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 May 2020

‘This virus doesn’t want to kill us’

This is the inside story of how Australian scientists in some ways got the jump on the world.  Australia has had great success in controlling the virus.  Was the early understanding of the virus among Australian scientists part of that?

“This virus doesn’t want to kill us. It has no brain, no will. It just wants to grow and reproduce, to obey the laws of evolution and natural selection.” So says Professor Peter Doherty, a man who knows a thing or two about unpicking a virus. If the virus that causes COVID-19 did have a brain it would probably avoid coming up against the 79-year-old, Brisbane-raised, Nobel prize-winning immunologist who in the mid-1990s unlocked the secret of how our body’s immune system gives viruses a good kicking.

His name has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight again as patron of the research and public health organisation that bears his name, the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. No organisation in Australia has been more prominent in tackling COVID-19, not only in the lab but in shaping government policy through the findings of its public health scenario modellings. “I’d just written my retirement book,” Doherty laughs down the phone from his home in Melbourne, where his age means he’s under strict isolation. “I thought I was fading into the distance and now suddenly I’m back as a talking head.”

There’s a lot to talk about. If we are in an ­enviable position in this war against COVID-19, with the tantalising prospect of life returning to normal seeming closer every day, it’s in part due to the early work of scientists at the Doherty Institute.

It’s easy to forget those early days back in ­January, when bushfires preoccupied the country and no one suspected a mysterious virus in China would within two months result in unimaginable global upheaval. But in the age of globalisation, viruses can move faster than even the news cycle, and so can those who fight them. Within hours of Australia’s first confirmed case of COVID-19 landing on our shores, the Doherty Institute had grown the virus in culture and shared it with the world (the first lab outside China to do so), sequenced the entire genome of the virus, mapped the human body’s immune response to the infection and was supplying the modelling that informed the Federal Government’s response in imposing the lockdown restrictions. Now its ­scientists are collaborating on a vaccine and testing possible treatments. Things have happened so fast that you could almost swear they were waiting for this virus.

Actually, they were. Doherty director Sharon Lewin calls it “peacetime preparations”: all the work that goes on when you’re not in the grip of a pandemic, when you’re not sure what sort of infectious disease will hit next but you know it will and you’d better be ready for it. It was SARS that primed the institute for COVID-19, but its bread-and-butter work is annual outbreaks of influenza, tracking cases in the community and developing new vaccines and treatments. “SARS was very infectious but the difference was people would only spread the virus when they were unwell,” says Lewin, “so you knew who was spreading it because they were sick and usually in hospital. But nothing like this new coronavirus has ever affected us.”

A collaboration between The University of ­Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Doherty Institute was born out of another disaster – the Global Financial Crisis – as a recipient of the Rudd government’s 2009 stimulus splash in the tertiary sector. It was established to deal with the exact sort of crisis we’re in right now.

The first cases of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness emerged from the wet markets of Wuhan, China in late December. It was soon confirmed to be a new type of coronavirus, and on January 7 China revealed to the world its genetic sequence – like sharing a fingerprint from a crime scene. “That’s when people started getting nervous,” says Lewin. “It was different to SARS. It set alarms off around the world.” The impetus for countries outside China was then on designing a diagnostic molecular test (called a PCR assay), so they’d know if the virus washed up on their shores. But Australia was a step ahead. We already had the test.

“The tests were designed in the wake of SARS and MERS, predicting that this would happen again and we’d need a test capable of detecting an unknown coronavirus,” says Mike Catton, director of the Doherty Institute’s Victorian Infectious ­Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL).

Having the virus’s genetic sequence meant ­Catton and his team could quickly tailor their test to the new virus. From January 15 they started testing samples from anyone arriving from Wuhan displaying cold-like symptoms. Catton jokes that if anything urgent is going to happen, it’ll be on the Friday night before a long weekend. On Friday January 24, the lab got a call from Monash Hospital. Another return traveller from China had presented with corona­virus symptoms and a sample from the patient was taken back to the lab for testing. By 2am they had preliminary results, and by 4am had completed the entire genome sequencing, confirming the matter beyond all doubt that the fingerprints matched. COVID-19 was here.

Getting a positive ID was just the beginning. The next step was to try to grow the virus in cell culture. If growing a virus is an art form then Julian Druce is the artist. Druce is the senior scientist at VIDRL’s viral identification laboratory, where he tends to cultures in flasks with the tender touch of the finest orchid grower. Other labs had failed to get it to sprout, but Catton says if anyone in the world could grow it, Druce could. The practice of growing cultures was once de rigueur, but is now almost antiquated since the molecular test revolutionised virology in the late 1980s. While a molecular test will place your suspect at the crime scene, only by having a viable virus strain grown in culture can you fully interrogate the virus and learn its nature and characteristics, allowing you to potentially design antiviral drugs and vaccines.

Over the weekend Druce and Catton watched their virus grow, sometimes in the lab during the day, sometimes in the middle of the night. When unable to sleep, they would periodically open the laptop and hook into a webcam pointed at the flask back at the office. “It was really exciting,” says ­Catton, adding drolly: “if that’s your idea of excitement.” By the time Australians were back at work on the Tuesday, VIDRL had uploaded the genome sequence to an international database and were spreading the virus round the world, but in a good way, with the hope it could still be contained.

Sharing the virus before having it accepted into an academic journal was a bold and unusual move. Researchers will usually keep their discoveries closely guarded until the findings can be published. It’s possible that at least two other labs around the world had grown the virus before the Doherty Institute, but were sitting on it. Julian Druce says they didn’t have time for that. “We wanted to get the genie back in the bottle. It was clear to us here that public health came before publication.”

Collaboration would also come before commercialisation, with the COVID-19 crisis heralding an unprecedented flurry of global scientific ­co-operation through the sharing of information, materials, expertise and facilities. “I think it sent a message to the world about how we should be playing this thing,” says Catton.

Immediately after sharing the virus, VIDRL focused on helping public health labs, diagnosing samples sent in from New Zealand and states without local capacity. Throughout March the focus was on getting Victorian hospitals and ­community pathology labs set up with their own testing programs. Australia now has the highest per capita testing rate in the world.

Having a viable virus in the lab meant that labs around the world could start work designing antiviral drugs to treat patients, test vaccine candidates and begin serology testing to detect antibodies deployed by our immune system to fight the virus.

At the same time as VIDRL was growing the virus, the institute was claiming another world-first. An early patient had her immune response to the virus scrutinised, providing vital information on how the body fights COVID-19. The 47-year-old woman from Wuhan became the first person in Australia to be tested under a platform called ­Sentinel Travellers and Research Preparedness Platform for Emerging Infectious Disease (SETREP-ID). Doherty Institute infectious disease physician Irani Thevarajan helped set up SETREP-ID two years ago, around the time when the world was getting jumpy over new diseases such as ebola and zika. The platform – with pre-approved ethics – allows for testing and research of any travellers returning to the country with an emerging infectious disease. “We set it up knowing that new infections could walk through the door any day,” says Thevarajan. “So we wanted to be able to do immediate detection and research, to gain an understanding of it when it arrived.”

Thevarajan activated SETREP-ID on January 7, back when the world wasn’t even sure if human to human transmission was possible, and calibrated it to recruit data from any return travellers from China. When the woman arrived at hospital in late January and tested positive to COVID-19, a team led by Dr Oanh Nguyen and Dr Katherine Kedzierska immediately started taking blood samples and mapping her immune system response.

“We wanted to know right away what the immune system does when it sees this new coronavirus, because no one knew at that stage,” Thevarajan says. It was mild case of COVID-19 but the study revealed valuable information about the immune response. However, Thevarajan says a vital part of the puzzle is still missing. “What we don’t fully understand is what’s driving the really severe disease. We don’t yet fully understand why most people recover but some don’t.”

Nor do we fully understand what we stand to lose as collateral damage in the battle against COVID-19. On February 3, a collaboration of researchers led by the Doherty Institute convened a workshop with the Office of Health Protection and jurisdictional representatives in Canberra to discuss modelling the impact of COVID-19 on our health system.

Modelling was released to the public on April 7, two months after being provided to the Federal Government, which used it to inform its public health response. It’s this modelling and the delay in releasing it to the public that’s subsequently become the most controversial and debated element of the early initiatives, and the one that may prove to have the most serious long-term consequences. Doherty director of epidemiology Jodie McVernon led the team that built the model. She says at that early meeting the team proposed a “very broad brush set of initial scenarios based on influenza pandemic preparedness assumptions about severity, which was then highly uncertain”.

Back in 2009, McVernon had led a team of modellers responding to the H1N1 influenza ­pandemic that killed half a million people globally. So when COVID-19 came along and a preparedness model was needed in a hurry they brought out the influenza plan as a template, updating data specific for COVID-19 as it came in. “It’s our business to be surprised. That’s what emergencies are about,” says McVernon. “The reason this [modelling] could be done so fast was because the government had invested in preparedness for a very long time. So the toolkit, the thinking and the strategies were ready, but as the data came in it became clear this was beyond the influenza scenarios.”

The modelling, though, came in for criticism for basing its assumptions on overseas data, for not taking into account Australia’s case numbers, ­different demographics, geography and health care system. Australia never saw the widespread virus transmission of places like Italy, Spain and New York. Some say this is because of the strict social distancing measures the government put in place. Others say it’s because Australia never had the effective reproduction number (the number of people infected by each person carrying the virus) that Wuhan did, our population isn’t as elderly as ­Italy’s, our rate of smoking is relatively low, we don’t have high-density slums, and a thousand other differences that mean a one-size-fits-all model was never going to be an accurate representation.

