assessments of final capacity but as glimpses of future attainment. These portents are not good. Results struggle to go up, and easily fall.
There is wider cultural failure in curriculum. In civics, we have a school population that is determinedly ignorant. Few adolescents could tell you who Lachlan Macquarie or Bennelong was, or whether Australia has a constitution (it does).
Other failures concern the teaching work-model. Teachers spend inordinate time preparing multiple lesson plans to satisfy vague curriculum envelopes. If the teacher is talented, this produces marvellous classes. If not, something is pulled from the internet and released on listless students.
These problems are not easy, but are soluble. Why not populate curriculums with standard expert-crafted lesson plans? This would enhance lesson quality and relieve teachers (especially new teachers) of the crippling drudge of constant lesson preparation. That time could be transferred to developing new, quality teaching skills.
Why not a serious approach to civics? The argument is the curriculum is already crowded. But it is a question of priorities. Knowledge and critiques of one’s own country is vital. Do it.
Then there is the perennial rancour over teacher education. This spans both schools who employ teachers and universities producing them. It is suffused with ignorance and prejudice.
For over a decade we have been obsessed not with actual teacher quality, but with the means of selecting them. It is like arguing over the cultivation of a pineapple rather than its taste.
The prime point of contention has been the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, a rather rough measure of ranking student performance in year 12. The argument goes that only a person with an ATAR of 146 out of 100 is clever enough to be a teacher.
Put aside hysterics over hypothetical education students with an ATAR below 50. These are rare, overwhelmingly involving special disadvantage schemes. Typically, university education students with an ATAR fall between the mid-60s and 70s.
You then face two confronting realities. First, most students will not enter teaching simply with an ATAR. Yes, there may be an ATAR, but only as one part of an entry package including interviews, aptitude testing and community service. Prestige courses such as dentistry, medicine and law do this. Where is the hysteria? A stupid, underqualified dentist is a nightmare.
Second, there is no research-based evidence that high ATARS make better teachers.
Teaching is a vocation demanding absolute commitment. Provided a student has a decent school performance and a serious university education, it is this human bond to students that makes the difference, not a raw score in year 12. Think of your finest teacher. Do you know their results in the final year of school? Do you care?
This ATAR compulsive disorder has caused the current crisis in teacher supply. Embarrassed politicians and bureaucrats do not admit it, but their fanaticism over ATAR has produced the personnel crisis meaning bigger class sizes and less educated kids.
The correlation is simple. If, like former NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli, you run a propaganda campaign that all new teachers are stupid ATAR refugees, it will have entirely predictable results. It will not increase the quality of new teachers. Instead, clever students will disdain teaching as a career because they do not want to be vilified as dumb. They will be led by the cleverest students, who are prouder and have more options.
This is the reality. In NSW, the number of students entering teaching degrees has collapsed. So have their ATARs. So has the proportion of high ATAR students.
The same pattern applies across Australia.
The worst thing is that this crash, followed by massive teacher shortages, was completely predictable. Indeed, it was predicted, repeatedly, by university education faculties. Smug ministers and bureaucrats retorted there was no possibility of a teacher shortage.
Now they are propounding exactly the hopeless alleviating measures foretold by their critics. Irish teachers are imported with no ATAR, who will skedaddle after their all-expenses-paid holiday. Mid-career engineers are teaching maths. In Germany, this has worked well with genuine would-be teachers; less well with failed professionals sporting a meth habit.
Remarkably, new Education Minister Jason Clare has appointed one of the haughtiest architects of the teacher shortage to review teacher education. As Director-General of Education in NSW, Sydney University vice-chancellor Mark Scott was a doctrinaire enthusiast for ATAR eugenics and confidently predicted there would be no teacher shortage.
Then we have university education. It is the sort of rolling crisis that beset the late Roman Empire.
The university sector effectively has two components. The first is the rich, prestigious, endowed sandstone universities. They traditionally have blocked economically disadvantaged students (who typically have lower ATARs) in favour of harvesting huge numbers of wealthy overseas students, particularly from China. Think Melbourne and Sydney.
Their most recent achievement was to put the whole sector into crisis when Covid collapsed their lucrative international market. With Covid (sort of) over, they are again revving up their proportion of overseas students to dangerous proportions.
The other type of Australian university is a “working” or “service university”. They make their money by educating students, often from parlous backgrounds. In both teaching and research, they serve a community, regional or categorical. Think Newcastle and Western Sydney.
These were the universities that dramatically widened participation over the past decade, enabled the children of workers and welcomed refugees. They are definitionally more interested in mission than money.
Nevertheless, governments and policymakers typically begin their account of Australian universities with the sandstones, the Group of Eight. Everyone is flattered by cloisters, cash and condescension. Ministers go gooey when they smell ivy.
They miss the reality that it is universities of service that will educate most Australians, pluck them from social disadvantage, and focus research on their problems. Why not start with these engines of opportunity and social justice, rather than the university equivalent of a yacht club?
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Federal Labor must back resources sector, not punish it
Australia exports more liquefied natural gas than any other nation in the world. We are a vital energy security partner to nations such as Japan and South Korea. We also supply coal for power generation and steel-making.
Australia is a resources powerhouse yet we are about to engage in another round of confidence-sapping investment uncertainty and policy back-flipping. All this in a desperate attempt to manage a federal budget in disrepair and a knee-jerk reaction to the loudest voices in the room on gas prices.
The Australian Workers’ Union has rightly been raising the issue of gas prices and domestic production at state and national forums of the ALP for years. These calls have routinely been rejected by many of those now serving on Labor’s frontbench, including Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
The self-serving, largely under-invested manufacturing sector has tagged along in the hope of cheap energy to produce a profit rather than innovate and embrace renewable energy.
Meanwhile, the peak body for oil and gas, the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, has completely dropped the ball in representing its members’ interests. Its government relations “strategy” in Canberra seems to have been reduced to handing out free seats to backbenchers at Canberra’s Midwinter Ball.
Gone are the private sector energy champions such as Shell’s Andrew Smith, who actively used to promote the contribution to our nation, especially in regional economies, of his company and the wider resource sector. He was prepared to stand up to the activists and take on the naysayers.
The sector’s political weakness couldn’t come at a worse time as the Albanese government is under extreme pressure to be seen to act from the teals, the Greens and rent-seekers. Labor’s actions in coming days to be seen to “do something” may well do irreparable harm to Australia’s reputation as a stable place to invest in big and economically transformative resource projects like those we’ve seen in Queensland and Western Australia.
It comes as ALP national president Wayne Swan, doing his best to channel Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, declared on the public broadcaster that gas companies were profiteering from the war in Ukraine. It was an unedifying performance that then segued into an all too familiar Bernie Sanders-style “tax the rich” call on gas companies.
It’s ironic Swan’s Cbus superannuation members have done very well with the capital appreciation and dividends paid by their significant exposure to resources companies, including those that mine coal and produce oil and gas. Swan, a self-acknowledged mentor of Chalmers, obviously had a healthy heads-up on the Tuesday statement to the Senate committee by Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy that echoed Swan’s call – with a justification of “war-driven shocks” – for massive government intervention including new taxes in the coal and gas sector.
Kennedy’s commentary on gas and thermal coal prices sits totally at odds with the same Treasury predictions contained in this October’s budget that tip thermal coal to drop from the current $US438 to just $US60 and gas also dropping by some 33 per cent by March 2023. You really do wonder how they make all this up and keep a straight face. Their low-ball commodity prices were just a lazy revenue kicker for their Treasurer come May next year.
So, just a fortnight later, we are now supposed to believe there’s a “war pricing profit cycle”. This is the one Treasury’s own estimates says will collapse within the next five months, but is now justification for massive market intervention and targeting of specific companies that have invested billions into our economy. Companies that throughout the depths of Covid and massively depressed resource prices only two years ago kept Australians in work.
You only get to traduce your investment-grade standing and sovereign risk profile once. Rather than recognising we need more supply, not more investment-killing taxes and regulations like price caps, the federal government seems determined to declare a war on success. Such a move might well appeal to short-term populism. Focus groups are currently littered with support for a “windfall tax” and it would no doubt be a populist sugar hit for the Albanese government.
What a price cap, super profits tax or domestic quarantining of gas and coal won’t do is provide the long-term framework for ongoing investment in our resources; a sector that has driven intergenerational growth and helped Australia avoid the worst economic shocks of the GFC.
The resources sector should be supported with more expansions to provide energy security for our nation and our allies. Energy security is as important as physical security through increased defence spending and capability.
The example of Western Australia often used to support domestic gas reservation is not comparable to the multi-state jurisdiction on the east coast. Queensland has produced a global gas export industry while Victorians cheer on gas moratoriums as they demand cheap gas for their cold winters and cottage industries.
NSW isn’t much better. It has plenty of gas but would prefer to cry poor and ask for handouts from Queensland taxpayers to support its energy-starved manufacturers and homes.
Federal Labor must decide whether it wants to tax Queensland with a triple whammy of domestic reservations, price caps and windfall taxes on companies daring to be profitable. Such a move would be cheered on by the chattering classes and the billionaire-backed teals in parliament. Just like the carbon tax and the mining tax before it, this won’t quickly be forgotten in the must-win state of Queensland.
That not one, but potentially two Labor federal treasurers from Queensland could so happily work against their own state’s interests might well explain why the last time federal Labor in Queensland had more lower house seats in federal parliament than the conservatives was 1993. That’s despite Labor at the state level having governed for 24 years in the same period.
Federal Labor should support the resources sector wholeheartedly and recognise the vital role it plays in supporting jobs and investment, not single it out for short-term punishment in the vain attempt to be populist.
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Australian actress reveals why she refused to get a Covid jab and how she knew she 'wouldn't get another TV job' because she dared to lash out at lockdown lunacy
Australian actress Isabel Lucas sparked widespread backlash in 2020 after coming out against vaccine mandates and lockdowns amid the Covid pandemic.
And now the former Home and Away star has opened up about her decision to jib the jab, admitting that she knew it was 'highly likely I won’t work for years if I share this'.
Speaking to Stellar magazine, the 37-year-old said that she had 'several' vaccines when she was growing up, but chose not to get vaccinated against Covid.
'For me, I appreciate, what might be right for you may not be right for me, but it’s not right that either of us are being stripped of the freedom to choose,' she explained.
'Our relationship with our body is very personal and it’s deeply complex and so are our choices, and we’re claiming to engage in conversations about inclusion and diversity – you know, gender, religion, sexuality, race – without allowing our beliefs or observations to be acknowledged,' she continued.
'The diversity of choice is yet to be included, in my experience.'
Last November, Isabel said that she was 'pro-choice' when it came to the Covid vaccine. She later clarified her remarks on Instagram, saying she has 'concerns around "mandatory" vaccination, not vaccination itself'.
At the time, the star joined hundreds of people at a rally to protest Australia's Covid-19 vaccine mandates at the New South Wales-Queensland border.
In 2020, Isabel hit headlines when she shared anti-vaccination views on Instagram while commenting on a post by controversial chef Pete Evans.
Throwing her support behind the former MKR judge, she wrote: 'Freedom of choice is every human's right. I don't trust the path of vaccination.'
She received widespread backlash for her stance, and as a result was dropped as an ambassador for the charity Plan International Australia, which ironically champions equal rights for young girls.
Isabel has a long history of activism dating back to 2007, when she and fellow actress Hayden Panettiere joined activists on surfboards to try and stop a pod of dolphins being slaughtered in Japan.
In 2020, Isabel also attended a 'peaceful' anti-5G protest in Byron Bay, marching from the Jing Organics health food store to the proposed location of a 5G tower.
The Sydney-born beauty got her big break in acting playing Tasha Andrews on Home and Away from 2003 to 2006.
From there, she found stardom in Hollywood in films like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Daybreakers, and Red Dawn.
More recently, she played Samantha Cage in season two of the MacGyver TV reboot.
Isabel has since left Los Angeles and moved back to Australia to start a new life in Byron Bay
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13 November, 2022
The NDIS is a vampire squid sucking from the country’s budgetary future
Tanveer Ahmed
The National Disability Insurance Scheme will go down as the biggest piece of public policy largesse in Australian history.
I work in a public mental health facility. I’m asked to approve their packages.
It’s difficult to say no to families wanting more services, but desires tend to be infinite and the uncapped NDIS is not well designed to set limits.
Once packages are approved, there is an incredible lack of transparency and unaccountability for the spending.
It’s striking that the NDIS has helped transform many of my bleeding-heart co-workers into anti-welfare ideologues.
The state health systems also don’t mind me shifting costs to the federal government.
Now costing thirty billion dollars a year, growing at over ten per cent and destined to overtake Medicare within a decade, the entire initiative is a vampire squid sucking from the country’s budgetary future.
It has completely failed one of its core aims, which was to enable more people with a disability to move into the workforce.
When Julia Gillard launched the program, disability advocates went so far as claiming it would pay for itself by promoting improved economic participation.
Such claims, in spite of their appropriate aspiration, have proven to be entirely bogus. Instead it skews incentives for people to be labelled as sick and remain sick.
Nor does the blame lie solely with the Labor party. Repeated terms of conservative governments did nothing to tame its excesses.
Former minister Linda Reynolds meekly caved in to the disability lobby after the then-government’s attempts to bring in independent assessments of claims.
The very concept of disability has evolved to one incorporating medical and human rights perspectives. Its current formulation as any functional, long-term disorder that limits participation in social roles casts a large tent.
The nature of the term disability is also shifting away from physical injuries and towards intellectual disability, behavioural disorder and chronic mental illness.
A third of the half a million clients receiving funds are diagnosed with autism, placing pressure on people like myself to rubber stamp the label.
The autism diagnosis has quadrupled in the past two decades.
Yet the face of disability and the NDIS is overwhelmingly linked to severe physical ailments. The Australian of the Year, Dylan Alcott, for example, suffers a spinal injury from a childhood tumour. This is an inaccurate representation of the trends.
And like in any market, if you pay people to be disabled, more people will be disabled.
In terms of monetary costs of identity politics, the NDIS ranks as one of the most expensive in the world.
Symbolic appointments such as Kurt Fearnley to the chair of the National Disability Insurance Agency are indicative of the program’s emphasis on emotion over pragmatism.
The huge dollars sucked up by the NDIS are shifting the rest of the economy to cater for those labelled as sick.
The latest census figures show disability and caring among the fastest-growing job segments; drivers, cleaners, cooks and even someone to walk with you to the grocery shop.
And why wouldn’t you when you can charge a premium for your service if it’s linked to the NDIS, knowing accountability and transparency are lacking.
Even sex workers are going out completing disability certificates recognising there is better-paid, secure work in the sector. They call it ‘support work’ on the necessary forms.
If I was more entrepeneurial, I would be pitching an NDIS-funded brothel offering such supportive work to the growing ranks of the disabled. Let’s see if that entices investors on the next series of Shark Tank.
On current trends of growth, a considerable chunk of the population will either be disabled or be employed by someone categorised as disabled.
When I make home visits I see the sheer scale of the worker outlay.
Modest housing commission homes are flooded with staff worthy of a palace, with three and four workers coming in a few times a week mowing the lawn, cooking meals and cleaning the bathroom.
The agencies offering such services have become sales-type organisations employing high-pressure tactics not out of place in a used-car lot. There is almost always another service that can be pitched, many of which are mundane day-to-day tasks that family and friends would traditionally provide.
This is another curious aspect of the scheme.
There is little expectation that family and friends have any obligation to their disabled relatives.
Granted, some people do not have supports. Likewise the vast majority of family do their utmost to help their disabled loved ones, but the NDIS renders such supports invisible in their measurements.
Many kids with autism receive weekly horse-riding and piano lessons in parallel with speech therapy. A portion of this is appropriate, but a great deal is excessive.
Beyond autism, another quarter of NDIS clients fall into the loose category of psycho-social disorders, which is a broad reference to mental illness.
The overmedicalisation of problems of living is combining with the loose nature of the term disability to send NDIS costs sky-high.
The label is catching all sorts of people who in past generations might be seen to have lost confidence, are failing to adapt to a changing economy or have made the choice to take drugs and play video games.
Now they can be called disabled and live on the public purse.
More importantly, they are stripped of agency to acquire dignity through being useful to others. For all the enormous waste of funds, this is the bigger crime.
Let me give the usual proviso there is a lot of good such disability services do provide. There are also many people with serious needs that struggle to attract the NDIS funding they deserve, often because they can’t find the right people to do the onerous paperwork. This is especially true in regional areas.
But history will rightly judge the NDIS and its last decade of irresponsible largesse harshly.
Shorten may have launched an investigation for potential cover to gain control of spiralling costs, but the task of budgetary repair is an urgent one for the Labor government. It is highly unlikely they will be up to it.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/the-ndis-and-irresponsible-largesse
***************************************************Some Green realism in the Labor government?
At last week’s Sydney (heavily guarded against climate protesters) International Mining and Resources Conference, the Albanese Labor government’s Resources Minister Madeleine King, who is ‘committed to working with industry to ensure the benefits of Australia’s traditional energy resources are realised’, swept aside local and international demands to end investment in, and infrastructure for, fossil fuels in Australia. She talked up the need for Australia to continue to rely on coal and gas into the foreseeable future, with new developments helping to ‘ensure long-term energy security for Australian households and industry as well as our core trading partners’.
‘If the environmental and economic credentials of new coal and gas developments stack up and projects receive all the necessary approvals, the government will support such new developments.’ That is more than Australia’s banks, superannuation funds and leading financial and investment houses whose boards of directors are prepared to do, cowed as they are by climate activists, and fearful of political policy uncertainty, continually evidenced by divisions within the Labor party – and the growing political power of the Greens.
While King’s welcome recognition of the need for fossil fuels adds a touch of reality to the climate debate, her comments were all within the context of the government’s clearly unattainable and unbelievably costly newly legislated emissions limits. These guaranteed Environment Minister Chris Bowen a much warmer welcome at Cop 27 than Scott Morrison received in Glasgow at Cop 26. (Albanese was too busy to go this year despite Australia’s push to host a future Cop in 2026). But King made no attempt to resolve the self-evident conflict between these new emissions targets and her support for the continued use of fossil fuels.
If she really was fair dinkum rather than just playing good cop to Chris Bowen’s bad cop, and so enabling Labor to walk both sides of the climate street, she must by now have become a major target for the obsessive green Left – particularly within her own government. Unlike Bowen, whose message from the current energy crisis (created not only by Putin’s Ukraine adventure, but worsened by the mass premature shutting of fossil fuel capacity long before renewables were capable of replacing them) is that there must be a massively expensive greater rush into renewables, King, on the contrary, says: ‘The crisis underlined a simple fact – that Australia needs reliable supplies of despatachable power’ that rely on coal and gas which also play a role in key industries that lack viable alternatives. ‘As we decarbonise, we are still going to need gas and coal to firm renewable generation and keep manufacturing going’, with gas being ‘an ally of renewable energy’ by supporting the addition of more intermittent energy sources.
King also acknowledged that the current crisis also highlights the critical role Australian gas and coal play in meeting global energy demand and in providing our neighbours with a secure and dependable energy source. In addition, ‘Australian liquefied natural gas will have a key role in supporting the decarbonisation ambitions of our trading partners, particularly those in north Asia, several of whom have invested in our gas fields to help them navigate towards their established emissions targets’.
The Bowen approach is of a different order, involving transitioning our energy system from one powered by hydrocarbons to one powered by wind turbines, solar panels and batteries and other renewables. As the Menzies Research Centre’s Nick Cater wrote recently, to reach the government’s 2030 target of a 43 per cent reduction in carbon emissions compared to 2005 that was locked into legislation last month, would require ‘installing forty 7-megawatt wind turbines every month or more than one a day from now until 2030 and more than 22,000 500-watt solar panels every day for the next eight years – 2.4 for every man, woman and child’. So King’s emphasis on reliable fossil fuel energy in a non-disruptive transition to net zero and Bowen’s on targets without knowing how to get there – or the cost – will ensure that, despite Albanese’s promise, the climate wars (particularly within the Left) are by no means over.
King will have few friends in academe or among the Extinction Revolution activists; their concern is that even Bowen is not doing enough to save a planet that is ‘undeniably in crisis’. The UN warns that there is still ‘no credible pathway’ to limiting global warming to the required 1.5 degrees Celsius so that, ‘frighteningly, we risk tipping the climate into a dangerous regime bringing even worse consequences;. And the Economist magazine headline agrees: ‘Say goodbye 1.5C’.
But Australia is under heavy pressure from Asian neighbours, like Japan, who rely on Australia as a secure reliable source of fossil fuels. Minister King revealed that in recent talks with PM Albanese, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida underlined the importance of Australian coal and gas to Japanese energy security, a message reinforced by top business leaders who expressed fears that although Australian coal and gas will remain vital for Japan’s energy needs for decades, the lack of new investment in fossil fuels threatens energy security, Flying in the face of the diktat by climate disaster Jeremiah, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterras that it would be ‘delusional’ for countries to invest in more gas and oil exploration, King reaffirmed that the current energy crisis ‘highlights why we need to continue to explore and develop our energy resources’ and that not only is Australia a long-term, reliable energy supplier, but ‘I assure you the Australian government is committed to being a stable and secure destination for energy investment’. Is this the ALP’s road to Damascus?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/business-robbery-etc-104/
*********************************************A targeted campaign is being run in Tasmania against plans to ban conversion therapy, including a Liberal MP hosting an upcoming event in Parliament House questioning the move.
The reforms are based on a Tasmanian Law Reform Institute report which outlined that parents and guardians "have the right to express views on sexuality or gender identity issues" to their children
Survivors of conversion therapies, and LGBTIQA+ groups, argue the campaign fundamentally misrepresents the proposed laws, which would see Tasmania join Victoria, Queensland and the ACT in banning the practices.
