This document is part of an archive of postings on Australian Politics, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written. My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. My Blogroll. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this document.

Two of my ancestors were convicts so my family has been in Australia for a long time. As well as that, all four of my grandparents were born in the State where I was born and still live: Queensland. And I am even a member of the world's second-most condemned minority: WASPs (the most condemned is of course the Jews -- which may be why I tend to like Jews). So I think I am as Australian as you can get. I certainly feel that way. I like all things that are iconically Australian: meat pies, Vegemite, Henry Lawson etc. I particularly pride myself on my familiarity with the great Australian slanguage. I draw the line at Iced Vo-Vos and betting on the neddies, however. So if I cannot comment insightfully on Australian affairs, who could?

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31 December, 2019

Disgrace:  Leftist Qld. Premier rejects cash for firefighters on a technicality

After much anticipation over the public pressure to support our Australian firefighters on the front line, Scott Morrison finally announced that volunteer firefighters will get to see some financial relief.

At the moment, the payments will be available to Rural Fire Service NSW volunteers who are self-employed or work for small and medium businesses. These firefighters will be able to access payments worth up to $300 a day, capped at a maximum of $6000 if they have served for more than 10 days fighting the current fires.

Mr Morrison extended the scheme to other states and territories who wished to participate, with the federal government setting aside $50 million for the cause.

But, it has been revealed that Queensland volunteer firefighters might not receive the $6000 cash boost offered to them. Queensland has not signed off on the proposal and implied Mr Morrison was disappointed by the decision.

The publication said that Annastacia Palaszczuk's government had so far refused to give the funding the go ahead because it was not a national scheme and was being offered to each state individually. 

Both South Australia and Victoria have confirmed that their firefighters will receive the money.

But on Monday, Ms Palaszczuk says she did not turn down the offer of compensation for volunteer firefighters in Queensland on Monday morning. "Queensland's volunteer firefighters deserve the same level of federal government support as do other volunteer firefighters across the country," Ms Palaszczuk said in a statement.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said it is important for firefighters to receive compensation but agrees it needs to be made nation-wide.

"One of the things I know from being on the ground on the north coast, in Queensland, on the South Coast, is that many firefighters are travelling from interstate," he told the Today Show.

"These fires don't recognise State boundaries and nor do firefighters, I've got to say. That's why it needs a national approach."

SOURCE  






Proposed Queensland water reforms anger graziers

Aims to "protect" rivers.  Protect them from what?  From being used, most likely

Farmers fear their livelihood could be undermined by the Palaszczuk government’s “sneaky” pre-Christmas announcement that it would review the management of some of the best cattle grazing country in Queensland.

State Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch released a scantly detailed statement on December 20 saying the government was consulting “with stakeholders” to protect the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin under the Regional Planning Interests Act.

The catchment for the giant salt lake in South Australia runs through some of the Queensland outback’s prime cattle grazing country.

It is understood the government has been working on the proposed reform for at least six months, with input coming from green groups, traditional owners and farming groups.

Graziers fear the legislation will be a significant reform with far-reaching consequences.

Birdsville grazier David Brook, who is also the chairman of OBE Organic, a beef supply company that gets most of its products from properties within the Lake Eyre basin, said farmers were confused by the government’s statement and had not been able to get more details over the Christmas break.

“We’re in the middle of a terrible drought, and the government’s Christmas present is to give no notice to potentially hundreds of impacted outback graziers that the way they run their business is about to be changed,” he said.

OBE Organic managing director Dalene Wray said the government needed to provide more details about the proposal.

“We’re concerned that poor timing, unreasonably and unnecessarily short timeframes, and an inadequate consultation process may lead to significant and avoidable mistakes by bureaucrats when determining the most ­appropriate administration of this pristine region,” Ms Wray said.

The pristine basin, which covers a sixth of the Australian landmass, is one of the world’s largest internally-draining river systems.

The water that fills the lake usually falls hundreds of kilo­metres from the shallow lake, draining the low-lying plains around the meeting points of the Queensland, NSW, Northern Territory and South Australian borders. Much of the water that falls in the basin never reaches the lake and is swallowed by the desert channels.

Ms Enoch said the consultation process was to fulfil a 2017 election commitment to protect Queensland’s rivers.

“The proposed framework will increase protections for streams and floodplains in the Queensland section of the Lake Eyre Basin, since those protections were removed by the former LNP government,” she said.

“We are going to work in partnership with First Nations peoples and support their establishment of the Lake Eyre Basin Traditional Owner Alliance, which will have an active role in the decision-making and management of the area.”

Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham said it was vital to strike a “balance between economic prosperity and ecological sustainability”.

Agriculture lobby group ­AgForce accused the government of a “sham” consultation process and conducting “secret meetings with green activists groups”.

Chief executive Michael Guerin said the government had used the cover of Christmas to draw ­attention away from the reform.

“They have deliberately made the submission time so short and over the Christmas holiday period, to ensure few or no submissions are received,” he said.

“It is hard to overstate how dodgy the process is. The Lake Eyre Basin legislation could lock up huge tracts of inland Queensland from agricultural or resource developments, which may have a huge impact on the very survival of farm businesses and towns in the region.”

Diamantina Shire Council mayor Geoff Morton said it was “a bit sneaky” of the government to release the announcement so close to Christmas. “They obviously don’t want people to study it with too much detail,” he said.

Mr Morton, who runs the 518,000ha Roseberth Station near Birdsville, said he was not aware of what impact the reform would have on his livelihood.

SOURCE  






A new voice for class teachers

Australian education could benefit from a shake-up of teachers’ unions, many of which oppose NAPLAN testing, reject the idea of merit pay for the best and brightest teachers, embrace fads such as critical literacy in English teaching and support students’ climate change boycotts of classes. Teachers’ unions are also highly politicised, backing Labor’s push to pour billions of dollars extra into the education system, despite classroom standards declining amid vast spending increases.

But the unions have baulked at efforts to promote phonics in early reading teaching, despite overwhelming evidence that it is the most efficient way to redress Australia’s poor performance in literacy.

Against that background, an interesting, fledgling development is under way in Queensland. Craig Johnstone reports on Monday that moves to break the stranglehold of political and industrial influence by Labor-leaning unions have taken another step. A new body, the Teachers Professional Association of Queensland, is promising lower fees and a ban on political donations to attract members.

The TPAQ has signed up about 100 members since its launch earlier this month. At this stage, it is no threat to the 47,000-strong Queensland Teachers Union. But it is modelled on the Nurses Professional Association of Queensland, which was formed six years ago as a rival to the Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union. It has grown to 5000 members. The QTU insists it is not affiliated with any political party. But it is affiliated with the Queensland Council of Unions, a major donor to the ALP.

If the new group is to succeed it must offer teachers better services and value, for which it is planning to charge a flat fee. Conscientious teachers would also appreciate their professional body taking a more constructive approach to the chronic problems in education.

As reported on Saturday, more than half the students offered building apprenticeships do not complete their courses because they lack basic skills in key subjects, such as maths. A teachers’ union with a better focus should be part of the solution, not the problem.

SOURCE  






Our charming African refugees again

Their way of thanking us for giving them refuge

Beloved grandfather, 50, left brain-dead with just hours to live after being 'stomped on and beaten with baseball bats' by gang of 10-15 youths outside his home after Christmas Day with his family

Brother-in-law said gang of 10-15 'African guys' set upon the family in the street

A 50-year-old grandfather who was allegedly bashed with baseball bats outside his home in a Christmas Day dispute with neighbours will have his life support switched off.

Anthony Clark, 50, was allegedly 'thrown around like a rag doll', stomped on and hit with bats in the street outside his home at Moorolbark in Melbourne's outer eastern suburbs shortly before 11pm.

His wife was also knocked out in their driveway and Mr Clark's stepdaughter Jessikah Clark said he was 'pretty much gone'.

'My daughter's lost her everything now. She just wants her poppy to come home and he's never going to come home,' Ms Clark told Nine News.

'My mum is worried about everyone and is just lying there with him praying. But he's pretty much gone that's it.'

'We have lost the best man in our whole lives,' Ms Clarke told the Herald Sun.

'No-one should have to die on Christmas Day just for looking after his wife and kids.'

The man's family was scheduled to arrive from Ireland and Canada on Sunday after which Mr Clarke's life support will be switched off. 

The violence began as the family were saying their farewells on the street and fireworks were let off, causing a dog to bark and the owners to get angry, Jessikah Clark said.

The family said a gang of youths with weapons, including bats and metal bars, were involved in the attack.

Ms Clark also claimed there were about '15 men' that set up on them she and her mother were hit.

'They had bats...they smashed my car and they threw mum around like a rag doll.' 

Mr Clark was allegedly confronted by a large group of men during the massive brawl.

His wife and 25-year-old stepdaughter were also allegedly attacked, his brother-in-law Mark told 3AW. 

'He's a gentle giant, and he was brutally, and I mean, savagely, attacked,' he said.

'A whole gang of African guys, ranging from teenage to mid-20s, approximately 10-15 of them with cars and baseball bats, attacked him, knocked my sister out.'

Mark said he believed his brother-in-law was trying to shield his baby during the brutal attack.

'They knocked my sister out, and had my niece - from what I understand - by the hair,' he told 3AW.

The man was repeatedly bashed in the head and was taken to hospital in a critical condition and placed in intensive care.

The family said there was no hope of recovery and his life-support will be turned off.

His wife suffered minor injuries and has been by his side at the hospital ever since.

An 18-year-old man was arrested but was later released.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






30 December, 2019

Scott Morrison Defies ‘Reckless’ Climate Protesters, Backs Coal Exports as Demand Soars

Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed calls from radical climate activists to end the export of coal – an industry worth $67billion a year to the nation’s economy – as a new report shows global demand is set to keep increasing over the next decade and beyond.

Strong demand from China and India for this electricity-generating commodity is driving the growth. Morrison wants Australia to maintain its edge by staying a key exporter and protecting the jobs of Australians who rely on the coal mining industry for their future and their financial security.

Nationally, the coal mining industry employs 50,400 people, when thermal and coking operations were combined, Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force data for November showed, with exports going mainly to China, India, Korea, Japan and Chile.

The conservative coalition leader spoke on the back of protests last week that called for Australia to end coal exports to ease pressure on the climate.

Morrison, who once once famously brandished a lump of coal in parliament, crying, “This is coal – don’t be afraid!” vowed those climate protesters – including Greta Thunberg  – would not be dictating energy or trade policy.

“I never panic,” he told the local Sunrise program last week. “I don’t think panicking is to way to manage anything and the urge for panic that has come from some, often politically motivated, to pursue a particular agenda is not something I’m ever intimidated by or distracted by.”

“We won’t embrace reckless targets and abandon our traditional industries that would risk Australian jobs while having no meaningful impact on the global climate,” he said in an opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph.

“In short, we will continue to act responsibly on climate change, avoiding extreme responses and get the balance right.”

He spoke just days after a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed Australia’s coal exports are expected to rise over the next five years on the back of growing demand from Asia.

The report, published by the IEA on 17 December, found demand for coal in India could rise by 4.6 percent by 2024 and by 5 percent in Indonesia and Vietnam. As a result, Australia’s total coal production is expected to rise 1.4 percent annually from 409 million t in 2018 to 444 million t in 2024.

Coal exports were worth an estimated AUS$67 billion (US$45.9 billion) to the nation’s economy in the 2018 – 2019 financial year, overtaking iron ore as Australia’s most valuable export.

Matt Canavan, Australia’s Minister for Resources, said the report supported the need for new coal mines in the states of New South Wales and Queensland. He commented: “We will need more than Adani,” referring to the Carmichael coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.

The Adani mine, which received final environmental approval in June, is expected to produce at least 10 million t of thermal coal every year.

SOURCE  





NSW volunteer firefighters to be paid in fair dinkum scheme

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has urged other states to follow NSW’s lead and sign up to a scheme that will pay volunteer firefighters up to $300 a day to cover lost income while fighting fires.

Mr Morrison defended the “fair dinkum” scheme as a well-considered process for compensating volunteers for lost income, not paying them to turn out. “This is about helping fight the fires,” he told a media conference on Sunday.

“This basically equates to around 20 days of emergency services paid leave for self-employed people and for people working for small and medium-sized employers,” he said in Sydney on Sunday.

“We have carefully worked through how best to deal with the issue of income loss that has been suffered as a result of people stepping up to defend their communities.”

Mr Morrison’s comments came after the federal government announced the payments of up to $300 per day will be available to Rural Fire Service NSW volunteers who are self-employed or work for small and medium businesses. They will be capped at $6000 per person.

It also follows the government’s announcement last week that Commonwealth public service volunteers would get at least four weeks of paid leave to fight bushfires, which continue to rage across parts of NSW. Fires this season have already cost eight lives, 1000 homes and burned through millions of hectares of bushland. More than 100 fires continue to burn and weather conditions are set to worsen over the next 48 hours.

Mr Morrison said that the government had entered into the arrangement with NSW, which will administer the payments on behalf of the Commonwealth, on the expectation that other states would also sign up.

However, he stressed that decisions needed to be made by each of the states, which had jurisdiction over fire fighting authorities.

Mr Morrison also pointed out that while firefighters had not been asking for compensation. “I haven’t had volunteer firefighters say they want to be paid,” he said. “I do know … particularly for self-employed people this is really starting to bite and really having an impact.”

SOURCE  






Parents outraged as Hillsong church caught recruiting in Queensland public high schools

Constant Leftist preaching of sexual perversion in the schools is OK but Christian preaching is not?

Controversial megachurch Hillsong has pulled a page on its website detailing plans to recruit teenagers in state schools across NSW, Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory in 2020.

The information was pulled on Wednesday, three days after a group of angry parents in Melbourne began a change.org petition calling on federal and state education ministers to ban the evangelical movement from proselytising in public high schools.

The petition has attracted more than 13,000 signatures since it was launched on Monday.

Information retrieved by 7NEWS.com.au through Google Cache shows the Hillsong Youth Schools Tour has already provided "life-giving messages about our lord" to 34,000 school students, including teenagers in at least three government schools in Queensland.

Until the site was disabled on Wednesday, it was running testimonials from the three schools' chaplains, who are funded under the federal government's National School Chaplaincy Program.

The program, which was recently expanded to $247 million over four years (2019-2022), stipulates that chaplains must not proselytise and must "respect, accept and be sensitive to other people’s views, values and beliefs".

Melbourne mother Fiona Newton, co-author of the petition to stop evangelising in public schools, said Hillsong's well-known hostility towards the LGBTI community had no place in the public education system.

The church campaigned against the same sex marriage bill and has been embroiled in the past with discredited gay conversion therapy.

"I grew up in a Pentecostal church, I know how they operate," Newton told 7NEWS.com.au.

"I'm now in a same sex relationship myself and I want my son to feel safe at his public school, that he won't be exposed to a religion that is anti-LGBTI."

"When you enrol your child in a secular public school you expect it to be free of any sort of religion.

"But Hillsong's mission is a clear and obvious mission of recruitment."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has credited Hillsong's founder, Brian Houston, as his spiritual mentor.

Morrison is not a member of Hillsong, which was founded in Sydney's north west and now has about 80 megachurches in more than 19 countries.

The prime minister attends a different Pentecostal church called Horizon in Sydney's south, which shares with Hillsong an affiliation under the Australian Christian Churches banner.

Morrison's friendship with Houston has attracted considerable criticism because the wealthy pastor was adversely named in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

That inquiry recommended Houston be investigated for failing to report to police his father Frank Houston, a self-confessed paedophile, for crimes committed while Frank Houston was an Assemblies of God minister.

NSW Police confirmed to 7NEWS.com.au on Wednesday that the Hills Police Area Command is still investigating Brian Houston.

Brisbane public relations operator Lyle Mercer, who handles media queries for Hillsong, would not say why the church pulled details of its 2020 schools tour plan from the website.

"Schools across Australia offer various optional activities to students," Mercer said in a statement provided to 7NEWS.com.au.

"Hillsong – like many other outside organisations – has for many years created programs that provide students with positive values and in many situations these don’t even mention Christianity.

"These are done in student time and are always optional.

SOURCE  






Green ideology, not climate change, makes bushfires worse

The article by Miranda Devine below is from March 5, 2019 but it has lost none of its relevance

Melissa Price, the new federal Environment Minister, has done untold political damage to a government already divided over climate action by spouting idiotic green propaganda about Victoria’s bushfires.

On Tuesday, she linked the fires to climate change, claiming there is “no doubt” of its impact on Australia.

“There’s no doubt that there’s many people who have suffered over this summer. We talk about the Victorian bushfires … There’s no doubt that climate change is having an impact on us. There’s no denying that.”

Sorry, minister, it wasn’t climate change that caused the latest bushfires which have so far destroyed nine homes in Victoria, and it wasn’t climate change that killed almost 200 people in the Black Saturday fires ten years ago.

The real culprit is green ideology which opposes the necessary hazard reduction of fuel loads in national parks and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation around their homes.

The ongoing poor management of national parks and state forests in Victoria and green obstruction of fire mitigation strategies has led to dangerously high fuel loads over the past decade.

That means that when fires do inevitably break out they are so intense that they are devilishly difficult for firefighters to contain. As a federal parliamentary inquiry heard in 2003, if you quadruple the ground fuel, you get a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.

Locals know the truth. Andrew Clarke, owner of Jinks Creek Winery, which has been destroyed by a fire which raged out of the Bunyip State Forest, “begged” for fuel reduction burns to protect his property.

“I’ve been begging them [Forest Fire Management Victoria] for 20 years to burn off the state forest at the back of our place and still to this day it hasn’t happened,” he told the ABC’s Country Hour.

Clarke said a planned burn-off was called off because of concerns about nesting birds.

So how did that work out for the birds?

Hundreds of emergency workers have worked across Victoria throughout the week to bring fires under control. Picture: AAP / David Crosling
Just three weeks ago, Victoria’s former chief fire officer Ewan Waller warned that state forest fuel loads were reaching deadly, Black Saturday levels. No one paid any attention.

But you can bet Premier Daniel Andrews will hide behind the climate change furphy.

Parroting green lies suits politicians because then they can avoid blame for their own culpability.

The Black Saturday Bushfire Royal Commission criticised the Victorian government for its failure to reduce fuel loads in state forests. It recommended more than doubling the amount of hazard reduction burns.

Instead, in the last three years, alone, the Andrews government has slashed the amount of public land being hazard reduced by almost two thirds.

It’s a crime.

The wonder is that the Morrison government is helping him with his alibi.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here







29 December, 2019

Activists hijack worthy groups like the AMA, RSPCA

MAURICE NEWMAN

It is understandable that, across the world, trusted organisations have become havens for left-wing activists. After all, the reputation of venerable institutions precedes them, making them ideal Trojan horses in the battle for ideas.

Take the Australian Medical Association. It is presumed to be the voice of the nation’s medical profession. Perhaps it is. But gone is the heyday of the 1960s when 95 per cent of medical practitioners were members. Today, a mere 20,215 doctors, or about 19 per cent of registered practitioners, belong. So it’s far from clear the AMA represents the views of most practising doctors.

Yet it remains influential in public health in a left-wing kind of way, and increasingly fancies ­itself more generally. But, then, health — like the environment — can be weaponised to bring pressure on legislators on a range of social and economic issues, and the AMA’s leadership knows this.

For example, it was a long-time campaigner for marriage equality, citing mental and physical health issues as reasons to vote for change. Yet, despite its advocacy and the publicity pushing for a Yes vote, last year, the first full year after legal recognition, when a surge in same sex-marriages would have been expected, only 6538 couples tied the knot. That’s only 5.5 per cent of all Australian marriages.

While the $100m spent on promotion, and the plebiscite itself, may have been well-intended, there is the matter of opportunity cost. With $100m, the AMA could have concentrated its time and resources arguing for less fashionable, all-embracing health priorities. ­Indeed, University of Sydney psychologists found that the increased exposure to negative messaging during the campaign added significantly to levels of ­depression, anxiety and other “psychological distress” for the gay, lesbian and bisexual community.

The AMA’s high-profile position on the Urgent Medical Treatment Bill, championed by then independent member for Wentworth and former AMA president Kerryn Phelps, seems to be ­another case of questionable judgment driven by politics. AMA president Tony Bartone argued: “There is compelling evidence that the asylum-seekers on Nauru, especially the children, are suffering from serious physical and mental health conditions, and they should be brought to Australia for appropriate quality care.” AMA federal executive member Paul Bauert compared offshore detainees to those ­interned under the Holocaust. Given the number of medical professionals on Nauru and the ­reality it is an open centre, that claim is obscene. Indeed, 40 of 300 refugees resettled in the US ­applied to return.

Twelve months after enactment, the medivac legislation was repealed. But not before 135 offshore detainees were transferred to the mainland for medical treatment. Only 13 were ­admitted to hospital. Five refused treatment altogether. One, ­despite allegedly being ­involved in 50 violent incidents, was admitted after botching a DIY penis ­enlargement.

It now seems clear the AMA’s primary motivation was political. By dramatising the health issues of offshore detainees, it sought to undermine Australia’s border ­security policies that had twice been endorsed by the electorate. Passing the bill may have been a momentary triumph for left-wing activism but, in so doing, the AMA nailed its true colours ­firmly to the mast.

On climate change, too, the AMA’s motives seem ideological. While Bartone says he relies on “empirical evidence”, he treads a well-worn alarmist path despite there being ample evidence to show some of his assertions are mistaken. He dwells on “significant linear associations between exposure to higher temperatures and greater mortality”, ignoring an international study published in The Lancet that finds cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather. Of course, to embrace The Lancet’s findings also would mean acknowledging that climate change policies were causing many needless deaths for the frail and elderly through increasingly unaffordable energy costs. How does this reconcile with the Hippocratic oath’s “First, do no harm”?

Just as the AMA exploits health for political purposes, so the RSPCA weapon­ises animals. Along with the Greens, Animals Australia and the Animal Justice Party, it has supported the abolition of horse racing, zoos, farming, fishing and the eating of meat.

In 2011 it campaigned with ­Animals Australia for the Gillard government to ban live cattle ­exports to Indonesia. In 2014 it co-sponsored a full-page advertisement in The Age supporting a Greens candidate for the Victorian elections. In 2017 it collaborated with Animals Australia and the ABC in a sensationalised documentary that resulted in NSW temporarily banning greyhound racing. Yet, when there are mass cattle deaths on ­indigenous properties in Western Australia because of “catastrophic failures” of cattle management, the RSPCA is strangely silent. WA farmers claim different standards apply when animal neglect occurs on indigenous-owned pastoral leases.

The RSPCA also was slow to declare its position on vegan ­activists breaking into farms and abattoirs. This follows its sister ­organisation calling for animal-rights protesters to shut down Britain’s top meat market. British animal rights activists claim veganism is the best way to save the planet. In Australia, the RSPCA also supports the “scientific consensus that climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, ­including electricity generation, agriculture (including livestock farming), industry, waste and land use”. It seems Australia’s RSPCA is preparing to follow its British counterpart’s lead.

By posing as wolves in sheep’s clothing, left-wing activists have been most effective in influencing political outcomes. And the AMA and RSPCA are just two of the many respected organisations captured. No longer should we ­assume trusted names are true to label.

SOURCE  







Religion is being ousted from the public square

Values: it is a term we hear a lot about these days. Many people, some of them writing for this newspaper, are crowing over a shift in public tolerance

The evidence for this, they assume, is the success of the Conservatives in the British election and, before that, the triumph of Donald Trump and the installation of our own conservative Morrison government.

Even the fact Israel Folau was able to elicit an apology and damages from Rugby Australia has comforted them that events here and abroad are indicative of this shift.

Forget about it. Why are people not asking, if that is so, why do we Australians have to pass a bill to guard the most fundamental of all our rights, the right to religious liberty?

We have never needed a bill for the protection of religious freedom in the past and we don't really need one now. But leaders of all the major religions are nervous that our current open and easy compact with religion will not last, and many individuals and religious bodies are fearful of the aggressive secularism that wants to expunge religion from the public square altogether.

Religious freedom is a fundamental "value" for a democracy. Yet it was a "values" campaign that made a religious freedom bill necessary in the virulently aggressive and overtly anti-religious campaign to change the meaning of marriage.

That campaign succeeded largely because many people who saw marriage as a purely legal form thought that the Yes vote would satisfy the gay lobby and "settle" the question. It hasn't settled anything, of course.

Most religious people abhor the concept and they don't see any reason they shouldn't say so in public, whether in schools, from the pulpit or on social media, and they rightly resent being forced into artificial lawfare to shut them up.

That is one reason for the bill. Religion is not a private matter. It is by definition public. One lives a faith. Hence people such as Folau, whether you agree with him or not, have suffered a great injustice. Folau wasn't given his job back, he can't play anywhere else and he could have expected better in a nation where free expression of religion or politics is supposedly the norm.

We know that this was done simply because the corporate masters of rugby didn't like what he said. No other players have been reprimanded for support of any social campaigns they approved of, whether it was gay marriage or against coal-seam gas — and never mind some players' dreadful off-field antics.

It is an appalling indictment on our so-called values that in the matter of free speech and religious values Australia has behaved in the Folau fiasco as badly as communist China. The parallel that highlights the extent of the injustice done to Folau is last week's case of the Muslim football player for Arsenal, Mesut Ozil, who tweeted against the Chinese treatment of the minority Uighurs. His protest caused that despotic government to punish him and the Football Association by cancelling the televised match. At least the player wasn't sacked by his own team and refused any outlet to play anywhere else, as was Folau.

Like it or loathe it, intruding into sport, whether it was diplomatic or dopey, the Arsenal player has a right to do that, as did Folau. But the Folau case is only one example where freedom of religion and conscience have been attacked in Australia. There have been other more serious cases, notably that of Catholic Archbishop of Hobart Julian Porteous, who faced anti-discrimination proceedings after disseminating a pamphlet on the Catholic doctrines of marriage.

Many readers may not realise the action was not brought against just him as an individual. As the pamphlet also was circulated by all the bishops in Australia.  If the case had succeeded it would have brought the entire Australian Catholic Bishops Conference to the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal. There was a real danger that one jumped-up tribunal could challenge a fundamental 2000-year-old teaching of the Catholic faith, not to mention the even older Jewish tradition, and Muslim too.

From The Weekend Australian of 21 December, 2019






RSPCA calls for South Australian rodeo to be cancelled

Nonsense.  Rodeos have never been for powder puffs.  Many RSPCA branches have been infiltrated by animal rights warriors and this looks like another instance of that

Heatwaves are a hallmark of an Australian summer. But they're getting hotter, becoming more frequent, and lasting longer.
The RSPCA wants one of the biggest night rodeos in South Australia to be postponed due to heat but organisers say it’s going ahead.

The leading animal welfare organisation is shocked Carrieton Rodeo won’t reschedule its Saturday night event as the day’s top temperature soars to 40C before dipping to 36C for a 6.30pm start.

“In the forecast conditions, it’s likely some animals will suffer heat stress but it will be difficult to verify how many have suffered or to what extent,” RSPCA’s Rebekah Eyers said.

“To demonstrate that animal welfare is a priority, we had hoped Australian Professional Rodeo Association and event organisers would follow the lead of other organisations using animals for entertainment, and cancel or reschedule the event.”

Club president Daniel Williams said the 67th annual rodeo was “absolutely going ahead” with up to 3000 people to attend and pump money into the drought-stricken town.

“It is an absolutely beautiful day. We have a water sprayer on hand if necessary and have the option of delaying if the heat is extreme,” Mr Williams told AAP. “They (the horses) are kept in excellent conditions, treated like royalty, get to run around.

“The RSPCA is an activist group that no one actually cares about these days ... their stated objective is to shut down rodeos.” The temperature in the far north South Australian town is due to hit 36C when the rodeo kicks-off, before quickly cooling down, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

“36C is quite reasonable for that time of day, but it will cool down pretty quickly so by midnight a temperature of 24C is expected,” a spokeswoman said. “Once the sun goes down it’ll be OK and they will get help from the sea breeze.”

There is no legally enforceable top temperature to prevent the animals from performing in rodeos across the state, and rodeos are legal events.

Even if the temperature drops, the RSPCA still has concerns about the transport and handling of animals to and from the event, risk of heat stress and other physical stress.

SOURCE  





GetUp stirs the climate claims of fire activists

The GetUp activist group is driving the campaign of some bushfire survivors who blame climate change for fires burning in southeast Australia and are calling for “100 per cent renewable energy for all”.

Key among demands of the Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action group is that the Morrison government curb the nation’s ­reliance on fossil fuels by vetoing development of the Adani coalmine in north Queensland — a campaign priority similar to GetUp’s own.

The bushfire survivors’ group gained national attention when it was launched in February with a personal endorsement from decorated former NSW Fire and Rescue commissioner Greg Mullins.

GetUp promoted the launch on its Twitter feed in advance, telling supporters Mr Mullins would join Bushfire Survivors for ­Climate Action at a press conference in Canberra.

Mr Mullins leads a group of ex-fire chiefs — Emergency Leaders for Climate Action — funded by Tim Flannery’s Climate Council. They have accused Scott Morrison of a “policy-free zone” on climate change and urged the government to respond to the bushfire crisis with curbs on carbon emissions. A spokesman for the former NSW fire chief stressed that, while not demurring from his support of the bushfire victims’ group, he had “no affiliation” with GetUp.

The GetUp website promoting Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action provides harrowing ­accounts of fire victims’ experiences. It seeks support for their cause and is authorised by GetUp’s ­national director, Paul Oosting.

The site says GetUp provides “in-kind support” while “ad hoc media support” comes from the Climate Media Centre.

Asking supporters to “join us” in urging the government to take action, Bushfire Survivors says the Morrison government can no longer ignore the way climate change is hurting communities. “They must take Australia ­beyond coal projects like Adani and move to 100 per cent renewable energy for all,” it states.

Prominent among the group’s survival stories is Lyn Trindall’s account of how she escaped her lower Blue Mountains home at Winmalee in October 2013. Ms Trindall, the local GetUp group co-ordinator and a former Blue Mountains councillor, tells of a frightening evacuation as the wheelchair she uses spilt into a garden bed and a fire team came to her aid.

Another survivor, ­retired teacher Janet Reynolds from Bega and a supporter of ­recent “school strike” protests over climate change, tells of confronting a wall of flames and fallen trees during her escape.

The fire chiefs group led by Mr Mullins has no direct link to GetUp but some of the Climate Council’s supporters and contractors do have GetUp connections. The Mullins group, with Climate Council support, is pledging to hold a national summit after the fire season has ended early next year to devise a strategy on combating future fires that would take account of climate change.

The Prime Minister has been criticised by both Mr Mullins and the Bushfire Survivors group for refusing to meet them.

Government insiders say Mr Morrison has been reluctant to kowtow to lobby groups linking climate change to bushfires.

His office is believed to be wary of the politics involved, arguing the groups’ associations with the Climate Council and GetUp as support organisations suggests they are anti-Coalition, leaning more to Labor or the Greens.

A Climate Council spokesman rejected claims of an “anti-­Coalition association”, saying his organisation was strictly non-­partisan.

SOURCE
 
 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






28 December, 2019

Greenies want global speed limits on roads

The Greenies are getting their meddling fingers into even more pies.  It's only a "declaration" that they are asking for  at this stage but once the declaration has been signed, governments will come under pressure to implement it

Hopefully, most governments  will foresee its unpopularity and kick the can down the road, in a way that governments are good at doing.  The 55mph limit that Nixon and Jimmy Carter imposed on Americans was hugely unpopular so was eventually rescinded -- by Bill Clinton

Australia is preparing to sign an international road safety declaration in Sweden that endorses a 30km/h limit on suburban roads in response to "traffic injuries, air quality and climate change".

Nationals leader Michael Mc-Cormack is scheduled to attend a global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety on February 19, where he will join other transport and infrastructure ministers in ratifying the Stockholm Declaration, which will be referred to the UN.

A draft obtained by The Weekend Australian includes a preamble recommending integration of road safety with UN Sustainable Development Goals, including climate action, gender equality and reduced inequalities targets. The summit is expected to endorse speeding up the "shift toward cleaner, safer and more affordable modes of transport, incorporating higher levels of physical activity such as walking, cycling and using public transit".

Clause seven of the draft declaration suggests mandating lower speeds on urban roads, which would have a significant impact on Australian residential limits, currently 50km/h. It resolves to strengthen "law enforcement to ensure zero speeding and mandate a maximum road travel speed limit of 30km/h ... in residential areas and urban neighbourhoods within cities as efforts to reduce speed will have an impact on both road traffic injuries, air quality and climate change".

The two-day road safety summit, which includes sessions with Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and Prince Michael of Kent, will also focus on "sustainable transport. The Stockholm Declaration calls on public and private organisations to purchase "safe and sustainable vehicle fleets".

It flags addressing "the connections between road safety, mental and physical health, development, education; equity, gender equality, environment and climate change". A spokesman for Mr McCormack said the Deputy Prime Minister "has had no approval or input into the wording of the current draft text". "The draft Stockholm Declaration will be considered at the Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in February," he said.

Despite The Weekend Australian understanding Mr McCormack and his chief of staff were confirmed to represent the government in Sweden, his spokesman said they were not sure whether his "schedule will permit him to attend". "If the Deputy Prime Minister does attend, the draft text will be carefully reviewed and the government would provide input where necessary," he said.

If he pulls out, Assistant Road Safety Minister Scott Buchholz would likely attend. Mr McCormack did not answer questions on whether he supported 30km/h limits, integrating road safety with climate action or if the government would purchase a "sustainable vehicle fleet".

In October, Scott Morrison delivered a speech urging Australia to "avoid any reflex towards a negative globalism that coercively seeks to impose a mandate from an often ill-defined borderless global community ... And worse still, an unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy".

Mr McCormack's visit comes after the Australian Automobile Association in August warned about government inaction on the national road safety strategy. The AAA released analysis showing only nine of 33 individual safety performance indicators were "on track" to be met. Pressure is also building on the Coalition to accelerate policy settings in response to the influx of electric vehicles.

From The Weekend Australian of 21 December, 2019





Using the haters







Leftist hate speech

Leftists call all sorts  of things hate speech but that is projection. They are the real haters. Their constant finding fault with normality shows that clearly.  They are obsessed

Nick Cater

Few things lift the human spirit like the triumph of the underdog. Which is why we must welcome the dispiriting news that the hitherto undistinguished personal pronoun “they” has been named word of the year by the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

We are told that the number of people looking up they has risen by 313 per cent this year, which is a surprising statistic since practically no one had thought of looking it up before.

Seven centuries after it entered the English language from the Norse, the personal pronoun’s plurality has transitioned to singular. It is deemed to be less hurtful than he or she by those who care more for political correctness than correct grammar.

If the inclusivity police get their way, kids in the future will encounter gender-normative personal pronouns only in Shakespeare, and then presumably only under supervision.

The use of they was made compulsory this year by the American Psychological Association when clients refer to themselves as they. The APA instructs members to scan their written work for bias just as they once checked for spelling. It offers a helpful style guide designating expressions as problematic or preferred.

Males and females are in the problematic column. An array of unproblematic alternatives is listed in the column marked preferred: “Cisgender men, cis men, cisgender women, cis women, cis people, cis allies, transgender men, trans men, transgender women, trans women, transgender people, trans people, gender-fluid people, gender-nonconforming people, gender-expansive people, gender-creative people, agender people, bi-gender people, genderqueer people”. If in doubt, the authors suggest, use the word humans.

With a resource such as this so easily to hand, it is disappointing that the scriptwriters of the popular BBC television comedy show Gavin and Stacey chose to use the word “faggot” in this year’s Christmas special.

In their defence, the six-letter F-word is in the lyrics of a song about an argument between drunk people by the Pogues, sung by members of the cast in the ironic tone in which it was first performed.

The offence seekers will have none of it. Last week Alex Dyke, a DJ at BBC Radio Solent and therefore a minor Southampton celebrity, said he was no longer comfortable playing the song. He took to Twitter to condemn it as “an offensive pile of down-market chav bilge”.

Apparently, “chav”, a derogatory term used by snobs to describe the ill-bred, is not problematic.

Rock stars once regarded offending people as an essential part of the job. Indeed, for a glorious period in the late 1970s after the arrival of the Sex Pistols, the imperative to scandalise ranked above the requirement to learn an instrument.

Today, however, any artist with a career that began more than 10 minutes ago is liable to fall victim to “cancel culture”, which happens to be the Macquarie Dictionary’s 2019 word of the year. To suggest that it is two words would be an unwarranted cultural presupposition. The rise of cancel culture explains why you won’t be hearing the Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar or Under My Thumb on an FM radio station any time soon.

The cancel culture’s objection to “faggot” explains why Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing has been banned by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.

Homophobic hate speech also would rule out Taylor Swift’s Picture to Burn and Katy Perry’s Ur So Gay.

Lou Reed’s borderline-transphobic Walk on the Wild Side wouldn’t get a look-in.

Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s anthem to racial equality, Ebony and Ivory, has been promoted from mildly irritating to highly problematic. The contemporary zeitgeist favours rappers such as Noname who refuses to dance on stage for white people. On the plus side, the avoidance of racial stereotypes and cultural appropriation means we may never again have to listen to Carl Douglas’s 1974 hit Kung Fu Fighting.

You can’t be too careful these days. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch has yet to recover after he referred to “coloured actors” in an American TV interview four years ago. What he should have said, of course, was “actors of colour”.

American commentator David Roberts must have thought he was on safe ground when he compared “refugees who have walked thousands of miles to escape oppression” with “sedentary, heart-diseased, fast-food gobbling, car-addicted suburbanites” who cast judgment on them.

Yet this unfortunate example of fat-shaming enraged the grievance-mongers on social media who laid into him for being “only half-woke”. Fat people, one presumes, should now be referred to as people of girth.

One hesitates to refer to religion in these judgmental times, even at Christmas.

Yet we cannot but reflect that cancel culture is yet another of the birth pains of a new religion, ugly and badly formed, conceived to take the place of the old religion from which many of us drew our moral compass as recently as five minutes ago.

Cancel culture was what once drove the Catholic Church to excommunicate heretics, pull out their fingernails and burn them at the stake. Cancel culture motivates the Exclusive Brethren to avoid contact with apostates, drawing authority from St Paul in his Letter to the Thessalonians “that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us”.

The new religion, like the old one, requires us to wrestle with seeming contradictions. Why in the name of the they-hood of humankind are people so readily excluded in the cause of inclusivity? Why does their God, if they have one, appear to care more for the suffering of some minority groups than others?

How does their declared love of global humanity fit with their contempt for their neighbours?

In the end we are drawn back to the great insoluble, the hidden wisdom known only unto the faithful that leaves the rest of us stumped.

Who appointed this new priesthood and why do they spend so much time on Twitter?

SOURCE  





So you’re a vegan ... but are you, really?

The number of animals that die each and every day to produce vegan food is astonishing.

There’s a lot to be said for veganism. For the thinking eater, it gets around a whole bunch of ethical grey areas. If you care about what you put in your mouth, it is probably the most black and white way to approach the whole meat thing. There are no grey areas about so-called “ethical” meat, or questions over exactly how “free range” are the hens when there are 10,000 chickens to the ­hectare. Not eating meat, not buying products that come from animals — surely that means you’re doing better not only for those animals directly affected, but also the environment, and your health?

But while veganism is on the rise in Western nations, it’s still far from mainstream. Why, then, is it so hard to convince people of its worth if it really is a win all round? The vegan philosophy is, at its heart, quite often about ­reducing suffering. By not eating ­animals, you — by definition — reduce suffering. It’s a lovely idea. And I wish it were that simple.

Let’s start with peas. Collydean (not its real name, but a real farm) is a 2700ha mixed farm in northern Tasmania. They grow beef cattle, some sheep, do agroforestry, have barley and some years grow peas. A lot of peas: about 400 tonnes a season.

And to protect the peas, they have some wildlife fences, but also have to shoot a lot of ­animals. When I was there, they had a licence to kill about 150 deer. They routinely kill about 800-1000 ­possums and 500 wallabies every year, along with a few ducks. (To its credit, Collydean only invites hunters onto its farm who will use the animals they kill — for human food, or for pet food — and not leave them in the paddock, as most ­animals killed for crop protection are.)

So, more than 1500 animals die each year to grow about 75ha of peas for our freezers. That’s not 1500 rodents, which also die, and which some may see as collateral damage. That’s mostly warm-blooded animals of the cute kind, with a few birds thrown in.

Collydean’s owners assure me it wouldn’t be financially viable for them to grow peas without killing animals. Which means that every time we eat peas, farmers have controlled the “pest” species on our behalf, and animals have died in our name.

The number of animals that die to produce vegan food is astonishing. Consider wheat, a common crop in Australia. And let’s look at the nutrient density of the food in question, because not all foods are created equal. According to an article by Mike Archer, Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of NSW, roughly 25 times more sentient beings die to produce a kilo of protein from wheat than a kilo of protein from beef. Thanks to monocultures, mice plagues and our modern farming systems, a hell of a lot of small animals die to produce wheat. Yes, most of them are rodents, but surely in the vegan world all warm-blooded life should be honoured equally?

On average, 1 billion mice are poisoned every year in Western Australia alone. According to a 2005 Senate report, if we didn’t kill mice the cost of food would rise drastically; even with heavy baiting programs, mice cost the Australian economy about a $36 million a year.

Let’s look at birds. Over a five-year period up to 2013, rice farmers in NSW killed nearly 200,000 native ducks to protect their fields. That’s right, to grow rice. That’s in addition to the animals indirectly affected, such as those that once thrived in the waterways drained by such a heavily irrigated crop on a dry continent.

That’s how farming works. To grow something, other things are affected. Sometimes it’s an animal, sometimes it’s a helluva lot of animals. The most animals that die on Fat Pig Farm, our property in the Huon Valley south of Hobart, are the snails and slugs that would destroy our garden if left unchecked. We kill close to 5000 moths, slugs and snails each year to grow vege­tables, and thousands and thousands of aphids.