McVernon says they had no choice but to use overseas data, as that’s where the epidemics were occurring. She says they simply didn’t have time to wait. “We’re acutely attuned to the fact we have to contextualise this to our local setting,” she says, “but you have to start with what you have. Yes, there were uncertainties, but the model is there to help you come to a consistent set of decisions. You ask yourself if any of those uncertainties would change your decisions.”

The modelling revealed that an unmitigated COVID-19 epidemic in Australia would have been a disaster, quickly overwhelming the health system. Suddenly “flattening the curve” became a phrase every Australian was familiar with. The curve was soon flattened, but at what cost? We won’t know until later the legacy of shutting down the economy, consigning so many Australians to the unemployment queue, or the other social impacts. One million Australians have become unemployed, and the Federal Government’s economic support packages are costing the country $320 billion.

McVernon admits she’s nervous about the ­collateral damage but stands by the measures. She says it was their job to avert a crisis. “It’s not a stretch to compare COVID-19 with the plague. ­People are saying that public health is being allowed to run the ­government. Well, I think there was definitely a need for public health to lead the charge to avert a catastrophe. That was our single task.”

The world waits for a vaccine. Doherty Institute virologist Dr Damian Purcell says more than 100 vaccine concepts are being worked on. “It doesn’t take a lot of time to produce a vaccine candidate,” he says, “what really takes time is the testing.” The institute’s collaboration with the University of Queensland to design a vaccine is one of those 100. Purcell says UQ started the work on ­January 20 and it’s now being tested on ferrets in the Netherlands prior to human trials. Elsewhere overseas, other vaccine candidates are already at the human trial stage.

In-house, the institute is working on its own vaccine candidates, thanks to a $3.2 million donation from the Jack Ma Foundation. Meanwhile, two ­international groups, one from Britain’s Oxford University and another from US group Inovio, are testing vaccine ­candidates at the CSIRO in Geelong. CSIRO has partnered with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), part of a global alliance aiming to speed up the development of vaccines, and in April was given $220 million by the Federal Government to upgrade its biosecurity research facilities and help expedite the quest for a vaccine.

Purcell says international collaboration and funding are the keys to unlocking a vaccine. “Funding is the thing that fires up the rocket sled. But things are highly accelerated now because people are sharing information in real time. A lot of the problems with vaccine development is it’s so expensive to manufacture at a high grade and going through the larger scale testing, so we’re speeding up the process of the early phase testing. As soon as things look remotely good and we get the safety signals, we pull the trigger and manufacture.”

If it sounds simple, don’t kid yourself. Developing a vaccine is one thing, but working out how to safely mass produce what is a very complex biological product for the consumption of millions, to fight a virus we still don’t know a lot about, and doing it by yesterday, requires navigating seemingly insurmountable problems. Purcell believes we will get a vaccine, but he’s just not sure if it will be the elixir the world is expecting. “It may be difficult to achieve effective vaccination of the elderly, we just don’t know. Therapeutic antibodies or anti-­viral drugs may turn out to be more important. That’s why we need to advance all fronts.”

Other fronts include a trial led by the institute involving 2500 people in more than 80 hospitals in Australia and New Zealand (called the ASCOT trial) to assess the effectiveness of two antiviral drugs, lopinavir/ritonavir (used to treat HIV) and hydroxy­chloroquine, the antimalarial drug touted by ­Donald Trump and Clive Palmer.

It’s also partnering with Monash University on a study of the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin. Early experiments done at the Doherty Institute days after the virus was identified in Australia showed that Ivermectin killed SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, within 48 hours in cell culture. Dr Kylie Wagstaff from Monash Biomedical Discovery Institute says anecdotal evidence is good, but getting the dosing right is the key before human trials in Australia can start.

Peter Doherty, who still has a key research advisory role with the institute, remains relaxed and grounded, an endearing everyman infected with an incurable case of humility. On April 27 he tweeted what was meant to be a Google search: “Dan Murphy opening hours.” Even strict isolation comes with occasional caveats. Rather than delete the tweet, he let it stay and gather likes and laughs. “Only flawed humans can be loved,” he later tweeted. “And I certainly qualify.”

The real work is more sobering. Doherty says the worst virus he’s ever seen is smallpox. It killed about 300 million people in the 20th century, about 30 per cent of those it infected. Ironically, it’s also the only human infectious disease ever to be eradicated, the last case occurring in 1978. “We’re probably not going to eradicate COVID-19,” says Doherty. “So whatever people think of what’s being done, we need to build up the armamentarium against this thing. It’s lethal.”

SOURCE  






Student activist, 20, is suspended from the University of Queensland after criticising its ties to China and leading a pro-Hong Kong protest

A student who dared to criticise the Chinese government and lead a pro-Hong Kong protest has been suspended by the University of Queensland.

Drew Pavlou, 20, is a passionate student activist due to graduate in just six months, but has been suspended after criticising the university for its ties to Beijing.

He led a series of campus demonstrations last year, in support of Hong-Kong's pro-democracy movement.

The activist also posted messages to social media criticising China's authoritarian regime and denounced the university's close financial ties with the Communist Party. 

It has around 10,000 Chinese students, bringing in $150 million in student fees each year.

He accused the University of Queensland, where he is enrolled studying philosophy, of behaving like the country's communist government after it suspended him for two years.

Speaking after his suspension on Friday following a controversial disciplinary hearing, he said the university hadn't given any good reason for its decision.

'Refusing to provide exonerating evidence, calling no witnesses and providing no reasoning for my expulsion during a secret hearing no one was supposed to know about,' he said. 'What an amazing standard UQ has set in regards to transparency - at least by Beijing's standards.'

Mr Pavlou faced a disciplinary hearing on May 20 at the university over 11 allegations of misconduct, detailed in a confidential 186-page document.

It is reportedly linked to his on-campus activism supporting Hong Kong and criticising the Chinese Communist Party.

The University of Queensland has faced intense scrutiny for its relations with the Chinese government, which has co-funded four courses offered by the university.

It is also home to one of Australia's many Confucius Institutes - Beijing-funded education centres some critics warn promote propaganda.

The Chinese consul general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, even serves as an honorary professor at the university.

Mr Pavlou led a series of campus demonstrations last year, in support of Hong-Kong's pro-democracy movement.

He also posted messages to social media criticising China's authoritarian regime and denounced the university's close financial ties with the Communist Party.

 The university ordered Mr Pavlou's suspension on Friday after the 20-year-old student left the previous hearing after about one hour, citing procedural unfairness.

Mr Pavlou told reporters he views the suspension as 'an expulsion for all intents and purposes' as he was due to graduate in six months.

'I think they're using the term suspension to talk down just how harsh this punishment actually is,' Mr Pavlou said on Friday. 'They've been threatening me with suspensions ever since last year.'

Mr Pavlou says he found out about the suspension via email at 4pm on Friday. The email allegedly asked him to keep the outcome confidential.

'I absolutely p**s on their rule book when it comes to confidentiality,' the Brisbane student said. 'They're trying to do me over in the shadows. F**k that. No way.'

UQ Chancellor Peter Varghese said on Friday he was concerned with the outcome of the disciplinary action against Mr Pavlou.  'There are aspects of the findings and the severity of the penalty which personally concern me,' Mr Varghese said in a statement.

'In consultation with the vice chancellor, who has played no role in this disciplinary process, I have decided to convene an out-of-session meeting of UQ's Senate next week to discuss the matter.'

Mr Pavlou said he found it hard to believe the chancellor and vice chancellor had no part in his punishment and questioned the independence of the disciplinary board.

'They (the UQ chancellor and vice chancellor) directed this from the beginning. There is no way they wouldn't have known about it. It's a joke.'

A UQ spokeswoman said on Friday the institutions disciplinary matters are dealt with under the Student Integrity and Misconduct policy.

Mr Pavlou said he will now appeal the decision with the assistance of his lawyer, Tony Morris QC.  'We're going to immediately appeal this decision in an independent court of law outside UQ.'

Mr Pavlou recently took Mr Xu to court after being attacked at a rally by Chinese nationalists.

'In July 2019, I led a peaceful campus sit-in calling for UQ to completely cut ties with the Chinese state until Tibetans were freed, Uighur detention camps were closed, and Hong Kongers were afforded greater democracy,' he said.

'Masked pro-CCP heavies violently attacked our rally, assaulting me and choke-slamming other pro-Hong Kong students to the ground.'

Following the ugly incident, Mr Pavlou was named in a Chinese state media article by Mr Xu and accused of being 'anti-China'.

As a result, Mr Pavlou claims he then received death threats, unsettling phone calls and letters.

The University of Queensland said in a statement, it rejects the 'unsubstantiated' claims and is not attempting to prevent students from expressing their personal political views or trying to limit their right to freedom of speech.

SOURCE  






Radio host Alan Jones took aim at coronavirus restrictions during his final breakfast show today, retiring after 35 years on air

Radio host Alan Jones had a dig at coronavirus measures during his final show on Friday but said “it ain’t over really” as he concluded 35 years on the airwaves.

Jones, 79, is retiring from radio after three decades, finishing his final 2GB breakfast program at 9am.