Liberal backbencher Lara Alexander will host a Free Speech Alliance event in Parliament House on November 23 titled, Conversion therapy laws – risks and harms?
An invitation email for the event sent to Tasmanian parliamentarians urges them to attend "in the interest of freedom of speech, open and fair debate".
The email, from campaigner Isla MacGregor, promotes it as a "forum on the contentious changes to Tasmanian law being proposed by the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute on the issue of so-called 'conversion therapy'."
"The forum will offer testimony from those who have been negatively impacted by similar laws along with experts who will show the great danger such laws pose to best practice care and freedom of speech. You will personally get to hear from people who have not had the opportunity to be heard in this very contentious and serious debate in Tasmania," it reads.
The event comes after the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) ran full-page advertisements in the state's major newspaper which says the laws would "criminalise parents who question their children's wish to change gender", but this claim has been widely questioned.
Like with the Victorian laws, criminal charges could only be brought if someone experiences serious injury beyond a reasonable doubt due to conversion practices. Medical practitioners are exempt provided they comply with their code of ethics.
The reforms are based on a Tasmanian Law Reform Institute report from earlier this year, which outlined that parents and guardians "have the right to express views on sexuality or gender identity issues" to their children, and to "guide their moral and spiritual development".
Nathan Despott, who co-founded Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Change Efforts (SOGICE) Survivors, said the opposition campaign in Tasmania had been vigorous and indicated to him that conversion practices were still occurring.
He said the laws would ensure LGBTQIA-plus people could no longer be considered "broken".
"The real purpose of conversion practices legislation is not just to ban a small bunch of formal practices or kooky, quacky sort of practices, it's actually designed to deal with this problem of this idea that LGBTQIA-plus are dysfunctional and broken and damaged and need to be fixed," he said.
"And making sure that that idea can't be prevalent, or inadvertently used as the base of treatment in health settings, in human service settings, in religious settings."
The government plans to introduce the legislation early next year.
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Bosses demand better literacy, uni degree reforms
Employers have scolded schools for churning out semiliterate students, and demanded a new “degree apprenticeship” model to better train professional workers.
Traditional three-year university degrees are losing popularity, with early applications to start a degree in 2023 slumping as mature-age students learn on the job and more school leavers head straight to work.
The decline in domestic student enrolments has triggered a tertiary turf war, as regional universities accuse big-city sandstone institutions of “poaching’’.
The Australian Industry Group (Ai Group), representing 60,000 employers of 1 million workers, has warned that poor literacy and numeracy skills among workers is affecting three quarters of businesses.
It has told the Productivity Commission workers need to upskill through short courses known as “micro-credentials’’, which will qualify for student loans under federal government reforms.
Ai Group education and training director Megan Lilly said many school leavers – and even university graduates – have “inadequate skills’’ to work.
“There are definitely people who come from vocational and university education who lack the foundational skills they need to function properly in the workforce,’’ she said.
“We have a lot of very well-educated young people these days but we still have a considerable number who have literacy and numeracy deficits that impact … getting a job and maintaining a job. Apprentices often need to get literacy and numeracy support to enable them to complete their apprenticeship.’’
Ms Lilly said more businesses want a return to on-the-job training, combining work with short industry courses or part-time tertiary study.
She said “degree apprenticeships’’ were popular in Europe and would work well in Australia, for school leavers keen to “earn while they learn’’.
“There are such acute skills shortages that young people can pick up jobs and earn good money, so some companies are employing people directly and building a training program for employees,’’ she said.
“There should be more high-level apprenticeships and cadetships across the economy, like they do in Europe.
“We need a model of learning that is more relevant to the modern economy.’’
The Australian Information Industry Association, representing tech companies, also criticised the quality of some traditional university degrees.
“Graduates from IT (information technology) degrees are not job-ready,’’ AIIA chief executive Simon Bush said on Friday.
“It takes six to 12 months to train a graduate on the job to get productive and on the tools.’’
Mr Bush said IT employers were hiring Certificate III and Certificate IV vocational training graduates, who study for a year or two. “They’re not necessarily taking graduates with three- and four-year undergraduate degrees from university,’’ he said.
BAE Systems, a global engineering firm that specialises in defence, cyber security and virtual-reality technologies, will launch the first “degree apprenticeship’’ in systems engineering in 2024.
The Melbourne-based degree will involve Apprenticeships Victoria and Engineers Australia, although the partner university has yet to be revealed. Participating employers will include Dassault Systemes, Advanced Fibre Cluster, Air Radiators, Navantia Australia, Memo and Systra.
BAE Systems Australia has also partnered with the University of South Australia to kick off a degree apprenticeship in software engineering.
“It’s important that we look for new ways to work across industry and academia to collectively develop solutions that benefit the nation and provide alternatives for students who might not otherwise consider tertiary studies,’’ the company’s chief people officer, Danielle Mesa, said on Friday.
The push for work-based tertiary education comes as universities suffer a slump in enrolments for 2023. Applications to universities in NSW are the lowest in four years, with those lodged through the Tertiary Admissions Centre down 4.6 per cent from the same time last year. Victoria’s applications have dipped less than 1 per cent, but in Queensland mature-age applications have fallen 11.3 per cent and school-leaver applications are down 3.7 per cent.
Former Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven claimed prestigious universities are “plundering’’ disadvantaged students from regional and suburban universities to meet equity quotas for students.
“They are poaching socially marginal students from the regions and underprivileged suburbs, with scholarships and other sweeteners only rich institutions can afford,’’ Emeritus Professor Craven writes in Inquirer.
“They do not actually want these students, given their historic rationale for existence has been to invite only the elite. These newly privileged students will be academic cannon fodder. Sandstones have neither the interest nor the learning structures to cater for students beyond the north shore or the eastern suburbs.’’
Regional Universities Network executive director Alec Webb warned of a “hollowing out’’ of regional communities if city universities lure local students.
“While we respect student choice, regional universities are concerned about metro-centric solutions, and short-term incentives that could see a further hollowing out of regional communities,’’ he said.
“Taking the best and brightest from regional areas hollows out our regional workforces and obviously will have an impact on Australia’s economic prosperity.’’
The Group of Eight, representing the elite “sandstone” universities, said its academic success rate for disadvantaged students was “well above the national average’’.
“Allowing students to choose the university course that best suits their aspirations and skills is a core tenet of Australia’s approach to university study,’’ Go8 CEO Vicki Thomson said.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will require all universities to do more to help disadvantaged students as part of the University Accord, to be launched next week.
“I want more people from poor families, from regional and remote parts of Australia, more Indigenous Australians and more Australians with a disability going to all our universities,’’ he told The Weekend Australian.
The federal government allocated all 20,000 of its bonus university places in last month’s budget to disadvantaged students.
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11 November, 2022
Australia's new homeless: Meet the hardworking mother who works six days a week but STILL can't find a rental and is forced to sleep in a tent and a car
Tenants are paying the price of anti-landlord legislation. And being a single mother has its price too. Where is the father?
A hardworking mother has revealed how she was forced to sleep in a tent and in the back of her sister's car after suddenly losing her home.
The woman, named Jessica, appeared on a Four Corners investigation into homelessness and shed light on the rental crisis that is gripping Australia.
In an emotional interview, she said her landlord suddenly kicked her out after deciding to renovate the property she was living in with her nine-year-old son.
Jessica said she had applied for more than 60 properties since being evicted but was knocked back every time.
The mother shared her fears about losing her son and desperately asked for 'someone' to help her and other low-income earners find stable housing.
'There was no vacancies in town,' she said as she explained her situation. 'So it was a phone call to my sister and she works full time. She lives above a pub and children aren't allowed above the pub but there was no choice.
'I slept in the back of her car that first night, and my son slept upstairs. It was scary to not know what's going to happen the next day.
'I paid for my own accommodation out in the caravan park. It's the cheapest place I could get a cabin. That's $110 a night and that's the cheapest in town.'
Jessica was entitled to 28 days of crisis accommodation after losing her flat but, despite applying for 10 properties a week, she was unable to find a new rental.
This led to her being left homeless and living in a caravan park - though she admitted she couldn't afford to carry on the arrangement.
'Essentially, my son will have to go with my sister. I'm in the back of her car, but if not, I've got a tent to sleep in. That's scary.
'I don't want to lose my boy. A simple thing of not being able to house my son means I could lose him and that's not that's not fair when I raised him solely.
'To work so hard and to get so far and to have everything gone from underneath you.
'Not for my own choices. Not because you're a bad mum. No. It's because there is no housing. You go through every avenue to try and you get nothing.'
The mother called on Anthony Albanese or anyone to help her and other low income earners.
'Help us, help us do something. Help the low-income earners and the unemployed to get good stable housing.
'Just help us. We need help. Someone needs to do something for us.'
Jessica's story is the latest example of the growing rental crisis that is gripping Australia.
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Fiery moment a race row erupts between Jacinta Price and Penny Wong in the Senate over plan to have a world ambassador for Aboriginal Australia
Outspoken conservative Senator Jacinta Price and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong have clashed in Parliament over a plan to appoint an ambassador to represent Australia's Indigenous people on the world stage.
During a tense showdown at a Senate Estimates hearing, the Country Liberal Party MP told Ms Wong that as an Indigenous person she found the idea of such a role 'divisive' - and invoked the minister's Malaysian heritage.
Ms Price asked Ms Wong if she would accept only 0.03 per cent of the Asian community having the power to make decisions that would directly impact her life.
The two politicians repeatedly spoke over each other as they clashed over the concept of the new role, with the Speaker at one point forced to call for order.
Ms Price sensationally accused the government of creating the role as part of an 'international PR stunt' amid debate over the Indigenous Voice to Parliament - with Ms Wong accusing the senator of making a 'political statement'.
'You don't want to hear our answer,' she told Ms Price. 'I've tried to, in good faith, explain to you senator, why we have done this, and you don't listen.
'You have a view, that's your view.'
During the fiery exchange, Ms Price questioned why the Labor government thought it was necessary to 'segregate' First Nations people with their own foreign policy.
She referenced Ms Wong's Chinese background, asking the minister if she would appreciate only 0.03 per cent of her community having power to make decisions.
'I doubt that you would accept 0.03 per cent of your community of the Asian community on anything in regard to any decisions in regard to the Asian community of Australia, which is on the same sort of principle,' Ms Price said.
'Well, I'll answer that. You want to talk about my ethnicity and my heritage, I am deeply proud and deeply grateful that the Australian people have chosen to put more people from diverse backgrounds into our Parliament,' Ms Wong hit back.
Ms Price tried to interrupt the minister but was quickly slapped down.
'You asked me a question about being Chinese, so I am responding,' Ms Wong said.
Earlier in the fiery race row, Ms Price claimed the ambassador role would only further divisions between First Nations People and the rest of Australia.
'I reject that. It's not about segregation. It's about inclusion. And a place in our international story that we have not told,' Ms Wong replied.
'I think in the world telling the full story of who we are is a good thing to do, regardless of one's political views over the Uluru Statement.
'This is about telling the full breadth of the story about who we are.'
Ms Price cited Ms Wong's Malaysian heritage when she argued that an ambassador couldn't possibly represent all Asian voices.
'It is your position that the Uluru statement of the heart should represent us all, and I'm suggesting to you that it doesn't,' she said.
The foreign minister replied that like any ambassador, the person who was chosen for the role would consult widely to get a 'diversity of views'.
During the fiery exchange, Ms Price questioned why Australia thought it was necessary to separate First Nations with their own foreign policy.
Ms Price on Wednesday tweeted she was: 'In Senate Estimates pulling 16 hour days and holding this disgraceful Albanese government to account'.
The conservative politician, among other Indigenous leaders, has been critical of the the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, saying the proposal for an advisory body for First Nations people was another act of 'racial separatism'.
The Labor government plans to allocated $1.3million to its First Nations Ambassador budget to start a taskforce for the department, remuneration for the ambassador, international and domestic engagement as well as meeting facilitation.
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Restraint on "sacred sites" needed
We are constantly being told that the Uluru Statement is an invitation from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to ‘walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future’. But we can only join in the walk to Canberra on their terms. We cannot, under any circumstances, walk with the Bundjalung people to the top of Mount Warning. This was once one of the most popular walks on the NSW North Coast and those who got to the top early enough were able to enjoy a magnificent coastal sunrise view. Not anymore.
In an earlier article about sacred sights, I tried to describe the Bundjalung initiation ceremonies which took place on Mt Warning 120 years ago (‘Sacred Sites – A warning to us all’ Spectator 13/3/2021). The account of the ceremony was so shocking that the editors, in their infinite wisdom, decided the details were unfit for a family magazine and excised some of more graphic descriptions of the procedures from the article. It must be admitted that, if the traditional ceremonies were repeated today, criminal prosecutions would follow. Volume 37 of the journal, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for promoting useful knowledge, published in 1898, contains a fascinating article on the ‘Initiation ceremonies of Native Tribes of Australia’ for those who wish to know more. But the fact that the Bundjalung people can no longer follow their traditional sacred ceremonies never seems to worry those who claim the ceremonial sites are still sacred places.
Australians are no longer permitted access to Ayers Rock/Uluru and a host of other ‘sacred sites’ for ‘cultural reasons’. And of course it’s not just in national parks that Aboriginal groups are wielding power in the sacred sites fandango. While we are being asked to walk together to a better future, at the same time, billions of dollars of mining projects which would enrich us all are being stymied because of indigenous intransigence. Australian operator Santos has had to suspend drilling activities at its $3.6-billion Barossa offshore gas project following a legal challenge brought by indigenous groups. Santos has similar setbacks at its Narrabri gas project. At a recent public meeting, hosted by Santos, Ms Dorothy Tighe, a representative of the traditional owners of the land on which the mine will be based said, ‘We’re here to tell you you’re not welcome on Gomeroi and Githabul and Ngarabal country because there’s not any proper consent done for our people. You never consulted with us as traditional owners…. We don’t want you on country. Gamil means no’. In response to Ms. Tigh, the chair of the meeting said, ‘We have been working with the authorised applicants of the Gomeroi people, and we’ve been working with them in informal negotiations since 2012 and formal negotiations since 2015. We have undertaken extensive engagements to ensure the Gomeroi are fully informed on the aspects of the project.’
So, at a time when the Australian east coast is facing a critical shortage of natural gas supply a major project which has been under development for over a decade cannot progress without court action. The Gomeroi people are the traditional owners of the land in the Pilliga state forest on which Santos wish to mine the gas which will be solely for the Australian market. Santos will need access to 1,000 hectares for the life of the project. This is one fifth of 1 per cent of the land controlled by the Gomeroi people but they will not relinquish even that tiny fraction of the land they control. Not much of the ‘walk with us’ spirit there.
Of course every major mining group in Australia has similar problems. Projects which would benefit us all are inevitably resisted by people claiming a deep spiritual commitment to the land on which the projects are to be based. The raising of the Warragamba dam wall is also being resisted by traditional owners because it will flood sacred sites but there is almost no photographic evidence of the alleged sacred sites. The proposed widening of the Great Western Highway connecting Sydney to Western NSW is said to be of national significance but that doesn’t concern Wiradjuri man Adrian Williams who is deeply worried about 20 sacred sites that may be affected by the widening of the highway.
And on it goes. Almost every road project in rural Australia encounters problems with people claiming that a tree or rock is sacred. Rarely is any evidence produced in support of such claims. Instead journalists are content to merely repeat whatever a self-appointed spokesperson chooses to say. Just as uttering the word ‘Shazam’ turned mild-mannered Billy Batson into the 1950s superhero Captain Marvel, so anyone who utters the magic phrase ‘sacred sites’, turns into an indigenous expert who will mysteriously appear on ABC news programs.
Whenever an Aboriginal group gets control of land then, almost invariably what follows will be a struggle by various members within that group for supremacy and access will usually be restricted or denied for non Aboriginal Australians. Economic development will invariably be impeded or delayed.
It is time we recognised that places that were once undoubtedly sacred to people can no longer claim that status. Stonehenge which must once have had a sacred purpose is now a tourist attraction. The same status now applies to almost every pre-industrial animist religious site in the modern world and although many Aboriginal Australians, especially those from the Canberra tribe, would argue otherwise, Australia is part of the modern world.
Giving greater power to Aboriginal groups will not reduce their resistance to economic development and the Voice treaty truth campaign is not a way forward. It is an unashamed grab for even more power and will inevitably result in greater difficulty developing the resources which have made Australia one the most successful and wealthy nations the world has ever seen.
It would be helpful if credulous journalists could start asking Aboriginal spokespersons some direct questions about this mysterious voice to parliament. They might ask why we are all to walk together for a better future when Aboriginal groups invariably resist economic development. Perhaps they could ask for a deeper explanation of how discontinued religious and ceremonial practices are still regarded as essential to their self identity.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/aussie-life-95/ ?
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Net Zero? The hypocrisy of the religious clergy
It is a rootless age when 100 of the leaders of various Christian and other churches in Oceania can pen an open letter to Prime Minister Albanese demanding Australia stop ‘approving new coal and gas projects’.
This is not an area where they have any expertise, unlike morality. Whether from a practical or moral angle, this open letter is wrong.
Australia needs to produce more gas for its own use, and more gas and coal for the world’s use.
To deny that is to destroy any chance of a pivot to a low-carbon economy and to deny the role fossil fuels play outside the power grid, producing fertilisers, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and other necessities.
Ceasing the approval of new coal and gas projects would be a real death sentence on millions in the developing and developed world.
Take the practical first.
The official Australian Energy Markets Operator (AEMO) plan is for Australian power generation to transition from a mix that is currently 53 per cent coal, 19 per cent gas and 27 per cent renewable to 98 per cent renewable plus storage and gas backup.
Most of this under the federal government’s promises is to happen within the next 8 years.
How is this to work? Let’s look at exhibit one, the state of South Australia which is the furthest state along the road to decarbonisation, bar Tasmania, which is a one-off because of its extensive, and unique hydro capacity.
South Australia is 61 per cent renewable on average, and has been reported as high as 92 per cent for short periods of time, but if it weren’t for the gas-fired backbone, and interconnectors to Victoria, it wouldn’t function as a grid. Renewable energy is unreliable, so it requires grid-scale storage and/or flexible, on-demand back-up.
On the storage side, as far as the grid is concerned, batteries are almost entirely absent. Despite boasting the largest battery in the country at Hornsdale, SA only deploys about 0.75 per cent of its electricity from batteries according to the AEMO Data Dashboard.
The only currently viable form of larger-scale storage is pumped hydro. In 2019 there were four potential pumped hydro schemes in SA vying for ARENA funding of $40 million.
Now there is only one, a project at Baroota with a potential capacity of 250 MW (10 per cent of total state peak demand) and total discharge potential of 2 GWh (5 per cent of South Australia’s daily requirement). It was supposed to start construction in 2022, but as yet there is no sign of it, so perhaps it also has been shelved.
In the absence of pumped hydro, the only way of keeping the lights on in South Australia is gas, which currently supplies 38 per cent, the same amount it supplied in 2014-15, although it has been as high as 53 per cent in 2012-13 and 52 per cent in 2017-18.
It’s possible it could reduce further with the building of more renewables, but not by much without storage.
There are already so many renewables in the system that on days like Wednesday of this week when the sun is shining and the wind blowing, they can be 95 per cent of output.
In fact, that day there was actually more power being generated than the grid could use, so the price of electricity was negative at -$48.21 (14:14 GMT-10:00).
When power is so cheap you can’t give it away most of the time there would be no profit in building more of it.
These factors are recognised in the 2022 AEMO Integrated System Plan which projects a need for 10 GW of gas-peaking capacity in 2050 (p11) supplying overall around 2 per cent of energy demand (p38). In 30 years, the gas to fuel this capacity probably won’t come from any wells in existence today, it will come from new wells the government must approve.
So the clerics who demand the end of approvals to new gas projects want to sabotage the market operator’s thoughtful scheme to get to Net Zero. Because they know better, or because they know nothing? What is the morality behind this tinkering?
Australia also has a role to play in ensuring Europe doesn’t freeze to death because of the lack of Russian gas. Europe uses 400 billion cubic metres of gas per annum, of which Russia supplied approximately 160 bcm.
To replace Russian output to Europe we need to increase total internationally tradable production by 16 per cent. Australia, as the 5th largest exporter with 9 per cent of total volume, has a moral obligation to do more than its part because we have the scale to make a difference, along with the USA, Qatar, Norway, and Canada, the other big exporters. Otherwise, people will die from cold and starvation, and Europe will have to rely on activating mothballed coal-fired power plants, and burning forests, as it is now doing, to keep its citizens alive.
How many deaths do our churchmen want on their conscience? What is the point of their plea if it leads to increased emissions?
They might retort that climate change is killing people today, but the evidence is that many more lives rely on reliable energy for a prolonged life, and to deal with the challenges of climate, than any change in the climate currently threatens.
Does God value hypothetical lives in the future more than he values real lives in the present?
They also fail to take account of the other 50 per cent of oil and gas – the 50 per cent that goes to make plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers, and other useful substances like bitumen.
Without plastics to provide the lightweight components that reduce energy consumption the low carbon future is even more difficult. Without pharmaceuticals managing health becomes harder and life shorter. Famine in Sri Lanka shows exactly where absence of fertiliser leads. And without bitumen where will we drive our Teslas?
If churchmen and women want to make a statement about Net Zero, then let them start at home before lecturing the rest of us.
Most lead comfortable middle-class lives with tax-sheltered above-average incomes (an Anglican priest in Brisbane earns around $104,000 after tax, equivalent to $140,000 before tax). They have mostly working spouses, second cars, overseas sabbaticals, and often holiday homes.
As a consequence, their carbon footprint is much larger than the average.
Rather than signing open letters telling the government what to do, they should concentrate on their daytime job. The Bible has some good advice for situations like this.
