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 January, 2020

Row over Bettina Arndt’s honour

Social commentator and men’s rights advocate Bettina Arndt has hit back after Victoria’s attorney-general called for her to be stripped of her Australia Day honour.

Over the weekend, Ms Arndt was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) — Australia’s third-highest civic honour — for striving to achieve “gender equity through advocacy for men”.

The journalist and sex therapist was criticised in 2018 when she interviewed convicted sex offender Nicolaas Bester and has been outspoken against what she believes is a “fake rape crisis” at Australian universities.

In response, Labor’s Jill Hennessy, who is also state minister for workplace safety, has written to Governor-General David Hurley after the Australia Day Honours list was published on Sunday saying she was alarmed at the appointment.

Ms Arndt has blasted the letter as “gobsmacking” and “absolutely hilarious”.

Ms Hennessy’s letter, dated January 28 and posted on her Facebook page, recognises the honours are decided with the recommendation of an independent council but asks why Ms Ardnt was included.

“Taking into account Ms Arndt’s well-documented opinions, public commentary and media appearances — which include sympathising with a convicted paedophile and blaming and shaming victims — this award is an insult to victims of sexual abuse and to those of us who work hard every day to prevent it,” she wrote.

Ms Hennessy also pointed to the issue of family violence.

“I would ask that the Council of the Order of Australia consider cancellation of Ms Arndt’s award given that her public commentary brings the Order into disrepute and in particular that it attaches the Order’s tacit support to her views,” she wrote.

Ms Ardnt said Ms Hennessy should be ashamed.

“Shame on Victoria’s first law officer, Jill Hennessy, the Victorian Attorney-General for responding to muckraking from ideologues rather than seeking proper evidence,” she posted on Twitter.

She posted this morning: “She shows my main crime was defending men and telling the truth about women’s role in family violence.”

This all comes as the New Matilda questioned Ms Arndt’s credentials — writing that she was not a doctor, had never obtained a PhD and nor was she a psychologist or clinical psychologist.

The publication claimed she “has actively participated in the promotion of material which portrays her falsely as a psychologist, clinical psychologist and doctor”.

On Facebook overnight, Ms Arndt hit back at the story, calling it a “hit job”.

“I am not currently a practising psychologist. However, that was certainly my professional training when I started my career in the 1970s. I have postgraduate qualifications in clinical psychology,” she wrote.

“It’s common practice for well-known people to use labels that include their professional background. According to the authorities regulating professional practice for psychologists, I am not doing anything wrong.”

Former Australian of the Year and family violence survivor Rosie Batty, whose young son was murdered by her mentally ill ex-husband, earlier this week questioned the legitimacy of the appointment.

“I cannot help but be appalled that someone who minimised violence towards women who is part of the inevitable push-back and backlash that we all experience as we pioneer a way forward, would be awarded,” Ms Batty told news.com.au.

Upon receiving her honour, Ms Arndt told news.com.au she had been writing about men’s issues for 30 years.

She said she started off as a feminist and campaigning for women’s rights, but became “increasingly alarmed” by the movement.

“I felt in many areas, women had achieved equality,” she said. “We had a lot to celebrate. But there are many who wanted to extend women’s rights well beyond any notion of equality.

“It’s now all about male bashing, trying to advantage women over men in so many areas. I had enough of that.

“I don’t think it’s fair that a small, noisy minority group in our society closes down discussion on issues that affect half the population.”

SOURCE  






Crackdown targets protection visa scam

A crackdown on foreigners trying to enter Australia illegally and ­exploit protection visas has ­resulted in a huge spike in interceptions at overseas airports and passengers being kicked off flights, with the new approach stopping 1730 arrivals in 2018-19.

Australian Border Force has ramped up operations at international flight terminals, targeting individuals carrying fraudulent documents and those who have lied about or obscured their genuine reasons for travel.

Protection claims by Malaysian and Chinese citizens have also declined sharply in the first six months of 2019-20 as the ABF and Department of Home Affairs use intelligence threat assessments, improved alert systems and risk profiles to stop foreigners aiming to prolong their stay.

Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said Australian authorities were working with ­regional partners, including ­Malaysia, to curb the number of unfounded protection claims.

The Australian can reveal that, in 2018-19, ABF officers intercepted 387 people at international airports around the world who were attempting to travel to Australia without proper documentation. This compared with just 205 in 2017-18, representing an 89 per cent increase.

There were also “significant ­increases” in people offloaded from flights to Australia based on recommendations from ABF officers, amid concerns these individuals had lied about their genuine reasons for travel.

In 2018-19, there were 1343 passengers offloaded by airlines based on advice from Border Force officers compared with 555 passengers in 2017-18 — a 142 per cent increase.

Mr Tudge said Australia had one of the most “generous ­humanitarian programs in the world” but warned that too many people had tried to take advantage of the system by falsely claiming they needed protection.

“We settle thousands of people in desperate need every year,” Mr Tudge said.

“Some people unfortunately seek to exploit our international obligations by lodging protection claims onshore which have no foundation — this issue is not new and is not unique to ­Australia.

“These individuals use our legal system to deliberately prolong their stay in Australia even when they have no prospects of success.”

There was a 19 per cent decline in protection lodgments from Malaysian citizens in the first six months of 2019-20, with 3410 claims being made compared with 4191 in the first six months of 2018-19.

There was also a decline of 16 per cent in protection lodgments from Chinese citizens over the same period, with 2106 claims made in the first six months of 2019-20 compared with 2506 in the first six months of 2018-19.

Other measures implemented by the ABF and the Department of Home Affairs to strengthen the integrity of Australia’s visa and immigration systems included the cancellation of visas of “non-genuine travellers” ahead of ­arrival. The ABF and department are also actively responding to ­increases in fraud and noncompliance by increasing scrutiny of visa applications.

Mr Tudge said co-operation with regional partners combined with border protection measures “before, at and after the Australian border” had reduced the number of claims coming from known international hot spots.

Countering Labor’s claims of a surge in asylum-seekers arriving by air, the government said less than 0.25 per cent of people who arrived in Australia by plane went on to apply for protection and, of them, about 90 per cent were ­refused. Mr Tudge said that, in the last three years of the previous Labor government, 6900 permanent protection visas were granted to people who arrived by air. In the past three years under the ­Coalition, 4780 visas were ­granted.

Protection visas allow holders to live, work and study in Australia permanently and sponsor eligible family members for permanent residency through the offshore humanitarian program.

For permanent visas, asylum-seekers escaping persecution or harm in their home countries must have arrived legally in Australia and meet health, character and security requirements.

Others attempting to secure protection visas are motivated to prolong their stays in Australia, seek employment and a better quality of life.

Analysis of Department of ­Immigration and Border Protection data shows Malaysian and Chinese citizens topped the list of protection visa lodgments ahead of those from India, Thailand, Fiji, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan and The Philippines.

Of the protection visas granted by citizenship, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Libya and China top the list. Only 11 per cent of protection visa cases finalised in 2018-19 were successful.

A monthly update for December released by the department revealed a total of 2219 protection visas were lodged last month. There were 997 refugee status ­determinations made and 75 ­individuals granted a final ­protection visa, with Turkey, Venezuela, Iran and Afghanistan topping the list.

The Coalition last year successfully won Senate crossbench support to repeal the medivac law, which allowed asylum-seekers to be transported to Australia on the advice of doctors. Opposition home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally has clashed with the government over her claims that people-smugglers have “changed their business model from boats to planes”.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal continues to be flooded by appeals from people seeking protection visas, who have been rejected, with some still being processed from Labor’s legacy caseload.

In recent cases, many involving Afghan citizens, asylum-seekers have been citing violence and blood feuds in attempts to overturn refusals of their visa ­applications.

SOURCE  






Politicized charities

Don't give them a cent

Four of Australia’s leading international aid organisations have urged the Morrison Government to take major climate change action amid the country’s bushfire crisis.

World Vision Australia, Oxfam Australia, Plan International Australia and Save the Children Australia have joined forces to issue a plea for stronger climate measures.

The group wants more ambitious emission reduction targets to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C, warning many countries will face unmanageable suffering and devastation if more isn’t done.

“The time for debate about climate change is over, it is now time for action. We cannot afford to waste any more time,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The organisations have called on Australia to demonstrate strong leadership on climate action and transition to a low-emissions global economy, support reforestation programs and build the capacity of vulnerable communities in Australia and overseas to deal with the ravages of climate change.

The four charities have called for the Coalition government to sign the Intergovernmental Declaration on Children, Youth and Climate Action.

“Our organisations acknowledge that this issue is so pressing, we must advocate in alliance to amplify the voices of the world’s most vulnerable people,” the joint statement says.

The Australian arms of World Vision, Oxfam, Plan and Save the Children describe climate change as a human rights issue impacting on health and an adequate standard of living.

“Every day, our aid workers see the very real and devastating impact of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable people,” the aid alliance says.

The group pointed to a food crisis in southern African, severe floods in Indonesia and a 2018 deadly cyclone in Mozambique.

“Now the climate emergency has well and truly arrived at home, too,” the alliance continued.

“Australians are suffering through the devastating ongoing fallout from our worst fire season on record, with dozens of lives, thousands of homes and more than a billion creatures lost.

“Fires continue to rage and millions are breathing in hazardous air across three states.” Climate action has been brought into sharp focus by Australia’s deadly bushfires with the issue sparking tensions within the coalition.

SOURCE 





Franking credit plan stank

LABOR leader Anthony Albanese has officially dumped the party's election-killing franking credits hit as he embarks on a major policy reset ahead of the next federal poll. Mr Albanese told The Courier Mail the policy — a major contributor to Labor's shock loss under Bill Shorten in May last year — would go. "We won't be taking the same policy to the next election," he said, acknowledging the plan to abolish cash refunds for individuals and super funds deeply worried retirees.

 Mr Albanese said he was determined to be collaborative and ensure proper processes were followed for Labor to develop its policies. But he said the franking credits policy, which would have saved the Budget about $5 billion a year, would go.

It was the first of the Shorten-era policies to be formally junked by Mr Albanese, who took over as leader after Mr Shorten stood down following his defeat by Scott Morrison.

Mr Albanese, who on Monday emerged for the first time as preferred prime minister over Mr Morrison in Newspoll, also said he no longer opposed asylum-seeker boat-turnbacks, because "they worked".

He said economic debates had to be won ahead of environmental and social debates. And he urged fellow progressives to ensure they argued their case and "took people with them" when making the case for change.

The franking credits policy which would have abolished cash refunds for retirees who received dividends which had already incurred company tax — would have saved about $55 billion over 10 years, which Labor intended to spend on other social policies. But it proved the most unpopular of Labor's swath of policies.

"One of the things I've been determined to do is to be collaborative and to have proper processes for decision-making" Mr Albanese said.  "But I've indicated certainly that in my view Labor will not be taking the same policy to the next election.  "We'll work through all of the detail of our tax policies.

But something that I've heard very directly from people is
that they had made arrangements based upon the existing rules that were in place. "And they felt it was unfair that we were proposing to change that. "There are a range of people who weren't impacted by it at all who felt that they would be.

"Pensioners who have never held a share in their 'life felt they were going to be impacted." Mr Albanese said there were "issues with the tax system and fairness that need to be dealt with". "But they need to be dealt with in a way that doesn't add to people's insecurity," he said.

"We had an issue at the election of leaving ourselves vulnerable to attacks that we were adding to people's feeling of insecurity. "And I think that the pace of change in the economy, the nature of work, meant that people are worried about the future."

Mr Albanese pulled ahead of Mr Morrison as preferred prime minister 43-39 after trailing him by 14 points when the Newspoll voter survey was last taken in early December.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 18 January, 2020

 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 January, 2020

Australia: When a government says a white man is black, dissenters have to be fired

I put up the post below yesterday on my Tongue Tied blog.  It now has a sequel, which I reproduce below it.  The disgrace has got worse.  The truthteller HAS now been fired. Does anybody believe that the pink-skinned guy below is an Aborigine?



WHAT a scandal. Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt now threatens to sack a whistleblower who called out "Aboriginal historian" Bruce Pascoe as a white.

The whistleblower in Wyatt's sights is Josephine Cashman, an Aboriginal businesswoman on his advisory council. That's because Cashman claimed Pascoe, author of the bestseller "Dark Emu" and star of an upcoming MSC series, is a fake Aborigine, and she says she has plenty of evidence.

Genealogical records on dark-emu-exposed.org suggest all of Pascoe's ancestors are of English descent, and Pascoe refuses to say which is actually Aboriginal.

Indeed, his story keeps changing. Once he identified as white, until a reviewer of his first novel said it would have been better had Pascoe been black.

Once he claimed that one of his mother's grandmothers was Aboriginal, before admitting she was English. Now he claims he's descended from several tribes, including the Boonwurrung of Victoria, Tasmanian Aborigines and the Yuin of NSW.

But his claims have been rejected by the Boonwunrung Land & Sea Council, the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania and members of the Yuin, and now even the Yolngu of Arnhem Land.

Elder Terry Yumbulul says his fellow Yolngu want Wyatt to investigate Pascoe's "claim to Aboriginal ancestry" and what he's gained from an identity "he has been unable to verify".

Yumbulul, like the Boonwurrung and the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania, also rejects Pascoe's claims — based on false citations and exaggerations — that Aborigines weren't hunter-gathers but farmers in "towns" of "1000 people".

"There is no evidence of it in our art, languages or songlines," says Yumbulul, who accuses Pascoe of causing "concerns about our ancient cultures, our ancient traditions, our precious stories".

So what's Wyatt's reaction? It's to defend white Pascoe and
seemingly threaten Aboriginal Cashman with the sack. Wyatt told the Guardian Australia that Pascoe's Aboriginality was "being played out publicly" when "we should deal with (it) within communities".

He said he could ask one of his advisers to quit "I have to think of the greater good of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people."

Really? Is truth to be sacrificed for the "greater good"? And where's this "greater good" when Aborigines are being stripped of their past and even their right to say who is of their tribe?

No Liberal MP should tolerate what Wyatt seems to have in mind. If Cashman goes, so should he.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 27 January, 2020

Ken Wyatt dumps Josephine Cashman in wake of Dark Emu scandal

Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt has sacked his one-time friend and ally Josephine Cashman amid a furious debate over Aboriginal identity.

Ms Cashman on Tuesday lost her position on the senior advisory group overseeing the design of an indigenous voice to government, seven weeks after she asked Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton for an investigation into acclaimed author Bruce Pascoe for “dishonesty offences”.

Mr Wyatt was said to have been blindsided by Ms Cashman’s email to Mr Dutton on December 11, 2019, in which she alleged Professor Pascoe gained a financial benefit by wrongly claiming to be Aboriginal. Mr Wyatt learned about her complaint in The Weekend Australian on January 11, after Mr Dutton had referred it to the Australian Federal Police.

Since then, The Australian has learned, members of the senior advisory group became increasingly concerned that Ms Cashman’s public criticism of Professor Pascoe was divisive and detracting from their work. Ms Cashman’s push for a national register of indigenous Australians as a way of confirming identity also drew criticism.

“Following recent discussions with the Senior Advisory Group Co-Chairs, Professor Dr Marcia Langton AM and Professor Tom Calma AO, and after careful consideration, I have decided that Ms Cashman’s membership of the Group is no longer tenable,” Mr Wyatt said in an email to reporters on Tuesday.

“Ms Cashman’s actions are not conducive to the constructive and collaborative approach required to progress the important co-design process for an Indigenous voice.”

The Australian has been told Ms Cashman’s future on the senior advisory group was considered untenable last Thursday after the AFP confirmed it had completed its assessment of her complaint against Professor Pascoe and identified no Commonwealth offence. Having identified no financial benefit on the material Ms Cashman provided, the AFP did not probe Professor Pascoe’s ancestry.

The Australian has been told Ms Cashman’s sacking was imminent when a debate erupted on Monday night over the authenticity of a contentious letter that Ms Cashman gave to Sky commentator Andrew Bolt, which he published on his blog. Said to have been from Northern Territory elder Terry Yumbulul, it was critical of the thesis of Professor Pascoe’s bestseller Dark Emu, which draws on the historical accounts of early settlers to call for a rethink of the hunter gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal people. “It would have been impossible for my people to have built wells, silos, houses and yards to pen animals, as Pascoe promotes,” the letter states.

Mr Yumbulul later told NITV: “I did not say anything of the sort to write the letter on behalf of me”.

However Ms Cashman said on Sky on Tuesday that Mr Yumbulul approved a final draft of the letter. Bolt said Mr Yumbulul and his wife Clely were cc’d on several drafts and he published emails which he said showed they had replied with corrections.

Professor Pascoe is described on the back cover of his latest book, Salt, as a Bunurong man. He is accepted as Aboriginal by Mr Wyatt and other prominent indigenous Australians including Professor Langton, the co-chair of the senior advisory group.

On Bolt’s program on Sky on Tuesday night, Ms Cashman claimed: “There is a group of Aboriginal elites that decide who is Aboriginal and who is not and people on the ground have had a gutful of it.”

Professor Pascoe writes about claims he is “not really Aboriginal” in Salt. “What they say has cool logic. Clinical analysis of genes says I’m more Cornish than Koori.” he writes.

SOURCE 





Any climate policy change is going to be slow burn

Climate politics is global. This is the ultimate message from the worldwide reaction to Australia’s bushfire tragedy. The backdrop to the demands that Australia do more on climate change is that the world is not doing enough and that the Paris Agreement is in serious trouble and may fail.

The global story is stark: the scientists intensify their alarm but governments are not responding. The gulf between the scientific consensus from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the pledges made by the ­governments of the major emitters grows only larger and soon will verge on gargantuan.

The US, following President Donald Trump’s decision, withdraws from the Paris Agreement on November 4, at the time of the presidential election. If Trump is re-elected it means no American return and that will cast an ominous shadow over the agreement’s structure and credibility. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says “we are still losing the climate race” but then feels obliged to sound an optimistic note: “But we can choose another path.”

The idea that nations will choose another path seems remote. Below the surface you sense the desperation from the architects and champions of a global model that isn’t working and was always a third-best solution. It is now more than 20 years since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated with its binding targets only on rich, industrialised nations. It is ­almost 10 years since the failure of the Copenhagen conference to ­secure a legally binding global agreement, and almost five since the patch-up job in Paris — a weak fallback — asking nations to submit voluntary targets as nationally determined contributions.

Last year’s UN Emissions Gap Report, along with other UN documents, finds a “bleak” picture. Greenhouse gas emissions are rising. There is “no sign” they will peak in the next few years. By 2030 emissions will need to be 25 per cent and 55 per cent lower than in 2018 to limit warming to below 2C and 1.5C, the Paris requirements. The gulf between country pledges and what is needed remains “large” and growing, with countries needing to increase their pledges “threefold” to achieve the temperature goals.

The UN analysis says: “Essentially there has been no real change in the global emissions pathway in the last decade. The ­effects of climate policies have been too small to offset the impact of key drivers of emissions such as economic growth and population growth.” Understand what this means: the already “baked in” ­absence of progress means the steeper scale of adjustment needed in coming years will be so great it “risks seriously damaging the global economy” — decoded that warns about a global recession.

Paris is not a legally binding agreement; it has no compliance mechanism and no penalties for noncompliance. How does such a system work? By political pressure, public, media, peer group pressure and moral suasion. Invoke the Pope or Prince Charles or Greta Thunberg or the better ­angels of our nature. Pivotal to the political pressure is the fear of extinction or Armageddon. Guterres has bet his UN leadership on climate change ­action. Operating as a global politician, he told the General Assem­bly that unless big emitters act “we are doomed”. Big emitters will determine the fate of the Paris Agreement and our trajectory points to failure.

In this situation, the Australian bushfires become a test case, at home and globally. Guterres slotted the fires into “an existential climate crisis” where “our planet is burning” while governments “fiddle” as the globe “is edging closer to the point of no return”.

The raging bushfires, deaths, property destruction and terrifying pictures naturally prompted demands for action. Climate change constitutes a moral challenge for Australia and all nations to take stronger action. But media demands that Australia must now become a world leader on climate action or that more ambition on Australia’s part is a solution in its own right to our bushfire challenge are unrealistic, irrational and misleading.

The contradiction at the heart of the Paris deal now reverberates through the politics of the democracies. National pledges under Paris are utterly insufficient, as judged by the science. Every analysis shows this. In country after country the climate change champions demand greater action but national governments — essentially the big emitters — refuse to act with the urgency the scientists and the UN demand with doomsday scenarios.

The political battle is waged at the national and global level in constant interaction with each other. Guterres, like the ­activists, says the people are demanding “much stronger ambition”. Are they? Maybe, but global results don’t show it. At home Anthony Albanese backs coal exports and says Labor’s 45 per cent emissions target was a mistake.

For progressives, the bushfires are decisive. They show the climate is changing; that the threat is here, not just in the future. With quasi-religious belief they depict the fires as a “game changer” — the event that shifts public opinion towards greater action. These are declarations of faith. Do they pronounce too much? In reality, it will take many months to determine whether the fires are a game changer. The politics of climate change in Australia has fluctuated wildly over 15 years and fluctuations are likely to recur.

The human brain isn’t good at responding to a predicted catastrophe some time in the future. The domestic test is whether the bushfires have repudiated the May 2019 election settlement and made Scott Morrison’s modest 26 per cent emission reduction stance untenable with the public. The international test is whether Australia, having experienced fires of such notoriety, remains unmoved in its Paris Agreement pledges or concedes the growing threat by declaring more ambitious targets.

There is one certainty. Morrison will take his time on this judgment. He does not subscribe — at least so far — to the “game changer” conclusion of the commentators who demand he change his policy. His caution is understandable. What would be the political consequences for Morrison if, acting on the fires, he now announced a more ambitious emission reduction target?

First, he would never satisfy his opponents, who would pocket the concession, demand more and renew their attacks on his government. Second, he would inflame and alienate many of his own ­supporters, who would attack him for cracking under pressure, surrendering to his opponents, betraying his election mandate and dividing, perhaps fatally, his own side of politics.

In short, it would be meagre gain for truckloads of pain — that’s the political equation. At this stage it doesn’t make sense. Morrison’s aim is to hold his government and his voting base together. That may mean policy change at some point. But that will come only down the track after intense internal management and will surely involve targets beyond 2030.

In the interim, Morrison will make clear he accepts the reality of climate change, that he wants Australia to exceed the 26 per cent 2030 emission reduction target, that he prefers this be achieved without carry-over of credits and that he wants a new national framework for combating fires with greater emphasis on adaptation and resilience building.

Every sign is that Morrison will stick by his stance saying he wants power prices cut and won’t take further action on climate change if it hurts the economy and means higher power prices. But that is ­exactly what it means. The UN is talking about “transforming” policy change. That’s what the science requires. Wealthy Liberal electorates might accept this in principle but there is scant evidence most of the country will.

There is no escape from the fact that on climate Australia is a 1.3 per cent nation. This is our contribution to global emissions. It is wrong to say we don’t matter and don’t have obligations. But it is equally wrong to pretend that ­action by Australia makes any meaningful difference to global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet nothing seems to agitate climate activists as much as this truth.

It doesn’t negate the case for Australia doing more — in moral, diplomatic and self-interested terms. It is vital to avoid any trade or financial retaliation that singles us out from other rich commodity-based exporters (think Canada and New Zealand) by trying to claim we were doing less and should be penalised.

The climate change lobby demands, after the bushfires, a transformational policy change. That won’t happen because neither the policy nor political argument for such transformation exists. That may change. For the present, climate change policy will reflect a series of Morrison-judged compromises amid shifting reassessments involving the economy, energy, emissions reduction and prices, the bushfire legacy and how public opinion evolves, particularly within the Coalition vote.

SOURCE 






Foreign students flock to some Australian university courses

FOREIGN students have filled at least three quarters of places in key university courses, after international student numbers soared 12 per cent in a year.

As Queensland school leavers sweat on university offers, The Courier-Mail can reveal that overseas students have taken 82.4 per cent of places in information technology courses at the University of the Sunshine Coast, and nearly two-thirds of IT places at James Cook University (JCU) and the University of Southern Queensland.

At the prestigious University of Queensland, which pockets $250 million a year selling places to Chinese students, foreigners outnumber local students in IT and management and commerce courses.

Cash-hungry universities are offering more places to fee-paying foreigners than to local students in 64 courses nationally, data obtained exclusively by The Courier-Mail reveals.

Nationally, the number of foreign students in Australian universities soared 12 per cent to 427,610 in 2018 — with nearly 10 per cent studying in Brisbane. At Central Queensland University, the proportion of foreign students studying management and commerce soared from 54 per cent in 2013 to 70.2 per cent in 2018, the latest Education Department data for 2018 reveals.

CQ University acting vice-chancellor Alastair Dawson said 40 per cent of students come from other countries. "Due to the successive decline in funding from government to universities, in order to build our programs and ensure a sustainable academic offering we've realised the opportunity to pick up our international market," he said. We don't cut domestic places to suit the international market — you would take as many domestic students as you can."

In agriculture and environmental studies, 61.3 per cent of students at JCU are from overseas. "Domestic students are not missing out on places in these courses because of international student enrolments," a JCU spokesman said. "All students — international and domestic have to meet strict entry requirements and academic standards to be enrolled."

International education is a $22 billion business for Australian universities. Australian universities have enrolled 152,591 students from China, 71,857 from India and 28,233 from Nepal.

Foreigners, who are charged $15,000 to $33,000 for a basic bachelor degree, make up a third of the 1.5 million students enrolled in Australian universities.

The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) has warned that some universities, including UQ — where Chinese students clashed with Hong Kong protesters last year — are too reliant on Chinese revenue.

CIS Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz, a former vice-chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney and Murdoch University in Perth, said foreign students flock to courses likely to lead to jobs and permanent residency, such as IT and management

"Permanent residency is one of the main motivations to study in Australia," he said. "If suddenly permanent residency was given to people who study poetry, it's likely they'd all be doing poetry."

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 27 January, 2020





Kmart blogger mum tearfully defends herself against racism accusations for saying 'white is right' in a post about a QUILT COVER

A woman has tearfully defended herself after she was accused of being a 'racist' for saying 'white is right' about her new doona quilt cover.

Claire, from Tasmania, has been creating lifestyle content for her popular Instagram account The Kmart Lover as a hobby.

With more than 100,000 followers, her well-established page focuses on affordable fashion and home styling such as décor, furniture and bedding.

But over the weekend, Claire came under attack by cruel trolls who labelled her a 'racist' and a 'white supremacist' after she shared her thoughts on her new king-size waffle quilt cover.

'I wasn't going to address this... but as you can probably tell, I'm sad, but that's not from the thing that happened last night. It's from my sister Krista's beautiful words and the outpouring of love and support that you guys have given me,' she said.

'I've got a bad headache, I put it down to the stress that's come from here. I'm not racist, I was purely talking about a bloody doona cover, and it does hurt, it hurts me.

'I put some time into my page, it's my page, I don't get paid to tell you where the item is from. I don't get paid to give you a swipe up link. I don't get paid to show you what it would match with and so many of you ask things like that and I give you my views on it.'

After speaking out, Claire hit back at the nasty trolls by sharing a snap of herself sitting on her white quilt cover in her white Kmart outfit.

Claire was left in tears after receiving nasty remarks for sharing her thoughts about a doona

'This is me. On my white waffle quilt cover in my white outfit... Just a girl on a bed in what she considers a cool outfit sharing her love for home styling and fashion,' she said.

'Unshowered, heavy eyes from a bad headache, no make-up. Nothing more, nothing less. This week I have been trolled as being racist for saying "white is right" about the depicted doona cover.

'I could stay quiet as some of you have suggested and not respond to any of these remarks but that is not me. I am strong. I am independent and I am taking a stance against this small minority of society that feel this behaviour is ok because it is not.'

Claire has since updated her caption to: 'Can you beat a white quilt cover for a relaxing entrance to a bedroom? I love it.'

SOURCE 





Greyhound cuts ties with Adani coal mine after backlash from climate Nazis

The bus company Greyhound Australia has ruled out any extension of work on the controversial Adani coal project after a backlash from climate change campaigners.

On Sunday the SchoolStrike4Climate group launched a campaign to boycott travel with the company until it publicly ruled out working on the mine.

Guardian Australia revealed last week that Greyhound had written to staff warning they could be caught “in the crossfire” of anti-Adani campaigners after the company took a three-month contract at the coal project, with an option to extend.

The Indian-owned Adani mine and railway project is the first to begin work to extract the vast coal reserves of Queensland’s Galilee basin.

Greyhound is providing transport to workers for the construction company BMD, which is building the railway to take the coal to Adani’s Abbot Point port.

In a statement, Greyhound Australia said it had “received numerous messages, emails and phone calls from people expressing their thoughts both for and against the Carmichael Rail Network and Adani Carmichael project”.

It said: “Following considered deliberation, and in the best interests of our staff, customers, and partners, Greyhound Australia has decided to not enter into a contractual agreement with BMD to service construction of the Carmichael Rail Network beyond our preliminary 31 March 2020 commitment.”

The company declined to comment further.

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 January, 2020

'Get rid of your chip off your shoulder': Pauline Hanson's Australia Day message to Aboriginal protestors campaigning for a change of date for the national day

This campaign about the date will immediately change to a demand to abolish the day absolutely if it ever succeeds.

It is entirely a creation of the political Left, to whom any national consciousness is anathema.

Both in the USA and Australia, the Left do their best to promote racial division and antagonism.  It is the Left who are the dangerous racists.  Without them, different races would have a much better chance of living together in harmony.


One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has claimed Aboriginal people who want Australia Day moved away from January 26 need to 'get the chip off their shoulder'.

The outspoken federal senator was involved with a heated argument with Melbourne radio broadcaster Neil Mitchell on the Today Show, a day after Australia Day protests across the country.

Aboriginal and Torres Straight Island flags filled streets across the nation on Sunday, as thousands of protesters called for the date of Australia Day to be moved because of growing tensions over what it celebrates.

January 26 - which marks the raising of the British flag on Australian soil in 1788 after the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Harbour - is regarded as 'invasion day' by many First Nations people.

During a passionate discussion with Mr Mitchell and host Karl Stefanovic, Ms Hanson said she does not believe the date should be changed - claiming there are far bigger issues for Aboriginal communities.

'They're not talking about this in Aboriginal communities and I was there two weeks ago,' Ms Hanson, 65, said.

'You know the big issues there? Kids are on the streets, they're starving, they've got the biggest rate of syphilis in their townships.

'You move the date from January 26th, whatever date you pick they're going to whinge about that as well.

'Get rid of the chip off your bloody shoulder. We are here, I was born here, this is my country... this is Australia Day where people join together.'

Mr Mitchell, the long-time 3AW talkback host, initially agreed that the date on which Australia Day is celebrated is not 'a huge issue for most Aboriginal people'.

But he took exception to Ms Hanson's comments that 'invasion day' protesters have a chip on their shoulder, claiming it was remarks like this that caused division.

'Get the chip off your shoulder? That'll really help. We need to be inclusive. I don't think it's a chip on your shoulder to be worried about history,' Mr Mitchell, 68, said.

Ms Hanson defended her stance, replying: 'Neil this has been going on for over 200 years do you think they have been affected by this?'

'They're using this as an excuse. It's either a political stance or they're pushing their own agenda.'

Today Show host Karl Stefanovic had the final say on the matter, claiming that such a debate highlighted how emotional the issue is.

'This is part of the problem, it is such a divisive thing and a divisive argument, and I want unification on this day,' he said.

SOURCE 






A truth about climate change that Warmists continue to dodge

Higher levels of CO2 are beneficial

Andrew Bolt

ACTIVISTS are exploiting these terrible bushfires to whip up an astonishing fear of man-made global warming and hatred of sceptics like me.

But know what makes me sure, even after this fiery devastation, that the global warming menace is exaggerated? It's warmist scientist Andy Pitman, who has once again confirmed exactly what I've been saying. How horrified he'll be to hear it

You may remember Professor Pitman, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. He last year was recorded admitting to fellow warmists that droughts — like this severe one that's fed the fires — are NOT caused by global warming. "As far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought," he said. "There is no reason a priori why climate change should make the landscape more arid."

Indeed, despite the drought, Australia's rainfall over the century as increased, not fallen.

Pitman and the ABC were naturaily mortified when I and others started to quote him. Pitman is now furious that former rime Minister Tony Abbott last week quoted his admission, too, in he Australian.

But in his anger, Pitman let slip a fact that sceptics like me have tried for years to point out. Pitman complained that "Abbott quotes me on drought ... when in fact for 15 years I have been warning that the risk of fires is increasing as a consequence of climate change".

That's because, he said, the extra carbon dioxide we emit is actually plant food that causes "greening", meaning we get more leaves and even trees to burn in a drought. But Pitman has been too honest. Most warmists have dodged this truth, because it undermines their fear campaign.

You see, it's actually sceptics like me who have for years argued that global warming is greening the planet, and that this is, overall, a good thing. As renowned physicist Freeman Dyson says: "The whole Earth is growing greener as a result of carbon dioxide, so it's increasing agricultural yields, it's increasing the forests and it's increasing growth in the biological world."

NASA has found that an area about twice the size of the continental United States got greener between 1982 and 2009. This helps to explain why world grain crops keep setting new records.

But wait! A greener planet Bigger crops. Fewer cyclones, too. Is this really something we want to stop? This goes to the key question that sceptics like me keep asking. We don't deny the planet has warmed. We instead question whether the warming we're seeing — less than predicted — is all bad. We particularly question whether it's smart to spend billions or even trillions to cut emissions in a largely symbolic attempt to "stop" all this.

Of course, some warmists will say: look at these deadly fires! Don't they prove global warming is deadly? In fact, tragic as they've been, they are far from our worst, measured either by deaths or area burned.

What's more, our bush this summer was dried out by a drought that was caused primarily not by global warming but by a natural and regular change in ocean patterns called the Indian Ocean Dipole. When that dipole pushes warmer water in the Indian Ocean east to Australia, we get rain; when it replaces that with cooler water, we get drought

Last December the Bureau of Meteorology warned the dipole had pushed so much cool water our way that we get no real rain until April. We'd get no rain to stop the fires. Well, the bureau was wrong. The dipole suddenly decayed a couple of weeks ago, and we've since had lots of rain over eastern Australia, with more to come this week.

So, thanks to Pitman, the sceptics' case is even clearer. Do we really want to spend a fortune to slash our emissions in a largely futile attempt to "stop" a warming that isn't anything as dangerous as we're told? Or would it be far cheaper and infinitely more effective to finally do all the fuel reduction burns needed to keep down the fuel loads in our forests?

After all, even Pitman is blaming extra fuel loads for the intensity of the flames. Yet Victoria, for one, has over the past five years burned only half the area recommended by the royal commission into the shocking 2009 fires that killed 172 people -- four times more than died in this summer's fires. But that's one more topic warmists hate. Reason is their enemy, and only fear is their friend.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 27 January, 2020





Labor MP Tanya Plibersek is slammed by her own supporters for saying schoolkids should pledge loyalty to Australia

The Left are NOT patriotic

Former deputy Opposition leader Tanya Plibersek has been slammed by her own supporters for arguing all school children should pledge their loyalty to Australia.

Ms Plibersek took to Twitter on Saturday to share an article about her ideas ahead of her Australia Day address at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday.

The Federal Labor MP argued patriotism is about acceptance and lending a hand rather than exclusion, but was harshly criticised by users on her own side of politics.

She said the incredible spirit of generosity from Australians during the latest bushfire ravaged summer was the best example.

'This has been patriotism at its practical best; patriotism as the thread connecting us all as Australians.'

On Sunday she will call for all school students to be taught the Australian citizenship pledge, which states: 'From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.'

Ms Plibersek's remarks quickly became trending online with many of her supporters rejecting the idea as American and old fashioned.

'Are you just trying to lose the next election? (This is) all things I loathe about America. Going to vote in the religious bigotry bill too? Just to really break my Labor heart?' a woman said.

Controversial feminist commentator Clementine Ford also slammed the idea.

'Huge fan Tanya, but I think there are more elegant and less nationalistic ways to codify good citizenship here,' she said.

Ms Ford then argued Labor Leader Anthony Albanese was not being a good citizen when he pledged to keep Australia Day on January 26.

Other people pointed out the pledge is already made by immigrants who become Australian citizens.

One man remarked 'that the left are eating their own' and remarked that the behaviour was proof they were uneducated.

SOURCE 




Men's advocate, Bettina Arndt, given Australia Day honour

The Left cannot stand an anti-feminist female

[Some] Australians have reacted with fury to controversial commentator and men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt being recognised in this year’s Australia Day awards.

Ms Arndt was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) — Australia’s third-highest civic honour — for striving to achieve “gender equity through advocacy for men”.

The journalist and sex therapist was criticised in 2018 when she interviewed convicted sex offender Nicolaas Bester and has been outspoken against what she believes is a “fake rape crisis” at Australian universities.

“This is vile,” writer Van Badham tweeted. “Bettina Arndt platformed a paedophile, creating space for a convicted criminal who groomed & raped a child to brag about his crimes, while she herself blamed children for ‘sexual provocation’. If she is what’s ‘honoured’ as an Australian, it is no honour AT ALL.”

“Giving Bettina Arndt this award is like giving Pauline Hanson one for promoting racial equity & George Pell one for child safety,” journalist Sherele Moody wrote.

“Arndt’s work is not about gender equity. It’s misogyny-driven hate designed to keep women barefoot, pregnant and tied to the kitchen sink.”

Ms Arndt, 70, who says she’s been writing about men’s issues for 30 years, told news.com.au she was “delighted” to have her career recognised in this way and predicted it would “cause a stir”.

The Sydneysider said she’s also “very happy” about the wording used in the citation for her honour.

It states that she has been appointed an AM “for significant service to the community as a social commentator, and to gender equity through advocacy for men.”

“It absolutely captures what I’m doing,” she said. “But I would imagine that would be controversial because the feminists claim that they’re the only ones promoting gender equity through endlessly tilting laws, rules and regulation to favour women at the expense of men.

“I hope this award will encourage others to join me in campaigning for true gender equity – fair treatment for men and women.”

Ms Arndt said she is currently campaigning to draw attention to the “illegal kangaroo courts” she claims universities are using to adjudicate rape, as well as male suicide and “gender-neutral” suicide prevention policy.

Domestic violence is another issue she has campaigned on.

“Malcolm Turnbull boasted of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on domestic violence programs which (were) all about demonising men,” she said. “They ignore the true complexity of domestic violence which include problems with mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse.”

Meanwhile, she claims male victims of domestic violence receive “absolutely no funding”.

Ms Arndt says she’s been writing about men’s issues for 30 years.

She said she started off as a feminist and campaigning for women’s rights, but became “increasingly alarmed” by the movement.

“I felt in many areas, women had achieved equality,” she said. “We had a lot to celebrate. But there are many who wanted to extend women’s rights well beyond any notion of equality.

“It’s now all about male bashing, trying to advantage women over men in so many areas. I had enough of that.”

Throughout her career, Ms Arndt has courted controversy with her views and campaigns.

SOURCE 





Opposition to natural gas mining in most of Australia is helping to keep coal mining alive

The news that two more coal plants are about to close in the US would have been unwelcome at the White House.

Despite the President’s “best endeavours”, the carbon footprint of the average American continues to shrink. More than 46,000MW of coal-fired generator capacity will have disappeared by the end of his term, the equivalent of almost twice the entire capacity of Australian coal plants.

It is hard to see what more Donald Trump could have done. He has neutered the Environmental Protection Agency, ripped apart his predecessor’s Clean Power Plan and given the finger to the Paris Agreement. Yet he has failed to revive the fortunes of coal, despite his solemn promise to miners in Virginia on the campaign trail in May 2016.

Trump should have known that you can’t fight the market. The fracking revolution means coal can no longer compete on price with gas, which emits half the CO2 and a 10th of the pollution.

The same thing might well have occurred in Australia, if state governments had not been spooked by fracking.

It might have helped if they had done the right thing by landowners and offered them a share of the royalties for allowing drilling on their land. The shabby treatment of farmers as third parties in dealings between the Queensland government and gas companies created a potent alliance of farmers and environmentalists, which other state governments have been wary of confronting.

The result of the ill-considered moratorium on fracking and all forms of gas extraction in Victoria is that natural gas is in short supply on the east coast, forcing up the cost. Coal has unwittingly been priced back into the market.

In the great tradition of well-meaning governments achieving the opposite of what they set out to do, the state of Victoria will emit more CO2 this year than it would have done if the market had been allowed to operate freely.

Victoria’s three remaining coal plants, Yallourn, Loy Yang A and Loy Yang B, would probably be toast by now if the state government had allowed enterprising prospectors to develop gas holdings, making gas a viable competitor into the National Energy Market.

A reliable supply of cheap gas in a competitive market would not only hasten the end of coal, it would stabilise the grid and allow renewables to thrive. Gas, with its ability to fire quickly, can provide back-up more easily than coal when the output from wind and solar plants falls.

The former South Australian Labor government might not have had to shell out for Elon Musk’s battery, or scour the planet for spare diesel generators when the Northern Power Station closed prematurely, if it had not artificially constrained the development of gas.

The switch from coal to gas around the world, principally in the US and China, has been a game changer. It has saved about 500 million tonnes of CO2 over the past 10 years, according to the International Energy Authority, the equivalent to putting an additional 200 million electric vehicles on the road, assuming they run on zero-carbon electricity.

Emissions from the US energy sector are 27 per cent lower than they were in 2005, despite the robust growth in the economy. It puts the US on a plausible track to meet the Obama administration’s Paris target if it still cares about that kind of thing.

While it won’t be enough to bring a smile to Greta Thunberg’s pursed lips, the US has achieved bigger savings than other developed economies. It is doing better than Germany, Japan, Canada and New Zealand.

In today’s climate debate, however, there is increasingly little space for pragmatism. The absolutism of our times demands a clean economy, rather than an economy that becomes cleaner over time. Activists insist on renewable energy targets rather than cleaner energy targets. They demand we set a target date for zero emissions without the foggiest idea how to get there.

It was not always so. In the calmer conversations we were having before Al Gore interrupted by reinventing himself as a scary movie maker, the transition to gas was widely regarded as the first step towards a solution.

Today gas has become the target of crass campaigns that make it out to be the problem, lumping it together with coal under the disparaging term “fossil fuel”.

Pressure on investors will curtail the use of gas prematurely unless sanity prevails. Last week’s announcement by BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, that it would stop investing in coal did nothing to appease the critics.

“We’ll need to push BlackRock to move away from not only coal but all its climate-destabilising investments, including oil, gas and companies whose operations threaten to turn the lush Amazon into a savanna,” insisted Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club.

Let us assume for a moment that Brune genuinely hankers for a cleaner economy and is not, as so many climate activists patently are, pursuing a darker agenda. Let us assume he genuinely wants to clean up the planet one tonne of CO2 at a time, and that he gets Voltaire’s point that the perfect is the enemy of the good.

What can he hope to achieve by encouraging a flight of capital from natural gas beyond delaying the transition to a low-emission economy? Fracking has reduced CO2 emissions in the US 10 times faster that two other imperfect technologies, wind and solar, according to a report by the Manhattan Institute.

Rather than bank the dividend, the climate-explains-everything movement has fallen for the nirvana fallacy, the belief that the perfect solution to a particular problem is to hand. It permits the creation of a false dichotomy between the imperfect and the implausible.

Natural gas will not be the energy source that gets us to zero emissions, barring a breakthrough in carbon capture and storage. In the words of the old jazz classic, however, “If that isn’t love it’ll have to do, Until the real thing comes along”.

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 January, 2020

Reducing Fire, and Cutting Carbon Emissions, the Aboriginal Way

The article from the NYT below gives a good sense of Aboriginal burning practices but does not give enough emphasis to the fact that Aboriginal burning practices -- very frequent small fires -- would not be tolerated for a moment in most of Australia.  They would rightly be seen as dangerous.

The Aborigines described below can get away with it for two main reasons:

1).  They live in Kakadu national park, which is only very lightly populated -- so they have few neighbours to bother them with criticisms

2).  The NT has predicable monsoons, which enables safer detection of risky/non-risky times to burn.  Rainfall in the rest of Australia is much less predictable, if it is predictable at all. So choosing safe times to burn is very approximate.

Adequate burns can only be done safely in most of Australia if plans for burning cover many areas -- so that a burn can start somewhere as soon as there is a good day for it.  Burns have to exploit ALL good burning days


COOINDA, NT. — At a time when vast tracts of Australia are burning, Violet Lawson is never far from a match.