During his last show, Jones also criticised coronavirus restrictions, saying the “figures are made up”.

Noting that NSW would be winding back some of its restrictions from Monday, including that 20 people will be able to attend weddings and up to 50 people will be able to attend funerals and other places of worship, Jones asked: “Where do they get these figures from?”

“These figures are made up. “Can someone put a paper on a table and tell us where those figures come from?”

Jones added that 98.3 per cent of coronavirus cases in the world were mild.

Joining him for his final broadcast, Jones said, were former prime minister Tony Abbott, an “amazing human being” whose “removal from that office made Australia the poorer”, and state leader of One Nation in NSW, Mark Latham, “who would today be an outstanding prime minister”.

The former Wallabies coach noted that his career is not over and said Mr Latham would be part of a regular segment on Sky News, where Jones is expected to continue hosting an evening TV show.

“There will be a regular segment with Mark, and will replicate the kind of things we’ve been doing here because he’s got something to say, something to contribute,” Jones said. “So it ain’t over really, we’re just going to another medium.”

Jones announced earlier this month that he was retiring on the advice of his doctors, after decades of 2am-3am morning starts to prepare for his show.

In his many years on radio, Jones became the self-appointed and sometimes outrageously dogmatic voice of the battler, feared and courted by politicians.

Jones will continue to host an evening TV show on Sky News and is expected to keep writing a column for News Corp Australia’s newspapers.

SOURCE  






Australia's Retail Sector Is Bouncing Back From The COVID-19 Crisis Faster Than Many Landlords Imagined

Australia’s retail industry is bouncing back from the COVID-19 lockdown much more quickly than anyone anticipated, according to some of the biggest shopping centre operators in the country.

After the vast majority of stores across the nation closed in the early days of the pandemic, 80 per cent of them were now back in business as restrictions have eased over the past few weeks.

“And we’re finding foot traffic is now 80 per cent of what it was this time last year,” said Phil McAveety, director of customer experience at the Scentre Group, which operates under the Westfield brand.

“It’s coming back more quickly than we’d imagined, with New Zealand now seeing 93 per cent of retailers back operating.

“In the past couple of weeks, as foot traffic has risen, the spend is going up too. Once we’ve got beyond necessities like food and pharmacy items, we’re seeing anything to do with home in big demand, like homewares, home improvements and TVs.

“We’re also seeing youth fashion coming back really quickly and from next week, we’ll see further growth in out-of-home dining and street dining and entertainment.”

Mr McAveety was taking part in a panel discussion organised by the Property Council of Australia about building owners’ experiences of providing COVID-safe retail precincts, offices, workplaces and public spaces ready for an economic reboot.

They reported that retail was, quite unexpectedly, leading the way forward for a return to the “new normal”.

Louise Mason, chief executive of commercial property at Stockland, said about 85 per cent of stores in their centres had now re-opened with new protocols in place regarding cleaning, sanitisers, security and plenty of advice on maintaining social distancing.

“We are all quietly pleased and quietly optimistic for the future,” she said. “Western Australian and Queensland even opened up on last year, which is a really good sign.”

It’s an expression of confidence in shopping, and an eagerness to return to stores, that has also taken Bob Johnston, chief executive of The GPT Group, by surprise. He, too, said foot traffic was up on this time last year.

“The biggest surprise has been that turnaround,” he said. “People have been keen to get back out and experience shopping centres and it shows how we’re all social animals.

“Customers have also been generally respectful of the need for social distancing and are working with the restrictions.”

Mr McAveety said people’s desire to be social would keep bricks-and-mortar shopping going, and strong brands and strong retailers offering good customer experiences would flourish while the weaker ones, with frailer customer connections, might go to the wall.

Online shopping would also continue to grow, with an acceleration of the trends already happening, said Mr Johnston, and with some consolidation of those trends that they were currently seeing with K-Mart and Target.

Ms Mason also foreshadowed that there would be more non-traditional shopping centre tenants, such as post offices, education, and health and wellbeing stores, take up residence.

There’s also been more opportunity to develop, and introduce, innovation in business, says Mr McAveety.

“So in the next three to six months, we’ll be delivering a whole range of customer benefits that might have taken us a little bit longer had business not been brought into such sharp relief,” he said.

The pandemic had also forced business and government to work together much more closely, and effectively, for the good of the nation. “If we could keep that level of cooperation and engagement,” said Mr Johnston, “that would be great for the Australian economy.”

The forum heard that industrial real estate had generally been less affected by the pandemic, although it was much more of a mixed bag.

Companies involved with logistics for online shopping, for instance, had been extremely busy, having to find more space for storage, while those in the automotive industry had been down almost 50 per cent across the country as people stayed home, Ms Mason said.

It’s less certain, however, how the commercial office sector would fare as Australia re-emerged from the shutdown.

Mr Johnston said there was only 5 to 10 per cent occupancy of offices in the country’s CBDs at the moment and that was showing only slow signs of changing.

“We need to reboot Australia’s CBDs as a lot of businesses depend on them,” Mr Johnston said. “I’m sure there will be an element of working from home going forward, but we need to get people back and feeling comfortable in a responsible way.”

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 May, 2020

Pillars of justice abandoned in mob pursuit of George Pell

Henry Ergas points to the Christian origins of our basic legal principles


No matter how dramatic its ­current impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic may, 10 years from now, seem like a seismic shock that strikes, devastates and then recedes, allowing reconstruction to begin.

The case of Cardinal George Pell, on the other hand, highlights a sickness in the body politic that is all the more dangerous for being ongoing, widespread and deeply entrenched.

After all, more than a month has passed since the High Court quashed Cardinal Pell’s conviction, reversing the decision of Victoria’s highest court of appeal. That the Victorian Court of Appeal made grievous errors of law is undeniable. It is, moreover, every bit as certain that those errors capped a long series of missteps, stretching from the initial investigation to the decision to prosecute.

Yet the Victorian government has not launched, and does not intend to launch, an independent inquiry into a miscarriage of justice that led to the conviction and ­prolonged imprisonment of an innocent man.

Had Cardinal Pell not been who he is, it is unlikely that the state government would dismiss such manifest flaws as if they were minor mishaps. But even ignoring the further injustice that involves, the state government’s refusal to investigate can only increase the likelihood that the errors will recur. Nor could anyone describe those errors as trivial. On the contrary, they strike at the pillars on which our system of justice stands: the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and the requirement that guilt be established ­“beyond reasonable doubt”.

However, those pillars are not only the fundamental principles that shield us from the horrors of arbitrary imprisonment; they are also among the greatest achievements of the Christian tradition.

To say that is not to ignore their pre-Christian antecedents. For example, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which dates from around 1790BC, embraced the presumption of innocence. And Roman law repeatedly stated that the burden of proof falls on the ­accuser, with the dictum “Actore non probante, reus absolvitor” — when the plaintiff does not prove his case, the defendant is absolved — enjoying near-constitutional status.

But those principles would never have acquired their contemporary role and substance had it not been for the great renewal of canon (that is, church) law that began in the 11th century. At the heart of that renewal were the moral terrors of judging at a time when punishment almost always involved death.

Jesus himself, faced with accusers intent on stoning an adulterous woman to death, had warned that it was those who were without sin who should cast the first stone. As if that were not enough, it was clear to the canon lawyers that St Matthew’s admonition — Judge not, lest ye be judged! — meant that convicting an innocent defendant was a mortal sin.

Its price was correspondingly steep: as a 13th-century book of laws put it, the judge who committed or connived in that sin built for himself “a mansion in Hell”.

In a world pervaded by the fear of damnation, the result was that the conscientious judge, witness or juryman had to approach his task wracked by “fear and trembling” lest he be “guilty of (the defendant’s) Murther”.

Preserving one’s immortal soul from that risk required accepting that the accused was, in the ­famous words the canonist Johannes Monachus coined on the basis of a papal instruction issued in 1207, “innocent until proven guilty”. Additionally, as the leading canonists Raymond de Penafort and Aegidius Bossius explained, it required “keeping strictly to the order (ie, the procedures) of the law” and doing so entirely free of interest and passion, for if a judge “glories in the death of a man, as no small number do in our age, he is a murderer”.

Finally, it was the utmost responsibility of a Christian concerned about the salvation of his soul to seek “moral certainty”; that is, certainty of the highest degree, before finding a defendant guilty.

Punishments could only be administered once guilt had been established through proofs that were ‘‘luce meridiana clariores” — ‘‘clearer than the light of the midday sun”.

And when those proofs were lacking, the rule of “in dubio pro reo” — “in doubt one must decide in the defendant’s favour” — defined the “safer path” Christians were enjoined to pursue.

None of that implies that the canonists, or the common law scholars who developed the principles the canonists had elaborated into their current form, applied those precepts in a manner we would regard as acceptable. There is a chasm between the harsh and often savage justice they administered and that which we demand and expect.

But as Harvard’s Howard Berman showed years ago, in an analysis recently confirmed by Yale’s James Whitman, an even greater chasm separates our view of the law as primarily an instrumental exercise in fact-finding from the canonists’ realisation that adjudication is a profoundly moral enterprise, carried out by human beings whose innermost conscience ought to quake at the ever-present possibility of error.

To say that realisation was lacking in the witch-hunt leading up to Cardinal Pell’s conviction would be an understatement. If there was any certainty, it was that of the mob howling for vengeance, as if the cause of justice for the victims of child sexual abuse would somehow be served by sending an innocent man to jail.