‘And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me remove the speck from your eye”; and look, a plank is in your own eye?’ Matt: 7:4-5
Without a proper understanding of the practicalities, there is no way to make moral pronouncements. God might work in mysterious ways, but he only works within the physical world that he has made, and it has limitations.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/net-zero-the-hypocrisy-of-the-religious-clerisy/
************************************************Big reversal by Sydney University over exam
The University of Sydney has torn up a law exam after a student complained that she had been depicted as an HIV-positive, fanatical conservative who ran over a “socialist” in a car in a bizarre legal scenario.
Law student Freya Leach, 19, said she was horrified when she discovered her criminal law final assessment featured a “right-wing” woman named Freya and received dozens of messages from classmates who recognised the character to be her.
Students completing criminal law take-home exam will be required to complete a new assignment after the original was withdrawn out of a desire to preserve the sandstone university’s “academic integrity”.
In the colourful legal scenario, Freya runs over a man in a Mercedes to give “that chardonnay socialist a fright” and has unprotected sex while HIV-positive.
Ms Leach – who is active in the Young Liberal Club and the University of Sydney ?Conservative Club – said she believed she was being targeted by the paper and has written to the Dean of the law school asking for an apology.
Sydney University has confirmed to The Australian that students were told via their online portal that the paper had been withdrawn and apologised to those who had “dedicated a substantial amount of time” to working on the existing assessment.
Sydney University Law student Freya Leach has expressed outrage after an assignment question included a…
READ MORE:‘Shocked’: Student depicted in exam as HIV positive
“We understand that many students have already dedicated a substantial amount of time to the short release assignment, and sympathise with and understand your frustration,” the message to students said.
“However, the university and the law school set a high value on the integrity of assessments, which are crucial to preserving the good standing of our qualifications for graduates, the legal profession and society.
“Regrettably, we feel that there are no alternatives to withdrawing and replacing the short release assessment that would ensure academic integrity.”
Ms Leach said she believed she was being singled out by the left on campus after she spoke out against “zoom bombing”, a form of industrial action in which students intentionally disrupt online lessons as part of a push by the National Tertiary Education Union for better pay and conditions.
“So it is almost inconceivable to think it’s an accident, given my name is not common and everyone has been able to piece it together and identify it as me,” Ms Leach said.
“I think it’s really concerning that faculties think they can abuse their power to single out students for political beliefs.”
Sydney University has denied the character portrayed in the exam was based on real students and said the similarities were “entirely a coincidence” as the name had been in usage before.
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10 November, 2022
The voice of energy realism
The transition from coal is limited by the lowest level of renewable energy input to the grid on windless nights… Until that rises to meet the full demand, we had better keep all the coal and gas capacity that we have at present or be prepared to eat breakfast and dinner cold.
Reading literacy appears to be in decline – and that is causing concern – but spare a thought for the prevalence of ‘wind illiteracy’. This means a lack of awareness regarding the capability of wind supply, especially at the continental scale.
Wind illiteracy has enabled the biggest peacetime policy blunder in our history – connecting intermittent energy sources from sun and wind to the grid. That mistake has been compounded by subsidising these providers and mandating the use of the product.
The result is a mortal threat to the electricity supply which is the lifeblood of modern society since the horse and buggy days. At the very least the price of power will rise sharply, crippling energy-intensive industries, wrecking household budgets, and feeding inflation in every sector of the economy where electricity is an input.
The root of the problem is the combination of extensive and protracted wind droughts, the need for continuous input to the grid to match demand, and the lack of grid-scale storage to fill the gap in supply on windless nights.
Did anyone involved in planning the transition to intermittent wind and solar power think about the wind supply in the way that irrigation planners presumably pay attention to the water supply?
Did anyone call the Bureau of Meteorology or seek advice from some wind-literate person who might have warned them about the widespread wind-lulls that occur when high-pressure systems hover for a day or three, as they do, several times a year?
These are not the result of recent climate change. In the history of the Lameroo district in the Mallee of western Victoria:
‘A drought of a very different kind occurred in March and April of 1934. Because Lameroo sits above our underground water supply, windmills (wind pumps) were used to draw water to the surface for stock water and personal use. The period from mid-March to the end of April was almost completely windless; therefore no water. Farmers were soon desperate for stock water…’
Paul Miskelly accessed the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) records of the power delivered from wind farms attached to the grid. During the calendar year 2010 the total wind output across the entire grid fell rapidly to zero or near zero on 109 occasions in the year.
He showed that these droughts occurred when high-pressure systems fell over the area, these are visible in the weather maps that show the high and low-pressure systems that move from west to east across the continent.
He flagged the need for a fleet of fast-acting gas plants with enough capacity to match the installed wind capacity, on standby mode ‘to balance the wind’s mercurial behaviour’.
In 2010, there were only 23 wind farms with less than 2GW of installed capacity and it was anticipated that the supply would become more reliable as the number of sites increased. John Morgan reported that the situation was much the same in the 12-month period from Sep 2014 to Sept 2015 when the capacity of the wind fleet was approaching 4GW.
The problem persists with almost 9GW of installed wind capacity at present. Mike O’Ceirin, an independent analyst working with the Energy Realists of Australia, has an interactive site using the AEMO records.
The records can be interrogated to the depth and duration of all the wind droughts from 2010 to the latest serious episode which lasted over 40 hours through the 7th, 8th, and 9th of August.
People need to become wind-savvy and alert to the Achilles heel of the intermittent energy system, that is, the nights when the wind is low and there is next to no renewable energy input. During these periods, no amount of additional installed capacity will help until there is grid-scale storage to save the excess power generated on sunny afternoons.
Renewable energy promoters celebrate record high inputs like the wind just before the drought in August and the solar input for an hour in South Australia on the afternoon of October 16.
AEMO recently started to give out potentially misleading information (to the wind-illiterate user) on the data dashboard with a record of Renewable Penetration. (See the tab at the top of the page.) Admittedly, it is labelled ‘highlights’ but it could mislead the unwary casual viewer who doesn’t realise that the highs are useless as long as the lows persist. It is directly comparable to the fence around the cow paddock where the gate is always open or there are permanent gaps. Doh! The cows will get out regardless of the height of the fence.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/the-voice-of-energy-realism/
*****************************************************New home sales slump in Qld as rate hikes bite hard
NEW home sales in Queensland have tanked, with the Sunshine State recording the biggest drop in Australia during the last quarter.
The HIA New Home Sales report – a monthly survey of the largest volume home builders in the five largest states – has revealed that new home sales slumped 35.9 per cent last month, and 31.9 per cent over the quarter, compared to the previous quarter.
Since the same time last year, new home sales in Queensland fell 11.3 per cent.
By comparison, new homes sales in the October quarter, compared to the previous quarter, fell 22.8 per cent in Victoria, 19.6 per cent in NSW and 9.1 per cent in Western Australia.
NSW recorded the biggest decline in October, down 36.9 per cent, according to the report.
South Australia was the only state to see an uptick in new homes sales during the quarter, rising 18.8 per cent, but declining 13.9 per cent in October.
HIA chief economist Tim Reardon said that sales of new homes nationally dipped 22.8 per cent in October as the weight of increases in the cash rate slows building activity.
“Sales of new homes had already fallen 15.8 per cent nationally in the three months to the end of September, due to the increases in the cash rate starting in May 2022,” he said.
“The increase in interest rates is compounding the rise in the cost of new home construction and further reducing the capacity of borrowers to finance the build of a new home.
“But it is very clear, even before the October and November increase in the cash rate started to impact on sales, that this building boom is coming to an end.”
Mr Reardon said that the fastest increase in the cash rate in almost 30 years would see detached home building activity slow to its lowest level in a decade by 2024.
He warned that if those rate rises did not ease, the Federal Government’s goal to build one million homes within five years would be “very difficult”.
And that’s not the news that buyers, or renters in particular, will want to hear as the state grapples with arguably its worst rental crisis in living memory.
The latest REIQ Vacancy Report, released on Wednesday, revealed that there was now “virtually nowhere to go” in some parts of Queensland, with vacancy rates dropping to just 0.1 per cent in three regions – Goondiwindi, Southern Downs and the South Burnett.
And it is not much better in Maryborough or the Tablelands, where the vacancy rate is 0.2 per cent.
There were just five regions with vacancy rates above 1 per cent – Noosa (1%), Gladstone (1%), Isaac (1.1%), Mount Isa (1.3%) and the Bay Islands (4.3%), which was the only region to fall above the healthy rage of between 2.6 and 3.5 per cent.
REIQ CEO Antonia Mercorella said it was unlikely vacancy rates would see any significant shifts in the foreseeable future due to complex supply and demand constraints.
She said that the State Government had identified that Queensland had 55,000 fewer rental dwellings than expected based on historical trends and forward projections.
“We know there are various obstacles which have been holding back our state’s housing supply and pathways to home ownership,” she said.
“This is what needs to be rectified in order to restore some balance to the market and address the true cause of the crisis – while also finding remedies for the symptoms.”
The HIA report shows that new home sales in Queensland peaked in December 2020 and again in March 2021, but they have been falling sharply since July.
At the same time, several developers have shelved projects in recent months, while a host of building firms have gone bust due to rising construction costs and trade shortages.
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Sydney council warns residents against taking dangerous risks to charge EVs
A Sydney council has warned residents against running power cords onto the street to charge their electric cars.
It comes after several reports that residents had run hazardous extension cords from inside their homes out onto the street through trees and over public footpaths.
In one incident, a resident hooked a power cord through a tree over public land to charge their electric car.
Mosman Council was forced to issue a public warning urging residents to use the three publicly available fast charging stations in the suburb instead.
“Connecting power to a vehicle using this method is potentially unsafe to the public,” a Mosman council spokesman told The Daily Telegraph.
Sydneysiders took to social media to share their thoughts on the bizarre charging techniques.
“Still waiting eagerly for the first huge slip and trip injury claim against a council for allowing cables to be lying all over the footpaths,” they wrote.
Other commentators noted the lack of charging stations for electric vehicles throughout the city.
“Who would have thought … No infrastructure. But a race to get into overpriced throw away transportation … Now that’s moving forward,” one user wrote.
A NSW Fire and Rescue spokesman said failing to use an approved charging system would add increased fire risk to homes.
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Cultural training for teachers branded a ‘form of racism’
Aboriginal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has branded “cultural training” for teachers a form of racism.
In Senate estimates hearings on Thursday, the Coalition senator criticised an “Indigenous cultural competency report’’ produced by the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership, warning that it assumed Aboriginal students could not learn like other children.
“I’m surprised by the extensive work that’s been done around cultural competency and cultural safety,’’ she said. “I can’t see it as being of great educational benefit to students, and it seems to make life kind of difficult for teachers at the same time.
“I’d like to see AITSL use its resources to give teachers pedagogical competency rather than fixate on this separatist idea of cultural competency, which seems to imply that Indigenous students don’t learn the same as non-Indigenous peers.
“To me that sounds a bit like, well, racism.”
Senator Price, a former deputy mayor of Alice Springs, said she was struck by the report’s statement that the “legacy of colonisation’’ undermined the rights of Indigenous students to a fair and just education, and that “Australian education systems were never designed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’’. “Can you please elaborate specifically on how colonisation is undermining Indigenous students’ education?’’ she asked AITSL executives.
The AITSL representatives took the question on notice.
Senator Price was referring to an AITSL report on Indigenous cultural competency, released in June as part of its Building a Culturally Responsive Australian Teaching Workforce project.
The report recommends teachers connect with Aboriginal families in their communities, rather than expecting them to meet at school, and includes a suggestion that Indigenous children be tested in their home languages, rather than English.
“For many, education is the means through which dreams and aspirations are realised,’’ the report states. “For others, though, education is something to be endured for little or no gain.
“The legacy of colonisation has undermined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ access to their cultures, identities, histories and languages.
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have not had access to a complete, relevant, and responsive education.’’
The report recommends that teachers and principals be made more “self-aware’’ of their attitudes and assumptions towards Indigenous students, and be given “self-reflection tools to support them to increase their awareness of the assumptions underlying their personal identity in culture’’.
“The cultural responsiveness of the teacher is ultimately a function of their world view and implicit biases,’’ it states.
The report cites an anonymous submission calling for Indigenous students to be tested in their first language. And it calls on teachers to work with families “beyond the school gate’’ instead of expecting them to meet “on school grounds’’.
“Building relationships is a necessary part of being an active member in any community and, crucially, a lack of relationships and trust will often lead to students not attending school and becoming disengaged from education,’’ it states.
“Teachers need to engage with students and their families beyond the school gate to understand their world and what they bring with them to school instead of the expectation to meet on school grounds.’’
Indigenous teenagers are four times more likely to drop out of high school before finishing Year 10, census data shows.
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9 November, 2022
Australia's average life expectancy jumps to third globally behind Monaco and Japan, ABS data shows
It looks like the vastly "incorrect" diet most Australians live on -- sausages, burgers, steak, meat-pies etc -- cannot be too bad after all. We seem to thrive on what the wise-heads say will kill us
The life expectancy of Australians has continued its steady rise with the country now ranked third in the world, up from sixth last year.
New figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show life expectancy at birth is now 85.4 years for females and 81.3 years for males.
The combined male and female figure is 84.32 years, putting Australia behind only the principality of Monaco, and Japan, according to global data from the United Nations.
ABS director of demography, Emily Walter, said it is the highest ranking the country has achieved.
"That takes into account the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and shows really that Australia's life expectancy has remained strong through that period," she said.
"It's important to understand though what that's showing is not only improvements or changes in life expectancy [here], but also changes in other countries' life expectancy."
The statistics cover 2019 to 2021 – so do not take into account this year, which has been Australia's deadliest period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Head of the Australian National University's School of Demography, Professor Vladimir Canudas Romo, said based on mortality numbers so far in 2022, he expects life expectancy at birth will fall by about six months in next year's figures.
"It's actually OK news compared to the two years that they lost in the US, about the same in Spain," he said. "That said, I pay my respects to all the families that sadly lost relatives."
According to the ABS, life expectancy at birth estimates represent the average number of years that a newborn baby could expect to live "assuming current age-specific death rates are experienced through his/her lifetime".
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Renewables-only is ideology in defiance of reality
Daniel Andrews has ripped away renewable energy’s cloak of economic and engineering respectability.
Unveiling his new energy policy for Victoria on 22 October, he began to rationalise renewables as the best option to replace coal-fired power but broke off mid-stream. Perhaps he was tired of the threadbare renewables-are-the-cheapest disguise Chris ‘Blackout’ Bowen still dons with peacock pride?
Exposing naked ideology, Andrews declared his government will ‘simply refuse to do anything other than replace [coal] with 100 per cent renewable energy’.
The renewables industrial complex has spent decades carefully weaving a cloak of respectability around its favoured technologies – solar, wind, and batteries. Its gossamer thread is simulated expertise, in which invented experts, backed by the apparatus of research and peer review, bury a foregone conclusion in a mound of pseudo-scholarship.
At the political end of this ideological fabric is the disreputable modelling of Labor’s Powering Australia Plan by Reputex.
Labor fought and won the election flaunting its conclusion that it would cut power prices for the average family by $275 by 2025 while achieving a 43 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions with 82 per cent renewable electricity and creating 604,000 jobs. Too good to be true? Not a bit of it, said Labor, donning the Reputex modelling as a bullet-proof vest.
But the modelling was bogus.
Reputex assumed that no coal-fired power stations would close earlier than the dates that were then scheduled – late 2021. This was despite a key plank of the policy being to increase renewable generation from its current 20 per cent share to over 80 percent. Fossil-fuel generation would necessarily have to decrease from its 80 per cent share to less than 20 per cent.
This obvious contradiction was virtually ignored by the Australian media. Predictably, Reputex’s assumption proved false within months of being released when Australia’s largest electricity company AGL announced in February 2022 it would bring forward the closure dates of its two largest power stations, Bayswater in NSW, and Loy Yang A in Victoria. Less than a year on, earlier-than-scheduled closures for all Australia’s coal-fired power stations have been announced.
Reputex also assumed the 212 large emitters subject to the safeguard mechanism would respond to Labor tightening its screws by investing in emissions reduction technologies or by buying offsets, while maintaining output and employment. The alternative, that they cut output, reduce employment, or close altogether, was not modelled. This scenario was simply assumed not to occur.
Labor’s hapless Minister Bowen is to do deals with the facilities to be stretched on the rack of Labor’s safeguard mechanism to determine their breaking point. Meanwhile, they are already under severe strain from higher prices for electricity and gas. The Australian Workers Union has warned Prime Minster Albanese that 800,000 jobs are at risk.
Having assumed away the major downsides of Labor’s policies, Reputex added up the benefits – billions of dollars of presumed investment in renewable generation, transmission, and storage infrastructures, together with industry investment in emissions reductions, are cashed out as jobs and totted up. Reputex’s conclusion that Repowering the Nation would achieve Labor’s emissions reduction targets, lower electricity prices, and create jobs always was a fairy tale.
Too many in the Australian media let Australians down by believing the modelling unthinkingly. People believed it because they wanted it to be true. They want renewables to be the magic pudding of 21st Century Australia.
Reality has begun to show through with Labor’s mini-Budget of October 2022. Its commentary on inflationary pressures acknowledged the contribution being made by higher energy prices. The Budget forecasts assumed electricity prices rise 20 per cent in 2022-3 and by a further 30 per cent in 2023-4. Treasurer Jim Chalmers seems not to have realised this was a direct challenge to, if not a clear repudiation, of Labor’s pre-election commitment. For one so adept at spin and the contemporary politics of ‘the narrative’, he seems to have been caught flat footed – surprised, dismayed even, that post-Budget media headlines and interviews have been dominated by Labor’s breach of faith on electricity prices.
In response, Labor has turned to scapegoating and intimidation. Chalmers blamed the war in Ukraine, saying it has created ‘absolute havoc’ in energy markets. He peddles this as a discontinuity separating the present circumstances of Labor in government from those when Labor was in opposition, despite Labor repeatedly making a feature of its idiotic $275 price reduction commitment well after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine all the way through to the election in May. Prime Minister Albanese took attack as the best form of defence, seeking to intimidate Dutton by blasting the former Coalition government for failing to deliver any of the energy policies it developed over its decade in office, which Labor pans as a decade of energy policy chaos. This obscures the reality that the Albanese Labor government itself has yet to deliver a single energy policy.
Already, the post-Budget fallout has shredded Resources Minister Madeline King’s month-old heads of agreement with the gas industry. To head-off calls for direct subsidies to blunt the impact of spiralling prices, Chalmers is now threatening intervention with ‘a broader range of options in ways beyond what might normally be considered’. Labor’s energy plans are yet to pass the Senate, where the Greens have warned the price of their support, at a minimum, is a ban on all new fossil fuel developments. It is hard to see how Labor will square this with its pre-election support for the coal industry and its commitments to our key customers and allies including Japan to be a stable and reliable supplier of energy.
The election of Albanese Labor will not end the climate wars. And neither will it end the energy policy chaos. The disconnects between the fairy tale promises of renewables-only ideology and the reality of our deep dependence on fossil fuels will smash policy after policy to smithereens.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/renewables-only-is-naked-ideology/
****************************************************Australians Outraged at Schools Renaming Grandparents as ‘Grandfriends’
The decision by a growing number of schools in New South Wales (NSW) to rename “Grandparents Day” to “Grandfriends Day” to be more inclusive has upset and disappointed many Australians.
Ian Barnett, the founder of the National Grandparent Movement, said rather than being inclusive, the decision excluded one of the “most significant groups in the family.”
“It’s strange to do it, and I don’t know the reasoning behind it either,” he told Nine’s Today show.
“Grandparents day” is an opportunity for children to invite their grandparents to join them at school and celebrate their contributions and importance.
Many primary schools, including Spring Farm, Concord, Drummoyne, and Newtown, have changed the annual events’ name.
However, by renaming the event, Barnett said the implication was that the next step was for “parents” to become “friends.”
“I can understand maybe they want to make it easier for others to come on board, but even little ones who have lost their grandparents do have others in their life that take on the role of a grandparent,” Barnett said.
“It’s such a significant phrase and concept, and it’s disappointing to actually think that we can no longer use that and we’re changing into something like grandfriends.”
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet criticised the move as “ridiculous.”
“We should be acknowledging our grandparents, grandmothers, our grandfathers; they do a wonderful job, particularly now with busy parents, balancing work and family life and juggling kids,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
One Nation MP and chairman of the NSW parliamentary education committee Mark Latham said grandparents of students at Spring Farm Public School had contacted him about their complaints on the name change.
“What exactly is a ‘Grandfriend?’ A term nobody has heard of,” he wrote on a post on Facebook. “Why have grandparents been rubbed out in the new, silly, woke world of Spring Farm Public School near Camden in Sydney?”
Latham said the school was undoubtedly worried about offending “someone” unspecified, which was “totally unwarranted.”
“Parents and grandparents at the school have complained, and I don’t blame them,” he said. “It’s an insult to grandparents and the wonderful love and support they provide.”
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The national broadcaster behaves as a lobby group for the trans community, not an impartial news organisation
A few weeks back, actor Ralph Fiennes remarked that cancel culture had become dumb. “It has no nuance,” he told The New York Times. The same could be said of our stunted conversations on the intersection of medicine with trans culture, especially where it concerns children. Only it is worse than dumb. Censorship in this area has become dangerous. The failure to consider nuance, areas of grey and complexity will harm vulnerable people, again, especially children.
Gender dysphoria is a serious and complex issue. It ought to invite serious and complex responses, and reporting of a similar standard. In the past six months, there are critical signs the orthodoxies are being challenged by those who work closely with children who say they are suffering from gender dysphoria. These developments could mark a turning point in how vulnerable children are treated by the medical profession. And yet our national broadcaster, comprised of thousands of journalists, editors, producers, researchers and other staff, has failed to report these important changes.