In the woodlands surrounding her home in the far north of the country, she lights hundreds of small fires a year — literally fighting fire with fire. These traditional Aboriginal practices, which reduce the undergrowth that can fuel bigger blazes, are attracting new attention as Australia endures disaster and confronts a fiery future.

Over the past decade, fire-prevention programs, mainly on Aboriginal lands in northern Australia, have cut destructive wildfires in half. While the efforts draw on ancient ways, they also have a thoroughly modern benefit: Organizations that practice defensive burning have earned $80 million under the country’s cap-and-trade system as they have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions from wildfires in the north by 40 percent.

These programs, which are generating important scientific data, are being held up as a model that could be adapted to save lives and homes in other regions of Australia, as well as fire-prone parts of the world as different as California and Botswana.

“Fire is our main tool,” Ms. Lawson said as she inspected a freshly burned patch where grasses had become ash but the trees around them were undamaged. “It’s part of protecting the land.”

The fire-prevention programs, which were first given government licenses in 2013, now cover an area three times the size of Portugal. Even as towns in the south burned in recent months and smoke haze blanketed Sydney and Melbourne, wildfires in northern Australia were much less severe.

“The Australian government is now starting to see the benefits of having Indigenous people look after their lands,” said Joe Morrison, one of the pioneers of the project. “Aboriginal people who have been through very difficult times are seeing their language, customs and traditional knowledge being reinvigorated and celebrated using Western science.”

In some ways, the Aboriginal methods resemble Western ones practiced around the world: One of the main goals is to reduce underbrush and other fuel that accelerates hot, damaging fires.

But the ancient approach tends to be more comprehensive. Indigenous people, using precisely timed, low-intensity fires, burn their properties the way a suburban homeowner might use a lawn mower.

Aboriginal practices have been so successful in part because of a greater cultural tolerance of fire and the smoke it generates. The country’s thinly populated north, where Aboriginal influence and traditions are much stronger than in the south, is not as hamstrung by political debates and residents’ concerns about the health effects of smoke.

The landscape and climate of northern Australia also make it more amenable to preventive burning. The wide open spaces, and the distinctive seasons — a hot dry season is followed by monsoon rains — make burning more predictable.

Yet despite these regional differences, those who have studied the Aboriginal techniques say they could be adapted in the more populated parts of the country.

“We most certainly should learn to burn Aboriginal-style,” said Bill Gammage, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. “Our firefighters have quite good skills in fighting fires. But for preventing them, they are well short of what Aboriginal people could do.”

Last week, Victor Cooper, a former forest ranger in northern Australia, lit a wad of shaggy bark to demonstrate the type of fire that burns at temperatures low enough to avoid damage to sensitive plants that are crucial food for animals.

The preventive fires, he said, should trickle, not rage. They must be timed according to air temperature, wind conditions and humidity, as well as the life cycles of plants. Northern Aboriginal traditions revolve around the monsoon, with land burned patch by patch as the wet season gives way to the dry.

“We don’t have a fear of fire,” said Mr. Cooper, who burns regularly around his stilt house nestled in woodlands. “We know the earlier we burn, the more protection we have.”

This year, he will become certified to join the carbon credits program. Money earned through that system has incentivized stewardship of the land and provided hundreds of jobs in Aboriginal communities, where unemployment rates are high. The funds have also financed the building of schools in underserved areas.

NASA satellite data is used to quantify the reduction in carbon emissions and do computer modeling to track fires. Modern technology also supplements the defensive burning itself: Helicopters drop thousands of incendiary devices the size of Ping-Pong balls over huge patches of territory at times of the year when the land is still damp and fires are unlikely to rage out of control.

Those taking part in the program say they are frustrated that other parts of the country have been reluctant to embrace the same types of preventive burning. The inaction is longstanding: A major federal inquiry after deadly fires more than a decade ago recommended wider adoption of Aboriginal methods.

“I have many friends in other parts of Australia who can’t get their heads around that fire is a useful tool, that not all fire is the same and that you can manage it,” said Andrew Edwards, a fire expert at Charles Darwin University in northern Australia. “It’s hard to get across to people that fire is not a bad thing.”

Nine years ago, Mr. Gammage published a book that changed the way many in Australia thought about the Australian countryside and how it has been managed since the arrival of Europeans in the late 18th century.

The book, “The Biggest Estate on Earth,” uses documents from the earliest settlers and explorers to show how the landscape had been systematically shaped by Aboriginal fire techniques.

Many forests were thinner than those that exist now and were more resistant to hot-burning fires. Early explorers described the landscape as a series of gardens, and they reported seeing near constant trails of smoke from small fires across the landscape.

As Europeans took control of the country, they banned burning. Jeremy Russell-Smith, a bushfire expert at Charles Darwin University, said this quashing of traditional fire techniques happened not only in Australia, but also in North and South America, Asia and Africa.

“The European mind-set was to be totally scared of fire,” Mr. Russell-Smith said.

As the fires rage in the south, Aboriginal people in northern Australia say they are deeply saddened at the loss of life — about 25 people have been killed and more than 2,000 homes destroyed. But they also express bewilderment that forests were allowed to grow to become so combustible.

Margaret Rawlinson, the daughter of Ms. Lawson, who does preventive burning on her property in the far north, remembers traveling a decade ago to the countryside south of Sydney and being alarmed at fields of long, desiccated grass.

“I was terrified,” Ms. Rawlinson said. “I couldn’t sleep. I said, ‘We need to go home. This place is going to go up, and it’s going to be a catastrophe.’”

The area that she visited, around the town of Nowra, has been a focal point for fires over the past few weeks.

The pioneering defensive burning programs in northern Australia came together in the 1980s and ’90s when Aboriginal groups moved back onto their native lands after having lived in settlements under the encouragement, or in some cases the order, of the government.

Depopulated for decades, the land had suffered. Huge fires were decimating species and damaging rock paintings.

“The land was out of control,” said Dean Yibarbuk, a park ranger whose Indigenous elders encouraged him to seek solutions.

The Aboriginal groups ultimately teamed up with scientists, the government of the Northern Territory and the Houston-based oil company ConocoPhillips, which was building a natural gas facility and was required to find a project that would offset its carbon emissions.

According to calculations by Mr. Edwards, wildfires in northern Australia burned 57 percent fewer acres last year than they did on average in the years from 2000 to 2010, the decade before the program started.

Mr. Yibarbuk, who is now chairman of Warddeken Land Management, one of the largest of the participating organizations, employs 150 Aboriginal rangers, part time and full time.

“We are very lucky in the north to be able to keep our traditional practices,” Mr. Yibarbuk said. “There’s a pride in going back to the country, managing it and making a difference.”

SOURCE  





Bruce Pascoe scandal: Yolngu now denounce this 'aboriginal historian', too

Now the Yolngu of Arnhem Land join other Aboriginal groups in denouncing "Aboriginal historian" Bruce Pascoe and his fake history that Aborigines were settled farmers, living in "towns" of "1000 people" with "animal pens. Elder Terry Yumbulul writes:

There are no ancient creation stories in our heritage about Aboriginal settlements and there is no evidence of it in our art, languages or songlines. It would have been impossible for my people to have built wells, silos, houses and yards to pen animals, as Pascoe promotes. Australian indigenous animals are not capable of supporting human settlements and my people had no need to settle in one place because we were content living in harmony with nature and travelling by foot from sacred place to sacred place.

Our people also find it insulting so many prominent Aboriginal leaders have supported Pascoe and his theories. Among them is the Hon Ken Wyatt AM MP, the Minister for Indigenous Australians who has said he could ask for the resignation of members of his advisory council and continued, 'the Pascoe debate is led by one of our own, which is a pity because it's being played out publicly. It is something that we should deal with within communities.'

Other Aboriginal leaders also support Pascoe's attempt to change our valued Aboriginal culture and histories. Professor Marcia Langton AO said Dark Emu, 'is the most important book on Australia and should be read by every Australian', at the same time she insults Yolnga men and women and other Aboriginal nations. During a recent interview on NTV, Professor Langton reiterated Pascoe's Aboriginal ancestry had been settled years ago and she reaffirmed the credibility of Dark Emu. Many employees of the Indigenous units at our national broadcaster the ABC, SBS and NTV have also supported Pascoe publicly. All of these people should know better.

We are also mystified and hurt by the fact the Commonwealth government appears not to be concerned about Young Dark Emu being distributed to pre school and primary school children. The government also appears unperturbed about Pascoe's promotion of the theory Aboriginal people lived in settlements and practiced Aboriginal agriculture. We are also upset the government does not appear to care about the Pascoe claims and/or acknowledge the fact his claims could affect Aboriginal people and/or cause concerns about our ancient cultures, our ancient traditions, our precious stories, our beliefs and our children.

Our people have asked us to call for an investigation into Bruce Pascoe, his claim to Aboriginal ancestry and the financial benefits he and his businesses have derived from claiming Aboriginal ancestry he has been unable to verify.

The Yolgnu now join Victoria's Boonwurrung Land & Sea Council, the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania and members of the Yuin tribe of NSW in denying Pascoe's claims to be Aboriginal, descended from Boonwurrung, Tasmanian and Yuin tribes. They also deny his claims (promoted by the ABC) that Aborigines were farmers, and not hunter-gatherers.

They are also protesting the ultimate colonisation - where whites now assume Aboriginal identity for themselves, rewrite Aboriginal history and deny Aborigines even the right to determine who is in their tribe.

The Left is cleansing tradition Aboriginal culture and tribes from the records. All this is cheered on by the ABC, the national broadcaster.

SOURCE 





Facts blurred in climate coverage

Sobriety and perspective were once two of the valued qualities of serious media who considered themselves above the exaggeration and inflammation — commonly referred to as beat-ups — that they view as the domain of the tabloid or shock media.

Climate change has flipped that around. Nowadays media that would assign themselves the “quality” label while rejecting the accurate “green-left” tag are all about hysteria and twisting facts. Let me start with CNN, whose reporter Will Ripley spent a week or so in Australia reporting mainly on bushfires and weather, including a climate protest.

“They (the protesters) say the planet is dying,” Ripley reported. “And Australia is right on the frontline of this climate crisis: you have the unprecedented bushfires, you have the Great Barrier Reef drying up because of the ozone levels in the atmosphere.”

Oh, dear. Fact-checking goes missing when pushing the alarmist perspective. Only sceptical views tend to be treated with any, well, scepticism, by most media.

The word “unprecedented” has been invoked time and again in order to pretend terrifying events, the likes of which have scarred this nation forever, were something brought newly upon us by climate change.

Early in the season NSW had more emergency level fires on one day than ever before (due to arson, natural events and weather conditions), and on two other days the Sydney area recorded its worst fire conditions, and it has been the worst bushfire season in that state. But it is wrong to claim this is the worst season by any measure for any other state or the nation as a whole.

We could fill pages with such hype. Given the essential facts have been so drastic it seems implausible that anyone would want to embellish the story — but the sensationalism has been, well, perhaps unprecedented.

US ABC news headed a story “Wildfire Apocalypse” and chief meteorologist Ginger Zee said “unprecedented” fires were “consuming” Australia.

Maps on US and UK media had flames all over our continent; we were ablaze coast to coast.

At the BBC, TV host Ros Atkins bought into the sensationalism and Twitter-level political debate full-on: quoting people like Lara (Bingle) Worthington on social media, describing us as the “hottest place in the world” (as, of course, we often are in summer) and showing pictures of Scott Morrison holding a lump of coal.

Atkins along with most journalists in Australia adopted the word “megablaze” or “megafire” to describe the main Blue Mountains fire. This is of a piece with the climate change-induced language tweaks to make weather events sound different to all that preceded them. Storms are now “storm events” and heatwaves “extreme heat events” and so it goes. (The concocted word “megafire” even passed my lips as I read a breaking news update scripted elsewhere and presented live on air.)

But worse than the beat-ups has been the politicisation. Green-left politicians and climate protesters, led by former NSW fire commissioner and global warming activist Greg Mullins, were sowing the seeds before the fire season even began and have used every blaze and even every death to push their policies.

The basis of their concern is not seriously disputed in public debate: that global warming will make bad fire conditions more common in many parts of Australia. But the thrust of their arguments, amplified by compliant media, is based on untruths: claims this fire season is our worst, accusations our government is not acting on climate, inferences our policies can alter global climate and, perhaps worst of all, implicit and false promises that climate policies can ameliorate the annual threat of bushfires.

To avoid sensible arguments about historical context, policy options and global impacts, the green-left media deliberately creates a false dichotomy.

They characterise the argument in Australia as one between climate change reality and climate change denial.

This jaundiced falsification is social media click-bait. On the BBC Atkins used some of my commentary to this end, running a clip of me saying the activists and politicians were using bushfires to advocate policies that “can and will do nothing ever to prevent horror bushfire conditions” in Australia.

Instead of making an argument against this incontestable statement — perhaps by trying to explain how Australia’s policies can change a climate that has produced bushfires for millennia — Atkins falsely insinuated I didn’t accept the science and gave us the intellectually lazy climate science versus denial and inaction case.

He then falsely suggested Australia was not involved in global efforts to lower emissions. This is the inane “white hats versus black hats” level at which media conduct this complex debate.

In another segment Atkins asked London-based Sydney Morning Herald journalist Latika Bourke whether it was “fair to say the very existence of climate change is still an active debate in Australia?”

“Yes,” replied Bourke, “it’s been a very ferocious debate in Australia for about the last decade.” She claimed this debate has split the two major parties; one side accepting science and backing emissions reduction, and the other arguing “climate change, if it is happening at all, is not the fault of human activity”.

This is a mischaracterisation of our political debate where the choice at the last election was between a Coalition promising to meet our Paris climate agreement targets of 26-28 per cent by 2030 and a Labor opposition promising to increase that target to 45 per cent. Neither the science nor the need for multilateral action are in dispute between our major parties, but rather the targets and methods of achieving them.

Bourke then went on to say there was no resolution to the debate, “except what we’re seeing this summer and that is a catastrophic weather event.” Atkins aired another interview with Bourke in which she said: “Australia’s well used to bushfires but this extremity, this intensity, this degree, Australia has not seen before.” Plain wrong.

She went on to say, perhaps second-guessing her own hyperbole: “And these are the worst in living memory.” But, again, this is just wrong. It is only 11 years since the fierce firestorms of Black Saturday in Victoria where hotter temperatures and stronger winds saw 173 lives and thousands of properties lost and, of course, anyone involved in 1983’s Ash Wednesday will not have forgotten those hellish conditions or their toll. If we study the historical reports we know maelstroms descended in 1967, 1939, 1851 and many other times in between.

It is unpleasant to do these comparisons between horrible events. But it is sadly necessary to counter a loose conspiracy of misinformation designed to convince everyone that we have created something new, something more horrible than anyone else has experienced before.

It is of a piece with official edicts by news organisations such as The Guardian to inflame climate coverage by talking of “crisis” and “emergency” instead of climate change. It smacks of fake news generated to pursue green- left political goals. And it is as much of a worry as the climate.

SOURCE 






Locals vent their fury as Australian flag is removed from a rural town on January 26 and replaced with an Aboriginal one instead

The Australian flag stands for ALL Australians. There is no warrant for the flag of a small minority to supplant it.

The Australian flag was omitted from Woolgoolga's community flagpole Sunday

A New South Wales town has been accused of being 'unAustralian' after officials omitted the Australian flag from display, flying an Aboriginal one in its place.

Residents of Woolgoolga, in the Mid North Coast, were left outraged on Sunday after they awoke to find the Australian flag was missing from the community flagpole.

Instead, the Indigenous flag had been flying high alongside the Southern Cross flag and three others below it, outside the city's Chamber of Commerce.

Although the flags on the pole are known to change regularly, many locals were particularly miffed officials would omit the Australian flag on the country's national day.

A number of residents took to social media to share their disappointment, while some even contacted their local radio station to complain.

One resident sparked on debate on Facebook after he claimed the move breached the 'ethics of our constitution.'

'This is Australia Day and all other flags must fly under the Australian flag,' he wrote, generating dozens of responses.

'Stupid people forgetting the real reason for Australia Day,' one man commented.

'This is disgusting, very un-Australian you should be ashamed of yourself,' another local said.

One man said he believed the move had been intentional to spark a debate. 'Too many people are deliberately trying to provoke division just so they can then argue that Australia Day is too divisive. This sort of stunt is going to do nothing for unity, and everything to incite extreme prejudices,' he said.

'It's Australia Day and it would be really nice if the Australian flag was the only one flying today...because it is about our country as a whole not divisions of it,' one woman argued.  

The Chamber said the idea to fly the Aboriginal flag this year came from a 'member of the community' who regularly looks after the flagpole, and flying the Australian flag under the Aboriginal flag would have violated protocol. 

'Protocol says that if another flag is at the top, the Australian flag cannot be flown. He has included an assortment of flags flying with it including TSI, the Southern Cross and Ruok flag', Lisa Nichols told Triple M.

Ms Nichols said the Australian flag was on display at the town's visitors information centre.

SOURCE 






Female cop quota under investigation

Standards watered down to recruit more women?

AN investigation into alleged female recruiting "irregularities" in the Queensland Police Service is under way, in a bombshell for the organisation which strived for gender equality.

The Courier-Mail has been told physical standards and psychological assessment aspects of the recruiting process are under investigation after the claims. The allegations are under-stood to relate to a period between 2016 and 2018, after the service introduced a 50-50 gender recruitment target.

The Crime and Corruption Commission and QPS are 'investigating the allegations.

To get into the service recruits undergo physical tests, psychological and medical assessments, pass cognitive and reasoning ability assessments and are interviewed by a panel of officers.

Among the physical standards required to enter the service, the QPS has a beep test with minimum entry and exit levels at the academy. When asked if irregularities had been discovered with the female recruiting process, a QPS spokesman confirmed a review into recruiting processes took place last year. "As a result, allegations of irregularities associated with some past police recruiting processes were identified," the spokesman said.

"These allegations are now subject to investigation by the Crime and Corruption Commission and QPS Ethical Standards Command "In the meantime, the QPS has put mechanisms in place to ensure confidence in more recent and ongoing recruiting processes."

In 2016, then-commissioner Ian Stewart told HR Sections of QPS to aim for a 50-50 recruitment target. At the start of 2017, the ratio of officers and recruits in the QPS was about 265-735. In September, 2017, Mr Stewart said it was becoming difficult to reach the 50-50 recruitment goal but ordered standards not be lowered. "We are not moving any standards. We know that we have large numbers Of female recruits that do meet that standard, so what we're trying to do is encourage more women to come in the front end so we have a larger pool," he said at the time.

Between the 2016-17 and 2019-20 financial years, 558 women and 653 men have been sworn in. Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers said the union had always insisted. on "clear, transparent, and merit-based recruit selection". "The best.people for the job. should always be chosen rather than people being chosen because Of quotas," he said. "As long as all recruits selected on merit meet the minimum standard and competency, a person's gender is irrelevant"

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 18 January, 2020

 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 January, 2020

The science behind climate change and its impact on bushfires (?)

I rather enjoyed this article, long-winded though it is.  Prof. Karoly is an old global warming warrior from way back so he has had a long time to perfect his arguments for global warming and, in the version of his talk below, he does present a much more detailed case than one usually encounters.

All of the assertions below are however unreferenced and most have been challenged many times.  And as is normal in Leftist writing, there is no mention of any of the facts which are contrary to his case.  The article leaves out almost all of the many facts which tend to contradict the global warming hypothesis.  Such argumentation is of course completely unscholarly and identifies the article as propaganda only.

Prof Karoly's scientific background does however show in a number of useful ways so it is a pity that such a long article will remain mostly unread -- as there are a number of basic scientific points below that Warmists would do well to note.

The one that stands out most below is his perfectly correct and perfectly basic point that global warming CANNOT explain Australia' drought or any other drought.  Anybody who has watched a kettle boil will know that heating water causes it to give off water vapour so warming the oceans will also give off more water vapour -- and that comes down again as rain.  So a warmer world would be a wetter world.  So, if anything, drought proves that global warming is NOT going on.

So in his words on the drought, Prof. Karoly contradicts the claims made by almost all Warmists.  There will be much reaching for indigestion remedies by almost all Warmists who read those of his words.

What Prof. Karoly leaves out:

It's hard to believe but in an article that is allegedly about bushfires, there is no mention of the biggest influence on the fires:  Fuel accumulation in the form of fallen branches and leaves.  Without fuel, there would be no fires. If it's not about global warming he doesn't want to know about it, apparently.

If only for the sake of argument, most climate skeptics are prepared to concede that atmospheric CO2 has SOME warming effect. The dispute is about its magnitude.  Is the warming effect large or is it utterly trivial?  The Warmists have little more than assertions for their claim that it is large.  There are, on the other hand, both theoretical and empirical reasons to say that the effect is trivial.

On the theoretical side, the fact that CO2 forms much less than one percent of the atmosphere should indicate that any effect from it will be trivial.  More importantly, however,  a heated atmospheric molecule will radiate heat in ALL directions, not just downwards towards the earth. And the higher up the molecule is, the less heat from it will hit the earth.  Rather than seeing heated CO2 molecules as a blanket or a greenhouse roof, a better analogy for their effect would be a bucket with a small hole in it.  Only what gets through the hole hits the earth.

But all theories must be tested against the facts so what are the facts?  The most basic fact is that over the last 150 years or so we have experienced only about one degree Celsius of warming.  Is that trivial?  If you walked from one room into another where the temperatures in the two rooms differed by only one degree you would not normally notice anything.  You would need an instrument to detect the difference.  So I think "trivial" is an excellent word for that difference.

But a much less impressionistic piece of evidence for the triviality of CO2 induced warming is also available.  If CO2 has the effect hypothesized and the effect is large, we should notice increased warming every time the CO2 levels rise.  But that is not remotely true.  Increases in CO2 mostly have no noticeable warming effect.  CO2 levels can shoot up with absolutely no discernable effect on global temperatures.

Perhaps the most striking example of that is the "grand hiatus". For 30 years between 1945 and 1975, CO2 levels leapt but global temperatures remained flat. See here.  How come?  CO2 molecules don't have a little computer inside them telling them to take a holiday from emitting heat.  They emit heat all the time. So if they were emitting heat from 1945 to 1975, that heat must have been tiny in amount, so tiny as to be undetectable.

Greenies say that "special factors" explain the failure of temperature to change in accordance with rising CO2 levels.  But what special factor could exactly cancel out the effect of CO2 for 30 years? It's an absurdity.

30 years of no effect would be notable in itself but 1945 is supposed to  be the year in which anthropogenic global warming began -- with all the postwar reconstruction.  The 1945 to 1975 period is a critical test of the global warming theory -- and it fails that test utterly.

So it takes only a few basic facts to show that Prof. Karoly's pontifications are a castle built on sand


Charis Chang reports:

When considering the science around climate change, one expert believes it’s useful to compare it to another famous hypothesis – the theory of gravity.

Not many people would think to cast doubt on the theory of gravity, and according to Professor David Karoly, who leads the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub in the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program at CSIRO, the evidence that human activity is causing global warming is so strong it is equal to this theory.

“The theory on the human impact on climate change is just as strong, or stronger, than the scientific basis for the theory of gravity,” Prof Karoly told news.com.au.

Prof Karoly said that there was also evidence climate change was a factor in recent devastating bushfires in Australia.

Prof Karoly will explain the science at a free public lecture as part of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute 2020 Summer School public lecture in Melbourne on Wednesday, January 29. His speech will also be streamed online.

When we talk about science, Prof Karoly believes it’s helpful to remember we are not talking about “beliefs”.

Science is in fact a process that tests a hypothesis to provide conclusions about the way nature works.

Not convinced? Here’s the science.

Some say the world’s climate has always changed and in the past there have been ice ages and warmer glacial periods, which is true.

The difference is whether humans have caused the changes.

We know that humans could not have had any influence on the past ice ages for example, because there were no humans on the planet.

So how do we know that the climate changes now are due to human activity?

Prof Karoly said there were two approaches.

The first approach involves examining “observational data”. If we want to identify long-term trends we need to look at data collected over a wide area and across at least 30 years.

To figure out why the Earth is warming, there are some logical factors to look at first.

The main things that impact the Earth’s climate are sunlight from the sun, how it is absorbed in the atmosphere and how energy is lost from Earth and sent into space.

One thing that can impact the amount of sunlight we get includes the amount of clouds, ice and snow because they all reflect sunlight, making it cooler.

However, greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere can also affect temperatures. These gases make the planet hotter because they absorb heat radiation from the Earth and prevent this from being released into space as quickly.

Greenhouse gases can include carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour. “When greenhouse gases increase, the surface temperature of the Earth increases,” Prof Karoly said.

So what does the data tell us about these factors?

‘SOMETHING WEIRD IS HAPPENING’

Analysis of air bubbles from ice cores trapped in ice in Greenland and Antarctica showed that over the last 10,000 years, carbon dioxide varied a small amount, hovering around 280 and 290 parts per million.

But if you look at the last 150 years, it’s a different story. Carbon dioxide now sits at 400 parts per million.

“This has increased by more than 40 per cent,” Prof Karoly said.

“It is higher than at any time in the last 10,000 years. In fact, it’s higher than any time in the last million years.”

“So that suggests … something weird is happening.”

Prof Karoly said you had to go back more than three million years to find a time when carbon dioxide was around 400 parts per million.

“Three million years ago when carbon dioxide was higher, temperatures were more than two degrees warmer and sea levels were more than 10 metres higher,” he said.

Humans were not around three million years ago so they can’t be blamed for the high amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

So what was cause of these higher levels of carbon dioxide?

Some experts have suggested the carbon dioxide was actually being released from the ocean.

“A warmer ocean can’t absorb as much carbon dioxide,” Prof Karoly said. “As it heats up, it can’t hold as much carbon and this is released into the atmosphere.”

However, the type of carbon dioxide the ocean releases is different to that released by burning fossil fuels and land clearing.

Prof Karoly said the carbon dioxide has a different chemical composition so scientists are able to distinguish between the two.

“Carbon dioxide released from the ocean doesn’t use up oxygen,” Prof Karoly said.

Over the last 40 years, scientists have been able to monitor the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and the fall in oxygen has exactly matched the increase in carbon dioxide that you would expect if it was coming from the burning of fossil fuels and decomposition of vegetation from land clearing.

“What we now know, is that the increase to carbon is not natural, it’s due to human activity, from the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing,” Prof Karoly said.

This is not just a theory, it is based on “observational evidence”, that is, scientists have data that shows the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming from fossil fuels and land clearing.

AND NIGHTS ARE GETTING HOTTER

We can also look at other observational data to help strengthen the theory.

If the Earth was warming up because of increasing sunlight, then you would expect temperatures during the day to increase and for it to be cooler at night (because there is no sun at night!).

However, what scientists found is that nights were actually warming up more so than days.

This points to greenhouse gases playing a role.

As noted above, greenhouse gases trap heat radiation from the Earth and stop it from being released into space as quickly.

This effect can be seen for example, on nights with more clouds, which don’t cool down as much as there is more water vapour in the atmosphere.

In contrast, deserts are more cool at night because there is not as much water vapour over these areas, and it’s a similar story in coastal areas.

So if nights are warming up more than days, it’s unlikely that the sun is playing a role in this, it’s more likely that greenhouse gases are trapping heat on Earth and pushing up temperatures.

Scientists have also looked at temperatures in the Earth’s stratosphere, which is the layer of the atmosphere from about 10km up.

The stratosphere warms because the ozone layer it contains absorbs the sun’s ultraviolent radiation.

If there was more sunlight, you would expect the upper atmosphere to warm up because it was absorbing more ultraviolet rays.

But if there was an increase in greenhouse gases then you would expect the stratosphere to be cooler because carbon dioxide is efficient, not only at absorbing heat radiation but also at releasing it into space, cooling it down.

“Observations have shown that the surface and lower atmosphere have warmed, and the upper atmosphere has cooled in the last 50 years — the entire time we’ve been monitoring it through balloons and other satellites,” Prof Karoly said.

“This pattern of temperature change has happened everywhere and cannot be explained by increasing sunlight,” he said. “And it’s been getting stronger, which is exactly what you would expect from increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

NOW ADD COMPUTERS TO THE EQUATION

The first approach to looking at climate change is “observational data” but you can also use complex mathematical models of the climate system.

Around the world, Prof Karoly said more than 50 complex climate models had been developed to test climate theories on a larger scale.

While some may question how scientists could simulate the climate when they can’t forecast the weather over long periods of time, Prof Karoly said it was because the climate models looked at levels of radiation, which determine long-term climate.

“Models solve physical equations for the absorption and transmission of radiation in the atmosphere, and for the motion of the air, and for the motions of the ocean,” he said.

These simulations have shown that without human influences there would not be any long-term warming trend.

Temperatures would have stayed pretty much the same with only two-tenths of a degree of warming.

Instead the world has warmed by 1.1 degrees and the warming over Australia has been even higher than the global average, at 1.5 degrees.

This is because land warms up faster than the ocean.

WHAT ABOUT THE BUSHFIRES?

So how does this relate to the catastrophic bushfires that have raged across Australia in recent months?

Higher mean temperatures give rise to a greater chance of heatwaves and hot extremes, Prof Karoly said.

“We have good observational data of the current summer and the last 50 years,” he said.

“There have been marked increases in heatwaves and hot days in all parts of Australia.”

Australia experienced its hottest and driest year on record in 2019 and December 2019 had a number of Australia’s hottest days ever recorded.

“We have also seen increases in sea levels, exactly what you would expect from climate change and the warming of ocean waters and melting of ice sheets and glaciers on land.”

When it comes to the intensity of bushfires, Prof Karoly said there are certain factors that were known to be important.

The McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index was developed to measure the degree of fire danger in Australian forests and the likelihood they will occur.

It combines factors including the temperature of air, wind speed, the dryness of the air (measured by relative humidity) and the dryness of the fuel and the ground (measured by rainfall over the previous month).

“So the combination of high temperatures, strong winds, low humidity and no rainfall leads to extreme fire danger,” Prof Karoly said.

These were exactly the conditions experienced in NSW and southern Queensland in September and October where there were record high temperatures and low humidity.

These conditions were also experienced in Canberra, coastal NSW and particularly East Gippsland in Victoria, which was why there was extreme fire danger in these areas.

The next question is whether climate change caused these conditions.

Prof Karoly says climate change has led to higher temperatures, as discussed above, but it’s unlikely it had a major role in the drought conditions.

He said if the rainfall in 2019 was related to climate change you would expect wetter conditions in northern Australia, not the record dry year experienced in 2019.

Climate change has also been linked with the long-term rainfall in the cool season in south-east Australia.

Prof Karoly believes the drought in 2019 may actually be due to “natural variations” and the “Indian Ocean Dipole”.

The IOD refers to the seesawing temperatures in the Indian Ocean, with colder waters closer to northern Australia and hotter waters closer to Africa.

There were also changes in wind patterns in the south of Australia and over Victoria and NSW, which led to stronger westerly winds that reduced the rainfall over the NSW coast and East Gippsland, where the worst fires and conditions have been.

Prof Karoly believes it was the stronger westerly winds and the Indian Ocean Dipole that ramped up the fire intensity, however, this was combined with the extreme temperatures caused by climate change, sparking Australia’s deadly fire season.

“So it was a combination of natural climate variability and climate change,” he said.

SOURCE 






Vital hazard reduction burns were stopped before Australia's deadly bushfire crisis due to residents complaining about poor air quality

Firefighters have revealed they were forced to cancel or delay hazard reduction burns in critical areas due to residents complaining about the smoke.

During the winter and autumn months the NSW Rural Fire Service deliberately burns parts of the bush to reduce the fuel load ahead of summer.

But several burns were stopped or cut short to keep air quality levels from deteriorating.

The elderly, infants and those with asthma often struggle with the thick smoke from the fires.

NSW RFS spokesman Inspector Ben Shepherd told the Daily Telegraph that public health was an important consideration.

'We speak with National Parks weekly during the hazard reduction season about the burns planned and the impact of smoke,' Mr Shepherd said.

'We look to see if we can change the lighting pattern to reduce the smoke impact.

Mr Shepherd said unpredictable weather can make directing the smoke very challenging.

Air quality issues played a key role in reducing the size of a burnoff in Bowen Mountain, an hour west of Sydney, which later lost several homes to the roaring Grose Valley fire.

More burns were reduced for air quality reasons in Putty, an area near Gospers Mountain which was consumed by a 'mega blaze' that went on to burn an area seven times the size of Singapore.

Other burns at Wiseman's Ferry, Ku-ring-gai Chase, Dural, Pennant Hills and Hawkesbury were postponed.

It comes after revelations that a Independent Hazard Reduction Audit Panel report recommended the government increase hazard reduction burning in 2013.

The report said that while it was not a solution, hazard reduction would be an critical tool in fighting bushfires going forward.

'Increases in fuel reduction will be required to counteract increasing risk that is likely to arise from climate change,' it said.

SOURCE 







Why I’m looking forward to celebrating Australia Day

Some Australians are tired of the constant protests that surround Australia Day. Some just want to celebrate their country and not be shamed for it.


Corrine Barraclough

When I first arrived in Australia 10 years ago, I’d never heard of Australia Day.

There was a lot of chatter in the office about what everyone was up to, talk of family gatherings, BBQs, fireworks, parties, yummy food and a real sense of pride in country.

We don’t have an “England Day”. There is no day when everyone comes together, waves flags and feels proud (that’s not connected to the royals).

Quite simply, Australia Day is the official national day of Australia. I loved the simplicity of that.

Australia Day is for all Australians; no matter where we’re originally from and it felt overwhelmingly inclusive.

I find it incredibly sad that now, years down the track, debate around our special, national day only seems to grow increasingly negative as time ticks by.

Anyone who calls it “Invasion Day” is looking to promote disunity. Anyone who calls it “Survival Day” is missing out on the warmth this day offers. There’s even talk about “paying rent” for stolen land.

There doesn’t need to be any controversy, angry hash tags or vitriol spat on social media. It’s meant to be a day of solidarity, peace, celebration and pride.

Australia Day is, of course, each year on 26 January and celebrates the arrival of the First Fleet of British on Australian soil.

Australia was not invaded – it was settled. There was no warfare, no organised military resistance or conflict. The First Fleet came here with convicts in chains; it was not an invasion force. Certainly, starting a new chapter doesn’t mean everything that’s gone before is forgotten.

There are records of celebrating Australia Day dating back to 1808.

Now, it’s a public holiday across all states and territories.

Doesn’t everyone love a public holiday? Doesn’t everyone look forward to an extra day off work?

And yet, here we are in 2020, and furious protesters are waiting in the wings, ready to preach their religion of division.

If you’re looking to find evidence of “oppression”, you will always be able to find it.

If you’re looking for opportunities to divide rather than bring people together, you will always find them.

If you’re seeking to shout about “shame”, you should take off your blinkers.

Australia is a wonderful country filled with caring, thoughtful, compassionate people. Just look at the incredible response to the bushfire crisis for proof of that.

This is not a racist country – and no one should feel “shame” for looking forward to celebrating this weekend.

This year, more than ever, we should be coming together.

Much as activists like to screech otherwise, the vast majority of people want to keep Australia Day on January 26 – and they want to celebrate freely.

A new poll from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) found that 75 per cent of Australians support Australia Day on January 26.

This is a huge number, especially considering the constant, monotonous and vocal efforts of the political left and pockets of mainstream media to oppose our national day.

The “woke” bullies with an agenda of bitterness have failed to divide us; that makes me even more proud. Perhaps I shall wave two flags.

“Mainstream Australians are fundamentally optimistic and positive about Australia and its values,” said IPA Foundations of Western Civilisation Program director Dr Bella d’Abrera.

The survey found 88 per cent of people were “proud to be an Australian”, with only 3 per cent disagreeing.

Only 10 per cent of Australians think the date should be changed. They will, no doubt, be the ones covered in glue this weekend.

On Sunday there are protests planned for “Invasion Day 2020” across the country, including Parliament House in Melbourne.

Perhaps we may see some familiar faces from other protests this year and some of the same loudmouths gluing themselves to the road in protest.

Its just noise, whether they’re screaming about “climate justice” or “invasion justice”.

People are sick of these disrupters.

The police should not be battling to maintain law and order against feral left-wing agitators. Their aim is to “burn down Australia”.

We’re in the middle of a bushfire crisis for god’s sake; no wonder most people aren’t on-board with the madness.

No, it doesn’t make me “selfish” for celebrating.

Nor does it make me “insecure”.

No, I’m not “ashamed”.

No, I don’t want to talk about “enslavement”.

And no, caring about Australia Day does not mean that I don’t care about the future of Aboriginal communities. Far from it.

I repeat: The majority of mainstream Australians are proud, they’ll be celebrating and if you’re not part of that, you’re simply a tiny, resentful fringe minority.

SOURCE 






How 'Happy Australia Day' became an offensive term

Wishing somebody a 'Happy Australia Day' could be determined as offensive, according to advocates in the indigenous community.

Kado Muir, who is a leading advocate for Aboriginal culture, heritage and awareness said the phrase was an 'ignorant gesture', news.com.au reported in 2019. He said the annual debate, which has been reignited in 2020, brings sadness to his heart.

'This issue is extremely divisive and sensitive to all Australians,' Mr Muir said. 'I know White Australia is guilty and fragile. I know Black Australia is broken and angry.'

He called on Australians to rise above the 'base destructive emotions' in the debate and instead shift focus onto the aspects that unite the country.

Leading Aboriginal campaigner Cheree Toka said many people traded in the term 'Australia Day' for 'Survival Day'. She said the national day of commemoration on January 26 was a sad day for First Nations people.

She said she saw the raising of the Australian flag as the moment Aboriginal history and culture was threatened.

The 28-year-old has been pushing for the Aboriginal flag to be flown atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge all year round.

As it stands, the flag is flown for 18 days a year, of which one of those days is on Australia Day.

Despite the 105,000-strong Change.org petition to raise the flag permanently, Premier of NSW Gladys Berejiklian has stood firmly against pressure.

Thousands of Australians are expected to protest the national holiday as Australia Day celebrations kick off today.

January 26 marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the 'First Fleet' to Sydney Cove, carrying mainly convicts and troops from Britain.

For many indigenous Australians, who trace their lineage on the continent back 50,000 years, it is 'Invasion Day', the start of Britain's colonisation of Aboriginal lands and their brutal subjugation.

'Celebrating Australia Day on January 26th is offensive,' said Joe Williams, a mental health worker and former professional rugby league player. 'To celebrate an invasion which has seen our people dispossessed, displaced and oppressed for some 230 years, is plain offensive,' he told Reuters.

Australia's 700,000 or so indigenous people track near the bottom of its 25 million citizens in almost every economic and social indicator.

While opinion polls suggest up to half the country supports changing Australia Day, the conservative government is under pressure to legally entrench Jan. 26 as a national holiday.

'We should keep the 26th of January as a special day in our calendar,' said Nick Folkes, a painter from Sydney. 'It means respect and acknowledgement of the sacrifices made by explorers, settlers, our convicts,' he added.

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 January, 2020

The grim reality of gender-neutral toilets: Women are forced to use filthy bathrooms soaked in urine and covered in pubic hair at one of Australia's busiest train stations

Comment from an experienced male social worker:

I have worked in several establishments when the toilets were being converted to unisex, or what now gets termed "gender neutral". In each case, it was feminist women who were pushing for unisex or gender neutral toilets.

None of the men wanted them. After the toilets were made unisex, most men would walk to the basement or the carpark to use the last remaining male toilet. Some men would drive home at lunchtime to use their own toilet.

Most men don't feel comfortable (what a woman would call safe) using toilets with women in them. Men feel vulnerable because we don't want to be accused of molesting a woman.

Also, we men like to stand to pee. And making toilets unisex means the urinals are removed and men are forced to pee in the toilet bowls, and then the same feminists who wanted the unisex toilets start demanding men should sit sown to pee so they don't pee on the seat or floor. They also reprimand any man who does not shut the cubicle door behind him when he pees.

One day, during a shift at the hospital where I worked, the only day that I went in the toilet after it was made unisex, I went in and a female nurse screamed at me to "Get out of here!".

I ran out in a hurry indeed, into the corridor to see people looking at me with horror. It was a most uncomfortable feeling that did not want to experience again.

But I did experience something similar again, recently at a different hospital where I am now stationed. When coming out of the unisex toilet a female nurse stopped me and sternly told me not to use that toilet again. The toilet door had both male and female silhouette signs on it, but I did not argue with the nurse.

As a man who has worked in many female dominated workplaces, I know better than to argue with a feminist without reliable witnesses present. In my observations, with few exceptions, they will accuse the men they conflict with of anger, threatening, intimidation, violence or sexual harassment.

So I simply ignored her and walked on. I have not used that toilet since, though. It did not shake me up as the first time did, but it was still unpleasant.

Good men do not want unisex or gender neutral toilets. And good women do not want them either. Only feminists want them. And feminists do not want them out of any sense of charity or helpfulness towards others, but only for the sense of power over men that public and workplace unisex toilets give to feminists.

Women in Sydney are being forced to use urine-soaked toilets after Wynyard train station introduced unisex cubicles.

Despite being cleaned every hour, the public toilets are often left in a filthy state by commuters, with toilet paper littering the floor. Pictures show the bathrooms covered in urine, toilet roll and even body hair after being used by thousands of commuters every day.

Not accessible unless the person taps their Opal card or train ticket, the two rows of toilets are through the ticket barriers on the concourse in Sydney's CBD.

And there is no choice but to use a single-sex cubicle, as all the toilets are unisex.

One commuter told Daily Mail Australia the toilets often 'stank'.  'They're not great, but how good are any train station toilets?' she said. 'Though they might be a bit cleaner if there were some just for women.' Another said it was 'a bit gross'.

Unisex toilets have become a hot topic of debate across Australia, as gender diversity activists campaign for them to become commonplace.

According to a survey carried out by Sydney officials for its Public Toilet Strategy report, 75 per cent of people - the majority women - preferred to have single-sex facilities.

Of those who preferred single sex toilets, 32 per cent said it was for privacy and 29 per cent stated hygiene. A further 19 per cent they felt safer in a single sex bathroom. 

Despite this, the 2014 policy said all public toilets 'where modification is not possible' should be replaced with compliant unisex automated public toilets. 

It comes after the University of Technology Sydney introduced 'all-gender' bathrooms. The university, based in Ultimo, introduced the gender diversity policy to 'make students feel safe and welcome on campus'. 

One of the students who campaigned for the new bathrooms said they had experienced harassment and intimidation in single sex toilets.  'What motivated me to be involved in this campaign is that I’m a non-binary student who has been harassed in bathrooms in the past, and I experience social dysphoria as well as other types,' the student told news.com.au. 'Gender neutral bathrooms are something that have helped with reducing my dysphoria and anxiety about being verbally abused in a bathroom setting.'

In 2018, a NSW council is replaced its unisex toilet signs because they were deemed offensive.

Hawkesbury City Council, in Sydney's north-west, changed four signs after meeting two campaign groups. The 'unisex' signs were replaced with ones saying they were toilets for 'all genders'. 

This is because not all people identify is either male or female, meaning that 'unisex' wouldn't apply to them, as they are not either gender.

SOURCE  






Inner-city council to spends $20,000 of ratepayers' money on one-hour 'mourning ceremony' on Australia Day

The Left love to racialize everything

Inner-city ratepayers will spend as much as $20,000 on an Australia Day 'mourning' ceremony to recognise how colonisation has negatively affected indigenous people.

The ceremony at Alfred Square in Melbourne's St Kilda will run for an hour from 6am on Sunday and will be held in collaboration with the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council.

City of Port Phillip council will then at 11am hold a citizenship ceremony, which officials said is 'presented in harmony' with the mourning event.

The idea for the early morning reflection ceremony was promoted in October as a 'morning of mourning' by the council's mayor Dick Gross. 'There is no doubt that elements of Australia Day are controversial,' he said. 'The First Nations paid an undeniable price from European 'settlement'and we need to acknowledge this.'

The council will spend $20,000 on proceedings, and Australia Day Council funds have also been committed towards the event.

Funds from the Australia Day Council will be used for 'cultural delivery aspects', the Herald Sun reported.

Whittlesea Council, in Melbourne's north, will also hold a minute's silence and an official 'mourning ceremony' to pay respect to the Stolen Generations on Australia Day.