Nor has the slightest awareness of the risks of error been apparent in the uncritical reception of the previously redacted statements of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Whether those statements are accurate is an open question: there is a long history of royal commissions, which are not bound by the ordinary constraints imposed on judicial proceedings, making serious mistakes of process, fact and inference. But even were they accurate, they could hardly justify or excuse imprisoning Cardinal Pell for a crime he did not commit.

Perhaps those outrages are the price we pay for living in a society that has entirely forgotten the ­religious origins and meaning of the principles it claims to cherish. It is not faith that it has abandoned; rather, drenched in a dogmatism worthy of the Inquisition, it is any understanding of doubt and of human fallibility, along with an appreciation of their implications for the design of tolerable ­social institutions.

“Justice?” asks William Gaddis in the first sentences of A Frolic of His Own. “You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.”

If grave wrongs, such as that inflicted on Cardinal Pell, are quietly allowed to fade into the past, it is merely a matter of time before we get neither.

SOURCE  







George Pell contempt case: charges over media that allegedly breached suppression orders will go to trial

Contempt of court charges against the media amid allegations they breached a suppression order after Cardinal George Pell was found guilty of child sexual assault will go to trial in November.

Pell was acquitted of all charges by the high court on appeal last month. At an administrative hearing at the supreme court in Melbourne on Tuesday, the court heard that there are 21 separate publications, six corporate groups and 19 individual journalists involved in the contempt of court case.

The county court chief judge, Peter Kidd, imposed the suppression order on 25 June 2018 over the trial to prevent “a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice” because Pell was facing a second trial on separate charges. Despite this, when Pell was convicted in December 2018, numerous publications in Victoria, throughout Australia and overseas reported the verdict before the suppression order was lifted.

Matthew Collins QC, representing the defendants, said “the respondents are very anxious for these matters to be resolved finally”. “It’s been hanging over their heads for far too long.”

Lisa De Ferrari SC, representing the office of public prosecutions, which brought the charges against the media, said one trial should be held.

“We certainly don’t see any problem since it is a trial before a judge, and everyone is represented by the same lawyer, for everyone to go ahead at one time,” she said. “The judge can discern which evidence is related to which respondent.”

Collins said his clients held a different view. “It would do an injustice to require journalists from rival news organisations to face trial at the same time in respect of allegations that would never ordinarily be heard together, just because they have [their occupation] in common,” he said.

Justice John Dixon asked the parties as to whether they had considering splitting the trial into liability and penalty hearings.

“There’s probably no point in considering questions that go into penalty until the extent of liability is resolved,” he said. “Things like extent of circulation, and circulation outside of Victoria.”

De Ferrari responded that “these are knotty issues we really have to come to grips with”.

She said the respondents had said they would not give any notice of evidence or tender any documents in liability until the close of the prosecution’s case.

The second trial Pell was facing was dropped on 26 February 2019, owing to a lack of admissible evidence, allowing the suppression order to be lifted.

The matter was adjourned until July

SOURCE  






A Queensland university that unlawfully sacked a professor for criticising colleagues for their research on the impact of global warming on the Great Barrier Reef is back in court

James Cook University is appealing the Brisbane Federal Circuit Court's finding that it contravened the Fair Work Act when it dismissed Peter Vincent Ridd in 2018.

Judge Salvatore Vasta made 28 findings in April 2019 against the university, which censured Prof Ridd for remarks against a coral researcher, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

The university was later ordered to pay Prof Ridd more than $1.2m for lost income, lost future income and other costs.

Before sacking the geophysicist, the university alleged Prof Ridd had violated its code of conduct during an August 2017 interview on Sky News when he remarked some of the university's research could "no longer be trusted".

It also alleged Prof Ridd wrote of a researcher in an email to a student: "It is not like he has any clue about the weather. He will give the normal doom science about the (Great Barrier Reef)".

Judge Vasta found the university's actions, including the dismissal, were unlawful.

"Incredibly, the university has not understood the whole concept of intellectual freedom," he wrote in his findings.

"In reality, intellectual freedom is the cornerstone of this core mission of all institutions of higher learning."

Freedom of expression and the interpretation of the university's code of conduct were the focus of the appeal submissions on Tuesday.

The university's lawyer, Bret Walker SC, said the university was responsible for enforcing standards of behaviour to protect intellectual freedom and the code of conduct.

Mr Walker said staff had the right to intellectual freedom and the right to express certain views but not bully, harass or intimidate others.

"Freedom .... is not without limit, restriction or standard," he told the court.

The two-day hearing continues.

SOURCE  







A toxic feminist

Why this brouhaha over writer Clementine Ford and her tweeting “Honestly the coronavirus isn’t killing men fast enough” last week?  It was meant as a joke and I thought it was hilarious. If you think otherwise, chances are you should lighten up.

Just imagine all those men across the world inflicted with the disease: struggling to breathe, their lungs inflamed, their kidneys so badly damaged they cannot cleanse the blood, their vital organs gradually shutting down. Many are dying alone, their loved ones denied the chance to be at their side during their final moments. Yes Clementine, it makes you want to slap your thigh with delight, chortle loudly and sing a feminist empowerment song.

It should have been obvious to everyone that Ford does want not all men to die, particularly those who subsidise her lifestyle.

For example, if not for her Melbourne City Council artistic grant worth thousands of dollars which is partly funded by men, she would not be able to write her ironically titled book “How We Love”.

And only a philistine would deny she is a worthy recipient of this public largesse. As the ever-so-modest Ford herself pointed out to her detractors this week, the council was obviously inspired by the fact her books have collectively sold over 100,000 copies.

It does raise the question, though, of why a supposedly successful author has her hand out for public dosh. I hasten to add in asking this I am not casting aspersions on Ford, and that her applying for this should not be examined in the context of an entitlement mentality but rather her ongoing and noble struggle against patriarchy. Also, as the council’s art portfolio chair and Greens councillor Rohan Leppert confirmed, Ford’s application “met the criteria strongly”.

In response to Ford’s tweet, Lord Mayor Sally Capp requested a review into the funding program on Monday, saying she found her comments “deliberately divisive and incredibly unhelpful”.

Whatever the outcome, Leppert has already said this review will not overturn the original decision. “We have never sought to regulate the speech of grants recipients unrelated to the grant in question,” he stated, assuring artists the council was “not engaging in censorship”.

Translation: the council will not engage in censorship except when deciding which arts grants will be approved.

Despite his stressing the council must avoid “becoming the arbiter [of] taste and offence,” he as chair does exactly that. The funding guidelines for the grants expressly provide that “artists or arts organisations or applications that seek to exclude or offend parts of the community” are ineligible.

Incidentally, just over two years ago Leppert was demanding that Melbourne venues not host right-wing activist Milo Yiannopoulos during his speaking tour. Spare us his tosh about not wanting to constrain expression.

In fairness to Ford, she was hardly acting out of character. She has an extensive history of hurling vile abuse at conservative figures on social media, regardless of whether they are men or women. In 2017 the ABC was forced to apologise after Ford declared on live television that Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine was a “c**t”.

In 2015, she tweeted regarding Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi, who is of Iranian descent, “No matter how hard she tries, she’ll never be a white man.”

In 2013, when the Coalition assumed government, she sold “F. k Tony Abbott” T-shirts. Others she has called a “c**t” on Twitter include former senator Cory Bernardi, and former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop. In 2018 she tweeted “Eat shit Dutton,” referring to the Home Affairs Minister.

For most of that period she was employed as a columnist by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, yet seemingly she was still allowed to go the full Linda Blair on social media. In 2015, Ford applauded the sacking of a Sydney hotel supervisor who had called her a “slut” on Facebook after she alerted his employer to his comment. She also searched his Facebook page and took snapshots of racist and other offensive jokes.

“There are basically no consequences for men who behave like this, so we have to start making consequences for them,” she wrote.

If you need a wry laugh, just consider that Ford appeared on ABC that year to talk about “sexist double standards”.

It was only in September 2018 she was finally forced to curb her abuse of others following her suspension with pay after tweeting that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was a “f**king disgrace”. She terminated her arrangements with those newspapers in a Twitter huff in 2019, claiming the impetus was Nine’s takeover of the former Fairfax.

She remains unrepentant for all these vituperative tweets, yet uncharacteristically she apologised for her latest outburst, saying it was a case of misjudgment.

Given this immediately preceded mayoral intervention concerning her grant, it is not difficult to infer why she suddenly relented.

Now compare this with what she wrote for 10 Daily about 2GB presenter Alan Jones in 2019 and his comments about New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, specifically, his calls to “shove a sock down her throat.

“Management at 2GB has a lot to answer for, prioritising profits at the expense of human dignity and protecting men who don’t deserve to be protected. In doing so, they’ve made it clear exactly where they stand – on the wrong side of history,” she wrote. “[Jones] has offered an apology to Ardern, but it seems to me that it was likely offered unwillingly and in a nod to damage control.”

But no doubt she would maintain her apology was both sincere and the act of a righteous woman.

As for Ford’s little solecisms, she need not worry too much about the media holding her to account.

Conduct a search of ABC’s online screen tool using her name and it will retrieve hundreds of entries relating to Ford, including shows promoting her books “Fight Like a Girl” and “Boys Will Be Boys”. Yet none of them mention this latest outburst. There is a reason for that and it has everything do with ABC’s championing of Ford and its contempt for conservatives.