In Britain, the National Health Service has recently released a guidance note for doctors in which it switches to a “watchful approach” and asks doctors to “explore all” underlying health problems, including mental health issues, to better reflect the complexity relating to gender identity development in children.
This is an important change from the earlier “affirmative approach” adopted by the Gender Identity Development Service in Britain where a child’s claim that he or she was born with the wrong gender was used to explain other complex problems the child may be facing. The increasingly discredited affirmation approach was practised at London’s Tavistock clinic, the NHS’s main gender identity clinic for young people in England.
An interim report by Hilary Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, documented the concerns of many medical professionals that the NHS was too quickly prescribing irreversible puberty-blocker medication to children.
This report led to the closure of the Tavistock clinic. And these two developments led the NHS to review its treatment of children and issue new interim guidelines.
NHS England’s new approach, dated October 20, states: “The clinical management approach should be open to exploring all developmentally appropriate options for children and young people who are experiencing gender incongruence, being mindful that this may be a transient phase, particularly for prepubertal children, and that there will be a range of pathways to support these children and young people and a range of outcomes.
“A significant proportion of children and young people who are concerned about or distressed by issues of gender incongruence, experience coexisting mental health, neurodevelopmental and/or family or social complexities in their lives,” it goes on to say.
Our national broadcaster has been silent on these advances in the use of medical treatments on children who claim to suffer from gender dysphoria. It has resources no other media organisation in the country has. Many ABC journalists, especially high-profile ones, spend publicly funded airtime pursuing issues about the trans community. And yet, across the entire organisation, there was no news report when Tavistock was closed in July following the Cass review. On August 15, Media Watch drew attention to the ABC’s failure to cover that important development. Two days later, the closure of Tavistock was mentioned on an afternoon chat show in Melbourne.
Having failed to report this important news, the national broadcaster has, again, failed to report recent changes in Britain to the medical treatment of such children. The ABC’s silence is a disgrace, not just to journalism.
These are matters of importance for our society. Yet the taxpayer-funded ABC behaves as an activist lobby group for the trans community, not as an impartial news organisation. These reporting failures are compounded by clueless leadership. In an interview with Stellar magazine last weekend, ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose said she is “not supposed to be friendly to anyone in politics … I’ve always thought journalists need to be apolitical. We’re meant to be unbiased. We’re meant to be able to deliver both sides of the story and let the public decide. We’re meant to deal with facts and not opinions.”
Buttrose still has not grasped the fundamental problem at the ABC. The issue is less about politics and more about culture. Is she blind to the slow-burn cultural activism on show daily at the ABC?
From climate change to sexual politics to programs that start with “we come to you from Gadigal land”, many ABC journalists and producers shamelessly use our public broadcaster to drive cultural change to suit personal agendas. It is bad enough that staff have hijacked the joint to use it as an instrument of social and cultural engineering. These are garden-variety derelictions of the ABC’s legal duty to present news that is accurate and impartial.
The failure to report on matters of medical significance concerning gender dysphoria is a different, more dangerous, genre of cultural activism. By censoring news of medical developments, the ABC news division is letting down vulnerable children.
Medical treatments of all kinds must be open to scrutiny. And scrutiny within one country must be reported in other countries. In other words, developments in Britain deserve to be understood and reported in Australia so our own medical professionals and regulators can learn from the experiences of others. This is the essence of medical advancements, be it treatments for cancer or medical treatments aimed at gender dysphoria.
When an orthodoxy becomes so cemented it cannot be challenged, where developments elsewhere are not reported, we stand on dangerous terrain. If the intellectual failures at the ABC were repeated across society, we would be assured of a new dark age. Not just a dumb one, but a dangerous one. Too many ABC journalists who call themselves progressive routinely reject intellectual curiosity when it interferes with their cultural agenda.
When the pattern of omission concerns critical developments in the medical treatment of children, it is time for Buttrose to rip off her staff-tinted glasses.
We don’t need a friendly ABC. But we are entitled to demand our national broadcaster impartially reports important news about the medical treatment of children.
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8 November, 2022
'Dirty' diesel generators may be needed during Perth summer as WA energy crisis deepens
The body that runs Western Australia's biggest power system may have to spend tens of millions of dollars hiring diesel-fired backup generators as part of desperate efforts to keep the lights on this summer.
Amid widespread disruptions to WA's power supplies, the Australian Energy Market Operator called for bids in September from energy companies and users to provide an extra 174MW of capacity for four months from December 1.
However, it is understood the system operator received a subdued response from the market when the tender period for additional capacity closed last month.
AEMO is now believed to be considering the use of dirty diesel-fired generators that can provide backup power in the event the grid comes under stress over the coming period.
Another sizzling summer on the cards
The moves come amid forecasts of a potentially scorching summer in WA, where the south west interconnected system supplies electricity to more than one million customers from Kalbarri in the north, Kalgoorlie in the east and Albany in the south.
In calling for extra capacity, AEMO in September noted the system was dealing with a "shortfall" of reserves caused by a number of different reasons.
Among them was the early retirement of a power station in Kwinana, south of Perth, an unexpected outage of another gas-fired plant north of the city and an increase in forecasts for peak demand.
On top of this, AEMO and the state Labor government have also been hit by the fallout from a worsening crisis in WA's coal basin, which has long formed the backbone of the electricity industry.
Two months ago, the Indian-owned Griffin Coal mine near Collie, 180km south of Perth, fell into receivership following years of operating problems and mounting losses and debt.
Coal supplies hit by double whammy
At the same time, Griffin's rival Premier Coal was plagued with problems of its own including declining ore reserves and a safety incident that interrupted operations.
Combined, the difficulties at the state's two coal producers have forced major customers including listed miner South32, as well as state-owned power provider Synergy, to look at importing coal from interstate and abroad despite sky-high prices.
They also prompted the state government to take the extraordinary decision of mothballing from September until January 1 the 340MW Collie coal-fired power station to preserve fuel supplies.
As part of its tender, AEMO said it was seeking companies that could either supply extra generating capacity or reduce their demand at times of strain on the grid.
The system operator said it wanted the services to be available from December 1 until the start of April between the evening peak between 5pm and 9pm.
This follows a series of rolling 'brownouts' that affected Perth during an intense heatwave last summer, when constraints in the poles and wires network meant supply was unable to keep up with demand.
AEMO would not be drawn on the level of interest in the reserve tender or whether extra diesel generators would be required as a backup this summer.
Instead, the agency noted it was "still assessing submissions" and would provide further information at the end of the month.
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How I kept my inner rage against our Dear Leader
Paul Maguire compares Victoria to North Korea and the old Communist East Germany
In the early months of the Covid pandemic panic in 2020, I read Anna Funder’s excellent book Stasiland. The central theme of the book is the attempt to understand how a large proportion of the German citizenry of the German Democratic Republic were willingly co-opted into the socialist dystopia brutally enforced by the likes of Erich Mielke, founder, and head of the East German Stasi.
It seemed incomprehensible that entire sections of civilised society could willingly surrender independence, dignity, and self-respect for so long particularly after the horrors and indignities of Nazism and the humiliations of the second world war. That is until one finds themselves trapped in a society gripped by fear and panic. This is where I found myself in late July 2020 when Victorians were confined to home under threat of arrest and financial penalty for any act of disobedience. The legal authority for this extraordinary action was an administrative Direction issued by the Chief Health Officer pursuant to the previously innocuous Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 (Vic).
The audacity and arrogance of the 200+ odd days of lockdown imposed on Victorian citizens without warning by the Victorian state government, seemingly with the accord of the government of the Commonwealth of Australia was truly astounding. Without wishing to stretch the analogy of East German communism too far, the experience taught me how fragile and easily basic human rights can be taken away without objection if enough fear can be engendered, and in Victoria’s case, perpetuated with daily sermons of the horror of the unseen but purportedly insidious ‘wicked’ enemy of the people.
During this period, I learned a lot about my own resilience, family, neighbours, and in particular, the dangerous nature of unchecked state authority on a fragile democracy. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, the dark signs of this ‘new authoritarianism’ were already evident for anyone willing to open their eyes within the state of Victoria. As much has been written about the continuing failures of Premier Andrews, I do not intend to repeat them. I would, however, offer several personal observations from the inside, so to speak, to illuminate my contention that the failed attempt at elimination of the virus has on any objective measure, not been a good experience, as lives were not saved, nor the public health protected. On the contrary, the draconian measures exposed the dark side of human nature and the ease by which the citizenry will embrace the new authoritarianism.
Having followed closely the decisions of the Victorian and NSW Supreme Courts and the High Court of Australia, I learned that long-standing Constitutional rights of freedom of movement and in particular, the Victorian Charter of Human Rights is not worth the paper it is written on. Worse, human rights advocates, academics, and officials are not interested in universal human rights. They are cultural relativists who gladly welcome the control of the state over individual freedom and liberty.
A bit harsh? Well, not one of the usual suspects such as Liberty Victoria, the Victorian Human Rights Commission, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Law Institute or Bar Council officers spoke out against or challenged in the public square, let alone the courts, the power of the myriad administrative ‘Directions’ issued by the Victorian Chief and Deputy public health officers. Challenging administrative decisions and orders are the bread and butter of the law lists of the AAT and the Federal Court are clogged with applications and appeals against decisions of the Refugee Tribunal every day of the year. A scan of the law lists for the Victorian AAT and Supreme Court of Victoria for the period of lockdown revealed less than a handful of matters listed challenging the human rights breaches none of which were initiated or supported by the entities listed above.
The second lesson is Victorian police are a partisan arm of the executive government enforcing its will rather than independently upholding the law.
The arrest of the young Ballarat mother Zoe Buhler, endorsed by Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius, in her home for the alleged unlawful act of incitement is one of the most egregious acts of police intimidation in this state’s history. The last time I looked at s 321G of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic), which admittedly is not too often, Mrs Buhler, would only be found guilty if she intended an offence to be committed by another person. Five minutes into the video of this appalling intimidation it was clear Mrs Buhler had no such intention. At that point, the two hulking police officers should have apologised and immediately left the premises. However, as Assistant Commissioner Cornelius lectured us, echoing the words of his political masters:
‘We remain very concerned, and in fact, outraged is probably a fair word, to say there is still people in our community who think it’s a good idea at the time of this deadly pandemic that we’re all fighting, think it’s a good time to leave home and protest in our streets.’
Excuse me? We were not fighting anything. The risk of the infectious respiratory virus that may result in serious ill-health and potentially death of certain cohorts of our community is a health issue, and if treated sensibly, may be reduced with various preventative measures and if infected, through medical intervention. It is not for the police to assert with seeming impunity, that Mrs Buhler and a group of citizens of Ballarat meeting together in the open air, are inciting mass murder. My cynicism is justified, as the police typically withdrew the charge of incitement on the day of the scheduled hearing at the Ballarat Magistrates Court, presumably to avoid the ignominy of having to justify their heavy-handed conduct and worse, reveal which of the Police Command directed them to take the action.
The image of riot squad police marching down the aisles of Victoria Market in full protective gear with batons and shields in late 2020 was nothing short of bizarre. What did they think the good citizens of Melbourne were going to do? Attack police with a zucchini or a sack of brush potatoes? When CFMEU construction workers took to the streets of Melbourne protesting the closure of building sites the police were swiftly deployed to crush the dissent. Don’t start me on the attacks at Shrine of Remembrance and the cavalry charge at St Kilda beach and surrounds as people dared to gather in the open air to discuss their grievances. No bended knees to that mob. The so-called force for good is ripe for another Royal Commission and clean out of senior ranks if confidence in the police is to be restored.
Now that Chairman (excuse me) Premier Dan Andrews has announced the pandemic is over (no public health evidence provided) effective from midnight on 12 October 2022, we are all expected to simply forget and move on. Unfortunately, the majority of Victorians, and certainly the political class, are content to follow the lead. Perfectly submissive fools, vassalages accepting the protection of the all-powerful state.
Me? The experience was shocking particularly in the manner of its swift and brutal implementation. I am not content to simply move on. However, the overwhelming lesson I learnt from this experience is the new authoritarians are brilliant at controlling us, crushing human rights, infantilising us, stopping us from going about our daily lives. They are just no good at doing the job actually entrusted to them … protecting the public health. A bit like the Stasi in the final days of the German Democratic Republic.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/how-i-kept-my-inner-rage-against-our-dear-leader/
****************************************************Not so independent
Liberals are slamming the Americanisation of Australian politics after staggering figures revealed self-proclaimed independent candidates received almost $6m in combined funding from a single organisation.
The AEC’s transparency data has finally put a price tag on the “Teal” independents’ war on key former Liberal seats in NSW and Victoria — with each of the six women elected to parliament getting more than $700,000 each from environmental activists Climate 200.
The group raised more than $8m for the federal election and splashed almost $6m to bring the candidates into parliament — each with a push for more climate conscious policies.
But Simon Holmes a Court, the man who is among the leaders of the “community independents movement” — and personally forked out hundreds thousands of dollars to install the candidates to Canberra — claims they are not influenced by Climate 200’s generous donations.
“The independents are loosely part of the community independents movement, which began in 2012 … they are certainly not a party. But I don’t/can’t speak for them,” he said.
Mr Holmes à Court, the son of Australia’s first billionaire Robert Holmes à Court, said Climate 200’s donations from 11,200 donors were designed to level the playing field.
Along with Mr Holmes à Court, billionaire businessmen Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes were among the biggest donors to Climate 200 with the Atlassian founders donating $1.5m and $1.115m respectively.
Former Liberal MP David Sharma, who lost his seat of Wentworth to Teal Allegra Spender, slammed the identical funding of the independent candidates and called for an urgent intervention through expenditure and donation caps before his NSW colleagues suffer the same fate at next year’s state election.
“I don’t think Wentworth had seen anything like that sort of spend in its history – it would be the same for Kooyong and Mackellar. It’s American style spending, and we don’t want that in Australia,” he said.
“If people on the left are concerned about Clive Palmer’s spending, you’d have to be concerned about this as well. Each of these candidates is getting 40 to 50 per cent (in) total funding from a single organisation, that looks like a political party to me.”
Jason Falinski, who lost Mackellar on Sydney’s affluent northern beaches to Sophie Scamps, added: “These people are increasingly looking like privileged shills for some of the most powerful vested interests in Australia.”
Liberal Senator James McGrath — who is on the Electoral Matters Committee — said the donations revealed a case of “rich people buying elections and freezing out mums and dads.”
“The teals in Climate 200 are bringing US style politics to Australia. A million dollars to them is loose change, for everyone else it’s a lotto win,” he said.
“You can’t expect to spend a million on a seat and not have a result. The teals love talking about two things, talking about transparency and taking big money donations. The teals are a political party, they’re lying to Australians when they say they’re not.”
But NSW Teal MPs Ms Spender, Dr Scamps and Kylea Tink doubled-down on their independent status.
Ms Spender said her voting record was proof of her independence. “I’ve voted with all sides on a range of issues, my votes are based on the values and interests of my electorate. I stood on an agenda of climate action, integrity, gender equity and decency – an agenda that voters of Wentworth supported,” she said.
“My campaign had the backing of 1500 local volunteers and over 600 local donors ... Climate 200 supports my values too, and so they chose to support me.”
Dr Scamps told the Telegraph she has never discussed policy with anyone at Climate 200 and “never will”.
“I understand this is a quantum shift in Australian politics as some people are used to the major parties doing the bidding of their donors, but the money raised from the 826 community donors and the 11,200 Climate 200 donors helped to level the playing field in Mackellar against a party political machine that had stacked the electoral system in their favour,” she said.
Ms Tink said she always expected Climate 200 funding would account for 35 to 40 per cent of her total campaign revenue.
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Energy Minister insists Queensland’s grid is sufficient
Energy Minister Mick de Brenni has declared the state has sufficient power supply and won’t be plunged into rolling blackouts this summer, despite a critical failure at a major coal-fired power station in Central Queensland.
The Callide Power Station was removed from the energy grid last week and remains offline after equipment failures ground the generators to a halt.
Mr de Brenni said one of the station’s four generators was expected to be back up and running on Wednesday and the remaining generators would progressively return to operation but insisted the state’s power supply was sufficient.
When quizzed by reporters about how the grid would cope if the ageing infrastructure at Callide failed during a period of sustained heat and stress on the electricity supply, he again insisted Queenslanders would not face blackouts.
“The advice that I get from the Australian Energy Market Operator is that the system in Queensland is healthy and stable and manageable,” Mr de Brenni told reporters on Monday afternoon.
“So we’re very confident that we’ll continue to be able to put downward pressure on prices and there will be adequate supply for both households and, of course, businesses.”
Annastacia Palaszczuk faced criticism after describing the station’s failings as “routine” but the Premier stood by the comments, saying the condition of the state’s coal-fired stations were in decline.
“We have an ageing fleet, that is nothing new — we know that,” she said. “That is why we have a plan to transition (to renewable energy).”
Deputy Opposition Leader Jarrod Bleijie repeated LNP’s calls for an independent inquiry into the power station’s failings, demanding to know if the state government was adequately funding the maintenance of the generators.
“Can the government guarantee reliability and safe electricity for Queenslanders when we’ve seen four generators go down at Callide last week?” he said.
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7 November, 2022
‘A state of disrepair’: Australia's Home affairs minister slams immigration system
The Home Affairs minister says the system has been 'run down' and needs a shake-up.
In her strongest comments yet about the failings in the system, O’Neil blamed her predecessor, Liberal Peter Dutton, and revealed she had received expert advice that “tens of thousands of people” might be unlawfully in Australia, including many who are exploited foreign workers.
“We’ve ended up with a system where there’s massive visa queues and where the people who actually legitimately want to use the system can’t properly use it. And yet criminals who want to bring people into the country as slaves are able to somehow do it,” O’Neil said.
“We’ve got to change the way that this system operates.”
O’Neil made the comments after she was privately briefed by Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw and Border Force commissioner Michael Outram in response to a series of reports in this masthead about organised crime exploitation of the visa system.
O’Neil was responding to Trafficked, a project led by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, 60 Minutes and Stan’s Revealed documentary program which casts a light on visa rorting, sex trafficking and foreign worker exploitation in Australia.
Among the reports was that of a human trafficking boss who entered Australia in 2014 and built a criminal underground sex empire despite having previously been jailed in the UK for similar offending.
“The migration system is in a state of disrepair,” said O’Neil said, blaming Dutton, now the opposition leader, for the problems.
The Trafficked “investigation has uncovered, repulsive criminal wrongdoing in our country”, she said. “There’s some systemic issues here about the way that our migration system has been run down … creating direct criminal conduct in our country and putting Australians in danger.”
The minister said it was vital to get “independent eyes on what’s happened here”. She wanted “answers to why various law enforcement bodies within the Australian government had information that was needed to prevent harm occurring in the Australian community, and that information didn’t get to the right people at the right time”.
O’Neil has already commissioned a review of how problems in the migration system – including huge backlogs in visa processing – are denying Australia access to desperately needed foreign skilled workers.
Trafficked has revealed how state and federal agencies have spent years issuing confidential warnings of migration rorting, involving syndicates gaming the visa system to bring criminals or exploited workers into Australia. This is facilitated by networks of corrupt federal government licensed migration agents, education colleges, fixers and people who rort the English language test.
Border security failures enabled human trafficking boss Binjun Xie to allegedly set up an underground sex network across Australia, and authorities have also uncovered repeated rorting of visa streams by Vietnamese cannabis crop producers and traffickers in Australia.
O’Neil said the revelations had highlighted “the failure of our visa system” as well as “dodgy educational institutions that are clearly set up as fronts to bring people into the country, some of whom go on to commit crimes”.
“And the question is, why was this problem let run for so long?”
“There are systemic problems ... It’s not about a bad apple here or there, but in fact this interaction between education providers, between visa systems that aren’t working properly and between migration agents, who are not properly regulated. There is a real problem here and that’s why I think this needs to be properly looked at and properly addressed.
“Criminals are coming into our country operating with impunity and no one’s doing anything about it.
“The expert evidence does suggest that during that nine years that the Coalition was in power, literally tens of thousands of people came into our country. They might be exploited farm workers, they might be women who are trapped in sexual slavery. The human consequences of these problems are enormous, and we’ve got to change the way that this system operates so we can have a properly run migration system.”
In a statement, Dutton said he had “zero tolerance when it comes to any attempt to exploit our visa system and vulnerable individuals”.
“As minister for immigration and border protection, I oversaw establishment of Taskforce Cadena … which specifically detects and disrupts criminal syndicates who seek to profit off vulnerable foreign workers,” he said.
He said he would support any further measures “to combat visa fraud within the Australian migration system”.
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AIDS to language?
During the height of the Aids epidemic a body was established called the ‘Aids Council of NSW’. I’m sure in fighting that awful illness they did splendid work. But that epidemic is now over. So, was the ‘Aids Council of NSW’ thanked politely and dissolved?
Oh, no. Like too many organisations set up for a special purpose it just changed course, kept getting taxpayers’ money and did other things. Its current project seems to be to undermine the English language.
They now appear to see their role in Australian life as wiping out of the dictionary any words to do with normal family life. They are now telling employers to ban the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’. According to the Daily Telegraph Acon encourages:
‘…using terms like “primary caregiver” (and) “secondary caregiver” making sure we’re not referring to partners using gender terms like “mother” and “dad” is really important’.
Well, no. What is really important is that we ignore knuckleheads like this. But here’s what’s really alarming – up to sixty government departments and agencies including the prime minister’s office, schools, universities, police, the ABC as well as private businesses have signed up as members to the training schemes they run.
And who is paying for this? You are. They receive $13 million in taxpayer funding a year. I hereby call upon governments to withdraw all this funding. The Aids epidemic is over. Acon is no longer needed, and appears to have been taken over by fanatics. The public should not be funding the enemies of the English language!
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/language-35/
**************************************************How former NSW Police Officer Ben Smith was betrayed by the force he once trusted
All due to police fear of feminists
It began with a troubled, young girl infatuated with a slightly older, rising teenage football star, who was popular, good looking and not short of female attention.