Insects bear the brunt of all annual vegetable production. And the most exploited insect of all is the European honeybee. True vegans don’t eat honey because it’s the result of the domestication, and utilisation, of the European honeybee. They don’t eat it because eating honey is “stealing” honey from the hive, and because bees die in the process of beekeepers managing the hives and extracting the honey. And they’re right, bees do die in that process.

Problem is, honeybees are very, very good pollinators, and a whole heap of crops are pretty much reliant on these bees to produce fruit — and even more crops would suffer from far lower production due to poor fertility if we didn’t have bees. About one-third of all crops globally benefit from direct interaction with pollinators, of which ­European honeybees are by far the most efficient.

Whether we eat honey or not, we are the beneficiaries of the work of the domesticated European honeybee. In their absence, some crops would come close to failure, and others increase substantially in cost. Gobs of bees die every year doing the work of pollination for us. According to Scientific American, up to 80 billion domestic honeybees are estimated to have a hand in the Californian almond industry each year, up to half of which die during the management process and the long journeys to and from the large almond orchards. And that’s the carnage from just one crop.

What about vegan wine, you say? It doesn’t use fish bladders, or milk extracts, or egg as a fining agent (ingredients used to clarify many wines, beers and ciders). But don’t forget the harvest. Come with me to watch grapes being picked, watch as huge tubs of plump grapes are tipped into the crusher along with mice, spiders, lizards, snakes and frogs. Sadly, vegan wine is a furphy.

Let’s move on to peanut butter, that wonderful practical protein staple. Do you know how many parts of an insect are in each jar? According to ­Scientific American, each of us eats about 0.5-1kg of flies, maggots and other bugs a year, hidden in the chocolate we eat, the grains we consume, the peanut butter we spread on toast. According to US regulations (which are easier to access than ­Australian data), 125g of pasta (a ­single portion) may contain an average of 125 insect fragments or more, and a cup of raisins can have a maximum of 33 fruit fly eggs. A kilogram of flour probably has 15g of animal product in it, from rodent excreta to weevils to cockroach legs.

I don’t bring this up for the “ick” factor, but simply to show the true impact and cost of food production. When you eat, you’re never truly vegan. When humans grow and process food, any food, other things die — and often we eat them.

Vegans are welcome to voice their opinion that raising and eating meat has consequences. Indeed, some of those consequences, from the personal to the animal to the environment, are worth serious thinking about. It’s quite possible that eating less meat might mean less suffering. But don’t be fooled into thinking that being vegan hurts no animal.

More HERE 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






27 December, 2019

Bank regulator should stick to his knitting

I noted yesterday that Greenies had gained control of the banking regulators.  A few excerpts from comments on the matter by the mocking Terry McCrann below

I don't think APRA boss Wayne Byres is a capital-C capital-L Climate Loon — but he is of course entirely free to prove me wrong. However, the jury remains out for so long as he allows himself to be led around by the — of course, entirely figurative, nose-ring by his APRA colleague Geoff Summerhayes, who is an out and proud and campaigning capital-C capital-Z Climate Change (sorry Geoff, emergency) Zealot

Summerhayes is one of the three top executives under Byres at the regulatory agency which is supposed to be about ensuring that financial institutions behave "prudentially". That's after all the key word in its title and job description: the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority.

Specifically, his responsibilities cover oversight of the general, life and private health insurance sector. Summerhayes is also chair of the Sustainable Insurance Forum, It's a combination which has spurred the full flourishing of his CE Zealotry, like in a greenhouse with added carbon dioxide.

Spurred by Summerhayes's enthusiasms, it's not sufficient for APRA to limit itself to the job it's supposed to do; and do that rather more than indifferently–crudely and broadly but reasonably, to do its best to ensure that banks and other financial institutions don't go broke next year.

Oh no, now APRA is setting out to ensure that the banks & co will have taken the necessary steps to "insure" against what the climate might be in 2080. So, if they lend money to people to buy beach houses, they will have to assume that the house and their money will have been swept away by then. That is of course if the house has not been earlier crushed by the climate-induced falling sky or fried by rising temperatures.

Just quietly Geoff and Wayne — if somebody borrows from a bank to buy a beach house tomorrow, it is probably a more than reasonable working assumption that the loan will have been paid off some time —maybe even some considerable time— before 2080.

That is to say, such a loan in 2019, or even 2020, has zero additional "climate" prudential risk for a bank over and above the conventional financial prudential risks, which in a saner era is what people in your jobs focused on.

In any event, how are the banks supposed to work out what these climate risks are supposed to be? As we reported exclusively yesterday, in revealing how the increasingly "climate woke" APRA was embracing its task, the assessment will be based on "climate models". Ah the infamous "climate models" ....

More at "The Australian" of 21 December, 2019






Dangerous electric scooters

Saddening scooter crash rate revealed.  These have had quite an uptake among young people and clearly kept cars off the road.  Another Greenie idea that creates problems

THE rate of horror injuries caused by Lime Scooter accidents could be almost 30 times higher than originally believed, according to shocking new research. The data reveals almost 450 people presented at Brisbane emergency departinents in the 12 months to October this year, equating to 27 serious accidents per 100,000 trips.

A leading Queensland lawyer has called on the State Government to force companies like Lime to register their scooters and obtain Compulsory Third Party insurance. "Perhaps the State Government would be thinking twice about allowing e-scooter companies to skip registration and therefore Compulsory Third Party insurance," lawyer Travis Schultz said.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail' of 23 December, 2019





Mothers choosing kids over paid employment

MANY women with children choose to work part-time so they can be home with their kids, a new study has found. Researchers studied under-employment in a sample of nearly 5000 Australian women and found those with children under 15 are not likely to want to work more hours. Therefore they have lower underemployment levels than women with no children.

The study, published by the Life Course Centre from the University of Queensland, goes against an assumption that mothers would work more hours if they could balance it with caring for children.

Lead author Parvinder Kier found younger women, women without tertiary qualifications and those with no kids at home are 50 per cent more likely to want more hours of work. "Females prioritise their off-spring upbringing and hence choose to seek employment opportunities with limited hours so they can be more readily available during their children's vital formative years," Dr Kier, from Griffith University, said.

Women now make up 47 per cent of the overall work-force but 68 per cent of the part-time workforce. Mothers work on average 20 hours a week in paid employment

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 21 Dec. 2019






Derailing Australia’s Campus Rape Panic

by Bettina Arndt

As 2019 draws to a close, the manufactured rape crisis on Australian university campuses has suffered an important setback. Last month, a Queensland Supreme Court ruled that universities have no jurisdiction to adjudicate sexual assault. This prompted a major speech by the Federal Education Minister in which he affirmed that “If a student alleges they are the victim of a crime then our criminal justice system is the appropriate authority to deal with it.” This is hugely significant, but the media has been noticeably reluctant to report on this development.

Late last year, new regulations were introduced by a number of universities to establish committees and secretive processes to investigate and adjudicate sexual assault. These reversed the burden of proof, denied the accused normal legal rights, and required only a “balance of probabilities” to secure conviction. Many other universities have apparently made plans to proceed down the same path.

This followed a campaign orchestrated by activists who have spent the last decade successfully convincing the media that young women are unsafe on our campuses. As a result of their lobbying, the Australian Human Rights Commission spent a million dollars on a survey intended to uncover evidence of this alleged rape crisis. However, the survey found that only tiny numbers experienced sexual assault (an average of 0.8 percent over each of the two years studied), even when a broad definition of sexual assault was applied that included touching by a stranger on public transport to campus. The main finding was low-grade sexual harassment (mainly unwanted staring) which the universities then promoted as alarming levels of “sexual violence.”

Despite this setback, the higher education sector continued to toe the feminist line, setting up new measures to respond to the perceived crisis. Our university regulator—the Tertiary Education, Quality, and Standards Agency (TEQSA)—swiftly issued a “guidance note” advising universities to provide evidence of how they respond to sexual assault. This was widely interpreted by universities as a requirement to get involved in the criminal law business.

The kowtowing of key players to activist demands has been extraordinary. Prior to the recent Federal election, lobby groups almost succeeded in establishing a government task-force aimed at further bullying universities in this direction. “We were so close,” lamented Darren Brown, the former higher education officer working for the Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham, before Birmingham’s successor shelved the proposal.

Former barrister, now Queensland Senator, Amanda Stoker used a parliamentary committee to grill TEQSA officials about the impact of that “guidance note.” A video shows bureaucrats squirming as Stoker points out that the resulting university regulations contain barely a word about ensuring proper legal rights for accused young men. The accused, Stoker explained, had no access to evidence against them, there was no effort to ensure the reliability of that evidence, no power to call evidence in their own defence, no legal representation, no presumption of innocence, and no right of appeal.

A secretive, unsupervised committee would determine guilt on the balance of probabilities with power to impose serious penalties including expulsion from the university. As Stoker observed, this means that any student so punished will have wasted money and time invested in their degrees and are likely to be excluded from chosen professions—all penalties absent from the criminal justice code.

I’ve spent the last year touring Australian university campuses speaking about what’s happening, and Stoker played a pivotal role in our first major achievement. When the riot squad had to be called to remove violent protesters blocking my audience from accessing the venue at which I was speaking at Sydney University, Stoker used a similar Senate Estimate committee to question TEQSA about Sydney University’s failure to protect free speech. This led to the Federal government setting up an inquiry which ultimately led to our universities imposing new free speech codes.

But the major breakthrough came when the Queensland Supreme Court decision in November determined that universities have no jurisdiction to adjudicate sexual assault. This landmark case involved a University of Queensland medical student who was accused of sexual assault by another student. Wendy Mulcahy, the lawyer for the accused student, took the matter to the Supreme Court arguing that UQ did not have the jurisdiction to adjudicate such matters. In her judgement, Justice Ann Lyons concluded that universities are only entitled to make decisions in sexual assault cases which have been proved in criminal court.

Dan Tehan, our Federal Education Minister, used this legal decision to instruct TEQSA that the criminal justice system, not a university disciplinary process, is the right place to deal with alleged crimes that occur on campus or in the student commun­ity. “Universities have a duty of care to their students and that ­includes ensuring processes around the enforcement of any codes of conduct are legal, fair, and transparent,” he told a TEQSA conference in Melbourne later that month.

Earlier this year, a university administrator admitted in private correspondence with a student representative that his university had assumed they might still proceed with a misconduct hearing to determine the guilt of the perpetrator even if the accused had been found not guilty in criminal court. The reason? The university had a lower standard of proof, he said. That’s the point of this whole exercise—to use “victim-centred” justice to ensure more rape convictions. Feminists are angry that juries so rarely convict young men in he-said, she-said date rape situations, and “believe-the-victim” campus investigations make securing a conviction much easier.

That was widely acknowledged as the goal in 2011 when President Obama required all publicly funded universities to establish tribunals to adjudicate rape on campus. This led to over 200 successful lawsuits against universities for failing to protect the due process rights of the accused —rights the Trump administration is now seeking to restore. Given that recent history, it is extraordinary that our higher education sector has allowed itself to be led down the same path. Universities Australia has just commissioned a new survey on sexual assault intended to cook up more impressive rape statistics after the failure of the AHRC to produce the desired results.

It’s a relief to see a few shots finally fired across the bow of this misbegotten enterprise, and hopefully there are more to come. I’m about to launch a campaign to enlist alumni from all Australian universities to send Vice Chancellors a series of questions, drawn up by the legal team assisting me, asking about these institutions’ plans regarding the direction given by the Education Minister.* (Some universities have already written to the Minister stating they are discontinuing investigations.) I’ll be continuing my campus tour to educate male students about the risks presented by this manufactured crisis. I now have a list of cases of young men who have had their lives derailed by these courts and have made YouTube videos featuring two of these students, one in Adelaide and another in Perth.

One other minor development bears mention. In my previous Quillette article I mentioned I’d made a complaint to the university about key organisers of the Sydney protest, providing hours of video evidence and numerous witnesses to show they were breaching the university’s bullying and harassment regulations. After an investigation that lasted over 8 months, the university finally took action, suspending the key organiser, Maddy Ward, for a semester. Ward is a serial troublemaker who already had a strike against her following a notorious protest at which she exposed her breasts to an anti-abortion group. Ward proudly took ownership of the protest against me but was outraged that I had succeeded in “weaponising the university codes of conduct” against her. It was the authoritarian Left that insisted on regulating behaviour on campus, but they do not, it seems, like being held to the standards they impose on others.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






26 December, 2019

Australian banks first in line for climate stress tests

The banking regulators have fallen into the hands of the Greenies. So banks now must not lend to projects Greenies disapprove of. 

If they do it will be regarded by the regulators as a "risky" investment, even if the only risk is from global warming and is hence an entirely fictional risk. 

Greenie investments will be favoured over rational ones, thus greatly limiting bank support for many industries -- such as mining and dam building

Stress tests of banks by regulators have a legitimate role. They make sure banks do not overlend or lend foolishly.  They aim to stop banks going broke.  So they control what banks can do.  But the stress tests are now being perverted so that only Greenie-approved investments are regarded as safe. 

The truth is probably the opposite:  Greenie investments are the risky ones, not the safe ones.  Remember Solyndra?


Australian banks will be the first sector in the firing line for the prudential regulator's tough new institutionally focused climate change stress tests, which will be rolled out following the launch of new economic and environmental scenario modelling by global central banks next year.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority will target the $45bn general insurance sector with its audits on the vulnerability of companies to a potentially "disorderly" transition to a low-emissions economy.

Finally, superannuation fund managers overseeing the nation's $3 trillion pile of retirement savings will feel the heat of APRA's soon-to-be-launched climate stress tests, which will measure how the funds are preparing their portfolios for an unpredictable future in which asset prices could fluctuate wildly depending on the rate of warming of the planet or
the policies put in place to achieve emissions targets.

Regulatory sources have confirmed to The Weekend Australian the running order for the sectors soon to face an Australian prudential probe measuring the exposure of banks, insurers and super funds to both the physical risks of climate change such as floods, droughts, fires or cyclones — and the economic "transition" risks, such as orderly or abrupt changes in prices, possible stranded assets, or long-term productivity changes.

The insights from the stress tests could be used to encourage companies to exit potentially risky assets or investments, re-price policies or loans, or even to force banks and insurers that refuse to ready themselves for an unpredictable climate to hold more capital as a buffer in times of crisis. The climate models to be used to analyse the financial strength of companies are being developed by an international group of regulators, chaired by Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who this week warned that large financial groups in the UK would imminently face the world's toughest climate stress tests.

As revealed by The Australian this week, the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), chaired by Mr Carney, is due to finalise a number of climate transition scenarios in the first half of 2020, at which point APRA will begin tuning the economic models to the local context to begin stress testing large financial institutions.

The Reserve Bank, a member of the group, will use the financial models to analyse economy-wide impacts of climate change and policies seeking to shift the nation to a low-emissions future. The Australian Securities & Invest-ments Commission will also be engaged in the work, mostly through monitoring whether companies are properly disclosing known risks to shareholders.

Mr Carney this week said the BoE would measure UK financial companies against three scenarios, which were under development by the NGFS. "The catastrophic business-as-usual scenario where no further climate action is taken, a scenario where early policy action delivers an orderly transition to the targets set in Paris, and a third where late policy action leads to a disorderly and disruptive transition," Mr Carney said.

This aligns closely to recent remarks by APRA executive Geoff Summerhayes, who chairs the global Sustainable Insurance Forum, who said Australian regulators were contemplating "three broad models" of climate change scenarios and what the ensuing "implications would be for assets and business models" stemming from those scenarios.

"A hothouse world, where there is no discernible change to the warming profile; an orderly adjustment to a lower-carbon future, which would envisage a significant amount of transition risk, albeit smooth; and a late adjustment where the world continues to warm and there is a realisation from a policy sense much later in the piece which requires a very rapid ,adjustment to a lower-carbon future,"

Mr Summerhayes told parliament this month: "Each of those scenarios has implications for the pricing of assets, for business models, for physical impacts and liability impacts to a range of firms' investments."

Fitch Ratings head of sustainable finance Andrew Steel on Friday said the gap between how ambitious global governments pledge to cut emissions and the actual policies in place to reach those targets highlighted the "risk of a sharp shift" in the global regulatory environment.  Mr Steel said the possibility that global governments could ratchet up carbon pricing policies to meet emissions targets was a key risk to company credit ratings.

From "The Australian" of 21 December, 2019




Feds put foot on the gas

A NEW power station to help keep the lights on in Queensland and NSW will "be announced today, the first of a series of new electricity generators to be given the tick. The gas-fired power plant at Gatton will be underwritten by the Morrison Government and is one of 12 generators short-listed just prior to the election.

No decision has yet been made on a coal-fired power station at Collinsville, championed by some LNP MPs, which was also short-listed.

At 132 megawatts, the Gatton gas plant is a smaller generator but can be used to firm up renewable power and can switch on with little notice during peak periods. It is also hoped it will put downward pressure on power prices should it be given final approval by the company behind it, Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners.

Quinbrook, which specialises in renewable and low-carbon projects, has previously warned the project would not go ahead without government support. Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the decision to underwrite the project was made after consideration of the project's financial viability, benefit to consumers and potential environmental impacts: "The Government will now enter detailed underwriting and contractual negotiations with the project proponent ahead of its financial investment decisions," he said.

Construction will begin once private sector funding is secured. The Federal Government is not funding the project, but instead underwriting its debt, so taxpayers will not have to fork out for the construction and any financial exposure is expected to be minimal.

Mr Taylor said it would increase competition, helping to keep energy prices down. Any excess gas from the project will be put on the Queensland gas market, which would increase competition for AGL and Origin.

An interconnector linking the Queensland and NSW power grids means the project could boost the southern state's energy supply if needed.

In relation to Collinsville, Mr Taylor said a first study was due this week, but further feasibility studies would be needed early in the new year.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail' of 23 December, 2019






Unfair attack on Sea World by Greenie fanatics

SEA World operators have dismissed animal rights protesters, slamming a NSW politician's "appalling" decision to use the popular Gold Coast theme park to grandstand.

Yesterday about 30 people, armed with placards, chanted slogans outside the park at Main Beach during a two-hour protest. Among those leading the rally was NSW politician Emma Hurst from the Animal Justice Party. Ms Hurst said she had travelled to Queensland to protest against Sea World, as well as attend other protests.

"No animal should be forced into entertainment ... we want Sea World to stop the breeding of (dolphins). We need to make sure no more of these animals are born and bred in captivity," she said. She hoped Queensland would follow her state's lead by introducing an inquiry into animals in entertainment.

Village Roadshow Theme Parks boss Bikash Randhawa said it was "astounding" Ms Hurst had travelled out of her jurisdiction to be involved. "What is a NSW senator doing in Queensland? I don't get it. It's insanity," he said. "It's appalling that (she) comes all the way to Queensland to get some
publicity.

I was happy to go over and talk with them but when I looked at (the protest) and saw some of the messaging, I said this does not deserve any conversation because it's all based on opinion ... let's base it on science.

"They were all turning around taking pictures for their social media — seriously, it's ridiculous." Mr Randhawa said it was frustrating, given Village Roadshow theme parks voluntarily poured money into animal rescues. Sea World is an accredited zoological institution under the Zoo and Aquarium Association, and is also regulated by multiple government agencies.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail' of 23 December, 2019




Academic agitators rely on the public purse

On Sunday the ABC published an article stating that masculinity is the biggest obstacle to climate ­action. The highly offensive piece, which was steeped in misandry and titled “Is fragile masculinity the biggest obstacle to climate action?”, was written by University of Sydney academic Megan Mackenzie. It was published exactly the way you would expect: with a triple barrel of taxpayer funds.

First, Mackenzie is employed at Sydney University, which is a taxpayer-funded institution. According to its annual report last year, the university pocketed a total of $710.3m in Australian government grants, plus an extra $45.5m in NSW government grants. This is hardly an insignificant amount of taxpayer dollars.

Second, Mackenzie’s research work also has been generously funded by the taxpayer. In 2014, she received an Australian Research Council grant worth $434,692 to fund a project entitled Women in Combat: A Comparative Analysis of Removing the Combat Exclusion.

Third, her article has been published by the ABC, which is, of course, another taxpayer-funded institution funded to the tune of more than $1bn a year.

While Mackenzie has completely bought into the notion that white men are the embodiment of evil, she needs to remember that a large number of Australian taxpayers who are funding her research are hardworking white men against whom she rallies.

It is wrong for researchers such as Mackenzie to continue to take benefit from the money of people who they consistently and openly deride in the public forum.

Last year, Sydney University hosted American professor, author and “renowned anti-racism educator” Robin DiAngelo on campus so she could harangue white people about how racist they were. Taxpayer money is being used without the slightest hint of questioning, self-reflection or consideration for the taxpayers themselves. If academics such as Mackenzie were to attempt to make a living from propounding identity politics, radical gender theory and eco-poetics, they would not survive in this world. This is because there is no market among the general populace, who naturally have little desire to pay someone to insult them. The harsh reality for those employed in the humanities is that without funding via other people’s money, they would struggle to earn their keep.

What Sydney University academic Mackenzie has done is to connect two diametrically opposed topics that currently obsess the elite of this country: gender and climate change.

This is something at which the university appears to excel. Readers will now be familiar with its FutureFix program, in particular the Multi­species Justice project, which is described by the univer­sity as “a post human reconceptualisation of justice via a multi­species lens” and that looks at how “justice across the human and natural world (would) look like and entail”. Moreover, a lecturer also proposed that we need to consider seriously the “arguments for the formal inclusion of animal interests in democracies”.

The university even has its own all-encompassing Environment Institute, which covers everything from the Great Barrier Reef to justice and culture. In October, the institute hosted a two-day symposium titled Unsettling Ecological Poetics, during which various participants from universities around Australia gathered to read poems about climate change, sustainability, radical feminism, racism and LGBTQ+ issues.

The move to combine disciplines is part of a growing worldwide trend to create new and exciting interdisciplinary studies. In a recent article for The Conversation, a couple of academics from the University of California stated the case for combining climate change science and the humanities with their article “Why science needs the humanities to solve climate change”.

There is little doubt that Australian universities are in crisis. This is because academics such as Mackenzie have completely rejected the cornerstones of Western civilisation and, in doing, so are cutting themselves and students off from truth, reason and knowledge. The reason student numbers are falling in the ­humanities is because academics appear to be indulging in their own interests without consideration for anything else.

These cloistered academics are completely out of touch with mainstream Australians, but even in the face of resounding defeat they refuse to see it. They belong to the elite who were voted out in May by mainstream Australians and rejected en masse by the British public last week.

Yet the government continues to fund agitators who are filled with the zeal of the righteous, and who not only believe their own propaganda but also insist everyone else must believe it, too. By giving money to institutions such as the university, the ARC and the ABC, the Coalition is funding a progressive ideology that is contrary to tradition, contrary to what people believe and contrary to the truth. The Coalition might keep winning elections, but as long as it keeps funding left-wing institutions that promulgate insidious identity politics it will continue to lose the battle of ideas.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





25 December, 2019

A great Australian Christmas poem



The Fire At Ross's Farm



By Henry Lawson
             
         
The squatter saw his pastures wide
Decrease, as one by one
The farmers moving to the west
Selected on his run;
Selectors took the water up
And all the black soil round;
The best grass-land the squatter had
Was spoilt by Ross's Ground.

Now many schemes to shift old Ross
Had racked the squatter's brains,
But Sandy had the stubborn blood
Of Scotland in his veins;
He held the land and fenced it in,
He cleared and ploughed the soil,
And year by year a richer crop
Repaid him for his toil.

Between the homes for many years
The devil left his tracks:
The squatter pounded Ross's stock,
And Sandy pounded Black's.
A well upon the lower run
Was filled with earth and logs,
And Black laid baits about the farm
To poison Ross's dogs.

It was, indeed, a deadly feud
Of class and creed and race;
But, yet, there was a Romeo
And a Juliet in the case;
And more than once across the flats,
Beneath the Southern Cross,
Young Robert Black was seen to ride
With pretty Jenny Ross.

One Christmas time, when months of drought
Had parched the western creeks,
The bush-fires started in the north
And travelled south for weeks.
At night along the river-side
The scene was grand and strange --
The hill-fires looked like lighted streets
Of cities in the range.

The cattle-tracks between the trees
Were like long dusky aisles,
And on a sudden breeze the fire
Would sweep along for miles;
Like sounds of distant musketry
It crackled through the brakes,
And o'er the flat of silver grass
It hissed like angry snakes.

It leapt across the flowing streams
And raced o'er pastures broad;
It climbed the trees and lit the boughs
And through the scrubs it roared.
The bees fell stifled in the smoke
Or perished in their hives,
And with the stock the kangaroos
Went flying for their lives.

The sun had set on Christmas Eve,
When, through the scrub-lands wide,
Young Robert Black came riding home
As only natives ride.
He galloped to the homestead door
And gave the first alarm:
`The fire is past the granite spur,
`And close to Ross's farm.'

`Now, father, send the men at once,
They won't be wanted here;
Poor Ross's wheat is all he has
To pull him through the year.'
`Then let it burn,' the squatter said;
`I'd like to see it done --
I'd bless the fire if it would clear
Selectors from the run.

`Go if you will,' the squatter said,
`You shall not take the men --
Go out and join your precious friends,
And don't come here again.'
`I won't come back,' young Robert cried,
And, reckless in his ire,
He sharply turned his horse's head
And galloped towards the fire.

And there, for three long weary hours,
Half-blind with smoke and heat,
Old Ross and Robert fought the flames
That neared the ripened wheat.
The farmer's hand was nerved by fears
Of danger and of loss;
And Robert fought the stubborn foe
For the love of Jenny Ross.

But serpent-like the curves and lines
Slipped past them, and between,
Until they reached the bound'ry where
The old coach-road had been.
`The track is now our only hope,
There we must stand,' cried Ross,
`For nought on earth can stop the fire
If once it gets across.'

Then came a cruel gust of wind,
And, with a fiendish rush,
The flames leapt o'er the narrow path
And lit the fence of brush.
`The crop must burn!' the farmer cried,
`We cannot save it now,'
And down upon the blackened ground
He dashed the ragged bough.

But wildly, in a rush of hope,
His heart began to beat,
For o'er the crackling fire he heard
The sound of horses' feet.
`Here's help at last,' young Robert cried,
And even as he spoke
The squatter with a dozen men
Came racing through the smoke.

Down on the ground the stockmen jumped
And bared each brawny arm,
They tore green branches from the trees
And fought for Ross's farm;
And when before the gallant band
The beaten flames gave way,
Two grimy hands in friendship joined --
And it was Christmas Day.







24 December, 2019

The green-left preachers are naive if they believe they can win over deniers

Gerard Henderson

It has been said that Christmas is not universally a time of peace and goodwill since many a seasonal get-together leads to arguments among family and friends. If this account is accurate, then it would be best to avoid readers of Guardian Australia as we enter the silly season.

Last Saturday the Canberra-based Katharine Murphy, who is the Guardian's political editor, sent out this tweet: "Lots of people asking me today how to channel despair about climate change into positive action. I have one simple suggestion: talk to someone who disagrees with you. Christmas breaks seem an ideal opportunity. Argue your case, and, also, listen. Make a connection."

Now, if Murphy's plan is to work, she and her Guardian comrades  will have to take their attempts at conversion outside of her paper's Parliament House and Sydney offices. It is unlikely that Murphy would find anyone inside her office who disagrees with her and, consequently, is in need of conversion on climate change.

In this sense the Guardian is a conservative-free zone without a conservative in any prominent position. Murphy is a fine, hardworking journalist. But her planned entry ito the world of political activism seems naive. It is a rare occasion when A who believes in B can convince Y who believes in Z to adopt A's position.

Life does not work this way. Individuals change position but this usually occurs over time or in response to a traumatic event. The main exception is the religious conversion experience. The best known example of this in Australia occurred in 1959 when American evangelist Billy Graham conducted his Australian Crusade to huge crowds, especially in Melbourne and Sydney. Graham called on his audiences to make a commitment to Christ, which led to many an instant conversion. Murphy does not have the charisma of the North Carolina preacher. Few do.

She apparently believes that if an eco-catastrophist engages someone who does not believe that extinction is upon us all if we do not act on climate change — he or she can bring about a situation whereby the person changes his or her mind.

This position has religious overtones. Murphy believes that she possesses the truth on climate change and that it is her duty to convince others of the righteousness of her cause. Moreover, to embrace Murphy's cause requires an act of faith. The point being that a person at an end-of-year party cannot take positive action of any significance on climate change. Since Australia produces about 1.3 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions there is nothing that anyone in Australia can do to take any action on climate change that would result in any meaningful change to the climate. This would be so even if the whole nation closed down.

In short, even if Australia had become a world leader in reducing emissions two decades ago, none of this would have reduced the ferocity of the current bushfires in Australian states.

However, a reduction of the fuel load (trees, undergrowth, grasses) would have diminished the intensity of the fires. But this is not something likely to be raised by the Guardian, which presents as the mother paper of the Green Left Weekly.

As Christianity declines in the West, the art of preaching seems to have been embraced by the secular left. The secular-left preachers of our time invariably have tertiary qualifications and live in or near to the central business district. They see it as their duty to censure others on the evils of their ways. Murphy's associates are in "despair about climate change". But it is not the kind of despair that would lead to action even of the symbolic kind, such as turning off the airconditioning, junking the car, abandoning air travel, closing the Guardian and the like. It's really a despair born of the fact that most of their fellow Australians do not agree with them.

Murphy and her Guardian comrades believe that Scott Morrison's government has not done enough to reduce Australia's emissions. The paper wanted a change of government at the May election. Most Australians did not agree. So now the task is to engage those who disagree in a condescending manner with a view to changing their minds while pretending to listen to their views.

The evidence suggests that, for the moment at least, the views of the Guardian are at odds with most voters in Britain, the US and Australia. Hence the support for the Brexit referendum in June 2016, Donald Triunp's victory in Novembe 2016, Morrison's win in May and Boris Johnson's triumph this month.

On the above occasions, many individuals on the lower-economic scale with modest education backgrounds voted for political conservatives and their causes. And they voted against the wishes of those who once proclaimed to be the agents of the working class — the Democratic Party in the US, Labour in Britain and the Australian Labor Party. They did so partly because they are sick of being lectured to by those who, explicitly or implicitly, regard themselves as possessing, a higher (secular) morality.

In Britain, wealthy business executive Gina Miller led much of the opposition to Johnson's attempt to take Britain out of the EU, including launching action in Britain's High Court and Supreme Court. Despite heading the Remain United group, she managed to get an interview with Sophy Ridge on Sky News UK's The Take program on December I.

Miller used the polls her organisation had commissioned to tell viewers that British foreign secretary Dominic Raab would lose his seat to the Liberal Democrats (he didn't) and that a hung parliament without a Conservative majority was "almost set" (it wasn't).

Johnson's stunning victory on December 12 indicated that, for all her education and talent, Miller is out of touch with mainstream Britain. Consequently, she is unlikely to convert her opponents by an argument at Christmas time in Britain or Australia.

From The Weekend Australian of 21 December, 2019




Investment in solar, wind farms drying up

A sharp slump in new investment in wind and solar farms will continue unless a price is put on carbon or the Renewable Energy Target is extended beyond next year, the Clean Energy Council warns.

CEC chief executive Kane Thornton said investment in renewable energy had dropped by 60 per cent in the past year and declines would continue without government intervention. He said this would put pressure on power prices and reliability as coal generators aged.

The comments ignited a debate about whether renewable energy was the cheapest form of power, as advocates including Anthony Albanese and Malcolm Turnbull claim. Energy Minister Angus Taylor said large-scale renewables projects would not receive any further government support. "The clean energy industry has assured us that the cost of renewables is now competitive with alternatives so we would expect investment to continue in the absence of subsidies," he said. "An industry that is now competitive shouldn't require additional subsidies, Mr Taylor said.

Nearly 70 per cent of Australia's electricity was generated from coal-fired power this year compared with 22.6 per cent from renewables. The RET will result in 33,000GWh of power being derived from renewable power generation next year and the subsidies will continue until 2030 but only for plants constructed by 2020.

The scheme operates by allowing large renewable power stations, such as wind farms, to create renewable energy certificates for every megawatt hour of power they generate. The certificates are bought by electricity retailers who sell the electricity to householders and businesses.

Mr Thornton said the industry was not asking for subsidies, despite his call for an extension of the RET. "The RET could actually be extended in a way that provides that certainty," he said "The market will decide whether there is in fact a subsidy delivered or not "(In one project), the renewable energy certificates that were delivered were worth zero. So that project was essentially getting no subsidy but was getting certainty from the target."

The fall in investment from renewables, also shown in a report released this month by the Clean Energy Regulator, comes amid continuing tight supply in parts of the electricity market during periods of high demand.

The Australian Energy Regu-lator launched an investigation on Friday after South Australia's wholesale spot electricity price hit the market price cap of $14,700 a megawatt hour twice on Thursday night, amid a severe heatwave.

With the Morrison government moving to fund a feasibility study into a coal-fired power station in central Queensland, the Opposition Leader this week declared a new coal plant was not needed because "renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels".

"Markets will determine what the economics are of projects," he said. "And the economics of projects are showing that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels and that change has occurred over a period of time. And one would expect that would continue."

According to a draft report on the energy market released by the CSIRO this month, electricity generated from new renewables projects will be cheaper than from coal projects that include carbon-capture storage.

It predicts a new wind project with six hours' storage would generate electricity at between $88-$112/MWh in 2030, dropping to between $82-$108/ MWh in 2030 and $71-$102/1"h in 2050. A new solar project with six hours storage will generate power at between $75-$11.8/MWh falling to $52-$95 by 2050:

A new thermal coal-fired power station that stored its carbon emisions would produce electricity at between $148-$200 MWh in 2020 and $137-$202/ MWh in 2050.

However, the projections show that new gas and coal projects without carbon-capture storage will be  cost competitive with renewables. A new coal-fired power station is expected to produce electricity for between $83-$l12 in 2020, with the price reducing slightly by 2050.  Electricity from a new gas power plant would produce power at between $67-$117.

Grattan Institute director Tony Wood said new coal-fired power stations without carbon capture storage would have trouble receiving finance because of concerns they would be forced to close if emissions targets became more ambitious.

He said the RET had helped renewable energy become competitive and he doubted major clean energy projects would come online under the Morrison government's policy settings.

From The Weekend Australian of 21 December, 2019





Heavy regulation of Airbnb in Noosa resort area

A crackdown on an Airbnb-led explosion of holiday rentals in Noosa is a discriminatory assault on the rights of property. owners, Queensland Law Society has warned. Noosa Shire Council this month passed arguably Australia's toughest restrictions on the online short-term rental market, dominated by Airbnb and Stayz. The move was in response to complaints from permanent residents about "party houses".

Under the changes awaiting state government approval, owners of properties in "low-density areas", including oceanfront Noosa Heads, who want to list on the websites must apply for approval. Properties rented out in the past can continue to be listed, even if they are sold, under a "use it or lose it" provision requiring they are let out at least once a year. Apartments and townhouses in medium and high-density areas are not affected.

Queensland Law Society president Bill Potts said he shared the concerns of property owners that it was discriminatory and could skew values. He said he believed the scheme could face a legal challenge. "Is this a fair system for homeowners? The answer is no. People have a right to utilise their property whichever Way they want to," Mr Potts said. It certainly does create a two-tier system.

"Rules ought to apply across the board or in this particular case, at least a rule that sees an equal opportunity for homeowners to lease out their properties. "The old saying is that every person's house is their own castle, and they can utilise it whichever way they wish."

The city plan is currently with Queensland Planning Minister Cameron Dick for approval. If approved, the changes will be introduced alongside a council law aimed at creating a code of conduct governing short-term rentals.

The code is yet to be drafted, but is expected to address issues such as properties being hired for parties. Noosa Mayor Tony Wellington defended the crackdown, saying the council was responding to community concerns about the rise of "party houses" and "over-tourism". "We can't be adding tourist beds at the expense of residents, which is the fundamental purpose of what we're approaching in the planning scheme," Mr Wellington said

"When tourist accommodation takes over in residential
housing areas residents no longer know their neighbours, they no longer feel as safe.

"The notion that we're taking away people's rights is really a nonsense because every planning scheme zones every piece of land. "Homeowners have never been allowed to do exactly what want"

Real estate agent Adrian Reed said prestige property buyers were often after homes they could let to holiday-makers. While acknowledging the need for greater regulation, he believed the council's approach was a step too far.

"Other areas are facing these same issues we didn't even get a chance to try and mediate with local law before they (council) deployed the more heavy-handed option," Mr Reed said.

"When you make these changes, you are removing the buyers from the market. That is the concern!"

Airbnb national head of public policy Derek Nola said the company was willing to work with local and state governments to ensure guests and hosts acted responsibly.

Noosa has long been a luxury holiday destination for holiday-makers looking to escape from Sydney and Melbourne. The shire received more than two million visitors last financial year and they contributed more than $1.1bn to the local economy.

From The Weekend Australian of 21 December, 2019





Green left trashes votes by its contempt for the mainstream

Chris Kenny

Almost 15 years ago I wrote about the accidental insight of Mark Latham’s diaries (which were a minor sensation at the time). My thesis was that the diaries revealed a disdain for mainstream people, the voters the former Labor leader was trying to win over.

Reincarnated first as a political commentator and now as NSW’s One Nation leader, Latham seems belatedly to have learned this lesson, becoming an unashamed and articulate champion for mainstream families and values. (To be fair, this is exactly what he threatened to become in the successful early days of his stint as federal opposition leader — the bitterness in his diaries might have been inflamed by subsequent events.)

The point is that you don’t win people over by demeaning them. Bob Hawke constantly praised mainstream Australians, flattering them and appealing to their intelligence. John Howard had a similar approach.

As I put it in reference to Latham’s diaries in 2005: “The left have developed a sneering attitude to the populace. Latham’s description of what he says is half the population is withering: ‘… the disengaged, self-interested middle class, who tend to delegate economic management to the Coali­tion in federal elections, but trust state Labor with the health and education services. Apathy Rules.’ ”

There were many other examples to support my conclusion: “This is a slippery slide — from not engaging with the public, to siding with the elites against an apparently unenlightened public. Eventually there is distrust and even disdain for the very people you are relying on for support.”

Clearly the trend has continued; through myriad turns and issues, it seems this divide has become the defining one in Western liberal democracies — those who hold voters in high regard, and those who look down at them.

Apart from turning off voters, it affects how the politicians behave; the more they sneer at voters, the more they think they can fool them and the more cynical their tactics become. And voters see through it.

Take what I think was the most telling moment in the 2016 US presidential campaign. It did not spring from anything Donald Trump said, it came from his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic,” she told Democratic donors in New York City in September 2016, “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

It is not hard to see why this can be politically fatal. It has become a typically left-of-centre failing but it is a trap too for so-called moderates on the right of centre who shy from tough debates and look for the easy way out.

Take the 2012 US election when Mitt Romney notoriously was caught out lamenting that 47 per cent of voters were locked on to Barack Obama because they “are dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims”. Romney tanked.

In Australia the left has fallen for this trap repeatedly. Sometimes voters are derided indirectly — think about how Labor and Greens politicians, along with many journalists and commentators, have accused the Coalition of “dog-whistling” on border protection policies. Such a charge, by extension, insults voters in three important ways: it accuses them of supporting foolish policies; it ­hinges on mainstream voters harbouring innate racism; and it tarnishes them as gullible enough to be fooled.

For a decade or two the green left in Australia has accused Coali­tion politicians and, by extension anyone thinking of voting for them, of being xenophobic or even racist when it comes to border security. They are deemed as selfish deniers on global warming, Islamophobes when it comes to countering terrorism, and greedy and heartless on taxes and welfare.

“But hey,” says the left, “haul your racist, sexist, selfish, denier, Islamophobic and heartless attitudes into the polling booth and vote for us.” It becomes tiresome, especially when the policy arguments lack substance.

And it hasn’t worked. Why do politicians demean voters? You can think of the scorn as the ugly but necessary hull that keeps afloat the colourful spinnakers of virtue signalling, or perhaps the invective is the foundation stone to the cathedral of sanctimony. It is only by demonising others that the green left can demonstrate its own moral superiority. So contempt directed at others becomes a necessary precondition of moral posturing.

The same scenario has been played out on steroids in Britain during the past three years of the Brexit debate, coming to its inevitable conclusion in last week’s election.

In the millions of words of analysis, nothing cut through like this pithy and personalised summary from journalist and bestselling author Douglas Murray.

“As it happens, I share the views of the majority of the country,” Murray wrote in the Mail on Sunday. “I have seen the Leftist robots up close for years. I have sat in halls and studios with them and been insulted by them just as the rest of the general public have. They have called me a ‘Little Englander’ because I happen to think that our country isn’t a good fit with the EU. They have called me a ‘racist’ and ‘scum’ because I’m concerned about too-high levels of immigration. They have called me a ‘bigot’ and a ‘transphobe’ because I refuse to pretend that biological sex does not exist.

“And amazingly, at the end of all that, I felt no more desire to vote for them than I had beforehand. I suspect the general public have the same view.”

Murray went on to conclude that the central political divide now is “between the ugly, intolerant, metropolitan Left and the rest of us”. He has summed it up, in a nutshell.

A defining characteristic of modern politics in Western liberal democracies is that the left is regressing to the discredited socialist goals of the 1970s. The young green left has forgotten the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union or, more likely, it never learned them.

Instead, the green left tackles a range of economic, environmental, foreign affairs and social goals, and does it with a sense of moral superiority that is misplaced, evangelical and ruthless. To oppose their goals is to be deemed unworthy as a human being and dismissed or attacked — the issues are not to be debated, the dissidents are to be de-platformed or destroyed.

The modern left is corrupted by the coarse manners and lack of persuasiveness in S11, Occupy Wall Street, antifa and Extinction Rebellion. These extremist activists pollute the movement, their memes are propagated through social media and find their way into mainstream journalism before being spat from the mouths of green-left politicians.

This is the reason the love media is such an ironic term. The hate preached by the green left and its media supporters is beyond the bounds of normal discourse. It scares voters away.