Guest speakers will be required to acknowledge 'past injustices in our nation's history'.

It comes after Darebin and Yarra councils in Melbourne were both stripped of their right to hold citizenship ceremonies in 2017 after announcing they were scrapping Australia Day celebrations.

A survey from The Institute of Public Affairs earlier this week revealed Australia Day celebrations on January 26 are wanted by more than 70 per cent of Australians.

SOURCE  






The left media’s different treatment of two very different prime ministers

It is a rare occasion when comments made by two former Australian prime ministers make news on the same day, especially when both are former Liberal Party leaders. The circumstance provides a case study on how the media reports politics.

On Thursday Imogen Crump, editor of the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit research news publication, was the guest commentator on influential ABC television program News Breakfast. She led the discussion on what was making news in newspapers and online. Co-presenters were Madeleine Morris and Paul Kennedy.

It was a busy media morning. News had recently broken about Malcolm Turnbull’s interview on BBC Two’s Newsnight on Tuesday (London time). And The Australian was running an opinion piece by Tony Abbott titled “Lives Matter, Not Political Points”.

Turnbull used the occasion to criticise his successor, Scott Morrison, along with Abbott and US President Donald Trump. Turnbull accused Morrison of downplaying the influence of global warming on bushfires which he declared “is just nonsense from a scientific point of view”. Turnbull also took a swipe at Morrison’s leadership abilities.

Neither Crump nor the co-presenters made any criticism of Turnbull’s intervention in the public debate, although Crump did concede that “harsh words” were spoken. However, Morris did declare that Turnbull’s (alleged) comment, as reported by Crump, that Morrison “is probably the most prominent climate denier in Australian politics” was “quite a big call”. It certainly was. In fact, Turnbull’s put-down was directed at Abbott.

Then Crump moved her attention to Abbott’s article stating that, despite the headline, the former prime minister “does go on to make political points”. In fact, Abbott did not refer to the term “political points” in his article and the heading was not written by him. The piece was essentially a report from the bushfire front, narrating the author’s experiences as a volunteer in the Davidson Rural Fire Brigade in NSW.

According to Crump, Abbott made a political point when discussing his role as a volunteer firefighter. She also declared that it was a political point to state that Australia was meeting its Paris Agreement emission targets.

The same comment was made about Abbott’s decision to quote from a recent speech by Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of NSW, to the effect that there was no link between climate change and drought.

Crump described Abbott’s straightforward statements as “quite extreme language from a former prime minister” — a significant exaggeration.

Kennedy and Morris concurred that Abbott had made political points. Yet no such criticism was made of Turnbull’s at times explosive BBC interview.

In fact, Turnbull has changed his position on the causal link between climate change and bushfires. At a media conference in Bega on March 19, 2018, the then prime minister said it was wrong “to attribute any particular event, whether it’s a flood or fire or drought or a storm, to climate change”. This statement was made in the aftermath of devastating bushfires that had destroyed parts of the seaside town of Tathra on the NSW south coast. Now Turnbull is accusing Morrison of downplaying the influence of climate change on bushfires.

It came as no surprise that the likes of Crump, Morris and Kennedy seemed to welcome Turnbull’s contribution to the climate debate. That’s invariably going to happen when two ABC presenters interview the editor of a university publication about climate, bushfires and all that.

The ABC is a conservative-free zone, without a conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its prominent TV, radio or online outlets. And universities are no longer (if they ever were) the repository of open discussion with respect to many contemporary matters. Public broadcasters and tertiary institutions are bastions of left-of-centre thought, and when their personnel get together they tend to agree with one another.

Lara Logan, a former US CBS 60 Minutes correspondent, put it well when talking to Fox News Media Buzz presenter Howard Kurtz on Sunday (New York time). She grew up in a left-liberal (in the American sense of the term) environment “believing that we were all right … we all agreed with each other”.

According to Logan, many journalists are “not aware of our own bias because I never worked in a newsroom where people were not liberal and where people were not Democratic (Party supporters).” She agreed with Kurtz that a certain groupthink was at work and added: “Most journalists are liberal. That doesn’t mean you’re not capable of being objective, it just means you might not be aware of the extent of your own bias.”

Logan’s comments came after MSNBC presenter Lawrence O’Donnell declared recently that he did not interview Trump supporters because anyone who supported the President was a liar and “we don’t bring on liars”. Lawrence is a former Democratic Party staff member.

In view of the fact Australia produces 1.3 percent of global carbon emissions and cannot do anything to reduce global warming on its own, it should be possible to have a considered discussion about how best to mitigate bushfire risk. But this is not the case. Just as it was not possible for News Breakfast to objectively assess the recent comments of both Turnbull and Abbott.

It was much the same on Thursday when Nine Entertainment newspapers’ Latika Bourke reported from London that “Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest has repeated his unsubstantiated claim that the bushfires are primarily caused by fuel loads and arson”. What’s wrong with the sentence is the insertion of the word unsubstantiated. This is journalistic opinion.

Forrest told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour he had a PhD in marine ecology. He said carbon was “partially responsible for the slowly warming planet which has an impact on fires”. But he believes more scientific research needs to be done on the issue. This is a reasonable proposition by a successful business figure who understands the importance of mining and the tragedy of bushfires. But Bourke felt incapable of reporting his position without stating her view that Forrest’s position was “unsubstantiated”. Just as Crump and her presenters felt the need to distance themselves from Abbott.

SOURCE  






Bushfires: Land-clearing laws blamed for Kangaroo Island fires

Native vegetation laws that prevent farmers from clearing land and the extent and adequacy of controlled winter burns will form a key part of a major South Australian government inquiry into the summer bushfire crisis.

Premier Steven Marshall’s commitment comes as the mayor of fire-ravaged Kangaroo Island, former Liberal MP Michael Pengilly, lashed out at the “idiocy” of the state’s Native Vegetation Act, saying the destruction of more than half the island this month “proves the old adage ‘burn or be burned’”.

“We used to be able to burn to protect ourselves and regenerate the native vegetation, and that’s what has gone,” Mr Pengilly said.

“That’s the ridiculous part. We have to have common sense across the country. What has been put in place, particularly in SA through the Native Vegetation Act, has just allowed everything to get out of control.

“We have massive loads of fuel that haven’t been touched. It is an offence for a farmer to burn off a little patch of scrub and try to keep something in the back pocket for when there is a proper fire.

“And now it’s gone, the whole bloody lot. It’s like we have been sitting on dynamite. I am not saying anything would have stopped that fire but the fuel load made it worse. The idiocy of the Native Vegetation Act is that it has stopped any serious kind of control for four decades. And today, well, here we are.”

The Weekend Australian travelled to Kangaroo Island this week and also visited the fire-affected Adelaide Hills wine region with Mr Marshall, who confirmed that issues relating to land clearing and burn-offs had been raised with him by many affected landowners.

“There obviously has to be a huge review into every aspect of the bushfires,” Mr Marshall said.

“We will be reviewing not only all of our fires here in SA but taking note of the reviews that are done interstate. If we can learn to be more ­resilient in the face of bushfires that’s precisely what we will do. There is plenty of time for that ­review and it will be done fully.

“All of the prescribed burns and cold burns that were in the schedule on Kangaroo Island were completed ahead of the fires.

“Whether they were adequate is something that will be part of the report. We will go back and look at whether the regime we had in place was enough.”

Mr Marshall said he understood the anxieties of farmers over land clearing but also noted that the January fire that emerged from the Flinders Chase National Park and tore east across the island was of a magnitude the island had never experienced.

He said he had been told by the Country Fire Service that in some cases the fire was spotting 2km to 5km ahead of the front, meaning even a radical increase in land clearing may not have stopped the inferno from spreading.

“This was different from the 2007 fires on KI which were a slow burn,” he said. “I’m not sure what would have helped on January 3. It was absolutely catastrophic.”

The Premier appointed himself Tourism Minister this month to ­elevate the status of the portfolio as it is battered by cancellations and in some areas closures of attractions and the loss of infrastructure.

This week he launched the #bookthemout campaign urging Australians to visit Kangaroo ­Island and the Adelaide Hills.

“We are really proud that we were the first to get on the front foot with this type of campaign,” he said. “Tourism operators have been doing it extraordinarily tough as a result of cancellations and it is ­important that we tell the story … that places like Kangaroo Island and the Adelaide Hills need all the support they can get.”

SOURCE  






Jobs surge: workforce on record growth run

As usual, conservative government is good for jobs

An unexpected employment ­bonanza has lifted the share of working-age people who have jobs to a record 74.5 per cent, reducing the likelihood of immediate ­emergency cuts in interest rates and putting the government on track to achieve its workforce ­targets by 2024.

Treasury analysis obtained by The Weekend Australian shows the 74.5 per cent record reached in the December employment data is above the 20-year average share of about 72 per cent of people aged 15 to 64 in work.

Josh Frydenberg seized on the jobs boom as evidence the economy was strong and “resilient”, saying it “made a mockery of the doomsayers in the Labor Party”.

“Unemployment today is at 5.1 per cent compared to 5.7 per cent when the Coalition came to office and employment growth is more than double the OECD average and three times what it was under Labor,” the Treasurer said.

The stronger jobs growth follows a rebound in retail spending and house prices. After a series of weak readings, retail spending jumped 0.9 per cent in November from a month earlier, the largest increase since mid-2017.

Following cuts to the cash rate last year, house prices have begun rising strongly in capital cities and home loan approvals have started to rise, including for first-home buyers, who made up more than a third of approvals in November.

By dollar value, approvals rose 1.6 per cent in November, the ­latest month for which data was available, and were up 10 per cent over the year

The Morrison government struggled to reverse declines in business and consumer con­fidence over 2019, amid news of weak economic growth, sluggish retail sales and concerns about the trade war between the US and China. Westpac’s closely watched monthly confidence index fell by 1.8 per cent in January to 93.4, indicating more respondents were pessimistic than optimistic.

The stronger than expected jobs figures for December, released this week, show the share of women in work has also reached a record. In unadjusted terms, the participation rate for women rose to 61.7 per cent in ­December, the highest recorded.

The figures put the government’s target of 1.25 million new jobs by the end of 2024 within reach. Annual jobs growth of 2.1 per cent is tracking above the 1.9 per cent required to meet the target.

The jobs data will be watched closely by the Reserve Bank, which is due to meet on February 4 and must weigh its employment targets with the impact of the bushfire crisis that has wiped billions from economic activity and hit agriculture and tourism.

The 5.1 per cent December unemployment figure represented a 0.2-point fall from 5.3 per cent in October, prompting market economists to revise down the chances of a cut in the official interest rate by the Reserve Bank.

“Despite domestic and international challenges, the Australian economy remains resilient as a result of the government’s ­economic plan,” Mr Frydenberg said on Friday.

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





24 January, 2020

Fuel reduction, a contrary view

Every official enquiry into the causes of Australia's big bushfires has concluded that more off-season preventive burns are needed to prevent a recurrence of such fires.  Greenies worldwide however have a long history of obstructing such burns.

The far-Left ""New Matilda" has found a couple of scientists who defend the Greenie actions. They say that preventive burns are ineffective.  I excerpt their argument below.  They say that most preventive burns just consume the ground cover, leaving the tops of the trees intact.  And the tops of the trees are plenty to support a big bushfire.

So what do they conclude from that?  They conclude that we are always going to have big bushfires so we had better get used to it.

That is however a very strange conclusion. It is both a non sequitur and a counsel of despair.

If what they say is generally true, I would have thought the obvious conclusion to be that preventive burns have to be more thorough.  If wildfires burn the tops of the trees then preventive burns have to do that too.  Obviously, the bigger the preventive burn the riskier it is going to be but big efforts at containment should be possible. 

A two-step procedure may be needed.  First burn off the ground  cover then attack the top cover.  That would surely halve the risk.

But it is all theory.  In most locations getting any sort of preventive burn done seems to be near impossible.  The inertia of the State government fire authorities seems set to ensure that we will continue to have big fires for many years to come.


Dr Byron Lamont a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Plant Ecology with Curtin University, and Adjunct Research Fellow Dr Tianhua He explain:

The knee-jerk response to the devastating wildfires that have raged in Australia this summer has been for some to demand a more intensive program of prescribed/controlled burning before summer begins. But what are they and do they even work?

Prescribed burns are fires created by fire management authorities to reduce fuel in an attempt to stop the advance of future possible wildfires.

Unfortunately, areas that recently received a prescribed burn have offered little resistance to the advance of current wildfires. The fires have just passed straight through them. But why?

Current practices of prescribed fires essentially burn the ground flora, the shrubs, herbs, and creepers. At most, heat from the ground might scorch the upper canopy, and they tend to be patchy. These are called surface fires.

But wildfires burn everything. They create their own inferno.

Their greatest heat is produced from fuel in the tree canopy. The convective currents created by the firestorm spray embers up to kilometres from the fire front – they simply drop onto or over areas that have received prescribed burns.

These are called crown fires.

The aim of fire managers is to avoid crown fires during prescribed burning for fear that the fire gets out of control and will go far beyond the area intended to be burnt.

Controlled fires are only meant to stop the odd cigarette thrown out of a car window from starting a fire, or lightning strikes igniting the ground flora. They may not even achieve those goals, because scorching the trees above can lead to considerable leaf drop and build-up of litter that increases flammability and deters germination and seedling establishment.

Nature conservation was never one of its overt goals, though research by these same fire management authorities claims that no harm is done. And because they always fall behind in their prescribed burning program, independent ecologists are usually satisfied that species diversity does not appear to be harmed.

The only effective deterrent is areas that have recently experienced a wildfire, as no combustible fuel remains. This inhibitory effect might last for five or so years when the vegetation can carry a fire again.

Ironically, the Australian flora has experienced wildfires of the current type for many millions of years.

It is adapted to wildfires, not prescribed burns.

Thus all eucalypts, paperbarks, she-oaks, and banksias release their seeds only when their canopies are burnt and there is massive seedling recruitment in the next wet season that ensures the vegetation recovers.

Ultimately, we are guests in the world’s most flammable continent and have to learn to live with that fact. The Aboriginal inhabitants learned to but we have not.

SOURCE  





How a tiny group of Greenie protesters managed to stop backburning in East Gippsland over worries baby birds would die - before fires ravaged the area killing four people and forcing mass evacuations from the beach



Greenies fighting to save baby birds blocked vital hazard reduction burns in a tiny Victorian town two months before residents had to be evacuated as a deadly bushfire closed in.

Holding placards that read 'be firefighters not firelighters' and 'spring burns kill baby birds', the protesters refused to leave the planned burn area in Nowa Nowa, Victoria in September.

Firefighters were forced to abandon what they considered a necessary step in bushfire mitigation before the government reduced the planned burn area by more than 97 per cent to appease activists.

The backdown has played out in similar scenes across the country with devastating consequences as hazard reduction burning drops to dangerous levels.

'Burning in spring is the worst time because the animals are breeding and trees are flowering and it is still so dry,' Mary from Nowa Nowa told her local ABC outlet during the protest.

'The Department of Environment, Land and Water and Planning (DELWP) is dividing the community because they are telling us this has to be done to save our lives but in fact they're just destroying the environment.'

The department scaled back the planned burn from 370 hectares to just nine in what would prove a disastrous move as Australia entered a summer of disaster.

Just two months later, the town's 200 residents would have to be urgently evacuated as the East Gippsland bushfire - which killed four people, destroyed 340 homes and burnt 1 million hectares - raged. The insurance bill from the Gippsland area alone is expected to surpass $100 million.

The ABC has since blurred the faces of the activists to protect their identities, having become a target for trolls in the wake of the East Gippsland fires. 

But also coming under fire online was the Victorian government and its agencies for bowing to the wishes of Greens and reducing its planned burns in the Nowa Nowa area by roughly 97.5 per cent.

A Royal Commission into the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires found that 385,000 hectares of hazard reduction needed to be carried out annually across the state.

But DELWP's annual reports reveal only one-third of that goal was accomplished in 2018/19, with 130,000ha burned.

SOURCE  






Davos 2020: Mathias Cormann defends Australia on climate action and coal

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has fiercely defended both Australia’s climate action record and its coal industry in front of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Australia’s bushfires, the Finance Minister fought off suggestions from Australian artist Lynette Wallworth and a retired firefighter that the government was not taking climate change seriously enough.

Senator Cormann’s defence of the Morrison Government’s commitment to action came hours after US President Donald Trump told Davos not to listen to “prophets of doom.”

“Australia absolutely does its bit,” the Finance Minister said in Switzerland. “The proposition that is circulated by some, that we are not committed to effective action on climate change, is false. “It’s an assertion that suits the narrative of some commentators, but it’s not accurate.”

Scott Morrison has pledged to focus more on climate change adaptation and resilience, but will not shift to more radical emission reductions targets or policies like a price on carbon.

In the wake of the bushfires crisis, the Prime Minister criticised the fact there were clear rules and transparency arrangements for reporting on emissions but not on mitigation measures.

He highlighted hazard-reduction burns, landclearing laws and management of native vegetation and national parks as critical state issues that had to be scrutinised.

Mr Morrison’s mantra on climate change was repeated by Senator Cormann in Switzerland, who also repeated Mr Morrison’s recent comments that hazard reduction is also a highly important focus on fighting future bushfires.

Senator Cormann – who has been meeting with world political and business leaders as Australia’s most senior representative at Davos – also defended Australia’s coal industry and said not every coal mine was “bad for the environment.”

“There is a global demand for coal, and if it’s not met by cleaner Australian coal it will be met by comparatively dirtier coal from other sources and the world environment will be worse off,” he said.

“Not every coal mine is a bad thing for the environment. When you have better quality coal compared to the alternative options that are available, you actually might be able to help the transition and provide better outcomes.”

Senator Cormann also stressed the huge size of the Australian continent and its history of extreme weather events in any global discussion of the bushfires.

“Yes, climate change is making things worse … But we have also got to keep it in perspective. In a sense, Australia has always been a country that has suffered extreme weather events,” he said.

SOURCE  






Malcolm Turnbull unloads on Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party that dumped him as PM in extraordinary interview about the bushfire crisis and climate change

He's just a miserable ghost, a big ego and a sore loser

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has slammed Scott Morrison, saying he failed to show leadership during the bushfire crisis.

Mr Turnbull said the prime minister misled Australians by downplaying the influence of global warming and climate change.

'Everybody knew we were in a very dry time and as a consequence the fire season was likely to be very bad,' he told the BBC.

'So rather than doing what a leader should do and preparing people for that, he downplayed it and then, of course, chose to go away on holiday in Hawaii.

'At the peak of the crisis? I just can't explain any of that. It's just not consistent with the way in which a prime minister would or should act.'

Mr Turnbull, who was ousted from leadership and replaced by Mr Morrison in 2018, said he could not explain the current Liberal leader's behaviour.

Despite working closely with Mr Morrison and knowing him for 20 years, he said he 'did not know why Scott Morrison has acted the way he has'.

'I can't explain why he didn't meet the former fire commissioners who wanted to see him in March last year to talk about the gravity of the threat,' he said.

Mr Morrison has come under heavy criticism over the past month for his handling of Australia's unprecedented bushfire season, which have killed almost 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

He faced criticism for not acting quick enough to bolster the nation's firefighting capabilities, and for going on holiday to Hawaii during the crisis.

The disaster has bolstered the climate change debate and the government has been criticised for not taking more action. 

Mr Morrison acknowledged that summers are 'longer drier and hotter' than ever before but insisted he was taking action on climate change.

'We will beat the Kyoto targets and meet and beat the Paris agreements... We will reduce our carbon emissions per capita by half between now and 2030,' he said.

SOURCE  





Bushfires: Malcolm Turnbull has exposed the opportunism and inconsistency of climate crusaders

He has done a backflip on the role of climate in the fires

We ought to be thankful for Malcolm Turnbull’s intervention. All summer the green Left have been shamelessly trying to use the trauma and tragedy of another deadly Australian bushfire season to promote their political and ideological goals on climate policy.

Undeterred by facts, history, context or decency they have attempted to capitalise on every burned building, every horrible death, as an excuse to promote their utopian goal of a carbon price and the forced closure of fossil fuel industries that would, they suggest, render horrific bushfires a thing of the past.

If you don’t think it has been as shameless as that just look at the twitter feeds of people like Green Leader Richard Di Natale. When firefighters were killed just two days before Christmas he tweeted: “We grieve with those who have lost loved ones and homes in this latest tragedy. This is what a climate crisis looks like.”

More to the point, this is what ghoulish and cynical politics looks like.

There must be room for a sober and informed discussion about the relatively marginal future impacts of climate change on the prevalence of high fire risk weather conditions — but the rush to exploit tragedy for the climate alarmism cause, fanned by a largely compliant media, has been sickening.

What does this have to do with former prime minister Turnbull, who once suggested former leaders should not hang around like “miserable ghosts” but now seems intent on haunting Scott Morrison like Banquo? Well, Turnbull has accidentally belled the cat, he has exposed for all to see the opportunism and inconsistency of the climate crusaders.

If any of this is about science, then it is political science that is mainly at play. And not political science of the high-minded variety but of the personal and vengeful kind.

Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership in opposition (when I worked for him) and then again as prime minister — both times because he was trying to do a bipartisan deal with Labor on climate policy. Climate policy is his bete noire and it seems there are only two ways to rationalise what has transpired for him; either he has been so wrong on the politics for so long that he has allowed it to destroy his political ambitions twice, or most everyone else in his party (and the broader electorate) is wrong and have failed to recognise the wisdom of his national climate leadership.

Guess which version he subscribes to.

And so it is that this summer, while former prime minister Tony Abbott has been at the frontline of fires all over NSW as a volunteer firefighter and the current Prime Minister has been calling in the army reserves to help out, Turnbull has been using the tragedy to support his carbon emissions policy preferences and settle political scores. In order to do so he has been emphatic about the link between these fires and climate change.

“Australia’s fires this summer — unprecedented in the scale of their destruction — are the ferocious but inevitable reality of global warming,” he wrote for Time magazine. This statement is untrue, of course, both in its claims about “unprecedented” destruction and on the climate link.

One of the clearest explanations for why the climate link is wrong comes from Turnbull himself, when he was prime minister and had responsibility for national leadership. In 2018 fire ripped through Tathra in NSW and destroyed more than 60 houses while the Greens tried to link the episode to climate change.

“I’m disappointed that the Greens would try to politicise an event like this,” Turnbull said. “You can’t attribute any particular event, whether it’s a flood or fire or a drought or a storm to climate change.”

Quite. That is correct. And his own words expose his current politicking and that of so many advocates in politics and the media.

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






23 January, 2020

The old teacher standards debate

You can demand high academic standards in teacher trainees until you are blue in the face but people with high academic standards don't want a bar of chaotic Australian State schools.  They have better job options. So dummies are all you can get to teach there

What is needed to raise teacher quality is to make teaching more attractive and that means making public school classes less like a warzone.  And the only way to do that is to enforce civil standards of behaviour from the students.  Unruly students should be diverted to special schools where physical means can be used to enforce compliance with the rules. In the old days students were caned as a punishment for bad behaviour.  That could work again but Leftist opposition ensures it will not be reintroduced.

So what is the alternative?  Australia has a well-known alternative:  40% of Australian teenagers go to private schools.  Such schools are expensive so the kids concerned have to come from middle class homes -- where even a look can be sufficient discipline.

So in such schools teachers are allowed to teach and that is where the good teachers go. At my son's private school, he even had two MALE teachers, wonder of wonders

So Leftist failure to permit adequate discipline consigns as much as 60% of the child population to schools where very little gets taught in the worst cases.  How compassionate!


THE way to lift Queensland's academic standards? Get brighter teachers. It's not rocket science - but then science, of any kind, is not the strong suit of most who are fronting our classrooms.

By accepting into education degrees the students at the bottom end of tertiary entrance rankings, we can't then expect top outcomes. An OP17 won't get you into most university degrees - and fair enough, too - but it will ensure you a seat in the lecture theatres at the Australian Catholic University.

I've written about this issue before and am familiar with the arguments of those who disagree with me, including fans of ACU and proud parents of young teachers who say the ability to relate to kids outweighs academics.

Now, Deanne Fishburn from the Queensland College of Teachers is claiming that "you can't be registered as a teacher in Queensland without meeting high and rigorous standards".

As director of the QCT - which, according to its website, "registers teachers for Queensland schools and accredits the state's preservice teacher education programs" - Ms Fishburn is hardly going to admit the status quo stinks. Naturally, she will defend it.

However, as part of her argument, she says that those high standards include that "teacher education students must have passed senior English and mathematics". That means obtaining a C. Hardly what I'd call excellence.

When economic experts are continually identifying the greatest jobs growth in fields that require higher level maths and critical thinking, such as engineering and technology, why are we settling for a pass mark in those who would inspire and instruct future job-seekers? It is unreasonable to expect people who are average achievers themselves to be able to confidently unpack complex problems to others.

Alarming findings from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute back me up on this. Only one in four teenagers is learning from a specialist maths teacher - someone who studied maths at university, including for six months as part of their four-year education degree. Too often, sports or music teachers are also taking maths classes.

It's no better in primary school, with former AMSI director Geoff Prince saying that teachers are "breaking out in a cold sweat" when they have to teach maths. Contrary to the requirement to which Ms Fishbum refers, Mr Prince says many "haven't done maths through to Year 12 (and) don't understand fractions and percentages properly themselves".

Ms Fishburn argues that focusing on OP scores (soon to
be ATAR) distorts the real picture of the beginning teacher workforce. Reason being, she says, is the average age of graduate teachers is 28, meaning they are likely to have a career behind them or perhaps another degree. They might also have had several gap years, stuffed around  switching courses,'Or taken longer than usual to complete their teaching qualifications.

Don't get me wrong - life experience is valuable, but it shouldn't excuse academic mediocrity or underperformance.

In Finland - a much stronger performer than Australia in PISA international benchmarking - all teachers hold a master's degree.

Teaching polls as Finland's most admired profession, and you can't just walk into an education degree. You have to be the cream of the crop. This is how it should be.

As Peter Goss, director of the Grattan Institute School Education Program, told the Courier-Mail yesterday: "Teaching is a complex job. It requires strong cognitive abilities as well as the  emotional skills to relate to the  children, but unfortunately the academic backgrounds of new teachers has been dropping for 40 years and has continued to drop even over the last decade."

  Lowering the bar to address teacher shortages - which is partly why an OP17 is  considered adequate - will not  attract high achievers.  What will, however, is not an easy fix. It requires a major shift in how we, as a society, view the value of education and, in turn, respect, train and remunerate teachers.  Kids deserve the best educators - those who combine academic proficiency with "soft" skills such as creativity, communication and empathy, but as it stands now, that boils down to sheer luck.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 18 January, 2020





Scott Morrison says hazard reduction burns are more important than cutting carbon emissions in protecting Australians from deadly bushfires

Good that someone in power gets it

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared hazard reduction could be more important than emissions reduction in protecting Australia from increasingly dangerous bushfire seasons.

Mr Morrison has also revealed the government was considering a way to name and shame states which don't complete required hazard reduction burns.

'Hazard reduction is as important as emissions reduction,' the prime minister told Sky News on Tuesday. 'Many would argue even more so, because it has a direct practical impact on the safety of a person going into a bushfire season.'

Mr Morrison flagged clear national standards for meeting hazard reduction targets, along with a review of land-clearing laws, native vegetation rules and allowing grazing in national parks.

'We report all the time on what our emissions reductions are, but across the country there is not a national system of reporting to track how hazard reduction is progressing,' he said.

'There's been plenty of chat around emissions reduction and that's fine, hazard reduction though is the thing that is going to take a more practical effect on how safe people are in future fire seasons.'

He said a proposed royal commission should look at how states were performing on reducing fire risks in the face of hotter, longer and drier summers.

While the royal commission into the 2009 Black Saturday fires took 18 months, Mr Morrison wants the mooted inquiry into this summer's disastrous season to run for a maximum six months.

He also wants the probe to look at when the federal government is able to step in above state counterparts in natural disasters. 'I want to know when the trigger line is,' he said.

Mr Morrison has come under fire for his response to the fires, which have killed almost 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Climate change debate has been central to the fallout from the disaster, with the government criticised for not taking more action.

SOURCE  





Tony Abbott says 'every extreme weather event' in Australia is being used as 'proof of climate change' by eco fanatics who have become 'religious' in their beliefs

He is clearly still aware that global warming is hokum

Tony Abbott says climate change zealots are wrongly using 'every extreme weather event' as undeniable proof of global warming, with the former prime minister denying it was the main cause of Australia's unprecedented bushfire crisis.

Mr Abbott launched a stinging rebuke of eco warriors at an event for the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, in Washington D.C. on Tuesday - where he also lauded US President Donald Trump's first term in office.

The former Liberal Party leader and volunteer firefighter said deadly bushfires were inevitable in Australia and pointed to the century-old Dorothea Mackeller poem 'My Country' which describes the country as a land 'of droughts and flooding rains'.

Mr Abbott said climate change activists were almost 'religious' in their beliefs that global warming was to blame for the ongoing fires, which have devastated a record amount of land.

'I'm not one of those people who sees the current bushfires as confirmation of all we have feared about the changing climate,' he told The Sydney Morning Herald.

'I see the current bushfires as the sort of thing we are always going to be prone to in a country such as ours.'

Mr Abbott said those who believe climate change is the most important factor in extreme weather events use it as the reason for fires, floods and Hurricane Sandy - which devastated the Carribean in 2012.

'If you think climate change is the most important thing, everything can be turned to proof. I think that to many it has almost a religious aspect to it,' he said.

Mr Abbott, Australia's 28th prime minister, led the country between 2013 and 2015 while served 19 years as a volunteer firefighter for the Rural Fire Service.

He supported Prime Minister Scott Morrison's stance that climate change had some role in causing bushfires, and praised his response to the state of emergency caused by the fires.

SOURCE  







Dozens of vegans storm a steakhouse and ruin people's dinners in protest against eating meat - but run away scared when the police are called

Vegan activists have stormed a Queensland restaurant as part of a protest against the meat industry.

Protesters held up signs and repeated the chant 'it's not food, it's violence' in the middle of the Black Hide Steakhouse in Brisbane at the weekend.

The protest was part of a global movement by activist group Direct Action Everywhere.

The group live-streamed the protest to Facebook, urging animal rights supporters to share the video and spread their message. 

'We're at a steakhouse to disrupt normalised violence,' the woman filming the video said. 'We have around 25 dedicated animal rights activists standing in solidarity for animals that are needlessly slaughtered for food.

'We have the choice to end violence with our dollar and in 2020 there is no longer an excuse to pay for someone else's suffering.'

The diners appeared uncomfortable as the group stood in the middle of the restaurant chanting and holding their signs.

Others stood out the front of the steakhouse confronting those who entered the restaurant with their message against meat.

The group are well known for their activities in Western Australia, where they have held several marches and protested outside abattoirs and butchers shops near Perth.

Direct Action Everywhere spokesman Arcadiusz Swiebodinksi said the group planned more protests in Queensland.

'We came here to Brisbane because its a very heavy animal agriculture state here in Queensland and animals need to be spoken for everywhere, he told 7 News. 'This is just the beginning.'

One diner said he was unhappy about having his dinner interrupted. 'Don't interrupt other people's life everyone has got a right to make a choice - they can make there's.  Let the people here who like eating steak make theirs,' he said.

Others offered their support to the steakhouse on social media.  'Hi, sorry you had to put up with those vegan d**k heads last night. We love eating your steak,' one person wrote.

The protest lasted less than 20 minutes, and by the time police arrived the activists had already left.

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





22 January, 2020

Amusingly empty-headed Leftism

Leftists run as if from the plague if they encounter conservative discourse.  They have to.  So much of what they believe is contrary to the facts that they have a desperate need not to be proved wrong.  Conservatives have no such fears.  Conservatives just want to know what the facts are. Conservatism is built around the facts.  Mr Gradgrind was probably a conservative.

So I read Leftist articles almost daily.  They can have useful facts in them but never the whole facts.  So I had a look at the current article below from the far-Left "New Matilda" site. It is written by Rosie Latimer, who is a medical student. I feel sorry for any patients she may one day have.  The heading on her article reads "Climate Change Is Science Not Politics. So Can We Talk About It Yet?"

Yet she mentions NOT ONE scientific fact in her article. She probably knows none. She uses "science" as a sort of magic word that opens all doors.  She relies on a fictitious "consensus" among scientists to "prove" the reality of global warming.  Has no-one ever told her that once there was a consensus among all good men that the earth was flat?  Science relies on facts, not opinions.

I reproduce just her opening paragraphs below.  I give the link for you to read the whole article if you are interested in any more "ad hominem" fallacies


Australia is under attack from unprecedented bushfires, which are decimating our country, leaving a trail of physical, mental, and emotional destruction. Many have lost loved ones, homes, and some of our native plants and animals are facing extinction.

People are suffering under the toxic smoke that is billowing throughout Australia and the Pacific.

Yet in the face of this, our government and the Murdoch media contend this is not the time to discuss climate change, because the discussion of climate change is a political issue.

Climate change is not a political issue.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, caused by humans emitting greenhouse gases. The world has drawn links between Australia’s love affair with a coal-based economy and the bushfires ravaging our great nation.

This should be a bi-partisan issue, an issue that unites us all. So why is it a Liberal calling card to deny climate change, and a Labor calling card to let them?

SOURCE  





Climate change rally turns ugly in Melbourne as angry demonstrators clash with police and Extinction Rebellion protesters bury their heads in the sand at a popular beach

They are just attention-seekers getting high on their own righteousness

Thousands of protesters have marched through Melbourne calling for immediate climate change action and for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to be sacked.

There was a heightened police presence as the activists gathered at the State Library and walked through the city on Saturday afternoon.

One impassioned activist decided to target the on-duty officers by screaming in their direction and leaning uncomfortably close.

A police officer was forced to warn the angry protester to 'back off' and push him away.

The rally, organised by Uni Students for Climate Justice, is part of rolling January demonstrations for the city 'to demand real action on climate change and justice for the communities devastated by the fires'.

'These fires are the result of decades of climate destruction at the hands of fossil fuel industry and their mates in Canberra,' the event description said.

Activists are fighting for a levy on fossil fuel companies, the removal of Mr Morrison from office and firefighters to be paid for their work, among other demands.

Organisers estimated about 2,000 people took part in Saturday's event. 

The march came one-day after Extinction Rebellion activists buried their heads in the sand to demand the government declare a climate emergency.

About 300 people descended on Inverloch Beach, about two hours south-east of Melbourne, for the 'peaceful' protest on Friday.

The demonstration comes amid a catastrophic and fatal bushfire season, which has ripped through the state's East Gippsland region.

The protest saw activists dig holes in the sand to bury their heads and lie on the side of the shore, Nine News reported.

Protester Nicky Miller described the protest as 'symbolism' for Australia's lack of action in reducing emissions.

A number of protesters displayed signs slamming the government for its reliance on fossil fuels.

The colourful demonstrators sung there was a 'climate crisis' with the assistance of ukuleles and other instruments.

Leticia Liang referred to the bushfires when explaining why she took part in the protest.

'I don't want my children to adapt to hazy days, I don't want me children to adapt to smoke and fires,' she said.

Lynn Atkinson from Extinction Rebellion said the location of the protest - Inverloch Beach - was eroding 'rapidly'.

Jessica Harrison, also from the activist group, said: 'We want our lovely beach to be preserved, this beach has eroded more than 30 metres in the last four to five years.'

Extinction Rebellion said they expected 100 protesters to attend the demonstration but the 300-strong crowd represented the local community are 'concerned' and 'need action'. 

SOURCE  






Insane childcare costs

A torrent of regulations have "gold-plated" childcare, making it generally unaffordable.  So the government tries to restore affordability by giving subsidies. But the subsidies are not keeping up

It's deregulation that is needed if affordability is to be restored.  One insane regulation is that a carer has to have a university degree or diploma -- and it goes on from there.  There must also be a minimum educator-to-child ratio of 1:15, which is well-up on what it used to be.

There are also regulations about premises, furniture, materials and equipment; fencing; laundry and hygiene facilities; indoor and outdoor space – unencumbered space; toilet and hygiene facilities; ventilation and natural light; administrative space; nappy change facilities; outdoor space—natural environment and shade.  And they all cost money that has to be recouped from fees in order to get a return on investment

"OUT-of-control" childcare costs are continuing to soar -under a new subsidy scheme, as the industry warns there is more hip-pocket pain to come. Even fees for some Queensland parents on the highest discount are hundreds of dollars higher than they were 12 months earlier.

Prices are expected to substantially rise again later this year with a review of child-care worker wages anticipated in the Coming months. The cost increases are biting now as parents return to work and scramble to find extra care for their children until school returns.

Education Minister Dan Tehan flagged that more action would be announced soon to crackdown on excessive fee increases by rogue childcare operators.

The annual cost of sending a single child to care  is now reaching higher than $16,000 a' year in the inner city and parts of Brisbane's south, before rebates are applied.

Parents are forking out hundreds to thousands of dollars more, depending on where they live and how much they earn, just covering the increased costs applied by pro-viders since the subsidy started on July 2, 2018. The subsidy covers up to 85 per cent of the childcare fee depending on a family's household income.

Education Department data from September 2018 to September 2019 shows that childcare costs rose 42 per cent on average from $9.50/ hour to $9.90/hour during the 12-month period. But the Nathan area was the most expensive in the state. topping $17,000 a year pre-subsidy for one child in care for 31.6 hours a week, 48 weeks of the year after a 12.5 per cent increase in the hourly rate. Families there on the highest 85 per cent subsidy were still paying $2600 a year.

Families in Nundah, Nathan, Outback Queensland and Bundaberg on the full 85 per cent discount were paying $200 a year more out-of-pocket in September, compared to a year earlier.

Queensland Council of Social Services boss Mark Henley said child care was becoming unaffordable for many families. "For someone on minimum wage there's a decision to be made as to whether it's more costly to have ajob and put kids in child care, or if you're saving money by staying at home," he said.

Australian Childcare Association vice-president Nesha Hutchinson said profit margins were falling as rent and wage increases put pressure on care operators. "When they're putting up prices they don't want to gouge fainilies; they're just trying to remain financially viable," she said.

Despite the soaring costs, Mr Tehan said many. Austraian families were still paying less out of pocket now than they were before the new sub-sidy system started.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 18 January, 2020




Government is not even trying to reduce fuel for fires

A FIRE fighter has savaged the Queensland Government's hazard reduction burning process, claiming there was state-owned land that wasn't being monitored for fuel loads. Will Wilson, who is stationed in Mt Alma, West of Gladstone, said the local brigade had also stopped telling authorities about "intense fuel loads" building up because there were too many hoops to jump through.

"There's no one that drives along the highway that says 'There's a massive fuel load'," he said "There's no one checking fuel loads at those locations apart from landholders who don't own the land."

The first officer, who's been with the brigade for about 25 years, said the land which runs parallel to a highway was a big instigator for fires. "We've never been notified by main roads that we need to do some fuel reduction on their land," he said

Mr Wilson said it was not the volunteers' job to monitor areas such as rail corridors and main roads and called for financial incentives to better protect the community.

A Government spokesman said government agencies conducted hazard reduction burns on state-owned land only when it was safe to do so.  "Activities include hazard reduction bums, fireline maintenance, mechanical clearing and targeted community education," he said. "More than one million hectares of national parks were treated by planned burns last year. That is the most hectares treated in eight years."

Frank McKee, a fire warden for the Boyne Valley, said it was "all but impossible" to get all government departments to agree to hazard reduction burns on state-owned land. "You have to jump through hoops so high it's ridiculous," he said.

Asked why he thought it was hard to get approvals, Mr McKee said it was due to concerns about risk. "They (authorities) think 'Well what if it (fire) gets away'," he said.

Mr McKee also said officers were required to tell the Government whether there were endangered trees on land needing burning.

"They should be able to have land with no more than a seven-year build up (of fuel load)," he said. "Anything over seven years is uncontrollable."

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 18 January, 2020



21 January, 2020

Platypuses said to be on the 'brink of extinction'

This just about "fears" and what "could happen".  There is nothing factual below.  The journal article is "A stitch in time – Synergistic impacts to platypus metapopulation extinction risk".  It is pure armchair modelling based on extensive guesses.  There was no actual research involved. No feet were muddied.

And the assumptions are all one-sided.  What if some features of  modern environments are actually helpful to the platypus?  There are plenty of examples of modernity helping a species. The "bin chickens" (Ibises) are known to most Brisbane people

It seems to me that dams might actually be helpful to the platypus. They give it a big choice of what water level they want to feed and breed at.  But that would never have occurred to our modellers.

And the major scare the modelling was based on was global warming.  What if there is no global warming?  There has certainly been very little warming for the last century or so

This whole article is just a tawdry attempt to get something into the journals by using conventional scares.  The journal editors were negligent in publishing something so insubstantial


Australia's beloved platypus is now feared to be on the 'brink of extinction'. Researchers at the University of New South Wales say the number of platypuses in the wild could fall by 66 per cent by 2070 because of climate change and other threats.

Researchers said soaring temperatures across the country, the intense drought and land clearing are all contributing to the species' decline.

Richard Kingsford, director for UNSW's Centre for Ecosystem Science said the future for the animal was 'grim'.

'This is impacting their ability to survive during these extended dry periods and increased demand for water,' Mr Kingsford said in the journal article, Biological Conservation, The Age reported.

'If we lost the platypus from Australian rivers, you would say, 'What sort of government policies or care allow that to happen?''

Gilad Bino, the study's lead author said the threat of climate change could affect the platypus's ability to repopulate, noting they could face 'extinction'.

'We are not monitoring what we assume to be a common species. And then we may wake up and realise it's too late,' Dr Bino said.

The platypus is listed as 'near-threatened' under the IUCN Red List of threatened species but Dr Bino says the government needs to assess how much the animal is at risk.

The study's researchers said in order to prevent total extinction the platypus' habitat would need to be managed.

The Victorian Environment Department said they were working with the federal government over whether the platypus' status needed to be changed to 'threatened'.

NSW said they recognised issues such as the drought could be placing the platypus 'at risk'.

Platypuses live in freshwater areas and are found along the east coast and southeast coast of Australia.

SOURCE  






Prevention as cure: Fuel load reduction way to take climate out of fire threat

Peta Credlin

RIGHT now, Scott Morrison is in the political fight of his career. I do not say that lightly; he has been in plenty of scraps over the years, but few have seen him so wounded, up against an opponent so full of might, and spleen. And hate too.

George Orwell wrote, "the further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it".

This an understatement when it comes to the new "truth" of climate change? No longer do we have any fact-based assessments on Australia's 1.3 per cent contribution to global emissions — or what others are doing, or not doing as the case may be.

Instead, climate change orthodoxy has become the new religion for generations of young people (and the not so young) who often mock more traditional institutions of faith.

Indeed, I bet over the summer, if you have tried to have a rational discussion with anyone on this subject or the fires more broadly, it is quickly descended into regurgitated dogma, and quite likely hysteria, so cult-like it's all become.

Take the opportunistic Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese who last week again tried to turn bushfires into climate change with his now much-repeated line that "you can see it, smell it, and feel it".

By trying to use the soot and ash whipped up by fires to further his political fight against the Coalition, Albanese both insults our intelligence and does himself a disservice in his bid to one day lead the country.

The Left's demon in all of this is carbon dioxide and is also essential for life on this planet. Like news outlets that love to show images of water vapour spewing out of power plants or smog filled skies as evidence of climate change — conflating steam or pollution with greenhouse gas emissions is just yet another example of the lies and misinformation that masquerade as "fact" in this debate.

In a world now where the only history we know comes from what we might have personally experienced rather than any proper study of the past, these fires are the "worst ever" so "something extraordinary must have caused them" regardless of historical fact.

Right now, dismayed by these fires' devastation, people do not really want to know that the 2009 Black Saturday fires and the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires killed far more people; or that the 1974 fire season burnt out at least ten times the area of this one.

And while people want policy measures the Government can take that will avert similar devastation in the future, it would be a serious mistake to think the policy measures to combat these fires lie in agreements made overseas that most countries (unlike us) do not even follow, rather than what can be done here at home, in our state governments and Canberra, as well as national parks, right around the country.

Can someone tell me the point of a new royal commission into bushfires if we still are not doing what was recommended in the last one? Out of Victoria's tragedy in 2009, officials in that state were told by the royal commission to lift the rate of off-season hazard reduction burning — yet last year, just one-third of the burn target was met.