The sports star, Benjamin (Ben) Gregory Smith, viewed the girl as a sort of little sister figure. Nothing more.
He had no idea of her secret obsession with him until nearly 20 years later, when it manifested in claims he had sexually assaulted her.
Smith, now 43, had been a NSW police officer for almost 10 years and had joined the Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission (ACIC) as a covert intelligence officer when the by then, grown woman, walked into his former workplace, and made her claims.
The fallout blew apart his life and career as a law enforcement officer and up until then, his steadfast belief in the justice system.
“I no longer trust the police, even though I was one of them,” said Smith.
“The complaint made was complete and utter rubbish. I thought naturally they (the police) would put the jigsaw puzzle together and I honestly believed that the matter would be withdrawn,” Smith said.
But it wasn’t. From that awful moment it took more than three years and two trials, which cost the better part of his family home to finance, for Smith to finally be acquitted of all 14 charges.
The first trial in ended with a hung jury. The second in came in with a unanimous jury verdict of not guilty. While being found innocent brought Smith great relief, the father of three says it did not bring him closure.
That, he says, would only come if action were taken against the detectives involved in the failed prosecution.
“Until people like this are held accountable and made an example of, things like my case will continue to poison and clog our justice system,” he said.
The torturous road to being found innocent laid bare what Smith and his criminal lawyer Danny Eid argue were conflicts of interest and misleading evidence.
The two trials revealed, Smith and Eid argue, the investigating detectives had not disclosed exculpatory evidence that negated the woman’s allegations, had not undertaken a proper investigation and had lied about evidence from material witnesses.
“I still to this day believe that they jumped the gun way too early and or were forced to lock me up by a senior police officer,” Smith said.
Mr Eid is adamant if police had done their job properly in the first place, Smith would never have been charged.
But Smith’s ordeal is not over. His attempts to raise complaints with the police watchdog, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC), about the conduct of the detectives have become nothing more than a Catch 22 situation.
His complaint in March 2021 was referred back to the same police command he was complaining about - to investigate themselves. The police declined to investigate a number of complaints and found the others were not substantiated.
The failure of police complaint processes has been the subject of widespread criticism recently.
Samantha Lee, the head of Redfern Legal Centre’s police accountability practice has said the complaints system is failing to provide just outcomes and is perpetuating “an insidious culture of impunity among police.”
Gregor Husper, the principal lawyer for the Inner Melbourne Community Legal Police Accountability Project said the lessons for police investigating colleagues are universal.
“The Police Accountability Project has long advocated about the failings of police investigating themselves, and the resultant lack of accountability and risks of police impunity,” said Mr Husper.
“Misconduct needs to be independently investigated by a body like a Police Ombudsman, otherwise rogue behaviour by police will never be addressed.”
THE COMPLAINT
It is hard to imagine that police could get it so wrong, but right from the get go there were glaring problems with the allegations of sexual assault against Smith.
Senior law enforcement officials openly comment there is a current culture of prosecuting all sex assault allegations and letting the accused beat it - for fear of being criticised publicly for not doing enough.
Barrister Greg Barns SC, the National Justice Spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, agrees and said the case is an illustration of a trend which has gone from one extreme to the other.
“The police have gone from too readily disbelieving female complainants, to the other extreme where cases are often put up with inadequate forensic investigation, and that is not helpful to anyone, said Mr Barnes.
It is a culture and attitude that might explain what happened to Smith. But in his case NSW police took this to a new level.
The detectives charged Smith in December 2016 without conducting prudent cursory investigative background checks of the woan’s allegations, according to Mr Eid.
The detectives did not interview Smith before he was charged. They also failed to take a statement from the only “eye witness” nominated by the complainant before charging Smith.
If they had, the police would have discovered the eyewitness instead of corroborating her allegations - actually negated the woman’s claims, Mr Eid believes.
The detective on the case also failed to interview a second witness who could have given important information about the woman at the time she alleged she was sexually assaulted.
If the police had bothered to check the dates the woman said he assaulted her, they would have found Smith was not even the same postcode at the time.
At least seven of the 14 offences she accused him of were at a time he was suffering from a broken leg and Medicare records proved he was hundreds of miles away.
At this point, Smith said they should have been critically assessing the complaint.
“Our job as police is not to run cases with no evidence, Smith said.
“It was sickening to think that the police and the local area command that I worked at could attempt to create a narrative, rather than a search for the truth and the facts, to try and have me convicted of something I did not do.”
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Living in the Latter Days
Viv Forbes
Australians are living in the latter days of the Anglo/American Empire.
For centuries, world power centres have been moving west – from Mongolia, to Europe, to Britain, to North America, and now Eurasia beckons.
The Anglo/American Empire today resembles the decadent dying days of Rome. Europe is becoming a green energy wasteland, the British Empire died with Churchill, and America has dodderers and adolescents in charge. Australia plans to defend the outback with battery-powered Bushmasters (good for battlefields with plenty of power points). The new Defence Minister has restored ‘rainbow morning teas’ (banned by Peter Dutton), and an Australian iron oligarch and green hydrogen speculator, Andrew Forrest, aims to de-power Xi Jinping by inviting him to the Climate Summit.
Every chapter of history ends with a flood of barbarians.
Australia has never seen the campfires of an invader – but our wealth and our powerful friends have bred a dangerous complacency in this fat lazy land.
Australians have always been sustained by hunter-gatherers, farmers, and miners.
Our farmers and miners produced wool booms, gold rushes, silver booms, coal bonanzas, and a cornucopia of meat and butter, iron and steel, oil and gas, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, aluminium, lithium, cobalt, manganese and uranium. But now green dreamers think we can afford to destroy our processing and manufacturing industry with solar/wind dreams, shut the gate on mining and exploration, and turn farms, forests, and grassland into industry-free world-heritage and first-nations wilderness.
The Comrade Societies have mastered one thing – conscripting all their resources to construct colossal war machines. And naive democracies are easily lulled into inaction by paper treaties such as the Munich Pact of 1938 signed by Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier.
In November 1938, just after the signing of the Munich Pact, John Curtin (Leader of the Labor Party in the Australian Parliament, and later Prime Minister), made this statement:
‘…I say that any increase in defence expenditure appears to be an entirely unjustifiable and hysterical piece of panic propaganda.’ Source: Hansard p1095, Nov 2, 1938.
Just ten months later, in September 1939, Germany attacked Poland. Then Japan attacked the US base at Pearl Harbour in 1941. By 1942, the British Navy had lost their prized battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse, Singapore had fallen, Darwin had been bombed, and Japanese troops crested the Owen Stanley Ranges and looked across the shallow sea to Australia. Surrender of Australia north of ‘The Brisbane Line’ was discussed.
Then US General Douglas Macarthur came to Brisbane with men and weapons.
Of the billions of people who live in the Asia/Pacific region, less than one percent are Australian. Australia has enormous natural assets with identified but undeveloped resources of uranium, oil shale, green metals, coal, timber, sea foods, and gas. Our only real title to this land is our willingness to use it and our ability to defend it.
Australia is surrounded by a marvellous moat – we need bayonets on the beaches, eagles in the sky, killer whales on the seas, and lots of savage piranhas underneath.
And we need an armed population. John Howard needs to be forever condemned for disarming honest people and then destroying all those confiscated guns. One day we will need them. (No gangsters or terrorists surrender their arms.)
In 1181, Henry I made it obligatory for every able-bodied man to keep arms. America won the war of independence with an armed militia. In the early days of the second world war, the British trained with shotguns and broomsticks and Churchill pleaded with America for arms. Yet Australia pretends we have decades of time for labour unions to build our own submarines and some politician felt secure enough to scrap and bury 23 old but airworthy F111 aircraft at Swanbank in Queensland.
Politicians love costly high-tech stuff, but numbers play a key role in any battle. Thousands of armed drones controlled by scattered individuals may be more effective than one massively expensive high-tech fighter plane. Soon a sailor with a rocket in a row boat may be able to threaten an aircraft carrier.
Effective defence needs community involvement and self-sufficiency
If today’s Australia was involved in an armed engagement we would rapidly exhaust fuel and ammunition supplies. For these there are only two options – make it here, or store it here. It is too late to look for it even one day after a war starts.
Australian politicians have ‘solved’ the looming fuel famine – they negotiated to buy crude oil stocks. But we will need a very long fuel delivery hose because these stocks are in America, part of their strategic stockpile. And is anyone keeping an eye on what Biden is doing with that oil?
Australia at war would soon face a manpower crisis. We cannot find people to harvest our food, so the flat-white brigade is unlikely to line up for military service. Hopefully, we can rely on bikie gangs to step up? They can probably bring their own guns.
The cadet movement has been a valuable prep-school for recruitment and training for the armed services since 1903. But it has been gutted. Gough Whitlam disbanded the cadet corps in 1975 and since then it has been a political plaything. Judging from its website, it is now a toughened-up girl guides unit.
Officialdom has also been largely hostile to rifle clubs that teach small arms skills, the Army Reserve is just a plaything, and today’s youth are told it is wrong to fight, no matter how provoked.
Timid Tim was taught
‘It is wrong to fight’,
But Roaring Bill who killed him,
Thought it was all right
Undoubtedly there is a place for women in our armed forces, but not in mixed-sex units where some men are likely to be either over-protective or over-amorous to the female members. An Aussie Amazon Battalion armed with machine pistols and lasers could be a formidable force, but no bi-sexual platoons thanks.
Russia and China recently signed a defence alliance. Will we take notice when they are joined by Iran and North Korea, or even Turkey, Afghanistan, Argentina, Syria, or Pakistan?
Australia is a ripe melon defended by a small population, many of whom are chatting on social media, basking at the beach, or drinking in the pub. We waste resources in pointless climate wars, pacifists infect our Parliaments, and Green politicians want to slash defence spending by 50 per cent.
We need international friends and allies. The recent treaty with Japan and the Aukus treaty are worthwhile, and good relations with Indonesia are essential.
But when the chips are down, we will have to defend ourselves. That will require tough troops, with big guns, little guns, motor fuels, ammunition, allies, and treaties.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/living-in-the-latter-days/
************************************6 November, 2022
Pay increase of 15pc for 300,000 aged-care staff
More inflation! You will pay for this at your supermarket. There is no magic money tree to fund this and the Federal government has promised no new taxes. So there will in fact be a big tax -- on the money you spend on groceries etc. The Federal government will print money to pay for this wonderful new world and that will devalue all money, thus pushing up the price for everything. And the destruction of your savings will continue
Leftist governments have a compulsion to spend for good causes. But there is no end to good causes. This is a good cause but where are the cutbacks elsewhere to pay for it? There is not even the suggestion of it
More than 300,000 aged-care workers will get a pay rise of at least 15 per cent after the Fair Work Commission found their work had been historically undervalued and significant changes to the way they worked over the past 20 years justified the lift in wages.
The Albanese government immediately reaffirmed its commitment to fund the pay rise after the commission found an interim 15 per cent pay rise for aged-care nurses and workers in direct care roles was “‘plainly justified by work value reasons”.
The timing and phasing in of the pay rises is to be determined, and the commission did not rule out a further rise for direct care staff. It is also yet to rule on a union claim for a 25 per cent wage increase for administrative and support aged-care employees such as cleaning staff.
Aged care is one of the government’s biggest and fastest-growing spending programs, budgeted to cost $27bn this financial year and rising to nearly $35bn by 2025-26, even without incorporating the commission wage decision.
A commission full bench, headed by president Iain Ross, said it was not suggesting the 15 per cent interim increase necessarily exhausted the level of pay rise for direct care workers, and whether any further increase was justified would be the subject of further submissions.
Aged-care workers covered by the interim award increase include those working in direct care roles in nursing homes and those providing in-home care.
About 210,000 workers are in direct care roles in residential aged-care centres, according to the most recent aged-care workforce census published last year, with another 124,000 providing in-home care services under government programs.
The full bench said it accepted the expert evidence that “as a general proposition, work in feminised industries, including care work, has been historically undervalued and that the reason for that undervaluation is likely to be gender based”.
“It is common ground between the parties that the work undertaken by registered nurses, enrolled nurses and Certificate III personal care workers in residential aged care has changed significantly in the past two decades such as to justify an increase in minimum wages for these classifications,” the full bench said.
“We also recognise that there is ample evidence that the needs of those being cared for in their homes have significantly increased in terms of clinical complexity, frailty and cognitive and mental health. In respect of direct care workers … the existing minimum rates do not properly compensate employees for the value of the work performed.”
While the evidence relating to support and administrative employees was not as clear and more submissions were needed, “we see no reason to delay an increase in minimum wages for direct care workers while that … takes place.”
The government confirmed it would fund the interim increase in line with its election commitment, saying better pay for aged-care workers was a critical step to attract and retain the numbers of staff required for the growing cohort of older Australians.
“Aged care is hard work, but it’s undervalued work,” Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke said.
“This result is the first step in changing that.”
The Health Services Union welcomed the 15 per cent interim pay rise but said a “larger and broader increase is needed to stem the industry’s crisis”.
“This is a reasonable start but we need the commission to go further and permanently end the poverty wage settings that dominate aged care,” HSU national president Gerard Hayes said.
“Fifteen per cent is a down payment but nobody should be mistaken. This will not fix the crisis. We still have massive unfinished business in aged care.”
Aged-care providers welcomed the decision as a “substantial pay rise” but said key aged-care staff were not covered.
“We note the decision does not cover staff not involved in direct care such as kitchen, laundry, recreation activities and administrative staff, and we look forward to a further decision by the commission which addresses their pay,” Aged & Community Care Providers Association chief executive Tom Symondson said.
Analysis by the Grattan Institute said aged-care wages would rise by around $3bn a year if the 25 per cent increase was implemented this year for all workers under the claim.
The commission said it was “not persuaded that varying the relevant awards to give effect to the interim increase … will have any material effect on the national economy”.
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Income rules a barrier to Australian pensioners filling skills gaps, advocates say
Retirement was going well for Henry Gasior.
After a long career in the aviation industry, the pensioner was enjoying volunteering and helping out at his local food bank in Bacchus Marsh, about 40 kilometres out of Melbourne.
Then, a year and a half ago, the 76-year-old did something he never saw coming: he went back to work. "I had to supplement my pension," he said.
"The bills kept on coming in, [and not] just gas bills or electricity bills. I had to dip into my superannuation: large amounts on about three different occasions."
Mr Gasior now works as a personal care worker, providing assistance for older Australians living at home.
He works about 12 to 15 hours a week, earning anywhere from $670 to $840 a fortnight. That's well over what he's allowed to earn before his pension payments are reduced.
Currently, those on the Age Pension are allowed to earn a "Work Bonus" of $300 a fortnight for a single person, or $320 a fortnight for a couple. For every dollar earned above that amount, pension payments are reduced by 50 cents on every dollar.
It means the more hours Mr Gasior works, the more his pension shrinks. And because he's married, his wife's pension is also reduced. "It would be a big, big help if they increased the threshold," he said.
In this year's federal budget, the government announced plans to do just that.
The Work Bonus will be increased from December 1, taking it from $7,800 a year to $11,800 for this financial year. But the measure will expire on July 1.
Advocates and industry groups say the move is a step in the right direction — but likely not enough to entice more pensioners into the workforce.
The latest statistics show a huge demand for more workers, particularly in the field of health care and social assistance. The sector has an older workforce and had 74,000 job vacancies nationwide in August.
Despite the moves in the budget, National Seniors chief advocate Ian Henschke said the government had not addressed one of the key barriers when it came to pensioners working: the prospect of interacting with Centrelink.
He said the government needed to make the system "simpler, more understandable and fairer" — and to make the move permanent.
"We've got fewer than 80,000 pensioners [working] in Australia when we've got a pensioner population of 2.25 million," he said. "When you've only got less than 3 per cent of your pensioners doing work, it's not because they don't want to work. We believe [Centrelink] is the big barrier."
Tapping the 'grey economy'
Aged care is one sector of the economy that could benefit from pensioners re-entering the workforce, according to the experts. The latest workforce census revealed 45 per cent of personal care workers were over the age of 50.
For in-home care providers, there is a huge demand for older workers, with advocates saying clients feel more comfortable with care workers closer to their own age.
"This 'grey economy', what [we] need to do is [tap into] that market," said Georgia Downes, the chief operating officer of aged care provider Home Instead. "At the moment, we are in dire need of more caregivers. [In our business] we would love to take on up to 1,000 to 1,200 more."
She believed the system was too complicated and the amounts pensioners were allowed to earn too low -- even with the one-time boost provided in the budget.
"We've got caregivers that are currently turning down shifts, although they need the money, and they'd like the work," she said. "They're turning down shifts because they're scared of affecting their pension."
In a statement, Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said the boost to the Work Bonus in December would have a positive impact.
"This measure not only incentivises pensioners to work and boosts the supply of labour to meet workplace shortages, but it also gives pensioners the opportunity to work flexibly," Ms Rishworth said.
"All aged pensioners [will] receive the up-front $4,000 income credit and will be able to work and earn more before their aged pension is reduced. It's a simple measure that provides certainty — pensioners know exactly what they are getting up-front and how much they can earn."
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Queensland schools data reveals private school enrolments growing
As private schools go from strength to strength, Queensland state school enrolment numbers are crashing due to the low birth rate in 2017, homeschool popularity and interstate migration.
Samford Valley Steiner School, an independent school offering Prep-Year 12, has experienced significant growth, so much so they have this year opened six new classrooms.
“We are growing the school from the bottom up,” enrolments manager Joan Weir said.
“I’ve seen the migration trends (with the school’s enrolments), particularly out of Victoria.”
From 2018-2020, state school enrolments increased on average 10,000 ayear. But this growth slowed in 2021 and decreased by almost 4000 in 2022.
From 2018-2022, secondary enrolments have continued to increase, but primary enrolments have shrunk since 2019, with the decline becoming sharper every year.
Education Minister Grace Grace said Covid-related international and state border closures in place until the end of 2021 created a lag in new enrolments.
“We have also seen a rise in home schooling as some families chose to keep vulnerable children at home during a health pandemic,” she said.
“There were also one-off factors like the fact that back in 2017 Queensland had a lower birthrate than usual, which has flowed through now in lower numbers starting prep in 2022.”
Independent school enrolments climbed by 4.8 per cent in 2020-21, which was a 10-year high, and followed this up with a 4.1 per cent jump in 2021-22.
Independent Schools Queensland chief executive Chris Mountford said enrolments were at all-time high across the sector.
“A key factor in this growth over recent years is the increase in in-migration to the sector throughout the pandemic. This could be students coming from interstate, overseas, or the state or catholic sectors,” he said.
“From 2019–2022, net in-migration enrolments at Queensland independent schools jumped, on average, about 50 per cent to 4350 students.”
The Catholic sector enjoyed consistent growth in the past five years, boosting enrolment numbers by more than 10,000 in total, at a yearly average of 1.2 per cent.
“Nine new Catholic schools have opened in Queensland since 2018 to meet the demand in high-growth areas,” Queensland Catholic Education Commission executive director Dr Lee-Anne Perry said.
“These schools have been in high demand with initial enrolments exceeding expectations and, in some cases, requiring additional classes to be offered.”
From 2018-2022, the number of state schools in Queensland grew from 1240 to 1258.
The state government plans to build 11 new state schools in 2023-24 – including five in Ipswich, three in Logan, one on the Sunshine Coast and one in Redland City.
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Dwayne Johnstone murder trial jury told officer acted lawfully when he shot shackled Indigenous man
A jury has been told a NSW Corrections officer was acting lawfully when he shot and killed a shackled Indigenous man outside the Lismore Base Hospital.
The accused man, who is referred to as Officer A for legal reasons, is standing trial for the murder of 43-year-old Dwayne Johnstone on the evening of March 15, 2019.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
The court has heard Mr Johnstone was handcuffed and had restraints on his ankles at the time.
The jury heard the officer fired three shots as Mr Johnstone tried to flee, and twice shouted out "stop or I'll shoot".
The third shot hit Mr Johnstone in the back and he died in hospital a short time later.
Defence barrister Philip Strickland SC told the court on Monday the regulations surrounding when a Corrections officer could discharge a firearm were clear.
"A correctional officer may discharge a firearm if the officer believes on reasonable grounds that it is necessary to do so in order to prevent the escape of an inmate," he said.
"You may agree with this law or you may disagree with it, you may think it gives officers too much power, but I urge you if you do think that then disregard it. "It doesn't matter if you like the law or you don't like the law."
The defence barrister told the court the drama played out over the course of 11 or 12 seconds. ''He had to make, in a few seconds, a decision of momentous consequence," Mr Strickland said.
The court was told Mr Johnstone was "desperate to escape" and a nurse at the Lismore Base Hospital thought he was overheard offering someone "10 grand if you help me get away".
The court was told the nurse did not alert authorities because they were unsure if they had heard correctly.
Crown prosecutor Ken McKay has argued Mr Johnstone posed no risk to any person and Officer A had no lawful excuse to shoot him. "What you have here is an unarmed offender, in restraints, not posing an immediate threat to anyone," he said.
Mr McKay told the jury corrections officers were trained to make split-second decisions, to always seek a peaceful outcome and to use a firearm as a last resort. "A firearm is the most lethal weapon in the Corrective Services armoury because it has the potential to kill," Mr McKay said.
"You would have no reasonable doubt that the accused intended to inflict really serious bodily harm on the deceased."
The trial continues next week.
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4 November, 2022
The Albanian thinks democracy is under threat
He is too sweeping. He himself is a very popular leader and Scott Morrison must the be the most wishy washy authoritarian ever. So where is the threat to democracy in that?