Former Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone got a taste of this during the week when she retweeted my climate change column from last weekend suggesting it was “spot on”. This seemingly harmless act invited an avalanche of vile and idiotic abuse from hundreds of people who clearly had not read the article and based their responses on the headline (the only words not written by the columnist and the least interesting aspect to those responding).

Twitter is not only full of insults and vitriol, its prime fault is that it is overwhelmingly obtuse. Whatever is most popular on Twitter is almost invariably wrong; yet, inexplicably, mainstream media take their cue from it. Because it is easy, I suppose.

In this way, the most ridiculous ideas on Twitter, such as blaming Scott Morrison for bushfires or deifying Greta Thunberg as bringing something new to the climate debate, can soon find their way into the news bulletins of our public broadcasters or the pages of Time magazine. All the while the intelligent life forms who ignore all this are never heard from, either drowned out or scared away.

They have their say on election day. And we are left to wonder why the green left hasn’t mended its ways.

The Trump election victory, Russiagate embarrassment and impeachment process, Brexit referendum, Morrison election win and Boris Johnson triumph — the media/political class keep misreading the public and embarrassing themselves. Will they ever learn?

There are only two possible explanations. Either they are too ideological to modify their behaviour — they really do believe their propaganda and despise mainstream voters — or their egos are so warped they forsake the goal of medium-term success for short-term social media gratification.

Either way, they are not offering much hope for working families. nd they won’t find success until they rediscover mainstream values and learn to identify with the people who hold them.

SOURCE  





My Christmas wish

Below see a picture of a small W.E. Bassett Company "Trim Trio" pocket knife which makes an excellent key-ring. I liked them so much that in their heyday back in the '60s I bought a swag of them.  Over the years however I gave away some and lost some so now I have only one left -- which is in my pocket every time I go out.  The company's website seems defunct so I cannot order more of them directly.  If anyone can find a current email address for them I would appreciate it



 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






23 December, 2019

Scott Morrison rules out changes to government’s climate change policies amid bushfire crisis

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made clear that there will be no change to current climate change policies, as he addressed the ongoing bushfires crisis after returning from holiday.

Speaking to the media at the NSW Rural Fire Service headquarters in Sydney, Mr Morrison said a range of measures in place were adequate and contributing to a reduction in emissions.

Yesterday, while still in his capacity as Acting PM, Nationals leader Michael McCormack conceded that Australia “absolutely” must do more to tackle climate change.

“I agree entirely,” Mr McCormack. “Yes I do. We will have those discussions.”

But today, just hours after jetting in from Hawaii in the wake of ongoing criticism over his absence while large parts of the country burn, Mr Morrison ruled out any immediate changes.

“What we will not do is act in a kneejerk or crisis or panicked mode. A panic approach and response to anything does not help,” he said. “It puts people at risk.”

Mr Morrison defended the government’s climate policy and reaffirmed his commitment to “meet and beat” Australia’s emissions targets under the Paris agreement.

“There is no argument, in my view and the government’s view, and any government in the country, about the links between broader issues of global climate change and weather events around the world,” he said.

“But I’m sure people would equally acknowledge the direct connection to any single fire event is not a credible suggestion to make that link. We must take action on climate change and we are taking action on climate change.”

However, climate change experts have criticised the government’s use of a so-called “loophole” that allows it to use carry-over credits from the Kyoto agreement to meet Paris targets.

Mr Morrison deflected a direct question about the loophole today, instead reiterating his view that current policies represented a “balanced” approach.

“Emissions are lower than at any time they were under the previous government. “We have had record investment in renewables in Australia and now, thankfully, as a result of policies the Government has put in place we are also getting electricity prices down, some $65 a year.

“And on top of that we’ve been doing it without embracing the reckless job destroying and economy crunching targets that others are seeking to force upon us.”

Later, when asked about Mr McCormack’s remarks, the PM denied it was an indication that new targets are needed.

“The Kyoto targets that were set by the previous Labor government, when we came to government there was the projections were that we would miss those by some 700 million tons,” Mr Morrison said. “Now we’re going to beat them by 411 million tons.”

SOURCE  





Foreign fishing boat caught with huge catch

They've nearly fished out their own waters so now they try to raid Australia's carefully conserved fish stocks.  At least we burn their boats when we catch them

AN INDONESAN fishing boat has been apprehended by border patrol after being caught with more than 14 tonnes of fish in Australian waters. The Maritime Border Command, a multi-agency taskforce in the Australian Border Force, apprehended the vessel north of the Gulf of Carpentaria for suspected illegal fishing in Australian waters, in a joint operation with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.

On December 15, ABF Cutter Cape York sighted the vessel about 139 nautical miles inside Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone with fishing gear in the water. ABF officers found 11 crew on board with the catch of fresh and frozen shark and fin fish.

The vessel was confiscated and disposed after material that may have posed an environmental, safety or quarantine risk was removed.

MBC commander Rear Admiral Lee Goddard said such incidents had become less common. "This shows that our regular patrols of Australia's borders are effective in protecting our waters," he said.

Peter Venslovas of the AFMA said the vessel's crew would be held in Darwin while possible breaches of the Fisheries Management Act 1991 are investigated.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 21 Dec. 2019






Party for workers now can’t stand them

In the process of making themselves supremely woke Labor in Australia and Labour in Britain also have made themselves unelectable.

Caroline Overington

I was listening to the car radio a few days back when a woman came on and said: “Politics should be like the underwire in your bra.” I can’t remember who was hosting but whoever it was kind of choked, then said: “OK.”

The caller went on: “You want to know the government’s there, doing its job, but you don’t want to be conscious of it. You don’t want it to be irritating.”

Probably this caller was not the first person to come up with this analogy — probably it will turn out to be somebody famous — but the lady had a point, I thought, so allow me to labour it.

Most of us, when we’re young, don’t need much support (Are we still talking about bras? No, but then again, maybe.) Anyway, most young people are perfectly capable of getting some kind of starter job. They date, they travel, they hopefully save some money, then it’s time to get married, and so begin the child-rearing years. You’ll be needing your bra, ladies.

You also will be tapping the government for extra support, things such as healthcare and the maternal child health nurse; or else paid parental leave, family tax benefit and the childcare rebate: the point being the underwire is there when people need it.

Problems begin when politicians decide that it’s not enough for them to take care of the basics — the economy, national security, the roads, the schools — but to interfere unnecessarily in people’s daily lives.

In the process, they offend, or irritate, almost everyone.

All parties are guilty of this, but in the process of making themselves supremely woke Labor here in Australia and Labour in Britain also have made themselves unelectable. Labour/Labor used to mean jobs and job security. They were for workplace safety and eight-hour days and holiday loading and flexible hours.

Now they’re for — well, they’re apparently into berating their own base about how stupid, sexist, homophobic and racist they are.

Where is the evidence?

Most families in Britain and here in Australia are probably a bit like your own: one of the kids is gay, or else it will be one of the cousins, or else you’ll have a couple of guncles in the wings. Who gives a hoot? Nobody.

Imagine the bloke scratching his armpit on a building site trying to make sense of the idea that he’s a homophobic pig and therefore he should vote for the party that says so.

You think he cares whether his brother’s daughter wants to marry her best friend in a ceremony where the french bulldog wears a tuxedo? Knock yourselves out, is his likely response.

Labour was likewise convinced of the stupidity of its own supporters. They wanted Brexit, so their party ran against Brexit. Where is the logic?

In a similar vein, why does Labour/Labor insist on running leaders that people hate?

Here in Australia, Bill Shorten was unpopular — actually, no, talk to people, and they’ll tell you “I can’t stand him”.

I can’t stand him! There’s not a lot of wriggle room there. I can’t stand him means: if you run him, I will not vote for you. And so they ran him.

Because of course they did. Because they’re also arrogant. You don’t like him? Well, you’re having him.

Shorten’s base also comprised many people who had worked hard for many years as teachers, nurses, librarians and truck drivers to build up a nest egg. They’re now retired, and they were making a few thousand dollars a year from franking credits, meaning they’ve got some nice, safe Commonwealth Bank shares.

Shorten proposed to take the benefit from them. But that’s the money they put in cards for the grandkids at Christmas. As policy goes, it was absolute madness.

They did it anyway.

The bit they seem to forget is, people can turn up at the voting booth and say: well, to hell with you. I’m not voting for you.

You’re not? Of course, you are! You always have, your parents did, their parents were coalminers, you think you’re going to vote Conservative?

I am.

You’re not.

I bloody well am.

There’s only one way for that argument to end, of course. People are now wondering if Labor/Labour can ever come back. They say that every time there’s a landslide: oh, it will take a generation. Not necessarily.

The circumstances that allowed for Boris Johnson’s victory, and indeed that of Scott Morrison, were as precise as they were unique. They could well lose next time around. Donald Trump, on the other hand, will win a second term, and then he will probably put up daughter Ivanka for 2024.

Their first female president! Just not the one they thought they were getting. Democrats will look for people to blame — the media, especially — but actually, it’s not the media biased against them. It’s the electorate biased against them.

Traditional supporters are never gone forever, however. They can swing back in behind the party, with barely a moment’s notice. All the party needs to do is listen to people’s concerns, and respond in a way that makes voters think it understands. Bring them back to the bosom, as it were.

SOURCE  






Mining union slams Govt over committee gender quota

QUEENSLAND'S peak mining union urged the State Gov-ernment to put the safety of workers before gender quotas just days before the fifth industry fatality in 12 months, a scathing letter has revealed.

In a letter sent to the Government, the CFMEU slammed the handling of appointments to the Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee which did not meet for months because it had not met its gender quota.

The letter, dated June 19, was sent a week before David Routledge died after a high wall collapsed on the excavator he was operating at a Middlemount coal mine.

In the letter, addressed to Mines Minister Anthony Lynham, the CFMEU's Greg Dalliston said the issue had been "allowed to occur for too long" and the union would not be attending any meetings.

Mr Dalliston said the union would continue to raise health and safety matters with the inspectorate or the minister.

The extraordinaiy letter was revealed in Right to Information documents obtained by The Courier-Mail. The documents also reveal Dr Lynham wrote to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk twice about the appointments over seven months, including one sent just days before Mr Routledge's death.

Appointments were not made until July 9 — two days after Jack Gerdes died at a quarry near Collinsville. At the time, Dr Lynham said: "Our Government is committed to getting more women on boards but health and safety always comes first."

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington slammed the revelations as a massive scandal, claiming Labor's gender politics had put mine workers at risk. "For a mine safety committee not to meet because of gender representation issues shows that Annastacia Palaszczuk's priorities are all wrong," she said.

A spokesman for Ms Palaszczuk said: "As is often the case with Ms Frecklington, just because she says something doesn't make it true."

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 21 Dec. 2019

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






22 December, 2019

A smart-arse Lesbian doctor has cost taxpayers a heap

Self declared lesbian, Dr. Kerryn Phelps, clearly had a grudge against conservatives so took a narrow window of opportunity to join with the Left to pass "Medevac" legislation which gave refugees in detention offshore a highroad to be moved to Australia.  They just had to say that they were ill.

In collusion with crooked Leftist doctors, the whole thing ended up a total fraud.  All or almost all of those moved claimed to be ill but none actually were.  And most were highly undesirable immigrants


FORTY-five asylum seekers who doctors declared were in need of urgent medical care are in a four-star, city hotel costing Australian taxpayers more than $410,000 a week. Most of the asylum seekers, sent from Nauru and PNG under Labor's Medevac laws for medical treatment, never went to hospital.

Some have refused care, even though a makeshift GP clinic has been set up especially for them in the hotel. The bill for those at Melbourne's Mantra Bell City can be exclusively revealed by The Courier-Mail, but the cost would be dwarfed for all of the 184 Medevaced asylum seekers who are in Australia.

The weekly cost breakdown includes $40,000 for accommodation, including three prepared meals a day, $280,000 for 24/7 security onsite, and $90,000 for transporting them to an immigration centre for an hour's exercise.

They can also use the hotel's gym. The GP clinic provides their vaccinations, pathology tests, mental health support and general wellbeing.

The end cost for taxpayers is uncertain because under the laws there was no explicit ability to return them to Nauru, where they can apply for a 20-year visa or resettle in PNG. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said while Medevac was repealed by the Federal Government, the cost of the policy was still being picked up by taxpayers.

The Medevac legislation was panned by security agencies, who warned those with security concerns would enter the country. "Most of these people never went to hospital," Mr Dutton said. "Many refused to have any scans and now it's costing us millionS of dollars a month.

'This is all .thanks to the Labor con that was Medevac. "it's money that we should be spending on pensioners and police, and instead Labor has locked us in to wasting millions of dollars."

The 184 asylum:seekers are scattered throughout the country and total cost of supporting them could not be ascertained yesterday.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 21 Dec. 2019






Bushfire crisis: fire chief’s city slicker claims not relevant, says Campbell Newman

Former premier Campbell Newman has blasted a prominent former fire chief for blaming intense bushfires on climate change, saying Lee Johnson never raised the issue when he headed emergency services in Queensland.

“He had a solid two years where he could have come to me and ­expressed, one on one, these views that he’s now espousing. I have no recollection of him doing so,” Mr Newman said.

Mr Johnson, commissioner of Queensland Fire and Emergency Services when Mr Newman led the state, was one of the six former fire chiefs who accused Scott Morrison this week of abandoning bushfires raging across the country and offering “no moral leadership” on climate change.

As part of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group funded by Tim Flannery’s Climate Council and spearheaded by former NSW fire chief Greg Mullins, Mr Johnson said firefighters were seeing the effects of climate change “first-hand”.

He called for a national strategy to tackle extreme weather linked to climate change, saying the Brisbane River flooding he ­witnessed as fire chief in 2011 ­amounted to an “inland tsunami”.

“I can feel the tsunami of public opinion rolling on to Canberra,” Mr Johnson said.

Mr Newman, Queensland LNP premier from 2012-15, challenged Mr Johnson’s expertise on bushfires and climate change, saying he found it curious all his group “seem to be urban guys”.

“Mr Johnson’s career was particularly about urban firefighting,” Mr Newman said. “There is a world of difference between urban and rural firefighting. Urban firefighters are about spraying lots of water and chemical foams and stopping fires, whereas rural firefighters know they have to use fire as a tool, in terms of hazard-reduction burns and backburning.”

Mr Newman said he never recalled Mr Johnson saying, as fire commissioner, that the state was not doing enough hazard-­reduction burning or other land management. As premier, Mr Newman said, he was also very concerned about tensions between urban, unionised firefighters under Mr Johnson’s leadership and rural fire services.

“Behind the scenes, city-based firefighters were trying to exert control operationally, in a quite profound way, over the rural and volunteer fire services. They pushed back,” he said. “So here we have this schism between urban and rural firefighters, and Lee Johnson suddenly jumps into this area on bushfires … I would prefer to hear the views of experienced volunteer rural firefighters.”

He accused Mr Johnson of “hysterical nonsense” in calling Brisbane floods an inland tsunami when records showed much worse events. “When Lee Johnson starts talking about weather, he needs to do his homework,” he said.

Mr Newman said he felt compelled to “cry foul” because bushfires had resulted from poor land management, not climate change.

“I am sick and tired of people like Mr Johnson telling people from their positions of trust and respect in the community that things are unprecedented when they are not,” he said.

Emergency Leaders, which has grown to 29 former fire chiefs since its formation in April, says it will convene a national summit early next year to devise a bushfire strategy with strong emphasis on ­climate change. The former fire chiefs, almost all with distinguished careers involving urban brigades, want an immediate end to burning fossil fuels.

Mr Johnson left his Queensland fire chief’s position in December 2014 following a report on the “hostile” work environment for women in the service.

Report author Margaret Allison found evidence of sexual harassment and bullying, and “systematic problems” in dealing with them.

SOURCE  





Queensland private schools defend fee hike

40% of Australian teens go to private schools so this is of some concern

SOME of Brisbane's elite private schools have increased their school fees by up to double the inflation rate, as boarding schools freeze prices to stave off dwindling enrolments because of drought. One of the biggest increases was a 5.5 per cent hike in fees at inner-city All Hallows' Catholic School; where tuition costs will rise from $10,850 in 2019 to $11,450 in 2020; more  than double the inflation rate of 1.9 per cent

Parents will pay a staggering $27,542 to send their children to top-performing Brisbane Grammar School, a 3 per cent increase on tuition fees in 2019, while sister school Brisbane Girls Grammar's fees will increase by 3.5 per cent to $25,782 in 2020.

Brisbane Grammar School headmaster Anthony Micallef said the fees were all-inclusive and provided access to high-quality teachers, innovative teaching practices and wellbeing programs.

"The board strives to contain fee levels through careful long-term financial management and supports student diversity through a needs-based bursary program that assists over 50 boys", he said. "Brisbane Grammar School is non-selective and delivers the best academic outcomes in the state while educating boys to become thoughtful and confident men of character who contribute to their communities."

The Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association's (PMSA) Brisbane Boys' College will raise its fees 3.5 per cent to $24,116 and sister school Somerville House will up its fees 3 per cent to $23,890.

Independent Schools Queensland executive director David Robertson said that independent school boards had been mindful of the current economic conditions, as well as the toll the drought was taking on many Queensland families, directly and indirectly. "Independent-school boards carefully consider the capacity of their parents to absorb even small increases in tuition fees when household budgets are under pressure from low wages growth and rising living costs," Mr Robertson said.

"Schools take a range of different approaches to support families with their education budget planning. "These include offering scholarships and bursaries, providing sibling discounts and discounts for fees paid in full at the start of the year, as well as developing all-inclusive fee packages and providing payment plans."

PMSA chief executive Sharon Callister said that the PMSA schools had increased fees in the range of 3 - 3.5 percent, which covered  increased school operating-costs and was slightly lower than the education-component of the CPI'. Our schools offer families various discounts, including discountS for upfront payments and discounts for siblings at the same or other PMSA schools, scholarships and flexible payment options," she said.

Prestigious boarding schools Stuartholme and St Margaret's have frozen their boarding fees at 2019 costs, and Anglican Church Grammar School (Churchie) is offering fee support to help students from regional and rural areas.

St Margaret's School principal Ros Curtis said that the increase was as minimal as possible at 3 per cent, "in recognition of the currently very difficult conditions being experienced' by our rural boarding families".

"Out of some 185 boarders this year, over 60 per cent are from rural Australia, many have been affected by drought to some degree and some by the floods earlier in the year in north-west Queensland," she said. "In addition to freezing boarding fees next year, some severely affected families were the recipients of boarding bursaries in 2019".

"Six current day families have banded together in a donor circle committing to an ongoing contribution to ensure boarding students have the means and opportunity to finish their education ... and two past students have established bursaries, which are helping to keep current students enrolled at St Margaret's in the face of financial hardship due to drought"

Matthew Flinders Anglican College principal Stuart Meade said the college was mindful of the economic situation that impacts on parents' capacity to pay independent school fees, and therefore
kept the increase to a minimum. "The fee increase for 2020 is 2.7 per cent, which maintains the trend of lower than education CPI increases," he said.

Mr Meade said the college fees included tuition, camps and library resources. "The college has a transparent levy structure that reflects the true costs of these items and charges," he said. "It is important to note that other schools may include items covered in the Flinders Tuition Fees in their levies. We encourage families to consider the total school fee when comparing schools

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 18 December, 2019

Amusing comment above that Brisbane Grammar School is non-selective. A fee of $27,542 is pretty heavily selective





Extraordinary push to stop bosses calling end-of-year celebrations 'Christmas parties' and instead hold 'holiday season drinks' so non-Christians aren't offended

Australian workplaces are being urged to hold culturally friendly end-of-year celebrations such as 'holiday season drinks' instead of 'Christmas parties' so non-Christians aren't offended. 

Diversity Council Australia wants businesses to be inclusive of all traditions and celebrate holidays including Jewish Hanukkah, Buddhist Bodhi Day, Islamic Ramadan and the Hindu Diwali.

The proposal would let staff work on Christian religious holidays such as Christmas to be able to keep time off for other more relevant celebrations of their own faith.

Lisa Annese from Diversity Council Australia told The Herald Sun one in ten of their 500 member businesses have implemented their approach.

'If you're having a Christmas celebration, try to make sure it's inclusive of other faiths as well because the office is for everybody,' Ms Annese said.

She recommends having a combined Christmas and New Year celebration so that 'everyone is on board with the ­company's vision for the new year.'

The council's recommendations included developing and maintaining a calendar of multicultural events and celebrating those that have the most relevance to your staff.

Different needs for people of different faiths should be accounted for, including dietary requirements, designating time for prayer and meditation and respecting cultural boundaries, the council says. 

The 2016 ABS census revealed that 52 per cent of Australians are Christian, leaving many Australians left out of the celebrations.

On Thursday the Diversity Council said they were not suggesting bosses should not mention Christmas. 'Lots of organisations celebrate the end of year holiday break with a Christmas party,' the Diversity Council said in a statement on Thursday.

'We are simply saying that it's worth remembering that many Australians do not celebrate Christmas religiously, either as followers of non-Christian religions, or as individuals with no religious affiliation.

'There is a lot organisations can do to make them feel included at this time of year.'

The council's push comes after City of Perth's Cultural Development Plan promised to water down Christmas celebrations in 2019 to deliver a holiday season that is 'representative and inclusive of city's multicultural community.'

Residents took to social media to express their outrage over the idea, with many claiming the council is going too far.

'This is just madness in my opinion. I'd love a Christmas as Christmassy as it can get,' one man wrote. 'PC gone mad,' wrote another.

'Absolutely what a great idea the world needs less joy throughout the year we have too much good news, community spirit love and happiness,' another wrote.  

Chief Commissioner Andrew Hammond said the council's current holiday-season celebrations did not acknowledge or create a sense of belonging for non-Christians.

'We're not about to change Christmas celebrations. We're just taking a common sense approach that about 50 per cent of people are Christians and about 50 per cent are not,' he told 9News.

The endeavour for political correctness has reached into some of Australia's top universities, who have been accused of slashing students grades for using banned 'gendered language.'

Terms such as 'man', 'she', 'wife', 'mother' and any other terminology that angers the PC brigade have been blacklisted.

Students claimed they have lost marks for referring to 'mankind' or 'workmanship' in assignments, as they are not deemed 'inclusive language.'

'Students are advised to avoid gender-biased language in the same way they are advised to avoid racist language, cliches, contractions, colloquialisms, and slang in their essays,' Professor Julie Duck from the University of Queensland told The Courier Mail.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham openly disagrees with the policies, claiming that they were enforcing 'nanny state stuff' on students. 'Our universities should be better than this rubbish,' he said.

SOURCE  





Central Queensland saves the day

First chickpeas of season leave Australian shores bound for Bangladesh

Despite the significant effect of drought on Australia's pulse production, Queensland's first chickpeas of the season have been loaded onto a ship in north Queensland, ready for export.

The chickpeas were harvested in the [Queensland] Central Highlands district, the only region on the east coast to get a crop due to ongoing insufficient rainfall.

Pulse Australia's northern region industry development manager Paul McIntosh said while some growers in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales planted crops, they withered before reaching maturity.

"[Chickpeas in NSW] were planted on a prayer and a whiff of moisture but they didn't come to anything much at all in that area, so thank goodness for central Queensland growers," Mr McIntosh said.

"It's great that we've got a boatload of our good quality chickpeas from central Queensland to go to the Bangladeshis.

"Australia as an export country exported nearly 2 million tonnes of desi chickpeas in the 2016 shipping season [but] in 2019 we're not going to get anywhere near that with the crops we've got so far."

Harvested pulses are transported by train and trucks off the farms and to the port of Mackay, where they undergo final checks before being loaded onto a ship.

Import permits to Bangladesh require the chickpeas to be checked for quality, as well as phytosanitary and biosecurity standards, before they leave the country.

Jeff Moodie, port operations manager for Central Queensland Ports, said the inspections were completed by authorised officers who looked for insects and biosecurity risks.

"The grain is always tested before it gets into the silos and is fumigated, so we shouldn't get any surprises," he said.

"But if we do, we have the ability to stop the grain before it gets in the vessel [if needed]."

Mr Moodie oversees the loading of the ship, which drops roughly 700 tonnes of chickpea per hour into the vessel.

"There have been some good crops around," he said. "We've got about 60,000 tonnes of chickpea booked to go out with this vessel and another two vessels in January and February, but it is a bit quiet this year."

Impact of international tariffs ongoing

When news broke of India imposing a 30 per cent chickpea and lentil tariff in late 2017, it had an immediate impact on pulse growers that is continuing to influence Australia's exports.

"In a normal year we probably would have started a couple of months earlier, when the Indian markets open, but they're pretty much closed down at the moment due to tariffs," Mr Moodie said.

Mr McIntosh said the impact of the Indian tariffs had led to Australia needing to look for alternate markets.

"The Bangladeshis have been good customers of ours over the years, and they've assumed a much more important [role] — as well as Pakistan — than the Indian markets are now," he said.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here








20 December 2019

Violence rocks Melbourne's south: Dozens of black teenage thugs are pepper-sprayed by cops after brawling on a BUS following a rampage that turned  beachside Chelsea into a war zone

Dozens of teenage thugs were pepper-sprayed by police after an all-in brawl broke out on a Melbourne bus in an affluent suburb increasingly plagued by youth crime.

The chaos started when the gangs started terrorising locals in Chelsea, a beachside suburb in the city's south-east to which they commute, at about 9.30pm on Wednesday.

About 30 Victoria Police officers arrived and moved the men away from the beach, shipping them onto a 902 back to Springvale in the city's outer southeast suburbs.

But as they boarded the bus, a brawl erupted between two groups of teenagers.

Police were forced to use pepper spray in an attempt to stop the fight.

The brawling teenagers were dragged off the bus and ended up on Station Street, where police had to cordon off part of the road to traffic.

One of the teenagers was heard saying 'I f**ked her up, I f**ked her up. Say something now, I f**ked her up,' the Herald Sun reported.

Several others screamed that they needed water for their eyes after being pepper-sprayed. Officers hosed down a group of the teenagers at the nearby police station.

An 18-year-old man was arrested but released early Thursday morning while police conduct further investigations. 

Police said they would inquire about his possible involvement in several incidents which occurred during the night.

The incident follows a spate of youth crime in the suburb in recent months. Last week a fight started outside Chelsea Pizza House and Fish and Chips, where around 12 teens were seen screaming, swearing and kicking each other as terrified bystanders watched on.  

In December last year, youths of African background smashed a glass bottle over a teenager's head before assaulting multiple swimmers and stealing their wallets on the same beach. A male swimmer was assaulted when he confronted the thieves who fled with mobile phones and purses.

The group later approached three other men who were also assaulted.

Moments after, a 19-year-old man who was sitting on the beach was approached by the group of thugs. He was violently struck in the head with a glass bottle and assaulted with a plastic cricket bat.

In 2016, a woman suffered spinal injuries after an attack involving up to 10 men of Sudanese appearance at Chelsea beach.

On another occasion, a shopper was kicked and punched by five youths in a Woolworths car park.

Fed up locals have voiced their fear on social media, calling on Mordialloc state Labor MP Tim Richardson to step up and do something about the violence.  

'Please do something about our once peaceful and safe neighbourhood … we are all scared,' one woman said.

SOURCE  





Inflation nightclub manager Martha Tsamis to get $90k defamation payout from Victoria Police



Victoria Police has been ordered to pay $90,000 to a nightclub manager who won a defamation case over allegations that she was running a "honeypot" for drug dealers.

Martha Tsamis sued the police over comments made to the media in 2014 by then-superintendent Brett Guerin, who said Ms Tsamis was running the Inflation nightclub in "a manner that was conducive to drug trafficking, drunkenness and violence".

The Supreme Court also found Mr Guerin conveyed to the Herald Sun newspaper and radio station 3AW that she had allowed minors into the venue and jeopardised the health of patrons.

Victoria Police was pushing to limit the CBD club's trading hours because of concerns about activities at the venue. It had cited 59 incidents at the club in an application to the liquor regulation commission.

Ms Tsamis was also accused of improperly approaching witnesses who were taking part in commission hearings.

Ms Tsamis argued there were eight instances of defamation by police as part of a campaign to inflict "maximum hurt" on her position before the commission. In August, a jury found in her favour on four of those, but found the claims about drug activity use to be "substantially true".

Justice John Dixon acknowledged the personal hurt to Ms Tsamis and the damage to her reputation, in particular her integrity. "Mr Guerin inflicted damage on the plaintiff's reputation through publication of the false imputations," Justice Dixon wrote in a 48-page ruling.

"She felt that her business was under attack and that she personally was under attack." She also received threats, including an email after the radio interview aired, the court heard. "She felt her safety was in jeopardy and forwarded that email to police," Justice Dixon wrote.

Mr Guerin was stood down from his role as Assistant Commissioner of Professional Standards Command in February last year for using an alias to make "crude and coarse" comments about former colleagues. The state's Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) confirmed in September he would not face charges.

'Overwhelming evidence' of drug activity

Justice Dixon also noted the "apparent contradictions" in the jury's findings. The six jury members found the drugs claims were true, but the personal allegations against her and her role as the licensee were false.

He noted that drug issues were common to all nightclubs. "There was overwhelming evidence of drug activity in and around the venue that the jury accepted," Justice Dixon wrote. "The evidence demonstrated that the police failed to control drug activity."

He also said police had ultimately dropped the application to alter trading hours.

Ms Tsamis has been managing Inflation since 1995, and has 30 years experience in the hospitality industry.

Justice Dixon noted Ms Tsamis had been active in endorsing safe practices in licensed premises in Melbourne since 1993. "The plaintiff [Ms Tsamis] made clear, and I accept, that she has a strong personal anti-drug attitude," he wrote.

Ms Tsamis told the ABC the court win was "fantastic" but that the action was "not about the money". "This was about me clearing my name," she said. "It's a great result. It's over."

She said the claims made by police about the way she ran the nightclub had taken a deep emotional toll. "I was pretty angry. I was upset. I was hurt. I felt let down. I felt betrayed … But if you don't stand up, these things will continue," she said. "Most nightclub owners don't speak out because we feel that if we speak out we will be targeted."

Ms Tsamis said the court's finding that there was drug activity at the club was something she had been battling for years. She said police needed to do more to stem the tide of drugs into society and stay away from making comments like those that ultimately defamed her. "I just want them to do their job and protect us, and not get involved in this behaviour," she said.

In a statement, Victoria Police acknowledged the court decision and said the force had no further comment.

SOURCE  





A 'vital' social media group connecting farmers battling the drought has been reinstated by Facebook after being abruptly disabled

More than 11,000 people signed an online petition within hours of the One Day Closer to Rain (Drought) group being removed from Facebook, calling for its return.

The page brings together thousands of primary producers who give each other advice and support, as well as allowing people from the city to see the realities of the drought.

"It was a place for people to share their stories so they weren't alone in drought, and it just grew from there," founder and New South Wales farmer Cassandra McLaren said.

"It's more than a Facebook page — it's a community, it's a family.

"It was farmers sharing their stories, it was people living in rural towns but not necessarily on farms sharing their stories, it was people in city and urban areas that didn't live on farms trying to understand."

The group was suspended by Facebook yesterday after it breached a community standard in relation to selling livestock, a mistake Facebook has now acknowledged.

"We appreciate the hard work that 'One Day Closer To Rain' is doing to support drought-stricken farmers and their families at this difficult time," a Facebook company spokesperson said.

"We've looked into yesterday's removal, and upon further review, realised that we made an error and have since restored the Group and are reaching out to the admins of this Group to apologise for our mistake."

Isolation is a common feeling shared by primary producers living through the worst drought in a century, but the online community group offers a little reprieve and crucial connections, disregarding countless kilometres between its users.

"We are ecstatic that it is back up," Ms McLaren said.

"Still reeling and trying to process it all but are extremely appreciative of the support of everyday Australians who have rallied to ensure our page is able to continue.

"With this being recorded as the biggest drought on record, it's actually a historical record of this drought.

"We look forward to hopefully direct contact with Facebook and an understanding of what has happened."

After first learning the group had been taken down over concerns of the sale of livestock and guns, Ms McLaren said she was "devastated and gobsmacked." "Anybody who knows our main One Day Closer To Rain page, [knows] it's not a sales group," she said.

"We don't allow sales — we don't even allow hunting, so why we would we be selling guns?" Users have often praised the group because of the exclusion of sales.

"Often the comments have been … 'it's so supportive, it doesn't have all the other crap other pages have', and we had to moderate fairly hard to get it to that standard," Ms McLaren said.

Within hours more than 11,000 people had signed the online petition, and many other emailed Facebook with their concerns, as well as voicing them online.

"This is devastating to us that are on the land … it's a lifeline to each other and city folk who are interested in what we do," Robyn Clydsdale wrote. "It's a wealth of information to us all."

Another user, Kerry Fraser, said she was worried about the impacts Facebook restrictions could have. "This is deeply concerning," Ms Fraser said. "At this time of the year this lifeline is critical for our farmers for our mental health."

That was a sentiment echoed by Ms McLaren. "We can't be without that page, it's vital, it's saved lives and that's not an underestimation," she said. "Australia needs it, farmers need it, and those that aren't on the land need to know they can support them, even if it's just emotionally, because it does make a difference.

SOURCE  






Regulators approve environmental plan for Equinor’s proposed oil exploration well in Great Australian Bight

Australia could once again become independent of overseas oil

A controversial plan for oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight has received environmental approval amid protests from green groups.

Drilling for an oil exploration well could take place in the Great Australian Bight next year after a Norwegian company received approval for its environmental plan amid protests from green groups.

The approval of Equinor’s plan has been welcomed by the South Australian and federal governments as well as the energy sector, but environmental groups have described it as “madness”.

The decision from the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) is the second of four approvals Equinor requires to move ahead with the plan.

The oil drilling has been controversial among environmental groups and has sparked protests in South Australia.

“We are gobsmacked that NOPSEMA could approve Equinor’s plan that experts have slammed,” Wilderness Society South Australia director Peter Owen said.

Earlier this year a group of energy and natural resource experts, led by the University of Sydney, made a submission to NOPSEMA that Equinor’s “overconfidence” in its ability to prevent a major spill could lead to catastrophic environmental impacts.

“Throughout the environmental plan, Equinor has consistently made optimistic choices in order to convince the public and NOPSEMA that ‘it is safe’ to drill,” they wrote.

“However, we saw a similar style of overconfidence demonstrated in BP’s proposal to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, which led to one of the world’s biggest oil spills in 2010.

“History has shown us that overconfidence precedes catastrophic failure in many spheres of engineering endeavour. No matter how many layers of defence there are between a hazard and an accident, accidents can and still do happen.”

But Equinor’s country manager for Australia, Jone Stangeland, told The Advertiser in November that the chemical would only be used if there were “shortfalls in the supply chain” of accepted dispersants.

NOPSEMA has made it a condition of approval that Equinor demonstrates its spill response equipment is appropriate before it drills.

“Equinor has obviously failed to satisfy the regulator of that yet,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific head of campaigns Jamie Hanson said.

James Cook University professor Jodie Rummer produced a report for Greenpeace about the dispersant, which had been shown to cause symptoms such as nausea, memory loss, nervous system damage and irritation to the skin, eyes, nose and throat in humans.

“Studies from the Deepwater Horizon spill show that dispersants mixed with oil are often more toxic to marine life than oil alone,” Prof Rummer said.

The Australia Institute also released a report this year that showed 27,000 jobs in South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania would be put at risk if a catastrophic oil spill occurred.

“Equinor have already had 239 oil spills in their history and, according to their own modelling, a major incident in The Bight would cover thousands of kilometres of the Australian coastline,” The Australia Institute’s SA projects manager Noah Schultz-Byard said.

Greenpeace’s Jamie Hanson said Equinor could not be trusted to operate in the pristine waters of the Great Australian Bight without the risk of incidents that could coat Australia’s much-loved beaches in black oil.

“This disastrous decision paves the way for an oil company that has a worsening safety record, and a history of accidents all over the world, to conduct dangerous, experimental drilling in Australia’s whale nursery in the Great Australian Bight,” he said.

Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society say they will continue to fight the proposal.

“The approval flies in the face of experts, communities, traditional owners, surfers, coastal families and the South Australian seafood industry who have all relentlessly campaigned against plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight for over five years,” Mr Hanson said.

The Wilderness Society said it was considering legal options to stop the well from going ahead. “The fight for The Bight is one of the biggest environmental protests Australia has seen, and this approval will only further mobilise community opposition,” director Peter Owen said.

Equinor was first granted a petroleum title over areas in The Bight in 2011 and now has an accepted environment plan.

It must still have a well operations plan and a facility safety case approved before it can begin drilling its proposed Stromlo-1 well at a site about 400 kilometres off the SA coast in water more than 2.2km deep.

If approved, Equinor plans to begin work in late 2020 with the operations expected to last for 60 days.

Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan said The Bight project had the potential to open up a major new petroleum basin.

“In a continent as large as ours I hope we can find another oil and gas province to replace the Bass Strait,” he said.

Mr Jone Stangeland, said environmental approval was an important milestone for the drilling program.

“We have been preparing for safe operations for two-and-a-half years, holding over 400 meetings with more than 200 organisations across southern Australia,” he said.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






19 December 2019

Vegan activist group who wreaked havoc in Melbourne have their charity status REVOKED because 'veganism is not in the public interest'

A vegan activist group who caused traffic to come to a standstill in Melbourne in April has had its charity status revoked.

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission on Tuesday revoked Vegan Rising's charity tax concessions and registration, which it has held since September 2017.

The group had been registered with the purpose of preventing or relieving the suffering of animals.

ACNC Commissioner Dr Gary Johns said revocation of a charity's registration was reserved for the most serious of cases.

'Our approach to regulation focuses on education and guidance first. However, when charities are unwilling to comply with their obligations, or fail to demonstrate commitment to their governance, then we will take stronger action,' he said in a statement.

Although the revocation is displayed on the charity register, the ACNC is prevented from publishing the findings from the investigation.

They also cannot reveal the the nature of the concerns raised due to secrecy provisions in its governing laws.

Dozens of vegan activists obstructed the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets in Melbourne during peak-hour on April 8, demanding an end to animal husbandry.

They used three rental vans as part of the blockade, chanting for 'animal liberation', with some also sitting on tram tracks and linking arms to stop police attempts to break them up.

Dozens of vegan activists obstructed the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets in Melbourne on April 8    +6
Dozens of vegan activists obstructed the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets in Melbourne on April 8

Tow trucks were fielded to move the stationery vehicles while other protesters chained themselves to cars and their counterparts waved placards that read, 'vegan rising' or 'this is a peaceful protest'.

Thirty-eight people were arrested for obstructing a roadway and resisting or obstructing police.

Similar protests were also staged at regional Victorian abattoirs, condemned by farmers and some politicians.

Vegan Rising's website describes the organisation as having one objective - 'to help create a vegan world'.

Last month the charity status was stripped from Aussie Farms, which has similar aims to Vegan Rising.

SOURCE  






Former cops who were caught on camera bashing a drunk man and snapping his finger in 'gruesome' arrest avoid jail

Two police officers who lost their jobs after bashing a 'vulnerable' drunk man and dislocating his finger during a violent arrest have avoided jail. 

Sergeant Nathan Trenberth and constable Julian Donohoe were slapped with fines after the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) findings resulted in actions of misconduct.

Horrific footage of the incident showed the former officers throwing punches at John Wells at High Street Mall in Fremantle, Western Australia, in 2017.

Trenberth admitted to the court that he punched the drunk man seven times claiming the first three punches were of reasonable force, compared to the other four which were excessive. He pleaded guilty to one count of common assault

'There was no injury alleged, there was no injury to the male, they were distractionary techniques of little force...' he said, Perth Now reported.

His partner Donohoe pleaded guilty to a charge of assault occasioning bodily harm for his role in the brutal arrest which saw Mr Wells's finger bent backwards causing it to dislocate. 

The court heard Donohoe attacked Mr Wells 'deliberately, vindictively and maliciously'.

Dohohoe told the court he was 'deeply ashamed and appalled by what he did'.

The magistrate described the arrest as 'gruesome' and 'violent', and highlighted the power imbalance between the officers and the 'vulnerable' victim.

Donohoe was fined $3,500 and Trenberth pleaded guilty to a count of common assault given a $1,800 fine. Both have resigned from the police force.

The incident occurred when Mr Wells was trying to light up a cigarette and three police officers approached him asking for some identification.

A police officer grabbed the cigarette which saw the pair wrestle before Mr Wells was repeatedly punched in the face as his arms were held down.

Mr Wells' finger was twisted until it was completely dislocated in the violent arrest in September 2017.

SOURCE  






Tradie is ordered to tear out a strip of fake grass he's had outside of his business for four years - because it might get 'too hot'



So dirt is going to look better??

A tradesman has been ordered to remove a strip fake grass from outside of his business despite it being there for four years - because it could get too hot.

Harry Hatfull, 58, said it took four years for the Sunshine Coast council to notice the 40 square metre patch at the front of his Marcoola building business. 

But despite the construction enterprise being located in a quiet dead-end street, the builder has been told the artificial turf must go. 'I don't like turf and never have, there's not enough area to mow,' Mr Hatfull told the Courier Mail.

'I'm going to have to comply [with the notice to remove the material] and it will look like sh**. 'It's just stupidity.'

The business owner said council became aware of the professionally-laid imitation lawn after someone made a complaint.

The complaint came as a shock, Mr Hatfull said, as the industrial estate area is generally quiet.

The council reviewed its decision at his request, but rejected each of his reasons why the fake grass should stay. 

He argued that water restrictions were about to be introduced and the maintenance of the fake grass was more economical than natural grass.  

Instead, the council referred to Subordinate Local Law No.4 2011 schedule 1, which states that interfering with any turf, sand, clay, soil or other materials on all local government-controlled areas and roads was prohibited. 

Interference under the regulation includes any act of damage, destruction, tampering, removal, alteration, defacing, disturbance or change. 

'The sub-surface may sink or wash out, pinned edges may become loose and present a tripping hazard,' the council's regulation states. 

Animal faeces and urine, leaf drop, food and drink spill and dropped chewing gum may also affect the product or it could attract vandalism, it said.

The council also claimed that studies have shown the sun can make artificial turf rise up to 65 degrees- making it difficult to walk on and increased localised heat. 