For example, consider this excerpt from an interview Sunday Extra presenter Jonathan Green did with Ford in 2017. “You cop a lot of hate, especially online,” said a sympathetic Green. “I reckon this is the trademark of modern conservative argument: this is the logical inversion – the people who hate accuse you of doing the hating.”

Not only is that an inane generalisation; it falsely portrays Ford as an innocent victim of harassment and bullying.

As 3AW Drive host Tom Elliott said this week: “She put out this vitriol, this bile, to get a reaction”. He also labelled her a “man-hater”, saying: “Most women I know would have nothing to do with Clementine Ford”.

When interviewed on ABC’s One Plus One in 2018, Ford claimed she did not conflate the phrase “toxic masculinity” with masculinity.

“Some people make the mistake when they hear the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ of thinking that what it means is that all masculinity is toxic,” she said. “Which is not the case. Toxic masculinity refers to the aspects and elements of masculinity that are weaponised by the patriarchy to cause harm to other people, sometimes to cause harm to men themselves.”

One might similarly observe that some people make the mistake when they hear the phrase “toxic feminism” of thinking what it means is that all feminism is toxic. That is not the case. Toxic feminism refers to the aspects and elements of feminism that are weaponised by misandrists to cause harm to other people, sometimes to cause harm to women themselves – especially those who publicly reject its parasitic and spiteful mantra of entitlement, victimhood and hatred of men.

Now there is a project worthy of a generous grant by a council – a course in detoxifying feminism.

Consider the composition. Day 1: “Misogyny is not the default position for every setback you experience”. Day 2: “Victimhood and self-respect, two mutually exclusive concepts”. Day 3: “How to debate without resorting to expletives or platitudes”. Day 4: “Should I write for Daily Life or get a life?” Day 5: “What do male and female chauvinists want in common? Answer: a meek and subservient spouse”.

It is an amusing thought, but the chances of Ford and her ilk even considering such notions are zilch.

After all, bores will be bores.

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 May 2020

Australia 'has BEATEN coronavirus': Top health official says a second wave of COVID-19 is unlikely as transmission rates plunge to nearly zero - with just 30 patients in hospital nationwide

The chance of a second wave of COVID-19 in Australia this year is unlikely, according to one of the country's top health officials, as transmission rates fall to nearly zero.

New South Wales chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant told state politicians the ban on international travel and the state's grasp of social distancing meant it was well placed to stem further outbreaks of the virus and prevent a second wave.

There is just one coronavirus patient in intensive care across the state - and only five nationwide as of Tuesday. A total of 30 COVID-19 patients remain in hospital across the country.

In the private briefing, Dr Chant conceded NSW's ability to prevent a second wave would rely on widespread adherence to social distancing rules.

It comes as the state looks to June 1 for the next stage of restriction easing - with beauty salons and nail bars set to re-open and regional travel permitted.

'The policy for how to deal with a second wave is that we'll evaluate it at the time,'  an MP close to the meeting told The Australian.

'[Dr Chant's] message was: It's very possible to contain all this ­because we don't have the inter­nationals coming in, and we have good social distancing and hygiene­ practices.'

There were only two new cases of COVID-19 in NSW recorded in the 24 hours to Monday.

There are 7,133 cases of the coronavirus nationally since the outbreak began, but just 478 of those are still active. 

Six million people have downloaded the government's coronavirus tracking app less than a month after its launch, helping authorities trace contacts of any diagnosed cases.  

It follows Premier Daniel Andrews announcing the new 'COVID normal' in Victoria ahead of the loosening of restrictions on June 1.

People in the state will kick off winter being able to enjoy meals with friends at home, attend weddings, swim at pools or even get tattoos, as long as there's no more than 20 people.  

The number will also mark the number of people allowed at weddings, while up to 50 people will be able to attend funerals.

'The rules that accompany that opening up will be with us for a long time,' Mr Andrews told reporters.

'This is a COVID normal, this is not a return to business a usual.'

Victoria's reopening will see 20 people allowed to visit libraries and other community facilities, entertainment and cultural venues, as well as beauty and personal care services.

The start of the coldest season will also include a lifeline for the tourism industry as overnight stays in hotels will be permitted.

Campgrounds will be open for those eager to pitch their tents, but not their communal facilities like kitchens or bathrooms.

SOURCE  






Correctly counting the cost shows Australia's lockdown was a mistake

The future will now be worse because the flawed pandemic health projections didn't correctly calculate their effects on economic welfare.

Australia’s economic policies in response to the coronavirus threat have been driven in the main by projections of death and infection rates, produced by epidemiological modelling, that since have been proven to be orders of magnitude above what any country anywhere in the world, regardless of policy, has experienced.

Meanwhile, the welfare costs of our economic policy responses have been either overlooked entirely, gestured towards vaguely but not actually calculated, or calculated in ways strikingly out of alignment with international best practice when estimating the welfare costs of different policy alternatives – eg, using full value-of-a-statistical-life (VSL) numbers, rather than age-adjusted VSL or quality-adjusted life years, when valuing lives lost to COVID-19 (which are predominantly the lives of older people with a few years, not an entire life, left to live).

A leading reason for points 1 and 2 is that it’s a lot less work to count bodies and point to scary body-count projections than to think hard about the many and various costs – many invisible and requiring a reasonable counterfactual that is, again, mentally taxing to create; many manifesting only over time – that arise when we take the drastic economic policy actions we have taken.

The costs of what we have done are enormous. These costs will show up most obviously over the next few months in the body counts sacrificed to causes other than COVID-19 – like from famine, preventable diseases and violence in lower income countries; and deaths from despair, isolation, and non-COVID-19 health problems that have lost resourcing in better-off countries such as Australia – but will also stem from sources that don’t have actual deaths of presently living people attached to them.

Lower GDP now and going forward means lower levels of government services on education, healthcare, research and development, infrastructure, social services, and myriad other things that keep us happier, healthier and living longer.

Kids whose education has been disrupted due to our mandates that schools and universities move activities online, and young people who have lost their jobs or are entering the job market during the recession we have created, will carry the impact of these disruptions for years.

Discoveries of cures for diseases other than COVID-19 will be delayed; IVF babies won’t be born; our progress on lifting up the tens of thousands of Australian children who live in poverty will be set back.

The future we’ll now have is worse than the future we could have had without the policy responses we have seen.

That comparison of what-we-will-have to what-we-could-have-had can be expressed in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and wellbeing-adjusted life years (WELLBYs), and compared directly to estimates of the QALY and WELLBY costs of the COVID-19 deaths and suffering that our policies have averted.

When you make this comparison, correctly, the evidence is clear that Australia’s lockdown has been a mistake.

In hindsight, instead of reacting out of fear, our government could have understood its primary role early on to contain and reduce the population’s fear; it could have set proportionate and targeted policy, not blanket policy (eg, extreme lockdowns were not what drove the decline from peak infections in Australia: when many of the harshest measures were set, infections were already on the decline); and it could have been perennially mindful of the massive economic and hence human welfare costs implicit in any decision to stop trade, pull children out of school, or lock people away from their friends and family.

In normal times, we jump up and down and fill national airwaves about changes in GDP or unemployment rates that are an order of magnitude less than what we are seeing now. In normal times we don’t track single-digit daily death rates from any cause as a leading indicator of whether it’s safe to venture outside, knowing that hundreds of people in Australia die each day from myriad causes. In normal times we talk about striving for health not through sitting at home and avoiding other people, but by building our strength and supporting our immune systems. People today have lost their perspective on what is normal.

Travel bans and social distancing rules have drastically reduced footfalls at Australia's prime tourist destinations, and economists anticipate a telling effect of the drop in tourism on the economy.

As the costs of our decisions become more and more apparent, with time, our fear will stop controlling our minds. I hope the perspective of the public and policy-makers returns quickly, so we have a chance of handling things better if the next wave of the virus attacks again what is now one of the most immunologically unprepared high-income countries in the world: Australia.

SOURCE  







The coal, hard fact is we must put jobs first in this economic climate

As the biblical saying goes, you can’t serve two masters. For a decade we have been trying to con ourselves we could. We thought you could serve the master of ­climate change and keep a strong manufacturing sector.

The data doesn’t lie. You can’t.

While we have reduced our emissions by 5 per cent (largely by making it illegal for farmers to clear their own land), our manufacturing industry has gone backwards for the first time. During the past decade Australian manufacturing has declined in real, absolute terms. The 1990s and 2000s were not boom times for manu­facturing but the sector still managed to grow by 10 per cent each decade. Since 2010, it has shrunk by 5 per cent.

During that time, our pursuit of climate change and renewable ­energy policies helped double the cost of energy, despite our abundant reserves. The COVID-19 pandemic shows what a mistake this has been.

Now everyone wants to secure our supply chains and start making things again. None of this talk will lead to renewed manufacturing strength, however, if we do not get serious about reducing energy costs. And to do that we need to make tough choices about what is important in a post-COVID, economically depressed world.

Talk of the immediate importance of reducing our small carbon footprint now sounds like a dis­cordant echo from a bygone era. With millions are out of work, and our major trade partner threatens our economic security, why would we continue to self-flagellate by imposing the additional costs of reducing carbon emissions for no environmental benefit?

China’s recent actions demonstrate beyond a doubt that there is no hope a global agreement to reduce carbon emissions will lead to any meaningful global action. If we can’t trust China to keep faith with a trade agreement signed just a few years ago, and can’t trust it to be upfront on the pandemic, how can we trust China to honour a global agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions?