Fires cannot burn without fuel. Fuel is something Australians in the past — indigenous Australians for centuries and the rest of us, until recently — managed to get down to acceptable levels as we approached the summer fire season.

But that is now all changed. If we want to help prevent future fire seasons of this magnitude, then we have got to have an honest debate about how we got here, and what can be done in the future to better manage the risks.

Fighting this issue on the basis of climate change policy is where the Left want this debate. It lets state governments off the hook for what they have not done and it gives the Left their first real opportunity to tear down Morrison since he killed off their fairytale last May.

But for the Coalition, it is a zero sum game politically. You see, it does not matter how much Morrison does on climate change, it is never going to be enough for the green left; that does not so much want a reduction in emissions, but a statement of belief, and a redirection of society away from economic growth towards a new means of income redistribution.

This is why the government gets no credit for the fact that we are well and truly on track to meet our Paris targets.

Nothing exposes the Left on emissions more than their refusal to even debate nuclear power as an option for this country given its capacity to provide baseload power with zero emissions and our ready supply of uranium. Uranium I might add, that we send overseas but cannot use here; like our coal too, and increasingly our gas. If it all was not so serious, it would almost make you laugh.

The Coalition must stand firm because proper debate is needed now, more than ever. Fuel-load reduction is an area the PM can rely upon recommendation after recommendation in almost every bushfire inquiry to back him up. If he wanted to really change this debate and get it off an area he cannot win, on to an area where he can — and where most Australians would follow him — Morrison should demand a new national approach to fuel load reduction.

If the states are so keen to se the Commonwealth up-end the Constitution and take more responsibility for bushfires — then give them what they want. By making a new national fuel-load reduction plan a standing item on COAG, with reduction data pulished quarterly and states that do not do what the experts recommend named and shamed. As well as being the best way forward for the 2021 bushfire season, it is the PM's best way forward, polically too.

From the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of 19/1/20





John Barilaro, Scott Morrison slam Matt Kean over cabinet climate claims

NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has joined Scott Morrison in lashing Matt Kean’s claim federal frontbenchers want more action on climate change, saying his Environment Minister’s “unhelpful” comments didn’t represent the party.

“He seems to have taken this opportunity to go all out and spruik a whole heap of messages that I don’t believe is representing of the whole of government,” Mr Barilaro told Ray Hadley on 2GB.

“I’ve got a lot more to say about Matt and his comments but I’m not interested today, I’m focused on recovery,” he said.

As wild weather hits parts of Victoria and NSW after a catastrophic fire season, Mr Kean claimed on Sky News on Sunday that right-leaning cabinet ministers – as well as Liberal moderates – were concerned about the Morrison Government’s current suite of climate policies.

It comes after months of pressure on the Prime Minister to change tack on climate change and reported divisions between the federal and NSW government over the handling of the bushfires.

Mr Morrison on Monday said no cabinet ministers have approached him with concerns about the government’s stance on climate action and labelled the NSW Liberal MP’s comments a “beat up.”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he told the Nine Network. “I think Matt can focus on hazard reduction and I will focus on emissions reduction. “It’s all a beat up.”

Mr Barilaro, who has been appointed as the Minister responsible for Disaster Recovery, said he had spoken to Gladys Berejiklian about the rogue Environment Minister. “Will you be talking to his boss about his comments?” asked Hadley.

“Yeah, I’ve had conversations about it. There’s a time and place and right now it’s all unhelpful,” he said.

Earlier, Mr Morrison went on to give a more brutal assessment of Mr Kean and his public profile in a later interview.

“Matt Kean doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know what’s going on in the federal cabinet. Most of the federal cabinet wouldn’t even know who Matt Kean was,” he told ABC radio.

On the Today program Mr Morrison also continued to defend his government’s climate stance, saying he would never take up environmental policies which would cost resource sector jobs.

“I won’t put up a carbon tax. I won’t put up people’s electricity prices and I will not wipe out a resources sector which millions of Australians depend on particularly regional Australians,” Mr Morrison said. “We will stay with a balanced policy that understands the economic interests and environmental interests.

“We know the summers are longer, hotter, dryer. We are addressing them. We acknowledge the link between these things and will have a balanced policy which doesn’t put people out of their jobs.”

SOURCE  





'It's not even a debate': Scott Morrison shuts down Sam Armytage over Australia Day question

Scott Morrison has said he does not want to see the date of Australia Day moved. The PM was quizzed about the celebration in an interview on Sunrise on Monday morning after a new survey found 71 per cent want the day to remain on 26 January.

In recent years, the weeks before Australia Day have been fraught with debate about whether its is wrong to celebrate the day the First Fleet arrived to colonise Australia in 1788.

Indigenous activists say the date should be moved - but this year the debate has been stifled by the bushfire crisis.

'No one seems to be talking about it this year because there are other things to talk about,' said host Sam Armytage.

The PM said: 'We do have something is to talk about and that is people affected by bushfires.

'On Australia Day I will be saying thank you to every volunteer that has supported everyone through this terrible crisis. Not just this one but all the crises of weather and disaster in this country.'

Armytage pressed him, saying: 'So you think it should stay?'

Mr Morrison replied: 'Well of course I do. It's not even a debate we're having at the moment. 'I don't really want to be distracted by it at the moment.'

The survey by the Institute of Public Affairs found 71 per cent of Aussies want Australia Day celebrated on January 26, which was down four per cent on last year's figure.  

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 January, 2020

'They are incinerators from hell': Biologist blames GUM TREES for Australia's brutal bushfire season - and says they should be banned anywhere near human settlements

I really like our native gum trees and would oppose any attack on them but there is undoubtedly some truth in the colorful claim below. They do burn easily.

It is irrelevant, however.  Fuel reduction will prevent the fires regardless of which trees the fuel comes from.  Fuel reduction is the Holy Grail.  With it, there CAN be no big fires.  Anything else is passing the buck

A prominent Australian biologist has blamed the country's bushfires on gum trees, labelling them 'incinerators from hell dressed up as trees'.

Also known as eucalyptus trees, gum trees are native to every Australian state and their leaves make up most of the diet of koalas and some possum species.

Despite being a source of food for iconic native animals, biologist Jeremy Griffith attributed Australia's current bushfire crisis to the widespread tree on Saturday.

The biologist, who is also an author, even went as far to say that people should be banned from growing eucalyptus trees anywhere near human settlements.  

'Humans can't live near them, and they are an extremely dangerous habitat for wildlife,' Mr Griffith wrote in The Spectator.

Australia's current bushfire season has claimed the lives of 28 people and an estimated one billion animals so far.

Mr Griffith explained eucalyptus trees actively encourage bushfires as their waxy and oily leaves are very flammable.

In addition, he said gum trees have epicormic buds hidden under their bark that are protected from flames and allow them quickly sprout back after bushfires.

'Eucalypts can survive an intense fire when few other species can; and since they can survive fire they can afford to encourage fire because it will eliminate competition from other species,' Mr Griffith said.

He pointed out that gum trees heavily shed leaves and peeling bark, which he believes is in order to generate tinder for fires. 

Mr Griffith likened gum trees to 'dangerous crocodiles planted tail-down ready to destroy lives and our world'.

'There has to be a complete change of mindset when thinking about eucalypts that recognises their true nature. The stark reality is there should be legislation in Australia preventing eucalypts from growing in quantity near people,' he said.   

The biologist said there needs to be more regular hazard reduction burns in eucalypt forests, like those practiced by Indigenous Australians thousands of years before British settlement.

He explained that because Indigenous Australians would start small fires regularly, the intensity of fires would decrease, which would allow for safe fires in the summer.

Mr Griffith warned of the dangers that eucalyptus trees pose in other parts of the world where they have been introduced, such as California. [And China]

Australian gold miners introduced gum trees to California in the 1850s before the local state government began encouraging their plantation in the early 1900s.

During the Oakland firestorm in 1991, it is estimated that 70 per cent of the energy released from blazes was through eucalyptus trees.

In California, which has similar dry conditions to Australia, wildfires are a yearly occurrence and recently took the lives of five people in 2019.

Australia's current bushfire season arrived early in October 2019. So far, a total of 28 people have died in the horror blazes and more than 2,000 homes have been destroyed.

SOURCE  






Victorian government to launch an attack on free speech about sex-change

The Victorian government intends to pass a law very soon that may see ordinary citizens imprisoned if they speak up against the chemical, psychological and physical mutilation of confused adolescents. Labor Attorney-General-Hennessey wants to outlaw conversion practices. They are defined in her discussion paper about the proposed Bill as

…any practice or treatment that seeks to change, suppress or eliminate an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to reduce or eliminate sexual and/or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender, or efforts to change gender expressions.

Queensland already has a similar bill before its parliament. It would authorise imprisonment for those who perform what is called conversion “therapy” in that state. Such therapy is defined as a treatment or other practice that attempts to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s very broad. While it is directed to those who provide a health service it includes “alternative” ones, and  will very arguably capture pastors, concerned family members, or other lay people who attempt to dissuade a young person they know from embarking upon a “transition” from their natal sex to its opposite.

It is almost unnecessary for me to tell you that the Queensland legislation specifically quarantines from criminal liability the actual conversion practices that carry the real risks for children — those promoted by the medical and quasi medical cadres of the gender industry, opportunistically exploiting a child’s hesitant and often confused explorations of her or his identity and sexual nature and independence as they enter puberty, when frayed family dynamics or peer pressure are often making such experience more difficult. In such a context  any treatment that consists of undeviating and reflexive “affirmation” of the “choice” of such a child or adolescent is not treatment at all. It is better described as enlistment and it is  being done in the furtherance of political and not medical imperatives.

Astonishingly, the fact the person you are trying to assist is a child aggravates rather than mitigates the seriousness of the offence: then it carries a maximum of 18-month, rather than the standard 12, term of imprisonment.

If you are in any doubt about the risks and the scientific irregularities associated with the diagnosis and treatment of gender dysphoria (real and imaginary) in Australia then read what Professor John Whitehall, Professor of Paediatrics at Western Sydney University, has written in Quadrant and elsewhere many times in recent years. He is compelling and the stridency of his call for urgent scrutiny of the medico-gender complex is supported by eminent psychiatrists and paediatricians in Australia and overseas. He is persona non grata with the ideologues, of course; that only raises the index of his authoritativeness even higher.

The Andrews government has plotted this attack on free speech very carefully, as you would expect. First, the Health Complaints Commissioner was given wide power under laws brought in by Ms. Hennessey in 2017 to conduct investigations on her own initiative; she duly and promptly reported on the urgent need to address conversion practices.

Then the radical Marxists of first resort at La Trobe University and the Human Rights Commission were invited to comment on the Commissioner’s report. They did and announced that conversion therapy (only of the unapproved kind, of course) was a terrible practice that must be eliminated urgently with the full force of the law.

Here I am reminded of Andrey Vyshinsky, who always came through with the legal theorising necessary to give cover to Stalin’s latest purges of recusants; attorneys-general have always done the same for Victoria’s socialist governments. Daniel Andrews is the leader of the most illiberal and radical state government in anyone’s memory, even if its Marxism is cultural and not economic and the materialism “designer” rather than dialectical.

The discussion paper and the reports it relies on, together with Ms. Hennessey’s public utterances about them, make it clear that Victoria intends to make plain what is latent or ambiguous in Queensland’s proposed legislation. It is not just the individual transsexual or homosexual who needs protection from conversion; no, the criminality can arise outside of any therapeutic context. It is society that needs to be protected so the mere utterance of heterodox views about affirmation of gender or sexual “choice” must be extirpated.

More HERE 






Labor Party to adopt new 2050 target for emissions instead of old 2030 goal.  Enmity to coal also dropped

They are trying to find a policy that will be less open to attack, it seems.  Good luck with that

Labor will land on a 2050 emissions reduction target before it assesses its shorter term goals, as Anthony Albanese declared it was a “mistake” for the party to retain its climate change policies after losing the 2016 election.

The Australian has been told caucus will likely adopt a 2050 target by Labor’s national conference later in the year, with climate change spokesman Mark Butler expected to push for a net-zero emissions target by the middle of the century.

Senior Labor sources said the party would likely announce a 2030 or 2035 target closer to the election.

The shorter term target would be geared around meeting the 2050 goal based on Australia’s emissions at the time of the election, likely to be 2022.

The Australian revealed last year that Labor could scrap its 45 per cent 2030 target in favour of focusing on a “net-zero emissions by 2050” policy.

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday morning, Mr Albanese said Labor should have revisited its 45 per cent 2030 target after losing the 2016 election.

“I think it was a mistake in 2019 to continue to say ‘we will do exactly to do what we did in 2015 as if it hadn’t changed’,” Mr Albanese said.

“What we did (in the last) six year period was to add-on policies. So everything stayed the same and we just added more on. We have seen how that played out. It didn’t work.”

Mr Albanese declared the climate change policy would be “as ambitious as possible” but would not be drawn on a potential target.

He noted Bill Shorten’s pre-election target – to reduce greenhouse emissions by 45 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030 – was created in 2015 and allowed a 15 year time frame to be achieved.

“That was a 2015 target established for 15 years’ time,” Mr Albanese said.

“In 2022 our 15 year target will be very different. 15 years from 2022 is 2037 not 2030.

“You can’t define your point on where you will go to the election in 2022 at January 2020 because the circumstances will change.

“We will take climate change seriously. We will determine our policy. It will be as ambitious as possible. I want to have a very strong framework. I want to be ambitious and I want it to be as strong as possible but you have got to know what your starting point is.”

Mr Albanese also left the door open to amending the party’s pre-election franking credits crackdown rather than dumping it altogether. “Very clearly we won’t be taking the same policy to the next election,” Mr Albanese said. He would not say whether the negative gearing policy would be dropped.

The Labor leader said Adani’s difficulty in securing finance for its coalmine in central Queensland showed there was global uncertainty about the future of the sector.

The Opposition Leader denied claims he was “wishy washy” in his support of the coal industry despite refusing to endorse the already-approved Adani project in the Galilee Basin.

“The environmental approvals have occurred. The project wasn’t able to secure finance. That says something about what the international scene saw about the financing of a new mine in a new coal basin,” Mr Albanese told Sky News on Sunday morning.

“So they are self-financing the project. But it has been approved so it is going ahead.”

When challenged whether he was wishy washy in his support of the nation’s biggest export earner, Mr Albanese said: “that is not right”.

“People in Queensland and everywhere else know, who are involved in the industry, knows that the industry is continuing,” Mr Albanese said.

“If you gave got a 50 per cent renewable energy target, by definition there is 50 per cent coming from fossil fuels.

“So let’s be realistic there about what the framework is domestically and internationally. Of course there will continue to be coal exports; I have made that very clear.”

The Labor leader planned to go to a coalmine but his office claimed the visit was cancelled because of scheduling issues.

SOURCE  






Leftist site bans climate skeptics

And its boss is having a wonderful time with the bushfires

Last week, New Matilda announced that we have banned climate deniers (and those who deny the links between the bushfire crisis and climate change) from commenting on our website, and on our various social media channels.

It received a strong response, mostly supportive. And then, a video I filmed on Kangaroo Island of a trailer load of koalas arriving at an emergency triage centre went seriously viral (it's been seen by around 1.5 million people so far)... and the comments section has gone ballistic... and for the interim at least, we have nothing like the capacity necessary to moderate the platform. So that will be a work in progress.

Over the next few days, I'll be writing a feature on the fires on Kangaroo Island, focussed around the 'Farm Units' - an extraordinary group of men and women who operate independently from officials to fight the fires. We'll also have more coverage from our usual broader cross section of areas - as you might expect, our pretty humble resources have been heavily focussed on the bushfire crisis.

Via January 15, 2020 email from New Matilda -- chris.graham@newmatilda.com

 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 January, 2020

The Queensland desalination project

The article below was written before 12.12.19.  How do I know that?  Because it refers to the drought.  And for most of 2019 Queensland was indeed unusually dry.  On the night of 12.12.19 however, Brisbane had the mother and father of a storm that delivered 6 months of rain in one hour.  And there was a similar storm down the coast a couple of days later. So both the Wivenhoe and the Hinze dam (which are linked) would have received a big boost

It is particularly good for the dams to get all that rain at once. If the fall had been spread out over a long period, much of the fall would have been lost to evaporation and soaking into the ground.

The desalination project was an absolute boondoggle from the beginning. It was started by a Leftist government as an alternative to building a dam. It took years to get it working properly so it is lucky that the rains came and rendered it unnecessary.  It is however some consolation to hear that it is finally working and being marginally useful


DESALINATE or die. That was the dire warning from then-premier Peter Beattie as he was confronted by a lone protester at the under-construction Gold Coast desalination plant during the so-called "Millennium Drought" in 2000.

The protester, local green activist Inge Light, had slipped through a security detail to shirtfront Beattie about the controversial $1.2 billion project's environmental and financial costs.

"I've got to be honest with you, we're going to build it(the plant), we've got no choice -- unless you go up there and play God and make it rain for me," the premier declared. "If you don't allow us to get desalinated water, frankly no one's going to be alive. "If we don't have desal, we're not going to have any water. "If you don't have water, you're dead.'

It may not be quite life or death. Beattie, wasn't averse to a bit of hyperbole — but as Queensland grapples with arguably its worst drought on record, the Tugun desalination plant is playing a key role in keeping water flowing to residents in the state's south-east.

Largely on "hot standby" since it opened in 2009 due to consistent rain events, the facility has been cranked up to full capacity after a tinder-dry spring and early summer which has seen dam levels plummet.

Since hitting 100 per cent production on November 18, the plant has pumped more than two billion litres of water into the southeast Queensland water grid. It represents about 15 per cent of the region's water use, currently averaging at 212 litres per person per day, up from 183 litres this time last year.

The first large-scale desalination plant on Australia's east coast (Perth's plant opened in 2006), the Tugun facility occupies a sprawling site next to Gold Coast Airport, a few hundred metres from the beach. It was originally planned as a much smaller Gold Coast City Council facility. But as the Millennium Drought bit deeper, the Beattie government invested almost $870 million in the project to more than double its capacity to 133 megalitres per day.

Gold Coast mother and environmentalist Inge Light wept at Gold Coast City Hall in October 2006 after councillors voted 12-2 to approve the project, saying it would worsen global warming and damage the marine environment "I'm emotional because I see my children's future being affected by global warming," she told The Courier-Mail at the time. "It's incredibly sad and incredibly frustrating that we've got yesterday's politicians making tomorrow's decisions."

But the council, led by green-leaning mayor Ron Clarke, decided  overwhelmingly that the desal plant was needed, and urgently. "The region will run out of water if we don't deal with this and make the hard decisions," then finance committee chair and now Southport MP Rob Molhoek said.

Construction began irmnediately by an "alliance", incvolving  French water giant Veolia, construction firm John Holland, infrastructure company Cardno and engineers Sinclair Knight Metz.

In 2007, The Courier-Mail revealed that Veolia expected to take in at least $351 million from running the desal plant over the following decade. Anna Bligh, who had succeeded Beattie as premier, took the first sip of desalinated water at a Tugun open day in December 2008.

The plant officially opened in January 2009, but the State Government refused to accept ownership after a raft of serious defects were revealed, including rusting pipes, cracking concrete and faulty valves, as well as concerns over potential contaminants leaching from the former Tugun rubbish dump on which the facility was built.

In April 2009, the plant, supposedly the showpiece of the $9 billion south-east Queensland water grid, was shut down for almost six weeks as technical experts crawled through pipes to pinpoint faults. A year later, the plant was again shut down, this time for three months, as a giant barge was brought in to make repairs. Only months later, south-east Queensland was hit by the devastating 2010-11 floods.

Critics have labelled the desal plant a costly white elephant, but it has been used to help supply water during floods as well as drought, and when water treatment plants have been shut down for upgrades.

The Courier-Mail recently took a tour of the plant with its manager, Tina Feenstra. Right on cue for our visit, the heavens have opened. "It's a running joke for us here: whenever we're at full capacity, it starts raining," Feenstra says, handing us umbrellas.

Feenstra explains the desalination process, which begins with sea water being fed through a 4m mushroom-like inlet on the seabed, about 1km offshore, and into a pipeline to the plant. Larger particles are screened out before the water passes through a finer filter which removes smaller particles. The water is then pre-treated in large tanks which blend small suspended particles into clumps which are then removed by sand filters.

Next, the main process begins — removing the salt. The water passes through thousands of reverse osmosis membranes to purify the water. It ends up being so pure, Feenstra explains, that chemicals and minerals then have to be re-added to make the water suitable to drink before it is pumped into the water grid.

Desalinated water does not come cheap, costing up to $800 a megalitre to produce. It's also energy-intensive, consuming the equivalent electricity of about 12,000 houses a day when running at full capacity.

"But when it's hotter and drier than average as it is now, having use of a facility like this is a real asset, particularly when we don't know how long this drought will last," Feenstra says.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of January 4, 2020







Status anxiety and the tyranny of opinion

John Carroll

Proclaiming your own shallow virtue from the pulpit of social media has become the new religion.

As the year of identity politics, 2019, is now at an end, we should ask what has been going on.

The return of medieval heresy trials, draconian inquisition and pseudo-religious cults preaching apocalypse demands some inter­pretation. The new wars are over opinion. Belief has been separated from fact. In parallel, status has shifted from property and achievement to attitudes. Even a summer of catastrophic bushfire often has been co-opted by doomsday politics rather than met, as it should be, by sober gravity, sympathy and reflection on the nature and history of this harsh continent.

One obvious manifestation of insecure identity is status anxiety. Throughout the modern period, people have compensated for doubts about their worth by showing off their wealth, displayed in large houses, luxury cars, designer clothes and expensive holidays; living in prestigious suburbs; and sending their children to elite schools and universities.

They have indulged in what American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen dubbed “conspicuous consumption”.

Rise of the new snobs

The new snobbery, however, is not over bad taste, crude accents, cheap belongings and the wrong schools; it is over attitudes.

Some boast on Instagram that they personally carbon offset when flying #climatechange, and attract a stream of likes. Others tweet they support gay marriage #loveislove, and are deluged in hearts of approval. Thousands swarm against a Michael Leunig cartoon. This shift in the signals of status must be, in part, a feature of affluence — the markers of economic success matter less these days — combined with the fact the noise is coming almost exclusively from the ranks of the better off. In the upper middle class, comfort may be taken for granted.

The root of identity politics is revealed in its designation: in identity and its discontents. Mind, there is nothing new in anxiety about self. Seventeenth-century French moralist Francois de La Rochefoucauld argued that self-esteem was the strongest of human motivating forces. Vanity, egoism and fear of embarrassment and failure drive most human behaviour. In the pre-modern world, this was less universally true, for more than 90 per cent of the population had little time or energy left over from the daily grind of basic survival. Concern about identity was a leisure-time luxury they could ill afford.

The key to secure identity is an inner confidence underpinned by belief and belonging. Belief is primary. German sociologist Max Weber coined the term disenchantment to describe the central threat confronting the modern West. In a secular time that no longer believed in God, or indeed in any transcendental ordering principle, the risk was that the world would lose its magic and be come a dull and prosaic absurdity. Humans were left to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and little else.

Samuel Beckett highlighted this condition in Waiting for Godot, arguably the most important play of the 20th century. For Beckett’s two tramps, life has become so pointless that they talk of suicide but can’t be bothered carrying it out. Meaning has become the modern problem.

In fact, faith in God has been replaced, in the shadows, by an alternative potential commanding attachment: that there are deep and enduring truths that underpin the human condition; and, further, that the good life depends on gaining some understanding of them and managing to live in harmony with them. These truths are elusive, and difficult to formulate and enshrine; Shakespeare’s entire work may be read as a wrestling to uncover their complex texture.

Things were much easier in the time of church religion, with priests, teaching orders, theology and doctrine, an absolute moral calculus, and a vast background of tradition, monumental buildings, music and art — all dedicated to proclaiming the faith.

As the West progressively moved into a post-Christian era, high culture and the universities became of vital social importance. Their guiding mission was to help ordinary people better understand their lives, and in particular bear the hardships and tragedies that beset them. They did this through telling stories about life in its manifold variety — in literature, art, music and more recently film — and then interpreting them. Across the past 1½ centuries, this mission, in the main, has been progressively abandoned. As a result, loss of faith has left a vacuum and the anti-belief, if pressed, that there is nothing.

Weariness rules

The need for faith, or some secular equivalent, seems to be universal. Without it, there is the uprootedness of Beckett’s demoralised tramps, who have no mental chart to guide them through the day, the month and the year.

Human identity without firm and distinct shape is condemned to leading a haphazard existence, motivated by profane pleasure and the pursuit of power. Pleasures diminish and power is capricious. A vacancy of belief drives some to seek tranquillisers and intoxicants; others to seek militant secular faiths. Those pseudo-religions, in turn, are given to a paranoid polarising of the world into good and evil. The psychology is familiar, from earlier times, when churches, out of their own insecurity, persecuted heretics, witches or those they deemed nonconformist.

Shaky medieval religion also triggered apocalyptic sects, which we see re-emerging today in an uncanny regression to our most superstitious past.

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg provides a case study. Her demean­our and mode of declam­ation mimics that of a fundamentalist Christian preacher ranting about the end of the world. The intense eyes, the raging warnings of apocalypse and the incantatory chant of “How dare you!” pitched against the satanic adult world are reminiscent of some cult spawned in Waco, Texas.

There was a Children’s Crusade in the early Middle Ages: something like 20,000 children, led by two of their number, set out from France to free Jerusalem from unbelievers. The crusade foundered well before its destination, in starvation and disaffection.

There is also the other recent eruption of Extinction Rebellion, a movement of self-styled soldiers of virtue parading as if cast from the Book of Revelation. From London to Melbourne, they came hooded and garbed in bright crimson robes, faces painted white, with thin red lips, a cross between a medieval dance-of-death procession and spooky Hare Krishnas. These martyrs glue themselves to buildings and seek arrest — that is, look for self-vindicating persecution by evil authority.

Whatever the truth about ­climate change, the Extinction ­Rebellion apocalypse is based on a radical inflation of long-term global warming forecasts, in themselves as unreliable as economic forecasts, if not more so. Eminent Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith quipped that economic forecasting was invented to give astrology a good name.

Identity politics obeys the catchcry: I emote virtuously, there­fore I am

End of the world is nigh

Greta is not in herself of interest. What is alarming is that she has been taken seriously by the worldwide media, listened to devoutly by broad sections of the upper middle class and its cultural elites, given a platform at the UN and celebrated as Time person of the year.

Professional orders that are otherwise sober, serious, hardworking and methodical in their practical lives are turning, in their leisure, to quasi-religious venting, dark paranoid fantasy and wide-eyed righteous indignation.

This crusading opinion is being generated from within a tiny social bubble. Sociologist Peter Murphy has calculated from Twitter statistics that a mere 2 per cent of the American adult population deal in political opinion. The rest who use Twitter gossip about celebrities and lifestyle — but that too may come with a malevolent thrust, as experienced by Meghan Markle and the barrage of hate opinion she has attracted on social media, some of which has an overlapping political cast.

In last year’s federal election, climate change was proved to be a minority worry, playing a negligible role among mainstream voters, who remained uninterested.

The take-up of social media has meant angry opinion, which used to be limited to berating this or that political figure at the pub or the golf club, may be broadcast instantly and worldwide. It provides the mouthpiece for a global cacophony of hatred, malicious gossip, derision and persecution of those who are different, and coercive opinion containing the implicit threat: agree with me or else.

Foundation stones of the modern West crack: the liberal value of freedom of individual conscience, the Enlightenment values of reasoned argument and freedom of speech, and the civilised values of moderation and courtesy.

The ease of fingertip communication has aggravated the tendency for anyone, when hot under the collar, to speak impulsively and thoughtlessly, and to judge without mounting a clearly reasoned case. As people spend more of their leisure time on smartphones and less reading books, they develop habits in themselves ill-suited to measured reflection.

Addiction to social media brings with it a feverish restlessness of concentration and, it seems, a dependency on approval.

This is a trait that has taken centre stage, with posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter receiving hearts and thumbs-up to indicate likes, even though the likes often come from strangers giving the post a few passing seconds of their time.

That recognition for a post comes in the form of a love heart is suggestive of an underlying depressive strain in the culture.

No depth or sense of self

At the pathological extreme, this kind of brittle self-esteem links with an inability to handle criticism, as with the 20-year old apprentice plumber whose work is corrected by his boss, sending him into a two-day sulk. Or univer­sities offering counselling for students whose sensitivities may have been damaged by opinions they disagree with. Or The Australian’s cartoonist Bill Leak being investigated by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Identity politics obeys the catchcry: I emote virtuously, there­fore I am. The specific content is often unimportant, as illustrated by a low inclination to mar­shal arguments to back up opinion.

The in-vogue markers of identity today — sexual orientation, race, hostility to Western civilisation, and the environment — are more free-floating excuses for enthusiasm than real personal traits, for few of the crusaders are cross-gender, native peoples, Gandhi-like ascetics or Greenpeace sailors.

The enthusiasm is then expressed as high-voltage opinion on social media, during political demonstrations and in graffiti.

The logic of this type of depressive narcissism finds its main reward in the tick of approval. The thumbs-up or love heart is inflated in the imagination as recognition for the lonely self as a whole, the sum total of its identity, which is more than the specifics of its opinions. At the same time, self-esteem has become so fragile, the ego so lacking in confidence, that the mere whisper of a dissident view pricks the emoting bubble.

Even major institutions have taken to emoting virtuously. In part this has been to cover up the fact they have excluded while they have embraced. The mission statements of corporations, universities and sporting bodies proudly boast of inclusiveness, tolerance and diversity. But the more they do so, the more they have practised discrimination, intolerance and politically correct conformism.

Sigmund Freud termed this pathological syndrome negation, as in the aggressive smile — “to smile and smile and be a villain”. Negation was illustrated politically by the former East Germany, one of the nastiest dictatorships of the modern era, which called itself the German Democratic Republic.

It is not surprising, then, that belief has become separated from act. Others are judged by what they believe, not by what they do. Footballer Israel Folau and tennis great Margaret Court have been chosen as the local scapegoats.

Last year Rugby Australia, it seems, preferred to signal its own virtue than concern itself with the wellbeing of its sport, in on-field performance or its own balance sheet. Mimicking medieval relig­ious fanaticism, it persecuted its best player for his unmodish beliefs, likely picking on him because he was its best player — the more brilliant his rugby, the more evil his character.

Many professional footballers, if grilled on their attitudes, would not pass the heresy test. What separated Folau from the others is, first, rugby super-stardom; and, second, the unusual fact today that he strongly believes in something. His faith confronts and irritates. For the minority who are themselves fanatical believers, such as devotees of Extinction Rebellion and Greta, Folau is a true heretic worshipping the wrong god.

Likewise with Court. The fact she was the nation’s best female tennis player, and arguably the world’s best tennis player, makes her a beacon of sporting excellence. She has to be burnt at the stake because she lends authority to heresy, even though that heresy is the traditional view of marriage held by most of the Western world until very recently, and still held by a sizeable minority of Australians.

The Folau and Court cases tell us something more. The moral views at issue are not particularly shocking, for the public heat has gone out of both domains. Folau’s attitude to homosexuals is, to most minds, ludicrous, even laughable, as is his belief in Hell; and the same-sex marriage controversy is over, and decided, so who should care what Court thinks?

But crusading religion needs its devils, even if they are rather quaint and feeble devils. The sniff of evil provides blood energy.

Virtual shallowness

Communal belonging traditionally has proved the most successful way to compensate for the insecure identity that derives from the lack of much to believe in.

What sociologists call anomie results when community ties break down — anomie is the sense the world lacks cohesive norms and values. Strong community binds people together with shared purposes and common beliefs, providing a collective glue that helps its members feel at home in their world, with confidence about what they should do and how they should live their lives.

Today, the nuclear family provides the most common and successful example, with a lesser, supporting role played by schools, clubs and other associations.

The virtual community enabled by social media is not an entirely satisfactory substitute. It is, in general, less stable and enduring than the family, less tightly bound, and it mobilises a fickle, less cohesive legitimacy. More, it encourages aggregates of shared opinion rather than shared doing or face-to-face gathering together.

The disenchantment that follows from lack of belief in any fundamental truths anchoring the human condition has led to some malign compensations. It has unhinged the all-too-human search for security of individual identity.

Hell has gone, but not the belief in satanic forces and their incarnations. Christ the saviour has gone but not the belief in redemptive politics. The more atheist ranks have grown, the more we have seen, with religion, a Freudian return of the repressed. The best of secular values — freedom of conscience and opinion, underwritten by a liberal-democratic order — are suffering under an onslaught from the worst excesses of religion: the tyranny of right­eous opinion, fanatical preach­­ing and the persecution of heresy.

SOURCE  







Somewhere over the ditch there’s an imaginary utopia

It’s a reality of Western democracies that the most estranged citizens tend to come from the most successful and best-educated sections of society. The phenomenon is best described as alienation, a feeling of dissociation from fellow citizens and their elected leaders.

Take Melbourne barrister Julian Burnside. He lives a lifestyle to which most Australians would aspire. But he’s not happy with his lot. On New Year’s Day, Burnside tweeted: “The only thing worse than #ScottyFromMarketing as PM is the possibility of @PeterDutton replacing him. If that happens, it will be time to move to NZ where they HAVE a real leader.”

Those with a sense of deja vu may recall that it is not the first time Burnside has threatened to quit the land of his birth following political disappointment. Before the 2004 election, he foreshadowed an intention to consider “leaving Australia if John Howard were re-elected”.

When this occurred, Burnside conceded that inertia was a powerful reason for staying in Australia. He added that “the effort of selling up and moving to New Zealand or Canada and re-establishing a ­career is formidable”. And so it came to pass that Burnside remained in Australia and unsuccessfully contested last year’s election as the endorsed Greens candidate in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong.

Burnside worked hard to defeat Josh Frydenberg with the help of leftist activist groups such as GetUp. But the ­Coalition won both seats and votes in the election. Rather than accept that Scott Morrison is the duly elected Prime Minister of Australia, Burnside, who paraded his AO QC post-nominals in the election campaign, refers to Morrison as “ScottyFromMarketing”. This is just a sneer.

In the unlikely scenario Dutton replaces Morrison as prime minister and the even more unlikely scenario that, in such a situation, Burnside would pack up his Melbourne mansion and head to Auckland or Wellington, what would he find? Well, not a Greens-style utopia, that’s for sure.

The fascination of some Australians with New Zealand seems to have coincided with the elevation of New Zealand Labour Party leader Jacinda Ardern to Prime Minister in September 2017, leading a minority government with the support of New Zealand First led by Winston Peters.

Without doubt, Ardern is a successful politician with an ability to project empathy. But her political legacy has yet to be established. Despite this, some Australians appear to have fallen in love with Ardern’s New Zealand.

At a post-budget business function in Sydney in April last year, ABC presenter Ellen Fanning introduced panellist Sir John Key, a former conservative New Zealand prime minister, with the statement: “Don’t we love a New Zealand prime minister in Australia, any of them are fine.”

Last month Nine Entertainment newspapers published an article by Neil McMahon, who suggested that what he termed “Kiwi envy” was a phenomenon “afflicting modern Australia”. He referred to “the election of global icon Jacinda Ardern, whose disarming political charm and boldness (have) left many Australians gazing forlornly across the ditch and wondering: what happened to us?”

Earlier this month Nine newspapers published a column by playwright Ned Manning, who maintained that Australia’s victory in the Boxing Day Test “exposed the evolving essential difference between the two neighbouring countries”. Yes, according to Manning, you can generalise about a nation by watching its men’s cricket team in action.

Manning’s point was that the Aussies were technically superior but the Kiwis “seemed to have the whole thing in perspective”. He did not like “the incessant chest beating of our players”. Fair enough. But it’s a stretch to claim “a lack of self-confidence makes us take ourselves seriously” based on the behaviour of a dozen men in cricketing whites. According to Manning, Australia might defeat New Zealand at cricket “but we have a fair way to go when it comes to defining who we are”.

He argued that New Zealanders “have an anthem that reflects their, not someone else’s, culture; they are unafraid to stand up for themselves on issues such as climate change and, famously in the past, nuclear arms; and they have a treaty” with the Maori people.

Manning’s comment about the New Zealand national anthem is not readily understandable. However, he overlooked the fact Key’s National Party government restored imperial honours — knights and dames — in 2009 (they had been abolished by ­Labour in 2000). Also, in 2016, most New Zealanders voted in a referendum against Key’s proposal that the Union Flag (Union Jack) should be removed from the top left corner of the nation’s flag.

It’s true New Zealand has ­denied US nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships access to its ports. But it’s also true that through the years New Zealand has obtained its defence on the cheap, relying on the military assets of US and Australia to protect its sea lanes and air lanes.

Members of the Kiwi fan cub in Australia, like Burnside, rarely protest against how little New Zealand does with respect to its refugee and humanitarian intake. At five million people, New Zealand’s population is about one-fifth of Australia’s yet it accepts far fewer than one-fifth of those who find refuge in the area of Austral­asia. Then there is the fact, as Australian Energy Minister Angus Taylor has pointed out, that New Zealand’s carbon dioxide emissions are increasing, not declining.

Sure, the Land of the Long White Cloud is a fine place to live. But its population is unlikely to blossom following an intake of Australians. There is no evidence in suburban, rural or regional Australia that citizens are thinking about doing a Burnside and seeking political refuge across the Tasman. This is just a fantasy for some Australians who can afford to be alienated.

SOURCE  






Teachers rushed in

Students hired to fill widening gap

AN INCREASING number of Queensland university students are being approved to teach before they have officially graduated, as the state is gripped by a shortage of educators. The Courier-Mail can reveal that last year, 99 students in education courses were granted Permission to Teach (PTT) waivers by Education Queensland to help fill the gap in schools without enough teachers — 39 more early approvals than in 2018.

But a Department of Education spokeswoman said the number of teachers on PTT represented "only a fraction of all new teachers hired" and they taught in schools for an average of one semester. The spokeswoman said that the approvals issued included those for students who had finished their courses, but were yet to graduate and be registered as teachers.

The main criteria for a PTT, which is assessed by the Queensland College of Teachers, includes evidence that no "appropriate" registered teacher is already available for that position, and evidence that the applicant has the skills and ability relevant to the job, and is "suitable to teach".

Queensland Teachers' Union president Kevin Bates said the process should be used only as a last resort and he was concerned the number issued was increasing. Mr Bates said that a concerning number of teachers were already forced to teach outside of their specialty, and this could place increasing pressure on new teachers employed under PTTs.

"It can complicate things enormously ... in remote and rural areas you usually have to teach something you're not trained in, and that involves an enormous amount of additional work," he said. "A teacher in a western school who is trained as a junior primary school teacher is teaching a secondary art and a math class simply because there aren't enough teachers.

"PTT should be a last resort only and should not be seen as an easy option for HR systems to fill a gap. We need to have a long-term view to make sure teachers are available to teach every class."

Mr Bates said those teachers needed more support. "If they're coming in on PTT, the standard induction and support of the Beginning to Teach program is simply not enough."

During 2019, the department employed more than 1400 new teachers, and 500 new teachers have already accepted appointments to start in 2020, an Education spokeswoman said.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 15 Jan., 2020


 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 January, 2020

Science Minister says talking about climate change a waste of time in combatting fires

The real issue is how to reduce fuel loads.  Everything else is a distraction

Australia's bushfire crisis has prompted a blunt warning from Science Minister Karen Andrews to those she says are wasting time arguing about whether climate change is real.

Ms Andrews will convene a roundtable meeting of top scientists on Wednesday to kickstart work in response to the "devastating and surprising" bushfires this summer.

"Every second we spend discussing if climate change is real is a second we don't spend addressing these issues. Let's move on and get over this," she told the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Ms Andrews warned unnecessary debate could distract from the urgent need to develop new bushfire adaptation and mitigation techniques. Her intervention is another step in the Coalition's recent shift in rhetoric over climate change, after a decade of divisions over the issue dominating the party room.

"My starting position in the discussion tomorrow will be that the climate has changed and it continues to change," Ms Andrews said. "We need to focus on the steps to adapt and mitigate the impact of those changes."

The Wednesday roundtable meeting will include scientists from the CSIRO, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre and Science & Technology Australia and the Australian Academy of Science.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has come under increased pressure during the bushfire crisis from scientists and business leaders to take further action on reducing emissions, flagged a focus on resilience and adaptation to the changing climate.

"The longer, drier and warmer seasons that we're seeing are a reality and so while you take your actions as part of a global effort on emissions reduction, the practical thing that actually can most keep you safe during the next fire or the next flood or the next cyclone are the things that most benefit people here and now," he told reporters in Canberra.

"People have said it's not just about emissions reduction, it's about hazard reduction. That's true. Hazard reduction is climate resilience and ensuring that you're able to successfully pursue those programs is very important.

"So climate resilience, climate adaptation, the fact that over the next 10 years, it's a fact that we've got longer, hotter, drier summers means we have to prepare practically as we have been and need to do so more in the future."

Ms Andrews said she would focus the roundtable discussions on practical measures, asking the question "what can we do immediately, and what can we do in the medium and long term?"

Former Australian chief scientist, Australian National University Adjunct Professor Penny Sackett said the science community would need a funding boost to complete the "herculean task" of documenting the causes and impacts of this summer's bushfires.

"We have the expertise needed in Australia for most of the questions we need answered, but the magnitude of the task will demand a lot of capacity building and a large injection of funding."

SOURCE  






Qld. Conservative parties back grazing to reduce risk

MORE national parks would be opened up to cattle under the LNP's newly unveiled bushfire management plan to help reduce the fuel load across the state.

The party has announced a 10-point plan that would make it easier for landholders to burn on their land to manage fuel loads and set KPIs for fire-fighters to do 98 per cent of all planned hazard reduction reduction burns.

LNP leader Deb Frecklington said "one of the main reasons" for such catastrophic bushfires here and in southern states was because state-owned land hadn't been managed properly.  "There are many old-timers, there are many people, including our indigenous elders, who are saying that they have evidence that grazing in national parks, if managed properly, is a very good way of controlling the amount of hazard," she said.

Opposition Fire and Emergency Services spokesman Lachlan Miller said the move would reduce fuel loads and benefit local economies.

We're not looking at opening it up to every national park across Queensland, what we're looking to do is looking at state forest areas and certain national parks that used to have grazing", he said.

The plan would also allow landholders and councils to burn on their land 15 business days after an application was made to stop bureaucratic hold-ups under a "right to burn" model.

Environment Minister and Acting Fire and Emergency a Services Minister Leeanne Enoch said 10-point plans were for pamphlets. "We're well past the time when politics are welcome in the discussion about bushfires," she said.

Ms Enoch said that many of the policies, such as grazing to  reduce fuel loads and using indigenous methods, were already  done.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 14 Jan., 2020






Greens’ shaky camera conspiracy near Carmichael coal mine

Suspicious Minds, Tony Abbott’s go-to karaoke tune, could easily serve as the soundtrack for the latest saga involving the Greens and anti-Adani activists in central Queensland.

Protesters recently became suspicious of cameras installed on roads leading towards the controversial Carmichael coalmine, convinced they were being used to secretly monitor their activities.

Queensland Greens MP Michael Berkman fired off a question on notice to state Transport Minister Mark Bailey: “Will the minister advise … do the monitoring facilities use thermal sensors, infra-red sensors, face recognition or vehicle number plate recognition? Who has access to the monitoring feeds and information?” Berkman demanded to know who owned the devices and whether the Palaszczuk government had given permission for them to be installed.

Bailey pleaded ignorance. Eventually the Isaac Regional Council confessed to putting up the traffic cameras and admitted the confusion could have arisen because no signs were erected. Despite the James Bond gadget claims from the Greens, a spokesperson for the council insists “there is no face recognition, no infra-red capability”. The cameras’ only purpose is to make sure trucks and other equipment don’t damage the “assets of the council” — aka the road.

“They don’t monitor anything else but vehicle movements,” the spokesperson says. “The council just wanted to know the pressure being put on local roads from the activity at the mine site.”

Asked who would have access to the footage, the council says normal rules of privacy will apply.

But that’s not good enough for Berkman. The Greens MP’s flack says he will continue to pursue the curious case of the unmarked road cameras: “We are happy to take the council at their word but would still like to know who would have access to the vision from the cameras.”

SOURCE  





Wilson Gavin: Online pile-on mob is medieval in its malice

Go now to Twitter — yes, I know, why would anyone? — and you will find messages like that popping up pretty much everywhere after prominent Aust­ralians hurried to delete their mean tweets about Wilson Gavin, who killed himself on Monday.