And the unnatural product looks noticeably different and does not fit into the 'natural theme' of the landscape.

'They claim it adds to the heat of the neighbourhood, but we are in an industrial estate next to an airport so I don't think it's going to make much of a difference,' Mr Hatfull told Daily Mail Australia.

Mr Hatfull said he will remove the covering by January 14 as ordered. 

The verge, the thoroughfare between properties and roads, is considered council land, but maintenance is the responsibility of householder and must comply with council regulations.

SOURCE  






Pilots to lose jobs as Jetstar cuts fleet

Fallout from industrial action at Jetstar could see up to 50 pilots lose their jobs and another 50 demoted because of a reduction in the airline's Boeing 787-8 fleet

The low-fares carrier on Monday flagged the possibility of three 787-8s being sold following a network and fleet review in the face of dwindling profits. The Australian understands that would mean the loss of as many as 50 pilots while another 50 could be redeployed to less senior roles across the network

It comes after Jetstar warned it would not give in to pilots' demands for upfront pay rises that it says amount to 15 per cent. The Australian Federation of Air Pilots has denied they are seeking that much and has urged Jetstar to return to the negotiating table.

Jetstar announced on Monday the cancellation of 800 domestic flights in January, equivalent to 10 per cent of their schedule, to provide passengers with certainty in the face of on-going disruption. More than 90 services were axed at the weekend because of four-hour stoppages by pilots on Saturday and Sunday and strikes by ground crew, including baggage handlers.

Combined with the reduced services in January, Jetstar estimated it would lose between $20m and $25m in revenue over the summer holiday period. CEO Gareth Evans said the wage claims being made by the AFAP and the Transport Workers Union were unsustainable.

"There's no doubt that industrial action is expensive and frustrating but we have to hold the line on costs or it threatens the long-term sustainability of our business," Mr Evans said. "We apologise to customers whose plans have been caught up in what the unions are doing."

From "The Australian" of 17 December, 2019

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





18 December, 2019

Insurers strangle battling Qld. regions

This is an old grumble with no easy solution.  The companies have to cover their risks and living in a Cyclone-prone region does have big risks.  The only solution is government action but there are already many big claims on the taxpayer

COSTLY insurance premiums are driving residents and businesses out of Townsville as the sky-high rates "slowly strangle" north Queensland, an economist says.

Natural disasters since Cyclone Larry in 2006 have resulted in north Queenslanders paying more than double the price for insurance compared to their southern counterparts. In north Queensland the inflated premiums meant more than $1 billion had been lost from the economy in the past decade and instead gone in the pockets of insurers, analysis by economist Colin Dwyer shows.

Mr Dwyer's research found north Queensland residents paid about $2200 more each year for insurance than people in southeast Queensland. "We estimate there are over 80,000 homes in the Townsville (local government area) and 12,000 registered businesses," he said. "If we were to extrapolate this over that decade, it becomes potentially greater than $1 billion that would have stayed in the local economy. "The confidence and wellness of the community would be in a much better position."

Mr Dwyer said high premiums meant people were not spending money growing the Townsville economy. Mr Dwyer called for a universal insurance cover, similar to Medicare, to be rolled out to equalise prices across the state.

Townsville businessman David Bowers said insurance costs drove developers and residents out of the region. "It is driving people and businesses out of north Queensland," he said. "Governments need to make a decision on whether they want people to live and work up here.

"It's a developing story but I'm hearing across the board businesses are aghast at the increases." Mr Bowers said cover for a 20-unit complex, for which he chairs the body corporate, had risen from $84,000 to $220,000 in one year. "Insurance is killing the north Queensland economy," he said_ "It's slowly strangling the region."

An Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry last year found home and contents insurance in northern Australia rose by 130 per cent between 2007 and 2018, compared to 50 per cent in the rest of Australia.

In July the ACCC proposed a national insurance comparison website after its own inquiry found north Queensland residents paid "considerably higher premiums for home, contents and strata insurance".

"Consumers have been given little visibility into how insurers assess risks, set premiums, or why premiums in this region continue to rise," ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said.

From the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of 8 December, 2019





Chef Ben Batterham is awarded $1 million in costs after he was found not guilty of killing an ice addict burglar he found in his daughter's bedroom

A Newcastle apprentice chef has been awarded costs related to his three-and-a-half-year fight to clear his name over the death of a drug-addled home invader.

Benjamin Batterham on Tuesday was awarded costs in the NSW Supreme Court after a judge criticised the director of public prosecution's decision to pursue a murder case against him.

Mr Batterham was in November acquitted over the March 2016 death of Ricky Slater who he found ransacking his daughter's bedroom at 3.15am.

He tackled Slater in the street, put him in a chokehold and repeatedly punched him in the head until police arrived.  Batterham told police: 'Give me two minutes with him. I'll kill the dog.'

However, a jury found him not guilty of murder and manslaughter after they accepted his argument he was acting to protect his home and family.

Mr Batterham's family was sleeping next door at his parents' house at the time of the incident.

Justice Desmond Fagan ruled that Mr Batterham be paid costs saying the charges should have been withdrawn on medical evidence.

The judge said the acted reasonably when he chased down Slater who was high on methamphetamine at the time.

Slater - who was found with three knives, cannabis and ice in his bag - died a day later after suffering three heart attacks.

He had scarring to his heart because of regular drug use, suffered liver disease and was obese, the court heard during the two-week trial.

The Crown had argued Mr Batterham 'caused or substantially contributed to the death of Ricky Slater by application of pressure to his neck and downward pressure on his upper body'.

But toxicologist and pharmacologist Dr Michael Kennedy gave evidence that Slater died due to the high level of methamphetamine in his system and his existing heart condition.

'If he hadn't been taking methamphetamine it's highly unlikely he would have died,' Dr Kennedy said during the trial.

Justice Fagan determined the charge should have been withdrawn upon receipt of Dr Kennedy's report of March 2019.

Mr Batterham acted 'lawfully and reasonably' in first calling police before chasing down and restraining Slater, the judge said.

'Having seen and heard the evidence of all the eyewitnesses it does not appear to me that the restraint applied by Mr Batterham was excessive, putting aside the blows he dealt to Ricky Slater while holding him down.

'Those blows may have gone beyond the force that was reasonably necessary to restrain Slater and to prevent escape. 'But it has been clearly shown by every medical opinion offered in the case that they played no part in causing death.'

SOURCE  





Family, not climate, top of mind for tweens

Family issues weigh more heavily in the minds of Australians aged between 10 and 13 than big global concerns such as the environment, a new study shows.

The longitudinal study run by the Australian Institute of Family Studies ranked concern about families highest, followed by terrorism, the use of drugs and alcohol, and school-related issues.

"Many parents may be surprised to hear that young people worry most about their families in their 'tweens' and early teenage years, showing how important family relationships continue to be as children get older," AIFS director Anne Hollonds said.

"Our study found two-thirds of 10-11-year-olds were worried about a family member becoming seriously ill or injured, more than half were concerned about fighting in their family and nearly half were worried about their parents losing their job," she said.

"By the age of 12-13, the level of worry about family issues had declined but still remained a prominent concern for this age group, with more than half worrying about the health of family members and close to four out of 10 concerned about family fighting and parental job loss."

The Growing Up in Australia Longitudinal Study of Australian Children found about four in 10 children in these age groups were concerned about terrorism and war, and a third worried about the environment

"Concern about the environment remained fairly stable over time," report author and AIFS research fellow Suz-anne Vassallo said.

"The use of drugs and alcohol was also a concern for many children (44 per cent at 10-11 years), although this appeared to become less of an issue once they reached their teens (37 per cent at 12-13 years)." She said relatively fewer teens and tweens worried about how they looked and whether they fitted in with their friends.

From "The Australian" of 17 December, 2019






Prue MacSween is mocked for saying a small child burst into tears and was left 'traumatised' after seeing a female Santa with a beard at Westfield

Prue MacSween has come under fire for saying a young child was left traumatised after seeing a female Santa at a shopping centre in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

The media personality said the four-year-old boy burst into tears after realising the Santa was a woman while walking through Myer, at the Bondi Junction Westfield.

'Why are we traumatising little kids with this gender nonsense? Child abuse? You betcha,' MacSween wrote on Twitter.    

The response on social media was explosive, with most people critical of the controversial commentator's tweet.

Some were quick to point out that kids often cried without warning, offering hilarious situations of their own children becoming upset over nothing. 

'My five year old cried yesterday because I said she had to wait five minutes for the video I was watching to finish,' one person tweeted.

Others suggested the situation was fake, with Junkee editor Rob Stott claiming Myer didn't have a Santa in their Bondi Junction store this year.

It's understood the department store has a Mrs Claus who reads books to children, but there is no listing for a Santaland online.

Not everyone was against MacSween, with one person agreeing it would have been distressing for the child to see a woman with a fake beard.

'I have no problem with Mrs Clause sitting on the chair but with a full on beard!.... I remember grandma having a few hairs on her chin, but,' they wrote.

MacSween clarified her comments to the Daily Mail Australia. 'Now I appreciate that Mrs Claus has been a feature of Christmas for some time…but this little boy was expecting to see Santa – who has been depicted in mythology as a man,' she said.

'If it is going to lead to confusion, anxiety and the kind of response this little boy experienced, I think it is the responsibility of the stores to clearly identify the person in the red suit as Mrs Claus.'

She said likening the situation to child abuse may have taken it too far. 'Child abuse? Maybe extreme. But anything that leads to the situation, confusion and upset that this little boy experienced should be avoided.'

The media commentator is no stranger to controversy and has been in the media herself for a number of comments about other people.

This included calling Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a 'psychopath', referring to Greens MP Adam Bandt as a 'danger to the community' and Australian Tennis player Nick Kyrgios as a 'spoilt little Greek brat' who 'should have been slapped as a child'.

She was also investigated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority after saying Australia should re-consider tactics of the Stolen Generation- and reconsider taking at-risk Aboriginal children from their families.

SOURCE  

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here








17 December, 2019

Isaac Levido: the Australian political strategist credited with Boris Johnson's victory



From his name and colouring, I am guessing that Isaac is of Portuguese ancestry. Alternatively, he could be a Sephardic Jew.  His family have been in Australia for several generations however, so it is all probably well diluted by now

Lynton Crosby protege behind Scott Morrison’s unexpected win chalks up another triumph with the UK Conservatives’ successful re-election campaign

National election campaigns – by definition a team effort – are somewhat unfairly often credited to the performance of a single person.

But thanks to a sharp, focused campaign that produced a large majority for Boris Johnson after a period of unprecedented political instability there was just one name being sung out at Conservative headquarters on Thursday: Isaac Levido.

A protege of veteran Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby, Levido is not a household name in his home country, despite playing a senior role in the upset re-election of Scott Morrison’s government in May.

He is just 36, but former Liberal Victorian state director Simon Frost says Levido has “experience beyond his age”.

No stranger to the UK, Levido worked on the 2015 and 2017 general election campaigns before setting up Crosby-Textor’s Washington DC office and returning to Australia to serve as Liberal party deputy director from January 2018 to mid-2019.

After a change of prime minister in August 2018 plunged the Liberal-National Coalition government into minority, they faced a seemingly impossible task of picking up seats from Labor to stay in power despite three years of polling deficits.

Levido had responsibilities spanning the party’s research and polling, through to day-to-day operations setting up headquarters in Brisbane, and organising the ground game with state directors.

Frost says Levido was “cool and calm under pressure” as he assembled the nuts and bolts of a Liberal party campaign run with a ruthless focus on the leftwing economic policies and personal unpopularity of Labor leader, Bill Shorten.

In Australia, Levido worked with Michael Brooks, a pollster from Crosby’s British company CTF Partners, and digital content experts Sean Topham and Ben Guerin from New Zealand – a team that was later transplanted to run Johnson’s campaign.

While the British Labour party took a leaf from Australian Labor’s formidable 2016 campaign – both claimed the conservatives would privatise public health services – Levido and his team capitalised on Brexit fatigue with the winning pitch that a majority Johnson would “get Brexit done”.

Andrew Bragg, a Liberal senator and former acting party director, is a life-long friend of Levido from their time at college at the Australian National University.

Bragg describes Levido as “a country guy from Port Macquarie” and “not a wanker” – echoing the personal reflections of other colleagues who say he is quiet, unassuming hard worker who doesn’t self-promote, is not too serious and can have a laugh at himself.

Bragg says Levido has “been able to get to top of his game really quickly”.

“If I were federal director, he’d be the one I’d want running the campaign,” Bragg says, echoing a sentiment that Australian conservatives hope they can call on Levido’s skills again – if he is not lost to the UK for good.

“He understands politics, polling and … modern campaign infrastructure. He’s an earthy machine man.”

SOURCE  






Queer how Press Council would suppress the truth

Jennifer Oriel

Australia is sleepwalking into a state of political censorship. While major media organisations have united to defend the free press against government interference, the chilling effect of political correctness does not prompt such unified action.

Yet state-designated minority groups frequently target journalists who dissent from PC ideology. The Australian Press Council should make the unfettered pursuit of truth its core business. But it has handed down guidelines ­advising journalists how to write on sexual politics, including queer and transgender issues.

The APC guideline for reporting on people “with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics” is derived from the particular school of thought known as queer theory.

Queer politics is not the same as gay liberation or lesbian feminism. The notion that queer activists speak for a “community” of people who are homosexual, ­bisexual, transgender or intersex is a myth. Rather, lesbian feminists and high-profile gay liberals have opposed the radical queer fringe since it emerged.

Former professor of political science Sheila Jeffreys explained the basic difference between the schools of thought: “Sexual liberals are those who subscribe to the 1960s agenda of sexual tolerance, to the idea that sex is necessarily good and positive, and that censorship is a bad thing. Sexual libertarians … advocate the ‘outer fringes’ of sexuality, such as sadomasochism, with the belief that ‘sexual minorities’ are at the ­forefront of creating the sexual revolution.”

Queer activism arose from sexual libertarians who believed sexual minorities were the true revolutionaries. The more that a practice or behaviour deviated from the mainstream, the more queers celebrated it.

Under the banner of queer even pedophilia was regarded as defensible because it was considered ­immoral by the society. Yet ­heterosexuality and standard ­expressions of gender were rejected because they formed the basis of the traditional family — an ­object of radical queer contempt.

The new morality celebrated whatever was restrained by law and/or shunned by the majority. Queer was — and remains — the most reactionary movement in left-wing sexual politics.

The revolutionary aspect of queer politics attracts people ­inclined to fundamentalist thought. Many are deeply intolerant of tolerance and treat dissent as a grave offence rather than the cornerstone of democratic society.

The onus is placed on dissenters not to offend, rather than queer activists learning how to handle different opinions.

The APC has fallen afoul of reason by promoting queer ideology as good journalistic practice. Its stated aim is “to assist journalists and publications to improve standards of reporting so as not to ­exacerbate … particular concerns faced by (LGBTQI) persons”.

The APC does not explain how the pursuit and revelation of truth is assisted by its advice. Perhaps because truth has relatively little to do with it. It is more about politics and the suppression of unfashionable truths. The published advice extends from a list of language rules to advising journalists how to avoid giving offence while interacting with interview subjects. In the recommended literature, there is even advice on what might be called PC grammar.

My favourite is the guide where journalists are instructed to ask “what is your pronoun” and discouraged from assuming it ­because, “misgendering can have negative consequences for a person’s mental health”. Compelling journalists to lie about biological fact to appease PC activists makes them a party to deception.

It is hardly conducive to a journalist’s psychological wellbeing. Yet the APC’s list of recommended guidelines includes gender ­diversity literature that suggests physical organs should not be ­labelled male or female because it can lead to discrimination.

Questioned by The Australian, the APC was at pains to stress the guidelines were not mandatory. It is cold comfort. Those of us too old to be naive know that radical activists are content with conventional debate until they begin to lose. Then they compel dissenters to comply. In the final act, they ­enforce.

The APC guidelines on sexual diversity are an invitation to lie where the lie is considered noble and the truth cruel. But a journalist cannot change the biological fact of birth sex and should not feel compelled to do so.

Artists who endure life in totalitarian regimes have spoken of how parallel institutions and realities are created to suppress unfashionable truths. Ran Yufei, a Chinese public intellectual who was imprisoned for exercising freedom of speech, described the need to ­refuse becoming complicit with such lies.

In The New York Review of Books, he said: “You have to learn how to argue. Too few public intellectuals in China have learned how to argue logically … the (Chinese Communist Party) created a parallel language system (of ­untruth) that is on an equal basis with the language of truth.”

Political censorship is the refuge of cowards. The censor is unable to mount a compelling ­argument and unwilling to compete fairly in the contest of ideas. Freedom of thought leads naturally to the free expression of speech in the spoken and written word. Their suppression is ­obtained in reverse motion; the censor introduces a penalty for words he dislikes because they ­embody ideas that challenge him.

By attacking the words or ­images, he attacks dissenting thought. If the assault is suffici­ently punitive, the message is clear: use that word and you will suffer. As the words change, so too do the ideas that precede them. They lose clarity, sharpness and direction. If a certain word is not permitted, the idea has nowhere to go. The frustration of knowing truth that cannot be expressed makes the pursuit and revelation of knowledge unappealing.

When faced with the risks of telling the truth in a state of political censorship, writers and artists often retreat. They adapt to the new order where truth is partial or, in radical times, completely ­reversed. In a state of political censorship, liars control the truth and make truth a lie.

The APC guideline should be rejected for what it is; an exercise in PC sophistry that renders truth subordinate to fallacy. I will not submit.

SOURCE  





Court action after ‘old school’ CFMEU tactics ruin concrete pour

The Australian Building and Construction Commission has launched Federal Court action against the CFMEU and three of its officials alleging they disrupted a concrete pour during construction of an aged care centre in New South Wales.

In a statement of claim, the ABCC alleges a threat by one official, Gerasimos Danalis, to engage in “old school” tactics on the Kiama Aged Care Centre project led to a critical concrete pour being halted and three trucks laden with concrete being wasted.

The ABCC alleges the union and the officials contravened the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Act by organising or engaging in an unlawful picket and breached the Fair Work Act by failing to produce a valid federal right of entry permit and hindering and obstructing and acting in an inappropriate manner.

The maximum penalty for each contravention of the BCIIP Act is $210,000 for a body corporate and $42,000 for an individual. The maximum penalty for each contravention of the Fair Work Act is $63,000 for a body corporate and $12,600 for an individual.

The ABCC alleges Mr Danalis and fellow officials, Anthony Dimitriou and Anthony Burke entered the project in November last year, with Mr Burke saying “we have an issue with access and egress”.

The trio returned three hours later with a notice of entry alleged suspected contraventions including issues with the concrete pour, front left leg of pump sinking in soil, workers working under boom, and no signage.

Mr Burke allegedly demanded workers be removed from a first floor work area and be re-inducted.

Mr Danalis is alleged to have said, “we’ll do it old school and block the concrete trucks”, before walking to the back of a reversing concrete truck and preventing it from unloading.

When a second concrete truck tried to enter the project site, the ABCC claims all three officials blocked its path.

It claims Mr Danalis shouted, “we are shutting down the site” before running “his finger across his throat”. A third concrete truck was prevented from entering the site and the concrete in all three trucks had to be disposed of.

Mr Danalis and Mr Dimitriou returned to the site the following day and allegedly again refusing to show their right of entry permits.

SOURCE  






THE soaring cost of gas and electricity is the top financial concern for households in 2020, a new report has found

Despite an energy pricing shake-up this year resulting in cheaper deals for many, power prices still remain a significant burden on budgets. Canstar's 2019 Consumer Pulse report, which surveyed 2000 people, found that 14 per cent of respondents said their biggest monetary concerns for the coming year were electricity and gas.

Next was grocery prices (10 per cent), job security (10 per cent) and running out of retirement savings (8 per cent).

Canstar's Simon Downes said power bills remained a "consistently high cost that is a shock to the budget". The report found that three out of four people opted to pay
power bills quarterly, which Mr Downes said was a big part of the problem. "If you are paying quarterly you are almost setting yourself up for a shock every quarter," he said.

"Quarterly energy bills can be $600 or $700 and it triggers shock in your head, leaving you cursing energy bills." He urged households to look for a provider that bills monthly or to set money aside each month.

The Australian Energy Market Commission's 2018 Residential Electricity Price Trends report shows the national average annual residential bill in 2017-18 was $1522. Origin's Jon Briskin said most of their customers "still receive and pay for their bills quarterly" but there were alternatives.

"Another option that many customers find helps with managing their household's budget is to set up a payment plan and make regular monthly, fortnightly or weekly payments," he said

"For people with a smart meter in their home, an easy way to reduce the stress of big quarterly bills is to switch to monthly billing and make smaller but more frequent payments." However households with a smart meter may still face an "estimated" read, which does not reflect actual energy use.

EnergyAustralia's head of retail. Mark Brownfield said most of their customers were billed quarterly. However he said that of those with a specific payment plan, 16 per cent paid weekly, 64 per cent fortnightly and 20 per cent monthly. "When people use the EnergyAustralia smart phone app, they can check their electricity usage down to the hour," Mr Brownfield said.

From the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of 8 December, 2019

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





16 December, 2019

Aboriginal rugby coach Jarred Hodges has boycotted the term 'Indigenous'

We can't win.  Australians have been told in recent decades that "Aborigine" is wrong and "indigenous" is right.  Now another change may be coming

When I was growing up many decades ago, we just used to call them all "boongs", which, rather surprisingly, is an Aboriginal name for themselves, a tribal name.  My Kuranda relatives used to refer to them as "Boories", which was the local tribal name in the Kuranda area

After being put in charge of a fledgling program to discover Indigenous playing talent this year, Hodges sent a timely message to mainstream Australia in naming it.

Instead of using the "Indigenous" tag, he called the talent-spotting rugby sevens program "First Nations", to create a more inclusive feel to what is an important program for the sport.

"The 'First Nations' term not only recognises [Aboriginal] people as the sovereign people of our land but it also recognises the unique language groups and sovereign nations that exist," Hodges said.

Hodges says the idea to call the program "First Nations" came to him after seeing how some other countries celebrate their traditional owners, using a similar term.

"Canada is probably one of the leaders around the world pushing for the rights of native people and acknowledging the differences that exist," he said.

"The word 'Aboriginal' or 'Indigenous' just brackets everyone but we know we have differences. "There are over 250 nations and language groups across the country. "We have got saltwater people, we have got desert people, we have got freshwater people, for example."

SOURCE  






Climate change is not the era’s burning issue

Stoic. We used to be stoic and sensible. And proudly so.

In Britain this was encapsulated by the wartime poster “Keep calm and carry on”. Here in Australia we have exhibited a phlegmatic hardiness down the gen­erations, dealing with all that a sunburnt country of droughts and flooding rains could throw at us.

Now hysteria reigns. That British poster today would read, “Cry panic and herald Armageddon”. The Australian visage of calm practicality has been replaced by a Munch-like scream.

On Christmas Day 1974, households around the nation were shocked by news coming through from Darwin and rang to offer their homes to house families evacuated in the wake of Cyclone Tracy. If it happened today many people would go and protest against the climate instead.

Rational arguments, hard facts and intelligent debate have been cast aside in favour of woke whingeing. In this information age, ill-informed emotionalism dominates public debate (although thankfully the great mainstream remain level-headed and smart, as they showed in this year’s so-called climate election).

We live in an age when Greta Thunberg can be named person of the year for doing nothing more than allowing herself to be the face of protest, bringing teenage hyperventilation to what should be a ­rational and scientific policy ­debate. She is to the climate debate what the Bay City Rollers were to music.

But she is far from alone. When Sydney was smothered in bushfire smoke this week The Sydney Morning Herald published Mark Mordue. “There is no other way to see it,” he wrote, “our dead future is here.” In The Guardian Australia Charlotte Wood wrote about her trauma from Sydney’s inner-west suburb of Marrickville. “We’re used to turning our attention briefly, ­intensely, to ‘those poor people’­ ­affected by climate change, then returning to normal life,” Wood wrote, without telling us who or what she was referring to. “Now those poor people include us.”

The New York Times fed the hyperbole, quoting novelist Anna Funder looking at bushfires on a flight into Sydney. “It was as if the country were being devoured by a chemical reaction,” she said.

“Dear prime minister,” Katharine Murphy wrote in The Guardian Australia, “the country is not parched but desiccated, and it is burning like a tinderbox, and people are frightened.”

Remember when journalism was about facts?

A host of people from the prominent to the anonymous took to social media to tell us that “Australia is burning”. NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean blamed the fires on climate change — without evidence.

Rather than explain what his department had done or failed to do to reduce fuel loads in national parks and forests — the one part of the bushfire equation humans can control — he promised more action on carbon emissions reductions policies that, of course, can and will never do anything to ­reduce or alleviate the bushfire threat. Yet, in this post-rational age, he was applauded by many.

People rallied in the streets not to offer their services with other fire volunteers for hard yakka on the frontline with backpacks and rakes or making sandwiches to help; no, they rallied for more government action on carbon emissions reductions. We have reached an absurdity when people blame governments for deliberately lit fires and the smoke they produce. Grown adults blame governments for weather.

Therese Rein, wife of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, took to social media to sheet home blame for destructive fires at the feet of Scott Morrison. Needless to say, she has never publicly blamed her husband for the 170 deaths on Black Saturday, when Rudd was prime minister just over a decade ago.

The divide in approaches was illustrated by the actions of two other former prime ministers. While Tony Abbott has spent weeks on distant fire fronts vol­unteering with his local Rural Fire Service brigade, Malcolm Turnbull jetted back to Sydney, posted a picture of the smoke and said we needed to take more climate action.

The silliness is constantly reinforced in the media. ABC presenters ask daily inane gotcha questions. Hamish Macdonald ­demanded drought tsar Shane Stone declare whether anthropogenic global warming was a thing, and Michael Rowland demanded to know whether federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher would join Kean in blaming climate change for bushfires.

The point about this game-playing is that nothing turns on the answers, except to desired creation of political embarrassment or the chance to shame someone for defying the zeitgeist. Whatever we do to combat drought and bushfire is what we have always done — build dams, supply feed, reduce fuel, protect houses and so on — because these are threats that are endemic to our land.

The expert analysis shows that if there is a long-term influence from climate change on either of these blights, it will be to make each of them slightly more common in a land where they are common already. Whatever Australia does on carbon emissions can have no impact on any of this, at least for decades to come as global emissions continue to rise. And if, at some unlikely time in the future, international resolve sees substantial cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, Australia will still be a land menaced by drought and fire.

There is no drought-free and bushfire-free Nirvana awaiting us, no matter how much nonsense we hear from Kean, Turnbull and Thunberg. It is only the practical that matters. Yet it is usually the gotcha moments, emotional cries and virtue signalling that dominate the public debate. We are our own worst enemies.

Look at the ridiculous coverage and response given to the Climate Change Performance Index ­released in Madrid this week. It is the work of European climate activist think tanks — comparable to The Australia Institute in our country — yet their findings are reported as though they are dispassionate assessments.

The overall ratings had the US ranked last and Australia third from last despite both these developed nations having reduced emissions and, in our case, being committed to further reductions. China — a country that is increasing its emissions ­annually by more than Australia’s total emissions — was ranked almost 30 places above Australia. India, too, was ranked high on the list.

Australia was marked down for approving the Adani coalmine but India was given a leave pass for burning the coal. The index pays more ­regard to climate politics and ­posturing than to emissions facts and outcomes.

Yet this week ABC opinionista Barrie Cassidy tweeted about the index by saying: “I don’t think we’ve ever had a government so out of touch with a national concern and an opposition so incap­able of putting pressure on them.” I guess Cassidy has already forced himself to forget the “climate election” of seven months ago.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese also used the index to criticise the government’s performance and his frontbencher Mark Dreyfus said our nation was now an “international embarrassment”. But the ALP’s climate spokesman, Mark Butler, would not be outdone: “Australia is burning. We can feel the impacts of climate change. Scott Morrison’s climate policy is ranked dead last, below Donald Trump. This is a crisis and the government won’t act.”

Against all this panic and politicking, we need to consider the facts. In NSW this has been a bad bushfire season, one of the worst the state has seen, certainly since 1974. With NSW’s drier winters and wetter summers, the season is usually earlier and less intense than the most bushfire-prone states of Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.

With widespread fires this year the smoke haze has been bad too. But, again, not unprecedented.

In 1936 the smoke haze was so bad in Sydney a ship from Hong Kong, the Neptuna, struggled to find the heads and sounded its foghorn but the harbourmaster couldn’t find the ship or see across the harbour. In 1951 all Sydney airports, from Mascot, through Bankstown to Richmond, were shut for hours because the smoke was too thick for planes to land.

Apart from rampant arson, the reason NSW’s fire season is bad is the drought. On this point it is ­important to note the clear assessments of University of NSW’s ­Andrew Pitman, who heads the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. “This may not be what you ­expect to hear but as far as the climate scientists know, there is no link between climate change and drought,” he said. “Now, that may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented but there is no reason a priori why climate change should make the landscape more arid.

“And if you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last 100 years there’s no trend in data, there’s no drying trend, there’s been a drying trend in the last 20 years but there’s been no drying trend in the last 100 years and that’s an expression of how variable the Australian rainfall climate is.”

When Pitman was embarrassed by the use of his quote in the climate debate, he issued a statement saying he should have used the word “direct” — so there is no “direct link” between the drought and climate change.

There you have it. Most of the rest is just noise.

SOURCE  






OK boomer for now, but a revelation awaits millennials

BERNARD SALT

I have some sympathy for the millennial generation and their latest gibe at Baby Boomers. For those who haven’t caught on, “OK Boomer” – popularised in social media this year – is a kind of eye-roll put-down of older people’s lecturing of the young on topics ranging from housing to climate change to personal resilience. I have some sympathy with Millennials (born 1984-2002) because this is pretty much what Baby Boomers (1946-1964) did to their elders 50 years ago.

In the late 1960s the hippie movement and the anti-war student protest movement, stemming from privileged cities in America but quickly spreading to Sydney and Melbourne, involved teenagers and 20-somethings (Baby Boomers) railing against an older elite they called The Establishment. These young and “disrespectful” protesters were mightily confronting to middle-aged people who had survived the privations of the Great Depression, who fought in and whose comrades died in World War II, and who therefore, naturally enough, had a prescribed way of thinking.

The way to survive a war or an economic depression, they believed, was to subjugate individuality and to place trust and faith in the institutions that delivered victory: the instruments of government; a structured, almost militaristic society in which everyone did their duty; and the church, with its central tenet of self-sacrifice and endorsement of the pursuit of redemption and eternal salvation.

The Establishment had built quite a machine by the 1960s. Pity it was flawed. Viewed in hindsight there was, and remains, every reason to be suspicious of the instrumentalities of government. During World War I, Australia, with five million people, lost 60,000 men over four years, an average of 300 per week. Can you imagine modern-day Australia accepting such a sacrifice? The structured, ordered, dutiful society that flowed out of World War II may well have been disciplined, but it also crushed the gay, ignored the indigenous, was oblivious to the disabled (including returned soldiers with PTSD) and pigeonholed women. This society was repressive for many people and in desperate need of a makeover.

I’m not sure those student protesters and their hippie confreres knew what they were taking on with their derision of, and contempt for, The Establishment. What they did know was that the Vietnam War was wrong and that the pursuit of personal freedoms, the notion of individual sovereignty, was a better basis upon which to build a strong and fair society. It took the baby-boomer generation less than a decade – from the Summer of Love (1967) to America’s ignoble exit from Saigon (1975) – to disassemble the political and social apparatus of The Establishment. Out of these ashes came a new boomer-based society that found voice in the 1980s.

Not all Baby Boomers, of course, were authority-challenging visionaries; most, including me, merely watched from the sidelines. The same is true of Millennials today, although social media allows timid sideline-sitters to offer moral support from behind the safety of an anonymous “like”.

The systematic deconstruction of the thinking, perceived privileges and institutions of the baby-boomer generation may continue for a decade. But by the end of the 2020s all the usurping and upstarting will fall eerily silent as a great revelation descends upon the generational battlefield. As the Millennials breach their 40s they will realise that while it may have been OK, even brave, to target powerful 60-something boomers, it’s not OK to continue berating the old and frail.

SOURCE  






The expat dilemma

By Nikki Gemmell -- who was born in Wollongong in 1966.  She has written a number of successful books.  Her writing is popular in France, probably because of its existential tone.  Despair sells in France. Her mother committed suicide. She now lives in Sydney.  Her biography suggests that her perceptions may be unusually sensitive, for good or ill



They're the risk-takers; the flexible, the adaptable, the brave. Those among us willing to dive into the unknown, embracing pioneering Aussie traits of enterprise and courage and resilience. They're our expats, striding out to all corners of the globe. The Aussies who dream of shaking off sameness and safeness; of seeking something beyond the small worlds they've been raised in. Expats are the workers who relish the benefits of diversity over homogeny; who revel in a life of challenge and change.

Surely all that is to be admired? Surely it's seen as an asset in the local jobs market? Yet, say it isn't true — our returning expats are hard done by in their homeland. They're not valued when it comes to landing jobs as they head back.

New research has found that many Aussies who work overseas struggle to find employment after heading home. To secure a job, many are considering pay cuts and demotions to get a foot in the door, a majority of returning expats have shrinking ambitions and expectations. Ah, Australia.

The findings have emerged from a study by job site Indeed, and Advance, a group helping Aussies work overseas. Seven hundred returning expats were interviewed: 85 per cent reported trouble finding work, and this alongside 83 per cent of local recruiters who expressed caution about recommending expats for positions.

What is it in the Australian psyche that wants to overlook our bravest? Is it the curse of the tall poppy syndrome? A desire to put that person who thought they were too good for their country back in the narrow little box where they surely belong?

So why return? Sometimes, as Patrick White put it, "I am compelled into this country." Hiraeth, a Welsh word, means an intense, bittersweet longing for a homeland; a grief for a lost place of your past. Many expats suffer from it; I certainly did.

It was the siren-lure of this land, its vaulting sky
and hurting light that eventually sung me home; the cathedral of beauty that is Australia. And a desire to raise three little Pommies as confident, bold Aussies alongside beloved ageing parents.

Yet according to this latest report, 67 per cent of returning expats have considered heading back overseas again to land the right role, and 70 per cent said their self-esteem was impacted by difficulties in returning home.

Advance's Yasmin Allen says Australians who believe that overseas experience is always a bonus to their CV should think again: "What's really important is to keep our networks alive when we're offshore... [Because] when expats with great global skills come home to Australia... these skills aren't valued."

Why did I leave? Because I was starting to feel suffocated by the narrow little world I came from. I wanted more dynamism, less homogeneity; wanted to break loose from the tightness I grew up among, where I was expected to live a small, boxed-in, obedient little life.

If I became a good wife and mother that would be celebrated as a great victory, the pinnacle of womanhood — who was I to have tickets on myself?

I still go back into that sphere, occasionally, and the utter absence of curiosity about wider worlds or lives always strikes me. As a woman, the compulsion is to keep you small, unthreatening, reduced, one of them in a narrow little world.

It still shocks me. Which is why I find a natural affinity with expats around me — we think alike. It's such a relief. When I came home and fell into old circles there was no curiosity about what my life had been; I slipped right back in like I'd never been away. It was disorienting, alienating. Which is why, for many returning expats, we now live in Australia with the taunt of perpetual restlessness. We've found our way home — but dream of elsewhere. Still. No wonder many head back overseas.

From the Weekend Australian magazine of November 9, 2019






Evil doctor should be burnt at the stake

A Melbourne anaesthetist who used a needle on himself before injecting 55 pregnant women with hepatitis C has failed in his bid to overturn a 14-year jail term by arguing the disease is not that serious.

James Latham Peters intentionally infected the women at the Croydon Day Surgery between June and November 2009 after stealing syringes of fentanyl from the operating theatre, injecting himself and then using the same syringes to inject patients.

Fifty-five women were infected with hepatitis C and experienced a range of symptoms. In victim impact statements, some victims described being “really sick for about eight weeks”, body aches, liver pain, constipation, lethargy, loss of vision and no certainty of a cure.

Some endured lengthy treatments that resulted in hair loss, vomiting, nausea, memory loss and 30kg weight loss, according to court documents.

Peters was jailed for 14 years with a minimum, non-parole period of 10 years.

The victims were awarded a share of almost $14 million in compensation in 2014 but today they were traumatised again as Peters attempted to downplay the seriousness of his offending.

In the Victorian Court of Appeal, he argued new treatment options for hepatitis C have become available since he intentionally infected the pregnant women and therefore his crimes did not constitute “serious injury”.

But it was an argument that Court of Appeal judges rejected.

A legal source involved in the original trial told The Age newspaper Peters was a “vile human with no regard for anyone”.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






15 December 2019

Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW accept complaint against Israel Folau

Israel Folau’s legal battles may not be over just yet after the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW accepted a complaint from a gay rights activist who has accused the former rugby star of “homosexuality vilification”.

Campaigner Garry Burns wrote to the board’s president in early December complaining about Folau’s infamous April Instagram post in which he warned hell awaits homosexuals.

Mr Burns also complained about the rugby player’s comments seen in a video sermon linking severe droughts and unprecedented bushfires to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in late 2017.

He wrote that Folau’s statements were “objectively capable of incitement of contempt and or hatred of homosexual persons on the ground of their homosexuality”.

The anti-discrimination board on Friday informed Mr Burns his complaint had been accepted under the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act.

Once a complaint is accepted it normally goes to conciliation. If that fails to resolve the matter it can be referred to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal for a legal decision.

Mr Burns in 2013 and 2014 had success at NCAT when the tribunal found a former Katter Party candidate had vilified homosexuals and ordered she publicly apologise.

But when Tess Corbett, a Victorian, didn’t retract her comments he couldn’t enforce the ruling because she wasn’t a NSW resident.

Mr Burns has set up a GoFundMe page to fight against the Sydney-based Folau.

Former leader of the Australian Labor Party Mark Latham believed the decision to accept the complaint sent a “chilling” precedent for all “religious preachers”.

In a lengthy spiel, Latham detailed how the ruling set a dangerous mark for the NSW Tribunal in relation to free speech.

“Section 49ZT of the Act has an exemption from ‘Homosexual vilification’ action for ‘religious instruction’, discussion, debate and ‘expositions of any act or matter’.

“The s49ZT exemption does not apply to Folau, apparently, meaning that an unelected NSW Govt tribunal is now in the business of re-interpreting The Bible in the case of a religious preacher.

“Mark Speakman must step in now and clean out the Anti-Discrim Board.

“During the SSM debate, we were told repeatedly no one would lose their freedom of speech to criticise gay marriage. This was a lie. “Folau has been dragged before a NSW tribunal for his belief that God disapproves of SSM laws.”

SOURCE  






Australia cops hate at UN climate summit

Australia’s lax approach to climate change has been called out on the final day of the United Nations climate summit in Madrid.

Among other things, Australia has come under fire for resisting proposed future emissions targets and changes to carbon markets.

Escalating tensions, Costa Rica’s environment and energy minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez outright blamed “Australia, Brazil and the US” for the stalemate.

“Some of the positions are totally unacceptable because they are inconsistent with the commitment and the spirit that we were able to agree upon (in Paris in 2015),” he said.

UN chief Antonio Guterres also warned of a global crisis unless big emitters such as Australia can meet demands. Australia’s reliance on coal-fired power makes it one of the world’s largest carbon emitters per capita.

The summit comes on the heels of countless climate-related disasters across the planet, including unprecedented cyclones, deadly droughts and catastrophic fires.

Along with Costa Rica, Fiji officials have also extensively criticised Australia’s stance.

At the talks, vulnerable countries expressed outrage over Australia’s bid to hold onto piles of emissions vouchers left over from a now-discredited system under the Kyoto Protocol. That approach could potentially allow Australia to meet its climate commitments on paper, without actually reducing pollution.

While Britain, Germany, New Zealand and others have slammed the notion, Australia continues pushing to maintain the loophole.

Asked about Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent assertion that his country was part of the “Pacific family,” the Minister for Economy of Fiji responded that “when you have family members you also have some black sheep members too in the family.”

“At the moment, it would seem that they appear to be far from eating at the same table,” Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum told reporters in Madrid, adding that he hoped Australia would “let go of their current position.”

Small, low-lying islands like Fiji are particularly vulnerable to tropical storms and sea-level rise worsened by climate change.

Nations are also at odds over how the fight against climate change should be funded and how carbon trading schemes should be regulated.

In addition, there has been little progress over the issue of “loss and damage” – how countries already dealing with the worst impacts of climate-related extreme weather and drought should be compensated.

Amid growing calls for action to address climate change, the Prime Minister was forced to address it earlier this week. The recent release of the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index - which looks at national climate action internationally - deemed the Morrison government a “regressive force”, saying the re-elected Morrison government “has continued to worsen performance at both national and international levels”.

Asked about that report during a press conference, Mr Morrison said he “completely rejects” it. Asked to elaborate, he only said, “Because I don’t think it’s credible” before moving on to another question.

SOURCE  







The drought shows vividly that Australia needs new dams

Ross Fitzgerald is pretty right below but he should do some reading on the Bradfield scheme.  Ross is no economist

Right now, the federal government is doing what it can to help struggling farmers and their communities with low-interest loans, income support payments and local infrastructure grants. These are important short-term palliatives but of course they don't address the problem of too little water.

At some stage, the drought will break, and when it does, in this land of "drought and flooding rain", chronic water shortage will almost certainly turn into temporary abundance. Australia doesn't have a shortage of water. We have a shortage of water management. This is what the Morrison govern-ment needs to tackle.

So far, the Coalition government has pushed on with the measures originally envisaged in the Murray Darling Basin Plan. There's been grants and loans for on-farm improvements to make existing water allocations go further, and there's been the welcome recent development in turning on the Adelaide desalination plant, so that South Australia needs less river water; leaving more for farmers and communities upstream.

But the Morrison government has also pushed ahead with water buybacks for environmental purposes, and now Water Minister David Littleproud is reportedly threatening even more of them.