I do not make these points to critique others. I made the mistakes too. I have been a supporter of the Paris Agreement because Australia has benefited from international agreements. But things have changed. With the need to secure our manufacturing industry and the clear breakdown of international co-operation, we must face the fact that era is over.

We should end our participation in the Paris Agreement, given the more immediate need to secure our manufacturing jobs. And we should rule out any moves to net-zero emissions or a future global agreement on carbon until other countries, much larger than us, demonstrate real reductions in their carbon emissions.

Our future targets continue to restrain our ability to make the tough choices to rebuild Australian manufacturing. Because of those targets, many are rushing to promote gas over coal. Gas in eastern Australia is not a pathway to globally competitive energy prices any time soon. The geology of our gas is not the lucrative shale seams from which the US has benefited.

At best we might hope to get the wellhead energy cost of Australian onshore gas down to $6 a gigajoule. That is still double the mining costs of most Australian black coal (and more than 10 times the cost of brown coalmining). It is also more than double the cost of US shale gas.

If we are not going to pursue and fight for the cheapest energy costs, then we are not serious about rebuilding an Australian manufacturing industry.

Some say the politics of building a coal-fired power station is too tough. I am a big supporter of gas developments but I drove to Canberra last week and I saw about 20 “no coal-seam gas” signs in western NSW. But I didn’t see a single “no coal” sign. Sure, lots of inner-city greenies oppose coal, but all politics is local. As last year’s federal election showed, if you have the locals supporting a project (such as Adani), that is a political fight you can win.

The political battle we should engage in is the one to return manufacturing jobs to Australia. To pursue naive policies that reduce our carbon emissions, regardless of what other countries are doing, hurts our ability to win that battle. To recover from this pandemic we must recognise that the era of rampant globalism is over and put Australian jobs first.

SOURCE  






Unions get a seat at Scott Morrison's workplace reform table

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has opened talks with ACTU secretary Sally McManus to clear obstacles to a consensus on workplace relations reform, giving union leaders key positions in the forums to decide a deal by September.

Mr Morrison sought the ACTU leader's opinion before launching an ambitious plan to streamline industrial awards and enterprise bargaining agreements in a bid to lift the economy out of the coronavirus crisis.

The Prime Minister also declared he was "very committed" to spending more money on skills and training under a new deal with the states and territories, while warning of the threat to growth from lower migration.

Offering unions and employers a pathway to negotiate reform, Mr Morrison slammed the current industrial relations system for delivering "marginal benefits" for unions while discouraging companies from hiring staff.

"It is a system that has to date retreated to tribalism, conflict and ideological posturing," he said.

"No side of that debate has been immune from those maladies. This will need to change or more Australians will unnecessarily lose their jobs and more Australians will be kept out of jobs."

The government will move within days to name union leaders and business executives to five working groups that will be asked to hammer out reform proposals by September.

Ms McManus said the ACTU would join the process but would set two conditions on any support for change because of the low growth in wages before the coronavirus crisis.

"The first is: will any proposal make jobs more secure for working people? That's really important – we don't want to go back to what it was like pre-pandemic where one in three workers didn't even have sick leave," she said.

"The second measure is making sure that working people get their fair share of the nation's wealth."

The conditions place a significant constraint on Mr Morrison's plan when Liberal MPs are seeking far greater changes to the workplace regime to give employers more freedom to negotiate wages and conditions with workers.

One Liberal backbencher said it was too early to tell whether the agenda would produce significant change but that Mr Morrison was right to start the process without stipulating the final outcome.

Another Liberal MP said the result could "tweak" the industrial relations system when the problem was the system itself.

While some Liberals want to scale back the power of the Fair Work Commission to regulate wages and conditions, some employers want to rewrite the rules of the "better off overall test" that ensures workers cannot be worse off in any changes to enterprise agreements.

Mr Morrison said he would not prescribe the outcome on the "better off overall test" and would leave it to employers and unions because it would be up to them to make sure any agreement was sustained and maintained over the long term.

"What I'm trying to do differently about this process is not run out there with an IR shopping list," he said.  "I haven't seen that work in my political experience in the time I've been in the Parliament."

While Mr Morrison said he was offering unions and employers a way to "get everyone back in the room" and build on the united effort in the COVID-19 crisis, others dismissed the chances of serious change.

The Opposition said it would back any changes that created more jobs, delivered higher wages and gave workers more rights. "Let's be clear: all the government has done so far is book a room. This is not an IR agenda – it's a series of meetings," said Labor workplace spokesman Tony Burke.

Labor welcomed Mr Morrison's decision to set aside the Ensuring Integrity Bill, which was meant to crack down on rogue unions, but said the government did not have the numbers in the Senate to pass the bill anyway.

The Australian Industry Group backed the process and Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott said workers would benefit if enterprise agreements restored the ambitions of the Hawke and Keating governments to tie conditions to productivity.

"We know from history that that system created higher wages, and if we could get back to that system then I believe Australians will have more secure jobs, better workplaces and higher wages," she said.

"The system has become too complicated – it's too hard to get enterprise agreements done, there are too many things in them."

Attorney-General and Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter has been speaking to Ms McManus several times each week and will consult the union movement on the membership of the five working groups.

Two of the five working groups will focus on industrial awards and enterprise agreements amid concerns that complex rules make it too difficult for unions and employers to gain results.

A third group will examine casual employment including the far-reaching consequences of a Federal Court decision last week that found long-term casual workers could seek entitlements including annual leave.

With big employers under fire for not paying workers their agreed rates, the fourth working group will consider compliance with the regime as well as enforcement against unions that breach the law.

The fifth group will seek a deal on enterprise agreements for "greenfields" projects to encourage new investment.

"We must make the most of this time we have and we must move quickly. It will become apparent very quickly if progress is to be made," Mr Morrison said.

"Ultimately it will be the government that will take forward a job making agenda from this process."

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







27 May 2020

Universal pension for all: Retirees call for tax and income reform

This is a very different proposal from Universal Basic Income.  There is no effect on job readiness because pensioners are already out of the fulltime workforce.  And if the pension is taxable any perversity in the payments would be substantially reduced

The existing system is very unfair to savers and investors as the lockdown knocks their income substantially without compensation.  A universal pension would in part compensate for that

We live in a time of great government activism and economic involvement, much of which is neither wise nor benign so it is merely balance to suggest  that governments should take responsibility for the ill results of their policies and do things to compensate for the burdens they create


Every retiree would get at least a part pension under a plan being considered by seniors' groups amid concerns the coronavirus pandemic's effect on key income streams is leaving many older Australians cash poor and increasing the number living in poverty.

Seniors organisations are pressing the Morrison government to look at a massive overhaul to the pension system that would also take into account possible changes to tax concessions, such as franking credits, as a way to pay for any reforms.

The federal government is reviewing the retirement income system although its reporting date has been pushed back to July 24 due to the pandemic's impact on agencies.

The COVID-19 crisis, and measures to stop its spread, has created havoc with equity and investment markets while also leading to a huge fall in global interest rates. Economic shutdowns have hit jobs and seen a sharp increase in the number of renters - private and commercial - unable to pay rent.

Analysis by JPMorgan suggests the huge scope of the income hit facing those dependent on interest, dividends and rents.

It estimates dividend income will drop by $68 billion in the 12 months to the end of June, property income will slump by $59 billion while interest payments will be $8 billion down.

National Seniors Australia spokesman Ian Henschke said the crisis had highlighted key shortcomings in a retirement income system he said was clumsy and complex.

He said many retirees had suffered a sharp fall in their income yet the value of their assets had barely changed. Under existing pension testing rules, it's the value of those assets that determined any pension income.

Axing the means test system and replacing it with a universal pension, paid for by an overhaul of the tax system, would improve retirement outcomes and incentives for savers, Mr Henschke said.

"It would get rid of the pension assets and income tests, doing away with the need for unfair taper rates, deeming rates and work restrictions, and end the need to engage with Centrelink," he said.

"If everyone of pension age received a pension, retirees could just add this to their other income and pay tax. Means testing is costly to administer and leads to perverse outcomes, which are more apparent in the current crisis.

"Asset taper rates unfairly penalise those who save more for their retirement. Income tests undermine ongoing workforce participation and lead to ongoing anger over deeming rates."

David Knox, actuary and senior partner with consulting firm Mercer, said the system of means testing made it difficult for many people to plan retirement.

He said there was scope to adopt a model used in Denmark where all retirees were paid a part pension that maintained some elements of means testing but also guaranteed income for all.

"The advantage is the universal part pension gives everybody a base to build on while the means-tested pension ensures that no-one lives in poverty," he said.

"Another advantage is that the means testing will cease at a lower level of assets or income than currently, as it would only apply to half the pension.

"This means that many retired Australian households would not be subject to any means testing and there would be a much clearer incentive to make some extra savings for your retirement."

SOURCE  






Employers to end up as JobSeekers

That $60bn miscalculation by the Australian Taxation Office is good news for long-suffering taxpayers, with JobKeeper now expected to cost us “only” $70bn rather than $130bn. The problem is that every urger is out and about suggesting ways in which the $60bn “saving” can be spent.

When confidence in government is extremely important, this enormous fiscal error carries the danger that the public’s trust in government competence is eroded. Or should that be further eroded?