Gavin, who was gay and ­conservative and just 21, threw himself in front of a train. He is lost now — to his family, and his wide group of friends.

The train driver will never recover­. Also the passengers. And those who watched in horror.

“Don’t care. He started it.” That’s just one of the tweets that appeared online after his death was announced. Can you believe that we live in this world? Because we do. And pity young people. They always have, and likely always will.

Some background: Gavin was the president of the University of Queensland Liberal National Club. He was part of the group that turned up to shout at drag queens reading to children at a Brisbane City Council library event on ­Sunday.

The protest was filmed, and the video got posted on Twitter, and Gavin was seen shouting: “Drag queens are not for kids.”

He soon found himself subjected to what’s known as a pile-on: a mass social media attack. He’s fat! He’s ugly! He’s a miserable beast. A vile homophobe!

But Gavin was himself gay. “I’m not a homophobe. I love gay men,” he said in an interview on Sky during the same-sex ­marriage debate.

But he was a conservative, so people are now saying: “Ah, yes, but he was filled with self-loathing. He hadn’t come to terms with his sexuality. He was living a life of misery.”

It’s a sad and ugly spectacle, but of course we’ve been here before.

Charlotte Dawson was a Sydney model, gorgeous inside and out. Loud and outrageous. She was bullied online, and she blamed trolls for driving her towards ­suicide, before killing herself in her luxury apartment in 2014.

There was also a girl called Dolly, star of the Akubra ads, who was bullied to death in 2018.

Some of those who piled on Gavin — many of whom were middle-aged women with promin­ent media careers — are now mourning his death.

Then you have people saying: but you contributed. You piled on. Have you no shame?

It’s such a complicated story. Gavin is not a sweet little girl in an Akubra being bullied at school. He went to that library. He ­con­fronted the drag queens, said they were “not for kids”. His Facebook page was filled with hateful posts.

Much of the criticism of him was mild. Liberal National Party MP Trevor Evans called the UQ kids “ratbags”. Party leader Deb Frecklington just distanced herself.

But some was vile. Pile-ons ­almost always are intensely ­personal. They go for individuals. It’s not about your argument. It’s about how disgusting you are. How ugly. How slovenly, how ­sluttish. How you should really kill yourself. And yes, people do ­actually say that.

Roman Quaedvlieg, the former Australian Border Force chief, describ­ed it this way: “Shout out to those Twitterati opening the app with gloves on, mouthguard in.”

Because that’s what it’s like: being pummelled. Or else you’re the one throwing the virtual punches, from behind the safety of your screen.

But it’s not just you. It’s millions of people all saying the same thing: gross pig, go and die! Mobs form online, just as they used to do in town squares, and they are just as unpredictable as they ever were. They can swerve in ways you can’t predict.

Pile-ons also aren’t concerned with political argument or nuance. It’s personal abuse. It’s broken. It’s unedited, unfiltered, it’s garbage. It’s doing untold harm to children, and young people, but also to anyone­ in the firing line.

Everyone claims to be in the group copping it most:

Conservatives get the most hate!

No, it’s liberals!

No, it’s those who work for Murdoch!

No, it’s those who work for the ABC!

Public shaming is the subject of the book You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by British journalist Jon Ronson; and an episode of Black Mirror, Hated in the Nation. It was the subject of Monica Lewinsky’s most recent tour. It’s not new: in the olden days, they’d cast you out beyond the city walls, in sackcloth and ashes, or they’d make you carry a billboard, or throw fruit at you, or sew letters on your clothes.

Now you get the pile-on, and it may make you want to kill yourself. But even that won’t stop them. “Absolutely no sympathy!” said one man after Gavin’s death.

No sympathy for a 21-year-old man who threw himself in front of a train? Nope. Because there’s a Twitter war to fight.

Question is: who’s winning?

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







16 January, 2020

Qld. move towards taxpayer-supported election campaigns  threatens free speech

Not-for-profits warn laws will end public debate

Background: Queensland will impose Australian-first election campaign spending limits and laws to block large political donations among a suite of integrity reforms announced on Tuesday. Although controversial, many integrity experts argue tipping the balance towards taxpayer-funded elections increases transparency and reduces the influence of large donors. The laws would restrict third-party organisations, including unions, political action groups like GetUp and industry bodies, to spend $87,000 in a single electorate, with an overall cap of $1m. The government would increase payments to candidates from $1.57 a vote to $3 a vote, with the eligibility threshold lowered from 6% of the first-preference vote to 4%.

CHARITIES have warned they will be "silenced" by a Queensland Government crackdown on election spending that could crimp their ability to fundraise and stifle public debate.

In free-speech backlash, not-for-profit groups warned that planned laws will discourage them from advocating on a wide range of issues because they risk being hit with caps on donations and spending.

Unions including the Nurses Union and Together argued that the planned laws could restrict them from campaigning on policy issues that affect their members.

As part of the Palaszczuk Government's plan to limit election spending, groups that spend more than $1000 in a bid to "directly or indirectly" influence votes up to a year before an election would be forced to register as a third party with the Electoral Commission.

These groups would have to disclose donations, face caps of $4000 per donor for political matters every four years and limit their spending to $1 million or $87,000 per electorate. Queensland Law Society president Luke Murphy said the law would have a "chilling effect" on public debate. Many charities backed the plan to restrict election spending by parties, but argued that they should not be caught by the rules.

Queensland Council of Social Service chief Mark Henley warned that the laws could "stifle public advocacy from not-for-profits, including small community groups and charities". The spending limit could include amounts spent on research, polling and staff, as well as advertising, he said.

Greenpeace Australia's Terry O'Donnell said that an ad about "the impact of climate change on the bushfires" would be caught by the laws "even if it does not mention a party or candidate".

Australian Conservation Foundation chief Anthony Moore said that the planned laws would "make Queensland elections more inequitable, by silencing community voices, while letting the largest third party actors — corporations and industry groups — off the hook".

A government spokesman said that they would consider recommendations from a parliamentary committee that is examining the laws.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 13 January, 2020





Defence advised to walk away from French subs

A key adviser to the federal governmen­t was so concerned about the $80bn Future Sub­marine Project it warned Defence it should consider walking away from the French-built boats.

A report by the Australian Nationa­l Audit Office released on Tuesday revealed the Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board warned that Defence should consider whether proceeding with the project was in the national interest.

The ANAO said in the report the submarines’ design phase was running nine months late, and “Defence cannot demonstrate that its expenditure of $396m … has been fully effective” in achieving key milestones.

The report also revealed Defence­ had approved the fabric­ation of complex hull parts for the first future submarine to be undertaken in France, rather than Australia, to guard against delays to the build schedule.

The revelations follow the ­Defence Department’s admission to a Senate estimates hearing late last year that construction of the first boat had been pushed back by up to a year, and the cost to build and maintain all 12 submarines would reach $225bn over their 50-year lifespan.

Defence told the ANAO that if the subs project was delayed by more than three years, it would “create a gap in navy’s submarine capability” that could affect plans for the nation’s Collins-class ­submarines.

In a sign of the tensions between­ Defence and French shipbuilder Naval Group, the report said the government’s Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board, chaired by former US Navy secret­ary Don Winter, warned in September 2018 that “Defence should assess whether program risks outweighed the benefits of proceeding”.

At that time, Defence was struggling to negotiate a strategic partnering agreement with Naval Group. “The Naval Shipbuilding Advisory­ Board expressed a separate­ view that, even if the strategic partnering agreement negotiations were successful, Defence consider if proceeding is in the national interest,” Defence told the ANAO. “This consideration was represented in the advice to government seeking approval to enter the (SPA).”

The agreement was finally signed in February last year and included a provision for Aust­ralia to break the contract if the subs were delayed or failed to deliver­ promised capability.

Defence has previously warned of “high to extreme risk” to its naval shipbuilding prog­ram, with differing engineering methodologies between France and Australia cited as a potentially major issue.

The Auditor-General said that establishing “an effective long-term partnership between Defence and Naval Group” was a key risk-mitigation measure.

Opposition defence spokesman Richard Marles said government “mishandling” of the nation’s biggest ever defence acquisition­ posed major risks.

“On all three measures of this program — on time of delivery, on the cost of the project, and on the amount of the Australian content — the numbers are all going the wrong way,” he said.

Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick said the ANAO report was “one of the most concerning reports I have ever seen”.

“The alarm bells are ringing. If the minister is not hearing them, they need to be turned up,” Senator Patrick said. “Defence’s view that they can recover the schedule is naive at best.”

But Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said the schedule delay had been essential to get the submarine design right.

“Doing so will reduce costly changes and uncertainties while the Attack-class submarines are built, and will reduce the need for larger construction contingencies,” she said.

She said the first submarine was still due to be delivered to the navy in 2035, as planned.

The Naval Shipbuilding Advis­ory Board’s role is to provide­ expert, independent advice­ to the government on its $90bn shipbuilding program. Its membership includes three retired­ senior navy officers — Rear Admiral Thomas Eccle, Vice Admiral William Hilarides, and Vice-Admiral Paul Sullivan — and former Department of Education secretary Lisa Paul.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute defence analyst Marcus Hellyer said the advice of the high-level board was normally confidential. “It’s the first time I have seen that gloomy assessment,” he said. Mr Hellyer said the potential “capability gap” was likely to refer to the risk of having fewer than six operational submarines at any point.

He said it was now likely all six Collins-class boats would have to have their lives extended.

SOURCE  






Greenie versus Greenie

MOUNTAIN bike riders and environmentalists are at loggerheads over potential trails through protected bushland on Brisbane's southside.

But both parties will have to wait up to five more months to see what Brisbane City Council's citywide off-road cycling plan looks like. Council says the plan will create more to see and do in a "clean and green Brisbane", and aims to provide safe and sustainable recreation opportunities that offer better protection for natural areas.

Between March and May last year, council engaged with key stakeholder groups and the broader community about their ideas for future off-road cycling opportunit-ies across the city. Now the council is in the process of analysing the "significant amount of community feedback" and developing the draft concept plans.

Author and off-road cycling enthusiast Gillian Duncan has been fighting for the rights of mountain bike riders and has been campaigning for the past 15 years for legal trails in south-east Queensland. She wants riders to have access to fire trails, and hopes the council will go one step further and open up a "satisfying trail experience" through Karawatha Forest.

But bushcare groups are "strongly opposed" to these ideas and do not want bikes destroying the habitats of native wildlife.

Currently, Mt Coot-tha is the only designated location for off-road mountain bike riding, and those tracks and trails are used more than 700,000 times each year. Karawatha Forest Protection Society treasurer Cornelis Van Eldik said mountain bikes in the reserve would cause havoc with the flora and fauna.

"Council should not allow this to happen," he said. "They (riders) won't be content just staying to the fire trails — they will want the extra thrill of a scrub dashing, which is what our major concern is."

Ms Duncan insisted a mountain bike-riding management plan would curb that sort of behaviour.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of January 11, 2020






Federal minister: Greta Thunberg and Climate Activists Just Want to ‘Upend Society’

The real concern of environmental activists like Greta Thunberg is not climate change, but to “upend society” and “move away from capitalism,” Australia’s Resources Minister Matt Canavan said Tuesday.

He spoke after the Swedish teenage climate worrier unsuccessfully tried to force German telecommunications group, Siemens, to drop its role as a contractor for the giant Adani coal mine now being planned for Australia’s north.

Canavan intervened and secured the company to stay and complete railway signalling at the site, but not before he took a passing swipe at the intervention of Thunberg.

Canavan told Sky News in Australia “common sense has once again prevailed,” and said the “likes of Greta Thunberg” claim to be concerned with emissions reduction remains a fallacy

“Their policy prescriptions aren’t actually about reducing carbon emissions, it’s about the radical massive changes to our economy and society”, he said:

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

Nationally, the Australian 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.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who once once famously brandished a lump of coal in parliament, crying, “This is coal – don’t be afraid!” has also vowed climate protesters like Greta Thunberg would not be dictating the country’s energy or trade policy.

As Breitbart news reported, last month he backed Adani and coal production.

“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.”

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.

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 January, 2020

Greenies surfing over bushfire facts

Wildfire is natural, cyclical and regenerative. Australian flora has adapted to survive bushfire and some indigenous species thrive on it. However, the ferocity of recent fires that scorched the country is shocking. The recovery will be painfully slow for those directly affected. Communities will be rebuilt or left behind as people seek safer ground. As city folk return to work, they will forget. But for people in disaster zones, the fires will stalk them by day and haunt them by night until they burn out or the rain comes.

Amid the terror of the season’s fire disaster, people are grieving for what is lost, angry about what they cannot control and afraid of what might come. Green-left politicians are using the fear for political gain. The green-left media is drumming up conspiracy theories that blame conservatives for the weather, the fires, dry earth, scorching wind, death, destruction and doomsday scenarios of some hypothetical future dystopia.

My present favourite is a Guardian article on the fire tragedy that leads with: “Australia is built on lies, so why would we be surprised about lies about climate change?”

As a first-generation immigrant, I have seen a fair share of Australian bushfires. I was a kid growing up in Adelaide when the Ash Wednesday bushfires took 75 lives. On Black Saturday in 2009, I was closer to the tragedy.

Victorians woke up to winds so hellish they broke the backs of saplings, stripped the air of moisture and seared our skin. When the first fire sirens went off in the morning and fire trucks roared down the street, I was doing the weekly shopping. People stopped, looked at each other and said it wasn’t going to be good. But we had no idea what was coming. By late afternoon, we were bunkered down. By early evening, I was glued to ABC radio.

Neighbours were preparing to leave. I was urged by friends to evacuate after my suburb was included in warnings issued by the Country Fire Authority. For some it was too late and many left only after hearing reports that people were dead in Kinglake, about 55km northeast of Melbourne, and that the fires had reached nearby St Andrews. I fled for the city as the fire developed into a storm that threw embers kilometres ahead of the front.

The shock of Black Saturday was a strange thing. I thought I was perfectly fine until feeling a sudden urge to stop on the Eastern Freeway into the city. I pulled over, walked to the side of the road and was violently ill. When I arrived at my friends’ house in North Fitzroy, they poured a whisky and sat me down. They said I was in shock, but I reassured them it was not the case. After settling my pet and opening my suitcase, I realised they were probably right. The contents of the case were absurd and I had no memory of packing them only a few hours earlier. I had taken nothing of financial value or practical utility. Instead, what lay before me was a half-empty suitcase with a pair of socks, books and a clock radio laid out on the base. All I could do was laugh. It was simply bizarre.

When I returned home the following week, the hills were like a wasteland. My suburb had been saved by a wind change. But in the surrounding areas, people were stricken with grief. The usually friendly towns were laid low and an uneasy quiet hung in the air. People walked the streets saying little and staring into the middle distance. Some were looking for missing loved ones or pets. Everyone knew someone who died. The atmosphere had an ashen quality, as though a grey veil had settled to protect the present from the past.

Amid the panic and tragedy of devastating wildfires, what we needed most was immediate relief in the form of care, reassurance and simple kindness from friends, family and employers. The communities directly affected needed swift aid and financial support. Everyone needed something a little different. But what we didn’t need was cheap politicking.

The Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader have taken the higher ground in recent days by agreeing that a royal commission into the fires is a sound idea. The bipartisan approach is constructive and should produce useful recommendations if the terms of reference are set well. The green-left is looting low-hanging fruit by making political capital out of the national disaster. The major parties should leave the scavengers to their ghoulish feast and concentrate on the question of what caused the major fires and how to mitigate risks in the future.

The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission unearthed the causes of the fire and the institutional failures that enabled it to spread without adequate warning to communities at risk. Yet despite recommendations on regular backburning to reduce fuel load, some areas between St Andrews and Kinglake appeared to be overgrown when I last drove through the area in 2018.

A central challenge of any future royal commission will be to create an enforceability mechanism to ensure fuel load is kept at a minimum while conserving the natural environment in fire risk areas. As Rachel Baxendale reported on Friday, the Victorian government has not undertaken fire reduction measures consistent with the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. The state Labor Party that encourages activism and blames natural disasters on climate change is neglecting its basic duty to keep Victorians safe.

The government does not control the weather. It cannot stand guard at every home while fires rage. It will never be responsible for every inch of land in the country because Australians believe in private property and the responsibility home ownership entails.

Politicians who use climate change to divert attention from their failure to enact bushfire prevention plans should talk less and do more to help communities in need. Reducing fuel load is something state and local governments can do as a matter of routine. It may not make for lively conversation with cosmopolites but it will save lives.

SOURCE  





I Cheered When the Bushfire Came

By Geoff Walker, the former deputy captain of Lemon Tree Passage volunteer fire brigade

With the eastern seaboard currently ravaged by bushfires, what sort of an idiot would actually cheer when one worked its way down the peninsular where he lived? I did, and there were a lot of others who did the same.

To understand why, we must go back over more than a year when a winter bushfire got going to the west of the town. It did for us what the volunteer firies couldn’t: it got rid of the ground fuel with minimal canopy scorch. No lives or property were lost. Had this ‘good’ bushfire not happened, the peninsular would have been obliterated this summer when a firestorm with winds gusting to 100kph came our way.

No fire fuel meant that it burned and went out. Simple as that. Today, as thousands of Australians confront the bushfire threat, we on the Tilligerry peninsula are safe. With only one year of fuel build-up we have little to worry about.

When bushfire management passed from local control to government bureaucracies, the political influence of the green movement virtually stopped the off-season burnoffs. This traditional practice dated back to the black man and his firestick management of the landscape. The European settlers adopted it, as did farmers and local grassroots volunteer firefighters.

In researching my bushfire book White Overall Days, I found that our local brigade averaged some 15 burnoffs per year in the decade of the 1970s; nine in the ’80s, a mere two or three in the ’90s and similar numbers ever since.

The reason for this dramatic fall-off in burnoffs was the complex web of rules and procedures dumped on the local captains to comply with before they could do anything. They simply gave up. It was all too hard.

It was NSW Premier Bob Carr who proclaimed vast areas of the state of NSW as national parks. The problem was that they were not fire-managed and have now been devastated by uncontrollable firestorms. Lives and property have been lost as they roared out of the forests into adjoining farmland and rural communities.

Several things have emerged from the current crisis. Green zealots are blaming coal mining and climate change for the fires. They refuse to concede that the green-leaning management policies caused the fires in the first place by ensuring catastrophic fuel build-up. On the other hand, the vast number of ordinary, sensible people now realize that cool burning delivers a far better environmental outcome than raging wildfires. From what I hear, even some of the self-serving bureaucrats are starting to talk mitigation rather than reactive suppression.

To continue down the current pathway of reactive firefighting means more of the same. There will always be bushfires. They are  an integral part of the Australian environment. We either manage them by controlled burning or suffer the consequences.

It was early December when I wrote this piece and the height of the bushfire season had not yet engulfed so much of Australia, from Perth to Penrith. With dire weather predictions, what it would be like a month or two down the track did not bear thinking about.

Now we know.

SOURCE  





Bushfires: Exhausted fireys welcome ‘hotshot cavalry’

An elite team of American forest firefighters has joined the battle in Victoria’s alpine region, venturing into the wilderness of Mount Buffalo to fight the mega-blaze.

In the US they’re called “hotshot crews”, teams of 20 specialist firefighters who march in by foot or are flown in to remote locations by helicopter to contain outbreaks of fires that are inaccessible to regular crews.

The 24 firefighters come from all over the US, and they are equipped with chainsaws, mattocks and blowers.

Leonard Dimaculangan, 41, works as the captain for the Texas Canyon Hotshots. In Victoria, he’s the crew boss for the team at Mount Buffalo.

He said he and his crew knew the horrors of bushfire season only too well and were honoured to be chosen to help out in Australia.   “It’s tragic. We know what it feels like back home and being able to lend a hand here, it’s an honour to come,” he said.

Mr Dimaculangan’s home base is at the Angeles National Forest in southern California.

“All this country is beautiful,” he said. “It’s very similar to things back home like Georgia, Florida, where the moisture level is still high but it will still rip and burn, which can be devastating.”

After dangerous conditions eased slightly at the weekend, sustained waterbombing quelled some of the fires, slowing the spread of the blaze and opening the land to containment work by the US hotshot crew.

On Monday the team marched in formation with their heavy gear across a charred valley to scout out the landscape and find where they could undertake vital containment work to stop the blaze.

The bush of Mount Buffalo is parched but the biggest risk is the volatility of the eucalyptus trees, which Mr Dimaculangan said could throw embers 40km away.

While some Australian forest firefighters are qualified to undertake this arduous work, the Americans must be able to hike 4.8km in less than 45 minutes while carrying 20kg. They also have additional specialisations in operating their heavy equipment.

Justine Gude is working the chainsaw on this mission. She said she usually didn’t accept any work after November but felt compelled to travel to Australia to help. “You look at these terrible stories and everyone wants to know what they can do to help,” she said.

“Not everyone’s in the position where they can help, and fortunately I’m in that unique position where I actually can help, so I jumped at the opportunity.”

In Victoria, four men have died as a result of the fires and 340 residential properties and 532 non-residential structures have been destroyed or significantly affected.

While the Country Fire Authority battles to save towns and properties, Forest Fire Management Victoria firefighters are the ones working to stop the spread of fires in dense bushland.

FFMV firefighter Julian Atherstone, 49, said the Americans ­arrived just in time to support the weary crew assigned to Mount Buffalo. “It’s great to have these guys over here because they just provide an enthusiasm and a dynamic to the effort, which is what we need, particularly in this situation where we’re under-resourced,” he said. “It was only a couple of days ago there were only four of us.”

In the US, forest firefighters can be sent away on missions for up to 21 days before they get a chance for a break. Eduardo Valle, 30, will miss his wife and two-year-old daughter who he left behind in Los Angeles but said he was honoured to be chosen among the thousands who applied to come to Australia. “She’s two years old so she doesn’t know,” he said. “I’ll FaceTime her at night and talk to her and she’s just smiling.”

Mr Valle is staying in the town of Bright with the other US firefighters. He said helping people was just part of the job.  “We’re anxious to work,” he said. “It's part of our job to help whoever’s in need.”

SOURCE  






Clock ticking on TikTok fears

CYBER safety experts are warning parents to beware of the popular app TikTok, as teenagers twist its songs and videos to bully others, and paedophiles prowl it for "sexy" videos posted by young users.

TikTok is aimed at children aged 13 and over, and, with changes to the way "Likes" are now viewed on Instagram, it has become a go-to app. But experts say it has also become a platform for bullying, accounting for one-third of the views on the Federal Governments eSafety guide page.

More than 10 per cent of the cyber-bullying complaints about TikTok involved impersonation accounts, which are then used to post distressing comments and pictures. But it is not just bullying, with cyber cop Susan McLean warning TikTok is "another avenue for predators to find potential victims".

Federal Minister for Cyber Safety Paul Fletcher said the Government was also concerned about how the personal data of Australians, including children, was being captured, analysed and shared by social media services and digital platforms. Chinese-owned TikTok is being looked at by the US and UK governments.

Mr Fletcher said draft legislation that would require the technology industry to do more to protect Australians' data and privacy would be released shortly for public comment. He added that social media and technology companies must be held accountable for the role they play in data collection and cyber bullying.

"Behaviour that is 'unacceptable offline should not be tolerated or enabled online," Mr Fletcher said. "The predator element is very real, and there have been lots of reports about the flagging of paedophile accounts of TikTok, and they remain there, they are not removed. They do not actively work to fix this problem," he said. "What seems innocent to you is very attractive to a paedophile."

Teacher and parenting expert Michelle Mitchell agreed a huge part of the problem was young teens and tweens posting "sexy" videos — without knowing who was watching them. She also said there were many examples of older men "reaching out" to teens and tweens.

"Some claim to be going through a breakdown or a terminal illness, or it's their last day before going to prison," she said

A TikTok spokeswoman said the platform was "a place for safe and positive experiences". She said it did not disclose user figures.

From the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of Dec. 29th

 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






14 January, 2020

'They can't even get the weather right': Pauline Hanson says the bushfires were not caused by climate change - and urges Aussies to 'look at the facts'

Pauline Hanson has rubbished claims that climate change caused  the Australian bushfire crisis, saying it was caused by the build-up of forest-floor fuel and restrictions on land clearance.

The One Nation leader appeared on the Today show on Monday, where she told hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon to 'look purely at the facts'.

'As far as predicting the climate change... they can't even get my weather right and tell me if it's going to rain,' she said.

'They can't get it right over the next seven to 10 days and they're trying to tell me what it is going to be like in the next hundred years.'

Ms Hanson said a lack of hazard reduction burns in fire ravaged communities had contributed to the rapid spread of the blazes.

Authorities in New South Wales and Victoria previously told Daily Mail Australia the majority of recent fires in both states were sparked by lightning strikes in dry, remote areas.

Fires at Gospoers Mountain, as well as in the Snowy Mountains and at Green Wattle Creek, were believed to have been triggered by lightning strikes.

Ms Hanson also criticised Prime Minister Scott Morrison's handling of the crisis.

Throughout the nation, she said voters are becoming increasingly frustrated with Mr Morrison and his lack of leadership. 

'People don't feel that he has done enough in dealing with the drought and the dairy farmers,' she said.

'I'm disappointed with him myself. When he was immigration minister I predicted he would be the prime minister but he's not as strong a leader as he was then.'

The PM has considered holding a Royal Commission into the fires, which Ms Hanson supports as long as the investigation studies 'pure facts' on how fires spread and efforts to stop them, and 'throws bloody climate change out of the window.'

Ms Hanson said her major concern is that in an attempt to lower emissions, the government will continue to raise taxes.

'How on earth is that supposed to reduce temperatures?' she asked.

'It is killing the communities. They can't afford the electricity. You have people moving out of the towns, these are going to become ghost towns.'

SOURCE  






Siemens sticks with Adani contract after intervention from Canavan

German industrial giant Siemens says it will continue to work with Adani’s controversial Carmichael coal mine after the company’s CEO cited arguments from federal resources minister Matt Canavan in an open letter justifying the decision.

Siemens had been awarded a contract by the Adani project to deliver services and equipment to the rail network connecting the coal mine to export terminals on the coast.

Siemens had signed the contract with the Adani project in December but announced that it would review this decision following calls from environmental groups. At the time, the company’s CEO said that he wasn’t aware of the company’s contract with the Adani project.

Siemens had faced growing pressure to walk away from the Adani project, including from environmental campaigners in Australia and in its homeland in Germany. More than 57,000 Germans signed a petition calling on the company to cancel its contract with the Adani mine, with campaigners protesting outside of the company’s headquarters in Munich.

President and CEO of Siemens Joe Kaeser said in an open letter published on Monday that the company considered the Adani contract to be a “very small signaling order for the project”, and confirmed that the company had decided to honour the contract.

Kaeser provided a list of reasons to justify the decision, including that the mine had received approvals from traditional owners, despite ongoing challenges to this claim, and quoted Canavan who wrote in a letter to Siemens that the 2019 federal election had effectively served as a referendum on the Carmichael coal mine.

“The Australian people clearly voted to support Adani at the federal election in May 2019, especially in regional Queensland. It would be an insult to the working people of Australia and the growing needs of India to bow to the pressure of anti-Adani protestors,” Canavan told Siemens in a letter dated 19 December.

Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, which is set to become one of Australia’s largest, has faced several years of strong opposition from environmental groups who have pointed to the impacts the project will have on both local land and wildlife, as well as become a major new source of fossil fuel emissions at a time when stronger action on climate change has been needed.

Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg joined calls for Siemens to refuse to work with the coal mine, tweeting this week that Siemens “have the power to stop, delay or at least interrupt the building of the huge Adani coal mine in Australia.”

The Siemens CEO said that the company remained committed to being part of the transition to a decarbonised economy, including the company’s aim to become carbon neutral by 2030.

“Siemens, as one of the first companies to have pledged carbon neutrality by 2030, fundamentally shares the goal of making fossil fuels redundant to our economies over time,” Kaeser said.

Kaeser argued that a refusal by Siemens to provide services to Adani would not prevent the project from going ahead, suggesting that competitors would simply fill the gap. Siemens also argued that the need for the company to honour its established contractual arrangements outweighed the climate change considerations of the projects it worked with.

“While I do have a lot of empathy for environmental matters, I do need to balance different interests of different stakeholders, as long as they have lawful legitimation for what they do. This is my responsibility as a CEO and that of the management team. Keeping our promises is Siemens’ highest priority.” Kaeser said.

“We should have been wiser about this project beforehand. Now, we need to be a supplier, who sticks to its commitments as long as the customer stays on legal grounds, too. Because being a company, which is not a reliable source for its customers is simply not an option,” Kaeser added.

The decision by Siemens places the company at odds with other businesses that have sought to distance themselves from the controversial coal mine. All of Australia’s ‘big four’ banks, which includes the NAB, Westpac, ANZ and Commonwealth Banks have declined to provide finance to the Carmichael coal mine following targeted campaigns from customers and shareholders.

Shareholder advocacy group Market Forces said that the decision was “appalling”, saying that the decision undermined Siemens’ own environmental credibility.

Global engineering giant GHD has also ceased its engagement with the Adani project, after the company faced internal pressure from staff to do so, and more than a dozen major insurance companies have also declined to provide financial services to the Adani coal mine.

The decision from Siemens to work with the Adani project has been criticised by environmental groups who had hoped Siemens would join other companies in refusing to work with the Adani mine.

SOURCE  





Murdoch University cuts ties with Indian student agency

This is a pretty clear admission that the maligned professor was right.  If the leaders at Murdoch had any decency they would now apologize to him.  But they are probably too Leftist to admit any error

A university suing one of its own academics after he raised concerns about international students with poor English has parted ways with the agency supplying Indian students.

Murdoch University in Perth took court action against Gerd Schroder-Turk after he alleged irregularities in its Indian tertiary student intake.

Dr Schroder-Turk and two Murdoch colleagues publicly claimed Indian students with inadequate English were being “set up for failure” and were failing courses in higher than normal numbers.

Murdoch is suing the associate professor for potentially millions of dollars in lost international student income after he publicly criticised the university’s student recruitment, particularly from India, on ABC’s Four Corners program in May last year.

The university attempted to remove Dr Schroder-Turk as staff-elected member of the university senate, prompting him to launch action in the Federal Court. The university has filed a counterclaim for damages, saying his comments led to a decline in international student intake “likely to cause revenue impact in the order of millions of dollars”. The case is due to begin in April.

On Friday, Murdoch University confirmed it had terminated its contract with a major recruiter of Indian students, Overseas Education and Career Consultants. The Punjab-based company has offices in Australia.

The termination follows an Indian media report that OECC had been accused of fraud by Indian authorities and had its migration licence cancelled.

The Times of India reported in December that the deputy commissioner of Ludhiana in the north Indian state of Punjab had acted against OECC “after they were found to be committing fraud with people on the pretext of sending them abroad”.

The newspaper reported that the deputy commissioner warned people “to not fall prey” to OECC and to check the list of approved supply agencies on government websites.

In a written statement, Dr Schroder-Turk told The Australian the legal battle had taken a toll on him and his family.

“I’ve got three young kids who have noticed my worries and also the time the case has absorbed,” he said. “The counterclaim and the potential financial consequences it poses for me have created a lot of uncertainty for my family’s future.”

When The Australian raised the report of the fraud allegation against OECC with Murdoch University, a spokesman said the university “is no longer associated with Overseas Education & Career Consultants” and “has provided OECC with notification of the termination of its contract”.

The university later said it wrote to OECC on January 10 confirming that the contract had been terminated.

Dr Schroder-Turk said his concern for the wellbeing of foreign students was unchanged. “It is apparent that some of our international students — right across Australia — find themselves in distressing situations beyond their control,” he said.

“I, and others, are ultimately fighting to ensure that the Australian universities keep up the best standard, both for kids who grow up in Australia, and also for those who are attracted to Australia for their studies.”

After the university countersued Dr Schroder-Turk, Murdoch adjunct professor Robert Cribb resigned from his university post after saying that he considered the legal action to be a “dangerous and uncollegial persecution of a principled academic colleague”.

The case may come under scrutiny if proposed free speech amendments to the Higher Education Support Act come into effect. Parliament is considering amendments that include the freedom of academic staff “to express their opinions in relation to the higher education provider in which they work or are enrolled”.

SOURCE  






Bureaucracy short-circuited

THE State Government has backed off sacking firefighters without Blue Cards this summer after entire brigades threatened to quit in protest. Barely a third of Queensland's rural firies met the January 1 deadline to get a working-with-children check, forcing Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to grant a three-month amnesty.

But volunteers will be turfed out of rural fire brigades and fined up to $6500 unless they apply for a Blue Card by March 31. And Queensland Fire and Emergency Services will refuse to give new uniforms to volunteers until they have applied.

"QFES personnel who refuse to apply for, or are unable to hold a current Blue Card, will not be eligible under law to continue their work, volunteer or undertake a practical placement within regulated roles at QFES," a spokesman said.

Queensland is the only state forcing firies to have Blue Cards
based on legal advice that they provide a "health service". The QFES spokesman yesterday said 21,378 volunteers require a Blue Card, yet only 8039 had met the original January 1 deadline to apply.

Twenty-six volunteers had applications rejected due to criminal records for "serious offences", which can include murder, rape, kidnapping, burglary and supplying drugs. Army reservists and interstate volunteers will be granted week-long waivers to fight fires in Queensland, a spokesman for Fire and Emergency Services Minister Craig Crawford said.

Rural Fire Brigades Association Queensland boss Justin Choveaux warned communities could be left undefended as entire brigades quit in protest against the requirement. "Whole brigades will close down," he said. "No one thought this through.

The plan is to grow volunteers — sacking half of them is not part of that plan. "The more volunteers there are, the safer communities will be. Reducing the number of volunteers to fight fires and carry out hazard-reduction burning is going to leave the community more exposed."

In Mareeba, in far-north Queensland, four senior members of the Paddy's Green rural fire brigade have quit in protest "These members have nothing to hide; evidenced by having to pass a criminal check at the first instance to become a member of a RFB," brigade secretary Kay Eccleshare wrote to the Cairns area director.

Dr Eccleshare said Blue Cards were required for people providing services to children, but the role of firefighters was to pro-tect communities from fire.

The Western Australian Bushfire Volunteers' Association blasted Queensland's Blue Card rule yesterday. "To suggest that the aver-age fire volunteer needs a Blue Card is the equivalent of arguing that the same requirement should apply to every retail assistant in every local convenience store because they both occasionally interact with children," executive officer Darren Brown said.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 9 January, 2020

 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 January, 2020

Scott Morrison says the government’s climate change policies would “evolve” without putting people’s jobs at risk

Scott Morrison has rejected the need to set a more ambitious 2030 emissions reduction target in the wake of Australia’s bushfire crisis but left open the possibility of dropping the contentious use of Kyoto carryover credits if they are not needed.

In a half-hour interview on ABC TV on Sunday morning, the Prime Minister did not rule out increasing the government’s 2030 emissions reduction target and said actions to make Australia more resilient and adapt to climate change required greater attention.

The government’s climate change policies would “evolve” without putting people’s jobs at risk.

Mr Morrison later clarified at a press confernece in Parliament House the government had set its target of 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels but would look to “meet and beat” it.

“We will always be taking up the opportunities of measures that enable us to achieve lower emissions, but lower emissions at the same time as we stay true to the policy I took to the last election, and that was to ensure we get the balance right, to get our emissions down without putting a tax on people, without increasing their electricity prices, without removing the industries upon which they and their communities and their towns and their regions rely on for their very livelihoods. So it’s a balanced policy,” Mr Morrison said.

“There will be new technologies, as there has been since the Kyoto targets were first set, and we will look to embrace those and we will look to take the opportunities that are in front of us to ensure that we don’t just meet these targets but we beat the targets that we have set.”

SOURCE  







Help me close down Australia's illegal kangaroo courts

An update from Bettina Arndt:

A very sad start to the New Year with so much of Australia being destroyed by bushfires. I’m very conscious my little causes are trivial compared to what so many people are facing.

But we need to press on. I’m hopeful this is the year when Quiet Australians will get very noisy, reclaiming the public agenda to ensure a fair deal for men and boys.

So now I am launching what I hope will be a real splash to start 2020.

It’s a very important cause. As most of you know, we had some big wins towards the end of last year. The evil system of campus kangaroo courts was dealt a mighty blow. For years now, many Australian universities have had secret committees investigating and adjudicating rape. In a landmark Brisbane Supreme Court decision last November these were declared illegal. And then Education Minister Dan Tehan instructed the university regulator, TEQSA, that universities should leave these crimes to the criminal courts.

This is a huge break-through, but I need every one of you now to step up and help me ensure that the universities take notice. I’m starting a big campaign enlisting graduates of Australian universities, students, academic staff, parents and grandparents of young people planning to attend university. I want everyone with a university connection to write to the relevant Vice Chancellors and Chancellors alerting them to what has happened and putting them on notice that we are expect them to comply with the law. If you have no tertiary association, you can just write to your local universities.  

It's easy – just use my draft letter.

Various lawyers have helped me put together a draft letter you can use – which is on my website. We need to seize the moment, enlist heaps of people to do this across the country to make sure universities have the courage to stand up to the feminist lobbying.

Feminist activists will be appalled if their carefully manufactured campaign is derailed and will put immense pressure on universities to ignore the legal judgement and continue with business as usual. They have put years of effort into promoting the fake rape crisis and bullying universities into establishing these illegal courts. They are not going to give up easily.

Sadly, they have most of the mainstream media right behind them. I find it absolutely shocking the ABC reported the lurid accusations that in the University of Queensland case which led to the Supreme Court decision but mentioned not one word about the judgement. Ditto, the SMH, The Age, The Guardian - all those journalists who have been actively promoting the rape crisis have becomes strangely silent now that the crowning achievement of this activism has been found to be illegal. How about some of you complain to the ABC and Media Watch about this turn of events?

We are watching them

A clever friend in advertising has helped me put together a short social media video, designed to tell universities we are watching them. Here it is:

https://www.facebook.com/thebettinaarndt/videos/483879372510196/

Watch it now. It’s only just over a minute long. I hope you agree it really hits the mark.

We’re using this for what I hope will be a major social media campaign. Please help me circulate it in every way you can, retweeting, sending out to people in the media.

Contact me if you have ideas about how to get it to go viral – I need smart young social media experts to help with this one.

We are also going to spend some of the funds people contribute to me to promote it widely. You are very welcome to donate.

Closing down Australia’s illegal campus kangaroo courts.

I have put also together a proper video. It’s been a long time since I released something new and we realised that we hadn’t told my YouTube and thinkspot audiences about all these exciting developments.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg0Vp0qph6Q

Remember it really helps if you like the video, comment and subscribe.

When I was researching all the events I wanted to cover, I made an amazing discovery. We knew that the university regulator, TEQSA, had sent out advice to the universities telling them that they should “take disciplinary action against perpetrators of sexual assault” – advice which led to our kangaroo courts.

I stumbled across footage, now included in this video, of TEQSA CEO Anthony McClaran, proudly announcing he has told universities to “hold perpetrators to account.” Well, now it turns out he was advising them to do something quite illegal.

By email from Bettina -- Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Wealth rise the fastest in two years

Australian households will begin the new decade with surging levels of wealth as rebounding property prices and a buoyant sharemarket drive the fastest rise in prosperity in almost two years.

Household net worth on a per capita basis jumped over the three months to September by $10,699, or 2.6 per cent, to a record $428,574 — the largest quarterly increase since December 2016, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.

Rises in national housing prices of almost 3 per cent and the sharemarket of almost 2 per cent over October and November mean the financial position of households is almost certain to improve again in the December quarter.

The figures are fuelling hopes that consumers may open their wallets in the new year, delivering a boost to growth after a year of sluggish spending.

The official wealth data, from the September national accounts figures, comes amid anecdotal evidence that an encouraging number of shoppers hit the Boxing Day discount sales.

PwC chief economist Jeremy Thorpe said: "There is a general rising tide ... as house prices rise, Australians should feel more confident in spending, or at least we hope that's the case. "A lot depends on people having jobs, and The last labourmarket release was more positive than anyone had expected."

Josh Frydenberg said Australians could look to the new year with confidence about their economic future. "Not only did they dodge Labor's $387bn of higher taxes but, under the Coalition, tax cuts we took to the election have been legislated, putting more money in people's pockets and helping to increase household disposable income at its fastest rate in a decade," the Treasurer said on Friday.

"In the face of challenging economic headwinds, with the drought at home and trade tensions abroad, the Australian economy has proven to be remarkably resilient"

The ABS said the property market revival was the key driver of wealth accumulation over the September quarter. "The value of residential land and dwellings increased by 2.9 per cent, driven by holding gains of $174.4bn — the first quarter of real gains after six successive quarters of losses," the ABS said.

The bounce put an end to 18 months of declining values, and aggregate net worth at the end of the September quarter increased 3 per cent to $10.9 billion.

The rise continued in the latest quarter, with national home values jumping 3 per cent in November and 12 per cent in October, bringing the total gain to 2.9 per cent, according to CoreLogic data.

Since September 30, the share-market has added 1.9 per cent. With only two trading days left in the year, the benchmark S&P/ ASX 200 index was up by more than 20 per cent in 2019. Once dividends are included, the annual returns for shareholders could push closer to 25 per cent. Household net worth on a per capita basis has surged 60 per cent over the past 10 years

From the "Weekend Australian" of 28 December, 2019






Good For You, Craig Kelly

Peter O'Brien

The Coalition needs Craig Kelly but they certainly don’t deserve him.  The pile-on against Scott Morrison, for his vacation, his ‘lack of leadership on climate change’ and his alleged responsibility for the bushfires, has been of Trump Derangement Syndrome proportions.

Kelly comes out in a combative interview with ITV talking head Piers Morgan and (a) defends the PM regarding his vacation, (b) points out that the bushfires have nothing to do with climate change and (c) that in terms of emissions reductions we are doing more than most countries.

And what thanks does he get?  Minister for water resources, drought and a lucky dip of other portfolios, David Littleproud, says:

That’s just a sideshow. He doesn’t represent the views of the government and you know what I couldn’t give a rat’s what he said, it’s irrelevant, let’s just focus on those people that are out there that need our help.

This is the same Littleproud who, only months ago, opined that he ‘didn’t know if climate change was manmade’, only to scuttle behind a ‘clarification’ when challenged by that bastion of objectivity The Guardian:

… he “totally” accepts that worsening droughts are linked to climate change, as he signalled more taxpayer support for regional communities was coming as Australia’s big dry “escalates”.

Now there’s a man of conviction for you.

Sometime ago I postulated in this forum that logic dictated there must be someone in the Liberal ranks who was sceptical about CAGW and I lamented that they did not speak out.  Craig Kelly took me to task on this and I was pleased to acknowledge  in a subsequent article, that Kelly had given voice to the sceptic position and has been doing so ever since.  His mastery of this brief is second to none among the political class.  He can cite chapter and verse of the relevant research to support his case whereas the best the wets in the Liberal Party can come up with in response to Kelly’s specific points is along the lines of Treasurer Frydenberg’s anodyne contribution to this latest furore:

Our view of climate change is that it’s real. We accept the science.

While Mr Frydenberg said fuel loads had been a factor in the bushfires, he said climate change was causing hotter, drier summers.

Which is exactly what the Greens want him to say so that they can go on beating the government over the head for achnowledging the ‘problem’ while not doing enough, by their yardstick, to remedy it. Let me summarize Craig’s argument.

Order Peter O’Brien’s Bitter Harvest here

Firstly, even committed warmist Dr Andy Pitman has conceded there is no direct link between drought and ‘climate change’. Like Littleproud, he then demonstrated quite the talent for back-scuttling.   ‘Climate change’ is in quotation marks because Pitman was talking about one particular form of climate change – the kind caused by atmospheric warming as a result of human emissions.  He has to say that, because a warming climate of this nature will produce a wetter world.  That is why most of the world’s rainforests are in the warmer tropical zone.

The current bushfire emergency has come about because of three factors:

# the prolonged drought

# the accumulation of fuel, and

# the malice and/or carelessness of almost 200 people charged with starting fires

In as much as high temperatures have contributed to the problem, if they really are records  (a doubtful proposition, given the revelations of Jennifer Marohasy et al regarding the BoM’s adjustments acolytes), they are only marginally higher than in previous decades and would  have had no greater impact now than in the past.