The one thing the government has not been prepared to do is build more dams, even though this is the only way to secure much more water both for farmers and for the environment. Morrison must know that there's a problem. He would not otherwise have appointed former Northern Territory chief minister Shane Stone as the drought co-ordinator.

For most of the past year, Stone has been quietly but effectively managing the aftermath of the floods in western Queensland with tens of thousands of dead cattle and farmers traumatised by a succession of enduring natural disasters. Morrison is no doubt hoping that this can-do former politician (who has no time for the climate cult, who's not in awe of bureaucrats, and won't take any un-reasonable "no" for an answer), can take the heat off the National Party ministers whose feuding has made them so ineffectual.

While Stone can't make it rain, any more than anyone else, he might just have the combination of independence and political authority to tell the Prime Minister that the phobia about dams must end.

The NSW government is cautiously venturing down this path, with two proposals (that the federal government is quietly supporting) to increase the capacity of the existing Dungowan and Wyangala dams.

And the Queensland Coalition opposition has formally committed to a feasibility study of a modern version of the 1938
Bradfield scheme, originally conceived by the engineer responsible for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

This would be a tropical version of the Snowy Mountains scheme, damming coastal rivers and, through a series of tunnels, exploiting much of the water that would otherwise flow out to sea into Australia's western river system.

When the Howard government briefly flirted with the idea of damming a tributary of the Clarence, in northern NSW, to increase Brisbane's water supply, local reaction was a factor in losing the seat of Page. But that proposal was to send water to another state, not to tunnel water under the Great Dividing Range to help farmers at a time of the worst drought ever in northern NSW.

So there are at least two credible proposals that should be considered if the government is to ensure that the next drought has nothing like the adverse conse-quences of this one.

What ought to be crystal clear is that we can't continue to add to our population without any significant increase in our water storages. Indeed, increasing population is the elephant in the room. At a time that our population has increased by a third over the past 30 years, we've added less than 5 per cent to our water storage. And any ambition to be a food bowl to the emerging middle classes of Asia is obviously dependent on more water.

Morrison has done well presenting himself as the plain-speaking everyman of Australian politics. Not for him the economic reformism of Hawke, Howard or Keating. Yet even cautious, careful, pragmatic leaders are expected to solve major problems. Otherwise, what's the point of being in government?

At some stage, it won't be enough to point to the dangers of an unreconstructed Labor Party in order to keep winning elections.

The Morrison-led Coalition needs something visionary; and drought-proofing Australia could be just the ticket

From "The Australian" of 9/12/19





Not every little thing needs to be about the nation

Bring back real federalism

When did everything become a national problem? Not a problem for individuals and families, not a problem for communities and organisations, not a problem for state governments or local coun-cils — but a national problem.

I was reminded of this with the release of the Program for International Student Assessment results revealing that Australia ranks 16th for reading, 17th for science and 29th for mathematics. Over a decade, our students have fallen behind close to a full year in these subjects.

Responding to the news, Labor's education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, declared it "a national problem, it needs a national approach and we need to make sure that we're working together to teach the basics well, lift entry standards into teaching, give schools the support they need".

This national approach thinking infects all sorts of areas. We have a national strategy for obesity and a national strategy for suicide prevention. The government recently created the very dubious position of National Skills Commissioner. The second Gonski report recommended a national teacher workforce strategy.

A recent report by the supposedly learned Academy of Science, titled Sustainable Cities and Regions: 10-Year Strategy to Enable Urban Systems Transformation, calls for a national vision for cities. (And don't waste your time reading it.)

Apparently, "sustainable transformation of Australia's cities and regions is being hampered by the lack of a national vision, institutional silos and perennial underfunding, and our best innovations and research break-throughs are not being shared across cities".

Last time I looked, our cities were all located wholly within either states or territories. So much for having a national vision. In any case, whose national vision? The vision of the deeply woke Academy of Science?

Economists have a framework for thinking about when a national approach is warranted and when it is not. To use the jargon, when there are significant inter-jurisdictional spillovers — meaning that what is done in one state has clear effects in other states — there is a strong case for a national approach. Otherwise solutions should be developed as close as possible to the action.

In this way, competition between the states is fostered and each can learn from the approaches others adopt. And the existence of interjurisdictional spillovers is not sufficient to justify a national approach. There are often means of handling these without a national approach. Using mutual recognition of skills and qualifications between the states is an example of this.

For several decades there has been a marked shift in the division of roles and responsibility between the federal and state governments, with the federal government winning out.

There have been some moments of hesitation. The Victorian government under premier John Brumby sought a mature discussion about the division of roles and responsibilities between the levels of government. Similarly, the then premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, was prepared to accommodate some clean reallocation of tasks between the levels of government

For a brief time, the Rudd government sought to rationalise federal-state relations, particularly in relation to intergovernmental agreements.

Once an avowed centralist; Tony Abbott as prime minister discovered the virtues of the federation and established a process to renegotiate the roles and responsibilities between the levels of government and the associated funding reforms. This was killed off when Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister.

The recently released discussion paper of the NSW Review of Federal Financial Relations includes some useful information on this. In 2008, the federal and state governments signed the Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations.

This agreement was the acknowledgment that the states have the principal responsibility for service delivery — education and hospitals, in particular. As a result, the number of agreements between the federal and state governments was reduced from 90 to six national agreements and about 16 national partnership agreements.

The new arrangements did not last, however. By 2010, there were more than 300 intergovernmental agreements. The paper also notes: "In 2018-19, there were 30 national partnerships that provided NSW with less than $10 million in funding. 25 of these were less than $5 million in funding."

So effectively where we have ended up is the federal government interfering in many areas that were traditionally the states' preserve. The funding agreements bgtween the federal and state governments come with strict and onerous conditions on how the money can be spent while failing to provide any funding certainty.

A consequence of all this has been to enfeeble state governments, which have lost significant capacity to develop policy and delivery systems. Always keen to secure additional funding, they have been prepared to go along with the bossiness of Canberra while diluting their autonomy, notwithstanding their continuing responsibility to deliver the vast majority of government-funded human services. In the case of schools, for instance, the states own and run public schools and bear 80 per cent of their costs.

Apart from enjoying a sense of dominance and illusory control, it's not entirely clear why the federal government has sought to interfere so forcefully in the realm of state government activities. It almost goes without saying that unclear accountability leads to inferior results. And does anyone believe that the federal government — including thousands of
bureaucrats in the federal departments of education and health —really has any comparative advantage in devising effective and implementable policy approaches?

Education expert Ben Jensen has observed that for too long, education policy has been dominated by a series of highfalutin, worthy-sounding national reports without real attention being paid to what does and what does not work and adjusting the approaches used to the particular circumstances. One size does not fit all.

Underpinning these dysfunctional arrangements are the funding imbalances that exist between the levels of government. Economists use the arcane term vertical fiscal imbalance. With the states raising less than two-thirds of what they spend, there is a tendency of the fiscally dominant level of government to call the shots in some detail.

The way forward involves the states standing on their own feet to a greater extent when it comes to raising revenue and for the federal government to realise that more untied funding to the states is likely, on balance, to provide better outcomes than the plethora of detailed and unworkable commands.

The federal government may also come to appreciate that the appropriate absence of national approaches in many areas eliminates the blame game for outcomes it can't really control.

From "The Australian" of 9/12/19

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






13 December 2019

If you get cancer in Australia you now have DOUBLE the chance of surviving compared to sufferers in Britain - Why?

Both Britain and Australia have systems of "free" government hospitals so why the difference?  They get vague below in answering that and fail to mention the elephant in the room: 40% of Australians have private health insurance versus only 7% in Britain.  So for nearly half of Australians, the scan is done and the diagnosis is in almost immediately.

I once got a referral for a CAT scan from my GP and when I went in immediately to the scanning service, they APOLOGIZED for not being able to do it that day -- but did fit me in the next day.  And my doctor had the report the day after that. 

It's nothing like that prompt in Britain.  It takes many weeks for a final diagnosis there.  And an NHS doctor is just as likely to tell you you have indigestion rather sending you promptly for a scan or specialist appointment. And the sooner you get a cancer diagnosis the better your chances of surviving it


Australians suffering from some of the deadliest forms of cancer will soon be twice as likely to survive as patients in Britain.

A recent study into 3.9 million patients with cancer from seven countries  - Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK - found Aussie battlers had a better survival rate across the board in the first year of diagnosis.

It also topped the charts over a five-year period at all but lung (Canada) and ovarian cancer (Norway).

The better rate of survival has been put down to the willingness of Australians to see a doctor, get health checks and quick referrals to hospital for treatment.

The Cancer Survival in High-Income Countries project, compiled by UK's The Lancet Oncology, hopes to provide a guide for governments across the world to better understand and treat cancer patients.

But while Australians can take some solace from the study's results, those living in the UK have reason to be worried.

Former World Health Organisation's Cancer Program chief Professor Karol Sikora told Daily Mail Australia the situation in the UK was a disgrace. 'This is extraordinary. People in the UK seem to be afraid to reveal the truth of what we are facing,' he said.

'The five-year survival rate in Australia for pancreas is set to be as good as one in four patients by 2024. 'In the UK, that rate - currently eight percent - will be just over one in ten in the same year. This is a British national scandal and one being hushed up.'

The study delved into the survival rates of patients suffering oesophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, pancreas, lung, and ovary cancer. It revealed the UK is bottom of the league for five major cancers.

'What we are about to face in comparison to the Aussies is remarkable,' Professor Sikora said.

By sourcing back through decades of records, Prof Sikora believes forecast numbers look increasingly dire for UK residents and remarkably positive for Australians, particularly those with pancreatic or lung cancer.

Cancer survival rates over a five year period 
Oesophagus 23% in Australia, 16% in the UK

Stomach 32% in Australia, 20% in the UK

Lung 21% Australia, 14% UK

Ovarian 43% in Australia, 37% in the UK

The cancer research expert said Australians were surviving longer over the five year period due to better access to good basic surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy where appropriate.

But it's over the initial one-year period where Australians are ahead of the rest of the world.

'(The UK) has been consistently behind since the beginning of the study in 1995,' Professor Sikora said. 'If we're consistently behind on the one year statistics, that means we're not going to do well on the 5 year statistics.'

All of the seven countries analysed share roughly the same total spend on health care and enjoy national health schemes.

Professor Sikora said the UK provided many of the oncologists working in Australians, New Zealand and Canada. 'So it can't just be that, it must be that one year survival that's the problem (in the UK),' he said.

Professor Sikora said Australians could be surviving for a number of factors, including our willingness to go to the doctor and get health checks.

He also believes Australian GPs have better access to information that can ensure those with cancer are treated faster. 'Why not give GPs access to CT scans, to ultrasound, and to MRI?' he said. 'Now, some do have, and they do it very well. But some don't have access. They have to make a consultant referral.'

Professor Sikora believes Aussies are being referred to hospitals significantly faster than cancer patients in the UK.

'And you predict the obvious rise in cancer incidence as we go through an ageing population. It's not going to work unless we get more capacity in the system,' he said.

'Sixty-two days, which is the NHS England target, is simply not fast enough. 'In all these other countries, you'd get next day service with your GP. The day after that - the scan. The day after that you see the specialist, and that includes Saturdays.'

Professor Sikora said the UK needed to learn some fast lessons from countries such as Australia. 'Smarten up the front end of diagnosis of cancer; not worry about high cost therapies, that's not the cause of the problem,' he said. 'The reality is, the system doesn't work. It's letting down British cancer patients.'

SOURCE 





Trannies trump feminists

As Rodney King memorably asked: "Can't we all just get along?"

A feminist group has been banned from using free office facilities normally available to community organisations because Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said it holds 'trans-exlusionary' views.

Andrew Wilkie has banned Women Speak Tasmania from using taxpayer-funded photocopying facilities in Hobart.

The federal member for Clark said his sensitivity about the issue has been heightened because his ex-wife was transitioning to identify as a man.

Women Speak Tasmania (WST) had campaigned against the idea that men can become entitled to the same legal treatment and services by identifying as female.

Mr Wilkie told The Weekend Australian he found the group was 'discriminatory' and 'exclusionary' and decided to ban them from the office facilities as a result. 'They were using it but when I learned of their discriminatory views I then stopped them using it,' Mr Wilkie said.

'One of the explicit conditions of use of the photocopier is that it shouldn't be for any material that is exclusionary. They discriminate against transgender women; men who have become women.'

He said now that his ex-wife Kate has become Charlie, he now has an appreciation of transgender issues and was sensitive to discrimination against transgender people.

WST was disappointed by the ban and accused the federal MP of discriminating against them.

They are furious Mr Wilkie is letting a 'radical trans group' continue to use the facilities despite their discrimination on female-only services.

WST spokeswoman Isla MacGregor slammed the MP and said it was a 'direct attack' on women's sex-based rights. 'Australia is in the grip of a psychosis whipped up the by gender lobby that (says) "trans women are women and anybody who opposes that is a hate group",' she said.

SOURCE  




Farmers are up a dry creek without a paddle over water meters

WHEN fifth-generation dairy farmer Thomas Brook's water dried up about eight months ago, things went from bad to dire. With the dairy industry already on its knees; a victim of the major supermarkets' price wars, having to spend 80 per cent of his family's income on feed to maintain stock was heartbreaking. "Our water situation is very, very scarce," he told The Courier-Mail from his farm in Boyland. "The dairy industry, with the milk prices, is not looking good, there's a very fine line that we're running."

So news that our state's farmers could be forced to pay up to $100,000 to install water meters in order to measure dry river beds is well and truly rubbing salt into the wound.

Towns are running out of water and millions of dollars is expected to be wiped from farm-gate production value this fmancial year as prime agriculture areas continue to grapple with the drought

The State Government's AgTrends report shows reduced values for primary industry production across the state. The report is forecasting a 5 per cent fall in the gross value of production of Queensland primary industry commodities at the farm gate — from $14.65 billion to $13.94 billion. It also forecasts a similar 5 per cent drop in the total value of Queensland primary industries — it is forecast to fall from $18.54 billion to 17.8 billion.

Yet the Palaszczuk Government wants drought-stricken farmers to install water meters and data loggers costing between $8000 and $100,000. The meters will send live measurements to bureaucrats so they can check the state's precious water resources. Nobody is disputing this measure could help when it comes to drought-proofing our state in the future. But the timing is way off.

To blindside our producers with the plan now is at best thoughtless and at worst, callous. AgForce boss Mike Guerin is on board with the plan, but said action shouldn't be taken now. "Insisting on people putting water meters in now while they're struggling to put food on the table — that's less ideal in terms of timing," he said

After questions were sent to Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham about the issue, he promised farmers would not be hit "during this drought". "We understand the difficulties they are facing and we will not be adding to them," he said. Of course the fact he was not forthcoming with a timeline that he is surely privy to will be little comfort for anxious farmers.

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington said people on the land needed more support not more taxes, especially when farmers are calling it the worst drought in living memory.

In this case we have to agree. Mr Guerin said while there was not a figure yet on exactly how many water licence-holders would be affected by the change, it would be an "enormous amount".  Consultation on the plan with those affected has so far consisted of a letter, and with the deadline-for having a say closing on Friday there's not much time left.

For Mr Brook, the estimated $10,000 to $12,000 for equipment to measure water from the Albert River they use to irrigate might as well be $10 million. He simply can't afford it and to force him into the installation would be leaving him up the dry creek without a paddle.

From The Brisbane "Courier Mail" of December 9, 2019





Widespread electrical blackout in central Australia caused by...clouds

The danger of reliance on electrical generation power sources that can suddenly surge or diminish the way wind and solar energy do was highlighted by a major blackout that left central Australia and the "major" town of Alice Springs without electricity for up to nine hours.  Yesterday, two top energy officials in the Northern Territory lost their jobs over the fiasco:

The Northern Territory Labor government has sacked the territory's two most senior energy chiefs following a damming report from the market regulator into a "system black" event that hit the city of Alice Springs in October.

Tim Duignan, the CEO of Territory Generation, and Michael Thompson, the head of network operator and systems control company Power and Water Corporation were both sacked after the government received a report from the Utilities Commission into the outage, which affected 12,000 customers for between 30 minutes and 10 hours.

It seems clear that this is not a problem about technology — despite some trying to sheet the blame on the amount of rooftop solar in the local grid and the impact of passing clouds — but of corporate and energy culture. And of incompetence.

An investigating report by consultants Entura — requested by the Utilities Commission — found that staff managing the system did not anticipate the approaching cloud cover, and did not know what to do when they realised what was happening and output from the Uterne solar farm and rooftop solar panels declined.

Who could anticipate clouds?

Seriously, anyone with a brain — which is why solar and wind power installations require backup generators that come into use only when unexpected events like clouds or low winds happen.  But that requires maintaining the backup systems:

Thermal generators failed because they had not been properly maintained, and the staff had no idea how to re-start the machinery, because procedures had not been updated since the installation of a big battery. To cap things off, there was insufficient spinning reserve and the system was unstable.

As Australian blogger JoNova comments: "Welcome to the new complexified energy grid, where a cloud can cause a system black event."

SOURCE  





"Reparations" at risk in Queensland

Aborigines have always got their hands out but rarely do anything to help themselves

Aboriginal leader Mick Gooda says there's a "big concern" Queensland's move to negotiate a treaty with the state's indigenous people would be in jeopardy if the LNP wins next October's state election.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad opened the door to financial reparations for Queensland's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in July, after promising to negotiate a treaty or treaties.

Mr Gooda, the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, is part of the eminent panel appointed to lead extensive consultations on the path to treaty and advise the government on the shape of a future agreement. The panel has consulted with more than 1000 people across Queensland, from Birdsville in the far southwest to Thursday Island at the northern tip of the state, over the past couple of weeks.

Mr Gooda said the need for redress possibly in the form of a South African-style post-apartheid truth and reconciliation commission — was "fundamental" to reconciliation, but not necessarily compensation. "

(Financial reparation) was mentioned every now and then but it wasn't an overwhelming view put to us," he said. "People talked about redress generally, but different forms of redress, not just money. The view was you can't have a treaty unless it's based on the truth. So there would have to be a truth-telling process somewhere.

"I don't think I'd find an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in Queensland who thinks we've confronted the truth yet of the past. Whether it's the way the state, or the nation, was settled or the ongoing treatment of our mob in Queensland, whether it's through the killings, the reprisals or the money taken out (stolen wages), like my mum, or my grandparents, when they were mission workers.

"We think that needs to be out there with Queenslanders more generally. Once we settle on that basic truth, whitefellas can move on and blackfellas can move on."

He said the panel was likely to recommend that the outcomes of the truth-telling form an "essential part of the school curriculum from then on".

Mr Gooda said the eminent panel, which is co-chaired by historian and indigenous activist Jackie Huggins and former attorney-general Michael Lavarch, was also likely to recommend multiple treaties; because it was more practical and representative than a single treaty.

He said there would not be a treaty negotiated within 12 months but he hoped the Palaszczuk government would introduce legislation to confirm a "path to treaty" before next October's state election.

He said there was real concern the LNP opposition would not continue with the treaty process if it won the election. "There's a big concern, because that's what happened to South Australia. The Labor government had started the treaty process there and had got to the point of appointing a treaty commissioner, but then there was a change of government and the new government decided not go ahead with that," Mr Gooda said.

The LNP on Sunday indicated it would not continue with the treaty process if elected. "This is Labor's policy and they need to implement it," an LNP spokesman said. "The LNP supports practical policies to dose the gap on indigenous disadvantage."

Victoria started a treaty pro-cess in 2016, and indigenous Victorians have voted for members of the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria — a body to advise the government on the process. The Northern Territory Labor government also started a treaty process last August and is preparing for multiple treaties.

The former West Australian Liberal government negotiated a $1.3bn land deal with the Noongar people of the southwest, described as "Australia's first treaty" by Harry Hobbs and George Williams of the Faculty of Law at the University of NSW.

From "the Australian" of 9/12/19

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here







12 December, 2019

'We've had bushfires in Australia for 60,000 years': Mark Latham slams environment minister for breaking rank and blaming fires on climate change

One Nation state leader Mark Latham has slammed the NSW Environment Minister for blaming extreme weather conditions, bushfires and smoke clouds on climate change.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian has refused to be drawn into a climate debate for the length of the fire season, but her Environment Minister Matt Kean on Tuesday said 'no-one can deny' climate change is to blame. Mr Kean was a speaker at the Smart Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, as the Sydney basin was choked by thick, grey smoke.

But Mr Latham told 2GB's Steve Price the comments were 'opportunistic' and didn't take into account Australia's long history with extreme weather. 'In Australia, we've had bushfires for 60,000 years,' he said.

'We've had fires in Sydney before... to be making a political argument relevant to the minister's portfolio defies the proper respect for firefighters themselves,' he said.

Mr Price agreed with the argument, telling listeners he 'couldn't believe' the comments when he heard them. 'What does climate change have to do with arsonists lighting fires?,' he asked.

'What does science say about governments who haven't built a dam in decades and have screwed up water policy to the point where there is no water policy?' 

The air quality in the harbour city was 11 times more than what is considered as a hazardous level. The state's health authorities warned the 'grotty' smoke pollution was a recipe for severe illness.

Particulate readings of 778 for PM2.5 in Mona Vale on the city's north-east coast meant the suburb had the highest reported pollution levels in the world on Tuesday morning. By comparison, Shanghai had a PM2.5 level of 188 while Hong Kong had a reading of just 135 at midday.

Mr Kean said the weather patterns were 'exactly what scientists warned would happen,' Sydney Morning Herald reported. 'We need to reduce our carbon emissions immediately, and we need to adapt our practices to deal with this kind of weather becoming the new normal,' Mr Kean said.

He commented on the low visibility in the harbour city on Tuesday, where it was so low that Sydney ferries were forced to stop running, while smoke infiltrated train stations and set off fire alarms, causing havoc for the public transport system.

Despite Mr Kean's comments, Premier Berejiklian again wouldn't draw any links between the weather and climate change.

'The smoke blanketing Sydney is simply shocking,' Ms Berejiklian said. 'I urge everyone to please follow the advice given by our health experts. Even if you are not directly affected, chances are someone close to you is.'

SOURCE  








Most first-year university students can't do Year 5 maths - leading professors to drop the subject from business degrees

New research has found Australians are unable to do year five maths in their first year of university. Basic maths problems like rounding to decimal points or finding four per cent of a number were several problems which couldn't be solved by the students tested.

It was part of a research task among first year university students in Sydney who weren't studying maths but needed it for other courses.

The research was done by the Western Sydney University's Maths Department according to the Australian Financial Review.

The University's Leanne Rylands said the drop in education level is impacting university courses.

'We've been in a 30 year downward spiral. Universities are now teaching school level mathematics. Eventually it becomes too hard for people teaching classes like business studies so they leave out the maths part,' she said.

The state's education department announced it would be bringing maths back as a compulsory subject in October, after dropping it as a mandatory HSC requirement in 2001.

While the subject stopped being required for the people teaching our future generations of economists, accountants, and chemists back in 2014.

Key education ministers will meet in Alice Springs today to address another recent finding: Australian 15-year-olds are three years behind in maths compared with students in the highest performing OECD country Singapore.

The day long meeting will address why maths, science and reading skills are declining among Australian students. Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan is hoping it will give him the power to overhaul the national syllabus.

'Teachers and principals tell me the current curriculum is overcrowded,' he said. 'Central to improving student outcomes must involve refocusing on literacy and numeracy and de-cluttering the curriculum,' he told Australian Associated Press.

SOURCE  






Retiring judge lifts the lid on the 'scandal' that sees some of Australia's worst paedophiles handed 'get out of jail free cards'

A retiring judge believes Queensland's criminal justice system is failing child victims and giving paedophiles a 'get out of jail free card'.

Under state laws, paedophiles with multiple victims are entitled to separate trials for each while their past offending is almost never revealed to a jury.

The high-profile trial of Daniel Morcombe's killer Brett Peter Cowan is arguably the most notable example of the latter.

In his farewell to the bench on Tuesday, Justice John McGill said most paedophiles did not confine themselves to one victim and it was 'a scandal' juries were not told the full story.

'This is the greatest get out of jail free card for paedophiles the courts have ever come up with,' he said.

'The worst part of my job was having to watch defendants acquitted because the jury did not know what I knew, that there were two or four or a dozen or more other victims waiting in the wings who could say, but were not allowed to say, 'he did it to me too'.

'It is a scandal that this rule remains despite the recommendation of the (federal child abuse) royal commission and the government should stop dragging its feet on this.'

Judge McGill was also critical of technical failings plaguing the system.

'The use of videotaped evidence of children .... would be wonderful if the jury could actually hear the child every time,' he said. 'But all too often, particularly with a young child, talking somewhat reluctantly to a stranger about something embarrassing, the child can barely be heard because the equipment used by the police is, frankly, hopeless.

'Money needs to be spent on this but the current system is letting down child victims.'

 SOURCE  





Global warning and Aboriginal history: Facts are facing extinction in both cases

Andrew Bolt

CHILD messiah Greta Thunberg was excited: "500,000 people marched in Madrid last night ... The world is slowly waking up to the climate and environmental crisis."

No, what the world should be waking up to this: Facts are now dead. Rarely have I seen newspapers report exaggerations on the scale I saw after the weekend rally by global warming hysterics, many of them young: "Organisers claimed 500,000 people turned out for the march, but authorities in Madrid put the number at 15,000."

The Washington Post, puzzled, added that there was "no immediate explanation for the disparity in the count". But there is. It's that facts no longer count. What counts is the myth. That's why Thunberg is today's great goddess, treated as an oracle by the United Nations.

She's just 16, refuses to go to school, claims her Asperger's is a "superpower", and is ascribed such mystical powers that her mother even claims "she can see carbon dioxide with the naked eye ... how it flows out of chimneys".

Here is a symbol of a new invincible ignorance — a refusal to even engage with facts and arguments. No wonder Thunberg particularly inspires children, the least educated and most dogmatic.

But this giddy disregard for facts now infects even the smartest adults. Take Therese Rein, who is not just the wife of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, but a very rich businesswoman. Even she joined in blaming Prime Minister Scott Morrison for the NSW bushfires, tweeting. "Parts of NSW on fire at least in part because your party has blocked, and also not initiated, effective climate change policies ... Time to repent"

Time to repent? That's the hot language of faith, not the cool of reason. The science is clear. Morrison can do nothing to change the world's climate and stop fires. Australia is just too small to make a difference.

Rein and other critics such as Malcolm Turnbull are plainly irrational to suggest Morrison could dial down some giant thermostat. Is there any point in also showing that the fires aren't caused by global warming, and that a recent NASA study shows fires are now burning less land, not more?

No, facts have lost their power ever since postmodernism conquered our universities and reassured the stupid they were mere social constructs. Even conspiracies.

To mention facts now is no longer to bring light into darkness, but to set fire to your reputation. Just look at the furious know-nothingness of the many ABC presenters now defending "Aboriginal" historian Bruce Pascoe. I've shown that there is overwhelming evidence that Pascoe is not Aboriginal. Aboriginal. groups say he's not and so do genealogical records.

Pascoe still claims Aboriginality, but has been ludicrously inconsistent. He used to say he was Aboriginal through one of his mother's grandmothers, but then admitted "the woman we thought was our Aboriginal ancestor was, in fact, born in England". Yet, undeterred, he's since claimed links to no fewer than six Aboriginal tribes, including the Aborigines of Lockhart River, despite having once said "the white side of my Pascoe family come from Lockhart River".

I've also shown that Pascoe grossly misquoted and misrepresented sources to claim that Aborigines were actually settled farmers. For instance, his prizewinning book Dark Emu, soon to be a TV series for the ABC, claims that explorers Charles Stint and Thomas Mitchell found Aborigines living in "towns" of "1000 people", when neither man noted any such thing. These are facts.

Yet the most well-educated ABC presenters refuse to even consider them. Virginia Trioli and Patricia Karvelas, for instance, instead suggested I was just a racist. The blindness was astonishingly wilful. ABC presenter Ellen Fanning falsely claimed that Pascoe "has already answered Bolt's claim", and Wendy Harmer, Linda Mottram and ABC Life boss Bhakthi Puvanenthiran falsely insisted, without checking, that Pascoe's untruths were true — "rock solid".

Annabel Astbury, the ABC's head of Education, responded not by proving me wrong, but by urging Twitter followers to watch all the pro-Pascoe propaganda the ABC had pumped into our schools.

What seemed to count with those senior ABC figures was not the facts but the myth -- that Pascoe was an Aboriginal man who'd proved wicked whites destroyed a sophisticated Aboriginal farming civilisation and then lied about it

Tar and feather anyone who contradicts such myths. Who wants their miserable facts?

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 9 December, 2019






Unions' base shrinking

CFMEU tops membership exodus count in state

UNIONS have taken a massive hit to their membership in Queensland in the past financial year, losing about seven members a day on average. The militant CFMEU suffered the biggest hit, losing almost 2000 members.

The Courier-Mail can reveal the new figures, which show the state's total union membership fell from 348,616 from June 30, 2018, to 345,944 a year later, with 15 of 26 Queensland unions posting a reduction.

The AMWU suffered a loss of 1106 members, while 1374 people left the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Queensland branch. The CFMEU's membership plummeted by 1923.

Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) general secretary Michael Clifford said construction employment was down by 1.1 per cent during that year. "There's a correlation with jobs in the industries generally," he said. "In those industries where there is growing employment and areas that are critically important, there has been growth in union membership."

The SPA grew by 789 mem-bers, Together jumped by 790, the Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union grew by 1703, while the Queensland Teachers' Union increased by 1319. Mr Clifford said QCU-affili-ated unions reduced by 256 members during that year, which was 0.09 per cent of its total membership.

He said that where there was declining employment, a decline in membership usually followed. "While in some areas there have been declines in membership, we draw attention to the fact that unions still continue to do great work on behalf of their members," Mr Clifford said.

Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland spokesman Dan Petrie said union membership and members of industrial organisations had faced a challenging 12 months. "The general state of the Queensland economy" affected both employer groups and unions, Mr Petrie said.

"Businesses needing help to negotiate an increasingly complex compliance environment and a voice to government have underpinned the chamber's increased membership in the last 12 months," he said.

From the Brisbane "Courier mail" of 9 December, 2019





Hospitals to call in the cavalry

MAJOR Queensland public hospitals are poised to hire contractors to perform work normally carried out by Australian Workers' Union staff, as seven weeks of industrial bans take their toll on non-union health workers.

The Courier-Mail understands Queensland Health has been advised that some hospital and health services will start hiring contractors as early as next week. That's expected to be challenged by the AWU in the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission as a breach of its enterprise bargaining agreement with Queensland Health, known as EB9.

The AWU and QH have reached a stalemate in negotiations for a new EBA, leading to the protected industrial action affecting public hospitals. The bans have included restrictions on moving equipment, prohibitions on collecting empty food trays, and indefinite bans on cleaning toilets in administration and management areas.

AWU health workers include cleaners: kitchen staff, security officers and orderlies. QH is understood to be planning a request for the AWU to lift its bans over Christmas if an agreement is not reached beforehand.

The bans have taken a toll on other hospital workers, who have had to perform tasks normally done by AWU members. The issue could reach boiling point next week when doctors and nurses receive the Palaszczuk Government's public sector bonus of $1250. AWU members won't be eligible until they finalise a new EBA.

QH and the AWU met yesterday to discuss the agreement, with a QH spokesman saying they were "working constructively". Health Minister Steven Miles said he had received assurances that the industrial action would not affect patients.

From the Brisbane "Courier mail of 7 December, 2019

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






11 December, 2019

Neutral toilet plan could be flushed

The Queensland Labor party has always been fairly conservative and seems to be getting more so after the losses of Federal Labor in Queensland in the recent national elections

PREMIER Annastasia Palaszczuk says she will raise the issue of shared toilets at a new Brisbane high school with the Education Department, declaring boys and girls should have their own facilities.

Ms PalaszcZuk said the first she had heard of a plan to install gender-neutral facilities at the $80 million new Fortitude Valley State Secondary College was when she read it in The Sunday Mail.

"Look, I am happy to talk to the department about that," she said. "I think in our high schools we should have facilities available for both boys and girls." Asked whether she had a problem with the plan, she said "I will be making it very clear that you should have toilets for boys and girls."

Ms Palaszczuk, Who established an anti-bullying task-force last year, was asked whether she had concerns over bullying or other problem behaviours that could flourish in shared bathrooms. "Like I said, there has to be toilets for girls and toilets for boys."

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington said young, impressionable teens needed privacy and protection. "I'm a mum of three teenage girls and it's deeply concerning to think that a 12-year-old girl would be in the same bathroom as a 17-year-old (boy)", she said. "When it comes to fitting out the bathrooms at schools, we need to make sure that girls have their bathrooms and boys have their bathrooms."

From the Brisbane "Courier mail" of 9 December, 2019






Controversial ex-politician slammed for his 'repulsive' and 'shameful' tweet about the New Zealand volcano catastrophe that has left at least five dead

Must not make sarcastic comments about Warmists.  Volcanoes are a big source of alleged greenhouse gases so it is a relevant comment

David Leyonhjelm has been slammed for mocking climate change in the wake of the White Island eruption in New Zealand that has left five people dead.

The former NSW Senator made the comments on Monday while replying to a viral tweet showing footage of smoke billowing from the deadly volcano moments after it erupted. 

'But the emissions...' Leyonhjelm tweeted, referring to greenhouse gas emissions that have contributed to climate change.

The politician has since come under fire with dozens slamming his remarks and branding him 'ignorant' and 'insensitive.'  

'How is this appropriate when people have died including Australians!' one woman said.

New Zealand authorities confirmed at least five people were killed and dozens more were severely injured after a volcano erupted off the coast of New Zealand's North Island on Monday afternoon.

SOURCE  






Scott Morrison and Christian Porter release second draft of religious discrimination legislation

Including a "Folau" clause

In the wake of Israel Folau's controversial GoFundMe campaign, is it time for a Religious Discrimination Act in Australia?
The government’s religious freedom reforms have taken another step forward with the release of a second draft, which includes a number of concessions following extended consultation.

Stakeholders from religious groups to aged care providers and LGBTI rights advocates have been involved in long-running negotiations for months.

Those talks led to the release today of the second and final exposure draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill, announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Attorney-General Christian Porter.

What Australians believe, both those of faith and no faith, is “such a personal matter”, Mr Morrison told reporters in Sydney.

“It’s hard to imagine something more personal,” he said, adding it was for that reason the process had to be one that was “on a platform of tolerance and inclusion that brings people together around the big issues”.

The changes would enshrine the protection of religious belief and activity while also “unifying our country’s firm belief in religious freedom”, Mr Morrison said.

The second exposure draft includes 11 key changes, most of which focus on clarifying the definition of what constitutes a religious body and tightening the definition of vilification.

But perhaps the most timely change relates to someone suffering professional consequences for a religious view they’ve expressed outside of work, including on social media.

The change to that provision comes less than a week after Israel Folau and Rugby Australia reached a settlement to their long-running dispute.

Folau was sacked from the NSW Waratahs and the Wallabies teams for declaring on social media that homosexuals are destined for hell, after a warning for a similar post several months prior.

Under the draft legislation, should an employee be reprimanded for expressing a view based on their faith, that could be considered religious discrimination unless damage is proven.

“(Companies) would have to show there’s undue financial hardship (as a result of the belief being expressed),” Mr Porter said.

Similarly, professional registration bodies, such as those for doctors and lawyers, would not be able to impose social media policies that infringe on the free expression of beliefs.

But, in all respects, the second draft also “finetunes” the definition of “vilify”, Mr Porter said. “It protects statements of religious belief, it doesn’t protect statements that vilify … that incite hatred or violence,” he said.

Another major change makes it clear that religious bodies are able to make employment and other administrative decisions based upon faith.

But now, that definition of ‘religious body’ would include charitable organisations that have a predominantly commercial function, such as St Vincent de Paul.

After the release of the first draft, LGBTI groups objected to the broad definition of medical professionals when it came to allowing conscientious objection for religious reasons.

The new draft narrows that to nurses, midwives, doctors, psychologists and pharmacists – something that Mr Porter pointed out was largely supported by religious groups.

However, the new draft makes it clear that the objection provisions don’t give the right to discriminate against individuals – but rather procedures themselves.

The new draft also makes clear that religious hospitals, aged care facilities and accommodation providers can make staffing decisions based on faith.

Religious camps and conference centres can also take faith into account when deciding whether to provide accommodation, but must make their policy publicly available.

Mr Morrison said he was confident that the legislation could protect religious freedoms and prevent discrimination without “cutting across the broader rights and liberalities of all Australians”.

“We’ve been listening to everybody,” he said of the latest consultation.

“The practical issues that have been brought up during the consultation process have been very productive … it deals with the everyday experience of how religious organisations and people of faith go about expressing and conducting their faith.”

The reform process has been slow due to objections from religious groups after the release of the first draft.

A new round of submissions will now open, with stakeholders having until January 31 to offer feedback.

SOURCE  





Students are the biggest losers as self-interested academics and politicians tinker with the curriculum

Fake history being taught in the schools.  Bruce Pascoe is just a fantasist

Chris Mitchell

Two stories last week show why education journalism informed by the interests of students rather than the self-interest of politicians or teachers is critical.

A story on Wednesday highlighted again the poor performance of Australian school students in international testing. It came in the middle of a heated media debate about Bruce Pascoe's book "Dark Emu", now being studied in schools despite its contentious thesis and disputes about the author's aboriginality.

Senior members of all three tribes Pascoe claims he is descended from deny he is in any way linked to them. Several Aboriginal leaders reject the book's descriptions of an Aboriginal farm
culture and villages of up to 1000 people in stone huts before white settlement

The Saturday Paper's Rick Morton countered with an unnamed Aboriginal source last Saturday week defending Pascoe and his claims.

It's a great media stoush but surely the book's claims and Pascoe's identity need to be resolved for it to be suitable for school geography lessons. The academic left regularly cites cultural appropriation to de-platform authors, so Pascoe certainly needed Aboriginal identity to ensure the success of a book that has already sold 100,000 copies.

Yet a detailed 5500-word genealogical study by Perth writer Jan Campbell with 75 original documents suggests Pascoe's ancestors are English. A fact check by a professional genealogist is available on the website Australian History — Truth Matters. I have no problem with reconsidering Aboriginal life before European settlement. Much modern imagery about that life is based on our understanding of desert tribes rather than, for example, the Brewarrina, NSW, tribes who used fish traps or northern saltwater people with abundant sources of food.

Pascoe's work has not sprung from an intellectual vacuum. The Conversation website in June 2018 traced the many books that have reconsidered pre-settlement agricultural lifestyles going back to the work of Barbara York Main and W.K. Hancock in the 1970s, Eric Rolls in the 80s and Tim Flannery's The Future Eaters in 1994.

Particularly influential was Bill Grammage's The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia in 2012. This paper reported in May that Pascoe admits he borrowed heavily from Rupert Gerritsen's 2008 book Australia and the Origins of Agriculture. Gerritsen's brother Rolf, a professor of indigenous policy studies at Charles Darwin University, says "90 per cent of Bruce's book is taken from my brother's work". Rupert, convicted over an attempted terrorist bombing in Perth in 1972, died in 2013 without academic success.

Aboriginal women Josephine Cashman and Jacinta Price raised crucial cultural issues when they spoke on the Bolt Report in separate interviews about the eurocentricity of Pascoe's claims. Both women are proud of their hunter gatherer ancestry and dislike attempts to paint their forebears as farmers in the European mould. As Price said last Wednesday, if any of Pascoe's theories were true they would be referenced in some of the thousands of Dreaming stories that have kept Aboriginal people safely on this land since long before agriculture in Europe.

This is a perfectly legitimate field of academic and media dis-cussion but why teach it as fact to schoolchildren? It sounds like curriculum activism to me. The release last week of the latest round of PISA tests comparing results from students in 79 countries in reading, maths and science showed Australia had slipped again. As usual the educational left reduced the results to grumbles about government funding, teacher pay and class sizes. Labor tried to maintain the fiction the Coalition has cut education spending, when it is up tens of billions in real terms over a decade.

The real problems are the curriculum, the teachers, the students and their parents. The introduction of national requirements for teachers to report on indigenous, sustainability and Asian engagement criteria across the national curriculum has only worsened problems of curriculum clutter.

Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has shown another way with his support for direct instruction. His Hope Vale school on Cape York shows what can be achieved by committed teachers, even in an underprivileged area where many parents cannot read or write and where English may not be the first language. Here teachers stand in front of class and drill spelling, sentence construction and times tables into children so that this knowledge has what education academic Kevin Donnelly calls "automaticity".

Children are made to pronounce syllables and sound out words as they begin to read. The whole language reading method is rejected in favour of the phonics approach that has worked since reading started. Modern ideas of child-centred learning have no place here. The teacher is unambiguously in charge.

National education correspondent Rebecca Urban made a similar point last Wednesday. She quoted OECD education director Andreas Schleicher praising an English school "vilified for being the strictest in England". After visiting Michaela Community School in northwest London Schleicher said positive discipline and direct instruction were "creating happy and confident pupils with outstanding outcomes".

How many modern city homes are like those of Hope Vale if we are honest? How many middle-dass capital city parents use an iPad loaded with cartoons as a child minder rather than read to their kids before bed time? How many children ever see their own parents reading a book?

Teachers complain that too many students come to school exhausted after too much time on devices. Pasi Stahlberg, Finnish professor of education at the University of NSW, wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald last Thursday that even Finland, the poster child of educational standards, was slipping in PISA rankings because young Finns were spending too much time on devices and getting too little sleep.

On the role of teacher training, Sydney University vice-chancellor Michael Spence gave the game away in 2012 saying on ABC Q&A, "(we know) that nobody is ready as a professional at the point at which they leave university ... so a pro-fession has to take a certain amount of responsibility for on-the-job training. (Our responsibility) is about teaching critical thinking." This is unlike the teachers colleges of the past that turned out teachers equipped to stand in front of 30 children.

The government should consider reversing the changes of Keating era education minister John Dawkins in 1987 and recreate the binary system of colleges of advanced education, including teachers colleges, outside the university sector. This paper at the time predicted the change would harm teaching and it has.