The USA could be a better case for a breakdown of democracy, with the Left going all out to suppress conservative comment. They have censored one of my blogs, even. But the election underway there at the moment will see the Left lose control of Congress so that will put a stop to any new moves in that direction
Russia, Iran, China and the African and Arab states are a different matter, of course. Democracy has never flourished there
Anthony Albanese says the hammer attack on US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, is a symptom of the increased polarisation and extremism of political discourse across the West.
“The attack on Mr Pelosi was horrifying – to think that something like that could happen,” the Prime Minister said in an exclusive interview.
Mr Albanese described democracy as “fragile” and said the contest between democracy and authoritarianism was part of the broader strategic competition between democracy and the various different types of authoritarianism around the world.
“Democrats have to stand up for democracy; we can’t duck these issues,” he said.
Mr Albanese was critical of his predecessor, Scott Morrison, for not denouncing former US president Donald Trump for inspiring the riots on Washington’s Capitol Hill on January 6 last year by supporters who believed the presidential election had been stolen.
“Then prime minister Scott Morrison was alone, really, among democratic leaders in not calling it out; in the UK, France, Germany, Canada, it was called out and it should have been,” he said. “The circumstances in the US, with people almost in paramilitary gear, is a concern. That concern has been expressed, quite rightly, by President (Joe) Biden.”
Mr Albanese said he has been worried for years about increasing extremism and intolerance in political exchanges.
“Much of the debate in politics generally has got far worse” during the quarter of a century he had been in parliament, he said.
Mr Albanese has drawn attention to increased polarisation, to people suffering “conflict fatigue”, and to the role of social media.
“The way political discourse is being conducted is far less civil. I think it is of real concern,” he said. “I can look at any time at a social media feed of mine and find something (in response) that is completely over the top.
“You see the rise of social media where people, sometimes anonymously, behind anonymous handles, will say things that they would never say face-to-face. “That then leads to responses and to an escalation that is extraordinary.”
All of this, he said, had a damaging effect on politics itself. “It undermines people’s participation in the process,” Mr Albanese said. “I think for young people considering going into politics, they’ve got to worry about what will be said about them. They’ve also got to worry about what’s on their social media feed from 30 years ago.”
Such entries furnished “gotcha” moments to be used against people, he said. “We’re going to end up with no one who has ever done anything interesting participating.”
The Prime Minister also called for media companies to take a more discriminating attitude to what they allowed to be published and broadcast: “Some of the media commentary is far more aggressive and I think that media operators have a responsibility to be more responsible about that.”
He contended that much of the political debate carried out on social media was far too simplistic: “A lot of these issues don’t have a 24-hour time grab, or don’t have an easy sound-bite grab. Dealing with the energy crisis, for example, is not a simple thing.”
Most of all, he wanted people committed to democracy from all parts of the political spectrum to behave with civility and to defend democratic principles.
“Sophistication in political dialogue is an asset,” he said. “It’s something that we have that differentiates us from the lack of political discourse in Russia, for example.”
Mr Albanese made his remarks as part of the most wide-ranging and forthright interview he has done on foreign policy and national security since coming to office in May.
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A tertiary tragedy
Of the assorted areas of life that have deteriorated over the neoliberal era – energy costs, health, and trust in institutions – has there been a greater erosion in esteem than that of higher education? The state of the Australian academy evokes Oscar Wilde’s refrain that’s all that’s now known is ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’.
This wasn’t always the case. Australia – given our history – has never been an apogee of the intellect. Our Anglo-European inheritance did once furnish us with an estimable academy, but we were one of the first places in the modern world to establish secular universities in the spirit of the Athenian model, and one of the first to offer tertiary education to women.
The establishment of an Australian academy was, as Governor-General Sir Charles Fitzroy remarked upon the founding of The University of Sydney in 1850, a development undertaken for the ‘advancement of…morality, and the promotion of useful knowledge’; an institute erected ‘for the promotion of literature and science’, with entrance not contingent on religion nor social-status, but on ‘the basis of academic merit’, as MP William Wentworth would confirm.
It was a noble intention that would come to fruition as our academy spawned a range of world-renowned figures. Inter alia, the Princeton philosopher Peter Singer and entertainer – and Dame Edna herself – Barry Humphries emerged out of The University of Melbourne. While at The University of Sydney, the Kid from Kogarah, Clive James, and acclaimed art critic Robert Hughes were fellow alumni back in the 1950s. Other notable names, like opera singer Dame Nellie Melba and Nobel-prize-winning author Patrick White, were an integral part of our academic and artistic milieu.
The Australian academy – including the CSIRO – was also the site of inventions of major historical importance. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Australian inventions – like Wi-Fi, the bionic ear, or the airplane ‘black box’ – many of the advances and comforts of modern life wouldn’t be with us.
Yet such developments are a far cry from our current academic state. Alongside a decline in public literacy and numeracy – even among teachers – and a deterioration in school performance, as evident in our PISA results, hardly a day goes by without a major malfeasance at one of our tertiary institutions.
As a recent article in The Australian starkly observed, the Australian ‘education experience is just a sham’ with plagiarism and cheating rife. Alongside sector-wide contract cheating, there are now common examples of students who’ve faked their way through their entire degree.
There is a favoured method involving students bypassing university plagiarism software by employing ghostwriters in poor yet English-proficient places like East Africa. As one ghostwriter remarked: ‘I have some students who I have worked for since their first year and I’ve done all the assignments until they graduate.’ Adding that what really worried him was the ‘the medical students who have never done even one assignment since their first day’.
Like our ‘Most Liveable Cities’ crown, our position in the recently-published Times University Rankings is a partial reflection of our institutes and not a more acute gauge of the whole. Indeed, 60 per cent of these rankings are based on the narrow notions of research and citation, while only 30 per cent is given over to the more fundamental practice of teaching.
On top of this are increases in class sizes and a decline in academic standards, with the latter evident in the fall in the use of final exams and the consequent increase in group assignments. That is, assessments designed to help weaker, overwhelmingly foreign, students slide through on the coattails of their more competent classmates.
Universities are now engaged in a sleight-of-hand in which the content remains the same, yet the onus is taken off the individual. For as commentator – and ex-student – Meshel Laurie noted of her university experience: ‘It’s a neat trick: group assessment (with groups allocated by instructors) in courses overloaded with full-fee-paying, non-English speaking students means the English speakers bear the burden of catching the others up, translating the course content for them, and helping them pass.’
Thus – like our cities’ ostensible liveability – our university results are useful fodder for the marketers; but in reality, our universities are the educational equivalents of fast-food outlets whereby an outwardly attractive appearance belies the utter lack of sustenance found within.
Given such sophistry, what has caused this fall from grace? And why it allowed to persist? The sad fact is that in opposition to the crucial role that is still performed by parts of our universities in training our doctors, lawyers, and engineers – vast swathes of the sector are now nothing more than a warehousing program for young and a ‘degree factory’ run along economic lines for favoured interests.
Of these interests, the biggest beneficiary has been the foreign students themselves – particularly those from the developing world. Our top ten source countries are dominated by nations from what was once known as ‘third-world’ with the top three – China, India, and Nepal – comprising well over 50 per cent of our overall annual intake. It is a fact made more acute by the rapid increase in total numbers, with the amount of international students in Australia almost doubling between 2010-20.
Australia has by far the largest per capita presence of foreign students of any place in the world, at over a quarter of our tertiary cohort. Our universities have come to function not as a place of education, but as a means to a first-world wage and living conditions, and an indirect route to permanent residency: with a sizeable minority of ‘students’ (around 16 per cent) obtaining residency after their studies.
This trend is further reinforced by the vast numbers who don’t obtain residency, but who nevertheless stay on in one form or another: with ‘more international students than ever…remaining in Australia for up to four years on graduate work visas following their studies’. The figure is made worse by the non-negligible number who – both here and in the UK – simply overstay their visas and remain here illegally.
A cynical interpretation could be that these things don’t really matter, as long as such incidents remain isolated and the integrity of the academy remains. Yet unsurprisingly, the entrance of a raft of non-native students into a nation’s tertiary-education sector, often with little knowledge of its history, culture or customs – or even its language of instruction – has not proven salutary.
English language requirements are often forged and pre-university preparatory courses are little substitute for years of immersion in the ideas and idiom of instruction. Some students even regress in their English the longer they are here, rarely leaving their first language enclaves of their home and place of work.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/a-tertiary-tragedy
****************************************Gas price caps a cure worse than the disease
When a good becomes scarcer, the logical response is to reduce its demand and increase its supply.
The “solutions” that are being floated to the recent surge in gas prices would do the exact opposite. Were the price spikes merely transient, the resulting damage might be acceptable. There is, however, no reason to believe they are a passing phenomenon.
It is true that the higher prices reflect the war in Ukraine, with the sanctions on Russia unleashing a worldwide scramble for alternative sources of natural gas.
But the sanctions are not about to be lifted; and even if they were, the supply disruptions will have a lasting impact in making relatively stable producers, such as Australia, more attractive to global buyers.
As those buyers switch from less to more reliable sources, demand for our exports will increase, placing added pressure on domestic gas availability and further raising prices.
The Albanese government will therefore face mounting calls to intervene on consumers’ behalf. The question is whether it can do so in ways that facilitate, rather than impede, Australia’s adjustment to the gas market’s new realities.
The strongest case for intervention is in respect of households. While welfare payments are indexed (and hence will adjust automatically as rising energy prices push up the consumer price index), most residential consumers remain fully exposed to price hikes. The Ukraine war and its consequences for energy bills are hardly events they could have insured themselves against; it can make sense for the government to step in as an insurer of last resort, smoothing the cost of wars, like that of pandemics and natural disasters, over time.
Providing low and middle-income earners with cash transfers that offset the war-related component of the price increases would be the best way of fulfilling that role. As consumers would still face the higher prices, their incentives to economise on energy would be undiminished, particularly if the transfers were clearly time-limited. Overall, the adjustment process would be neither slowed nor blunted.
In contrast, the approach many European countries have adopted of subsidising and/or capping power bills is administratively simpler but – unless the subsidies apply only to a basic level of energy use – has the perverse effect of boosting energy demand, aggravating the underlying problem.
The case for assisting commercial and industrial users is much weaker. Unlike residential consumers, whose incomes are largely fixed in the short term, businesses can raise their prices – and when cost increases affect entire industries, they typically do.
To that extent, their viability is determined through changes in the level and structure of prices. Moreover, because it is the firms that make the greatest use of gas that will have to raise their prices most, allowing the price mechanism to work will shift demand from energy guzzlers to more energy-efficient firms and products, curbing gas consumption and dampening the price spikes.
A hands-off approach consequently has compelling merits. But that is not going to quell the calls for a mandatory code that forces the major gas exporters to supply part of their output to the domestic market at a low, administratively determined, price.
Viewed in historical perspective, those proposals are a throwback to the days before the Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments progressively dismantled the byzantine regulations that kept the prices domestic oil and gas producers received below world levels. Unfortunately, in a far more globalised market, the current proposals could prove even more harmful than their unlamented predecessors.
To begin with, even assuming the schemes were workable, the assistance they provide would be completely untargeted. Far from rewarding firms that had economised on the use of gas, the largest benefits would flow to the firms that had cut back least; as those firms used the subsidies to displace more efficient rivals, overall productivity levels would fall, and living standards with them.
Nor is that effect likely to be trivial: in his classic study of broadly similar schemes, Yale’s Paul MacAvoy found those misallocations meant that each dollar in mandated sales cost the economy two.
Compounding the damage, artificially low, capped, prices would encourage gas to be used instead of other energy sources, whose prices would remain more volatile. Domestic demand for gas would therefore rise, slashing national income both by forcing gas producers to forgo higher-priced export sales and by promoting a use of resources that took no account of relative costs.
And as firms locked in gas-intensive methods of production, repealing the scheme would become ever harder, perpetuating the damage.
Last but not least, retrospectively imposing the proposed mandates on the gas exporters would deter new investment by directly reducing their profits and increasing sovereign risk.
The proponents of these schemes strenuously deny that investment would be chilled. But as far back as 1980-81, assessments by Treasury, the Industries Assistance Commission and the OECD all concluded that the two-price schemes had (in the words of the OECD) helped precipitate the “sharp decline in exploration activity throughout the 1970s”. To believe reinstating them in new form would not undermine the development of desperately needed supplies is as inconsistent with decades of careful analysis as it is with common sense.
As a result, were the proposals adopted, we would find ourselves in the worst of all possible worlds: greater demand, lower supply and pervasive inefficiency.
Despite that, the government may eventually feel obliged to increase the domestic availability of gas, particularly to the major industrial users.
In that event, it should purchase the gas at world prices and then require those users to bid for it in a competitive auction. That would ensure the gas went to the firms that expected to extract the greatest value from its use – and unlike the proposed schemes, whose economic costs are completely opaque, the difference between the amount taxpayers had paid for the gas and the receipts from its sale would transparently indicate the subsidy that was being provided.
In the end, if the current crisis is as deep as it is, and the prospects so alarming, it is because our gas market has been comprehensively distorted by ill-conceived policies.
Governments have stymied gas supply by prohibiting onshore development – while greatly increasing gas demand, both by encouraging the massive deployment of renewables (which, being highly intermittent, had to be matched by quick-start, gas-fuelled capacity) and by accelerating the decommissioning of coal-fired plants.
It is therefore hardly surprising that the lights are now flickering – nor that when they’re on, they are scarcely affordable. With year after year of failed interventions finally coming home to roost, squaring the error would be the greatest folly of all.
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Wishful thinking about wind and solar is going to come up against reality soon ... and there will be a world of pain in the awakening
This time last year one bitcoin was worth more than $98,000. Today it is worth just more than $32,000, a 60 per cent decrease in 12 months. If you were around or were involved with cryptocurrency communities a year ago, it was common to see and hear vainglorious claims about the potential of bitcoin to replace the US dollar, revolutionise the financial industry and save the world.
Much of that rhetoric has quietened after this year’s crash, which has wiped nearly $US2 trillion ($3.14 trillion) off the cryptocurrency market. But the pain felt by everyday retail investors who bought into the hype and risked (and lost) their savings remains real. Go online to Reddit forums and one can read stories posted by real people describing their investment in crypto as the biggest mistake of their life.
Story after story shows ordinary people glimpsing financial freedom, only for it all to vanish in a matter of hours during the crash. At one point during the market collapse this year, the top-voted post in the Reddit cryptocurrency forum was a link to a suicide prevention hotline.
In a recent podcast with psychologist Steven Pinker, respected 98-year-old investor Charlie Munger says the biggest mistakes he has made in his long career were born out of wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking is the bias we succumb to when we are unable to separate what we want to be true from what actually is true and what is rational according to the evidence we have in front of us. At its core, wishful thinking is an inability to deal with reality as it is and an unwillingness to update our beliefs when new evidence emerges.
In financial bubbles, the wishful thinking of a single investor multiplies. When we invest in an asset or industry with all of our friends, and we all want the same investment to succeed, wishful thinking dovetails with conformity, creating what I call “wishful groupthink”. When wishful groupthink is infused with politics and ideology, it becomes cult-like, impervious to reason and impervious to new evidence.
The cryptocurrency bubble is one of many examples of wishful groupthink. Another is the overwhelming hype associated with renewable energy technologies, specifically wind and solar. While the scaling up of such projects in Australia is remarkable – and the increasing output of clean energy impressive – much of the ideological rhetoric remains overcooked, overhyped and downright irresponsible.
It is claimed by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and the teal independent MPs that renewable energies will a) reduce emissions and b) make Australia a “renewable energy superpower” while c) creating jobs and d) lowering power bills – all at the same time. It would be nice if this were true. And it is understandable that many people want this to be true. But reality has a way of making itself known, and much of this hype eventually will lead to pain.
The claim that the renewable energy industry will create a surplus of jobs (notwithstanding those jobs that will be lost when coalmines shut) lacks specificity. The assumption seems to be that once coalmines close, miners who may be used to living in one location, with families and community connections, suddenly will want to move from place to place as itinerant construction workers. Of course, this might happen. But it is by no means guaranteed. In reality, this is a risky bet. But our government presents it as a sure thing.
While the claims about job creation seem overhyped, the assertions that solar and wind will lower our electricity prices are far more irresponsible. It is true that renewable energy is cheap on sunny and windy days. But it is also true that on such days wind farms and solar panels deliver excess energy that stresses the electricity grid.
The 2016 blackout in South Australia was found to be caused partially by the shutdown of the state’s wind farms due to volatile weather, in particular excessive wind. So while solar and wind can deliver abundant energy at certain times, and while this abundant energy may be cheap, the mistake is to assume this translates into cheaper energy bills. It doesn’t because when the overall system is stressed, more intervention is needed, and more intervention naturally leads to higher prices. How could it not?
But what about batteries? Batteries are great, but they need to be built before we can use them and almost every country is scrambling to build batteries at the same time. This demand drives up prices. The idea that such costs will never be passed on to the consumer is fanciful.
Many claims about renewables, as with cryptocurrencies, sound grand in theory. String a few abstract concepts together, sprinkle with jargon, marinate in ideology and boom, a claim can sound plausible to the untrained listener. And while it may be true that we need to transition to renewables to meet our net-zero obligations, and that we can scale up solar and wind rapidly with enough government subsidy, this by no means guarantees cheaper power prices for consumers or ensures jobs for those bearing the brunt of the transition.
It would be better if our leaders, and the Energy Minister in particular, were honest with Australians about the pain and hardship our energy transition will bring. Given that the public is overwhelmingly supportive of action on climate change, this would be real leadership, which might be rewarded by the electorate. But concealing the difficulty and engaging in wishful thinking will lead only to more shock and anger down the track when promised outcomes fail to materialise.
As Munger says, to be rational we need to “recognise reality even when you don’t like it – especially when you don’t like it”.
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3 November, 2022
Childcare sector ramps up calls for higher wages as pre-schools forced to turn kids away
There is an alternative to hitting the taxpayer over this. There are ferocious regulations governing childcare. Reduced regulation would allow more people to enter the field and reduce the numbers required to run a childcare service
More Australian parents could soon be forced to stay at home and not go to work as childcare centres face staff shortages.
Childcare operators fear the situation will get worse next year when the government's new childcare subsidies begin.
Community Early Learning Australia CEO Michele Carnegie said the policy, which she supports, will make more parents want child care and put pressure on an already struggling system.
"If [job] vacancies continue to grow at this rate, we estimate that there will be over 10,000 vacancies by July 2023," she said.
"This [the new childcare subsidies] will see an increase in demand for child care that simply will not be matched by workforce supply."
The government says the subsidies will ease cost of living pressures and help the economy, because cheaper child care will allow an extra 37,000 parents to take on a full-time job.
However Ms Carneige asked how that figure could be reached with the childcare worker shortage.
"The risk is that parents are going to be subjected to really long waiting lists, they're going to be subjected to the vulnerability of not knowing whether or not today's the day when their child is going to be able to access early education and care," she said.
"This is absolutely going to be impacting their ability to fully participate in the workforce."
Goodstart Early Learning, which is Australia's largest provider of early learning and care, has been struggling to recruit staff in recent years.
Its advocacy manager John Cherry said a lack of workers stops parents from being able to hold down full-time jobs.
"Every [staff] vacancy that we have is up to 15 families effected. The flow on economic consequences is profound," he said.
'Leaky bucket'
Narelle Myers is the director of Bermagui Preschool on the far south coast of New South Wales. She said the sector has dramatically changed over the past few years. "I've been there for over 20 years, we have always had long term staff," she said.
"But that all changed in 2020, we were impacted by bushfires, then COVID… also the housing crisis… we have actually had a turnover of about 36 staff in the last two years."
Mr Cherry said his centres were turning away children because they do not have enough workers to care for them.
"This has never happened before in Goodstart's history," he told a parliamentary inquiry earlier this week.
"Over the last two years up to 80 and 100 centres each week are enrolment capped because we can't find enough staff.
"It is mad and crazy for an organisation like ours, desperate to increase our occupancy, that we can't increase our occupancy because we can't find enough staff," he said.
United Workers Union executive director of early education Helen Gibbons said these stories were all too familiar.
"We have a leaky bucket in early education," she said. "We are struggling to attract people to work in the sector, but we're also having people leave daily."
Wages a key problem
Early childhood educators have long citied low pay as a reason for leaving the sector. Ms Gibbons said wages must be addressed to attract and keep more workers. "The elephant in the room is the wages of early educators, they're appallingly low."
Ms Myers said she pays her staff above award rates but still can't compete with other industries.
"We have lost so many staff who have gone to work in the primary school system… a lot of our staff have left to care for clients on the NDIS and they are getting paid over $60 an hour to work with one client," she said. "We can't compete with that."
Ms Gibbons said the government's proposed changes to multi-employer bargaining could be game-changing.
"I think the sector is really embracing the idea of multi-employer bargaining and I've heard a number of providers talk really positively about it," she said.
"The only question mark is, how quickly can we get it done because we want to see educators' wages lift as quickly as possible."
Both Goodstart and Community Early Learning Australia want the government to provide a wage subsidy in the short term.
Ms Carnegie said better pay is needed before the new childcare subsidies are introduced in July to avoid more workforce shortages.
"This will impact on retention of our existing qualified workforce and encourage more people to choose to be part of an incredibly rewarding career in early education," she said.
"An increase in remuneration will need to be funded by government, otherwise the cost will be passed on to parents through increased fees.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-03/child-care-is-cheaper-but-the-workers-arent-there/101608292
*******************************************************The naked authoritarianoism of the pandemic response is unforgiveable
Forgiveness is now officially on the Covid menu. The left-leaning Atlantic magazine in the US has called for a ‘pandemic amnesty’ in which people ‘forgive one another for what we did and said’ during Covid. At issue is the question of school closures and other restrictions and mandates now deemed excessive. The Atlantic is something of a mouthpiece for Joe Biden’s hopeless Democrats, but in this instance the article is actually worth paying attention to. Not because of any particular insights but because of the distinct whiff of fear that oozes out of every other sentence.