But on the subject of CAGW itself, no-one has done a useful cost/benefit analysis of CO2 mitigation.  That is because no-one knows just how much warming will occur in the future, how much of it will be due to man-made CO2 emissions (as opposed to natural climate variability) and how much of it will be beneficial.  So the ‘precautionary principle’ argument is often made, illustrated by rhetorical devices such as comparing the price of CO2 mitigation with that of insuring one’s house – something most people do without thinking twice.  That decision is almost instinctive but how much one is prepared to pay requires more thought. But analogies are often imperfect – sometimes laughably so, as recently demonstrated by Peter Van Onselen.  We don’t insure our homes to prevent bushfires but to recompense us in the event that one damages or destroys our house.

A better analogy, but again imperfect, is a military operation.  If your country is threatened with invasion there are two options – strike first in a do-or-die pre-emptive action, or prepare your defences, build up your strength and allow the enemy to exhaust his resources before launching a counter strike.  You would only adopt the first strategy if the danger was ‘clear and present’.  That is not the case with CAGW, despite the hysteric frothing of Piers Morgan and his sidekicks in the clip above.  In the CAGW sense I’m talking about adaptation – more dams, more robust infrastructure etc — because what we do know with certainty is that, regardless of CAGW, we will continue to see floods, droughts, bushfires and cyclones.

Even if they’re not prepared to diss the CAGW myth entirely, any half-smart conservative government would leap on Craig Kelly’s contributions to enable them to craft a case for making haste slowly and directing resources to the cause of adaptation rather than mitigation. On climate change the Coalition is half-pregnant and that is their problem.

Good on you, Craig Kelly.

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





12 January, 2020

James Cook university crookedness in support of global warming continues

We see now why JCU resisted Peter Ridd's call for validation  of their alarming "dying reef" studies.  Ridd knew that they were fudging the facts but, in good scientific form, did not say exactly that.  He just called for their studies to be validated, where replication is a major form of validation.

JCU illegally fired him for saying that and are still challenging him in the courts.  After one verdict against them, you would think that they would cave in.  But they cannot afford to. Admitting that they had no legal grounds to fire him would open up a whole can of worms about why they DID fire him.

Replication studies are the death of crooked or negligent research and the need for them has come to the fore in recent years after lots of high profile studies in both medicine and psychology have failed careful replication. Much of what we thought we knew was wrong.

So a big replication of some JCU research is of great interest. And the replication was an abject failure.  The JCU results could not be repeated.  Peter Ridd implied that their findings about the reef were nebulous and we now hear that their findings about reef fish were nebulous.  It's a disturbing coincidence.

The chief JCU author on this occasion complains that the replication was not exact but the differences he points to should have been trivial in their effects.  If an effect is real it should emerge in a variety of contexts.  It did not

My best guess about how JCU got their alarming results is that they used much higher levels of acidification than is realistic. Less detectably, they may have manipulated every one of their parameters until they got the result they wanted


Over the past decade, marine scientists published a series of studies warning that humanity’s burgeoning carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could cause yet another devastating problem. They reported that seawater acidified by rising CO2—already known to threaten organisms with carbonate shells and skeletons, such as corals—could also cause profound, alarming changes in the behavior of fish on tropical reefs. The studies, some of which made headlines, found that acidification can disorient fish, make them hyperactive or bolder, alter their vision, and lead them to become attracted to, rather than repelled by, the smell of predators. Such changes, researchers noted, could cause populations to plummet.

But in a Nature paper published today, researchers from Australia, Canada, Norway, and Sweden challenge a number of those findings. In a major, 3-year effort that studied six fish species, they could not replicate three widely reported behavioral effects of ocean acidification. The replication team notes that many of the original studies came from the same relatively small group of researchers and involved small sample sizes. That and other “methodological or analytical weaknesses” may have led the original studies astray, they argue.

“It’s an exceptionally thorough replication effort,” says Tim Parker, a biologist and an advocate for replication studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Marine scientist Andrew Esbaugh of the University of Texas, Austin, agrees that it’s “excellent, excellent work.”

But marine biologist Philip Munday of James Cook University, Townsville, in Australia, a co-author of most of the papers the Nature study tried to replicate, says there are “fundamental methodological differences” between the original and replication studies. “Replication of results in science is critically important, but this means doing things in the same way, not in vastly different ways,” he wrote in an email.

Munday helped launch research on the behavioral impacts of ocean acidification together with Danielle Dixson, now at the University of Delaware. In 2009, their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that orange clownfish (Amphiprion percula) reared in seawater with elevated CO2 levels no longer recognized the chemical cues that could help them find a suitable habitat on the reef. (“Losing Nemo” was a popular headline for stories about the paper.) That study was followed by dozens of others showing similarly striking, and often large, behavioral effects in clownfish and other species, mostly from tropical waters.

Timothy Clark, the first author on the Nature paper and a marine scientist at Deakin University, Geelong, in Australia, says he initially set out to probe the physiological mechanisms behind those behavior changes. But after he failed to reproduce the changes—let alone explain them—he invited other scientists to set up a systematic replication attempt. It focused on three reported effects of acidified waters: making reef fish prone to swim toward their predators’ chemical cues rather than fleeing them, increasing their activity, and altering the fish’s tendency to favor either their left or right sides in some behaviors. The researchers didn’t seek to repeat each previous experiment one for one, but Clark estimates the entire effort covers the research reported in at least 20 studies.

Overall, the group reports, exposing fish to seawater with acidification levels predicted for the end of the century had “negligible” effects on all three behaviors. The Nature paper also reports the results of a statistical analysis called a bootstrapping simulation, designed to calculate the probability that Munday and co-authors could have found the striking data on chemical signal preference presented in seven papers. The authors say the odds are exceedingly low: “0 in 10,000,” as they put it.

Clark declined to elaborate on the implications of the bootstrap finding, but says he “would encourage any other avenues of investigation to find out what has caused the stark differences between our findings and theirs.” Esbaugh calls the bootstrap analysis “a little concerning,” but he objects to the “somewhat nefarious undercurrent” in the Nature paper. “I know both of these research groups,” he says, “and they’re both very, very good.”

Munday stands by his papers and plans to detail many “critically important” differences in the designs of the two sets of experiments in a response to the Nature paper. For instance, he notes the replication group didn’t study clownfish, used different water volumes and experiment durations, and used a different setup to study chemical cue avoidance. Dixson—who presented her findings at a 2015 White House meeting—also says methodological differences make a direct comparison between the studies “inappropriate.” But the Nature authors say some methods had to be adapted because they didn’t work as described in the original papers. They add that they could not catch enough clownfish, so used six other species also used in the previous studies.

Replication studies often cause quibbles about methods, Parker says. But, he argues, “If the original finding is reasonably robust,” then researchers using even somewhat different methods should be able to replicate it. And he notes that the replication team went to great lengths to be transparent. Unlike the original authors, the team released video of each experiment, for example, as well as the bootstrap analysis code. “That level of transparency certainly increases my confidence in this replication,” Parker says.

Researchers say the Nature paper allays one fear about the impact of ocean acidification. But Josefin Sundin of Uppsala University in Sweden, the Nature paper’s last author, stresses that climate change still poses a serious threat to sea life. “If the oceans were as acidic as we have been testing, it would also be much warmer, and that’s a huge issue,” she says.

Although replication efforts have blossomed in psychology, biomedicine, and other fields, they’re still rare in ecology, says biologist Shinichi Nakagawa of the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The new paper “sets a great example,” says Nakagawa, who hopes it “will instigate and inspire more replication studies—not to prove previous results wrong but to make our science more robust and trustworthy.”

SOURCE  

The journal abstract

Ocean acidification does not impair the behaviour of coral reef fishes

Timothy D. Clark et al.

Abstract

The partial pressure of CO2 in the oceans has increased rapidly over the past century, driving ocean acidification and raising concern for the stability of marine ecosystems1,2,3. Coral reef fishes are predicted to be especially susceptible to end-of-century ocean acidification on the basis of several high-profile papers4,5 that have reported profound behavioural and sensory impairments—for example, complete attraction to the chemical cues of predators under conditions of ocean acidification.

Here, we comprehensively and transparently show that—in contrast to previous studies—end-of-century ocean acidification levels have negligible effects on important behaviours of coral reef fishes, such as the avoidance of chemical cues from predators, fish activity levels and behavioural lateralization (left–right turning preference).

Using data simulations, we additionally show that the large effect sizes and small within-group variances that have been reported in several previous studies are highly improbable. Together, our findings indicate that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible, suggesting that behavioural perturbations will not be a major consequence for coral reef fishes in high CO2 oceans.

SOURCE  

Note: At roughly the same time as I first put up the above (on Facebook) Peter Ridd himself put up a critique very similar to mine above. Peter also mentions the dodgy work on Lionfish done by Oona Lonnstedt, a PhD student at JCU. Making stuff up would appear to be a major feature of the culture at JCU






AFP eyes case of author Bruce Pascoe’s indigenous identity

He's no more Aboriginal than I am.  He is just a fantasist

The Australian Federal Police is assessing an allegation that celeb­rated author and historian Bruce Pascoe has benefited ­financially from wrongly claiming to be indigenous.

One of Professor Pascoe’s most vocal critics, Aboriginal entrepreneur Josephine Cashman, asked Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton for an investigation of Professor Pascoe for ­alleged “dishonesty offences” on December 11. Mr Dutton has since referred the matter to the AFP for an assessment, which was underway on Friday.

Professor Pascoe was joint winner of the $30,000 inaugural Indigenous Writers’ Prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in 2016 for Dark Emu, which argues for a rethink of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The award, which Professor Pascoe shared with Ellen van Neerven for her book Heat and Light, was established to acknowledge the contribution to Australian literary culture by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers.

Dark Emu became a bestseller. An adaptation called Young Dark Emu has been published for children and ABC ­announced it would turn it into a two-part series to be screened this year.

Ms Cashman’s email to Mr Dutton disputed Professor Pascoe’s past statements that he was of Bunurong and Yuin descent.

Ms Cashman, whose son is Yuin, alleged a genealogy search did not show Professor Pascoe had Aboriginal forebears. She said Professor Pascoe had benefited financially from his claims ­including from his appointment “as an Aboriginal professor at the University of Technology Sydney”.

In recent years Professor Pascoe worked as a UTS professor at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research. The Weekend Australian does not suggest the allegation against Professor Pascoe is true, only that the AFP is ­assessing it.

Ms Cashman is a Warrimay woman from NSW. She was a member of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Indigenous Advisory Council who spoke out about “the epidemic of violence in indigenous communities” in a joint presentation to the National Press Club in 2016.

In October last year, Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt appointed Ms Cashman and 19 other indigenous and non-indigenous Australians to the Voice Co-Design Senior Advisory Group.

In her email to Mr Dutton, Ms Cashman also raised the broader issue of indigenous identity. “I also seek your support on the question of government ­reforms concerning Aboriginal identity. ‘Do you identify as an ATSI person?’ is failing Aboriginal communities,” she wrote.

“I invite you to assist me in collaboration with the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister to develop a national strategy for establishing a register for Aboriginal people. I suggest a panel composed of traditional owners, on-the-ground elders, government experts and others to examine the most efficient manner to achieve identifying Aboriginal people.

“Once the procedure has been designed and agreed upon, it should be easy to register an ­Aboriginal birth because it could be linked to existing Australian birth registration and native title genealogical records. It is doable.”

Professor Pascoe’s current publisher, [Leftist] Morry Schwartz of Schwartz Publishing, declined to give his opinion on the validity of claims that Professor Pascoe was not Aboriginal. He told The Weekend Australian Professor Pascoe’s background was “completely irrelevant to his work”.

In Professor Pascoe’s latest book Salt, a collection of his writing dating back years, he ­addressed questions about his Aboriginality in an essay title “An enemy of the people”, saying “many people think I’m a traitor”.

“You’re not like the rest of us, they tell me, you’re not really Aboriginal,” Professor Pascoe wrote.

“What they say has cool logic. Clinical analysis of genes says I’m more Cornish than Koori. I hardly ever suffered racist remarks, and experienced no disadvantage, due to my heritage.”

In The Weekend Australian Magazine last May, writer Richard Guilliatt quoted Professor Pascoe addressing questions about his ancestry.

Guilliatt wrote that Professor Pascoe told him: “When people ask me whether I’m ‘really’ Aboriginal, because I’m so pale, I say ‘Yeah’. And when they ask me whether I can explain it, I say: ‘Have you got three hours?’”

Mr Schwartz alleged that Ms Cashman was “allowing herself to be used by the professional right-wing cultural warriors”.

“I am indeed saddened, for I have been involved with Josephine on several projects over the past couple of years, and I know she genuinely worked very hard towards the wellbeing of indigenous Australians,” Mr Schwartz said. “Bruce Pascoe’s background is completely irrelevant to his work.”

When told of Mr Schwartz’s comments, Ms Cashman responded by saying that facts mattered. She said it was offensive for a non-Aboriginal person to say they were Aboriginal.

A spokesperson for the AFP told The Weekend Australian on Friday that work had begun to ­assess the complaint about Professor Pascoe. “The Australian Federal Police can confirm it ­received correspondence in relation to this matter on December 24,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “The matter is being ­assessed in accordance with standard AFP protocols. As such, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.”

SOURCE  






Degrees to AVOID if you want to get a job straight out of university and it’s bad news for those studying communications, psychology and maths

Thousands of graduates are battling unemployment thanks to studying creative arts and maths at university.

While having a degree under your belt used to all-but guarantee landing a job, more employers are now happy to hire someone without a degree at all.

In its annual Graduate Outcomes Survey, Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching revealed the number of students securing a job straight after university has plummeted yet again to just 72 per cent.

Almost half of students who study creative degrees still aren't finding work four months after graduating, with 47 per cent languishing in unemployment.

Those who study maths and science are also struggling to find a job, as are those with a communications degree.

Meanwhile, to get the best value for money, students should instead opt for degrees in pharmacy, medicine, rehabilitation or dentistry.

Worst degrees for finding jobs

Percentage employed four months after graduating

Creative arts (52.9%)

Tourism and hospitality (56.4%)

Communications (60.1%)

Psychology (63.4%)

Science and maths (63.4%)

Source: Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching, 2019

Of those who study pharmacy, 95.7 per cent have secured jobs within four months of leaving university - but are given the lowest average salary.

Young workers face 'systematically disadvantaged outcomes in the labour market', according to the Australia Institute's Dr Jim Stanford.

He said today's graduates are suffering with lower wages, as well a being the last to be hired - and the first to be fired.

In 2008, 85 per cent of graduates secured a job after leaving university.

This figure has fallen to just 72 per cent, down another percentage point from 2018.

Best degrees for finding jobs:

Percentage employed four months after graduating

Pharmacy (95.7%)

Rehabilitation (92.4%)

Medicine (91.1%)

Dentistry (86.2%)

Engineering (84.8%)

Source: Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching, 2019

'You're better off with a degree than without one,' Dr Stanford told 7News at the time.

'But the outcomes have still deteriorated.'

As for salaries, undergraduate full-time salaries in 2019 ranged from highs of $88,200 to lows of $48,000, depending on the person's degree.

The best graduate salary awaits dentistry students, at $88,200.

For medical students it's $73,100 and for teach education it's $68,000.

The lowest salaries are reserved for those studying pharmacy, at $48,000.

Those with degrees in tourism and hospitality earned an average of $50,000, while creative arts graduates earned $52,000.  

'Higher level qualifications, on average, continue to confer additional benefits in the labour market, particularly for postgraduate coursework graduates,' the report explained.

'In addition, overall employment declined slightly to 92.7 per cent in 2019, a fall of 0.2 percentage points on the previous year.'

SOURCE  






Australia has been hotter, fires have burnt larger areas

By Dr. Jennifer Marohasy

The word unprecedented is applied to almost every bad thing that happens at the moment, as though particular events could not have been predicted, and have never happened before at such a scale or intensity. This is creating so much anxiety, because it follows logically that we are living in uncertain time: that there really is a climate emergency.

The historical evidence, however, indicates fires have burnt very large areas before, and it has been hotter.

Some of the catastrophe has been compounded by our refusal to prepare appropriately, as is the case with the current bushfire emergency here in Australia. Expert Dr Christine Finlay explains the importance of properly managing the ever increasing fire loads in an article in today’s The Australian. While there is an increase in the area of national park with Eucalyptus forests, there has been a reduction in the area of hazard reduction burning.

The situation is perhaps also made worse by fiddling with the historical temperature record. This will affect the capacity of those modelling bushfire behaviour to obtain an accurate forecast.

We have had an horrific start to the bushfire season, and much is being said about the more than 17 lives lost already, and that smoke has blown as far as New Zealand. Unprecedented, has been the claim. But just 10 years ago, on 9 February 2009, 173 lives were lost in the Black Saturday inferno. On 13th January 1939 (Black Friday), 2 million hectares burnt with ash reportedly falling on New Zealand. That was probably the worst bushfire catastrophe in Australia’s modern recorded history in terms of area burnt and it was 80 years ago: January 13, 1939.

According to the Report of the Royal Commission that followed, it was avoidable.

In terms of total area burnt: figures of over 5 million hectares are often quoted for 1851. The areas now burnt in New South Wales and Victoria are approaching this.

Last summer, and this summer, has been hot in Australia. But the summer of 1938-1939 was probably hotter. In rural Victoria, the summer of 1938-1939 was on average at least two degrees hotter than anything measured with equivalent equipment since

The summer of 1938-1939 was probably the hottest ever in recorded history for the states of New South Wales and Victoria. It is difficult to know for sure because the Bureau has since changed how temperatures are measured at many locations and has not provided any indication of how current electronic probes are recording relative to the earlier mercury thermometers.

Further, since 2011, the Bureau is not averaging measurements from these probes so the hottest recorded daily temperature is now a one-second spot reading from an electronic devise with a sheath of unknown thickness. In the United States similar equipment is used and the readings are averaged over five (5) minutes and then the measurement recorded.

The year before last, I worked with the Indonesian Bureau of Meteorology (BMKG), and understood their difficulty of getting a temperature equivalence between mercury thermometers and readings from electronic probes at their thousands of weather stations. The Indonesian Bureau has a policy of keeping both recording devices in the same shelter, and taking measurements from both. They take this issue very seriously, and acknowledge the problem.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has a policy of a three year period of overlap, yet the metadata shows that for its supposedly highest quality recording stations (for example Rutherglen), the mercury thermometer is removed the very same day an electronic probe is installed. This is a total contravention of the Bureau’s own policy, and nothing is being done about it.

I explained much of this to Australia’s Chief Scientist in a letter some years ago — neither he, nor the Bureau, deny that our current method of recording temperatures here in Australia is not covered by any international ISO standard. It is very different from methods currently employed in the United States and also Indonesia, and as recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation.

Then there is the issue of the remodelling of temperatures, I explained how this affects trends at Rutherglen in a blog post early last year.

The remodelling, that has the technical term of homogenisation, is a two-step process. With respect to the temperature maxima at Rutherglen, the Bureau identified a ‘statistically significant discontinuity’ in 1938–1939. Values were then changed.

It is somewhat peculiar that the Bureau did not recognise, in its process of remodelling the historical data for Rutherglen, that the summer of 1938-1939 was exceptionally hot because of drought, compounded by bushfires. Rather David Jones and Blair Trewin at the Bureau used the exceptional hot January of 1939 as an excuse for remodelling the historical temperature record at Rutherglen, with the changed values subsequently incorporated into international data sets.

These made-up values are then promoted by the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This propaganda is then tweeted by Hollywood superstars like Bette Midler to The Australian Prime Minister.

After a recent Sky News Television interview that I did with Chris Smith several people have contacted me about the hottest day ever recorded in Australia. They have suggested it is 16th January 1889 being 53.1 degrees Celsius at Cloncurry in Queensland. A problem with this claim is that the temperature was not measured from within a Stevenson screen, though it was a recording at an official station. A Stevenson screen (to shelterer the mercury thermometer) was not installed by Queensland meteorologist Clement Ragge at Cloncurry until the next month, until February 1889.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia using standard equipment (a mercury thermometer in a Stevenson screen) at an official recording station is 51.7 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit) at the Bourke Post Office on January 3, 1909.

We are all entitled to our own opinion, but not our own facts.

SOURCE  






Queensland grossly negligent about back-burning too

ACTING Fire and Emergency Services Minister Leeanne Enoch blames the weather for the State Government's failure to conduct the required controlled burns for four consecutive years to 2019

Obviously, not just good management practice but simple common sense would dictate that if the window of opportunity reduces, a good manager would allocate greater resources to that reduced window to achieve the required outcome.

More concerning, however, is that for each of these years the number of planned controlled burns has reduced in number. How could the requirement for controlled burns reduce each year for four consecutive years, considering the planned number was not achieved the previous year?

Controlled burns are not the only method of fire prevention. Clearing undergrowth and regrowth, as well as maintaining and making fire breaks, are critical elements as well.

Another concern is that it appears very few so-called frontline state public service staff have been allocated to the critically important task of fire prevention. Could it be that the Palaszczuk Government has neglected its responsibility to prepare for the potential disaster of fire?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was slammed by many for taking a short break before Christmas even though the federal government is not responsible for the frontline against the fires. It is the state governments that are responsible for land management, fire prevention and preparedness and firefighting yet there is hardly a murmur when Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk takes a cruise and now Fire and Emergency Services Minister Craig Crawford appears to be missing.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 9 January, 2020

 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 January, 2020

Murdoch University is prosecuting a whistleblower -- to send a warning to any future whistleblowers

The issue is an old one in Australian universities: Do you admit overseas students even though they are not really qualified and do you give them a pass when they have really failed? 

Why is that an issue?  Because overseas students bring in a rich harvest of fees -- so you want as many as possible of them.  And you don't want to upset any of them

So do universites really do those things?  The official answer is a scandalized "No".  The real answer is: Frequently. The professor let the cat out of the bag

In my days as a university lecturer I saw how easily favoured students could be granted marks they did not earn.  In my case the favoured ones were student activists and Aborigines but it would work equally well for Asians


Whistleblower mathematics professor Gerd Schroder-Turk, and his young family, must be wondering if they will be pushed into bankruptcy by his employer, Murdoch University. His crime was to expose on the ABC’s Four Corners program alleged corruption at Murdoch University’s enrolment section. According to Schroder-Turk, Murdoch was letting in students with inadequate skills in the chase for cash.

Murdoch University has ignored universal adverse media reaction against it. Condemnation by the union, staff, students, and a huge public petition have made no difference. It is continuing its legal action against Schroder-Turk, claiming he has affected its reputation and profitability. Schroder-Turk could lose everything he owns.

Murdoch’s legal action is not about retrieving lost earnings. I am guessing that Schroder-Turk’s entire wealth would be less than vice-chancellor Eeva Leinonen’s overly generous yearly salary. It would certainly be less than a day of the university’s operational cost.

This court action is about power. It is the university sending a message to the academic staff — “speak out and we will destroy you”.

It does not matter about the truth. It does not matter if Murdoch was acting disgracefully.

A frightened academia is a compliant academia. Just the way a modern university administration likes it.

The other universities, most of which have similar authoritarian streaks in their administration, will be cheering Murdoch from the side of the courtroom. It is in their interests for Schroder-Turk to be crushed. They also want fearful academics.

History is littered with examples where people stood by and watched bad things happen when they had the power to stop it.

Such a person appears to be the West Australian Education Minister, Sue Ellery. Murdoch University is set up under West Australian state legislation.

The state government has huge influence over Murdoch through the university’s governing senate. But Ellery seems too often silent about Schroder-Turk.

Another is federal Education Minister Dan Tehan. His department gives Murdoch hundreds of millions of dollars each year. There are many things he can do to persuade Murdoch that it is doing the wrong thing and not acting in the interests of the public that funds it.

But the minister seems to be showing signs of being captured by the universities he administers. This is a common problem and an occupational hazard in politics.

One must have some sympathy for him. Universities are very powerful organisations with slick media departments. Through their peak body, Universities Australia, they are ruthless in publicly pursuing their interests. A minister decides to cross an Australian university at his or her peril.

Nevertheless, the universities look at the Schroder-Turk case and see the inaction by Tehan and Ellery. I worry the collective university vice-chancellors are laughing at how easily and quickly Tehan seems to have been caught, reeled in, and brought to heel on a nice short leash.

Murdoch University has interpreted the inaction by both state and federal education ministers as a green light to do whatever it wants.

In the meantime, Tehan needs to lay down the law to show a little steel to Leinonen and her chancellor, Gary Smith. He should call Leinonen and Smith and tell them he is commissioning a review of Murdoch’s activities under the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency’s objective 4: “Take prompt and effective action to address substantial risks to students or the reputation of the sector.”

He would appoint an investigator who was sympathetic to the cause of academic freedom and critical of some of the tendencies of modern universities. I am sure the National Tertiary Education Union — which, again, has stood by Schroder-Turk throughout his ordeal — would be very happy to put forward some suitable names.

The minister should tell Leinonen and Smith that if Murdoch were found wanting by this investigation, they could lose their accreditation to operate as a university.

He has the power. He has the duty to protect whistleblowers such as Schroder-Turk. Although universities should be independent of government, they must behave like universities to deserve that privilege.

As it is, Murdoch University has forfeited that right.

That simple phone call by the minister to Leinonen would shatter Murdoch’s illusion that it can ignore the taxpayers who fund it.

Problem solved.

Happy public, happy Gerd Schroder-Turk, happy university staff, happy students, happy union.

Popular Dan Tehan.

There is no public support for Murdoch University.

SOURCE  





The fires: Climate change beliefs are distracting attention  from what really needs to be done

After decades of poor housekeeping, Australia’s latest devastating bushfires were predictable. Politicians and serving officials want to leave post mortems until the fires are out. Their instincts are correct.

That hasn’t stopped green ­advocates and the gullible from immediately linking them to ­Australia’s “inaction on climate change”. Climate experts as far afield as Sydney Lord Mayor ­Clover Moore and Swedish truant schoolgirl Greta Thunberg agree on the connection.

A coalition of retired fire chiefs, in what seems a closing-the-stable-door defence, claimed that last April it “knew that a bushfire crisis was coming” and nagged the government to invest in more resources. But, “fundamentally, (the government) doesn’t like talking about climate change”.

The ex-chiefs referred to being under an “unofficial gag order”, whatever that means, and argued that if governments had listened, there would have been more ­assets deployed and fewer fires.

When Australia accounts for just 1.3 per cent of global emissions that proposition is plainly absurd.

Yet, for all the bluster, the only mention of climate change in five years of Fire and Rescue NSW annual­ reports is a reference to crews being encouraged to turn off all non-essential lights during Earth Hour, “joining millions of people worldwide in showing their commitment to tackling climate­ change’’.

For five years the Victorian Country Fire Authority didn’t mention climate change. Its ­priorities were “fairness” and “inclusion­”, which it mentions 56 times.

Well may former fire chiefs blame climate change, but if they were so convinced of the connection between wildfires and global warming, why didn’t they publicly campaign for immediate, practical steps to reduce fuel loads in national parks? Surely they could have pushed their rural colleagues­, government ministers, and department heads harder?

Victoria publishes limited data, but a planned hazard reduction of 370 hectares in East Gippsland was reduced to nine after protesters claimed it was “killing baby birds alive”. Much of East Gippsland is now a wasteland.

These days, it’s commonplace for national park entries to be blocked by boulders or chains and padlocks. Many fire trails are so overgrown that a sign identifying them is all that distinguishes them from the rest of the forest.

Against the advice of local brigades­, the green firefighting hierarc­hy supported a wind farm amid prime agricultural land, renderi­ng an existing airstrip unsuitab­le for water bombers. Aerial bombing is considered 40 per cent of the firefighting effort.

While Aborigines are free to clear their land without a permit, once it transfers to non-indigenous owners those rights are ­forfeited. There are heavy penalties, including jail, for those who clear their property without permissi­on. Green tape and delay­s abound. Fires have destroy­ed some properties held up in this process.

So now the chickens are coming home to roost, with eastern Australian bushfires consuming an area approaching five million hectares. They have inflicted an unspeakable toll on human life, property, wildlife and livestock.

As weather patterns slowly return­ to normal and the fires are extinguished, there will be yet another­ government inquiry.

More money will be demand­ed, along with calls for additional jet tankers, even though there are few airfields from which they can operate. Money is needed, but alone it is not the answer. Much of it goes to the deskbound. For ­example, in the four years up to 2019, the NSW Rural Fire Service received a 78 per cent boost in funding, yet it oversaw a decline in volunteers and fire trucks.

Of course for Hollywood and other propagandists, it is vital that inaction on climate change, not inaction on hazard reduction, be the focus. For them, this link is vital to their cause.

Proving that a prophet can be any fool from home, The New York Times screams “Australia is committing climate suicide”. In an article long on drama and short on facts, the newspaper intones­ that “the response of Aust­rali­a’s leaders (to the fires) has not been to defend their country but to defend­ the fossil industry”. Talk about ignorance and warped values­.

Better to deprive 200 million Indians of a light globe and throw them crumbs through a UN-­administered clim­ate fund than provide economic independence through Australian coal.

Like ancient Druids, the media left, Hollywood and the rest of the global warming cult won’t hear that Australia spends 11 times the global average on renewable power and invests in renewables at a rate per capita four to five times faster than China, the EU, Japan and the US. They give no credit to Australia for being on track to meet its Paris Agreement target for 2030, despite a 2.2 million jump in population since 2013.

To fanatics, facts don’t matter. That there has been no drying trend in 100 years of Australian data, and that science is yet to establish­ a causal link between climate­ change and drought is irrelevan­t. [Global warming would induce MORE rain, not less]

While weather, droughts and bushfires will, from time to time, continue to feature, population growth and encroachment on green spaces increase risks. Indeed­, 87 per cent of bushfires are due to humans. Only 6 per cent are naturally started. Arsonists, attracted by the ease of ignition­, perhaps start more than half. To date, 183 arsonists have been arrested. However, while those delegated to manage the envir­onment and those charged with property protection share a close ideological relationship, little­ will change.

At some point, government must take control. Communic­ation and co-operation between the different jurisdictions, departments and agencies must be ­better co-ordinated.

Priorities must be set, audited and enforced. The insurance indus­try should be given a louder voice. It’s an important financial stakeholder and risk assessor. This crisis will lead to higher premium­s, more uninsured properties and serious moral dilemma­s next time.

For now, courageous frontline firefighters are putting their lives on the line and fighting fires the scale of which owes much to green ideology and confused and fragmented leadership. It is hoped that an inquiry will establish clear priorities and directions that will be followed.

SOURCE  





Bushfires: Victoria wide of mark on target burn-offs in 2019

Victoria carried out just over half the fuel reduction burns it planned in 2019, ultimately burning one-third of the public land that had been recommended by the Black ­Saturday bushfires royal ­commission.

The figures have been condemned by bushfire experts and landholders in fire-affected areas, with one accusing Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning and the Andrews Labor government of trying to avoid accountability by moving from a hectare target to a less transparent “risk reduction target”.

The information has come amid a horror fire season that has seen 25 people killed and thousands of homes lost in southeastern Australia, with at least two to three months of hot, dry conditions to go.

The forest industry and the CFMEU have called for fuel loads in national parks to be ­aggressively managed through hazard reduction burning and selective logging.

An Andrews government spokeswoman on Wednesday said DELWP conducted 251 planned burns totalling 130,044ha in 2018-19, as well as applying “other fuel management methods” to 12,034ha.

“In 2018-19, DELWP approved 246,396ha of public land for planned burning should conditions be appropriate for controlled fire,” she said.

The 130,044ha constitutes just 53 per cent of the 246,396ha of planned burns, and 34 per cent of the target recommended by the Black Saturday royal commission. A key recommendation of the 2010 commission, accepted by the Brumby Labor government at the time, was that the Victorian government significantly boost its level of fuel reduction from the then current annual level of 130,000ha, or about 1.7 per cent of public land, to 5 per cent of public land, or about 385,000ha.

The 2018-19 figures show DELWP did not even try to meet the commission’s recommen­dations in setting its target, with the 246,396ha of planned burns constituting just 64 per cent of the recommended 385,000ha.

While weather conditions have at times caused a cancellation of planned burns, some have also been hampered by green groups.

Near the Victorian town of Nowa Nowa, among communities evacuated as the East Gippsland fires roared through the region last week, a controlled burn in September was delayed and then significantly reduced.

The prescribed burn at Nelsons Road, Nowa Nowa, was initially intended to cover 370ha of land to the south of the town in September, but protests resulted in it being delayed until the following month.

Even then, only 9ha was burned after “community consultation”, with some mulching and slashing also done in the area.

“The current bushfires did not reach the Nelsons Road burn but another nearby planned burn at Radar Hill played a significant role in helping to stop the fire,” a DELWP spokesman said.

Former CSIRO fire scientist David Packham slammed the Andrews government’s 2015 decision to move from hectare targets to “risk reduction targets”.

“Hectare targets were a process by which the department and government could be held ­accountable,” he said. “Such people don’t like being held accountable, especially when they’re doing the best they can to subvert what the commission came up with.”

Mr Packham also attacked the government for its refusal to release DELWP mapping of fuel loads across the state, which were previously publicly available.

DELWP last year demanded a fee of $1294.80 from the Weekly Times to process a Freedom of Information request for copies of the maps, and a state government spokeswoman this week told The Australian that publishing them “would be giving a map of where to start a fire to arsonists”.

“The level of secrecy from DELWP would make a nuclear research facility jealous,” Mr Packham said. He said he believed that even the 5 per cent target recommended by the royal commission was insufficient. “The royal commission originally concluded that 5-8 per cent ‘at a minimum’ would be appropriate,” he said. “When the final report came, the 5-8 had turned into 5 per cent and the word ‘minimum’ had disappeared.”

Fourth-generation mountain cattleman Bruce Commins, 66, said “mismanagement of the bush” through a lack of controlled burning was to blame for the ­severity of the current fires.

The East Gippsland farmer’s home north of Swift’s Creek and 2000ha grazing property near Benambra remain under threat from fires that have been burning since November 21. “I’m devastated by this,” said Mr Commins, a CFA volunteer for more than 45 years. “The environmental damage that’s been done is beyond belief.

“I really thought that after Black Saturday we would have had a change, but the royal commission recommendations just haven’t been followed in terms of fuel reduction burning. That is the issue — the fuel.”

Forest Fire Management Victoria chief Chris Hardman said the move away from hectare-based targets had been endorsed by an expert reference panel and was adopted “because it represented a more effective approach to reducing risk for life and property than a hectare-based target”.

SOURCE  





Fresh charges laid against UTS science dean Dianne Jolley over ‘fake’ harassment allegation

A Sydney professor charged for allegedly orchestrating a fake harassment campaign against herself and costing her university more than $157,000 in security measures has opted to remain behind bars rather than apply for bail after being taken into custody on fresh charges on Wednesday.

UTS Dean of Science Professor Dianne Jolley was on bail after her arrest in November for allegedly sending fake threats to herself after the university announced in June it was going to cancel its traditional Chinese medicine course.

On Wednesday, NSW Police revoked the 49-year-old’s bail after charging her with a fresh offence, alleging she had sent another nine letters after her arrest, providing false and misleading information that could make her UTS colleagues “fear for their safety”.

NSW Police said two of those letters were received by UTS on November 27, the same day Jolley appeared at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on charges of causing financial disadvantage by deception, giving false information about a person or property in danger and making a false representation resulting in a police investigation.

Jolley did not apply for bail at Sutherland Local Court on Thursday. The court heard she had decided to wait until her solicitor was available to represent her at a bail application hearing at Sydney’s Central Local Court on January 21.

Police allege Jolley launched her fake harassment campaign in July when she made her first report to police about letters she claimed to have received about the closure of the course.

In September, Jolley filed another police complaint claiming a threatening letter and several items of clothing stolen from her home had been left on her car in Sydney’s south.

After a lengthy investigation, police charged Jolley in November, alleging she had been sending the threatening letters to herself.

Jolley pleaded not guilty to the charges in November, her lawyer Aaron Kernaghan telling the media at the time his client had instructed him the harassment campaign was genuine.

“She’s loyal to her university, she’s concerned for her students, she’s looking forward to returning to there,” he said.

Jolley — who specialises in environmental chemistry and toxicology — joined UTS in late 2018.

She remains on paid leave with the university.

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 January, 2020

Hazard reduction for big burns ‘not a panacea’

It is utterly un-ambiguous that the bushfires would not have happened without fuel to burn.  The fuel consists of fallen branches and leaves and the easy way is eliminate it is to burn it off in a controlled way, mostly in winter.  Foresters have been doing that for generations. Burn all the fuel and it absolutely IS a panacea for big burns.  There can be no fire without fuel.

So why is the official below saying that it is not a panacea?  It is because he has failed to do his job.  He has failed to eliminate the fuel that is powering the current fires.  The excuse he gives is that the weather is warmer these days so opportunities to do safe burns are fewer.  But that is nonsense.  Australian national average temperatures differ by only fractions of one degree from year to year.  And since the fires are nationwide, national averages are what counts.

So why has he allowed the huge fuel buildup that we are presently suffering from?  The two main reasons are bureaucratic and he gives every sign of being a very timid bureaucrat.  It even influences him when people complain about the smoke from preventive burns.

The first limitation is that the preventive burns are "scheduled".  Bureaucrats love schedules but the weather cannot be scheduled.  So what happens when the weather would make a scheduled burn dangerous?  The burn is of course called off and the fuel remains there ready to burn. 

So forestry has to be opportunistic.  Any window of suitable weather has to be grabbed when it arises and used there and then to do a burn.  But can you imagine Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons pushing through that policy?  It is to laugh.  He is just a timid bureaucrat who above all avoids making waves,  hoping that it will all work out somehow.

And the second reason is also bureaucratic.  When landowners want to burn off areas near their properties that have a dangerous fuel buildup, the authorities mostly say No.  You can't have people protecting themselves!

"That would show us up as not doing our Job!  No Siree.  We know what it is needed and we will do it, not anybody else".

And people who burn off without permission are often fined heavily.  So what's the solution to that?  A recognition that the people on the ground know best and a general deference to their wishes.

So the present fires were entirely preventible


Hazard reductions burns are being hampered by longer fire seasons and extreme weather, Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons says, warning the controversial technique is "not the panacea" some may be looking for to temper bushfires.

The Commissioner on Wednesday defended the RFS' record on hazard reduction burning, saying the agency was not comprised of "environmental bastards", indicating prescribed burns were done with the priorities of people, property and the environment in mind.

Commissioner Fitzsimmons said the agency had met its targets for hazard reduction in the lead-up to this bushfire season, but the "really awful" conditions across the drought-stricken state meant that fires had spread wildly regardless.

"Hazard reduction burning is really challenging and the single biggest impediment to completing hazard reduction burning is the weather," Commissioner Fitzsimmons told ABC Breakfast.



"It's only when the conditions back off a little bit that you actually have some prospect of slowing the fire spread.

"It's important, but not the panacea, and something we should have a very open and frank discussion about."

Commissioner Fitzsimmons said the agency "worked through a sensible regime" to conduct hazard reduction burns, with weather on the day being the largest factor in determining if a burn could happen.

"Resourcing is challenging. Don't forget, as settled Australians, as Europeans, we are now living and working and occupying areas that used to burn freely," Commissioner Fitzsimmons said.

Commissioner Fitzsimmons said the smoke generated by the hazard reduction burns before the bushfire crisis began had made the RFS and other agencies "public enemy number one" at the time.

"There is a very significant health issue with smoke, but you can't have prescribed burning, hazard reduction burning without the by-product being smoke. Whilst we try to forecast, predict and hope it doesn't impact populated areas, you can't have it both ways," he said.

As Commissioner Fitzsimmons spoke to the ABC, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce was on Sunrise and urged more hazard reduction burns.

"Have you seen a footpath on fire? No, because there is nothing there to burn. Have you seen a massive fire that kills people on grounds [where] there is no fuel load? People get terribly hurt but you can control it," he said.

"Once a fire breaks out onto an area... with minimal fuel load [you] can control it. In a national park, there are always fires but it is the intensity of the fire because of the fuel load catching on fire. I believe, and this is my view, there are too many caveats, green caveats, that impedes people's efforts."

The Prime Minister earlier this week also called for more prescribed burns.

"You've got to deal with hazard management in national parks ... this, of course, will be one of the things that we will consider when premiers come together after they've been dealing with the fires," the Prime Minister said.

On Tuesday, Victoria's Country Fire Authority's chief officer Steve Warrington said there was a "fair amount of emotion" around hazard reduction. "The emotive argument is not supported that fuel reduction burning will fix all our problems," he said.

"Some of the hysteria that this will be the solution to all our problems is really just quite an emotional load of rubbish, to be honest."

SOURCE  






Australia tops Qatar as world's biggest LNG exporter

Australia has overtaken Qatar to become the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas, shipping 77.5 million tonnes in 2019 with an export value of $49 billion as the fuel becomes increasingly important in the global energy mix.

The figures, released on Monday by energy consultancy EnergyQuest, show Australia's liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments for the 2019 calendar year increased 11.4 per cent on the previous year's exports, primarily due to the growth in the Ichthys project operated by Japan's INPEX in the Timor sea.

The surge follows a succession of massive LNG projects to begin production in Australia in the past decade including by ASX-listed Woodside Petroleum and Santos and other global operators such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron.

"We have previously achieved the global title in some individual months," EnergyQuest chief executive Graeme Bethune said.

"But 2019 is the first time Australia has topped global LNG export performance on a sustained annual basis."

While Qatar's final production figures for 2019 are yet to be released, the country's output is forecast to be 2.5 million tonnes lower at 75 million tonnes, according to EnergyQuest's analysis.

Dr Bethune said Australia's production capacity was 88 million tonnes while Qatar's was 77 million tonnes. "There is still room to grow," he said.

Western Australia was the nation's dominant LNG export region, accounting for 57 per cent of shipments, with the Woodside-managed North West Shelf project the largest single contributor.

Woodside on Monday said its LNG exports from WA were helping the world transition to a lower-emissions future.

"Woodside is playing a significant role in the world's energy transformation, through managing our own emissions and reducing global emissions by supplying cleaner energy to a world that needs it," a spokeswoman said.

LNG is expected to play an increasingly important role in the future global energy mix by supplying the stability needed when conditions for renewable energy are unfavourable, such as when it is not sunny or windy. Electricity from gas has on average half the greenhouse emissions of electricity from coal.

In Australia, the ongoing national bushfire crisis has sparked fresh calls to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired power generation, which still accounts for about 60 per cent of Australia's electricity.

The nation's boom in LNG exports, however, has been described as concerning by environmental groups due to the significant amount of emissions released during extraction and production – adding 4.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in Australia during the year to March 2019. Gas producers and the Morrison government argue LNG exports are aiding the effort to arrest global warming as they displace the use of coal-fired power generation overseas.

On Monday, Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan said the growth of Australia's LNG sector was boosting the local economy and generate much-needed jobs in regional areas of northern Australia.

"Australia's LNG story is very encouraging and positive for the country," Mr Canavan said. "The contribution of the LNG sector to local economies in places like Darwin, Gladstone, the Darling Downs and western Queensland, Karratha and Broome is essential."

The Morrison government would continue working to expand the national gas industry in 2020 for domestic users and exports, Mr Canavan said.

The industry group for Australia's gas producers said the milestone of Australia becoming the world's top LNG exporter came after the industry collectively invested more than $350 billion nationally in the past decade, generating 80,000 direct and indirect jobs.

"Australia's LNG projects will deliver decades of economic growth, jobs and exports," said Andrew McConville of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.

"LNG exports also have regional and global environmental benefits, contributing to cleaner skies for our trading partners."

Following a three-fold jump in domestic gas prices, up to $10-12 a gigajoule, since exports began, the federal government has been considering forcing gas producers to reserve some supply for the domestic market in an effort to cut bills for households and manufacturers. Dr Bethune said prices on the east coast had fallen to $5 a gigajoule in January 2020.

SOURCE  






Eye on China: Dave Sharma’s call for cyber warfare

Liberal MP and former ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma says Australia must be prepared to wage “political warfare” to protect the nation’s sovereignty, and ­develop offensive intelligence capabilities to destabilise foreign adversaries.

Amid warnings of surging foreign interference in Australian ­institutions, Mr Sharma says Australia should draw inspiration from the “intelligence-driven disruption operations” of Israel’s shadowy intelligence service, Mossad.