Governments should ensure we no longer accept teachers with ATARs below 50, and in some cases as low as 20, if we want to emulate the education culture that makes students thrive in Singapore and Shanghai. Most of all education bureaucrats wanting to drive political change — such as the way we think of Aboriginal life before colonisation — need to be purged.

We need equality of opportunity rather than the left's equality of outcomes. Educators who think Google and a calculator make traditional education obsolete need to get out of the way.

From "The Australian" of December 9, 2019





The miserable ghost is a pot calling the kettle black

If Warmism is not a religion, nothing is

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has launched a scathing attack on Scott Morrison's government for making religion a central issue of the climate change debate.

After being largely absent from the political scene since being ousted from the nation's top job, Mr Turnbull appeared on Monday night's Q&A program.

When asked about the bushfire crises, Mr Turnbull said a better plan was necessary as we will see 'more fires and hotter fires' due to global warming.

He then steered the topic to the collapse of his prime ministership over the controversial National Energy Guarantee plan. 

'There is a group within the Liberal Party and the National Party who deny the reality of climate change,' Mr Turnbull said. 'And will oppose to the point of essentially blowing up a government, my government in this case, if there is action taken to reduce emissions - and we saw that.'

Mr Turnbull said that while Mr Morrison and current treasurer Josh Frydenberg were supportive of the energy policy, the government was being 'held to ransom by a group of deniers within the party'.  

'The problem is that people… on the right, they are treating what should be a question of physics and science and economics and engineering as though it were an issue of religion and belief... and it's nuts,' Mr Turnbull said.

SOURCE  

Note: Turnbull once said that defeated politicians who fail to shut up are "miserable ghosts"

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





10 December, 2019

Desperate mum goes public with video of boys tormenting her deaf son in a bid to get his school to crackdown on cruel bullies

The Education Dept. is just a bunch of bureaucrats who don't give a sh*t about anything. Asking them to do something is way outside their comfort zone

A desperate mother has uploaded a video showing her deaf son being bullied in the hopes it will get the school to put a stop to the behaviour. 

Footage shows the young boy being followed around by students who appear to be taunting him at a state school in Brisbane.

The mother uploaded the video to 9Gag claiming she had been in touch with the school about her son being bullied, but they refuse to do anything about it.

'My deaf son getting harassed at school by these a**holes,' she wrote. 'I have been in contact with the school and yet nothing changes. My daughter took this video to show everyone what was happening on a daily basis.' The video shows the boy walking around the schoolyard as other students follow him and close in on him.

They can be heard yelling in his face as they continue to mock him by jumping around.

The mother explained that her son had been bullied most of his life for being deaf and also for 'the frustration that comes with it'. The mother hopes the public video will put a stop to the behaviour so her son can lead a normal life.

'The school never does anything about it because they "never see what happens" and what eventually does happen is that my son snaps and HE ends up getting suspended for his outbursts because of these kids,' she wrote on the post.

The video has also been shared to Reddit and is quickly going viral online, with thousands of people responding in shock. 'This is every parents worse nightmare! I am so sorry you and your child have to endure this,' one person commented. 'Absolutely disgusting. As if the deaf boy doesn't have enough of a struggle,' another wrote to Reddit.

SOURCE  





Gender-neutral toilets at Brisbane high school cause outrage

In a Queensland first, the all-new $80 million Fortitude Valley State Secondary College will not separate boys and girls’ bathrooms.

Instead, the Department of Education confirmed the school would be fitted with self-contained gender-neutral cubicles and shared basin areas. The only exception is the change room, which will have two male and female toilets.

Those toilets won’t open until later in 2020, but year 7 students starting next month will have access to 12 lockable, self-contained gender-neutral bathrooms.

The decision has not been taken lightly by parents and experts who have slammed the move as “ridiculous”.

“We already know some really bad things happen to kids in bathroom areas of schools – bullying, sexting, kids recording on mobiles, these things already go on when they’re just within their own sex, and then you’re adding in an extra element,” education expert and mum Michelle Mitchell told The Sunday Mail.

“Being a teenager is a really big time of change, for boys and for girls, and kids have a right to feel safe.”

The seven-storey St Paul’s Terrace precinct will provide more than 50 lockable “floor to ceiling” unisex toilet cubicles.

On Sunday, Opposition education spokesman Jarrod Bleijie branded the decision a “very bad” move and a “recipe for disaster”.

“I reckon boys and girls need and deserve their own privacy at school,” Mr Bleijie wrote on Facebook.

“How about instead of this PC rubbish the government spend more time helping our teachers with workload issues, aircon our schools, declutter the curriculum, fix the school maintenance backlogs and better support our teachers in regional and remote Queensland. Labor have its priorities all wrong.”

According to the Department, the move is in line with modern, state-of-the-art, vertical high schools in other states, including South Australia’s Adelaide Botanic High School.

“The toilet facilities at Fortitude Valley State Secondary College meets contemporary design standards in relation to accessibility, inclusivity, privacy and safety,” a department spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia. “Each unisex toilet cubicle is lockable in line with contemporary best practice and underpinned by safety considerations.”

The installation of gender-neutral toilets has sparked a massive divide, with some agreeing it was an “unsafe” move and others comparing them to disabled toilets, which are also shared.

“C’mon guys, nearly every accessible facility for disabled people is a unisex facility, and, last time I looked, nearly every household, you know where these kids live, has unisex toilet facilities. Get over it! There are bigger issues than this that deserve attention,” one person commented.

One woman said there was “no way” she would send her kids to a school with unisex toilets. “Especially being the mother of girls, not that it’s just girls sexually abused, then there is bullying and underage sex. Our schools really aren’t safe environments anymore,” the woman said.

Another person said it would be fine if the cubicles were all separate, but having shared hand basins would be a “real issue”.

“I can think back to when I was a teen and all my insecurities and embarrassment around boys, I would have been horrified to take a bowel movement while anyone of the opposite gender was in the room; not to mention that time of the month,” the Facebook user explained.

Clinical psychologist Dr Judith Locke told The Sunday Mail sharing facilities could lead to potential problems, such as girls feeling uncomfortable using the toilets while menstruating.

“If they are trying to change things to suit what we are experiencing in a modern society, we should allow opportunities to test them,” Dr Locke said, saying it was important the school takes on student feedback once it is in operation.

Fortitude Valley State Secondary College is the first inner-city state school to be built in Brisbane in over half a century.

SOURCE  






Matt Canavan challenges Anthony Albanese to voice Adani coal support

The dreaded coal has got the Australian Left all in a twist

Resources Minister Matt Canavan has challenged Labor leader Anthony Albanese to say he supports the Adani coal mining project during his tour of central Queensland this week.

Speaking to Sky News on Monday Senator Canavan said the trip presented a test for Mr Albanese and the Labor Party. “They say now they support the export of coal,” he told Sky News. “I haven’t heard Anthony Albanese say three simple words: ‘I support Adani.’”

Mr Albanese’s visit to regional Queensland comes as the Labor Party lays the foundations for policies it will be taking to the next federal election.

Party members are debating how to approach climate change and how ambitious the party should be in relation to its emissions reduction target.

Labor’s ambivalence of coal and the Adani project have been blamed for former leader Bill Shorten’s poor results in regional Queensland and the Hunter Valley, which saw massive swings against the party.

This was backed by Labor’s scathing internal review, which found ambiguous language around the Adani coal mine cost the party votes in coal mining regions.

Mr Albanese told Nine Newspapers on Monday Australia’s priority should be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under strong global agreements, but that this would not be achieved by stopping coal exports.

He echoed this sentiment when speaking to 2GB Radio on Monday, where he said the scrapping of coal exports would just lead to more coal being used from other places in the world.

“[It would] likely lead to an actual increase in global emissions because much of our coal is much better quality than is available from the alternatives,” Mr Albanese said. “So, we need to be sensible about the way we examine this. We do need to reduce our use of fossil fuels around the world.”

Greens MP Adam Bandt savaged the Labor leader. “As Australia burns and Sydney chokes, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are abandoning climate action. Liberal and Labor value coal more than human life,” he told reporters in Melbourne.

“Coal is fuelling the fires, coal is fuelling the drought, and coal is fuelling the smoke over Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. If you don’t have a plan to get out of coal you don’t have a plan to deal with the climate crisis. We stopped selling asbestos and we need to phase out coal exports too.”

But Mr Albanese said Australia needs a “sensible” approach to dealing with emissions, arguing coal will be phased out by the market anyway. “I think, very clearly, it’s obvious to all there won’t be a new coal-fired power built in Australia. The market is indicating that just won’t happen. There’s nothing stopping it at all except for the economics.”

The Australian revealed on Monday revealed Jenny Hill, the Labor Mayor of Townsville, had lashed the ALP’s “anti-worker” and “disruptive” environmental wing, arguing federal Labor did not have an answer to problems in north and central Queensland and was too focused on “elitists” in capital cities.

Ms Hill’s intervention came as Labor MPs Meryl Swanson and Terri Butler warned at a conference held by a Labor think tank on the weekend against ­talking down coal jobs in favour of lower-paid jobs in the renewables sector.

Mr Albanese told Nine Newspapers the environmental “climate change convoy” of activists led by former Greens leader Bob Brown to Queensland during the election campaign hurt the climate change cause by offending voters.

SOURCE  





NRL is 'forced to delete controversial comments' from interview with Aboriginal State of Origin star who slammed treatment of Indigenous players

Another black whiner.  They criticize Australian society but want it to give them everything on a plate.  They should do as the Chinese do.  Get on with it regardless of social handicaps.  Chinese who look different and often speak little English still make an economic success of themselves.

The NRL has been forced to delete controversial comments by an Aboriginal State of Origin star after he raised concerns about racial discrimination in an interview.

NRL CEO Todd Greenberg stepped in after Sydney Roosters star Latrell Mitchell, 22, made the remarks in an interview with nrl.com.

In the original interview published on Sunday, Lattrell was talking about  himself and other Aboriginal NSW Blues State of Origin team members Cody Walker and Josh Addo-Carr.

'NSW went real funny on us because we don't sing the anthem,' Lattrell said.

NSW Rugby League chief executive Dave Trodden was furious and threatened to take legal action against Greenberg if the comments weren't removed, The Courier Mail reported.

It is understood the Blues management team saw the comment as defamatory and sought legal advice before the quote was removed.

There were also concerns Mitchell broke media protocols when he did an interview without approval.

A New South Wales Rugby League spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia: 'The NSWRL is disappointed the issue has been given any air at all and we won't be making any further comment.'

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





9 December, 2019

Activism and emotion pale beside science and reason

What Greg Sheridan writes below is pretty right -- with one exception. He writes as if "we" are involved in all the current chaotic events.  But that is precisely wrong. None of the current irrationality is the doing of conservatives.  It is entirely the doing of the Left. Conservatives just stand aside and watch in horror at it all.

The challenge for us all is to work out what has corroded the rational faculties of the left.  That will not be easy.  All we can certainly tell is that it is deeply emotional.  Is it despair at the abject failure of all their past initiatives to bring about a new Eden?


Here’s the punch line — political culture in the West has become so crazy that in the pursuit of love and justice people increasingly practise hate and violence.

In a sign of the deepening political crisis in Western culture, strikes and protests crippled most of France on Friday. The protesters were upset that the government might marginally raise the retirement age. These are successor mobilisations to the Yellow Vest protests a year ago in which hundreds of thousands of people paralysed and vandalised the French capital. Emmanuel Macron was going to implement a small fuel price increase as part of combating climate change.

The French protests illustrate the broader cultural crisis of Western politics in two specific ways. First, it is core religious dogma of all progressives that radical action must be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Activists never level with people that this must mean drastically reduced living standards. So when inevitably climate action explicitly reduces living standards, the public rebels.

Second, the French protests ­illustrate a deeper element of the Western crisis: a new contempt for the processes of politics and reasoned decision-making. There is contempt especially for election results that progressives don’t like, and a deep belief that all such ­results are corrupt in themselves and, in any event, partake of an ­inferior morality to the overriding morality of the progressive cause.

There are plenty of anti-democratic tendencies on the right, ­especially among the deadly fringe of white supremacists, anti-Semites and racists generally on the far right. But it is the progressive world view that is promulgated in state education systems across the West — from preschool to university — and in state-owned broadcasters, and in the Hollywood-dominated entertainment industry and in most mass media (with honourable exceptions).

These progressive causes range from climate change through the gender politics agenda, the redress of past racial injustice, aggressive secularism intent on removing ­religion from the public square, ­intersectional identity crusades through income and wealth redistribution and ending inequality.

There is some measure of justice in all these causes. But their most ardent proponents take them to unreasonable, at times insane, extremes. And, most important, their champions see them as so morally transcendent as to justify breaking all the rules of democratic politics, as justifying physical direct action as well as the foulest abuse imaginable.

This is a deep crisis in Western political culture and Australia is experiencing it fully. Let me offer some examples. Conservative senator Cory Bernardi retired from the Senate this week and warmly thanked the Australian Federal Police for their help over the years. Bernardi is not an extremist. He also does not claim any victim status. But it turns out people have come to his home making threats, his wife has been subject to vicious texting abuse, people have threatened savage violence against him and the schools his kids attended. This sort of thing goes on across the board ideologically.

The three causes that excited the most abuse for Bernardi were his opposition to same-sex marriage, his opposition to strong ­action on climate change and his criticisms of Islamism, although the latter was by far the least of it.

Gerard Henderson is a distinguished columnist on this newspaper. Among many subjects he considers, he has written lucidly and at length, and in a vein similar to lawyers and scholars, about aspects of the legal judgments against George Pell, who was convicted of child sexual ­assault offences. Pell asserts his innocence and his appeal will be heard in the High Court next year.

Louise Milligan, an ABC journalist who wrote a book attacking Pell that has been criticised by Henderson, among others, for ­alleged factual problems, tweeted that Henderson was “a vile bully” and was involved in “pedophile protecting”. Not by the wildest ­interpretation could you construe anything Henderson has ever written as sympathetic to or protecting pedophiles. Yet if you didn’t read Henderson’s columns and only saw Milligan’s tweets, you would form a wildly inaccurate view of him. And yet Milligan is a mainstream journalist. Her ­offensive tweets are a minor example of the way a sense of righteous rage blinds activists to considerations of fairness, civility or keeping in touch with reality.

These examples are straws in the wind. There are thousands upon thousands of others. Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute has written an interesting short book, Our Very Own Brexit. He diagnoses, correctly, a certain “hollowing out” of our political system, a loss of faith in it. Where he is seriously mistaken is in concluding this is likely to produce ­triumphant right-wing populism that would be expressed through one side of politics wanting to end immigration to Australia.

Right-wing and left-wing populism end up being very similar, but left-wing extremism is much more pervasive in Western societies than right-wing extremism. Jeremy Corbyn is, according to numerous polls, just a “regulation polling error” (as British journalist Liam Halligan puts it) from becoming prime minister next week, with all his decades of support for terrorists, anti-Semites, dictators and communists. There is nothing remotely equivalent on the right.

The movement most likely to produce extremism in our politics is green activism. We have seen in the Occupy Wall Street, farm ­invasion and Extinction Rebellion demonstrations a contempt for normal politics, a determination to take direct action and a settled conviction that mere democratic election confers no legitimacy on a government. And the accompanying conviction that anyone who opposes these movements justifies extreme rhetorical, and sometimes physical, attack.

John Anderson, former deputy prime minister and long-time cattle farmer, thinks there is every chance extremism on climate change will hurt Australia economically, blight the future of young people and polarise and coarsen our politics, without doing anything to help the planet.

One of Anderson’s great qualities is balance and restraint, qualities little esteemed in this moment of cultural derangement. He tells me: “On climate, we have to adopt a mixture of mitigation and adaptation. But the world is not going to end. Internationally, grain prices are low because production keeps rising ahead of demand.”

Feeding the world, he says, causes 30 per cent of global emissions. Should we stop feeding the world? Anderson surprises me with his priority policy prescription: “Reducing food waste would be our most important contribution. Australia wastes something like 40 per cent of the food it produces and uses.”

What a wonderfully unglamorous, unromantic, undramatic, practical thing it is we really need to do — stop wasting food.

“There is an effort to delegitimise our industry,” he says. “The problem is the debate has moved from science and reason to one of political activism and emotion. People are involved in these campaigns with very different agendas.

“It involves a lot of people who have come to loathe our culture and our history and think capitalism and profits are dirty words. This overlooks the enormous positive contribution of the West.

“Competition and innovation in business, combined with a lot of compassion, have contributed to reducing the proportion of malnourished people in the world from 40 to 50 per cent 50 years ago, to 15 per cent now. Life expectancy has doubled. Education has kept increasing.”

Farmers, he says, care passionately about the climate and the mix of policies he would like to see focuses on better farming, less ­dependency in farming on fossil fuels, greater carbon sequestration and a reduction in energy intensity in feeding the world. (Though he says we must recognise no carbon reduction policy of ours will have any effect on droughts or fires.)

These are gradual, ameliorative measures of the type Western ­societies have undertaken in confronting countless problems before, but they won’t fire a demon­stration, cause anyone to glue themselves to the road, invade a farm, threaten a politician’s family, so they stand against the perversities of the zeitgeist.

Ideology and emotion are everywhere destroying good policy options. Says Anderson: “Every scientist will tell you that one of the most valuable transition fuels we have is gas, but we’ve allowed the Greens to demonise even gas.

“Gas could save us from exporting our industries to places that use energy far less efficiently and will produce much greater greenhouse gas emissions. We could easily end up de-industrialising Australia without doing anything to lower emissions on the planet.”

Anderson draws deeper cultural lessons: “Our young people have been trained to rely on their emotions rather than facts.”

Modern education and culture, he thinks, tell young people that the world is divided between completely good people and completely bad people, and “climate change hysteria could be the tipping point for Western societies”.

How we got to this point is a huge intellectual debate. Many writers see the loss of religion, the loss of unifying transcendent ­belief, as key.

Os Guinness in Last Shout for Liberty argues the West is still ­adjudicating the conflict between the American Revolution, which was a conservative movement to allow citizens to pursue lives of virtue and tradition with minimum interference from the state, and the French Revolution, which empowered the state to do anything.

We need to break free of the syndrome that now grips the West, of ever greater protest, ever more vitriol, ever feebler politics held in ever greater contempt.

Oh, and ever greater competition from rising nations untroubled by these complexes.

SOURCE  





The battle to find teachers for the Bush

HUNDREDS of school teachers have been recruited from overseas and interstate to help plug a critical shortage sweeping regional Queensland. The Courier-Mail can reveal more than 270 teachers have been hired through the State Government's interstate and
Outsiders international recruitment campaign to fill the urgent demand in regional, rural and remote areas, where some schools have experienced an almost 100 per cent turnover of staff some years.

But despite the recruitment drive, teacher shortages are predicted to get even worse next year reaching acute levels in some partS of the state. And it's not just primary and secondary schools facing shortfalls; childcare centres are also struggling to attract and retain qualified teachers.

Queensland Secondary Principals' Association president Mark Breckenridge said getting enough teachers to rural parts of the state was "a constant challenge". "There are a lot of reasons why, and one is that as the south-east corner population continues to grow, it sucks up a lot of the teachers," he said. "There are many innovative ways to try to encourage teachers to move, but I don't think anyone has got a real answer".  He said principals were fighting to use their scarce resources to get the best results for students in these areas.

A Department of Education spokesman said the interstate and international campaign had recruited more than 200 secondary teachers and more than 70 primary teachers. "Both beginning and experienced secondary teachers from interstate and overseas have applied to work in Queensland state schools," he said. "They are particularly attracted to the mentoring support and career development offered in Queensland."

From the Brisbane "Courier mail of 7 December, 2019






Brisbane Broncos put the feelers out for Israel Folau who is 'training hard for a return to the game' and would let a future club vet his social media posts

He played League previously -- before Rugby -- so this is a no-brainer

The Brisbane Broncos have put out the feelers for Israel Folau who is said to be training hard as he prepares to return to the game.

The former Wallabies winger reached an out-of-court settlement with Rugby Australia this week after lodging a $14 million compensation claim for wrongful termination following his infamous homophobic post on social media.

The Sunday Telegraph reports the 30-year-old has meanwhile been training hard to get himself fit for a preferred return to rugby league.

Any cross-code switch could meet resistance from the NRL, however, with chairman Peter V'landys having publicly insisted that devout Christian Folau's controversial stance on homosexuality is incompatible with the game's ethos.

According to the Telegraph Folau would even be willing to allow the NRL to vet his future social media posts if it allowed him to move back to the competition.

Potential suitors are said to be monitoring the situation closely, with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting Brisbane Broncos have already made a tentative inquiry with the game's governing body to see if they can bring Folau back into the 13-man game.

RA said they're aware of the expected offers and officials are stunned.

Folau said he didn't want to move overseas to continue his career and believes he has three years of football left in him and is in shape for any fitness test an NRL club would put him through.

Folau played four seasons in the NRL, with the Melbourne Storm and Brisbane Broncos, before a short-lived stint in the AFL and then a move to rugby union.

SOURCE  






For medivac, Jacqui Lambie got a briefing and a promise, says Mathias Cormann

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has played down the prospect of refugee resettlement in New Zealand as senior government ministers continue to deny striking a secret deal with senator Jacqui Lambie in exchange for her vote to repeal medivac laws.

It is believed the Tasmanian crossbencher was assured the government would pursue the New Zealand option once a resettlement deal with the US concluded.

She told the Senate this week national security concerns prevented her from speaking about her proposal to the Coalition. But on Sunday, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said all Ms Lambie had received in exchange for her support was “detailed classified briefings” and an assurance the Coalition would continue on course.

“The government has not changed any policy on border protection or resettlement arrangements or anything else in order to secure Jacqui Lambie’s vote,” Senator Cormann told the ABC.

“What we have done in response to issues that Jacqui raised with us is provide detailed classified briefings to ensure she was fully across what the government was doing and why.

“The only thing we have done is to provide her with an undertaking that we would continue to implement the government’s policies unchanged.”

SOURCE  






Free speech update from Bernard Gaynor



Bernard Gaynor is a married father of seven children and formerly served as an officer in the Australian Regular Army, deploying to the Middle East on three occasions. He was recognised with the United Stated Meritorious Service Medal for his service in Iraq. He was dismissed from the army in 2013 over his outspoken conservative Catholic views

It has been some time since I wrote to you with an update on the legal battles I face.

To be honest, for the first time since this began back in 2013, I have not known what to say because I have no doubt that it will be used against me.

Things are very complicated at the moment and delicately poised. But the time has come to speak.

Chief of Defence Force

Just like Israel Folau, I was sacked in 2014 for expressing views about marriage, family and morality and particularly for pointing out that it was against Defence policy to allow uniformed Defence members to march officially in the Sydney Mardi Gras.

Unlike Israel, I took the matter to court. I won the first case in the Federal Court but lost on appeal. The High Court then refused to grant leave to hear the matter.

The judgement of the Full Court of the Federal Court allowing my sacking has been criticised in academia, legal commentary and even in the media.

I was also hit with costs. Defence has sat on those costs since 2017. Now it is pursuing me for $743,379.17.

I have sent the Chief of Defence Force a statutory declaration with my financial situation. He knows he will be lucky to get anything out of me because he knows I have almost nothing left.

Nonetheless, Defence has already spent almost $30,000 just preparing the costs statements to pursue me. It will incur significantly more expenditure pursuing me.

This is clearly in breach of Defence’s legal obligations to act as model litigant. Those obligations can be found here.

In particular, government departments are entitled to pursue costs but only if it is in the economic interests of the taxpayer. Instead, Defence is blowing through more of your money for a futile purpose. Defence is wasting public money for an exercise that can only achieve one thing: causing harm to my family.

I am taking actions to defend myself against this attack through various means which I am not willing to discuss publicly yet. I am also taking advice about possible legal actions that may become necessary next year.

However, it is highly likely that Defence will attempt to bankrupt me in the not too distant future.

This will obviously cause me some difficulties but my main concern is that it will severely limit my ability to defend myself against Garry Burns. In particular, I am concerned that the New South Wales Attorney General will seek orders from the courts that my case against the New South Wales anti-discrimination industry should not heard unless I place a large sum of money into trust.

However, I will deal with these hypotheticals if and when they arise although I am taking action now in case they do.

However, one thing I can state is this: I will not be running a fundraising campaign for these court costs. In good conscience I just cannot ask anyone to donate to a campaign that will simply hand their hard-earned cash over to the government.

Garry Burns

While the Chief of Defence Force issue is problematic, things are looking much brighter on the Garry Burns front.

Firstly, Burns had been in the habit of sending me a barrage of offensive, harassing and even violent emails.

However, he has now signed court orders by consent prohibiting any further communications with me. If he breaches these orders he will face contempt of court proceedings. That, in itself, is a significant victory.

Up until recently he has been allowed by the courts and especially the Civil and Administrative Tribunal to get away with this conduct.

Furthermore, Burns has finally been hit with court costs. Recently the process to determine costs from Burns’ failed High Court action against me and Tess Corbett was finalised and he now owes over $80,000.

He is now facing bankruptcy action due to his failure to pay these costs.

And, just to make it very clear, if I was bound by the same model litigant rules that apply to the Defence Force, he would still face bankruptcy action. Model litigant rules allow for actions to recover costs in the case of vexatious litigation.

Burns has launched a fundraiser for his legal costs. It was launched on 20 November 2019. And, to date, it has raised just over $5,000.

It really is interesting that the most high profile gay litigant in Australia can only raise $5,000 in just over two weeks, while Israel Folau raised over $2 million in two days.

I think this shows, more than anything, how clearly public opinion differs from hashtag world occupied by activists like Burns on Twitter. The progressive elite do not live in the real world. They just want to control those who do.

It should come as no surprise that very shortly after Burns received his bills he lodged a complaint against Israel Folau. These actions are nothing more than a money-making scheme for him. I do hope that Folau defends himself against Burns. It would be a betrayal if he chose to settle with him.

Burns is also claiming that the New South Wales Attorney General will shortly decide whether to pay his court costs. It would be a tremendous scandal if the taxpayer bailed Burns out.

The New South Wales Court of Appeal will hear my case that the new laws that have allowed Burns to continue complaining against me are invalid on 24 February 2019.

Burns and the New South Wales anti-discrimination industry should be defending this matter. But they aren’t. Instead, the New South Wales Attorney General has officially been listed as a party and he is the only party opposing me.

As such, to defend my views expressed in Queensland I now need to defeat the first law officer of a ‘conservative’ government in another state. That says it all about the state of conservative politics in Australia.

Other news

I am sorry that I have not been writing as regularly as I have previously. The legal dramas do limit the time I have to write but, to be honest, even when I have time to write I am just mentally drained.

I apologise for that. However, I am in the process of producing a lot more video content. I would be interested in your feedback on this form of communication and whether you enjoy it more than written articles.

I have written today about the fallout of the Israel Folau saga. While I can understand the pressure that he was under, I do believe that the settlement has not achieved anything at all for the wider common good.

It is a massive missed opportunity.

And for those who are interested, I have been following and writing about the Plenary Council in Australia. While you may not be Catholic, the problems we face today stem from a moral crisis in society.

Email from Bernard Gaynor: personal@bernardgaynor.com.au

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






8 December, 2019

When Green/Left dam-hatred killed dozens of people and caused billions of dollars of flood damage

Brisbane has a history of occasional big floods so a few decades ago, the conservative-led Queensland State government built a big flood-control dam at Wivenhoe that should have ended the floods.  It was completed in 1985 and even before it was finished, in 1983, it did stop a potentially disastrous flood.

But in 2011 a flood as big as any hit Brisbane.  Why?  A court has just adjudicated that.  They found that the Wivenhoe dam was mismanaged -- as it undoubtedly was.  They blamed only the dam managers, however, without looking into the deeper background of what happened.

The court decision is something of a vindication for me personally.  I said from the beginning that Brisbane's big Wivenhoe flood control dam would have protected us perfectly well if it had been properly used.  The court has found that it was not properly used. The dam engineers were indeed at fault.  They were very arrogant in fact.  They ignored warnings from experienced people who could see what was coming.  They thought they knew it all. So they did not start discharging until it was too late.

What the report below does not tell you is that the lameduck Bligh Labor government of the day was also grossly at fault for two reasons:

1).Had there been a competent minister in charge of the dam he could have put a rocket up the engineers and told them to start discharging.  In fact he was a Leftist featherbrain who knew nothing and did nothing.  He was a waste of breath

2).  The Bligh government had also compromised the dam for Greenie reasons.  Because of recent water shortages and drought fears at the time, there was a need to build more dams. But a Green/Left government cannot do that.  So they decided instead to use the flood compartment of Wivenhoe for water storage, thus risking exactly what happened.

So the conservative Bjelke-Peterson government had built us a massive protective asset in the form of the Wivenhoe dam but even that could not save us from human negligence.  The dam would have protected us had either the engineers or the government behaved responsibly.  Sadly, neither did

It is perhaps fitting that a Labor government now has to pick up the pieces for a folly by a previous Labor government


As flood victims celebrated after years pursuing a complicated class-action suit against the government and its water management agencies, the financial implications of the NSW Supreme Court decision to uphold their claim were still being assessed.

Supreme Court judge Robert Beech-Jones found the operation of Wivenhoe Dam was negligent in the lead-up to the deluge, with dam operators failing to take into account rainfall forecasts in the days leading up the flood. This failure contributed to the downstream flooding of parts of Ipswich and Brisbane.

Deputy Opposition Leader Tim Mander demanded Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk apologise for the “incompetence” of the Bligh government — in which she was a minister — and explain how her cash-strapped administration would pay for the compensation.

“The Labor government was responsible for the management of Wivenhoe Dam during the 2011 floods and they blew it,” Mr ­Mander said. “Labor’s incompetence has put lives at risk and ruined thousands of homes and businesses.”

The only official response from the government yesterday was a short statement by Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath saying it acknowledged the court’s decision. “The government will closely examine the judgment before making any comment on a possible appeal,” Ms D’Ath said.

Pine Mountain Nursery manager John Craigie, whose investigations were crucial to the spotlight being shone on the role the operators of the dam played in contributing to the magnitude of the flood, described the decision as bittersweet. Mr Craigie — denied an appearance at the year-long royal commission-style inquiry into the floods run by now Queensland Chief Justice Catherine Holmes — forced a reopening of public hearings and rewriting of its findings that initiated the class action.

Mr Craigie said it was the discovery of the documents and collaboration with The Australian’s Hedley Thomas and retired chemical engineer Mick O’Brien that laid the groundwork for the class-action win. “Had I not done the research that opened the way for a reopening of the flood inquiry there probably would not have been sufficient evidence to initiate a class action,’’ he said.

The decision is a victory for the more than 6800 claimants who sued the Queensland government, and dam managers SEQwater and SunWater over the scale of the ­disaster. Justice Beech-Jones accepted engineers tasked with managing Wivenhoe and Somerset dams in the lead-up to and during a “biblical” deluge in January 2011 failed in their duty of care. He said they did not follow the dam operating manual that they themselves had helped write.

No cost decision has been made, with the case to return to court in February for a costs hearing.

The decision follows the findings by the Floods Commission of Inquiry that Wivenhoe Dam had been operated in breach of its operational manual.

The inquiry found that the dam operators had failed to use rainfall forecasts in making decisions about dam operating strategies.

The status of an estimated $1.5bn in insurance payments distributed to victims since the flood is also unclear, with Insurance Council of Australia spokesman Campbell Fuller saying insurers “will review today’s decision for its commercial implications”.

Queensland Law Society president Bill Potts said while SunWater and SEQwater did have legal liability insurance that could cover the compensation, it could be capped to a certain monetary value.

But Mr Potts said the state government was effectively self-insured and did not take out external insurance because it was such a large entity. He said it was likely the government would have to fund any compensation through its cash reserves, borrowing more money, creating a new levy, or increasing various taxes.

Mr Potts said defeated ­parties would consider whether there were grounds to appeal. “No doubt all of the parties will consider whether there’s been any error in the judgment or evidence which has been excluded that should have been included; they effectively have 28 days to appeal to the NSW Court of Appeal,” he said.

There were tears from some victims as the ruling was delivered, almost nine years after a disaster that devastated so many families.

Goodna retiree Frank Beaumont, 77, mulled over the years of distress he suffered after his home went under. “The mental stress has been horrendous,” Mr Beaumont said in Ipswich. “We’ve had so many trodden-down moments where the insurance didn’t pay, being kicked out of a rental home and then having to rebuild an absolutely devastated house.”

After Maurice Blackburn lawyers get paid, and their litigation funders, IMF Bentham and Innsworth, take their share of the damages payout, the rest will be shared between the class-action claimants. It is unlikely to be equal, with compensation to be based on the level of damage and financial loss.

The class action was filed by Maurice Blackburn in July 2014, with the trial starting in the Supreme Court of NSW in December 2017 and running for nearly 18 months. The litigation had to be filed interstate because, at the time, class actions could not be filed in Queensland.

SOURCE  






‘You deserve to be honoured’: Pauline Hanson pays tribute to Australian men

Pauline Hanson has paid tribute to “the everyday men of Australia”, thanking them for “working hard” and blasting feminists, saying they should “be ashamed of themselves”.

In an extraordinary five-minute speech yesterday, the One Nation leader addressed an almost empty Senate to “pay homage to the majority of men in Australia”.

“It’s not often that the dedicated and hardworking men of this country collectively get a pat on the back, as they deserve, so I’d like to do that now,” Senator Hanson said.

“Well done, men. You deserve to be honoured. I thank you.

“It is more often that we lift up women in this country. Men are widely regarded as toxic. That is wrong. The extreme majority of men are not toxic. They are good, they are caring.”

Senator Hanson said she was prompted to make the speech while Australia is in the grips of one of its worst bushfire seasons on record.

More than 680 homes have been destroyed in NSW this bushfire season, according to the Rural Fire Service while fires also rage in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.

“While the firefighters, who are mostly male, were battling the blazes we had feminists telling us that after they fight the fires, no doubt exhausted, covered in sweat, ash and soot, and with their skin singed from the heat, they go home and beat their partners,” she said.

“What an idiotic suggestion.”

Senator Hanson was referring to a since-deleted tweet from journalist and Red Heart Campaign founder Sherele Moody, who claimed domestic violence spiked after “cataclysmic events”.

“I’ve also made it clear that I have had a gutful of hearing from man-hating feminists,” Senator Hanson told parliament.

“I believe in what is fair and just and I am sick and tired of this constant criticism of men in Australia, especially if they’re white.

“Why is there such an ongoing attack on the men of this country, especially those who show strength and masculinity.

“Well, I’m not going to man-bash. There is no reason to do it. The vast majority of men are not toxic. They are loving, caring, respectful and hardworking and it’s mostly men who step up and face the flames, extreme heat … to fight the bushfires.”

Senator Hanson went on to quote percentages from the Australian Bureau of Statistics about the number of women who were firefighters, truckies and coal miners.

“Feminists should be ashamed at themselves for letting themselves down in this field,” she said.

“I’ve never seen a feminist recruiting campaign to get more women behind the wheels of a truck.

“Maybe it’s too demanding, not glamorous enough, so they’re happy for the men to do it.

“I’d like to say thank you to men. You help make Australia the great nation it is today and to my colleagues in the chamber, thank you very much you make it very interesting.”

Senator Hanson’s video has received dozens of comments praising the One Nation leader.

“Great speech, Pauline. You’re one of the few politicians who recognise the work of ordinary men who struggle through life supporting their families and community,” Steve Smith said.

“Brilliant speech, it’s a pity not many of your fellow senators were there to listen to you; that is disgraceful in itself. Man bashing is just another weapon of the left that needs to be called out and you have done so, bravo,” Les Baxter added.

SOURCE  






Co-ed vs  ‘education apartheid’

Many progressive advocates would welcome single-sex schools becoming extinct as alleged “educational apartheid.”

Nevertheless, Australia has a long tradition of high-achieving single-sex schools, in both the government and non-government sectors, and many parents still choose this option.

Proponents argue single-sex schools “…increase student confidence, provide a safe place for student to develop their identities and could be the answer to the gender gap in academic performance.”

It’s not a big deal for most Australian parents. Our recent research found a school being single-sex or co-educational was in the top two factors for just 5% of parents when choosing a school — but for some parents, it is a deal-breaker.

There is evidence students achieve better results in single-sex schools. Analysis of NAPLAN data by the Australian Council for Educational Research indicates girls’ schools and boys’ schools perform better on average in both literacy and numeracy than co-ed schools, even after taking into account student socioeconomic background (this particular analysis was a classic of the ‘we don’t like the results, so let’s not tell anyone until halfway through’ academic genre).

Overseas, some research has shown single-sex schools have significant positive effects on science and maths results for boys but not for girls, while other studies have found precisely the opposite (girls benefit but boys don’t), and other research suggests there is no significant effect for either boys or girls. OECD research suggests that in some countries there is a difference and in others there isn’t.

So the relationship between single-sex schooling and academic achievement isn’t entirely clear. But there isn’t any evidence that co-ed schools have non-academic benefits, such as better socialisation or preparation for post-school life.

Given the disagreement, the solution is more school choice, not less. Parents are in the best position to decide what is best for their child, and ideally should have single-sex and co-ed options across school sectors.

We don’t want to turn single-sex schooling into another culture war. Let parents make up their own minds.

SOURCE  






Gender scorecard failure

Victoria’s champions of workplace ‘gender equality’ have decided the best way to achieve their goals is to threaten employers with legal action.

The Andrews Government want public sector bosses who breach — currently undefined — ‘gender equality targets’ to face punishment that could see them in court for the alleged pervasive “sexism” in the Victorian Public Service.

But this concern is not confined to the ‘woke’ Victorians.  The Workplace Gender Equality Agency has recently released a seemingly impressive, but ultimately vacuous report.

Australia’s ‘gender equality scorecard’  — a measure of female workforce participation, pay, and representation in leadership roles — shows that women are advancing in the workplace.

Even the gender pay-gap — the comparison of average full time earnings for men and women — is getting smaller, However, this yardstick is meaningless because as even WGEA admits in their fine print, it does not measure like-for-like jobs.

But, apparently this progress isn’t good enough.

The Director of WGEA Libby Lyons is “disappointed.” The pace of change is apparently too slow and “We need systematic change at every single level of every single organisation.”

Victoria looks like it has already begun work on a full revolutionary gender equality manifesto, but Lyons and the ABC have also brainstormed some ideas.

They have suggested that superannuation companies and shareholders could threaten to take their money elsewhere if companies fail to boost the number of female CEOs or board members.

Financially coercing companies might seem extreme. But when you think women are consciously and unconsciously biased against at every turn in the workplace, and that meritocracy is a myth, using financial leverage to advance your agenda seems mild.

In fact, coercion already seems to be in the WGEA’s DNA.

The data collected for the ‘scorecard’ is not voluntarily offered. Non-public sector employers with over 100 employees are required to hand over a raft of data to the WGEA — non-compliance can result in the loss of government tenders or grants.

So, the WGEA already appear very comfortable for companies who do not comply with their demands to lose opportunities and money.

But what further demands will be made to ensure the ‘systematic change’ apparently required?

It is fair to ask whether the WGEA has an end goal in mind. Their mission is to ensure ‘gender equality.’ But does that mean every workplace — at every level — has to be 50/50 men and women?

Perhaps, more importantly, what further penalties are they willing to introduce to achieve ‘gender equality’?

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






6 December 2019

New carbon dividend proposal gets community support

You can get any result you want out of a survey.  I would critique it in detail but details of the survey seem not to be available.  I asked Mr Snell for details but got none. It's possible that a normal scientific research report was not at any time generated.  It would therefore be unwise to place any weight on the "findings" below
         
A majority of Australians support the introduction of a tax on companies that produce carbon to encourage a reduction in emissions.

And almost 85 per cent of people believe Australia needs a clear policy that addresses carbon emissions and ensures energy supply is reliable and affordable.

These findings from a new UNSW Sydney community survey explores attitudes to an economically modelled policy proposal for a market-based approach to reducing emissions through a company emitter tax that is redistributed progressively to Australian households.

The proposed Australian Carbon Dividend Plan would tax carbon dioxide at $50 per metric ton (MT) at the source, such as a mine or well or port, with the revenue generated returned to every voting-age Australian at an estimated $1,300 a year each.

While designed to use the tax to encourage companies to reduce their emissions, the plan shows any price rises would be more than offset to consumers with three quarters of voting-age Australians to be financially better off. Those on the lowest incomes benefit the most.

UNSW Sydney Professors Rosalind Dixon and Richard Holden today release an update to their Australian Carbon Dividend Plan as well as the results of a community attitudes survey which finds that two of every three Australians believe climate change is the biggest challenge facing the world today.

“A carbon dividend is strongly supported by Australians which should be great news to our political leaders who could adopt this model to help our country address one of the greatest and most pressing moral challenges of our time, climate change,” Professor Holden said.

“Australia, like many other countries, is committed to the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the rise of the globe’s temperature below 2 degrees and to cut emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030, but to date no policy has used a market-based approach to reduce emissions while providing a practical and progressive means of compensating Australian households.”

The Australian Carbon Dividend Plan represents an economically and politically effective climate-change policy and has the support from a majority of Australians aged over 18.

The survey also finds 63 per cent of people say the Government is not doing enough to lower carbon emissions to address climate change.

While support is just about even for both the Coalition’s and ALP’s currently known climate change policies, the support for a carbon tax and dividend model remains high but varies depending on how it is described.

When asked if they support a tax on companies that produce carbon specifically to encourage a reduction in emissions, 65 per cent agree. That support rises to over 73 per cent if it is explained the tax is redistributed to taxpayers and is designed to lower emissions and encourage investment into technology to achieve this.

But the support goes down to 52 per cent when the proposition only mentions the redistribution to taxpayers and does not mention the environmental benefits and market changes.

“The case for our federal government to do more to reduce emissions is clear from these new survey results but now there is also strong community support for a new type of tax on companies that produce emissions if funds raised go back to taxpayers and the policy achieves reduced emissions,” Professor Holden said.