‘But the thing is: We didn’t know,’ the author whines (in italics!), claiming ignorance as a defence against implementing erroneous Covid polices because she was operating under conditions of ‘tremendous uncertainty.’ ‘We lacked definitive data.’ ‘It wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.’ ‘Obviously some people intended to mislead…’. As well as this bizarre post-rationalisation: ‘In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck.’
Well, no. In some instances the right people were right for the right reasons. At The Spectator Australia in particular, where a veritable army of writers including Rebecca Weisser, Ramesh Thakur, James Allan, David Flint, David Adler, Rocco Loiacono, Augusto Zimmerman, Alexandra Marshall and many others risked opprobrium and worse for writing for the correct reasons – out of principle, out of conviction and out of sound research.
Indeed, a recent (much-appreciated) letter to the editor of this magazine spelled out the rewards of such an approach;
‘You and your team were like a light shining through the darkness of Covid hysteria. It meant a lot to my wife and I that we were not the only ones saying “what the hell…?” I am a former journalist (what has happened to our profession?) and I look forward to The Spectator Australia every week. The quality of writing is first rate but it is the fearless pursuit of truth which is truly outstanding. Your work is critical for public discourse in Australia as our political class, big business, media, bureaucracy and educational system all seem to have been captured by nonsense and wokeism.’
It is because of ‘uncertainty’ that in a democracy we supposedly seek a plurality of views on difficult issues, and we insist on accountability. By ensuring that as many people as possible get exposed to as many ideas as possible we hopefully avoid compounding bad thinking, and we trust the public – rather than the authorities – to make those final decisions that affect our lives and livelihoods.
It is utterly disingenuous for those who made such catastrophic and reckless mistakes during Covid to now say that ‘they didn’t know’ about such-and-such an outcome because of the ‘fog of uncertainty’ and that the alternative to their authoritarian overreach and draconian measures was ‘millions of dead bodies’. These same individuals deliberately and ruthlessly suppressed anyone who did try to shed some light on potential risks, problems or alternatives to the orthodoxy.
Many people were horrified by the police brutality, by the obfuscation and lies surrounding vaccine mandates, and were repelled by the QR codes and having their kids being forced to stay home or wear worthless masks all day long. But the censoring of them and the humiliation meted out to them was merciless. Dr Jay Battacharya was just one of many brave experts who spoke out early and loudly warning that lockdowns would not only fail but would cause more deaths than they could ever possibly save, not to mention doing untold economic damage.
Yet for speaking out he was demonised and hounded out of the public square. For merely asking questions, the Greens in the Australian Senate smeared and vilified the editor of this magazine in his role at Sky News along with Rita Panahi and Alan Jones. Gideon Rozner at the IPA cut a solitary figure in Melbourne when he did a video pleading for lockdowns to end in Melbourne and was vilified and demonised remorselessly.
So let’s skip the ‘fog of uncertainty’ nonsense. There were plenty of voices warning against nearly all of the policies that were being enacted, often brutally so, but rather than such plurality of opinion being encouraged, those voices were viciously silenced, humiliated, denigrated and demonised. It’s called wilful ignorance and it is no defence under the law.
But get used to hearing this argument that nobody knew any better. That it was all so confusing and we all did our very best. Plenty of people did know better and did try and speak up.
The Atlantic author claims that ‘dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop…. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty…’.
No. Let’s have a royal commission into the abuse of power during Covid, and a Senate inquiry, too, for good measure. To ensure this never happens again.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/covid-amnesty-anyone/
*****************************************************Perfect storm of weather events sees coral bleached at Abrolhos Islands off West Australian coast
Nice to see a coral bleaching event that is NOT being attributed to global warming. Why are similar processes not at work on the other side of Australia? Why are similar processes not at work on both the East and West coasts
In what's been described as an important natural process, thousands of hectares of coral at the Abrolhos Islands off the West Australian coast have been bleached after a combination of weather conditions repeatedly exposed the coral to strong cold winds.
Fisher and pearl farmer Jane Liddon has watched the ocean around her fall over the past few days from her home at Post Office Island in the southern group of the Abrolhos.
She said water levels had fallen to an unusually low level due to a combination of strong winds, a high-pressure system and new moon tides.
"When the coral first came out [of the water], it was bright and beautiful … the second day, the water was even lower and still very windy and cold. By the third day it was completely white," Ms Liddon said.
"The tops were bright white. It was like new islands have formed everywhere here."
Ms Liddon, who has spent her life at the Abrolhos, said in 50-odd years, she had often seen events where a low tide had exposed some stag coral, but this was unusual.
"It's a coincidence of having these weather events all come together that has made it extreme, this time of year you do get low tides in the middle of the day, that's common, but not as low as this event," she said. "The low tide is like a lawnmower on the coral.
"For three days we haven't been able to take our dingy off our jetty because our jetty was not in the water anymore, so we are marooned by low tide, which is very rare."
Murdoch University PhD student Jo Buckee is studying coral mortality events and the role that they play in determining coral cover on shallow reef platforms.
She said a similar coral bleaching event at Abrolhos Island due to low tide in 2018 impacted the 7,000-hectare area of shallow reefs and saw about 30 per cent of the coral die.
However, Ms Buckee said the coral was able to regenerate and recover relatively quickly and had re-established itself back to pre-2018 levels.
"The bulk of the corals that you'll see sticking out of the water are the fast-growing Acropora corals, branching and plating corals, and they are capable of fast growth rates," she said.
"This trimming off of the tops is a natural event, it looks very dramatic but it is a naturally occurring process. "It's important for keeping up with sea level rise, for providing the material for reef and island building."
Ms Buckee said sea level variability along with coral growth and mortality over thousands of years had formed the coral reefs and the Abrolhos Islands themselves and allowed them to remain in position.
"That is the material that you're walking on when you're walking on the islands, it's from previous periods when the sea level was slightly higher than it is now, but also fragments washed up from reef flats that surround the islands," she said.
"In order for the reef to keep up with sea level rise over time, it requires fragments of coral to be produced so that the overall height of the reef is able to change.
"These environments are very dynamic with a mixture of seaweed and coral, a reflection of the Abrolhos's position in the transition zone between tropical and temperate ecosystems."
Ms Buckee said with the diversification of land and water activities at the Abrolhos, leading to year-round visitation, previously unwitnessed coral bleaching events were now attracting interest and attention.
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Climate change could make some Queensland fruit crops unprofitable to grow
Big deal. What does it matter if strawberry growing has to move South into New South Wales or up onto the Darling Downs
Cropping expert Paul Gauthier told ABC Radio Brisbane Breakfast host Craig Zonca that rising temperatures meant the popular fruit could become a thing of the past.
"There's something about strawberries that if you reach a temperature above 26 degrees Celsius, they stop flowering, and that's kind of why in Queensland we tend to grow them in the winter," he said.
"And what we have seen when we project it to the future, by 2050 the temperature will increase by 3 degrees, maybe 4 degrees.
"And the problem is that the season is going to be shorter and shorter, and because strawberries take a long time to develop, to get the fruits, it's possible that we may not get strawberries in Queensland anymore."
It is one example of many crops — including apples and cherries — that could become unprofitable to grow in Queensland as temperatures continue to warm.
"We've seen that all over the place. In the US it's a major problem because most of the food is grown in California and we've seen the temperature growing, growing very high," Mr Gauthier said.
"And the other issue is drought — drought is a big problem and water scarcity has been a problem for a long time in Australia."
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2 November, 2022
Politics in sport is destructive
Once upon a time, sport was an international language. A child kicking a soccer ball in Argentina could communicate in the same terms as an Italian or Swedish junior – even one from Japan.
The language is one of sport: the love of the game. The universal code. The language applies to all religions, all people, all sports.
The language speaks of the challenge. The goal. The team unity. The individual strength. The soaring heights of victory. The lows of defeat. The hope. The possibilities. The dreams. The fans.
It is the international language where no words are needed to understand everything.
Sport raises us up.
But introduce politics, and the splendour fades. How have we allowed it to happen? Why have we allowed it?
Partisan politics and sport do not mix. Ideological politics and sport divide. Politics is the antithesis to sport.
The easiest example of that came to us with the Essendon Football Club saga. It appointed a CEO one day, and by the next, he was driven to resign. Andrew Thorburn’s Christianity was too much for the politically ‘correct’, the social elites who get to decide who and what is good.
It is a simple formula: someone is good if they agree with the virtue signallers and their beliefs – someone is bad if they disagree.
The tribe has spoken at Essendon. The Premier, Daniel Andrews, was part of that tribe, continuing his talent to represent some, but not all. When it comes to believers, Daniel Andrews is a religion of his own.
But the Essendon matter is wholly unsurprising: we had it coming. Supported by Woke boardrooms, the AFL has become both Creator and Guardian Angel of political intrusion and interference in sport.
Netball Australia and Cricket Australia have caught the bug. Their elite athletes cough and splutter with business-class hypocrisy.
In Netball Australia’s case, Gina Rinehart had every right to call an end to her $15 million gift. There are others who will respect her company’s brand, its bankrolling of the nation, job creation, and its extraordinary effort to fund the global dreams of our nation’s best young athletes including Olympic swimmers and rowers.
Tennis champion and Greatest Of All Time, Margaret Court, understands the dangers of expressing private thoughts publicly, thoughts deemed politically incorrect.
Who needs to watch a thrilling game of tennis when we now clap and revere according to how they vote in a referendum? Perhaps a quiet note to the marketing department: tickets might be harder to sell.
Diversity officers abound. Politically correct deeds flourish.
For the AFL, there was once a time when people simply went to watch the sport: a magnificent game with plenty enough happening not to require political sideshows or overtones.
But these days, there seems barely a round that isn’t dedicated to an approved cause.
There is nothing wrong with either the Pride or Indigenous rounds for example, but why pull them out of the hat that’s deep with a thousand good causes? Where is the round for CFA volunteers? Or the round for those who couldn’t attend funerals during lockdown? Or a weekend dedicated to maths and science teachers? Or for people with awful kitchens? For freedom of speech?
There are rounds dedicated to promoting health awareness – the most prominent being Motor Neurone Disease and Breast Cancer. Great causes each and deserving of attention and support.
These are the good things sport enables: the sentiments that unite and do not divide. Non-political.
But add politics, and all of a sudden, it’s not so much fun anymore.
The average Australian can sniff hypocrisy before they see it. They smelled it over Essendon’s Thorburn meltdown, the man who, as NAB Group Chief Executive Officer, introduced the Pride Round to the AFL in March 2015 to celebrate ‘…diversity and the LGBTQ+ community’.
No one has riled about that, or the NAB’s support of Climate Change legislation or sustainability awareness. It is only Thorburn’s religious associations that were trapped in the social jury’s snare.
But where were Premier Andrews’ words – his holier-than-thou indignation – for AFLW player and Muslim, Haneen Zreika, over her withdrawal from the round eight Pride match for religious reasons, and not for the first time? Crickets. Or as Richard Flanagan might put it, the sound of one hand clapping.
The Pride Round is political. The Australians I know don’t particularly care what someone’s sexuality is. They care that the person is happy and healthy. But by singling out the rainbow warriors, they are signalling a demarcation. Creating categories, division.
Similarly, why single out the Indigenous Round, when players on the field come from many corners and cultures of the world? Are the Italian or Irish players less suitable to celebrate? Every player has a history, a place, a culture. Celebrate them all by not singling one out. That’s real unity. That’s sport.
Sport is losing its ability to speak all languages.
I yearn for the days where we just cheer on outstanding athletes without wondering what they think in private.
Sport is great enough on its own. It doesn’t need politics.
But maybe politics needs sport.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-tribe-has-spoken/ ?
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Unreasonable war on anti-vaxxers
For the past two and a half years, Jack the Insider (Peter Hoysted), through his columns in the Australian, has waged a war on ‘anti-vaxxers’. Of course, he conveniently lumps into that category anyone who dared to point out the fact that the Covid vaccines, far from being the panacea he believes them to be, actually do very little, even when it comes to personal protection.
On October 27, he wrote a piece which so stood out for its lack of rigour that it has to be called out.
He started off with this statement:
When Covid-19 vaccines first became available in the summer of 2021, I argued that this was the end game for anti-vaxxers. The science and the data that followed would be irrefutable. I was right about the data. But I was wrong to think this shameless movement would put its cue in the rack.
Let’s leave aside the emotion about this ‘shameless movement’, who he says ‘are joined by a larger group of disaffected people who don’t read enough and listen too often’. Jack the Insider is the one who is not right about the data because he doesn’t read enough or listen properly.
He cites in his piece a string of US government data that supports the lie that Covid became ‘a pandemic of the unvaccinated’. Jack is a stickler. He even cites a study of prisoners (people who, unlike the vast majority of us, are confined and cannot move out and about in society as they please) to demonstrate ‘what we have now overwhelmingly shows that unvaccinated individuals are more infectious and for longer’.
Unlike Jack, let’s be honest and do the job properly.
If Jack wanted to do his job properly, he could have done far worse than read regular contributor to these pages and The Australian, Ramesh Thakur’s column in the latter on August 20 this year, and he would realise to his argument there is a very strong counter-argument, published by none other than NSW Health:
The Covid report from NSW Health for the week of July 10-16 says: “The minority of the overall population who have not been vaccinated are significantly over-represented among patients in hospitals and ICUs with Covid-19.” Just two pages later the same report gives the number of unvaccinated people admitted to hospital and intensive care units as zero. The sentence is repeated verbatim in the latest weekly report for July 31-August 6, with the number of unvaccinated people admitted to hospital at zero and to ICU just one.
Even by the standards of public health authorities across the world gaslighting the people to nudge them into docile – and often performative – compliance with official edicts, this level of internal contradiction of narrative with data is breathtaking.
Not a single Covid death under 40 was reported in the week to August 6. The total number of boosted people who died with Covid was 71.3 per cent of the 1,281 Covid deaths whose vaccination status was known, slightly above the “more than 68 per cent” of eligible people who have been boosted.
Thus the effectiveness of boosters in preventing death lasts only a short time.
People who have received two to four doses made up over 95 per cent of the over-16s and 98.1, 95.8, and 82.6 per cent of Covid hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, respectively.
In the 11 weeks from May 22 to August 6, the unvaccinated comprised 0.2, 1.8 and 13.1 per cent of all NSW Covid-related hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths, respectively.
The double vaccinated and boosted made up 98.1, 95.4 and 85 per cent of the same respective totals. Just the boosted added up to 73.3, 73.4 and 69.9 per cent.
We are no longer in the realm of a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Despite major protective benefits, Covid vaccines are undeniably leaky. Their real-world effectiveness lasts a disappointingly short time.
Strike one.
Then our Jack goes on a tirade against Rob Roos, whitewashing the anger over Pfizer executive Janine Small’s admission that there was never any testing done to demonstrate that the jab prevented transmission because ‘we had to move at the speed of science’. Jack dismisses the outrage at this as ‘shrieking’, and refers to, among other things, ‘peer-reviewed modelling’ (which he doesn’t reference) that suggested we couldn’t wait the usual five to ten years to produce a safe vaccine because ‘we would have to wear 14 million excess deaths a year if we waited’.
As we knew reasonably early in the piece, the modelling could never be trusted. Here are the undisputed facts about Covid from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare from November 2021, published in these pages. The average lifespan of an Australian is 82.6 years. The average age of Covid fatalities in Australia is 85. Since the pandemic began, the Covid fatality rate for Australians under 50 is four in 12,000. Sixty-six per cent of Covid deaths have been in nursing homes. Seventy-three per cent of Covid deaths involved pre-existing chronic health conditions and a higher number involved non-chronic but somewhat serious health complications. It would be difficult, therefore, to justify discrimination on the basis of vaccine status, especially if one has no pre-existing conditions, or is not in a vulnerable category.
Strike two.
Mr Hoysted, continuing his crusade against the ‘shrieking’ states that we always knew the vaccines would never prevent transmission – noting an FDA study – and that this was taken over by ‘political hyperbole’ about ‘protecting grandma’. He even cites an Israeli peer-reviewed study which showed ‘the ability of the vaccine to prevent transmission waned with time and with the advent of the Delta variant’. Well, I, among many other in this publication and elsewhere, were saying that as far back as April 2021. To then, as our Jack does, gloss over the way politicians and health bureaucrats promised to make lives miserable for people on the basis that they saw no point in getting a jab because not only did it not prevent transmission, but that, based on their own age and health circumstances, they believed it wasn’t necessary, is, in the view of this correspondent, inexcusable.
However, our Jack doesn’t give up. He uses the same study to insist that those who were unvaccinated for Covid would be more infectious and infectious for longer. As we know, that has been shown to be wrong. Remember when two doses were enough, then three, now four? Maybe that is why Denmark halted its Covid vaccine program back in April. Even before then, Lancet published this article noting the futility of vaccine mandates in the face of transmissibility (I’ll refer to it again below).
But our Jack still insists that he is right and has ‘indisputable evidence’ to prove it. He writes:
In the Oxford Academic Open Forum on Infectious Diseases, three infectious diseases doctors, two from the US and one from Scotland, examined three randomised trials and found that “receipt of the vaccine was associated with a 70 per cent reduction in all SARS-CoV-2 infections 21 days after the first dose and 85 per cent reduction seven days after the second dose. A similar cohort study of 3,975 health care workers, first responders, and other frontline workers in the United States who were tested weekly found a 91 per cend reduction in infection risk after full vaccination by an mRNA vaccine and an 81 per cent reduction after partial vaccination.”
Jack goes on:
While vaccine mandates may have been excessively applied across a range of industries (I never quite understood why they were imposed on footballers or construction workers), that analysis provides hard evidence as to why vaccine mandates continue to be necessary for frontline health workers, emergency response workers and even more obviously, for those working in aged care.
Well, that Lancet study I cited above directly contradicts this assertion, when it found that triple vaccinated Israeli doctors and nurses were getting Covid and passing it on to their patients: ‘[T]he demonstration of Covid-19 breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated health-care workers (HCW) in Israel, who in turn may transmit this infection to their patients, requires a reassessment of compulsory vaccination policies leading to the job dismissal of unvaccinated HCW in the USA,’ it argued.
So much for ‘hard evidence’. Strike three.
A suggestion for our Jack. Since he has all the ‘hard evidence’ that the Covid vaccine is safe and effective, he might want to ask his ALP friends in the federal government why it is that the Budget, handed down last week, is warning that Covid vaccine injury payouts could reach $77 million. He might want to investigate why the CDC, which he places so much faith in, fought tooth and nail to prevent this data from being released.
Maybe then our Jack might put his cue in the rack.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/jack-the-insider-is-out-of-bounds/
****************************************************Engineering disaster: Remaking the power grid to fail
Europe may be in the midst of a power crisis and memories of the chaos on the Australian grid in June still fresh, but that has not stopped billionaire activist Mike Cannon-Brookes and the state governments of Queensland and Victoria sowing the seeds of a major power disaster.
These players are engineering the closure of the bulk of the reliable coal-fired power supply of the eastern half of the continent within 13 years with nothing but intermittent renewable energy projects, most of which have yet to be built, to replace them.
To add to the air of fantasy which now pervades any decision involving energy in Australia, the Queensland and Victorian governments acknowledged that there has to be some means of storing energy for the changes to work, but then made proposals that were either completely inadequate (Queensland) or contained no details (Victoria).
To make matters worse the entire effort, including the many billions to be spent trying to replace coal power plants with wind and solar generators will have no benefit for Australia. As is widely known (except by Australian activists) few countries are paying much attention to their obligations under the Paris Agreement. Even those countries that have proved willing to undertake the major pain required to make real cuts in emissions (the UK and Germany) have backtracked in the past few months, thanks to the power crisis.
That means the sole result of all the money and effort spent on decarbonising the grid will be to make it more erratic and unreliable, and push power prices through the roof.
As was known before the announcements in September and October AGL’s 1.8-gigawatt Liddell power station in NSW will close in 2023, and its 2.6-gigawatt Bayswater plant will cease operations between 2030 and 2033. In addition, Origin Energy will shut the 2.8-gigawatt Eraring coal-fired power station in 2025, and Victoria’s Yallourn power station (1.48 GW, brown coal) is scheduled to close in 2028.
After a sustained campaign by Cannon-Brookes, who became AGL’s largest shareholder with the express purpose of getting the energy giant to accelerate closure of its coal plants, AGL has also announced they will shut the shut the 2.2-gigawatt Loy Yang A power station in Victoria’s La Trobe Valley in 2035, a decade earlier than planned.
At about the same time as the AGL announcement, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk declared that her government would end the use of coal power in the state by 2035. There are eight coal-fired plants in the state, the newest of which is the 30-year-old 1.4-gigawatt Tarong station, which will now close more than a decade ahead of schedule.
Then in October, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews declared that if he is re-elected in the looming state election he will introduce tough new emission targets that are likely to end coal-powered electricity generation in the state by 2035.
To replace this gaping hole in generating capacity, the Palaszczuk government has announced that it will develop a $62 billion renewable energy ‘super grid’ which includes a new transmission line and two new pumped-hydro projects. About half of that investment is expected to be public money, including $9 billion from the state government and (hopefully) the rest from the federal government.
The plan commits to two new pumped-hydro power stations. The Borumba project, near Gympie, in south-east Queensland and the Pioneer-Burdekin project near Mackay. Borumba is expected to store the equivalent of 48 GWh but the only figure available for the Pioneer-Burdekin is the output figure of 7 GW (a facility which generates 7 GW for seven hours produces 49 GWh – commentators, activists and even government press releases routinely confuse GW and GWh).
Assuming the combined total storage will add up to 100 GWh, however, it is still equivalent to perhaps ten hours worth of operation by the coal plants the Palaszczuk government wants to close down. The Snowy Hydro 2.0 project, which is proving a ridiculously expensive white elephant, may add another 300 GWh, but these are all still inadequate amounts especially given the growing evidence of a weather phenomenon known as a wind drought.