Writing in The Australian on Monday, Mr Sharma says Australia faces a “sustained political warfare threat” through electoral interference, propaganda and the acquisition of key assets, and needs new tools to expose and ­exploit the vulnerabilities of its ­adversaries.

“In particular, we need to consider developing not just defensive capabilities, but also offensive capabilities, so that we give our ­intelligence and other agencies not just the tools to defend, but also the means to respond,” he says.

“The usual practitioners of ­political warfare, authoritarian ­regimes, are themselves highly vulnerable to political warfare. We should develop the capabilities to take the fight to them in this ­domain, even if only to create ­effective deterrence.”

The member for Wentworth in Sydney’s east argues such tactics, also known as hybrid warfare and grey-zone tactics, “are becoming the new norm of statecraft”, and are “challenging the way we must think about the future of state contest”.

The call follows a warning by former ASIO chief Duncan Lewis that “unprecedented” foreign interference — which analysts attribute almost entirely to China — poses an “existential threat” to Australian society.

That threat was dramatically ­illustrated by a cyber attack on the federal parliament in January, which the Australian Signals ­Directorate labelled a “national cyber crisis”. China was the prime suspect in that hack, as well as ­another on the Australian National University late last year.

The political warfare “tool kit” of authoritarian states includes misinformation, the exploitation of local politicians, interference in electoral processes, the discrediting of a nation's institutions, and the exploitation of faultlines in ­societies, Mr Sharma writes. But he says Australia must respond “consistent with our values”, targeting adversaries’ absence of ­accountability, mistreatment of minorities, and a desire to tightly control information.

He notes the Panama Papers leak, which exposed corruption among Russian elites, was one of the most destabilising events of Vladimir Putin’s leadership, while revelations about the wealth of family members of Chinese leaders had been similarly destabilising.

“Shining a spotlight on bad ­behaviour and exposing corruption, human rights abuses, deception, and crude acts of statecraft is a powerful tool which can inflict serious damage on the stability and legitimacy of authoritarian ­regimes, hitting them where it hurts,” he says.

Security experts backed the push, saying a new approach was needed to meet the rising foreign interference challenge.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said: “We need to be ­realistic that there is this hybrid warfare threat that is now being used, largely by China as far as our own interests are concerned, and we have got to be prepared to understand that and to counter it in ways that would be regarded as potentially quite tough.”

Mr Jennings said explaining the nature of the threat to the Australian public in clear terms — which successive governments had failed to do — was a vital first step.

He also called for a dramatic upgrade of the nation’s diplomatic network, and a boost to cyber capabilities.

Lowy Institute non-resident fellow Euan Graham urged new “offensive and defensive resilience” measures in the face of a “concerted and economically ­empowered challenge from the Chinese Communist Party”.

“A more refined national security and defence tool kit is needed, and a less reactive, more independent mindset,” Mr Graham said.

Mr Sharma’s call for a strategic rethink comes as US Cyber Command prepares to target senior Russian leaders ahead of the 2020 US presidential election by weaponising their personal and financial data, in a warning to the Putin regime not to repeat its meddling in America’s 2016 poll.

Britain is also integrating ­hybrid tactics, including cyber and information warfare, into its everyday operations under a newly ­restructured Strategic Command.

In Australia, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds and Chief of ­Defence Angus Campbell this year both acknowledged the need for a greater focus on hybrid warfare, with Senator Reynolds declaring: “It is vital that we be able to bring all of our sources of national power to bear on this problem, not just those of Defence.”

Both stopped short of setting out a strategy for Australia to ramp up such capabilities, but efforts are under way within agencies to ­incorporate political warfare tools.

The ASD has acknowledged it engages in offensive cyber operations to “disrupt, degrade and deny offshore adversaries who pose ­serious threats to Australia’s ­national interests”.

While Israel’s Mossad famously uses targeted assassinations to achieve its objectives, such as disrupting Iran’s nuclear program, Mr Sharma told The Australian he was not suggesting Australia undertake state-sanctioned killings.

But he said there was much to learn from the Jewish state’s pre-emptive intelligence operations, which had “formed a pillar of ­Israeli statecraft since its foundation as a modern nation”.

SOURCE  





This year belongs to the Quiet Australians

The illiberal left grows ever louder, but ordinary people are having none of it.

NICK CATER

Australia’s spotless record of transitioning power without recourse to violence remains intact, unless you count the ugly incident with a corkscrew.

In the week before Scott Morrison’s historic election victory in May, a Sydney resident in an apparent state of rage about climate change or some such, inexplicably inflicted mild wounds on a supporter of former prime minister Tony Abbott.

That this minor entry in a police officer’s notebook should hit the front page is proof of what a civilised democracy Australia generally is.

Yet here, as in Britain, there is a flourishing school of thought that democracy is failing. It is a belief that justifies resorting to extra-democratic means to settle arguments and raises the temperature of social-media debate.

Happy country or hopeless country? Where one stands on this question depends on whether one is a quiet or a noisy Australian, terms coined by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to describe the contemporary cultural faultline in this well-blessed nation.

That Morrison’s terminology requires no elaboration to an international audience demonstrates how ubiquitous the divide has become in societies where open debate is allowed after two decades of 21st-century life.

In fairness, the divide has existed since history began to be recorded. The Zapotec priesthood, for example, exhibited all the characteristics of a noisy, needy and conceited elite as far back as the 4th century BC, when they extracted corn from Mesoamerican peasants in return for weather forecasts.

Yet never has the presumption of superior knowledge been so democratised as it is today in our highly educated time, nor its bearers so organised as they fight to have their way.

Watching the federal election count on a lovely Sydney autumn evening in May was possibly the most pleasant accompaniment to a cold beer I can remember in my three decades as a citizen of this country.

Having spent the day testing the mood at booths in Sydney’s far western suburbs, it was apparent there was only one way the vote could go. The pundits, however, remained convinced that Labor’s pledge to tax retirement savings and introduce job-destroying renewable-energy targets would be a hit with the middle class, right up until 8.25pm when the ABC’s election expert, in an apparent state of anaphylactic shock, called the result for Morrison.

It was an evening of schadenfreude that left one crying out for seconds.

There is nothing like a good, clean popular vote to reset the civic debate, as Boris Johnson’s victory was to do later in the year in Britain.

The results of the postmortem the Labor Party held into its defeat suggests it is not unaware of its problem, but it is clueless how to fix it in a world where the act of virtue-signalling threatens workers’ livelihoods and comfort.

Had the right to vote been stripped from citizens aged over 35, the Labor Party would have romped home, as Corbyn would have in Britain.

Exit polling indicates Labor was the preferred party of the educated professional classes, but not for the workers, the people in whose name it is supposed to exist.

Morrison’s victory, apparently against the odds, gives him command of a party more united than at any time since 2007. He is odds-on to become Australia’s first prime minister since John Howard to survive for a full term without being ousted by his colleagues.

Morrison has used his authority to declare war on the Blob, as Michael Gove famously called the expanding and apparently indestructible bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy-busting is his stated mission. His planned restructuring of government departments and his instructions to his ministers are aimed at reminding the mandarin class who is really in charge.

As Australia’s world-beating run of uninterrupted economic growth enters its 29th year, its citizens are enjoying the fruits of both prosperity and complacency.

Since the growth is largely sustained through the export of resources and the import of migrants, the underlying structural problems are little appreciated and, as a result, politically challenging to address.

The focus on reform remains fixed on the banking sector, a whipping boy upon which Quiet Australians can vent their frustrations on corporate bureaucracy in general.

Concern about sharp practices by banking executives is understandable in a nation where private wealth is spread more liberally and more widely than almost any other.

The list of economic challenges is long, however – energy prices, productivity and corporation taxation are among them, three policy areas in which Donald Trump’s US is leading the way.

Morrison’s victory failed, not unexpectedly, to settle the burning totemic issue of his times, climate change, or as some would have us call it, the climate emergency.

Energy policy was one of the biggest factors in the election and it was won by Morrison who framed it as an economic debate rather than a moral argument.

On this, as in every other policy issue, the Quiet Australians occupy the middle ground. They take care to recycle their household waste, pick up litter in the street and believe in taking reasonable precautions against future risk, providing there is not too great a cost.

The noisy minority, however, have become increasingly noisy, gluing themselves to the tarmac, serenading the prime minister by playing the bagpipes outside his Sydney residence, encouraging schoolchildren to strike and generally carrying on in a manner unbecoming to themselves and unhelpful to sensible discussion.

Their enthusiasm has been fanned by a drought in western districts of New South Wales and Queensland that is spreading to Victoria.

They justify their alarm with reference to bushfires and the smoke which has hung over Sydney for much of the late spring and early summer.

Bushfires are a natural feature of the Australian landscape that long predates the arrival of humankind. Plants and animals have evolved in tune with their cycle, regenerating through the burnt earth.

The bushfire threat once united civic-minded Australians. Volunteer firefighting brigades serve as what Edmund Burke called the little platoons, an enlisted army fighting a common foe.

This year, bushfires have come to divide Australians. That climate change might increase the likelihood and severity of bushfires has the ring of truthiness to it and warrants investigation.

Yet at this stage it is little more than a hunch without a firm empirical foundation. It may remain so, given the challenge of finding a reliable historical measure.

Bushfire season used to bring Australia together, inspiring private donations for its victims. Today it has become a burning stake by which to identify witches.

The inane question ‘do you accept that bushfires are proof of climate change?’ has become the stock-standard gotcha question for politicians and even fire chiefs appearing on the ABC.

Morrison has become the prime suspect, hauled before this tainted jury as the man we must blame for the smouldering undergrowth and destroyed homes.

Morrison’s ‘inaction’ on climate change may be the stated charge, but like President Trump’s impeachment, we suspect his real crime is his refusal to tip his hat to his accusers’ wokish nonsense.

Canada’s leader Justin Trudeau, we note in passing, is not yet being held responsible for the melting of the Arctic permafrost. Australia’s ‘inaction’ on climate has led to a 12 per cent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions since 2005. Canada’s efforts have reined in emissions by only two per cent.

The centre-right may be good at winning elections these days, but it doesn’t mean it wins the argument.

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




8 January, 2020

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community celebrates Australia Day across all its Mosques in Australia

Ahmadis are the good guys.  They express APPRECIATION of the nations that host them.  They differ from other Muslims in believing that their founder was the Messiah

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Australia invites you to their annual Australia Day celebrations where people can come together, united in allegiance to Australia.

In all its Mosques across Australia, a formal ceremonial event will also take place where the Community will come together to pay respect to and hoist the Australian flag followed by national anthem. Short thanksgiving speeches by community members and invited dignitaries will take please as they share their thoughts on what it means to be an Australian.

The National President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Australia, Imam. I.H. Kauser said:

“We, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, always pray for the progress and development of our homeland, Australia. As per our traditions we will celebrate Australia Day in all Mosques across Australia. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our nation, government and people because our religion teaches us that love of country of residence is part of faith.”

This day holds special significance for the Community; the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mosques across the country will begin the day offering prayers for the prosperity of Australia and for those who lost their lives in recent bushfires. Members of the community will also participate in community celebrations and parades throughout the day.

The Worldwide Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, the Fifth Caliph, His Holiness Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad guides Community members in this regard:

“True loyalty requires a relationship built on sincerity and integrity… it is essential for a citizen of any country to establish a relationship of genuine loyalty and faithfulness to his nation. It does not matter whether he is a born citizen, or whether he gains citizenship later in life..."

About the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community:

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is a very peaceful, law abiding, nonviolent and loving community. Founded in 1889, the Community spans more than 200 countries with membership exceeding tens of millions. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the leading Islamic organisation to categorically reject terrorism in any form. Similarly, the Ahmadiyya Community is the only Islamic organisation to endorse a separation of mosque and state. Today, it continues to be an advocate for universal human rights and protection for religious and other minorities. It champions the empowerment and education of women. Its members are among the most law-abiding, educated, and engaged Muslims in the world. For the official website of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association Australia, please visit: www.Ahmadiyya.org.au

Email from Media@Ahmadiyya.org.au






Senior government ministers have dismissed a Liberal backbencher's comments denying the link between climate change and the bushfires as a "sideshow"

It's politically inconvenient to knock global warming

Senior government ministers are distancing themselves from an outspoken backbencher who dismissed the link between climate change and bushfires.

Liberal MP Craig Kelly has caused major headaches after appearing on British television to talk about Australia's bushfire crisis.

As recently as Sunday, the prime minister claimed his government had always made the connection between climate change and extreme weather conditions.

Mr Kelly, who strongly denies the link, made his views known to an international audience.

Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud described his comments as a "sideshow".

"He doesn't represent the views of the government," Mr Littleproud told reporters on Tuesday. "I couldn't give a rats what he said, it's irrelevant, let's just focus on those people that are out there that need our help."

Mr Kelly said the suggestion the government could have reduced the bushfires by bringing down carbon emissions was nonsense.

Instead, he made disputed claims that fuel loads were largely to blame for the spread of the fires.

Scientists have disputed claims a lack of hazard reduction burns have led to the size of the bushfires, with former fire chiefs blaming the effects of climate change.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg also put Mr Kelly at arms length from the government. "Our view of climate change is that it's real. We accept the science," Mr Frydenberg said.

While Mr Frydenberg said fuel loads had been a factor in the bushfires, he said climate change was causing hotter, drier summers.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese said he was despaired by Mr Kelly's comments.  "The tragedy is that he's imposed those views along with a few others to ensure that Australia isn't taking action," Mr Albanese said.

After being panned for the "train wreck" interview, Mr Kelly has defended his decision to go on air, saying he needed to defend the government because it was under attack.

Good Morning Britain host Laura Tobin called Mr Kelly a "climate denier" with Piers Morgan telling the MP to "wake up". "You are facing now one of the greatest crises you have ever faced, and there is you... who still doesn't think this has anything to do with a heating up planet," Morgan said.

Mr Kelly later dismissed Tobin as a "arrogant pommy weather girl" who didn't know what she was talking about, and claimed Morgan "didn't want to hear the facts".

Tobin quickly hit back, pointing out she was a qualified meteorologist and former aviation forecaster for the Royal Air Force.

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Environmental group celebrates as Eden Woodchip Mill burns down in bushfires

There's not much that Greenies like.  They are even against cutting down trees

An environmental group has celebrated on social media the destruction of the Eden Woodchip Mill in the NSW south coast bushfires, sparking outrage from the local community.

On Monday Environmental East Gippsland (EEG) posted on Facebook a picture of the Eden Woodchip Mill burning with a happy face in the description describing the fire as “really good news’’.

The post was deleted but later a new post of the mill burning was published, stating that it was a “symbolic moment”.

A spokesman for Allied Natural Woods Exports, the operator of the mill, Malcolm McComb called the mill’s destruction “tragic”.  It is the largest employer in the town of 3000.

However the EEG said the “writing was on the wall’’ for the mill.

“After 50 years of watching that monster chew up our forests and ship them overseas for Japanese profits, its days might be over at last,’’ EEG said in the post. “The mill has a history of getting taxpayer funded grants to keep them profitable with our money or to build a new wharf.”

“Government must now invest in enviro-friendly industries that have both security and a social licence and are Aussie-owned.”

The mill was vigorously defended by locals on Facebook with the post garnering 900 responses in three hours.

“Why would you even contemplate posting this? It’s totally divisive and makes you look completely heartless,” said one person.

Mr McComb said the town would be seriously affected while the mill was inoperable.

“Seventy people are employed directly by the mill and 600 in the forestry industry in the greater region,” he said.

“It’s going to cause some disruption because we don’t know the extent of the damage yet - the logs about to be chipped are still on fire, so it’s not even safe to go in for an assessment.”

“There will be work to be done in cleaning up and salvaging operations, so we will need people to help there. We also hope to keep arrangements with contractors and stockpile wood, but it’s too early to say.”

“There’s so much rebuilding that needs to be done down here. I just don’t know if we have the engineering capacity to rebuild the mill as fast as we possibly can.”

Environment East Gippsland Inc. describes itself as “the longest running community forest group working for the protection of Victoria’s last and largest area of ancient forest.”

It was started in 1982 and claims to have a membership of over 350 people and is funded by individual donations. Its current co-ordinator is Jill Redwood. She did not respond to a request for comment.

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Bega wins long-running peanut butter legal battle against Kraft

This is from some months back but I had not previously caught up with it.  It was about an American company being devious and trying to shaft a local honest operator

Australian brand Bega has won the right to use the trademark yellow lids on its peanut butter jars, ending a long-running legal battle with American food giant Kraft.

The federal court ruled on Wednesday that Bega owns and has exclusive rights to use the yellow lid, and red and blue labels that most Australians associate with the peanut spread.

The fight over product appearance and copyright ownership was sparked by a tricky series of takeovers in which Kraft was bought by international giant Heinz and the Australian products including peanut butter moved under the Mondelez umbrella that was later bought by Bega.

Kraft went to the federal court alleging Bega engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct over the marketing of its peanut butter.

After the sale of Mondelez to Bega, the Australian dairy brand ran ads claiming “Kraft peanut butter is now Bega peanut butter” and that it was “never oily, never dry, with the same taste you’ve always loved, and is now Aussie owned by Bega”.

Bega took over the former Victorian Kraft factory in Port Melbourne as part of the sale.

The federal court Justice David O’Callaghan on Wednesday delivered his judgment, declaring that while the goodwill generated by the trademark branding had rightly benefited Kraft, and later Kraft and Mondelez, those rights had been transferred to Bega as part of the sales agreement between it and Mondelez.

As a result, Bega is now “exclusively entitled” to use the yellow lid, and red and blue peanut label.

O’Callaghan found Bega had breached consumer law with respect to its first advertisement, but Kraft also breached the law in an October 2017 press release when it described its product as “loved since 1935”.

A further hearing will be held, which could include discussions about damages.

Bega’s executive chairman, Barry Irvin, announced the win to shareholders with a statement to the Australian stock exchange.

“Importantly, this gives Bega Cheese the right to continue to use the current packaging of its smooth and crunchy peanut butter products,” he said.

The company will review the 178-page judgment before making any further announcements.

Kraft last year tried to get US courts to stop Bega using the branding, seeking “emergency relief” against Bega from the International Centre for Dispute Resolution while also launching its own action in the US federal court.

O’Callaghan told Kraft proceedings there could not continue until the Australian case was handled.

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Not the time for Scott Morrison to stand up India

It’s understandable that Scott Morrison cancelled his trip to India and Japan after the abuse he received over his holiday in Hawaii. But it’s an error of judgment. There’s a world of difference between an overseas holiday taken while most people are still working and when there’s a bushfire crisis, and, on the other hand, an official trip to deepen co-operation with two key regional partners. Provided the Prime Minister had fully announced the government’s response to the bushfire crisis by then, there was no compelling reason not to make this trip. Given the deteriorating strategic situation in our region and in the wider world, it’s a missed opportunity not to go ahead with meeting two of the world’s most substantial democratic leaders.

Of course, Australia must come first in everything that our PM does. But that doesn’t mean managing bushfires should take priority over fostering relationships that will be vital to our long-term national interest.

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has resoundingly won a second term, despite contentious economic reforms, such as a GST in lieu of state tariffs, and withdrawing large denomination bank notes from circulation to combat tax evasion. Modi is the first Indian prime minister born after independence and without postcolonial hang-ups about the West. He is fully alive to China’s hegemonic ambitions and an ­enthusiastic advocate for the quadrilateral security dialogue that draws together the Indo-­Pacific region’s four most strat­egically significant democracies: the US, India, Japan and ­Australia.

Why miss the chance to clinch a free-trade deal with what is already the world’s fifth-largest economy, and, with the blessings of democracy, the rule of law and the English language, could economically surpass China within 40 years? Or to secure a place in the annual Malabar naval exercises with India, the US and Japan? Just because our PM misjudged going to Hawaii while the country burned, he shouldn’t now be neurotic about leaving the fires.

At the last moment, Modi pulled India out of the Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade deal because he was wary of giving China a big win after Donald Trump had squandered the chance to create an American-led regional trading bloc by abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But there’s no reason why India could not now do the all-but-­finalised RCEP on a bilateral basis with Australia. This would avoid giving China even more access to the Indian market while linking India with a sophisticated and largely complementary first-world economy — that is, us. But it won’t happen without the ­impetus that only a prime ministerial visit can provide.

Then there’s Japan. Despite Tony Abbott’s inability to finalise a submarine deal with the nation that has the world’s best conventional subs, security co-operation with Japan is deepening. A visiting forces agreement between Australia and Japan is all but ­finalised to allow mutual rotation of troops through each country.

Like Modi, Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is a leader of historic significance. He’s now Japan’s longest serving post-war PM and, while his ambitions to deregulate the economy haven’t all been realised, Japan continues to be an underestimated economic powerhouse with about four times China’s GDP per person.

Visits like these are critical because Australia needs to be a much more active and nimble strategic player than ever before. All of the comforting assumptions on which our national ­security and strategic posture rested are crumbling: Chinese liberalisation; continued close US involvement in our region; and the onward march of liberal democracy. Not only can these no longer be taken for granted, but the opposite is just as likely at least for the foreseeable future.

The internment of a million Uighurs, the rapid rollout of a technology-backed system of ­social control, and Xi Jinping’s life presidency have ended any ­realistic hope that China was converging with the West on generally accepted norms of human rights. It’s hard to see the Hong Kong protest movement ending in anything other than severe repression. And there’s little doubt that once Hong Kong has been dealt with, the commissars in Beijing will renew their pressure on Taiwan.

Would America fight for Taiwan as promised and as always previously expected? I doubt that America would risk war with a rival superpower over a country that is legally a province of China. But the abandonment of Taiwan would unravel the US alliance system in East Asia and unleash the biggest arms race in history as every country looked to manage its own security in a post-American world.

Meanwhile the Middle East is as dangerous and as unpredictable as ever. Russia and Turkey are apparently at odds over Syria and now over Libya but are at one in wanting the US humiliated and marginalised. After the usual barrage of presidential tweets, Trump ostentatiously withdrew the US from Syria and abandoned the faithful Kurds to their fate, only to re-intervene a few days later. After taking no real action in response to the Iranian downing of a US drone and the Iranian attacks on Saudi oilfields, the US has just assassinated by drone the head of Iran’s revolutionary guard, probably the most important military figure in that country.

Such impulsive escalation is typical of Trump, but is fraught with peril and far-reaching consequences.

Where does this leave Australia: a Western outpost that can’t defend itself?

Yes, the fires are unprecedented in their duration and extent (if not in their destructive power) and have understandably mesmerised a nation that can’t decide whether they’re caused by climate change or a more prosaic failure to reduce fuel loads.

But should our Prime Minister allow fires that eventually pass to distract him from attending to the strategic alliances that must endure? In cancelling the joint trip to India and Japan, the Morrison government looks like it has a plan to manage the next month but not to manage the next ­decade.

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





7 January, 2020

A Leftist bushfire story

We have read in the papers in recent days many stories about various acts of generosity towards bushfire victims and firefighters.  Chris Graham, Publisher/Editor of the Leftist webzine "New Matilda" has a story up at the moment  about such an act of generosity that he describes as "very close to my heart". 

What makes it so close to his heart appears to be that it has a racial angle.  Leftists never cease obsessing about race. The story is that a Black Family Offered Their Home To Bushfire Victims.

All very nice of course but Chris plays down certain facts, the most salient of which is that the family is NOT Aboriginal except in a legal sense.  They look white.



So whatever motivates their generosity can most economically be ascribed to their WHITE ancestry.

Secondly, the home being offered is one that the family vacated some time ago.  They own it but it is not their current home.

Thirdly, the home is located in a place far away from the bushfires so is not likely to be of help to most of the victims.

Nonetheless it is of course a generous offer but that it "vindicates" blacks in any sense would be a large stretch.  If Chris thinks it does the story is closer to his anus than his heart.

Read it here






2019 was Australia's hottest year on record – so is global warming behind the fires?

Global temperatures have been inching up ever since the little ice age a couple of hundred years ago, meaning that a hotter 2019 is no surprise.  And it is also no surprise that extra heat favours fires.

What is not at all clear is that increased levels of CO2 are involved.  That increased CO2 causes increased temperatures is the theory behind "climate change" but for the theory to be correct there should be a close correlation between CO2 levels and temperature levels.  There is not.  They rise in different ways at different times. So the theory is grounded in faith, not fact.  It cannot in fact explain anything.

Northern English expat Graham Readfearn makes a living out of writing stories that boost the "climate change" faith so his latest piece in the Guardian (below) is no surprise.

He has done some homework and interviewed climate scientits about Australia's present bushfire problem in an endeavour to find out why the problem is much bigger this year.  Bushfires are a normal seasonal event in Australia but the problem this year is unusually severe.

The people he interviewed all identified various climate influences on the fires -- such as the Indian Ocean dipole, the Southern Annular Mode etc -- but all agreed that "climate change" was a "contributor" to the fires

But that's just a statement of faith.  They have no data that would enable them to dissect the various "contributions" to the fires.

That becomes particularly clear when we note that 2019 temperatures differed from several previous years by only tenths of one degree.  2019 was hotter but only by a tiny fraction.  So if temperatures similar to those of the present did not cause bushfires in the past, how can we know that they contributed this year?  We cannot. The probablity has to be that global temperatures had a negligble "contribution".

The actual causes would appear to be the drought and a long period of fuel buildup after the Greenies and their bureaucratic allies systematically obstructed backburning.  Without that fuel there would have been no fires


The year 2019 was the hottest on record for Australia with the temperature reaching 1.52C above the long-term average, data from the Bureau of Meteorology confirms.

The year that delivered crippling drought, heatwaves, temperature records and devastating bushfires was 0.19C hotter than 2013, the previous record holder.

Climate scientists told Guardian Australia that climate change pushed what would have been a hot year into record territory, driving heat extremes and the risk of deadly bushfires.

The Bureau of Meteorology data shows the average temperature across the country was 1.52C above the long-term average taken between 1961 and 1990. The second hottest year was 2013, followed by 2005, 2018 and 2017.

The data, from the bureau’s long-term ACORN-SAT data, will be used as part of the bureau’s annual climate statement due for release on 9 January.

Prof Mark Howden, the director of the ANU Climate Change Institute, said the continued rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, caused mainly by burning fossil fuels, was the underlying driver of the heat.

He said: “It’s very clear that greenhouse gas emissions are changing the radiation balance of the Earth. Other contributors are minor in comparison.”

He said two other climate systems had also played a role in delivering the record hot year.

The Indian Ocean Dipole system had drawn moisture away from the centre of the continent, causing extra heat to build there. Another system known as the Southern Annular Mode had also contributed to the heat.

The data also shows that 2019 was the hottest year on record for New South Wales, with temperatures 1.95C above the long-term average, beating the previous record year, 2018, by 0.27C.

Western Australia also had its hottest year, with temperatures 1.67C above average, beating the previous 2013 heat record by 0.58C.

The Northern Territory and South Australia both had their second hottest years, with 2019 coming in fifth hottest for Victoria and sixth hottest for Queensland, according to the data. Tasmania had a relatively cool year, but was still 0.41C above the long-term average.

The previous summer of 2018-19 was the hottest on record. The spring of 2019 also delivered the worst bushfire weather since at least 1950, when the Forest Fire Danger Index data began.

On Wednesday 18 December, Australia experienced its hottest day on record with an average maximum temperature of 41.9C (107.4F), beating the previous record by 1C that had been set only 24 hours earlier.

Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales specialising in extreme events, said 2019 had started hot, with the previous summer being the hottest on record.

She said: “The extremes have been seen in lots of heatwaves and, of course, the bushfires, that are a consequence of the very hot and dry conditions.”

She said while natural climate cycles had pushed temperatures higher, “climate change has given them a boost”.

“2019 would not have been pleasant anyway, but climate change has made it worse. We are focusing now on the bushfires, but the underlying heat has been driving these conditions for much of the year.

“Climate change isn’t the outright cause, but it’s an undeniable contributor to this extreme year on all accounts.”

A bureau spokesperson said it would provide official comment on the 2019 temperatures in its annual climate statement on January 9 that would include a “comprehensive analysis of the year’s weather events and climate context, including any records of note”.

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Concern over 'viability' of dairy farms and milk supplies as Australian bushfires spread

Warning fresh milk supply could be curbed as East Gippsland in Victoria and NSW south coast brace for fires

Dairy farmers were racing to shore up supplies of fodder and fuel on Friday as they prepared for a hot weekend that could see the return of fires that have already ravaged much of Australia’s east coast.

Two key dairy areas, East Gippsland in Victoria and the New South Wales south coast, were heavily burned during fires over the new year, adding to the woes of an industry already suffering from a crippling drought and persistently low milk prices.

Supermarkets say the fire crisis has not curbed the supply of fresh milk but the head of NSW farmers’ body Dairy Connect, Shaughn Morgan, said it could do so if it continued.

“It could have an impact, depending on the amount of milk that’s not collected,” he said. He said it was hard to get information but the fires were “impacting quite heavily on the south coast from Nowra down”.

“These guys aren’t able to get the milk from their farms, they’re spilling their milk,” he said. “We’re very grateful to the processors, who are continuing to pay the farmers.”

He said he hoped the declaration of a state of emergency by the state government on Thursday would allow roads to open and farmers to bring in fodder. “If there’s no fodder to feed them [the cows],” he said. “It raises serious questions about the viability of their farms.

“Saturday’s a real concern because it is another flashpoint – it’s going to be something that we need to monitor really closely. “The people down there are at their wit’s end and have been under enormous pressure for days.”

The president of the United Dairyfarmers of Victoria, Paul Mumford, said there had been reports of pasture damage and some stock losses in East Gippsland and up into the state’s north-east, but information was “still reasonably sketchy coming out of both areas”.

“The big problem farmers are having is fire damage not only to pastures but infrastructure – but more importantly getting services back on to the farm.”

He said farmers needed fodder to feed their cows, and fuel to power milking equipment.  “The cows have to be fed and the cows also have to be milked,” he said. “Some farms may not have been able to milk their cows since the fire went through their district.

“Because tomorrow and Sunday are going to be such problem days for heat, from what I understand today no fodder or services will be allowed in or out of those districts until the worst of the danger has passed.”

Max Roberts, the chairman of milk processor Bega, said it had been difficult to collect milk. “If they’re not on fire, we can’t get to them,” he said. “There’ve been a number of farms that haven’t milked for up to 50 hours, 60 hours, and that’s an issue for cow health.”

He said the company was working on getting fodder and diesel to farms, while emergency services were helping to get milk tankers out to dairy farms. “It’s highly unusual to get a milk tanker turning up with a police escort but that’s what’s happening.”

He was “not sure” how much it was costing Bega to pay for milk it could not collect.  “It’d be a bigger cost if the farm went broke,” he said. “You take a longer-term view on these things.”

Production at the company’s factory in Bega will grind to a standstill over the weekend. “The factory will close down all but a skeleton operation all through Saturday and Sunday to allow people to stay home and look after themselves,” Roberts said. “There will be milk tanker pickups but again the instruction is that, if it isn’t safe to do it, don’t.”

Steve Guthrey, a former dairy farmer who now grows fodder and agists livestock at his property near Bega, said the community was bracing for the weekend. “Pretty much everybody’s just watching and waiting for the moment,” he said. “We know we’ve got a pretty serious day tomorrow. “We’re all on tenterhooks, preparing our houses and farms as best we can.”

He said he feared fires to the north-east and north-west could join together.

“We haven’t gotten any aircraft down here to help us,” he said. “A lot of the vehicles down here are really limited in what they can do.

“We’ve run out of irrigation water now. The dams are virtually empty … We’ve still got a long summer ahead of us now.”

SOURCE  






Morrison government rules out visa-free travel between Australia, UK

 The Morrison government has baulked at expanding a new post-Brexit trade pact to include visa-free work and travel between Australia and the United Kingdom, arguing any special deal that circumvented existing immigration caps could be deeply unpopular in both countries.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that some changes to work rights would be proposed and accepted by both sides but said he “can't imagine full and unfettered free movement” will be on the table during negotiations.

“We're not into full negotiating mode and we will have to see what the UK aspires to, but noting that work rights and movement of people in the UK has been a big part of the European Union debate, I would be surprised if complete liberalisation around migration and labour rights was on their agenda,” Senator Birmingham said during an interview in London.

Australia already has a free movement deal with New Zealand but Senator Birmingham said the Morrison government would not use the Brexit trade talks to propose a similar scheme allowing British citizens to work and live in Australia visa-free, and vice-versa.

UK International Trade Secretary Liz Truss floated possible talks on free movement during a visit to Australia in September, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson also advocated for the creation of a special visa-free zone when he was mayor of London.

Mr Johnson once said opening the borders would end “absurd discrimination” facing expats in the UK and aid the Australian economy because the “unspoken reality is that Australians are actually quite keen to encourage more immigration from Britain”.

A largely foreign concept in Australia, free movement could unleash significant economic and social consequences, including a possible exodus of highly trained workers to the UK and influx of unskilled Brits to Sydney and Melbourne.

While Australians can visit the UK for less than six months without a visa, British tourists need one to enter Australia. Some 636,000 UK nationals were granted tourist, business or temporary work visas last financial year.

Unrestricted European migration was a major factor behind the push for Brexit. The Coalition has also moved to ease fears over congestion and employment in Australia by cutting the permanent migration cap from 190,000 to 160,000 a year.

Senator Birmingham said he expected possible tweaks to existing immigration rules to allow “more flexibility”, but stressed his priority was sealing a free trade deal focused on giving Australian exporters easier access to the lucrative British market.

He pledged to canvass public opinion on any changes to “kinks” in the existing migration regime.

“How you draw the line around rights to access work visas and other visas is a different question, that has an entire spectrum of grey, between the black and white of no movement and unfettered movement,” he said.

The UK’s departure from the European Union means it must seal new free trade terms with major economies, including the United States and Australia.

The UK is Australia’s eighth-largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at $26.9 billion in 2018. Britain is also the second-largest source of total foreign investment in Australia.

Britain will formally leave the EU on January 31 but the existing economic, customs and migration relationship will remain in place for one more year while the two parties thrash out a new trading and security pact.

Senator Birmingham met his UK counterpart over Christmas and hopes a deal can be struck and ratified by the December 2020 deadline that Britain has set itself to finalise a new post-Brexit relationship with Europe.

Mr Johnson’s legislation makes it illegal to extend the one-year transition window, making a “hard” Brexit a possibility in December 2020 if the negotiations collapse or take too long to complete and ratify, as some experts have predicted.

Senator Birmingham said the UK and EU were in “uncharted waters” but expressed confidence a deal can be struck in such a short timeframe. He predicted this would give Australian businesses and investors final confidence and certainty.

“Those uncharted waters also mean unprecedented outcomes can probably be achieved,” he said.

“The incentive to get a deal done has got to be significant given how much is at stake, so I expect given how much clarity and certainty the UK election provided, that goodwill exists on both sides of the Channel to nut out out a deal.”

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 January, 2020

Firestorms follow move away from preventive burning

“It’s all about fuel, not climate.”

Christine Finlay has been sounding the alarm on bushfires in Australia for more than a decade after tracking the relationship ­between reduced cool burning and the frequency of firestorms. And the Queensland-based fire ­researcher, who charted a century of archival bushfire records for her PhD, has long been screaming danger.

Finlay’s thesis examined problem bushfires between 1881 and 1981. What she found after plotting the historical data on a graph was that there was a marked increase in the size and frequency of fires after 1919. This was when bushfire-reduction operations increasingly moved away from traditional indigenous practices such as low-­intensity cool burning.

Finlay says this ­detailed correlation between the accumulation of catastrophic fuel loads and the frequency of extreme bushfires made it possible to forecast the dramatic increase in firestorms we have seen in the 21st century.

“For years, I energetically sent this predictive model to government agencies, in particular bushfire services, the media, coronial and parliamentary inquiries and so on,” she says. “Horribly ­ignored, it proved horribly accurate.”

Finlay has the support of forester Vic Jurskis, who has written a book on fire stick ecology and how indigenous Australians managed the landscape with fire.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister, premiers, chief ministers and opposition leaders in November, Jurskis said this season’s ­bushfire situation was neither ­unprecedented nor unexpected.

“This latest holocaust is a direct consequence of unprecedented accumulation of 3D continuous fuels as a result of green influence on politics,” Jurskis says. “It’s all about fuel, not climate.”

Half a century ago, Athol Hodgson, who later became chief fire officer of Victoria, explained the simple physics: doubling the available fuel usually doubles the rate of spread of the fire and ­increases its intensity fourfold.

Jurskis says control burning over large areas cheaply and effectively reduces the incidence of high-intensity wildfires and minimises damage.

When this year’s fire season ­finally ends, Finlay’s research and Jurskis’s theories no doubt will be offered to a federal government review already proposed by Scott Morrison. All sides will have a big stake in any investigation: fire command, volunteer services, state government agencies and anyone who lives near the bush.

Green groups are ready to battle demands that national parks be opened up to logging to reduce fuel loads. Politically, the Greens insist their environment policies adopted in November 2017 do not prohibit cool burns.

Their policy puts climate change front and centre but says “scientifically based, ecologically appropriate use of fire is an ­important means to protect bio­diversity and manage habitat ­effectively”. The policy calls for “an effective and sustainable strategy for fuel-reduction management that will protect biodiversity and moderate the effects of wildfire for the protection of people and assets, developed in consultation with experts, custodians and land managers”.

Linking bushfires to climate change scientifically is still contentious given the long history of fires in Australia. But for the Greens and climate groups making the link politically is a no-brainer.

It compounds a dilemma for the federal government, which might have hoped that finally it was getting its climate message under control. With the dramatic fires it faces the prospect of a new level of public expectation at a time when the appetite among world leaders for urgency appears to be on the wane.

For Australian Energy Minister Angus Taylor, the Madrid meeting outcome illustrates the disconnect between how climate change is being discussed domestically and what is actually happening on the world stage. Rather than setting tougher targets, political leaders are desperately looking for solutions that can make a difference at manageable cost.

Writing in The Australian this week, Taylor said there are serious limits to pressuring countries into aggressive top-down targets without offering clear pathways to deliver.

“Many countries understandably see that as negative globalism and a gross infringement on their national sovereignty,” he wrote.

“The Paris Agreement is based on bottom-up ‘nationally determined contributions’ and it should stay true to that … The best way to deliver on and strengthen these commitments is through new productive technologies and practices that deliver emission abatement while maintaining or strengthening economic growth.”

Taylor said in most countries it isn’t acceptable to pursue emission-reduction policies that add substantially to the cost of living, destroy jobs, reduce incomes and impede growth. His view is supported by international analysis that says the most daunting headwind facing UN climate talks is ­rising nationalism, populism and economic retrenchment — all at the expense of multilateralism.

AFP says street protests against the rise in cost of living in France, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Egypt and more than two dozen other countries last year have given governments already reluctant to ­invest in a low-carbon future ­another reason to baulk.

“These cases highlight how sensitive populations are to change in the price of basic commodities like food, energy and transport,” Stephane Hallegatte, of the World Bank, noted.

The formal withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement from November and the reluctance of the world’s major emitters, China and India, to bolster action completes a bleak picture.

According to climate scientist Judith Curry, the political divide remains between developed and developing countries, but particularly between the West and China/India, and has not changed since Copenhagen and Paris.

Curry argues we have not only oversimplified the problem of climate change but we have also oversimplified its “solution”. “Even if you accept the climate model projections and that warming is dangerous, there is disagreement among experts regarding whether a rapid acceleration away from fossil fuels is the appropriate policy response,” Curry says.

“In any event, rapidly reducing emissions from fossil fuels to ameliorate the adverse impacts of ­extreme weather events in the near term increasingly looks like magical thinking.”

Australia routinely is held up by lobby groups as an obstacle to progress at international climate talks. But Taylor wrote this week that debate in Madrid was not about Australia’s performance.

Unlike many other countries, Australia says it is on target to meet its obligations under both the Kyoto second round and 2030 Paris Agreement.

The most recent estimates ­released by the federal Environment Department last month are that Australia will overachieve on both its 2020 and 2030 targets.

The federal opposition, Greens and climate groups criticise the Morrison government for lacking ambition and counting the excess savings from the Kyoto round in the Paris targets.

But Taylor says there is less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ­because of the work Australian households, farmers and busi­nesses have done under Kyoto, and this should be recognised by the world in assessing and setting future obligations.

“Where we take a different ­approach to other countries is we only ever ratchet our ambition up as we know we can deliver,” Taylor says.

The Energy Minister is unmoved by protest groups like ­Extinction Rebellion, which he says ultimately may become self-destructive.

Curry’s advice is to consider the positives. During the past century, there has been a 99 per cent decline in the death toll from ­natural disasters, during the same period that the global population quadrupled.

While global economic losses from weather and climate disasters have been increasing, this is caused by increasing population and property in vulnerable locations. Global losses because of weather events as a proportion of global GDP have declined about 30 per cent since 1990. The proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty declined from 36 per cent in 1990 to 10 per cent in 2015.

SOURCE  







New rental reforms due to come into effect in NSW early next year will change how landlords and tenants navigate lease terms, while also allowing tenants more freedom to make repairs

These changes are much milder than some have advocated and the liberty to break a lease in return for graduated penalities is rather a good idea.  Other changes are not far from existing practices.  Landlords who keep their properties in good repair should have little to fear


Tenants will have greater freedom to break their leases early under sweeping rental regulation changes set to come into effect in March.

The reforms announced by the NSW Office of Fair Trading will give tenants greater control of their homes while putting stricter limits on landlords.

Real Estate Institute of NSW president Leanne Pilkington said the reforms to the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2018 and Residential Tenancies Regulation 2019 were “significant”.

Under the changes, landlords will only be able to increase rent once a year during a periodic agreement when the fixed term of a lease has passed.

Tenants will also have the right to break their lease if it is signed after March 23, 2020. Victims of domestic violence will be permitted to break their leases without penalty.

Tenants will be required to pay a break fee of four weeks rent if less than a quarter of the fixed term of their lease has expired.

The break fee reduces to three weeks rent if the tenant is more than a quarter through their lease but still less than halfway into the term.

Two weeks rent will be charged if the break is made between half and three quarters of the fixed term, while a week’s rent will be required if more than 75 per cent of the term has expired.

The new reforms will also put limits on how landlords and property managers market their properties to new tenants. Landlords will have to obtain tenants’ prior written consent to publish photographs or video recordings of premises, including property interiors that may show tenants’ possessions.

Tenants may make minor alterations, fixtures, additions and renovations with the landlord’s consent, but the landlord cannot unreasonably withhold consent if the alteration, fixture or addition is one from a prescribed list.

Other reforms will change how repairs will be carried out. For example, replacing of hardwired smoke alarms will have to be carried out by an authorised electrician.

Non-payment of water usage or utility charges may now result in tenancy termination (in addition to non-payment of rent).

SOURCE  





Leftist hysteria about the fires is just more of their usual  exaggeration

Gerard Henderson

It is understandable why some Australians are reluctant to use the term “Happy New Year” at a time when many have lost their homes to fire and some have perished in the flames. However, there is no reason to project the present tragedy on to a critique of the nation and its leaders.

I grew up in Melbourne where I heard constant tales of the 1939 Black Friday bushfires that afflicted parts of Victoria, South Australia and NSW. In the 1950s, there was still evidence of the fires that had burnt the forests two decades earlier. But southeast Australia recovered then as it almost certainly will recover again.

In Victoria, there were further huge fires in 1983 and 2009. But until now, there was no suggestion that the state’s future would be one of continuing apocalypse. Yet this is the message of the self-declared progressive media as it seeks to blame others for natural tragedies.

Writing in The Guardian on Wednesday, David Marr argued that the present bushfires are like none that have gone before — not even what some regard as modern Australia’s worst bushfire in 1851. In full hyperbolic mode, Marr wrote about the fires in the ­Victorian beachside town of Mallacoota: “Already, these scenes are part of the national imagination. Among Australians of a certain age, they stir memories of a Hollywood potboiler about the end of the world filmed 60 years ago in Melbourne. On The Beach starred Ava Gardener, Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire. The ­remake stars us.”

That’s clever writing but superficial in the extreme.

The 1959 film was based on Neville Shute’s 1957 novel of the same name. It was set in Melbourne as a group of (temporary) survivors await certain death as a consequence of a nuclear war. In short, it was a story about the end of civilisation. It seems that The Guardian’s high-profile columnist has joined the end-of-the-world-is-nigh club.

To Marr, this time we are doomed not by atomic weapons but by climate change. He claims that the Prime Minister is in ­denial about the issue.