The revelation of this error came in the same week as the activist judges of the Federal Court handed down a decision that ensures the Australian labour market is now close to being completely dysfunctional.

The judgment that a casual worker should be entitled both to a wage premium and payment for leave entitlements (annual, personal/carer’s, compassionate and public holiday leave) means employers will be wary of employing any worker on a casual basis apart from on a short-term and intermittent basis.

Recall that this was a case about a casual mine worker (he worked for a labour hire firm) who had been engaged on a series of contracts but with each contract involving predictable shifts agreed ahead of time.

This sort of arrangement suits many workers, in part because it is possible for them to make plans about other aspects of their lives. Not all of them want permanent work and, in any case, many employers won’t offer permanent work as an alternative because of the operational and financial requirements of the workplace.

One of the most immediate dangers of this decision is that many employers of casual workers, now and in the past, face claims for back pay based on the characteristics of the work performed. In particular, those casual workers who are given or have been given “firm advance commitments” (the legal phrase used in the judgment) in relation to their work patterns could be entitled to both the premium attached to their pay — generally set at 25 per cent — and paid leave.

There are various estimates about the cost of the back-pay bill, with some figures as high as $8bn based on estimates of 1.6 million long-term casual workers who work regular hours. There are several class actions being undertaken to secure compensation for the affected workers and the areas of employment extend far beyond labour hire firms in mining. Needless to say, these actions also will enrich the law firms handing the cases.

Many firms hit with these claims simply will go broke. They have paid the wage premium on top of the hourly wage to their casual workers but few, apart from some large firms and the public sector, will have the funds to cover the additional bill, particularly given today’s circumstances.

Mind you, many individuals may end up being paid out via the Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme, which exists to come up with the entitlements of workers whose employer’s business has gone broke. That is, if the employer can’t pay up, the taxpayer will. This is just one of the nightmare scenarios of this fiasco.

It’s easy to see how this judgment also blows up the prospect of any bounce-back as the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. Employers will be loath to take back previous casual workers or to employ new ones — the risks have become too great given the scope for double dipping.

But to take on permanent workers, full- or part-time, with fixed shifts will be impossible given the uncertainty of business conditions. It will be lose-lose, including for those on JobKeeper.

The government must act now. Casual employment is a very Australian invention where workers are generously rewarded for the absence of leave entitlements. It’s not as if temporary work doesn’t exist overseas but there is generally no wage premium.

The arithmetic tells us that casual workers are indeed over-rewarded for the absence of paid leave by virtue of the 25 per cent premium. But the real point is that casual work suits many workers as well as many employers given the nature of their businesses — think weekly variations in demand and seasonal factors.

Note here that the vast majority of awards (and agreements that provide for casual employment) include “casual conversion” clauses. These enable casual workers, after certain periods, to request that their employment be made permanent, a request employers cannot reasonably refuse. Tellingly, a substantial number of casual workers never makes such a request.

Whether the government can strengthen these casual conversion clauses to extract some agreement from the unions to reject double dipping for casuals is unclear. The government’s earlier attempt to solve the problem by inserting a regulation in the Fair Work Act has not worked — the judges simply brushed this aside as having no effect.

For those who think the COVID-19 crisis has led to some easing of the rigid (and oftentimes bizarre) industrial relations regulations that bedevil the workings of our labour market, think again. Apart from some early concessions, it has been a case of defiant resistance from the union movement since the JobKeeper scheme was announced, as well as inflexibility on the part of the Fair Work Commission.

While it’s clear that the government has plenty on its plate, the casual work issue must be sorted out — and quickly, if there is to be a chance of a decent recovery later in the ye

SOURCE  







The other diseases the coronavirus lockdown stopped in their tracks

Amid social distancing measures put in place to fight the coronavirus pandemic, case numbers have flatlined for a number of other diseases.

But experts warn with the easing of movement restrictions, people have to keep following social distancing measures to ensure they don’t come back.

Measures put in place to halt coronavirus have also taken out a range of other diseases.
Measures put in place to halt coronavirus have also taken out a range of other diseases.CREDIT:AP

Rates of influenza have been squashed flat after initially hinting at another serious year for case numbers.

The numbers went so low Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young said residents of the state were more likely to get COVID-19 than a flu in 2020.

"If you have respiratory symptoms there's every chance it is more likely due to COVID-19 than it is due to anything else," she said this week.

But aside from colds and flus, the rates of a range of other viruses have also bottomed out, including a potentially serious disease called EV-D68.

EV-D68 is an enterovirus that can manifest as a serious respiratory illness, especially in children and young teenagers. It's suspected of causing a polio-like condition called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), which causes the muscles to become weak and unresponsive.

It had not been found in large numbers in Australia but UQ virologist Professor Ian Mackay said the number of cases had been steadily increasing over the last few years.

“EV-D68 is a bit funny in that it behaves more like a respiratory virus than a fecal-oral virus like a lot of the other enteroviruses,” Professor Mackay said.

“It does look like any of those viruses we call respiratory viruses - and EV-D68 falls into that -have just dropped off the radar to a large extent.”

That made sense, Professor Mackay said, because they were spread in similar ways: through droplets expelled into the air and being breathed in by others, or landing on surfaces other people later touched.

That means if social distancing measures slip in the coming months, a range of diseases, not just COVID-19, will spread.

“Most of them will tick up again [once restrictions are lifted], they’re still there in households. Whether they kick back into their patterns straight away will be interesting to watch,” he said.

The other big beneficiary of social distancing have been measles cases, which have dropped to zero in the last few months.

A serious outbreak in the Asia-Pacific region late last year, centred on Tonga, had been blamed for a rash of new cases in Australia and New Zealand.

Epidemiologist and public health expert Professor Linda Selvey said just like other diseases spread through droplets, measles was completely contained when social distancing measures were put in place.

“Measles is actually far more infectious than COVID-19," she said. "If it’s around there would be the potential to spread in public areas and we’re not seeing that. “If we didn’t have a vaccine for measles it would be far more dangerous than COVID-19.

“But we’re able to manage it with the vaccine and with post-infection [treatments].”

Children are historically more at risk from severe side-effects from EV-D68 and measles, while for influenza and COVID-19 older people are more likely to get severe cases and even die.

Professor Mackay said until there were more effective measures to control the pandemic and a vaccine to prevent it, social distancing would likely be a fact of life for some time.

“In particular we’re going to see physical distancing in place for months, probably until next year,” he said.

“Keeping virus hosts away from each other is one of the best defences we have against all sorts of viruses. It’s crude. It’s primitive, but it works.”

SOURCE  







Advertisements need more scutiny for false information

Misinformation, hoaxes, and fake cures have run rampant on social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp since the outbreak of the coronavirus. Will new measures be enough?
It is a rare moment in history when you can say with absolute certainty that tomorrow will be a great day.

But this tomorrow most certainly will be. The nation’s first and largest state – Australia’s birthplace of public education – is reopening all schools to all students.

It is a great day for society, for the economy and most importantly it is a great day for our kids. Education is the best antidote to poverty and disadvantage and the greatest gift we can give our children.

And so how did the most vital role of society – that of raising and educating its next generation – get arbitrarily shut down or suspended on the basis of no hard evidence nor top-level medical advice.

How is panic and fake information spreading so far and wide? How do we have supposedly educated people demanding the shutdown of educational institutions with no evidence to support it? And how do we have genuine concerns about the impact of such shutdowns likewise overtaken by lunatics who believe coronavirus is a myth altogether? Or caused by the 5G network? Or a conspiracy engineered by Bill Gates?

A clue to this lies in a cunning little experiment undertaken by a canny little think tank called Responsible Technology Australia (RTA), which was recently established out of concern that perhaps internet and social media giants aren’t quite as responsible and righteous as they pretend to be.

The test case was the online megalopolis Facebook, which despite its mission statement of “bringing the world closer together”, has been infamously exposed for peddling fake news stories deliberately designed to sow division.

After this came to light, a supposedly chastened Facebook claimed that it would move heaven and earth to stop the spread of false and dangerous information, just like a good global citizen should.

Only this week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the BBC “we don't want misinformation to be the content that is going viral” and that Facebook had and would remove any content likely to result in “immediate and imminent harm” when it came to COVID-19 conspiracies.

And that’s great to hear. The only problem is it hasn’t and it didn’t.

To prove this, the people at Responsible Technology Australia set up a Facebook page called “Ozzie News Network” and then set about posting the most dangerous misinformation they could think of.

These included:

*  COVID-19 pandemic “advice” ads urging users to turn off their 5G, drink more water and get 30 minutes of daily sunshine

*  Saying the Australia-Indonesia free trade agreement was just a front to allow mass migration from Jakarta

*  Telling 18-year-olds not to bother to enrol to vote

*  Saying that the new 5G network will allow the Australian police to spy on you through your phone

*  Telling people the AEC has assessed they live in a safe electorate and therefore shouldn’t bother voting

These posts perpetuated obvious lies and misinformation posing as official advice. At worst they encouraged people to risk their lives and break the law. And the kicker is that they were posted as ads that Facebook both reviewed and approved.

There is absolutely no way on earth they would ever have been allowed to run in a responsible mainstream media outlet. Not News Corp, not Nine; nor Ten nor Seven nor anywhere with a pair of human eyes.

But still, a global giant like Facebook with billions of users could hardly be expected to notice everything that was posted on its millions of pages. Surely once it was brought to their attention the ads would be removed, right?