As previously noted in this publication (‘Transition loses traction’, 9 July, 2022) there is evidence that wind can die across the whole of the National Energy Market (the east coast grid) for up to 33 hours – as far as anyone knows – meaning that it will require at least twice the amount of storage now either being built or in proposal documents to get through a wind drought period, and ideally several times that. Proper grid planning should also take into account major wind droughts occurring during periods of cloudy days and during rain droughts where there will not be much fresh water to fill the pumped-storage facilities.
In October, the Victorian government announced that it would revive the old State Electricity Commission but this time as a renewable energy agency with $1 billion to develop 4.5 GW worth of renewable energy projects. In late September the Victorian government had also announced that it would increase its renewable energy storage capacity target ‘to 6.3GW by 2035’, although it’s not clear from the announcement or any of the breathless media stories generated by it just how this target will be achieved, or even what it means. Does the Victorian government mean gigawatts or gigawatt hours? If it means gigawatt hours, it does not help very much. Three battery projects in various stages of development amounting to about one GWh are mentioned, and the state government is tipping in $167 million of taxpayer money, although it is not clear what the money is to be spent on. Otherwise, the announcement seems to be a statement of intentions.
While governments make muddled announcements about what they may be going to do, the power grid with its collection of aging fossil-fuel plants continues to stagger along somehow, and probably will until the Liddell plant ceases operation in 2023.
However, the June crisis in the power grid was in part due to the simultaneous failure of major coal-fired units. As the coal power stations are aging it is not surprising that they are off the grid, for one reason or another, more often. The forced closures will make such crises more likely and more frequent.
Instead of acknowledging this point, commentators descend into fantasy about how more renewables and extensive use of hydrogen will fix the problem. It seems that consumers must wait until they are left in the dark in freezing homes for extended periods until policy makers finally concede that renewables might not be the answer to everything.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/engineering-disaster/
******************************************************Victoria’s infrastructure con job
I like to think I’m pretty good at spotting a con, but not always. Just days before the Federal election Labor’s Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Catherine King, made what the media called a ‘$4 billion power play’.
She announced that an elected Albanese government would keep the $4 billion the Liberals had set aside for the East West Link. Very reasonably, she said that money would be used towards projects backed by the state government of the day – Labor or Liberal.
This is wonderful, I thought. I wrote to Minister King on her very first day in the job, thanking her for her bipartisanship and seeking an opportunity to meet, so we could work together.
Turns out it was a con. On just her second day as Minister, King ripped away that $4 billion in infrastructure funding from Victoria. Perhaps naively, I didn’t see it coming. I also didn’t see the $900 million of other Victorian road and rail cuts by the new federal government.
Instead, through the budget Labor is committing $2.2 billion towards the Andrews government’s pet project: the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) – a massive rail tunnel through Melbourne’s middle suburbs. Stripped of the obvious political overlay (helping your Labor mates down here in Victoria) this was an odd decision.
Mr Albanese did some good things when he was Kevin Rudd’s Infrastructure Minister. One of the best was setting up Infrastructure Australia (IA). The idea was to take the politics out of infrastructure spending by appointing an independent, expert group to scrutinise proposals and their business cases.
Sounds good. So, what does IA have to say about the business case for the SRL? In short, nothing. That’s because even though the project was announced on Daniel Andrews’ Facebook page – naturally – four years ago, his government has never asked IA to carry out an assessment of the business case.
Curious. Well, not really. Other experts bodies have scrutinised the SRL and what they’ve found isn’t pretty.
Firstly, the independent, apolitical Parliamentary Budget Office popped the bonnet. It found that the loop – well, just the first two thirds actually – will cost $125 billion to construct, a lazy $75 billion more than Andrews said the whole loop would cost. Whoops.
At a time when Victoria has more debt that New South Wales, Queensland, and Tasmania combined, and with interest rates rising further still, such reckless spending would be mad as a bag of bees.
Then Victoria’s Auditor General had a look as well. He found that the project will be staggeringly expensive and that, as a result, its Benefit-Cost Ratio is 51. That means the Victorian taxpayers’ return on investment will be 50 cents in the dollar – a catastrophic rate.
Given it is crystal clear the SRL doesn’t stack up, it’s odd that the federal government wants to sink over $2 billion into it – to say the least, all the while cutting $1 billion from other Victorian infrastructure projects.
But, for the SRL, that’s where the money will stop. Andrews and co. want a further $10 billion from the Feds. Yet Minister King – quite sensibly this time – has said she’ll only cough up more if Infrastructure Australia gives its seal of approval. Unless Albanese stacks out the board of IA (always a possibility, I suppose) this is never going to happen.
As a result, Victoria’s budget has a new $10 billion black hole. We’ve become rather desensitised to waste here in Victoria. The Andrews Labor government has already wasted over $30 billion of taxpayers’ money on blowouts on major projects.
That’s over $20,000 for every Victoria family; more when you factor in the, rapidly rising, interest bill. That will look like small beer if Andrews wins next month’s election and starts constructing the SRL.
It’s interesting – over the last decade or so we’ve all started to care much less about debt and budget deficits. The recession of the 1990s and double-digit interest rates are a distant memory. Australia sailed through the Global Financial Crisis in much better shape than comparable countries, and many economists confidently predicted that the good times would just roll on.
But things have changed. Interest rates are rising and Victoria’s debt is so big, so unsustainable, that many people are rightly starting to worry. In my role as Shadow Minister for Youth I speak with groups of young people all the time.
I often hear about the need to address climate change and deliver better mental health support. But more than anything I hear about the state of the economy, the budget, and what this means for their futures.
They haven’t been conned. And nor should we be.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/victorias-infrastructure-con-job/
************************************1 November, 2022
Why do few people have positive views of Aborigines?
Noel Pearson says that few do and he is undoubtedly right. Helen Trinca below reinforces that point and tries to explain it. Her explnation is however a work of desperation. She mimics American blacks in saying it is all due to the past -- to the bad treatment of their ancestors. She appears unaware that NOBODY has had ancestors as badly treated as the Jews -- 4,000 years of persecution! -- and yet present-day Jews flourish mightily. Blaming the past is rubbish. It is the present that counts.
Psychological research has repeatedly shown that impressions we have of others are highly malleable. We are strongly influenced by what we have most recently seen. It even has a name: "The recency effect". Our views rapidly move towards what we ourseves have recently experienced. Expectations and stereotypes rapidly give way to actual experience. Some of the academic research findings to that effect is summarized here and here
So whatever view we have of Aborigines will be strongly founded in our experience of them. And we DO have some experiences of them, even in the cities. And if I can summarize that experiences briefly: We see them mainly as drunks and beggars and layabouts. We do not like WHITE drunks and beggars and layabouts so there is no likelihood that we would like that in blacks.
So why are so many blacks like that? No mystery. They are the victims of their separate development (Yes. I know of another usage of that phrase). For 60,000 years, they have evolved in geographical isolation as superb hunter gatherers and have some quite eeries abilities in consequence of that. But they have NOT evolved the abilities that allow them to fit in easily with the differently evolved people of the Eurasian continent. They are like fish out of water in a modern Western society. Many thousands of years of fierce competition among the many people of Eurasia has enforced an adaptive evolution in them that very few Aborigines can easily co-exist with. They don't "fit in".
Just a final and relatively minor point: Trinca mentions the hard time that football fans gave Aboriginal player Adam Goodes and blames it on racial prejudice. She omits much in that. See here and here
Noel Pearson opened a new front in the story of Indigenous Australia when he used his first ABC Radio National Boyer Lecture to talk about the unpopularity of First Nations people.
It was a shocking statement that came early in Pearson’s impressive opener to the four-lecture series delivered first on television on October 27 and repeated on radio on Sunday, and it’s worth quoting at length
“We are a much unloved people,” Pearson said. “We are perhaps the ethnic group Australians feel least connected to. We are not popular and we are not personally known to many Australians. Few have met us and a small minority count us as friends. And despite never having met any of us and knowing very little about us other than what is in the media and what WEH Stanner, whose 1968 Boyer Lectures loom large over my lectures, called ‘folklore’ about us, Australians hold and express strong views about us, the great proportion of which is negative and unfriendly.
“It has ever been thus. Worse in the past but still true today. If success in the forthcoming referendum is predicated on our popularity as a people, then it is doubtful we will succeed. It does not and will not take much to mobilise antipathy against Aboriginal people and to conjure the worst imaginings about us and the recognition we seek. For those who wish to oppose our recognition it will be like shooting fish in a barrel. An inane thing to do – but easy. A heartless thing to do – but easy.”
Many non-Indigenous Australians would have felt a stab of recognition on hearing those words but, worse still, despair for the future. Pearson was calling it as it is, not in anger but with a profoundly sad pragmatism that reminds us that he is not just good at rhetoric, he’s also a good thinker.
Pearson is urging us to go beyond the truth that racism has in various ways helped shape many views of Indigenous people to a more subtle but perhaps more damaging truth – that lack of familiarity and friendship with First Peoples could determine votes in the referendum on the advisory body, the voice to parliament.
The 2022 Boyer lecturer drew on the horrible sledging of former AFL great Adam Goodes to make his point. What happened to the footballer reminded Pearson of the trouble people had with Indigenous Australians, trouble that could readily be called racism and “certainly racism is much to do with it, but the reality is not that simple”.
“Unlike same-sex marriage there is not the requisite empathy of love to break through the prejudice, contempt and, yes, violence of the past. Australians simply do not have Aboriginal people within their circles of family and friendship with whom they can share fellow feeling.” It does not detract from the truth of Pearson’s comments to see this as an inspired tactic – sidelining the unhelpful argument about what is or is not racially motivated behaviour and staking out far less threatening ground for a conversation with opponents of the voice. Yet it has rarely, if ever, been articulated.
Most non-Indigenous Australians – even those committed to the voice and a treaty, those who value the deep culture of Aboriginal people; those who want in every way to atone for the wrongs of the past – know Pearson is right when he says Aboriginal people are simply not in the friendship and family groups of the overwhelming number of Australians.
It is difficult for many non-Indigenous Australians to even meet an Aboriginal person, given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders comprise less than 4 per cent of the population. Many Australians will never see an Indigenous Australian other than in a media photograph or on television. Views are formed through news stories or cultural products such as paintings, dance, literature, film and music or exhibitions or books. There’s sport of course, the great Australian equaliser, which allows for largely positive recognition – except in cases such as that of Goodes. In country areas, First Nations people are more visible, but again class, economic differences and the social problems in many Indigenous communities mean the distances between the groups can be even more pronounced. The reality is unless you work in the arts, universities, the public service, or you are an elite sports person, you may have little chance of finding an Indigenous friend. It’s very different when it comes to homosexual people, for example.
A colleague reminds me that more than a decade ago we were at an election event at Rooty Hill in outer suburban Sydney when a woman got to her feet and asked Julia Gillard, the prime minister at the time, why she could not marry her same-sex partner. The crowd erupted with clapping and one knew then the experience of many families was dramatically shifting attitudes. Legislating for same-sex marriage is not the same as amending the Constitution, but Pearson’s point is well made.
Time, then, to come to terms with the reasons behind this “enduring antipathy against my people” – in short, that the colonial project required the first settlers to deny the rights of Aboriginal people to succeed. There are other reasons why Indigenous Australians may not be popular, but terra nullius underpins them all. That original denial and its tragic consequences are well documented yet still so little understood by many Australians offered little or inadequate history across so many decades. Australians need to accept and absorb this if we are to have any chance of exercising good judgment in the forthcoming referendum.
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Greenie fanaticism in the schools is hurting kids
The Age of Anxiety has dawned. While this may be easy to dismiss as a natural corollary of the recent pandemic, when one looks a little closer, it’s not hard to see where this phenomenon manifested and where it is sustained.
In 2021, The Lancet published a global survey of responses from 10,000 young people, aged 16–25 years from Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and America.
The survey found that 84 per cent of young people aged between 16-25 were ‘moderately to extremely worried’ about climate change. More than 50 per cent of respondents reported feeling sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.
Over 75 per cent said that they think the future is ‘frightening’. Climate anxiety and distress were correlated with perceived inadequate government response and associated feelings of betrayal.
Yet despite decades of technological and medical advances and the raising of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the natural question that arises is, where did this anxiety come from?
You need look no further than our education system and what is being taught to students of all ages on a daily basis.
For years the University of Sydney’s Environment Institute (SEI) has been at the forefront of Woke ideology and radical climate activism. According to the SEI’s worldview, radical climate activism is an antidote to falling education standards and eco-related mental health problems.
Ultimately, activism-driven anxiety is a product of the left-wing vanity project to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050.
It’s a dream being fuelled by Australia’s oldest and most prestigious sandstone university and its treatment of the climate debate.
Who cares about numeracy and literacy? We have a global apocalypse on our hands! This is the mantra repeated by the Greta Thunbergs of the world and supported by SEI research.
The upshot: schools should be replaced with climate activism camps.
According to SEI Postdoctoral Fellow Blanche Verlie and Melbourne University’s Alicia Flynn, ‘ecocidal global socio-economic systems’ can be blamed for most problems in the modern world.
Verlie and Flynn ask, ‘What if education is not the solution, but part of the problem?’
They question whether education has ‘young people’s best interests at heart’ and claim schools constrain ‘cultural and political agency and effect’.
‘The transformative response is to reorient educational structures, practices, and relations towards those that sustain life on Earth. It is time for education to reckon with its role in the climate crisis and its entanglement within colonial-capitalist extractivism.’
In other words, the likes of Verlie and Flynn believe schools should be turned into centres where future social justice warriors can be trained the transform the ‘ecocidal’ structures from within.
Verlie and Flynn also remain stubbornly attached to the notion that there is ‘insufficient climate change education in schools’.
Perhaps they have not read the latest version of the National Curriculum, which is liberally littered with environmental content, thanks to the presence of ideologically driven cross-curriculum priorities like ‘sustainability’.
The criticism doesn’t just stop at schools, it extends to universities as well.
‘Our ecocidal global socio-economic systems (namely colonial-capitalism) are largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs,’ Verlie and Flynn claim. ‘The transformative response is to reorient educational structures, practices, and relations towards those that sustain life on Earth.’
Well then, out with the old and in with the new!
Such extreme rejection of the Western intellectual tradition also undermines the SEI’s role as a department of research, but we cannot be surprised. After all, it was the University of Sydney that promoted the Unlearn campaign encouraging students to ‘demolish social norms and rebuild new ones in their place’.
To promote research and innovation, the University of Sydney said that preconceived ideas about ‘truth’, ‘love’, ‘medicine’, and ‘criminal’ must be questioned. Calling for students to ‘unlearn’ basic fundamental ideas of knowledge will leave young and impressionable Australians unaware of the basic principles which built our way of knowing and way of life.
Similarly, advising students – terrified that the end of the world is nigh – to attend climate rallies, is a recipe for disaster.
More activism is the last thing that Australian children need at school right now. The most recent report from the OECD Program for International Student Assessment confirmed that Australia has continued its 20-year decline in education standards.
Throwing education out the window entirely and replacing it with more climate activism is not the answer. Neither is it the answer to the growing mental health crisis among younger generations.
The educated SEI elite, living in a world of ideas, rather than reality, must start to present real solutions to the problems they identify.
Obliterating the entire ‘ecocidal’ system which includes Western literature, culture, education, morals, values, institutions – to make way for a green new world – is a fine example of Einstein’s observation of infinite ‘human stupidity’, not progress.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/the-kids-arent-alright-2/ ?
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Is Mt Warning closure anything other than reverse racism?
Another small slice of Australia was roped off the other day, reserved for the enjoyment of a few and off-limits to the community at large.
It occurred just across the border in the Tweed Valley with the permanent closure of the National Parks and Wildlife Service’s Mt Warning hiking trail following a claim by a group of Indigenous people that it was not “culturally appropriate” for non-Indigenous Australians to walk the trail or climb the mountain.
World heritage-listed Mt Warning is the first point in Australia to catch the day’s sunrise and has been popular with hikers for decades.
But according to the self-named Indigenous Wollumbin Consultative Group, “public access is not culturally appropriate or culturally safe”.
“Wollumbin should not be a recreational space for the public to visit or use for tourism, including use of the image of Wollumbin for advertising purposes,” it declared, demanding the immediate closure of the site.
Predictably, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which has been denying rumours of a proposed closure for the past year, rolled over and shut the gates.
No case had to be made. Just a demand by an unelected body to lock out all non-Indigenous people.
Local Indigenous leader Fiona Noble has questioned the processes of the WCG and the lack of consultation and says that “false naming and false stories” are being used to ban access to the region’s natural attractions.
Local businesswoman Peggy Lemaire says up to 90 per cent of the area’s national parks could not be accessed and that locals had rarely been informed in advance of a series of arbitrary site closures over the past three years.
Meanwhile, over on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland Parks and Wildlife has stipulated that part of a popular camping and fishing spot about 10km south of Dunwich be reserved for the exclusive use of local Indigenous people.
QPWS has said that the new rules provided “an opportunity for all Queenslanders, including the Quandamooka People, to immerse themselves in this unique natural and cultural setting.” It is difficult to see how it is an opportunity for “all Queenslanders” when the site is divided along racial lines.
Were a caravan or camping park operator to divide their property into White and Non-White sections, there would be justifiable outrage.
But when the reverse occurs, everyone looks the other way.
Some, including former local federal MP Andrew Laming, have called the move reverse racism. “If we’re really serious about reconciliation, why wouldn’t you share the site and camp together?” he asks.
In Victoria, the trend is the same as large areas of national parkland popular with hikers and rock climbers are gradually been closed to non-Indigenous people on cultural grounds.
In Queensland, it’s only a matter of time before Mt Tibrogargan, just north of Brisbane in the Glass House Mountains National Park, is closed to anyone who can’t claim Aboriginal heritage and it would naive to think that what is happening on North Stradbroke Island will not spread to Moreton Island and Fraser Island.
No one is in the business of denying the embrace and celebration of culture but it’s a strange thing when a particular group declares that the only way it can preserve its culture is by erecting racial borders.
The debate surrounding the referendum seeking approval or disapproval of the establishment of an Indigenous-only voice to parliament is gathering momentum.
If approved, it seems that it will only add to the Them and Us attitude that is becoming pervasive and which creates division while preaching inclusion.
The creation of a publicly funded body elected only by non-Indigenous voters in 2022 is unthinkable, yet we are told by some that the reverse, creating two classes of Australians, would be a good outcome.
Many years ago, as a callow youth wandering wide-eyed around the US on my first trip overseas, I walked into a cafe in the main street of a town in Mississippi. The black American man behind the cafe counter took one look at me and said: “Boy, ya’all got y’self in the wrong place.”
He was right. I’d unknowingly walked into the Blacks Only eatery. The Whites Only one was a little further down the street, past the Whites Only park bench and the Whites Only water fountain.
I remember thinking back then that you would never see Australia allow divisions to be put in place which were decided by race.
How wrong I was.
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‘Cheaper childcare’ to get more Qld mums, dads back to work
More than 7000 Queenslanders will be able to get back into workforce, amid a labour shortage, off the back of Labor’s childcare reforms, the federal Treasurer claims
Positive predictions by politicians are usually to be viewed skeptically and this one is no exception. Cheaper care will mean more demand and, under existing regulations, that will require more staff to be hired. So the new measures will both expand and reduce the available workforce. Which number will be greatest? Who knows?
More than 7000 Queenslanders will be able to get back into workforce, amid a labour shortage, off the back of Labor’s childcare reforms according to new data from Treasury.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers seized on that data as he began his post-budget sales pitch.
He started a budget roadshow in Brisbane on Monday, as he prepared to hit five cities in four days.
Dr Chalmers is seeking to sell a “family-friendly budget”, after the nation’s finances last week revealed gloomy economic figures and rising inflation preventing the Albanese government from using cash handouts to ease growing cost-of-living pressures.
Labor’s policy to increase the maximum childcare subsidy to 90 per cent, while increasing the subsidy rate for all families earning up to $530,000 a year, will benefit up to 280,000 Queensland families, according to the data.
But Dr Chalmers said it meant more Queensland mums and dads would be able to get back to work sooner or do more hours – the equivalent of 7000 full-time staff across a range of fields.
“With high and rising inflation and rising interest rates, we know that Queensland families are doing it incredibly tough right now, which is why our family-friendly budget is focused on responsible cost-of-living relief that doesn’t make our inflationary challenge worse,” he said.
“Cheaper childcare is cost-of-living relief with an economic dividend – easing pressures on families while unlocking thousands of workers for Queensland businesses.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said young families, self-funded retirees and pensioners were feeling real pressure at the moment.
“A lot of people heard the Prime Minister on many occasions – in fact, 97 occasions – say before the election that power prices would go down by $275,” Mr Dutton said.
“Now, the problem is that the Prime Minister has never mentioned that figure since the election.
“I think there is a level of growing disenchantment of people who are really dismayed that the Prime Minister was so adamant that he was able to deliver this promise, and people voted for him on that basis, and now, it really becomes a question of trust.”
Dr Chalmers also revealed money in the budget meant there would be 2811 additional places at Queensland universities.
This includes 932 places at Southern Cross University, 780 at the Queensland University of Technology, 379 at the University of Queensland, 364 at Central Queensland University, 123 at James Cook University, 120 at the University of the Sunshine Coast and 113 at the University of Southern Queensland.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Sidebars
The notes and pix appearing in the sidebar of the blog that is reproduced above are not reproduced here. The sidebar for this blog can however be found in my archive of sidebars
Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used my blogs in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and clicking will bring the picture up. See here (2021). See also here (2020).
My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; My Alternative Wikipedia; My Blogroll; Menu of my longer writings; Subject index to my short notes. My annual picture page is here; My Recipes;
Email me (John Ray) here.