But Marr maintains that if Scott Morrison “could face the truth, he might speak not only to his country but the world”. ­According to Marr, “if Australia were to take effective action against climate change, this catastrophe would give us the right to demand better of the rogue states in climate, China and the US”.

Now Australia is a middle-ranking nation with significant ­influence in the world. But it’s ­unrealistic to expect that Morrison can tell the leadership in the US, China or, indeed, India what they should do with their nations’ carbon dioxide emissions that would result in a policy change.

It’s much the same on the home front. On Wednesday, ABC Radio AM presenter Sabra Lane put the following proposition to Water Resources Minister David Littleproud about the bushfires: “Plenty of experts say that they have seen nothing like this before; do you ­acknowledge that the federal ­government now has to do more about climate change?” When Littleproud responded that ­Australia was on track to meet its Paris Agreement commitments, Lane ­asserted that “there are a lot of people saying that more needs to be done”.

Sure, a lot of people are saying this — even though the Coalition won what was said to be the climate change election in May. In any event, as Lane should know, there is nothing that an Australian government can do about climate change since Australia is responsible for just over 1 per cent of total global emissions.

On ABC Sydney on Thursday, presenter Josh Szeps did what he acknowledged was a six-­minute-long “rant” about the fires. Szeps is one of a number of former or present comedians employed by the ABC.

But there was nothing funny about his rant to air that depicted Sydney as “at a tipping point” ­because of smoke and described the NSW south coast around ­Bateman’s Bay as akin to a scene from The Walking Dead or The Hunger Games.

Szeps’s suggestion? Well, he wants various Australian governments to buy “every rusty old Hercules plane that is sitting on a military airport in every poor country of the world” and “retrofit them … into water bombers”. I am not aware that any metropolitan or rural fire brigade has made such a request to any government in Australia.

While conceding that “it’s not Scott Morrison’s fault there are fires”, Szeps declared that there is “a sense of loss of leadership, a loss of faith, a loss of vision, a loss of being up to the seriousness of the challenge”.

That’s the view from a presenter’s chair in Sydney. Another view is that, considering the enormity of the fires on New Year’s Eve — on a day that was significantly hotter than predicted by weather authorities — state and local governments, with the ­assistance of the commonwealth government, did well in mini­mising fatalities and other casualties and in reducing property destruction.

Every Hercules in the world converted to a water bomber could not have extinguished the ferocity of the Australian bushfires on the last day of 2019 — or in 1851, or 1939, or 1983, or 2009. Firefighting can control fires to a greater or lesser extent but it cannot prevent them. It is a fact of life that many Australians live close to some of the most deadly potential fires zones in the world. The current smoke over large parts of NSW, Victoria and the ACT is unpleasant to all and dangerous to some. But it has ­happened before and it will happen again.

On Tuesday evening, The Saturday Paper’s Paul Bongiorno put out the following tweet: “As I choke to death in Canberra in thick acrid smoke the government would already be an ash heap without the rabid support of the Murdoch media.”

The good news is that Bon­giorno is still alive and Australians are not so stupid to vote the way someone (allegedly) tells them. The bad news is there can be apocalyptic thinking without a real apocalypse of the end of the world kind.

SOURCE  





Anger lingers at dam water being sent out to sea instead of being used by farmers:  For "environmental" reasons

Nine years ago grape grower Steven Barbon joined hundreds of farmers from the NSW Riverina at a meeting in Griffith., where authorities unveiled the plan to seize their water.

Mr Barbon watched on approvingly on October 14, 2010, as angry farmers burned copies of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which launched the federal government's buyback of irrigation water entitlements to enable more environmental flows down the rivers.

The Australian was in Griffith that day, and back then Mr Barbon said the plan would cripple the nation's food bowl, wreak economic hardship on communities, and fail to save the rivers. "Everyone has worked hard for what we have got in this town, and we're going to lose it because a few green lobbyists believe the frogs need more water," he said at the time.

The Australian revisited Mr Barbon at his 40ha vineyard near Griffith, as part of a week-long investigation into how farmers and growers are coping with the Murray-Darling Basin reforms implemented almost a decade ago.

Mr. Barbon said all his predictions had come true. "It's a fricking disaster," he said of the Basin Plan. "It was designed to ensure sustainability for the environment, farmers and the rural community, and it hasn't happened ... why did all those fish die?"

Water for irrigation has become scarce due to the drought, the Basin Plan, and huge commercial plantings of thirsty trees such as almonds that can't survive without water. The price of irrigation water on the spot market has skyrocketed, with farmers saying it is accentuated by a speculative squeeze orchestrated by non-farming professional investors.

"Out of this plan, who has benefited?" Mr Barbon asked. "It seems to have been designed to feed the fat cats, the speculators up in Sydney."

The high water prices on the spot market — about $700 per megalitre in Mr Barbon's region compared to about $100 in normal times — has produced some perverse effects on agriculture.

Mr Barbon holds what are known as permanent, high-security water entitlements that came with the property purchased by his parents Maria and Renato, who migrated from northern Italy in the 1950s and saved up money over the years cutting cane in Queensland and picking fruit in Griffith.

In the current market the tradeable entitlements are worth their weight in gold, and Mr Barbon could sell his for about $2m. Or, he could lease his water allocations on the spot market each year, perhaps reserving just enough to keep his vines alive but not producing grapes. That would give him an annual income of about $100,000-$150,000 a year, without having to
employ backpackers to pick a single grape or prune a vine.

"I'd probably be in front," Mr Barbon said. "You don't have the risk of growing the crop. I could get hail." But to abandon the vineyard his family toiled to build would break Mr Barbon's heart and, at this stage, he won't. "It'sjust not in my blood to do it," he said.

If he abandoned farming and sold or leased his water, Mr Barbon said, it would also squeeze more life out of the local economy in a region he loves. Other farmers in similar circumstances, particularly older ones, have been swayed by the argument that it's easier to be a water trader than a farmer, and more profitable.

Mr Barbon knows another grape grower in his 60s who recently decided to cash in his water and let his vines die. Just up the road from Mr Barbon's place, a property has vines withering away; the worth of their grapes less than the water needed to grow them.

From the "Weekend Australian" of 28 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








5 January, 2020

Furious Cobargo residents explode at visiting Scott Morrison after their town was destroyed by bushfires

How many Cobargo residents exploded and what were their politics is not mentioned.  One would think it obvious that the fires were not the PM's fault and that he could do nothing to stop them.

But clearly, some people have been taken in by the Greenie propaganda that the fires are due to global warming and that it just takes a law to stop global warming


Residents of a town devastated by bushfires have abused visiting Prime Minister Scott Morrison, forcing him to cut short a meet and greet with locals. 

Cobargo, on the New South Wales South Coast, is one of the areas worst hit by Australia's bushfire crisis, which has killed 18 people, razed 1,298 homes and destroyed more than 3.6million hectares of land.

The small town lost its entire main street, a beloved father and son were killed and dozens of homes were destroyed as the fire front swept through on New Year's Eve.

Mr Morrison travelled to Cobargo on Thursday to meet with residents who had lost everything - but the visit soon turned ugly.

He was told he 'should be ashamed of himself' while others called him 'Scum-mo' for 'leaving the country to burn'.

One local refused to shake his hand until the PM offered more support to volunteer firefighters. 'I'm only shaking your hand if you give more funding to our RFS,' the woman said. 

Instead, Mr Morrison picked up her hand and shook it himself, before turning his back on her mid-sentence and moving on to another person.

'So many people have lost their homes,' the woman said while holding back tears. She was consoled by another man as the PM walked away. She shouted after him saying: 'We need more help.'

Footage of the incident was described as 'disturbing' on social media.

'What is most disturbing about this extraordinary video is our PM forcing a young, clearly distressed woman to shake his hand followed by another male putting his arms around her telling her to ''shush'',' one woman wrote. 

'Proud of people in Cobargo for speaking their mind on how they've been treated! What does ScoMo do? Walk away from real people with real issues affecting them now. Disgusting.'

'I can understand him leaving when the men got aggressive but I can't believe he walked away from the woman pleading for help,' another added.

Another woman from the town, who brought her pet goat along to the meeting, told Mr Morrison the small town was 'forgotten' during the crisis.

'This is not fair,' she shouted. 'We are totally forgotten down here. Every single time this area gets a flood or a fire we get nothing.'

'If we lived in Sydney or on the North Coast we would be flooded with donations and emergency relief.'

The PM didn't find any additional support with the rest of the crowd which had gathered on Thursday.

Another shouted: 'You won't be getting any votes down here buddy. Who votes Liberal around here? Nobody.' 'You control the funding, and we were forgotten,' a woman added.  'Go on, p*ss off.' 

Shortly after arriving, the PM made a beeline back to his car and was driven away by his security team, looking slightly downtrodden as he left the hecklers behind.

Even as he left, furious residents continued to shout at his car, calling him names and asking why his home of Kirribilli wouldn't burn down. 'Go home to Kirribilli. Why won't that burn down after the fireworks?' another local yelled.

In an area where four people perished in a ferocious fire, Steve Shipton's eyes were burning as he tried to save his home. 'I thought I was a goner,' the Coolagolite cattle farmer told AAP.  'The heat was horrendous. My eyes... I couldn't see 20 feet last night.'

Mr Shipton thought he was fine to protect his home after getting his wife and kids inside and his stock out to a dirt clearing.

'It all happened so quick,' the 46-year-old said, soot still covering his face. 'I stayed out. I suppose I shouldn't have but it just happened so fast.

'It's just unbelievable. The ferocity and how quick.... That's what shocked me and that's why I thought we were in a good situation to survive,' he said.

The dairy-turned-beef farmer estimates he lost about a tenth of his 250-odd head of cattle, including his favourite dairy cow

Most of the cattle had been where Mr Shipton thought would be safe - on dirt with a feed rack - but the animals 'obviously panicked'.

A vet on Wednesday assessed which would survive and which needed to be euthanised, leaving Mr Shipton with the grim task of carrying out a mass mercy killing.

'There are some in there badly scorched,' Mr Shipton said. 'He'll know better than me what can survive and what can't because I've never been through this scenario. 'You don't want them to suffer.'

Mr Morrison later told the ABC he wasn't 'surprised people are feeling very raw at the moment. 'And, that's why I came today, to be here, to see it for myself; offer what comfort I could.

'But you can't always in every circumstance, I think everyone understands that,' he said.

The disastrous visit comes as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared a week long state of emergency ahead of Saturday's predicted catastrophic conditions.

SOURCE  






NSW bushfires: police set to charge a dozen with arson

NSW Rural Fire Service Inspector Ben Shepherd has revealed investigators are close to charging more than a dozen suspected arsonists believed to have deliberately lit bushfires as the state remains in the grip of an ongoing bushfire crisis.

With tireless firefighters continuing to battle more than 100 blazes across NSW, Mr Shepherd warned the RFS was working “hand-in-hand with police” and noted that the state has “some of the toughest arson laws and penalties” in the country.

It comes amid revelations at least 56 people have already been charged or cautioned with 71 bushfire-related offences since August, with 16 ogoing investigations into suspicious fires, including a blaze that threatened the rim of suburban Sydney in South Turramurra, on Sydney’s Upper North Shore, on November 12.

“There are a number of fires so far this season that have been lit with malicious intent,” Mr Shepherd told The Australia.

“We work hand-in-hand with police to investigate fires and have several officers working on the current investigations.

“It’s only a matter of time until the police catch up with them. We’re working to close those cases soon and ensure those responsible are charged and brought before the courts.”

NSW’s bushfire crisis has already claimed six lives and more than 700 homes this season, and Mr Shepherd warned that arsonists could easily find themselves facing up to 25 years imprisonment for manslaughter.

“This kind of activity is dangerous and stupid … and the real issue is the severity fo the risk when the environment is so dry and windy, and conducive to fires spreading extraordinarily quickly,” he said.

He said the majority of fires currently scorching the state were started by lighting, or embers spread from those fires — but noted that individuals’ negligence in respecting total fire bans when holding barbecues and going camping, was not insignificant when compared with arson.

The warning came as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced that “huge” firefronts ravaging her state are uncontrollable.

Ms Berejiklian made the announcement from the Rural Fire Service’s Hawkesbury Fire Control Centre on Tuesday, adjacent to both a mammoth 400,000 hectare “mega-fire” at Gospers Mountain, as well as the town of Mount Tomah, where backburning that spiralled out of control destroyed up to 12 homes on Sunday.

Authorities in NSW were pleading with residents to monitor conditions ahead of peak danger days on Thursday and Saturday, when daytime temperatures are expected to exceed 40 degrees in eastern NSW and ACT, and 45 degrees in western NSW.

Ms Berejiklian said “in particular we’re very worried about Thursday and also Saturday.” “At this stage we want to make sure everybody’s alert,” she said. “The firefronts have joined, and the firefront is now huge. Containment is not an option, what is the option is to save life and property.”

Emergency Services minister David Elliott said “the next five days, could potentially see some of the most dangerous conditions that the state has seen for quite some time”.

Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said heatwave conditions interacting with the ongoing firefront would create an “awful situation” later in the week. “By no means people should underestimate the potential for how bad these days can be,” Mr Rogers said of Saturday, which he believes will be the worst day, and Thursday which he said “will be bad enough”.

“With strong wings, you’ve got the worst possible circumstances and also so much fire in the landscape in so close a proximity to urban areas. It’s an awful situation.”

“One of the things that we found over this fire season is people are waiting until the last minute and then they’re suddenly ringing triple zero and saying ‘I need help’. Sometimes we can’t get firefighters to people in those circumstances.” he said.

Mr Rogers said firefighters are doing “whatever they can” to protect the “critical” Springvale coal mine facility near the Gospers Mountain firefront north west of Sydney.

He also said he was confident the Wallerawang power station, which supplies 10 per cent of power to NSW and is also near the Gospers Mountain fire, would not be affected, as westerly winds would push the fire in the opposite direction from the blaze on Tuesday afternoon.

A spokesman for Energy Australia told The Australian the Mount Piper power station at Wallerawang was operating “with only essential personnel”, and was working closely with the RFS and the Australian Energy Market Operator to ensure supply was met.

SOURCE  





Scott Morrison signals backburning shake up in wake of bushfires

Firefighters have app­lauded the Prime Minister’s call to rewrite hazard ­reduction and landclearing rules in the wake of the fires that have ravaged the nation since September.

Scott Morrison also signalled it was time to reconsider where houses can be built.

Speaking to the media in Sydney before flying to Bega yesterday afternoon, Mr Morrison said there was “a need to address issues around hazard reduction for national parks, dealing with landclearing laws, zoning laws and planning laws around people’s properties and where they can be built in countries like Australia, up and down the coast”.

“That being the case with the climatic effects of what we are seeing, there are many restrictions around those effects that have to be reviewed on the basis on the broader climatic effect we are seeing in this country,” Mr Morrison said.

The PM said there were “many contributing factors” to the fire season, none more significant than the drought which had “created a tinderbox around the country” and seen “these fires run for long periods of time, particularly when there is no dousing rain that has normally followed.”

Mr Morrison said the issue of “fuel loads” was also “very clear”.

“That has been a constant source of feedback by those on the ground,” he said. “Issues in national parks and issues of hazard reduction and how that has worked over a period of time, that needs to be looked at undoubtedly.”

NSW Volunteer Fire Fighters Association President Mick Holton said the PM’s comments were “excellent”. “We need to ensure we reduce hazards,” Mr Holton said.

“The problem is the red tape surround it has become so complex it is almost in the too hard basket.”

SOURCE  






Bright deserted after concerns raised about possibility of mega fire

Alpine tourist Mecca Bright is all but closed as local residents bunker down for a tense day as fire conditions intensify.

A wind change this afternoon will create an extra challenge for firefighters as it brings gusts up to 80km/h to Mt Hotham and other alpine areas.

Tens of thousands of people have evacuated Victoria’s worst hit bushfire regions in the past 24 hours.

Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning said a number of fires started converging overnight. The largest is in the Omeo region near the Alpine National Park. Three fires joined there overnight to create a 6000 hectare fire.

The large inferno is now moving toward Cobungra, and could flare up as conditions worsen throughout the day.

While the conditions were mild this morning, the DELWP Gippsland warned against complacency. “As the day progresses, and weather heats up – the risk will increase right across the region,” the DELWP Gippsland said. “The risk is still real in this area and the community needs to stay very much aware of conditions and relevant warnings.

“Further wind and weather changes are expected in the region by mid-afternoon.”

Campers left the area in droves on Thursday.

Emergency Management Commission Andrew Crisp said there was every chance the Corryong and NSW bushfires could merge into a mega blaze.

“If you are in that area you should be getting out,” he said.

“This is very much about shared responsibility.”

Bright’s neighbouring townships of Freeburgh, Harrietville, Smoko, Wandiligong were told to evacuate about 3.30pm on Friday, because there were multiple out-of-control bushfires burning in the Abbeyard area.

Temperatures in Albury are tipped to soar as high as 46C today as thousands of Victorians face a dangerous day fleeing and managing the state’s bushfire crisis.

Bright’s two supermarkets remained open for residents stocking up on supplies, but there were few other signs of life in the town other than cars passing through from areas deeper in the Alpine National Park.

SOURCE  






On the road to Apocalypse Soon with Greta Thunberg and her disciples

GERARD HENDERSON

Since the world, according to Greta Thunberg and her disciples, faces extinction it came as no surprise that this year there was a certain madness in the air — especially among those who regard themselves as progressive.

After all, when the end of the world seemed (relatively) nigh it was no surprise that hyperbole, exaggeration, hypocrisy, wish fulfilment, false prophecy and a lack of self-awareness, along with double standards, prevailed in the land as we headed towards Apocalypse Soon — month after month.

* January: The year begins with Nine Entertainment newspapers’ Peter FitzSimons criticising footballers who engage in look-at-me behaviour after scoring a goal. This from a middle-aged man who wears a red bandana on his head.

Nine’s David Crowe predicts that if former Liberal Julia Banks wins Flinders in the federal election “it will be an earthquake for the Liberals”. She finishes third.

The New Daily’s Quentin Dempster suggests that Sky News’ Chris Kenny “probably gets his instructions telepathically” from Rupert Murdoch.

* February: The Saturday Paper’s Paul Bongiorno tweets he admires “the ABC’s policy to put different voices and accents on air”. He adds: “I wish the reporter they sent to NZ spoke English; her accent is incomprehensible.” In fact, the journalist concerned speaks impeccable English with an understandable Scottish accent.

From Singapore, Alex Turnbull states that the lesson of “the internal war over coal in the Coalition is that the sooner the Qld LNP splits the better” since “you can pander to central cuspy Qld One Nation voters or form government but not both”. See May.

* March: Nine newspapers’ Peter Hartcher writes a series of articles on what he regards as the current predicament facing the Liberal Party. Hartcher is of the view that only the likes of Malcolm Turnbull should lead the Liberals.

But he expresses disappointment that his man did not perform in accordance with expectations. Hartcher seeks advice from political psychologist James Walter, who convinces him that Turnbull sold his soul to Lucifer in a modern day “Faustian bargain” to hang on as party leader by appeasing conservatives.

The fact is Turnbull lost the support of his colleagues, who did not include Lucifer. By the way, in January Walter foresaw a “wholesale collapse” of the Liberal Party “appears to be inevitable”.

* April: La Trobe University emeritus professor Judith Brett opines that “not since 1943 has the non-Labor side of national politics entered an election campaign in such poor shape” and predicts “it could well be heading for another low point”.

Bongiorno concurs, maintaining the Liberal Party’s “credibility is in tatters due to the fact that the person leading it is not Malcolm Turnbull but it is Scott Morrison”.

Former Liberal leader (and constant Liberal Party antagonist) John Hewson declares the Coalition “is facing electoral defeat”.

Lawyer Michael Bradley ad­vises Crikey readers that Rugby Australia has “every right” to say Israel Folau’s behaviour “cannot be accepted”. See December.

* May: On the eve of the election, ABC 7.30 political editor Laura Tingle predicts that Labor will win and laughs at the suggestion the Coalition might prevail.

Guardian Australia’s Kath­arine Murphy writes that Morrison’s vulnerability as an “empty vessel” is “becoming as obvious as the nose on Morrison’s face”.

The Age’s Tony Wright decrees that “the Liberal edifice is toppling”. Needless to say, this trio remain “experts” after the Coali­tion’s victory and live to make more false predictions.

Nine newspapers’ cartoonist Kathy Wilcox laments that “morons outnumber the thinking people at election time”. The ABC’s Andrew Probyn blames opinion polls, but not commentators like him, for misleading the electorate.

* June: In The Australian Financial Review Geoff Kitney rationalises the election result by asserting that “Australian voters didn’t really choose” Morrison. In a novel interpretation, Kitney reckons “many” electors voted for the Coalition because they thought Labor would win. Really.

Mike Carlton boasts: “I feel this delicious lightness of Being. A heady draught of Liberation! Freedom! It is like Paris, August 1944.”

You see, your man Carlton said he had just cancelled his subscription to The Australian — an act he equated with the D-Day landings.

* July: Garrulous visiting British political operative Alastair Campbell dominates discussion on the ABC’s Q&A program. In the process he equates Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler — as if the victims of Nazism only had to put up with excessive tweeting.

FitzSimons suggests Boris Johnson cannot promise “strong political leadership”. Nine newspapers’ Tony Walker compares Johnson’s “shambolic personal life” with that of the “outstanding” Lord Palmerston, apparently unaware of the latter’s personal life as a womaniser on steroids.

* August: Waleed Aly, who is a presenter on Network Ten’s The Project as well as on ABC Radio National, complains in his Nine newspaper column that Johnson “has suspended Parliament in the name of the people!”

The exclamation mark is intended to underline the allegation that the move was somehow undemocratic. But parliament in Britain resumed and Johnson led the Conservatives to a clear election victory in December. Nine newspapers lead with a story that “the Chinese economy is in danger of hurtling towards a hard landing that could threaten more than half a million Australian jobs”. A prophecy that remains unfulfilled, so far at least.

* September: Malcolm Farr tells ABC Insiders viewers Cronulla, in Morrison’s electorate, will be under water in 50 to 100 years — a prediction that exceeds the most alarmist eco-catastrophists.

Zali Steggall, the independent MP for Warringah, which is close to the sea, says she cannot afford an electric car and calls on the government to subsidise such vehicles to allow her to replace her Nissan Pathfinder.

ABC presenter Matt Bevan sneers at the Prime Minister’s successful trip to the US as the “box factory visit”.

* October: In The Australian Financial Review, the normally considered Martin Wolf expresses the view that it is a measure of how far Britain has fallen that Johnson in 2019 “often sounds rather like” Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in 1933.

Then Nine newspapers runs an article by economist Paul Krugman predicting Trump may preside over a slump — without mentioning he falsely predicted a recession in Trump’s first year in office. ABC journalist Osman Faruqi discovers rampant racism in Andrew Rule welcoming the fact an Australian-born horse won the Melbourne Cup.

* November: Retired ABC journalist Kerry O’Brien lectures an admiring audience at the Walkley Awards that Australia is on “an unacceptable step down on the road to authoritarianism” and that “authoritarianism unchecked can lead to fascism”. But not, apparently, to communism.

In Guardian Australia, Van Badham confesses she consigned her University of Wollongong Anarchist Collective T-shirt to “the dustbin of history” following a realisation that “organic extrapolitical entities” cannot “govern themselves democratically”. This wisdom came following a “wild internet barney” in the anarchist collective at Rose Bay on Sydney Harbour.

* December: Guardian editor Lenore Taylor condemns the Prime Minister for alleged “woefully inadequate climate policy” without mentioning she recently put her large Canberra house, which has a woefully inadequate energy rating, on the market.

FitzSimons dismisses the Folau settlement without realising Folau received a big payout from Rugby Australia plus two apologies.

Paula Matthewson bags Morrison for not doing “something” about the bushfires. This is the same Matthewson who dismissed the futility of Tony Abbott for fighting fires when he was prime minister in 2013. The Saturday Paper’s Eric Jensen concludes the year with this soothsaying: “Scott Morrison marks Captain Cook anniversary by taking career ending trip to Hawaii.” In Nine newspapers, Mark Mordue warns “our dead future is here”. Enough 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






3 January, 2020

Great Barrier Reef truth may be inconvenient but it is out there


PETER RIDD points out where the Australian Institute of Marine Science has got it wrong.  They cannot admit it or it would completely destroy their most trumpeted claims.  Their allies at JCU even fired Ridd to protect their claim of reef damage.  It's now political.  A lot of careers are at risk if Ridd is right

We have no data of Great Barrier Reef coral growth rates for the past 15 years. Has growth collapsed as the Australian Institute of Marine Science claims?

Is the Great Barrier Reef being affected by climate change, the acidification of the ocean, and the pesticides, sediment and fertiliser from farms?

One way to tell is to measure the coral growth rates. Our science institutions claim that coral growth rates collapsed between 1990 and 2005 due to stress from human pollution.

Remarkably, despite having data of coral growth rates for the last few centuries, there is no data for the last 15 years. We don’t know how the GBR has fared since 2005.

Corals have yearly growth rings similar to tree rings. By drilling cores from large corals, scientists can measure the growth rates over the life of the coral.

The yearly rings are roughly 10 millimetres thick so a coral many metres across can be hundreds of years old. In a landmark study, AIMS took cores from more than 300 corals on the GBR and concluded that for the past 300 years coral growth was stable, but in 1990 there was an unprecedented and dramatic collapse of 15 per cent.

With Thomas Stieglitz and Eduardo da Silva, I reanalysed the AIMS data and, in our opinion, AIMS made two significant mistakes.

The first was incorrect measurement of the near-surface coral growth rings on most of the corals that were giving data from 1990 to 2005. After years of argument AIMS has begrudgingly agreed that it made this mistake. The other problem is that it used much smaller and younger corals for the 1990-2005 data compared with the mostly very large and old corals of the pre-1990 data — it changed its methodology and this is what caused the apparent drop at 1990. When we corrected this problem, the fall in growth rate disappeared.

AIMS continues to dispute this second error and still claims there was a worrying reduction in growth rate from 1990 to 2005. This disputed work is quoted in influential government documents such as last year’s reef outlook report. I am not cherrypicking a minor problem. It is a fundamental problem with a keystone piece of GBR science.

We thus have a situation that arguably the most important data that tells us about the health of the GBR is highly questionable from 1990 to 2005.

What is far worse is that we have no data since 2005.

The science institutions have not only failed to investigate probable major errors in their work, they have also failed to update measurement of this fundamental parameter while claiming, in increasingly shrill tones, that the GBR is in peril.

But ironically, this failure provides a fantastic opportunity

The coral challenge.

For the past 15 years we don’t know what growth rates have been. It is easy to fill in the missing data, and check the previous data, by taking more cores from the reef. AIMS has effectively stated that coral growth is falling at 1 per cent a year.

According to the AIMS curve, growth should now be 30 per cent lower than it was in 1990 — which would be a disastrous fall. I predict it has stayed the same. Either way, it would be nice to know what has happened — is the reef really in danger or not?

But a second and almost equally valuable outcome of measuring the missing data is that it will be an acid test of the trustworthiness of our major science institutions. AIMS has dug in its heels and denied it made a major methodological mistake. Let’s do the experiment and see if it is right, or untrustworthy.

Same for me. If this measurement is done, and done properly, and it shows there has been a major reduction in coral growth rates, I will accept I was wrong and that there is a disaster happening on the reef.

The coral challenge is a measurement that will have to be done sooner or later. The longer it is neglected the worse it will look to the public. Farmers accused of killing the reef are especially interested.

We need to make sure these new measurements are done properly and without any questions about reliability. They must be supervised by a group of scientists that are acceptable to both sides of the agricultural debate on the reef to ensure the methodology and its execution are impeccable.

SOURCE  






Millenial students are dropping out of trades courses as they hope to land a 'trendy job' flying drones or working as personal trainers

There has been a drastic increase in students dropping out of trades courses as they hope to get a 'trendy job' instead.

With more Sydney students opting for courses which have poor employment prospects such as 'fitness, outdoor recreation and flying drones' fears have been raised that it may lead to a skills crisis. 

Courses in auto repair, cabinetmaking and metal fabrication have seen a 28 per cent drop in enrollments - an overall 42 per cent drop in just two years.

Businesses already import foreigners to do the work and the lower enrollments leading the way to a 'skills crisis'.

Last year just under half as many students enrolled in hairdressing and furnishing courses compared to 2016. 

NSW Business Chamber CEO Stephen Cartwright said growth in certain jobs within the next five years are already experiencing skill shortages.

'Most of the occupations identified are already experiencing a skills shortage, are difficult to recruit into and are forecast for significant growth over the next five years,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

TAFE also reported 40,000 fewer enrollments last year.

He also noted a 'major concern' in students not opting for vocational education and training (VET) courses. 'The reduction in the number of students doing a VET qualification while they are still at school is a major concern,' he said.

'Students are being discouraged from doing a VET qualification by their school or by parents who have negative perceptions of VET and consider it as being lower than a university degree rather than as an equal alternative.'

He blamed parents and teachers for warning students off VET courses as below a university degree rather than the same.

The NSW curriculum is currently being looked over to note changes which would help students opt for courses with opportunities and VET courses.   

SOURCE  






A fired-up Barnaby Joyce says China and India 'couldn't give two tosses' about whether or not Australia cut its carbon emissions - and has no influence over them

Barnaby Joyce has called Australians 'naive' for believing that reducing the nation's carbon emissions will inspire coal-obsessed China and India to follow suit.

The 52-year-old former leader of the Nationals party told Sunrise hosts and Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon Australians had little to do with carbon emissions on a global scale.

'You can't preach to the international community...  We are doing our bit, but we can't start saying single-handedly we can influence what China does or what India does, or change the climate itself,' he said.

Joyce said there was no single piece of legislation that could be introduced in parliament that would change the climate back to the way it once was.

'The climate is changing, there's no doubt about it... do you honestly believe there is a piece of legislation we can move in Canberra that will change it back? The answer is no,' he said.

Mr Fitzgibbon argued that Australians could make a difference by 'having a go' and acting as a leader for the other powerhouse nations.

'The place is burning and the rest of the world is... shaking their heads at us and asking why we don't just do our bit,' he said.

'We are at risk of becoming the pariah of the international community because we are not just having a go.'

But Joyce said anybody who believed those claims was 'naively overreaching the influence of Australia'.

'The actual fact is that China or Russia or India don't give two tosses what Australia thinks... don't start thinking for one second that we are some great moral mover in global politics, because we are not.'  

The duo also clashed about Prime Minister Scott Morrison's recent trip to Hawaii.

The PM apologised for causing anxiety by taking personal leave during the worst bushfire crisis Australia has seen but said he did so because he was trying to keep a promise to his daughters, Lily and Abby.

Upon his return, Mr Morrison held a press conference where he reiterated there would be no amendment to the climate policy as a result of the bushfires.

On Monday morning, the PM told the Today show his government has reduced Australia's emissions by 50 million tonnes each year for the past two years.

'We have more renewable energy going into our system now than we have seen before,' he said, before adding Australia is on track to meet its commitments for the Paris Agreement.

'Australia is taking action on climate change. 'But what we won't do is engage in reckless and job destroying, economy crunching targets which is... taking advantage of national disasters. 

'No Australian would think that the direct policies of any single government in the world is directly linked to any fire event. That's not true,' he said.

SOURCE  






Extinction Rebellion’s Roger Hallam loses the plot

Another Greenie lamebrain

Secular holiness is an unpleasant trait, and it is always a pleasure to see the unfrocking of a secular bishop such as Roger Hallam, co-founder of his own evangelical church, the Extinction Rebellion.

In an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit, he said: “The fact of the matter is, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history … (The Belgians) went to the Congo in the late 19th century and decimated it.” In this context, he said, the Holocaust was almost a normal event, “just another fuckery in human history”.

At first sight he might appear to have joined the camp of the anti-Semites such as Jean-Marie Le Pen, who once called the Holocaust a detail of history, but I do not think this is quite fair to Hallam. He was not claiming that the Holocaust did not happen or that it was not serious; he was claiming that it was not unique and that, if it were not, we should not continue to say it was unique.

There has long been academic debate, no doubt ghoulish but couched in respectable terms, as to whether the Holocaust is typologically comparable to anything else; for example, the Armenian or Rwandan genocides, or the mass killings in Cambodia under Pol Pot. No doubt something can be said on both sides of the question. I do not think anything important turns on it for, as Bishop Joseph Butler said, everything is what it is, and not another thing. The Rwandan genocide would be neither better nor worse than it actually was, whether it were the same as, similar to or distinct from the Holocaust.

What is appalling about Hallam’s words is their crudity. The vulgarity of his expression was matched by the imprecision of his thought, as exemplified by the excuse he offered after his words caused an outcry. “I want to fully acknow­ledge the unimaginable suffering caused by the Holocaust that led to all of Europe saying ‘Never again’. But it is happening again, on a far greater scale and in plain sight. The global north is pumping lethal levels of CO2 into the atmosphere and simultaneously erecting ever greater barriers to immigration while turning whole zones of the world into death zones.”

The word f..kery, apart from its vulgarity, is extremely lazy, especially when used by someone with pretensions to intellectual seriousness. It is a bit like seeing the Himalayas and saying “Very nice”. A cup of tea and the St Matthew Passion are also very nice.

It is hardly to be expected that a man using such a term to describe the wilful murder of millions of people with a view to exterminating their kind entirely is not a very clear thinker. On Hallam’s view of the matter, taking a ride on the No 31 bus is the same as, or worse than, herding naked people into a gas chamber disguised as a shower and killing them with cyanide. Here false comparison does matter, for it can justify almost any action, from assassination to military invasion, to avoid the thing that is compared to the Holocaust.

The combination of CO2 emissions and barriers to immigration are turning whole zones of world into death zones, says Hallam. One of the largest of these zones, presumably, the second largest continent, Africa, is not dying, at least if the number of humans living in it is taken as the criterion. Its population is growing by about 2.4 per cent a year; that is to say, it will double (all things being equal, which they may not be) within 30 years. This is a far cry from Hallam’s assertion that we have only a short time to avert extinction as a species: the assertion that supposedly justifies him in breaking the law in any way he chooses.

But Hallam is not just a bar-room bore who insists that Hitler is alive and well and living in Paraguay, or that aliens from a flying saucer abducted his neighbour and took her to Mars. He is supposedly an educated man, for several years having studied for a PhD at King’s College London, apparently researching civil disobedience. (Of late he has done mainly fieldwork by the method social anthropologists used to call participant observation.) Presumably, before he was allowed to proceed to a PhD, he was vetted for his level of education, knowledge and ability. He is in fact the author of a chapter titled Escape from the Neoliberal Higher Education Prison: A Proposal for a New Digital Communist University, in a volume titled The Future of University Education, a snip at $160 (the cheapest I could find).

It is well-known that highly educated people are capable of idiocy, and perhaps even prone to it, outside their field of special knowledge. But the vulgarity of expression and imprecision of thought of someone such as Hallam, who might well have reached the upper echelons of academe had he not decided to save the world instead, are indicative of a reduction in basic educational standards. People have always written tosh, but after many years of compulsory education of the entire population one might have hoped for a better mastery of language and grasp of what constitutes an argument in someone at a supposedly high level.

To be reduced to using the word f..kery in the face of the Holocaust, or a catastrophe in history of any scale, is symptomatic of a debasement of language, a limitation of vocabulary and a stunted imagination, and — since language is so intimately connected to thought — of an impoverishment of an inability to think. Edgar Wallace, who left school in the East End of London in 1887 aged 12, had better English than Hallam, PhD student at one of the country’s elite institutions.

The impoverishment of our public discourse, of which Hallam’s interview with Die Zeit is only an example, is now evident and one is tempted to say planned and deliberate. It is as if the educated classes had been trying for years to demonstrate their sympathetic identification with the lower orders by adopting what they supposed, wrongly, were their vulgar habits of speech.

Some time ago I saw a play called Tribes by Nina Raine, a highly educated (and praised) playwright, descendant of Boris Pasternak, in which she depicted life in an upper-middle-class household — for the benefit of an upper-middle-class audience, of course. Opening the script at random, to page 28, I find the following expressions within the space of 15 lines:

I want my f..king pen back.

You thieving little sh.t.

Oh, f..k you.

My arse!

This language, more or less constant throughout the play, is the reverse of expressive, except in the most primitive sense. But the intelligentsia would probably consider that to draw attention to this fact is absurd, censorious, sanctimonious, narrow-minded, bigoted, inhibited and generally retrograde, a linguistic Luddism that is trying to turn the clock back. Crudity on his view will set you free, refinement will constrain or imprison you. But, then, we should not be surprised that a man cannot tell the difference between genocide and pollution.

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 January, 2020

World reacts to new Margaret Court controversy

Tennis legend Margaret Court’s discussion of transgender issues in a recent sermon has made global headlines and drawn a mixed reaction.

Margaret Court’s latest public controversy made headlines everywhere from India to Turkey to South Africa — and has divided commentators.

In a sermon at her Perth church last Sunday, the tennis legend again ventured where Tennis Australia would prefer her to avoid by tackling the transgender issue.

Just weeks before the Australian Open will celebrate the 50th anniversary of her grand slam, the 77-year-old discussed her concern for transgender youth and the future of women’s sport.

“Children are making the decision at seven or eight years of age to change their sex … no, just read the first two chapters of Genesis, that’s all I say. Male and female,” Court said.

“It’s so wrong at that age because a lot of things are planted in this thought realm at that age, and they start to question ‘what am I?’.

“And you know with that LGBT, they’ll wish they never put the T on the end of it because, particularly in women’s sports, they’re going to have so many problems.”

The 24-time grand slam winner’s comments did receive some support. American author Eric Metaxas tweeted a link to news.com.au’s coverage with the comment: “She is probably the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, and she’s used her platform heroically. Thank you, Margaret Court.”

Australian political activist Lyle Shelton said Court’s views were “not controversial but mainstream”.

“Millions share her concern for women’s sport. Parents are worried about radical gender fluid indoctrination of their children. Yet the left viciously attacks Margaret for speaking the truth,” he tweeted.

“The battle for truth and freedom of speech should not be borne by this courageous woman alone. Where are our political, religious and other civil society leaders? Have we surrendered to rainbow lies about biology and the human condition? Is courage dead in Australia?”

But others were furious. Australian radio personality Gus Worland was particularly animated in his condemnation of Court’s views, calling for Tennis Australia to end its association with her, including removing her name from Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne.

“Tennis Australia want us to say there’s the person and there’s the actual player but you can’t (separate them),” Worland told Today. “The simple fact is she’s awful — and what she’s saying is awful. It’s spreading hatred.

“So at the end of the day I’d put a line through her completely. I’d take her name off the arena down there in Melbourne and say ‘you’re done and dusted’ …

“When she comes out with that sort of vile, that sort of hatred, that’s where you put a line through someone …

“The timing is terrible. She knows exactly what she’s doing. We’re about to have the Australian Open. We’re all going to get focused on the tennis down there in Melbourne — and we know her opponent. She’s just restating it again … and she’s (thumbing her nose) at all the tennis authorities and all the lovers and supporters of the game.”

Sydney Morning Herald senior writer Jessica Irvine agreed. “Hopefully in the next decade we’ll have left these views behind,” Irving told Today. “It’s just so disappointing.

“Australians want to celebrate our sporting heroes and she’s amazing. But can we separate the views she has that I believe are unacceptable to the Australian people and celebrate her sporting wins? I don’t think you can separate the two.”

In the same sermon, Court highlighted the difficulty of openly discussing her religious views. “People think because you don’t agree with them, you hate them. No, I don’t. I don’t hate anybody,” Court said.

Tennis Australia openly condemned Court’s views in November, and made it clear in an open letter they are not welcome in the sport.

SOURCE  






Faith shown in Christian schools

Christian school enrolments have soared over the past five years, surpassing growth in the public and broader independent sectors, amid claims the rising influence of identity politics in many schools is alienating families with traditional values.

Data provided by the Independent Schools Council of Australia reveals enrolments in Christian schools have increased by an average of 33 per cent a year for the past five years, accelerating to 4,4 per cent in the past two years.

Christian schools, while a minority in the broader independent school sector, added more than 10,000 students between 2013 and 2018, with the 18 per cent overall growth outstripping the 7.7 per cent growth seen in government school numbers. The independent sector recorded a more muted 1.7 per cent annual growth over the same period.

According to the Australian Association of Christian Schools, enrolment growth was being driven by an increasing demand for a Christian education rather than the establishment of new schools.

Fees are typically modest — in the $3000 to $7000 range—meaning the schools are more accessible than many non-government schools.

AACS executive director Alithea Westerman said reports from schools suggested an increasing number of parents were drawn to a Christian education in the wake of the public furore around programs such as Safe Schools, which lost federal support

From the "Weekend Australian" of 28 December, 2019





Extinction Rebellion crowd full of hot air and coffee

GRAHAM RICHARDSON

Bushfires have been around forever so it is ridiculous to claim they are a consequence of global warming.

They are far more likely to be due to an 11-year-old boy playing with matches than global warming. The Extinction Rebellion lot do themselves no good by continuing to make these claims.

Those valiant souls who risk life and limb by facing infernos know the truth. Nonetheless, speaking from behind the froth of the coffees served in the comfort of cafes in the nicer suburbs, the Extinction Rebellion people can tell you all about the march of global warming.

Unfortunately, logic has little or no role to play in our debate on climate and energy.

Josh Frydenberg has tried desperately to get an energy policy ­accepted by the states and, through no fault of his own, just can’t get anywhere. There are too many vested interests in this field. There are the coalminers, the power stations owners, the states and the poor punters.

Just how did Australia fall from a position where power was so cheap and so plentiful to a place where we rely on the power of prayer and hope for benign ­weather conditions?

Still, I guess anything is possible in a land where we sit on 400-year supplies of high-quality coal that will guarantee supply at a reasonable price -- and a vocal crowd is dumb enough to say we should leave it in the ground.

The worst part of this selfishness is the attempt by some to prevent India from importing our coal to fuel its endeavours to increase living standards. It was only in recent decades that some people there still starved to death.

SOURCE  







Queensland Fire service slammed for hiring a global warming officer

A HIGHLY paid bureaucrat will be recruited by Queensland Fire and Emergency Services to plan and build its response to climate change.  As debate rages around climate change and its impact on the tragic early fire season across the East coast, The Sunday Mail can reveal the position will be an Australian first.

The QFES's new principal program officer for climate change will enjoy an annual salary between $107,879 and $115,523. They will be responsible for developing "best practice approaches" to embed climate change effects into QFES plans and processes, the job de-scription notes.

The climate change officer will also "liaise with stake-holders and facilitate workshops for key staff, including senior managers". QFES advertised the position on the State Govern-ment's Smart Jobs portal this month, but pulled the ad after it was revealed management had not signed off on the role. It is understood the job be readvertised next month.

LNP fire and emergency services spokesman Lachlan Millar said the money would be better spent on increasing rural fire service budgets and hazard-reduction burning.. "Queenslanders don't need a change bureaucrat in Brisbane to tell them that climate change is a factor that needs to be considered," he said. "Labor have cut $13 million from the rural fire service budget this year and reduced hazard reduction activities by 83 per cent in 2018 compared to 2016.

"Climate change shouldn't be used as an excuse to cut budgets and reduce hazard-reduction burns needed to manage fuel loads."

Fire and Emergency Services Minister Craig Crawford applauded the move, insisting understanding climate change was "critical to winning and building community resilience". "Our firefighters are continually challenged by the frequency, intensity and duration of severe weather events," he said,

"While I understand the job advert was prematurely posted, QFES is committed to raising awareness and improving knowledge of climate change within the organisation." Mr Crawford said QFES was active on the Government's Inter-Departmental Committee on Climate Change, driving climate policy.

"Over the last year alone, Queensland has experienced extreme weather events leading to disasters including the Townsville floods and an unprecedented, ongoing bushfire season," he said "We must accept our changing climate and prepare for the challenges it presents."

From the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of Dec. 29th

 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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DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism"
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart


BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral Reef Compendium
IQ Compendium
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia


BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Bank of Queensland blues


There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)


Alt archives
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
General Backup
General Backup 2



Selected reading

MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY

Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
What are Leftists
Psychology of Left
Status Quo?
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism

Critiques
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.





Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
basic home page
Pictorial Home Page
Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here)
Another picture page (Rarely updated)



Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20151027-0014/jonjayray.com/

OR: (After 2015)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160322114550/http://jonjayray.com/