“This really is a win-win. It seems there is a widening gap politically about how to address emissions. While a type of carbon tax nearly became law in Australia under the then Prime Minister Gillard in 2011, it is clear the time is right to now introduce a progressive emissions tax and dividend model to help Australia take a leadership position on what most people in our survey say is the biggest challenge facing the world today.”

Note:  The community survey was of 1,636 people nationally on 19 November 2019 by uCommunications Pty Ltd. Telephone numbers and the person within the household were selected at random. The results have been weighted by gender and age to reflect the population according to ABS figures.

Contact: Stuart Snell, UNSW External Communications Consultant, 0416 650 906 s.snell@unsw.edu.au.





Izzy vindicated

And a costly lesson for the Christianity-haters

Israel Folau reportedly received an $8million payout from Rugby Australia to end the bitter legal stoush over his controversial sacking.

An out-of-court settlement was made on Wednesday as RA apologised to the former Wallabies fullback in a humiliating backdown to spare the sporting body a lengthy court battle.

Folau was seeking $14million in compensation after he had his Wallabies contract torn up for writing 'hell awaits' gay people in an Instagram post in April.

The Daily Telegraph reported Folau agreed to an $8million settlement - but Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle said this was 'wildly inaccurate'. 

Rugby Australia chief executive Raelene Castle told stakeholders the details of the settlement were confidential.

'The terms of the settlement are confidential but importantly Israel's legal claim has been withdrawn and whilst we were very confident in our legal position, this outcome provides certainty for Rugby Australia and allows us to avoid incurring ongoing legal costs and the risks and distractions of a lengthy trial,' she said. 

RA said it did not support Folau's controversial post, but 'acknowledges and apologises for any hurt or harm caused to the Folaus after his sacking.

The cross-code footballer and his wife Maria said the family had been 'vindicated' by Wednesday's settlement.

'We are extremely pleased with the settlement reached today,' Folau said in a video shared to his official accounts. 'Maria and I would like to thank God for his guidance and strength,' he said.

'Thank you to our supporters for their thoughts and prayers, in particular our families, our congregation as well as Martyn Iles and the Australian Christian Lobby.'

Folau didn't announce any plans to return to football - and said he looked forward to 'moving on with his life' to 'focus on his faith'.

Folau hopes their case will lead to greater religious freedom. 

'We started this journey on behalf of all people of faith to protect their rights of freedom of speech and religion,' he said.

'We now look forward to the federal government enacting the legislation necessary to further protect and strengthen these rights for all Australians.'

Rugby Australia's apology comes after the star footy player's controversy roiled Australia. It sparked debate over the right of contracts and corporate bodies to restrain free speech in this country, and triggered a push for religious freedom laws.

In its statement today, Rugby Australia said: 'The social media post reflected Mr Folau's genuinely held religious beliefs, and Mr Folau did not intend to harm or offend any person when he uploaded the social media post.'

Meanwhile, there was also an apology from Folau.

The statement read: 'Mr Folau wants all Australians to know that he does not condone discrimination of any kind against any person on the ground of their sexuality and that he shares Rugby Australia's commitment to inclusiveness and diversity.'

'Similarly, Mr Folau did not intend to hurt or harm the game of rugby and acknowledges and apologises for any hurt or harm caused.' 

The former rugby league and AFL player last week increased his compensation claim from $10 million to $14 million, and said the Wallabies would have done better in the 2019 Rugby World Cup if he was playing.

He also recently signalled he wouldn't be backing down from his firmly held religious beliefs.

In an inflammatory sermon at his family's church - first reported by Daily Mail Australia - Folau suggested the drought and bushfires wreaking havoc across Australia's east were caused by the legalisation of same sex marriage.

Questions have been raised about what will now happen to all the funds raised for Folau by the Australian Christian Lobby, after his campaign was dumped by GoFundMe earlier this year.

The lobby's chief executive, Martyn Iles, tweeted that 'donors who gave to the Folau campaign will be contacted in due course and are entitled to refunds on a pro-rata basis'.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mr Illes said Folau's settlement should set a clear precedent for the future.

'We look forward to the federal government producing reforms that prevent taxing and drawn-out legal processes like this in future,' Mr Iles said.

'People of all faiths need clear protections to speak openly about their beliefs. It is wrong for them to be silenced by the fear of litigation or lawsuits by activists.

'It is disproportionate in the extreme to end someone's career simply because they have said something controversial.

'Israel Folau's case was everyone's case, demonstrated by the huge outpouring of financial support from so many Australians.'

Folau played 62 Test matches for Australia, playing his last in 2017, and scored 32 tries for his country. 

SOURCE   






Animal rights activists are ordered to tear down 'misleading' billboard calling for captive dolphin breeding at Sea World to be banned

I'll stop eating animals as soon as animals stop eating one-another

Days after launching a campaign against dolphin breeding at Sea World an animal rights group was told their 'misleading' billboards would be taken down.  

World Animal Protection launched the campaign on December 2 targeting Sea World's use of dolphins and allowing them to breed in captivity .

But just days after the billboards went up on the Gold Coast advertising company JCDecaux announced they were taking them down.

The decision to remove the billboards came after Sea World proprietor Village Roadshow slammed the signs as 'false and misleading'.

A Sea World spokesman told the Gold Coast Bulletin preventing dolphins from breeding in captivity would impact negatively on the animals.

'Reproduction is a natural process which enriches the lives of the animals and helps contribute to positive welfare of the animals, which is our utmost priority,' the spokesman said.

'All management strategies to stop breeding are against best practice and decreases the welfare of the dolphins.'

World Animal Protection Head of Campaigns Ben Pearson said he was disappointed by the move. 'It's disappointing our education billboards on the Gold Coast are being taken down after just two days, but our campaign will continue,' he said.

Mr Pearson said the group was fighting to make the current generation of dolphins at Sea World the last.

'With Dolphin Marine Conservation Park in Coffs Harbour having already made this commitment, Sea World is now on its own and out of step with the growing public awareness that keeping dolphins in captivity is cruel,' Mr Pearson said.

'There are currently around 30 dolphins at Sea World, most of which were born and bred there, with breeding to continue in future to provide entertainment for tourists.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted World Animal Protection, Village Roadshow and JCDecaux for further comment. 

SOURCE  






Jacqui Lambie says she is open to supporting the government's 'union-busting' laws - under one condition

Looks like ScoMo will get his whole agenda through the Senate

Senate crossbencher Jacqui Lambie is open to supporting the government's reheated union-busting legislation if the proposed laws are reviewed after two years.

Senator Lambie has also rekindled a threat to back the so-called 'ensuring integrity' bill if Victorian construction union boss John Setka does not resign.

The independent senator has demanded the two-year review in return for her support for the legislation, which makes it easier to deregister unions and ban their officials.

'If the government thinks my previously unworkable amendments are now workable, well, I think that's great,' she told The Australian Financial Review on Thursday.

'I'm always happy to work constructively with the government and I note that the CFMEU haven't cleaned up their act - John Setka is still there.'

Senior cabinet minister Peter Dutton says the proposed laws are squarely aimed at 'militant thugs' in the construction industry.  'Hopefully common sense does prevail,' he told 2GB radio. 'I just think people need to recognise that this is a good bill, it's a sensible answer to what is a very difficult problem.'

The ensuring integrity bill was reintroduced to the lower house on Wednesday, less than a week after being voted down in the Senate.

Labor has promised to continue fighting against the proposed laws over the long summer break, before the legislation returns to the Senate next year.

'We'll continue to make sure that working Australians have the right to organise to improve their pay and conditions,' Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek told AAP. [Nobody is denying them that]

SOURCE  




Prime Minister announces dramatic cuts to public service departments

The prime minister has announced a major change to the public sector, with the number of government departments set to cut from 18 to 14.

As a result, five high-paid department heads will lose their jobs.

“Having fewer departments will allow us to bust bureaucratic congestion and ultimately deliver better services,” he told reporters in Canberra today.

“This is about getting better services on the ground. Australians should be able to access simple and reliable services, designed around their needs.”

Four new mega departments will be created early next year:

* Education, Skills and Employment

* Agriculture, Water and the Environment

* Industry, Science, Energy and Resources

* Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications.

The changes will come into effect on February 1 and 10 departments remain unchanged..

There will be no reshuffle to ministerial responsibilities.

The obvious question, and the first one Mr Morrison was asked, was how many public servants will learn over Christmas that they are about to become unemployed.

Mr Morrison said the move wasn’t being made to save money.

“This has not been done as a saving measure, this has been done as a structural issue to better align and bring together the functions of the public service,” he said.

However, asked whether he would guarantee no one would lose their jobs, Mr Morrison noticeably shifted the responsibility for personnel decisions to the departmental secretaries.

“That’s matters for secretaries, and there is nothing in these changes that is a directive to secretaries about making any changes in those areas,” he said.

“Whatever decisions they take, they’re not decisions that the government is taking.”

The sacked head of the federal communications department said he wasn’t given any opportunity to provide advice on a major government shake-up.

Mike Mrdak has spent 32 years in the public service.

“I was told of the government’s decision to abolish the department late yesterday afternoon,” Mr Mrdak said in a memo.

“We were not permitted any opportunity to provide advice on the machinery of government changes, nor were our views ever sought on any proposal to abolish the department or to changes to our structure and operations.”

Earlier this year, the Prime Minister said the public service needed to “evolve” and in some cases “conventional wisdom needs to be challenged”.

He also called for “congestion-busting” to encourage new ideas on how to improve services.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






5 December, 2019

Tearful Jacqui Lambie votes for medivac repeal, handing Scott Morrison a major political victory

ScoMo is not getting it all his way but he is doing well overall in getting his legislation through the Senate. Cormann deserves a lot of credit

Scott Morrison has scored a major political victory by repealing the controversial medivac legislation, delivering on a key election pledge, as a row ignites over whether he struck a “secret deal” with crossbencher Jacqui Lambie.

The laws, which made it easier for refugees in offshore detention to be brought to Australia to receive medical treatment, was scrapped during a tense debate in the Senate on Wednesday. The final vote was 37 to 35.

Senator Lambie, who delivered the government victory, broke down in tears as she told the chamber she would support the medivac repeal bill.

“I’m quite sure many people have known in here this has been a really hard decision for me to make,” Senator Lambie said. “Sorry, everybody, for taking this long to make it, but we’re getting there.”

The crucial crossbencher had previously been tight-lipped on whether she would vote with the government.

Senator Lambie told the Senate, the medivac laws were a national security threat and there were “real problems” with the way they were operating. “There are problems that sit at the centre of its operation. They cannot be amended away,” Senator Lambie said. “The Labor Party and the Greens might think everything is A-OK, but I’m not comfortable with it and I’ll tell you — they know as well as anybody else that this isn’t right.”

A tearful Senator Lambie said she was voting to dismantle the legislation because it was a “matter of conscience.”

“This is a matter of conscience. I can’t let the boats start back up and I can’t let refugees die, whether it’s sinking into the ocean or waiting for a doctor and I am voting to make sure that neither of these things happen.”

While the government’s chief negotiator Finance Minister and Senate leader, Mathias Cormann, denied a secret deal was struck, Senator Lambie said she couldn’t reveal the proposal worked on with the coalition for national security reasons.

“I’m not being coy or silly when I say I genuinely can’t say what I proposed. I know that’s frustrating to people. And I get that,” Senator Lambie said. “I don’t like holding things back like this but when I say I can’t discuss it publicly due to national security concerns, I am being 100 per cent honest to you.”

During the debate, Labor Senator Penny Wong blasted the government over its track-record on transparency, saying the vote should be delayed until Australians knew the terms of the private negotiations.

A furious Greens leader Richard Di Natale blasted Senator Corman for “misleading” the parliament after he denied a deal had been struck.

“We’ve just heard conflicting accounts. We had Minister Cormann say that there was no deal. Now we’ve just heard Senator Lambie say there is a deal. Who’s lying?,” Senator Di Natale said.

“Someone is misleading the Senate. Someone is misleading the Senate about one of the most important pieces of legislation that has been before this Parliament.”

He was joined in his attack by Senator Wong who told the chamber cabinet ministers were voting on legislation “like lemmings” having not been privy to the details of the deal.

“What sort of cabinet government is that? What sort of process of democracy is that?” Senator Wong said. “You should require of this government some disclosure. You should require something more than secret deals done in the shadows.”

The surprise vote occurred after the Coalition moved a motion to put the medivac repeal to vote in a move to push the legislation through the upper house.

SOURCE  






Police "strike" on going into Aboriginal settlements?

Just the charging of constable Rolfe has created tension. If the Rolfe trial leads to anything but complete exoneration, police may well in future refuse to go into Aboriginal communities.  Armchair judgments on police actions in the heat of the moment are intrinsically unfair and basing a prosecution on them tells police not to bother in future

One of Australia's longest-serving former police commissioners believes the shooting of Indigenous man Kumanjayi Walker in a remote Northern Territory community could have widespread consequences for the future of policing.

Western Australia's ex-police commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said officers felt unsupported after Constable Zachary Rolfe was charged with murder and many will be watching the outcome of the case "very closely".

Dr O'Callaghan also expressed sadness at the low number of Aboriginal people involved in law enforcement and the failed efforts to recruit them.

The comments come amid fresh scrutiny on policing strategies in isolated townships and the relationship between Indigenous people and the law.

Too risky for officers

As the state's highest-ranking officer for 13 years, Dr O'Callaghan has extensive experience in overseeing policing strategies in some of the most isolated places on earth.

He said the decision to charge Mr Rolfe with murder over the shooting sent ripples of dismay through the policing fraternity.

"I think [officers] feel they are not supported," he said. "[Officers] go out and do their job, something happens in a split second and they end up getting charged with a very serious offence.

"I think police in Western Australia and the Northern Territory will be very, very concerned about what this means for trying to support those Aboriginal communities."

He said the case had the potential to change the way officers approached policing in these places — and not necessarily for the better.

"The outcome of this will be watched very closely all over Australia," he said. "It will have an impact on the best of our police officers, on their decision to go to those communities.

"It will be a bad thing if police officers who are qualified and very skilled at their work decide that they don't want to go there because of this risk."

Policing in the far-flung regional centres of Western Australia and the Northern Territory has long presented a logistical and cultural challenge for officers.

A handful of staff are often responsible for between several hundred to 1,000 residents.

Small communities can be easily inundated by visitors who travel thousands of kilometres, many from interstate, to attend family commitments.

In addition to layers of complex social problems, there are language and cultural barriers to navigate, and support is usually hours away.

Law enforcement in these conditions requires a unique approach, according to Dr O'Callaghan, because officers, "are trying to deal with a lot of complex social issues".

"It can have an enormous impact on a police officer because of the complexity of what they're dealing with and I think even the best-prepared officers are not prepared or trained to deal with what they find in those communities," he said.

SOURCE  






The Aboriginal "Stonehenge"

There are no standing stones there today but were there ever?

Peter O'Brien below surveys the evidence

Having been an aficionado of climate change fiction for many years now, I have gradually come to understand the concept of ‘post truth’ or, rather, to appreciate just how omnipresent it now is.

Recently, I came across the perfect example in reading Bruce Pascoe’s hugely popular book Dark Emu.  Dark Emu postulates that Australian Aborigines were not a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, as we had all been led to believe, but a sedentary agricultural people whose achievements included baking the first-ever loaf of bread and inventing government.  Pascoe concludes that, on  the basis of those achievements, the colonization of Australia was totally unjustified. Dark Emu received the Book of the Year award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2016.

However, my intention here is not to critique Dark Emu itself – that is the subject of my book, Bitter Harvest, which is now available.

In this essay I will examine just one ludicrous claim that is based on the work of supposedly mainstream serious academics, not faux historians like Pascoe. In Dark Emu, Pascoe floats the idea that colonists downplayed or hid Aboriginal achievements, making them seem more primitive than they really were in order to justify colonization. But not only that:

"Perversely, some early colonists exaggerated the size of some features in order to distance the structure from the capability of Aboriginal people and to suggest their origin to be the work of isolated Europeans in the distant past.  An engraving of some vertical stones at Mount Elephant, Victoria, published in the Australian Illustrated News in 1877 has certainly been exaggerated to assume Stonehenge proportions.  Faced with the evidence of permanent occupation, some were tempted to infer that the work was the result of aliens."

This claim cites the work of professors Ian McNiven and Lynette Russell of Monash University.  McNiven is an archaeological anthropologist and Russell a historian.  Their assertion first saw the light of day in a paper titled Monumental Colonialism: Megaliths and the Appropriation of Australia’s Aboriginal Past, published in 1998 in The Journal of Material Culture.  It then reappeared in a book by the same authors, Appropriated Pasts. In a nutshell, the idea is that colonists were so insecure in their right to be in Australia that they invented structures which could not possibly be the work of Aborigines.  Comparing such structures to, for example, Stonehenge, would ascribe a European heritage to them and suggest that a superior, European-based culture had been displaced by Aborigines and that, in colonizing Australia, they were merely reclaiming their own heritage.

I kid you not.

The story of the Mt Elephant stones, located some 183km west of Melbourne and often described as ‘megaliths’, begins as far as McNiven and Russell are concerned with the inclusion in an 1867 work, published in England, on the ancient rock engravings of Britain and selected areas of the world. The author, Sir James Simpson, noted:

Stone circles have been found in almost every country in the old world, from Greenland southward.  Nor are ancient circles of this kind wanting even in Australia.  My friend, Mr Ormond, informs me that he has seen many, especially in the district near Mt Elephant plains, in Victoria.  The circles (Mr Ormond writes me) are from ten to a hundred feet in diameter, and sometimes there is an inner circle.  The stones composing these circles, or circular areas, vary in size and shape. Human bones have (he adds) been dug out of mounds near these circles.  The aborigines have no tradition regarding them.  When asked about them, they invariably deny knowledge of their origin. — Appropriated Pasts,  page 104

This was actually a footnote by Simpson which McNiven and Russell describe as ‘telling’.   But I’m not quite sure what it told them.  They contend the Aboriginal denial of knowledge of the origin of the stones is a ‘two way loss’:

If the Aboriginals were not responsible for the construction of the circles, then they, like the European colonizers, were newcomers, and the legitimacy of their claim to the land was questionable.  If, on the other hand, they had chosen to remain secret about the construction, use, and meaning of the stone circles, they were evasive, sly and dishonest.  In this context, the use of the term ‘deny’ is important, as it suggests the informants were choosing reticence and silence regarding the site’s meaning. — Appropriated Pasts,  page 105

The use of the term ‘deny’ might also be a convenient way to report that the Aborigines said they had no knowledge of the stones.  The words of Simpson, a simple recounting of what he had been told, do not justify the inference drawn by McNiven and Russell that this negated in the European mind any Aboriginal claim to the land.  And you will note there is no mention of the size of the stones.  They are not described as megaliths.  McNiven and Russell then go on to cite an 1872 survey of megaliths, The Monuments of Unrecorded Ages, by William and Robert Chambers, which refers to the Mt Elephant stone circles:

Five years later, William and Robert Chambers in their megalith survey of 1872, “The Monuments of Unrecorded Ages" made reference (albeit uncited) to Simpson’s footnote  “Even in Australia – in the colony of Victoria – they are to be seen in numbers, sometimes circle within circle, as at Avebury, and without any tradition among the natives". — Appropriated Pasts, page 105

There is still no suggestion the Mt Elephant stones were megaliths, other than in the claim that The Monuments of Unrecorded Ages was a ‘survey of megaliths’.  This description and the arguably disapproving aside that the reference to Simpson was uncited, suggest this was a scholarly scientific work.  But in fact The Monuments of Unrecorded Ages was simply one essay (of thirty-one pages) about monuments in general, in just one volume of a series of periodicals titled Chambers’s Miscellany of Instructive and Entertaining Tracts.  There were at least twenty volumes of this precursor to Reader’s Digest, containing such essays as “Intelligent Negroes“, “Religious Imposters“, and the one immediately before the ancient monuments piece, “Anecdotes of Shoemakers“.  The Chambers brothers were scholarly gentlemen who lived in Scotland but their reference to stone circles in Australia was a very fleeting one in an extensive article and had nothing to do with scientific research on their part or that of anyone else.

More HERE 





20 UNTRUTHS IN DEFENCE OF BRUCE PASCOE



I rarely quote Andrew Bolt on the grounds that most of my readers have probably read him already. I am however putting up the whole of a Bolt post below as a great deal of work has obviously gone into it and it therefore deserves maximum exposure.  The post is about a fake historian and his faked history.  The Left love the fake so  it could potentially receive a lot of acceptance as real history.  So Bolt has done a great job below of totally dismantling it.  The Saturday Paper Bolt refers to is a small-circulation Leftist rag.



Here are at least 20 falsehoods - plus other deceptions - I've found in what the ABC calls "excellent reporting".
Let's start with this astonishing falsehood in Rick Morton's piece for the Saturday Paper:

In his rebuttal (to Morton), the Herald Sun columnist has been forced to accept there were incredibly sophisticated settlements and seed-milling operations, and that Aboriginal people really did give cake and honey and roast ducks to Sturt and his party.

That is completely, completely false. Read my rebuttal here and a later one here. Nowhere do I "accept" what Morton claims - that there were "incredibly sophisticated settlements and seed-milling operations". He is inventing, Pascoe-like.
Also false: Morton inflates the grinding of seeds between two stones, pushed by a woman, with "seed-milling operations". There is also no mention of Aborigines in the settlement giving Sturt honey.
That's just the start of Morton's incredible string of errors and misrepresentations.

Bolt’s dislike of Pascoe began at least two years before the publication of the book...

False: I do not dislike Pascoe. In fact, I have some sympathy for him. I just don't accept many of his claims.

Bolt’s efforts to “fact-check” Pascoe’s book are based largely around a website called Dark Emu Exposed.

Half-truth: As I openly acknowledged from the start, dark-emu-exposed.org alerted me to many of the errors in Pascoe's work. I then doubled checked, found more and interviewed Aboriginal groups about Pascoe's claim to Aboriginality.

As one prominent Indigenous leader tells The Saturday Paper, on the condition of anonymity, the argument against Pascoe’s work is an extension of “19th-century race theory”, which once espoused the view that race is the major indicator of a person’s character and behaviour. “Any suggestion that Aborigines are anything other than furtive rock apes has to be destroyed by these people,” the leader says.

False. The argument against Pascoe's work is that he misquotes sources, invents "evidence" and wildly extrapolates to make an argument that is at odds with the evidence and with accounts of Aborigines themselves.
Deceitful: this is playing the race card.
Racist: this is perpetrating a racist trope that Aborigines who were hunter-gatherers were merely "furtive rock apes".
Deceptive: the anonymous source sounds exactly like an academic who has publicly admitted I am not in fact a racist, and apologised for similar slurs. That academic is not a "leader".

Pascoe’s book is based on close reading of the original journals of Australia’s explorers.

False: It is not a "close" reading. As I have shown, Pascoe misquotes often in Dark Emu and - more spectacularly - his lectures and interviews.

As the Indigenous leader notes: “He’s gone to the records and said, ‘Hang on, what does this really mean?’ While some historians with their PhDs have gone to the same original documents and came to the conclusion that we were all backward.”

False: The historians have not argued that hunter-gatherer Aborigines were "backward". They have merely described what they were.
Evasive: Nowhere does Morton explain why so many of our most pre-eminent scholars were wrong, and why bush-historian Pascoe is right.

In Dark Emu, which has sold more than 100,000 copies, Pascoe mounts a convincing argument that Aboriginal people actively managed and cultivated the landscape, harvested seeds for milling into cakes at an astonishing scale, took part in complex aquaculture and built “towns” of up to 1000 people.

Deceptive: Pascoe goes further, and describes them as farmers. His argument is not "convincing" except to the gullible. That Aborigines harvested seeds is consistent with hunger-gathering (who must also live off the land). There is zero "convincing" evidence for his repeated claims of towns of 1000 people.

That word, by the way – “town” – is not Pascoe’s.

False: from Dark Emu, "Sturt himself saw a prosperous town of 1,000 on the banks of the Darling River."

That word, by the way – “town” – is not Pascoe’s. That is how one such settlement was referred to by a man in the exploration party of Thomas Mitchell in the mid-1800s.

False: Pascoe attributes that quote to Mitchell in Dark Emu on page 15: "He (Mitchell) counts houses and estimates a population of 1,000." But Mitchell’s journal at this link makes no reference to any town of 1000 people. Neither does Sturt.

What some have found so astonishing about Pascoe’s claimed developments is not that they happened – they are right there in Charles Sturt’s and Mitchell’s journals, among many others – but that we, as a nation, could have been so ignorant to their existence.

Naivety: That's because many of Pascoe's claims are actually untrue or highly exaggerated.

As Pascoe wrote last year in Meanjin: “Almost no Australians know anything about the Aboriginal civilisation because our educators, emboldened by historians, politicians and the clergy, have refused to mention it for 230 years.

False: Pascoe himself quotes from the journals of explorers who described what was before their eyes.

It is Pascoe’s attempt to shout down this conspiracy of silence that has primed the culture war machine.

False: What "conspiracy"?

But why should a successful race of First Nations peoples be such a threat to modern Australians?

False assumption: It isn't. We have long been told - including in celebrated histories such as Triumph of the Nomads that Aboriginal hunter-gatherers had, well, triumphed. That they had successfully adapted to one of the harshest continents on earth. This threatens no one.

Of course, it is uncomfortable to later ask: What if this race of First Australians were civilised all along? Maybe we were the barbarians?

Racist: Implies that hunter-gatherers were not "civilised", but "barbarians".

Pascoe achieves this questioning with a somewhat controversial manoeuvre. He takes the European ideal of farming and architecture, and thoroughly white notions of success, and applies them, through the primary evidence, to Indigenous Australians.

Embarrassing admission: Yes, indeed. Pascoe tries to make Aborigines live up to the "European ideal of farming and architecture".
False: But he does not do that "through the primary evidence".

Bolt has purported to catch Pascoe in the act of faking his Aboriginal identity, as if to cast doubt on the book itself through the use of a skin-tone chart.

False: I have "purported" nothing, and not used a "skin-tone chart". I have noted that genealogical records suggest Pascoe does not have a single Aboriginal ancestor, and that Aborigines from the three tribes or Aboriginal lands to which Pascoe claims to belong all dispute his Aboriginality.
Deceptive: Morton nowhere examines the evidence that Pascoe is not in fact Aboriginal.

This murkiness speaks to how such relationships on this continent progressed for so long – disguised by violence, shame, lost records and stolen children.

False: It speaks to how Pascoe claims to be Aboriginal without even a scrap of evidence, and it contradiction to real evidence, and even after admitting that the woman he thought was his Aboriginal ancestor was in fact from England.
Also false: Pascoe has at times claimed his Aboriginal ancestry is not murky at all. On an ABC video for schools - and on his publisher's website - he has claimed to be of Boonwurrung (or Bunurong), Yuin and Tasmanian Aboriginal descent, all disputed by Aboriginal representatives. On another video, from 2016, he claims instead to have Queensland and South Australian Aboriginal connections.
Also false: No, there is not "murkiness" about Pascoe's ancestry caused by "lost records and stolen children". Last week Pascoe claimed he actually had birth certificates to prove his Aboriginality, but said he would not produce them.

Pascoe tells of the struggle to find his Aboriginal ancestor, which was sketched by family members not so much through what they said but through what they didn’t say. It was an absence that provided clues.

False: It was an absence that suggested Pascoe wasn't Aboriginal.

The senior Indigenous leader who spoke to The Saturday Paper excoriated those who pressed this line of attack. “When they insist on this inquiry, do they wonder if this person had family members stolen from the missions? Do they wonder if this person’s family was dispersed during the frontier wars? Do they wonder if they were hiding truths because of a concerted effort to shame or humiliate Aboriginal ancestry?”

Red herring and false assumption: Pascoe's genealogical records suggest that every one of his ancestors are of English descent. But I have several times indeed suggested those records may be faulty - maybe there's a mistake, or an illegitimate birth somewhere. I have three times asked Pascoe to point out the errors, but he has refused.

But this week The Saturday Paper spent two days at the National Library of Australia reviewing the original documents and explorer accounts in question. They are – at every instance – quoted verbatim and cited accordingly in an extensive bibliography at the end of Pascoe’s book.

Misleading: Many are cited verbatim, but others are misrepresented or used to wildly extrapolate. Some, as I've explained, are summarised incorrectly. In one extraordinary case, Pascoe redraws a map he claims is from Norman Tindale (1974) to claim an Aboriginal "grain belt" extended deep into Victoria and the present grain belt of south-west Western Australia.
Also misleading: Many of the most egregious examples I gave of Pascoe fantasising were drawn from his lectures and interviews.

Thomas Mitchell also noted a town of 1000 people in his journals, and the quote is attributed to Mitchell in Dark Emu at the bottom of page 15... In fact, the quote is from his 1839 journal. This, too, is recorded faithfully in Dark Emu.

False: Mitchell does not note a town of 1000 people in his 1839 journal. Or is it "faithfully recorded" in Dark Emu.

Bolt has twice scoffed at the idea of animal yards being found by these explorers.

False: I scoffed at Pascoe falsely claiming Charles Sturt saw an "animal holding pen" at a "town" of "1000" people near Cooper Creek.

But Dark Emu records the firsthand account of David Lindsay on his 1883 survey of Arnhem Land, where he says he “came on the site of a large native encampment... Framework of several large humpies, one having been 12ft high: small enclosures as if some small game had been yarded and kept alive..."

Misleading, deceptive: This is not evidence of farming, but, at best, keeping "small game alive", as hunters might. It is not proof but a supposition that it is a pen, no animal having been found in it. It is on the other side of the continent from Cooper Creek. It is not what Sturt saw.

While Bolt mocks Pascoe for speaking at a lecture about a well that was made by Indigenous people and was “70 feet deep”, there are, in fact, a litany of accounts of incredibly sophisticated wells in the journals. Of one, Sturt writes: “… we arrived at a native well of unusual dimensions. It was about eight feet wide at the top and 22ft deep..."

Misleading, deceptive: 22 feet is nothing like 70 feet. What's more, this 22-foot well was found nowhere near Cooper Creek, which is where Pascoe falsely claimed Sturt saw one 70 feet deep, when in fact Sturt had expressed surprise at the "smallness of the waterhole" there. Nowhere does Morton wonder how Pascoe got that so wrong.

The debate has now been reduced to minutiae – questioning how many mills were going and the different depth of various wells.

False. Pascoe's big claim - that Aborigines were "farmers" in "towns" of "1000 people" in "houses" with "animal pens" and "hundreds of mills" - is what is under severe challenge, as is his claim to be Aboriginal.

Looking for family has taken on a mournful quality this week, as Pascoe’s kin went to libraries around the country to find the name of their Aboriginal ancestor. But how to proceed, one must ask, when so much of their story and the story of a people has been destroyed to protect the last excuse for colonisation?

Deceit: Pascoe last week claimed he had "birth certificates" to prove his Aboriginality. So why were his kin last week going "to libraries around the country to find the name of their Aboriginal ancestor"?
Just how foolish is Rick Morton, and the journalists hailing him for his error-riddled defence of an error-raddled Pascoe?



SOURCE  




4 December, 2019

Bitter dumped PM Malcolm Turnbull goes rogue in an extraordinary speech slamming right-wing Liberals as 'threatening democracy' and claiming Donald Trump wants to 'destroy' the U.S.

Anger has destroyed his reasoning.  His invention of "authoritarian populists" is interesting but illogical.  The Left of course want an authoritarian elite, with a small group making all the decisions for everybody: a top-down arrangement. 

But how can populists be authoritarian?  They ARE the people the Left want to boss around.  They can only get their ideas implemented by voting for people who share those ideas -- such as Donald Trump and ScoMo.  But that's called democracy, I think.  Turnbull is in fact enraged by the triumph of popular ideas over elite ideas.  But he would be

But I suppose what he means is that populists may want authoritarian government policies, but not the authoritarian policies that the elite favour.  So immigration control would be to him authoritarian


Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused his own side of politics of 'threatening our democracy' in an extraordinary speech that also took aim at Donald Trump and Scott Morrison's 'quiet Australians'.

The ousted Liberal Party leader didn't hold back when addressing a gathering of Liberal moderates at a Sydney eastern suburbs yacht club, warning of the dangers of 'populist authoritarianism' and sensationally accusing Mr Trump of sabotage as the US President faces impeachment over his Ukraine dealings.

'Donald Trump is seeking to tear at every, single institution in the United States,' he said of the world leader he had last year visited at the White House in Washington.

With his autobiography just months away, Mr Turnbull said that President Trump appealed to reactionary elements within the conservative side of politics.

'I mean Donald Trump, who is their hero, is not a conservative. That is not what conservativism is,' he said on Thursday night during a 29-minute speech, obtained in full by Daily Mail Australia.

Awkwardly, Australia's next ambassador to the United States, Arthur Sinodinos, was in the audience and was even a speaker at this function.

More than 200 guests paid $75 for tickets to the Sydney Harbour event last Thursday, which featured a who's who of cabinet ministers and lobbyists linked to the Liberal Party.

A witness told Daily Mail Australia of seeing the multi-millionaire former prime minister arrive in a Sydney Harbour water taxi, from his nearby Point Piper mansion, with his wife Lucy and their daughter Daisy.

In his speech Mr Turnbull slammed conservative politics in general, more than a year after right-wing elements in the Liberal Party ended his leadership.

'What we are faced with at the moment on the right of politics, so called, is essentially a form of populist authoritarianism, which is utterly intolerant of diversity, is utterly intolerant of alternative views,' he said.

'And it really threatens our democracy. It is important to call it out.'

Mr Turnbull also took a subtle dig at his successor Mr Morrison, who in May this year credited the 'quiet Australians' for his election night win, despite Labor winning 55 consecutive Newspolls beforehand.

'The people on the right, the distinctly un-quiet Australians, who are claiming to be conservative are not conservatives at all,' he said to laughter.

'They are authoritarian populists. 'Don't let them get away with claiming that they are conservative.'

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who hails from the right of the Liberal Party, challenged Mr Turnbull's leadership in August last year after he proposed a National Energy Guarantee to deal with rising electricity prices.

Mr Morrison beat Mr Dutton in a second leadership challenge, in three days, which Mr Turnbull declined to contest.

The moderate faction in New South Wales had swung its support behind Mr Morrison to stop Mr Dutton from becoming prime minister.

The former prime minister had previously lost the Liberal leadership in December 2009 to Tony Abbott after proposing to back the then Labor government's proposed emissions trading scheme.

His speech at the Cruising Yacht Club at Darling Point was attended by high-profile Liberal ministers, MPs and powerbroker lobbyists.

These included Trade Minister Simon Birmingham and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher.

Former Liberal senator Mr Sinodinos, who next year replaces former treasurer Joe Hockey as Australia's ambassador to the United States, also attended along with Liberal backbenchers Trent Zimmerman and Dave Sharma, and former federal cabinet minister Christopher Pyne, who is now a lobbyist.

Lobbyist Michael Photios, a powerbroker within the Liberal Party's moderate faction in NSW, was also there.

The invitation-only event was organised by Liberal Forum, the organisation wing of the party's moderate faction.

Mr Turnbull's autobiography A Bigger Picture is due for release in 2020.

SOURCE  






PC madness: Australian students are urged to avoid using words like 'husband' and 'wife' for the sake of 'inclusivity' - and even 'last name' is on the chopping block

Australian university students are being urged to avoid words such as 'husband' and 'wife' to encourage 'inclusivity' on campus.

Gender neutral words like 'partner' are preferred in classes at Western Sydney University, to 'make everyone feel included'.

The Inclusive Practice guide says: 'Swapping gendered words for gender neutral ones (and using terms like "partner" instead of boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife), can make everyone feel included in the conversation.'

The word choice recognises that not every student identifies as heterosexual or as a man or a woman, the guide explains.  

The University of New South Wales, meanwhile, has advised staff to refrain from assuming 'Western name forms'.

'Family' and 'given' name should be referred to instead of 'last' and 'Christian' name, the Designing Inclusive Environments section of their website reads.  

'If in doubt, ask what students find appropriate in terms of modes of address.' 

A 'diversity toolkit' on the UNSW website, urges teaching staff to implement  experiential activities 'to help students (especially "dominant culture" students) to understand that they too are "raced" and have cultural norms.'

'At UNSW we aim to help students find respectful and culturally inclusive ways of dealing with controversial issues,' the page says.

The University of Newcastle refers to 'derogatory labelling' and 'forms of sexist language' in its Inclusive Language Guide.

Terms which discredit minority groups, like the use of 'whingeing poms', should be avoided to ensure language on campus is inclusive.

The University of Newcastle says women are often invisible in language, due to the use of 'masculine pronouns' and words like 'mankind' and 'man made'.

'Where these terms are never varied to include reference to women, the absence/unimportance of women is reinforced,' the guide says.

'Alternatives are needed if language is to challenge the implication that women are either absent or less important. 

To avoid sexist language, the university urges using alternatives like 'humans' and 'human beings' to 'man'.

Further, gendered word order can be varied to challenge the established order.

This reminds 'the reader of the equality of men and women rather than reinforcing – even subliminally – the perception that men are more important than their female counterparts'.

Bella d'Abrera, an Institute of Public Affairs researcher, told The Daily Telegraph the vocabulary was changing how students think - but not necessarily in a good way.  

'They are turning into totalitarian institutions where people will soon be too terrified to use words like 'husband' or 'wife',' she said.

'By changing language, you change thought. Without adequate words, people can't formulate ideas and describe what is going on around them.

'By reducing vocabulary, you are reducing their ability to think. It's exactly the opposite to the core business of the university.'

Western Sydney University and UNSW declined to comment when asked about their inclusive language guides when contacted by The Daily Telegraph. 

A spokeswoman from Newcastle University said their inclusive guidelines encourage students and staff to think about their language use.   

SOURCE  





Medivac transfers leap as repeal bid looms

More than one third of the asylum-seekers and refugees in Papua New Guinea and Nauru have applied for transfer to Australia under controversial medivac laws, with a rush of applications lodged before a parliamentary vote to terminate the scheme.

The fate of the medivac regime rests with Tasmanian Senate crossbencher Jacqui Lambie, who has refused to show her hand after making her support conditional on a secret ultimatum she has delivered to the government.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has provided Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton a personal assurance of her party’s support after last week delivering the Coalition a shock defeat over its union-busting bill.

With the Coalition hoping to repeal the medivac laws as soon as Tuesday, The Australian can reveal there are 171 people being held offshore who have applied for transfer under the Labor and Greens-backed medivac laws.

The 171 are at various stages of the approval process, with 63 having lodged more than one application for a medical transfer. In total, there are 234 applications currently being considered for medical transfers — a figure which is greater than half the total number of people being held on Manus and Nauru.

The Australian can also reveal that, in the lead up to the Senate sitting week of November 11, Mr Dutton was forced to consider nearly 100 applications. Forty-seven were considered during the week of November 4, and 51 the following week.

The spike came amid speculation the government could use the Senate-only sitting week in November to put the medivac repeal to a vote, with the number of applications plummeting to just four in the week of November 18 when the Senate was not sitting.

Since the medivac laws were passed in February, 184 people have been transferred to Australia and 418 valid applications have been lodged.

On Monday, Government Senate Leader Mathias Cormann confirmed the repeal bill would be put to a vote and that it would not accept measures that would weaken the border protection ­regime.

“We are very mindful of making sure that we maintain strong border protection arrangements and we don’t provide an incentive for the people-smugglers to get boats going again,” he said.

“We will not be making any changes to our strong border protection arrangements, and we will not be making any changes to the way we’ve been dealing with Labor’s legacy caseload.”

The government is also concerned people complaining of trivial medical issues are being approved by doctors for transfer under the medivac regime.

In one case, a refugee in PNG was approved for transfer because of receding gums, gingivitis and a urinary tract infection.

Labor home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally on Monday criticised the government’s push to overturn the laws, saying they were working effectively, and accused Mr Dutton of failing to advance third-country resettlement options, including New Zealand.

The Australian revealed on Monday that more than 20 refugees approved for relocation in the US had instead been flown to Australia under the medivac regime, fuelling concern the laws were undermining third-country resettlement arrangements.

More than 50 people rejected for relocation by the US have come to Australia under the laws.

Scott Morrison has ruled out ­allowing New Zealand to take asylum-seekers from Manus Island and Nauru in return for Senator Lambie’s support of the medivac repeal. “Those policies on those matters haven’t changed,” the Prime Minister said.

Senator Keneally accused the government of disclosing the private details and health conditions of asylum-seekers as part of its push to secure support for the ­repeal. “We have seen the names, backgrounds, ages and ethnicities of asylum-seekers and refugees published in papers,” she said. “We have seen their medical conditions misconstrued and exploited for political gain.”

Senator Keneally also ­appeared to take aim at Home ­Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, and quoted from a directive he ­issued in June 2015 when he was secretary of the then department of immigration and border protection. “Unless there are compelling medical reasons, supported by second opinions, to do with life-and-death situations, or situations involving the risk of lifetime injury or disability, transfers to Australia should be avoided,” he had said.

Senator Keneally said the ­directive “effectively stopped medical transfers to Australia”, leading to a fall of 92 per cent.

SOURCE  





Rare earths industry welcomes new US-Australian deal to ensure critical minerals supply

A newly-signed deal between Australia and the United States focusing on critical minerals could be the push to create a thriving rare earths industry in Australia and more specifically, central Australia, according to some mineral experts and rare earths industry players.

The deal comes months after the world's rare earths supply was thrust into the spotlight after Beijing threatened to restrict the rare earth trade as part of its ongoing trade war with the US.

On the other side of the world in outback Australia, Nolans Bore, a rare earths project north of Alice Springs, has welcomed the new deal.

The facility has been more than 15 years in the making, and the company behind it, Arafura Resources, said pending native title approval and finance, it was planning to start construction late next year.

Full details of the deal have not been made public but Brian Fowler, general manager for the Northern Territory with Arafura, said it was a sign that politicians were realising how geopolitically threatened rare earths are due to China's dominance in the market.

"[China] controls 85 per cent of the world's supply of rare earths," he said.

According to the company, the $1 billion project has a large, globally significant rare earth deposit of roughly 56 million tonnes.

"We have the potential to supply somewhere in the region of 8 to 10 per cent of the world's requirement for neodymium and praseodymium, two of the rare earths minerals," Mr Fowler said.

"Their role is in the production of the highest strength magnets on the planet, they are the absolute essential elements in the electrification of motor vehicles and in the production of clean energy using things like wind turbines."

Mr Fowler said considering the amount of car companies looking to make electric models, the current global supply of neodymium and praseodymium was not adequate to meet the predicted demand going forward.

Chris Vernon, processing research director for CSIRO's mineral resources, agreed that demand was about to soar. He said that although Australia had a significant supply of rare earths and sophisticated technology, investment had been holding the industry back. "[The deal] looks very promising," he said.

"One of the bottlenecks to getting a project off the ground in Australia was the financing and the uncertainty [so] if government is stepping in and providing some surety about getting finance, that can only be a good thing."

He reiterated that the China-US trade war was to thank for throwing rare earths into focus. "The rare earths market is about to explode, simply because we expect to put so many electric vehicles on the road; every one of those requires rare earths for their magnets," he said.

"There's also a burgeoning market in other technology uses.

"A car only takes a few tens of kilograms of rare earths but when you're looking at some high-tech military equipment for example, you could be looking at hundreds of kilograms of rare earths.

"There is a real hunger for more rare earths."

While Nolan's Bore has the required environmental approvals, a local advocacy group said it still had concerns around the mine.

However, they conceded that rare earths were needed for the transition to green energy by increasing the use of electric cars and wind turbines.

Alex Read, policy officer with the Arid Lands Environment Centre [ALEC], said the organisation was cautiously supportive of the project, providing that environmental regulations were followed.

"We understand the importance of having a supply of these metals for electric vehicles and renewable energy but we need to take a cautious approach to this," he said. "And we need to have a broader conversation about the costs and benefits of these projects."

The Northern Territory Government will soon start consultation on draft environment protection regulations after passing the Environment Protection Bill earlier this year.

But ALEC would like to see proposed legislation changes in place before any new mines come online.

"One of the key flaws in the current framework is there is no way for directors to be held personally liable if they don't comply with their environmental requirements," Mr Read said.

"We want to make sure they have a chain of responsibility framework to make sure they're held personally responsible and we want to make sure that the rehabilitation program is completed as they say it would be.

"Rare earth mining comes with a lot of risks.

"Particularly with this project, we're seeing it's associated with elevated levels of radionuclides and we understand that they're going to be significant risks to groundwater, surface water [and] public health."

Mr Read said ALEC would also like to see changes put into place to ensure mining companies had to pay for their water licences.

SOURCE  

  Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






3 December 2019

From farms and coal mines to airports and water supplies: How China is buying up millions of acres of land, vital infrastructure and companies - as part of its 'disturbing' plan to exert greater influence and control over Australia

This is just racist paranoia. China is not particularly targeting Australia.  It is buying up assets wherever it can worldwide.  And what harm is there in it?  China can't just pick up Australian farms and take them back to China.  And if they don't manage their assets commercially, they will send them broke, which is hardly what they would want.  They are in the business of acquiring assets, not destroying them.

So why the worldwide buying frenzy?  It's simple.  They may be communists but they are following orthodox Western economics.  Most economists are freaked by the huge issue of new American dollars that began under Obama and is continuing under Trump.  Such actions normally lead to inflation and in a sense MUST lead to inflation.   The inflation has been inexplicably delayed but the longer the unfunded spending  goes on the more likely it becomes. And inflation means that any greenbhacks you possess become steadily worthless.

So what would you do if you owned a trillion of such unsafe greenbacks?  China sells so much to America that they have earned greenbacks by the billion.  But just saving it is out of the question.  Even the banks don't do that.  They lend it out. The bubble  in the value of the dollar could burst any time and leave China with nothing in return for all the stuff they have sent to Amerrica.  So they need to spend it NOW while they can get worthwhile things with it -- things that will tend to retain their value.

They have been doing it for years. They put their trust in real things, not bits of printed paper.  So they told their millions of keen businessmen to buy overseas and their government would give them the dollars.  And they really ramped that up in the Obama years.  And they mostly like what they have got: Assets with  both a future and a present that will be a reliable store of value.

So why is Trump continuing the Obama excess?  Because he can.  He has a distinguished economics degree so he can analyse the situation for himself.  And he obviously thinks he can use the bubble while it lasts.  Just printing money instead of raising it in taxes has a lot of appeal to any politician.  Conservative econmists are squawking but Trump is ahead of them.  Just look at how he has revitalized the economy


China is buying up Australian land, infrastructure and businesses at an alarming rate as it seeks to project power and influence beyond its shores.

The communist nation of 1.4billion people owns an airport in Western Australia, nine million hectares of Australian land, several Aussie coalmines and wind farms and even the Port of Darwin, a key strategic asset.

China is also the largest foreign owner of Australian water and has projected soft power Down Under by planting Communist Party-approved Mandarin teachers in schools and universities.

Last week 'disturbing' stories emerged that China tried to install a spy as a federal MP - and it is also suspected of carrying out major cyber attacks on Parliament.

In November 2015, the Northern Territory government decided to lease the Port of Darwin - now known as Darwin Port - to a Chinese company for 99 years.

Landbridge Australia, a subsidiary of Shandong Landbridge, won the lease with its bid of $506 million.

The territory's Country Liberal Party government decided to lease the port - a key strategic asset because of its location at the top of the country - because it was desperate for investment in the absence of federal funds.

Executive director of the Australia Defence Association (ADA), Neil James, called the leasing of the base a 'seriously dumb idea'. And Labor MP Nick Champion called for the lease to be scrapped so the port can be returned to Australian control.

Land

China is the second largest foreign owner of land in Australia with Chinese companies in control of 2.3 per cent of the nation's soil.

Investors from the the United Kingdom own more with 2.6 per cent and buyers from the US are third with 0.7 per cent, according to the 2018 Register Of Foreign Ownership.

Most of the foreign-owned land is in Western Australia and the Northern Territory and is used for cattle farming.  

When the land register report was released in December, federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that foreign investment was important for growth.

But he also warned: 'It is important to ensure that foreign investment is not contrary to the national interest'.

SOURCE  





Cuddle-a-koala charity event to raise money for farmers is cancelled after Animal Justice Party said animals shouldn't be used to raise money for industry that kills livestock

A charity event organised to raise funds for struggling farmers has been cancelled after outrage from animal rights activists. 

The Cuddle-a-koala event was organised by members of Shoalhaven Zoo, on the south coast of NSW, at Warrawong Plaza for Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The fundraiser would allow people to cuddle koalas and pat them while donating a gold coin for farmers suffering in drought conditions.

The money would go to the 'buy a bale' campaign to assist farmers in purchasing food for their animals.

Animal Justice Party Illawarra regional group leader Julie Power said the event would 'traumatise' the animals. 'Koalas are wild animals,' she told The Illawarra Mercury.  'They should not be wheeled out in front of large crowds to be touched, poked and prodded for profit, no matter the cause.

'It must also be recognised that this event promotes traumatising animals to raise money for the cruel animal agriculture industry, who we know abuse and slaughter animals on a daily basis.

'Events such as this don't provide meaningful or natural interaction.' 

On Friday, the zoo announced the event was cancelled due to 'unforeseen circumstances'. 'Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances we have had to cancel our Koala experience,' they wrote on Facebook.

'We are still holding our Buy a Bale fundraiser to raise money for our drought stricken farmers. 'So if you would like to donate and put your hay bale sticker on the wall visit Concierge this weekend.'

A spokeswoman would not confirm to the publication that the cancellation was due to the criticism from the animal rights activists.

SOURCE  





Qld graziers [ranchers] take coal mine fight to court

It sounds like they have got a case but Greenies are such liars that you cannot tell

Conservationists have launched a court battle against Clive Palmer's proposed Queensland coal mine, saying it will destroy wildlife and and impact graziers.

The owners of the 8000-hectare Bimblebox Nature Refuge in central Queensland filed an objection to Waratah Coal's proposed mining project in the Galilee Basin on Monday in the Land Court in Brisbane.

Co-owner Paola Cassoni says Mr Palmer wants to build a mine that will destroy a nature reserve where more than 150 bird species, including the endangered black-throated finch, and other wildlife have been observed.

She said contracts were signed with the Commonwealth and Queensland governments about 20 years ago enabling the development of the conservation-based grazing property.

"We will fight to save this invaluable island of remnant woodland," she said in a statement. "We cannot stand by and allow the trashing of nature for coal."

Environmental Defenders Office CEO David Morris, acting for the Bimblebox owners, said the project would destroy about half the nature refuge which also operates as a cattle station.

"The project consists of two open-cut pits and four underground mines that will totally destroy roughly 50 per cent of the nature refuge and cut underneath the remainder, leaving it in ruins," Mr Morris said.

"It will have a huge impact on local graziers and destroy a private conservation reserve that is one of the largest tracts of intact woodland in Queensland and home to hundreds of species, many of which are rare or endangered."

The matter will be heard in the Land Court at a later date.

SOURCE  






Australia is doing well at adaptation to the threat of climate change

It’s not surprising that the continuing drought, the driest ever for many parts of the country, record temperatures and the early and explosive start of the bushfire season have increased public concern about climate change and triggered accusations the government is failing to prepare communities for these growing hazards.

While it is true that government responses are lagging in Australia, as they are in most other countries, the Morrison government is doing more to build Australia’s climate resilience than its critics (or even the government itself) may realise. That’s because many of its initiatives are not branded as “climate change” and are embedded in the bureaucratic silos of government departments that have other mandates.

Some examples of this include the $5bn Future Drought Fund, the $4.5bn Roads of Strategic Importance Initiative, the $3.9bn Emergency Response Fund, the $1.5bn National Water Infrastructure Development Fund, the $130m National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, and the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrange­ments, each of which provides very significant funding for activities to strengthen resilience to floods, droughts and other climate-related hazards that climate change is amplifying.

The problem is that this lack of integration at whole-of-government level is creating inefficiencies that we can ill-afford in a rapidly changing climate.

The Department of Environment and Energy co-ordinates the National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy, but the strategy is not integrated with the Department of Home Affairs’ National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, even though more than 90 per cent of all disasters are from hazards, such as floods and droughts, that climate change is worsening.

Similarly, the $100bn National Infrastructure Investment Program in the Department of Transportation, Cities and Regional Development, could be better leveraged to build regional and local resilience to climate hazards.

The ADF and the Australian aid program should also be key elements of a coherent national approach.

As we are already seeing, our military will increasingly need to be called upon to support disaster response within Australia and to respond to regional disasters, territorial disputes, and people movements driven by food instability and other climate-related disruptions. Careful targeting of the aid program’s $665m of development assistance for resilience-building can support both our humanitarian and national security objectives, decreasing the need for ADF responses to some of these emerging challenges.

We must bring together this significant ongoing work more coherently.

The recent Independent Review of the Australian Public Service, submitted to the Prime Minister last September, suggests a useful way forward. The review highlighted the key role of the APS Secretaries Board in driving policy across portfolios and explored options to strengthen the governance and resourcing of the board to drive delivery of whole-of-government outcomes. Building Australia’s resilience in the face of our changing climate is exactly the sort of cross-departmental challenge that would benefit from the board’s leadership.

Preparing a more coherent national approach would also make it easier to identify gaps that need to be addressed. A few already stand out. The federal government has no legislated authority ­defining its role, powers and responsibilities in responding to catastrophic natural disasters. This will become increasingly problematic in a rapidly warming climate. Governments in Canada and the US have this authority, even though they too have federal systems that vest the primary responsibility for responding to natural disasters at a state level.

Greater attention should also be devoted to mainstreaming disaster risk reduction across all of the commonwealth’s investments and we need to begin thinking more deeply about the implications for communities that are, or will soon be, in chronic crisis, including options such as managed retreats, land swaps and financial incentives for farmers to transition to other livelihoods.

Notwithstanding the polarising political rhetoric, there is strong bipartisan support for initiatives to build Australia’s resilience to climate hazards. Both major parties, for example, supported passage of the Future Drought and Emergency Response funds.

Given the increasing impact disasters are having on Australian communities, it is in our national interest for this bipartisan approach to become stronger, more visible and explicit. As this happens, it may also help to unlock opportunities for bipartisan efforts in other, more politically challenging, but fundamentally important areas, such as climate change mitigation.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






2 December 2019

Expert reveals why the private health insurance sector is in a DEATH SPIRAL - as young Australians are smashed by rising costs

It is not a death spiral.  It is an exclusivity spiral.  Public hospital care is so deficient that those who can afford to go private will always do so -- even if they have to pay steep insurance premiums. But as medical and hospital costs rise that will be fewer and fewer people.

The idea behind public hospitals was to give everyone the sort of health care that only the rich could once afford. That has already been stymied by rising costs and is only going to get worse no matter what governments do

There is a constant flow of beneficial innovations but the new procedures generally cost big.  Already, it is mostly the rich who can afford many of them.  Trying to make them generally available would require huge tax hikes, which is not going to happen.  Healthcare already takes a huge bite out of the budget

Scrapping some of the more absurd defence expenditures -- such as the submarine program -- would  probably enable more public support for costly procedures, however.  I am all in favour of defence but the money given to it has to be usefully spent. The submarine project was an initiative of the Gillard Labor Party government.  You will find any number of critics of it online



Young Australians are avoiding private health insurance due to the exorbitant costs, sending the entire sector into what some experts have labelled a 'death spiral'.

As millennials turn their backs on private healthcare, the industry is finding it increasingly difficult to cover the cost of subsidising older and sicker members.

Grattan Institute health economist Stephen Duckett said the private system is in the midst of a 'death spiral' and needs urgent reforms to repair it.

The amount of people aged between 20 and 34 with private health cover has plunged 11 per cent in the last five years.

Most experts blame rising costs in hospital treatments for forcing the increase in health insurance premiums - which young people in particular can't afford.

But with the young and the healthy abandoning their policies, the sector is finding it less profitable because those that remain are often the old and the unwell - and likely to cash in on their policies more frequently.

Premiums are already increasing faster than inflation or wage growth, the Grattan Institute study found.

Duckett concluded 'Australians are increasingly unhappy with the private health insurance' on offer in the country.

As more people turn their backs on private care, pressure on the public health system mounts.

Extended waiting periods and customer dissatisfaction are predicted to continue getting worse if more people rely on the general, public sector.

Australia currently runs on a two-tier health system.

The first care being the universal public health insurance scheme, known as Medicare, which gives all Australians access to taxpayer-funded health care.

The second is the voluntary private health insurance system. About 45 per cent of Australians have private healthcare.

Private health insurance should offer members more variety when it comes to choosing practitioners, expedited treatments and a place within private hospitals.

Duckett's study also discussed the 'adverse selection spiral', in which higher-risk people continue purchasing private insurance while low risk people choose to leave to avoid subsidising costs for high-risk patients.

In turn, the average risk profile for the insurer rises, meaning they boost premiums to reflect the change and even more healthy people drop their cover as a result.

SOURCE  






Unchecked rise of democracy deniers

They simply will not learn. They refuse to admit error, concede defeat or offer the crucial loser’s consent on which democracy hinges. Political opposition and public protest are fundamental in democracy. But there is a balance to be struck between such rights and the will of the majority as exercised through the ballot box.

That balance is out of kilter now. There are phonies in parliament, on campuses, all over social media and spewing erroneous groupthink from our public broadcasters. When facts don’t suit or reality confounds them, they console each other in the carefully constructed safe zones of university seminars or public radio forums. This cohort, for all its errors and misjudgments, dominates the public discussion; largely because of the heft of the taxpayer-funded media, university and quango sectors. They dominate now just as they did before this year’s election, before Don­ald Trump won and before Brexit.

On the ABC’s Insiders last week all three panellists agreed with the assertion Malcolm Turnbull had put forward that he would have won the election. Could they make such assessments if they understood what had transpired at the polls?

Having misjudged the electoral dynamic, you would expect a recalibration of perspectives might be unavoidable. Perhaps there would be a realisation from the media/political class that they had over-estimated the public appetite for climate action, underestimated resistance to increased taxation or missed anxiety about a return to ambivalent border security.

But no. There are no lessons. The ideological and policy settings of the media/political class remain unadjusted. They wander right up to the cheese again, take another bite, and get jolted again by the electoral shock.

They are the democracy deniers. Their version of public debate is one of virtual reality; their views are constantly reaffirmed, it is only the voters who get it wrong. For VR goggles, they can blinker themselves by watching the ABC, perhaps SBS for variety, reading Guardian Australia and discussing events at the Wheeler Centre or on Q&A.

The real world is kept at bay. When elections confound them, as conservative victories invari­ably do, they can blame strangers from the suburbs and the regions, demonise the barbarians at the commercial end of the broadcast spectrum or invoke that hardy perennial of the defeated leftist, the Murdoch conspiracy theory (as we have heard from Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and others). Anything but confront the truth. Ultimately this is futile, as Winston Churchill suggested: “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

So, at the May election the Coali­tion picked up an extra seat, won more than 41 per cent of the primary vote and generated a 1 per cent swing towards it on a two-party-preferred basis, crushing Labor’s 33 per cent primary vote and snaring another term of government. Given the damage the government had inflicted on itself over the term, and the fracturing of the right-of-centre vote by One Nation and Clive Palmer, this result is full of foreboding for Labor. It is understandable that this would disappoint and dismay many people. But it is fundamental that they accept it.

Denial started on day one. The Ten Network’s Lisa Wilkinson wrote a strained open letter to Scott Morrison, apparently not comprehending that many people, most in fact, felt the country had dodged a bullet.

“Prime Minister, you may have noticed we’re all feeling just a little broken right now — broken-hearted in fact, at how toxic the Australian body politic has become — and a return to basic civility in public discourse would be a great start to that healing,” she wrote, apparently not sensing that the Prime Minister’s mainstream views and the way he had weathered attacks based on his religion might have been seen as a repudiation of the green-left, Twitter-fuel­led politics of abuse.

After a fiercely contested “climate election” Wilkinson seemed to want the losing party’s policies to prevail: “We know, too, that the climate is sick and tired. And things are getting worse.”

The campaigning to ignore the election result and adopt the defeated green-left agenda has only escalated. Politicians, activists and journalists have exaggerated, embellished and fabricated climate hysteria to justify the kinds of extreme climate policies rejected at the election.

Extinction Rebellion protesters have superglued themselves to roadways in Brisbane, children have skipped school, and local and state government workers have been given time off to “strike” for the sorts of climate policies federal voters avoided.

The Senate has rejected union integrity measures taken to the election, and medivac laws, passed against the government’s wishes by a coalition of Greens, independents and Labor before the election, still may not be repealed despite the government’s renewed mandate and strong border security record. What would voters know?

Undeniably, Energy Minister Angus Taylor used grossly erron­eous figures in a charged letter to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. But given the letter was inconsequential and the figures were a misquote of the mayor’s own figures back to her, it is difficult to interpret the hysterical reaction from Labor and the media except as an exercise in retaliation: Taylor must be punished for winning a climate election.

Anthony Albanese, Greens leader Richard Di Natale, Turnbull and Australian Republic Movement chairman Peter FitzSimons pushed this week to rid our Constitution of the monarchy — as if voters had not just passed judgment on Labor, and its election promise of another republic referendum within three years.

Labor went to the election criticising the Coalition’s economic plans and promising remedies that included almost $400bn in additional tax revenue. Yet to abandon those tax grabs, it still critiques the Coalition’s economic management but proposes additional fiscal stimulus now.

It all smacks of an election result denied. It replicates the politics of the US and Britain, where not for a single moment have members of the media/political class accepted the will of the people as expressed through the election of Trump or the referendum vote for Brexit.

In this manifestation of democracy denial by the green left, elections are reduced to markers that deliver no lessons and in which the losers refuse to concede a point. Opposition merely morphs, through electoral rejection, into resistance.

Sure, we recognise the checks and balances. In Australia we have a bicameral system in which the government, typically, does not carry a majority in the Senate.

A narrow election win does not mean a government rules unencumbered. But for democracy to operate effectively, people such as Wilkinson and her fellow travellers must comprehend some sense of mandate. There must be some element of loser’s consent. Instead we see loser’s bitterness and loser’s revenge.

No party or individual should be expected to surrender their entire agenda because of electoral admonishment. But somewhere a lesson must be learned; the will of the voters must endorse or reject something.

Otherwise what is an election other than a well-funded and formulaic phase in a perpetual saga of toxic politicking? Besides, mainstream voters will not change their minds based on the bloody-mindedness of Senate crossbenchers or Extinction Rebellion stunt masters, the agendas run by media or tub-thumping of protest parties such as the Greens.

For Labor, a party of government, there is a crucial balance to be struck between causing mischief and learning lessons, between accepting democracy and standing on principle, between advocating an agenda and listening to constituents. Because if the will of the people is thwarted, disregarded and ignored between elections, voters might be more emphatic next time.

SOURCE  






University of Western Australia partnership with fossil fuel companies

The University of Western Australia is facing criticism over a partnership with fossil fuel companies that promises to help the gas industry expand into remote fields that have so far been too costly to develop.

Western Australian premier Mark McGowan praised the creation of what is known as the Centre for Long Subsea Tiebacks, a partnership between the university and Chevron and Woodside, which are contributing $600,000 a year.

A statement posted on the state government and the university’s websites says the centre will focus on how to improve “tiebacks” – connections between new oil and gas fields and existing production facilities – in hostile deep-sea conditions.

It follows the establishment of other recent university-industry partnerships designed to help the state’s liquified natural gas (LNG) operations, which have grown rapidly over the past five years to be a significant employer and major export industry.

Launching the centre, McGowan said bringing more oil and gas projects online would position the state as a global energy leader. It would also mean more jobs for Western Australians. “That’s my government’s number one priority,” he said.

Alex Gardner, a professor and environmental lawyer at the University of Western Australia, said the centre was just part of what was broad backing from the university sector for the petroleum industry. He said he acknowledged universities and academics should be free to research and teach according to their choices.

But he said there did not seem to be a discussion about how the continuing expansion of the LNG industry fit within Australia’s emissions budget if it was to play its part in meeting the goals set at the UN Paris conference in 2015.

The announcement of the centre comes as Woodside leads plans to develop the long mooted Scarborough and Browse gas projects in northern WA.

Announcing the centre, Dawn Freshwater, the university’s vice-chancellor, said it fulfilled the institution’s aim of serving the community and improving people’s lives. “Not only will it enhance Perth and WA as a centre of offshore engineering excellence, it aligns with [the university’s] plans to expand and strengthen global partnerships,” she said.

Woodside’s chief executive, Peter Coleman, said: “We believe this partnership will play a crucial role in unlocking new gas resources off Western Australia’s north coast in support of our growth activities.”

Chevron’s managing director, Al Williams, said the company was proud to partner with the university on the centre.

In August, Williams announced that a carbon capture and storage project at Chevron’s Gorgon LNG development had begun operating after repeated delays stretching back to 2016. The company has previously estimated between 3.4m and 4m tonnes of carbon dioxide, about 40% of the emissions at Gorgon, could be buried each year.

SOURCE  






The rise of solar power is jeopardising the WA energy grid, and it's a lesson for all of Australia

In Western Australia, one of the sunniest landscapes in the world, rooftop solar power has been a runaway success.

On the state's main grid, which covers Perth and the populated south-west corner of the continent, almost one in every three houses has a solar installation.

Combined, the capacity of rooftop solar on the system far exceeds the single biggest generator — an ageing 854 megawatt coal-fired power station.

But there is now so much renewable solar power being generated on the grid that those responsible for keeping the lights on warn the stability of the entire system could soon be in jeopardy.

It is a cautionary tale for the rest of the country of how the delicate balancing act that is power grid management can be severely destabilised by what experts refer to as a "dumb solar" approach.

"We talk about 'smart' this and 'smart' that these days," said energy expert Adam McHugh, an honorary research associate at Perth's Murdoch University. "Well, solar at the moment is 'dumb' in Western Australia. We need to make it smart."

An isolated solar frontier

Mr McHugh's remarks come at a time of profound change in the energy industry across the globe.

But nowhere is the change being more acutely felt than in Western Australia. Stuck out on its own at the edge of the continent, he said WA had become "a laboratory experiment in the uptake of rooftop solar". "We're at the front of the curve, the bleeding edge," Mr McHugh said.

"The technology that we're seeing being developed rapidly around the world is flowing into Western Australia at a more rapid rate, potentially … than anywhere else on the planet."

While much of the debate about the intersection of climate and energy policy is focused on the eastern states — and its national electricity market (NEM) — WA is hurtling towards a tipping point.

At heart of the state's problem is its isolation.

Unlike states such as South Australia, which has even higher levels of renewable energy, WA cannot rely on any other markets to prop it up during times of disruption to supply or demand.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which runs WA's wholesale electricity market (WEM), said the islanded nature of the grid in WA made it particularly exposed to the technical challenges posed by solar.

AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman said these challenges tended to be most acute when high levels of solar output coincided with low levels of demand — typically on mild, sunny days in spring or autumn when people were not using air conditioners.

On those days, excess solar power from households and businesses spilled uncontrolled on to the system, pushing the amount of power needed from the grid to increasingly low levels.

Ms Zibelman said WA's isolation amplified this trend because the relative concentration of its solar resources meant fluctuations in supply caused by the weather had an outsized effect.

Low-power days become a big problem

The only way to manage the solar was to scale back or switch off the coal- and gas-fired power stations that were supposed to be the bedrock of the electricity system.

The problem was coal-fired plants were not designed to be quickly ramped up or down in such a way, meaning they were ill-equipped to respond to sudden fluctuations in solar production.

"What's changing in the WEM is the fact that rooftop solar is now our single largest generator," Ms Zibelman said. "That has really made a huge difference in terms of how we think about the power system.

"The concern we have for the first time in probably the history of this industry is you start thinking about sunny days during the spring or [autumn] when you don't have a lot of demand, because you don't have a lot of cooling going on.

"And that becomes an interesting issue because you have lots and lots of solar and very little demand. "We've never worried about a system around low demand. You're always worried about the highest periods of the summer.

"What we're recognising now is that the flexibility we need in the system is one [issue] that we have to think about — how do we integrate solar and storage better? And these are new problems that we have to solve."

Rolling blackouts possible within three years

In a "clarion call" earlier this year, AEMO said that if nothing was done to safeguard the grid, there was a credible danger of rolling blackouts from as early as 2022 as soaring levels of renewable energy periodically overwhelmed the system.

At worst, AEMO warned there was a "real risk" of a system-wide blackout.

It said 700MW of demand was the floor below which it would struggle to ensure that voltage and frequency levels stayed within acceptable limits. "At that point, we worry about the voltage," Ms Zibelman said.

"But also it's that [point] we worry about the other generators, because below that level you actually have demand that's smaller than the smallest generator. "So if something trips off, it's very hard to respond."

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





1 December, 2019

Education Minister will tell universities to stop adjudicating rape

Bettina Arndt

Red letter day! Our Education Minister Dan Tehan will today tell TEQSA, the university regulator, that universities need to stop adjudicating rape on campuses.

He’s set to speak at  the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency annual conference in Melbourne where he will announce that the criminal justice system, not a university discipline process, is the right place to deal with ­alleged crimes that take place on campus or in the student commun­ity.

“Universities have a duty of care to their students and that ­includes ensuring processes around the enforcement of any codes of conduct are legal, fair and transparent," he will tell the conference.

“If a student alleges they are the victim of a crime then our criminal justice system is the ­appropriate authority to deal with it," Mr Tehan says.

Tim Dodd, the Higher Education editor for The Australian who has been given access to Tehan’s planned TEQSA speech, writes today that Tehan’s speech follows a decision by a Queensland Supreme Court judge last week that barred the University of Queensland from holding a discip­linary hearing into allegations that a final-year male ­medical student sexually ­assault­ed a female student last year.

Dodd summarised that ruling as follows: “Justice Ann Lyons ruled last week that the university was ­restrained from going ahead with the hearing on the basis that the allegations against the ­student “were in fact allegations of crim­inal offences of a sexual nature". “This is not just an action by the university about breaches of its rules, policies and procedures," Justice Lyons said. “It would indeed­ be a startling result if a committee comprised of academics and students who are not required to have any legal training could decide allegations of a most serious kind without any of the protections of the criminal law."

Dan Tehan will announce that education providers “need to take great care when considering disciplinary action in relation to allegations of criminal conduct, to ensure that the protections afforded to indiv­iduals responding to those allegations are not infringed. These are complex matters and there is substantia­l legislation, case law and legal precedent available to anyone accused of a crime."

Isn’t this wonderful? Finally we have an education minister willing to take on the small but noisy group of activists who managed to bully the entire higher education sector into pursuing this path, which has had such disastrous consequences for colleges in America, with over 200 successful legal cases of young men suing over the universities' failure to protect their legal rights, and thousands of accused young men being thrown out of colleges after biased, “believe-the victim" judgements by college tribunals.

Let's see if university administrators will now come to their senses. Not much sign  of that from USyd’s Vice Chancellor Michael Spence. His letter on the matter below. How does this man, who received a salary package of 1.53 million last year, get away with being so blinkered and inept?  Why are the University's academic lawyers silent about this dangerous nonsense?

We need to put pressure on universities to get real and realise feminist activists need to relinquish control of the sector and allow universities to get on with providing education rather than controlling people’s private lives. Please talk to any academics and administrators you know, or write letters to your local university. The activists are bound to be fighting fiercely against this advice from Tehan. Universities need to know the silent majority demands they get their act together. And Tehan needs your support. 

That’s  it for now. I’m off on two weeks’ holiday so I would be grateful if you saved up any correspondence until I return mid-December. I’ll check emails occasionally but will only deal with urgent matters.

Email from Bettina Arndt: Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au





Police take the lead in investigating campus allegations

Weaselly letter from Michael Spence, vice-chancellor, University of Sydney, NSW. He apologises for nothing and gives no undertakings

Attending university is not a right, it’s a privilege that can be forfeited (“It’s time we culled kangaroo courts", 27/11). Some behaviour appropriately deprives people of this privilege.

Universities do not try to determine criminal culpability in sexual assault cases.

The University of Sydney reports information about serious indictable offences to the NSW Police, and co-ordinates with them before commencing our own processes or investigations. A police investigation always takes precedence.

Our investigations seek to determine breaches of our own codes of conduct or policies, and we apply the “balance of probabilities" test, which is the standard of proof to be satisfied in civil proceedings.

We always take into account the nature and seriousness of the allegations when deciding whether the standard of proof is met. Always, our priority is to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, staff and broader community, and we take great care to ensure a fair process for all involved.

SOURCE  





Preschool cancels Christmas pageant because 'ONE non-Christian parent complained it wasn't culturally sensitive'

A preschool has cancelled its yearly Christmas pageant over 'cultural sensitivities' after one parent complained, a radio station has confirmed.

The preschool in Wheelers Hill, southeast Melbourne, called off the Christmas pageant after a parent 'of a different faith' complained, according to the father of a person who works there.

The man, known only as Felix, revealed the extraordinary cancellation to Radio 3AW host Neil Mitchell on Friday, who confirmed it with the unnamed centre after obtaining the contact details off-air.

'They normally have their annual Christmas pageant at the end of the year,' Felix told Radio 3AW. 'Everything was planned and has been called off now just because one parent of a different faith has objected to it, and that is disappointing.'

Felix said about 30 children attend the preschool.

Later in the same show another caller told Radio 3AW off air that Yarra Trams, which runs Melbourne's tram network, had been rebranded the 'Thankyou party'.

Yarra Trams re-named its Christmas staff party last year in part to counteract outrage over a scantily-clad fat-o-gram scandal from 2017 which resulted in the sacking of three workers, media reported at the time.

A Yarra Trams spokesperson said they changed the name to a 'Thank You Event' for inclusiveness.

'We changed the name to a Thank You Event to acknowledge the valuable contribution our employees have made throughout the year and to ensure that our employees from many different cultural backgrounds feel included in our end-of-year event,' the spokesperson said via email.

Australian Catholic University research fellow Kevin Donnelly, a critic of political correctness, said the surge in multicultural authoritarianism was not about politeness but came from the cultural left - who were trying to force people to think along party lines by controlling their language.

'If you want to change society you take the long march,' he told Mitchell on 3AW. 'You  get into schools, the universities, the media, trade unions and impose your ideology on other people.'

Dr Donnelly said most Australians thought political correctness had gone too far with more than two thirds of respondents surveyed by the Australia Talks National Survey, or 68 percent, saying they thought people were too easily offended, the ABC reported. 'You have to be careful with what you say,' he told 3AW.

'All the universities have got diversity tool kits, trigger warnings, safe spaces - you really can't say boo to a goose without somebody getting upset.'

SOURCE  






Priests across the country will be forced to report child sex abuse admitted at confession or could face charges themselves under strict new laws

What stupidity.  It will achieve nothing.  All it will do is victimize a few faithful priests.  And how will they prove what is said in the confessional booth?

Australia's chief legal officers have agreed to standardise laws making it mandatory for priests to report child abuse revealed to them during confession.

Federal and state attorneys-general meeting in Adelaide on Friday agreed to three principles for the laws, which were recommended following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Those principles say that 'confessional privilege' can't be relied upon to avoid a child protection or criminal obligation to report beliefs, suspicions or knowledge of child abuse.

They also dictate that clergy would not be able to use that defence to avoid giving evidence against a third party in criminal or civil proceedings.

Work on such laws is already well under way in most states and territories, but legal expert Luke Beck said the agreement will implement a nationwide standard.

'Some states are already in compliance with this and they don't have to do anything else,' said Mr Beck, an associate professor at Monash University. 'Now, all have signed up and said 'yes, we're going to do it'.'

In June 2018, the ACT was the first state to introduce laws which forced priests to admit any sexual abuse confessions.

The Victorian Labor government promised to push the law through in November last year.

Up until now, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia have protected priests.   

Teachers, police and medical practitioners are already legally required to report child physical and sexual abuse allegations.

The Catholic Church has insisted priests would be obliged to defy the laws, with Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli previously stating he was prepared to go to jail rather than break the confessional seal.

'For Catholics, confession is a religious encounter of a deeply personal nature. It deserves confidentiality,' he said in August.

SOURCE  





Australia to fight Europe on climate demands in free-trade deal

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has described France's push to force Australia to adopt climate change targets in a planned trade deal with European Union as "unprecedented", declaring he will only accept terms that are in the best interests of the nation.

Senator Birmingham wants to clinch a free-trade agreement (FTA) with the EU by the end of next year, followed by Britain in early 2021, after Parliament this week ticked off on deals with Indonesia, Hong Kong and Peru.

In a week when Australia-China relations soured over allegations of a plot to install a Chinese agent in federal Parliament, Senator Birmingham stressed the benefits of diversifying Australia's trading interests around the world through the new FTAs, but said China would remain a major trading partner with Australia for years to come.

He also declared he wouldn't "capitulate" to Europe's claim for exclusive use of key food names including feta, Parmesan and Gorgonzola cheeses.

Climate change targets are shaping to be a major sticking point in trade negotiations with Europe - already Australia's second-biggest trading partner - after France publicly tied Australia's domestic action on climate change to the proposed FTA.

Ahead of a speech in Sydney on Thursday night to the European Australian Business Council, Senator Birmingham told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he believed trade agreements were "overwhelmingly commercial undertakings between countries" and they should "focus on commercial realities".

He said Australia "had a good environmental story to tell" and was happy to discuss any proposed terms with the EU referencing the Paris climate agreement, but would push back on provisions that included sanctions for not meeting climate targets.

"We're completely committed to meeting our [Paris climate] targets and we've always met and exceeded our targets, but I think it would be unprecedented to see those type of provisions proposed in an agreement," Senator Birmingham said.

The Trade Minister said he didn't want to prejudge the negotiations, but Australia would put up a "strong defence" to some of the 172 foods and 236 spirits the EU wants protected under the geographical indication (GI) system.

"The areas of greater industry concern are those that have been publicly speculated on such as feta, Parmesan and Gorgonzola," he said. "The EU shouldn't expect that Australia is about to agree to every term that they've requested."

Australia is one of the first countries UK Trade Secretary Liz Truss has visited, to lay the groundwork for post Brexit trade deals.

He said there were significant agricultural opportunities in the EU, including increasing the 20,000-tonne quota for sheep meat, as well as creating more opportunities to export professional services as well as financial and regulatory technologies.

FTAs have gone from covering about 26 per cent of Australia's two-way trade five years ago to about 70 per cent today and this would increase to about 80 per cent under deals with the EU and Britain.

At a time when the United States was blocking appointments of appellate judges to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) amid a trade war with China, Senator Birmingham said it was up to middle powers like Australia to stand up for the "rules-based order" and drive reform of the WTO.

He said a trade working group had already been established to begin talking with Britain, and talks would ramp up assuming Brexit took place on January 31, 2020.

With China making up almost 40 per cent of Australia's export market, Senator Birmingham said Australia's trade would be more evenly spread "in an ideal world".

In its relationship with China, Senator Birmingham said it was important for Australia to hold true to its values, raise legitimate concerns and protect its interests as a democracy. But he said Australia must continue to pursue commercial opportunities with China because that was what gave the government avenues to address any problems with Beijing.

He said the new trade deals with Indonesia, Hong Kong and Peru provided "big new opportunities", but it was up to Australian businesses to "walk through that door instead of China, or as well as China".

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here<






Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.





Most academics are lockstep Leftists so readers do sometimes doubt that I have the qualifications mentioned above. Photocopies of my academic and military certificates are however all viewable here


For overseas readers: The "ALP" is the Australian Labor Party -- Australia's major Leftist party. The "Liberal" party is Australia's major conservative political party.


In most Australian States there are two conservative political parties, the city-based Liberal party and the rural-based National party. But in Queensland those two parties are amalgamated as the LNP.


Again for overseas readers: Like the USA, Germany and India, Australia has State governments as well as the Federal government. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


For American readers: A "pensioner" is a retired person living on Social Security


"Digger" is an honorific term for an Australian soldier


Another lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here


Another bit of Australian: Any bad writing or messy anything was once often described as being "like a pakapoo ticket". In origin this phrase refers to a ticket written with Chinese characters - and thus inscrutably confusing to Western eyes. These tickets were part of a Chinese gambling game called "pakapoo".


Two of my ancestors were convicts so my family has been in Australia for a long time. As well as that, all four of my grandparents were born in the State where I was born and still live: Queensland. And I am even a member of the world's second-most condemned minority: WASPs (the most condemned is of course the Jews -- which may be why I tend to like Jews). So I think I am as Australian as you can get. I certainly feel that way. I like all things that are iconically Australian: meat pies, Vegemite, Henry Lawson etc. I particularly pride myself on my familiarity with the great Australian slanguage. I draw the line at Iced Vo-Vos and betting on the neddies, however. So if I cannot comment insightfully on Australian affairs, who could?



My son Joe


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


I am an army man. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.


The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies or mining companies


Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.


The Rt. Rev. Phil Case (Moderator of the Presbyterian church in Queensland) is a Pharisee, a hypocrite, an abomination and a "whited sepulchre".


English-born Australian novellist, Patrick White was a great favourite in literary circles. He even won a Nobel prize. But I and many others I have spoken to find his novels very turgid and boring. Despite my interest in history, I could only get through about a third of his historical novel Voss before I gave up. So why has he been so popular in literary circles? Easy. He was a miserable old Leftist coot, and, incidentally, a homosexual. And literary people are mostly Leftists with similar levels of anger and alienation from mainstream society. They enjoy his jaundiced outlook, his dissatisfaction, rage and anger.


A delightful story about a great Australian conservative


Would you believe that there once was a politician whose nickname was "Honest"?

"Honest" Frank Nicklin M.M. was a war hero, a banana farmer and later the conservative Premier of my home State of Queensland in the '60s. He was even popular with the bureaucracy and gave the State a remarkably tranquil 10 years during his time in office. Sad that there are so few like him.


A great Australian wit exemplified



An Australian Mona Lisa (Nikki Gogan)


Bureaucracy: "One of the constant laments of doctors and nurses working with NSW Health is the incredible and increasing bureaucracy," she said. "It is completely obstructive to providing a service."


Revered Labour Party leader Gough Whitlam was a very erudite man so he cannot have been unaware of the similarities of his famous phrase “the Party, the platform, the people” with an earlier slogan: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer". It's basically the same slogan in reverse order.


Australia's original inhabitants were a race of pygmies, some of whom survived into modern times in the mountainous regions of the Atherton tableland in far North Queensland. See also here. Below is a picture of one of them taken in 2007, when she was 105 years old and 3'7" tall




Julia Gillard, a failed feminist flop. She was given the job of Prime Minister of Australia but her feminist preaching was so unpopular that she was booted out of the job by her own Leftist party. Her signature "achievements" were the carbon tax and the mining tax, both of which were repealed by the next government.


The "White Australia Policy: "The Immigration Restriction Act was not about white supremacy, racism, or the belief that whites were higher up the evolutionary tree than the coloured races. Rather, it was designed to STOP the racist exploitation of non-whites (all of whom would have been illiterate peasants practicing religions and cultures anathema to progressive democracy) being conscripted into a life of semi-slavery in a coolie-worked plantation economy for the benefit of the absolute monarchs, hereditary aristocracy and the super-wealthy companies and share-holders of the northern hemisphere.


A great little kid



In November 2007, a four-year-old boy was found playing in a croc-infested Territory creek after sneaking off pig hunting alone with four dogs and a puppy. The toddler was found five-and-a-half hours after he set off from his parents' house playing in a creek with the puppy. Amazingly, Daniel Woditj also swam two creeks known to be inhabited by crocs during his adventurous romp. Mr Knight said that after walking for several kilometres, Daniel came to a creek and swam across it. Four of his dogs "bailed up" at the creek but the youngster continued on undaunted with his puppy to a second creek. Mr Knight said Daniel swam the second croc-infested creek and walked on for several more kilometres. "Captain is a hard bushman and Daniel is following in his footsteps. They breed them tough out bush."


A great Australian: His eminence George Pell. Pictured in devout company before his elevation to Rome





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