Wrong. Even after the group reported their own ads to Facebook for fake and dangerous misinformation they were still not taken down.

“No traditional publisher or broadcaster would ever run ads like this,” RTA’s executive director Chris Cooper told news.com.au.

“But not only did Facebook review and approve them, even when we repeatedly reported them as misinformation they were never taken down.”

Yes, even after RTA did Facebook’s job for it and flagged the fake ads, still no action was taken – even though anyone following their advice could be putting themselves at risk. So much so that the group deliberately targeted the ads to an audience which had already been informed they were fake and consented to receiving them to ensure they did not inadvertently spread dangerous information themselves.

“Our fake ads deliberately play on people's fears in ways we know are typical,” Cooper says.

“This experiment proves just how easy it is to spread fake news on Facebook, and it would be easier still for an experienced malicious foreign actor.”

The posts were finally removed only after news.com.au approached Facebook for comment. The company confirmed they violated its policy.

“We’re aggressively going after misinformation about COVID-19 and have teams across the company dedicated to this effort,” a spokesperson said.

“We’ve applied warning labels to millions of pieces of misinformation and remove content that could lead to imminent harm.”

But the fact they were able to be posted in the first place, were spread for so long and were not removed even after being reported should send a chill down the spine of anyone who still believes in facts or whatever the world has left of reality.

We have social media giants policing opinions while publishing obviously false information for the sake of a few bucks. And all the while using the journalism of real news organisations to cannibalise the advertising revenue that allows real journalism to survive.

This is the perfect petri dish for fake news. An Essential poll this week found one in eight Australians believed Bill Gates was somehow responsible for the coronavirus and it was being spread by the 5G network.

The corona crisis has already shown that even argument among politicians and experts can produce catastrophic results for both lives and livelihoods. Adding endless idiotic opinions to the mix makes things far worse, yet for anyone who believes in free speech it is a necessary evil.

But peddling false facts for cash is another level of devilry altogether, especially when you are pretending to be on the side of the angels.

Facebook and other social media titans have already helped forge a wild new world where facts are determined by sentiment instead of science and reality is a matter of opinion. The result has been a decade riven by extremes: Crazed conspiracy theories, right-wing populism and left-wing socialist fantasies.

The chaos they have fuelled on global issues ranging from coronavirus to climate change is often quite literally a matter of life and death. Surely they have profited from it enough without pocketing every last cent from dangerous and dodgy propaganda – not to mention the pontification they serve up for free.

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 MAY 2020

Border friction: New Zealand set to open for NSW, Victorian tourists before Queensland

The border lock is popular with Queenslanders. It is a good way of preserving our remarkably safe position

Tourism centres of NSW and Victoria may be opened to travellers from New Zealand before visitors from Queensland as the federal government steps up talks to create a "travel bubble" across the Tasman.

In a new warning to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, the Morrison government said it would not allow state border bans to create an "obstacle” to allowing flights to and from New Zealand.

The Morrison government said it would not allow state border bans to create an "obstacle” to allowing flights to and from New Zealand in a new warning to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

The comments raise the possibility that Australians from southern states could ski in New Zealand before they surf in Queensland if Ms Palaszczuk keeps her state border controls in place as late as September, costing her state billions of dollars in lost tourism business.

Federal Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham said the government wanted the tourism industry to stand on its own two feet "as soon as it’s safe” for tourists to travel again.

"New Zealand is obviously the first, and right now only, international market that we could safely agree to open up to,” he told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

"If New Zealand and some Australian states are ready and willing to progress, then the reluctance of other states to open up their domestic borders shouldn’t become an obstacle to progress.

"The recovery of jobs and small businesses in some states shouldn’t be held back by the decisions of other state governments.”

Tourism and Transport Forum chief Margy Osmond released a survey last week showing 53 per cent of people named the Gold Coast as an intended destination in the next six months, while others named Noosa, the Sunshine Coast and tropical north Queensland.

"Unfortunately at this stage it looks like more of a dream than a reality if Queensland continues to batten down its hatches,” Ms Osmond said.

Queensland has closed its borders to travellers but allows freight and business travel.

Ms Palaszczuk said last week she would consider lifting restrictions at the end of each month but the closure could remain until September, a stance also adopted by Queensland Chief Medical Officer Jeannette Young.

Dr Young has argued that a single case from interstate travel could cause an "enormous setback” to the coronavirus recovery plan. "If the tourist industry wants a realistic scenario, then they should be preparing for September,” she said on Wednesday.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wants an air corridor opened with Australia without asking travellers to undergo 14 days of quarantine, signalling this could happen under her country’s level 2 restrictions.

"It is possible to have a trans-Tasman bubble, for instance, at level 2 – it is not contingent on us being at level 1 for that,” she said last week.

Destination Queenstown interim chief executive officer Ann Lockhart said a safe "bubble” would be a huge benefit to the New Zealand city and its surrounding ski fields.

"We stand ready to welcome Australians to Queenstown again, with the enticement of a wonderful ski season in the coming months,” she said.

Queenstown mayor Jim Boult said Australians made up more than one-third of the travellers to the ski fields. "I understand there has been talk of individual states starting trans-Tasman travel before interstate travel recommences,” he said. "If that happens, we are perfectly happy with that.”

Figures released on Sunday showed New Zealand had 27 active COVID-19 cases, with no new cases in the previous 24 hours.

University of NSW epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws said she was concerned about the pressure on Queensland to open its border when new cases in the southern states were yet to fall to zero.

"I am concerned the push is more economic than COVID-safe without mandatory mask use or face shields on planes, leisure boats and other activities where social distancing can’t be guaranteed,” she said.

SOURCE







Australia must 'move on' from the dream of fast rail: Grattan Institute

The cost would be enormous and any advantage over air travel dubious

Australia should put the idea of an east-coast bullet train to rest and "move on”, as the long-held dream of linking major cities from Melbourne to Brisbane via rail will fail to deliver its proposed economic, travel and environmental benefits.

That's the view of the Grattan Institute, which has called for a re-think on high speed rail on the grounds that bullet trains are unsuitable for Australia's population, size and density.

Federal Labor renewed its calls for a fast rail line connecting Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane, arguing it would help the economy recover from the COVID-19 economic crisis.

The federal government is promising to build its own fast rail network in Victoria, NSW and Queensland and has provided $8 million to a private consortium to investigate the merits of an east-coast bullet train from Melbourne to Sydney.

But the Grattan Institute's head of the cities and transport program Marion Terrill said the government should stop using public money to continually study these proposals.

While the sound of a Eurostar, Shinkansen, or TGV might sound appealing, fast rail networks in Europe and Asia connect large and concentrated populations even where the distances covered are very long. Countries similar to Australia in population size and spread — such as Canada and the US — do not have bullet trains.

"As regrettable as it might be given the undeniable appeal of an Australian east-coast bullet train, we should put the idea to bed and move on," Ms Terrill states in her new Fast Rail Fever report.

Rail upgrades such as electrifying track or removing bends and inclines to enable speeds as high as 200km/h makes more sense in Australia, and may improve life for people in regional cities, the report suggests.

But claims they will take pressure off crowded capital cities while at the same time boosting struggling regions are "overblown".

“Australia’s regional towns have more pressing infrastructure needs than faster rail, including better internet and mobile connectivity and freight links. And governments would help a lot more CBD commuters by improving transport options for people in the outer suburbs rather than the regions.

"Every proposed rail renovation project in Australia should be reviewed in light of the COVID crisis. The costs and benefit of each one should be rigorously assessed, and those that don’t stack up should be abandoned."

The analysis also warned that once a bullet train was up and running, it would emit far less than today’s planes, but construction would take nearly 50 years and be enormously emissions intensive.

The Victorian government has invested $100 million in its Western Rail Plan, to improve speeds on the Geelong and Ballarat lines by fully separating regional and metro services.

The federal government launched its Faster Rail Plan last year to speed up links between Melbourne and Geelong, Shepparton, Albury and Traralgon.

It provided funding to the Consolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA) company, which proposed to build two inland cities in Victoria and a further six in New South Wales that are linked by high-speed rail lines between Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.

Federal Labor Leader Anthony Albanese has renewed calls for an east-coast bullet train in the wake of the pandemic after developing the policy a decade ago. He argued it would "revolutionise" interstate travel and become an "economic game-changer" for regional communities.

Federal Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure Alan Tudge said the government’s ambition over the next two decades is to “connect the big capital cities to the satellite regional centres surrounding them”.

“In doing so, it can allow people to live in those regional centres and have the cheaper housing and lifestyle associated with that, while still being able to easily access the big city employment centres on a convenient and affordable basis.”

Federal opposition transport, infrastructure and regional development spokeswoman Catherine King reiterated that Labor was a firm supporter of rail - “whether that be urban, regional, freight or high speed”.

“High Speed Rail is a transformative, nation-building project which would reshape all of eastern Australia and deliver major decentralisation and development benefits to regional centres along the route.”

A Victorian government spokesperson said high speed rail along the eastern coast was a matter for the commonwealth government.

“We make no apologies for delivering on our election commitments to deliver fast rail to our regional cities – that will not only deliver faster travel times, but boost our economy and support jobs.”

SOURCE







Smart school funding a problem-solver

As is customary, new changes to school funding have carved up winners and losers. To finally put to bed, it’s time for a market-based makeover.

New Department of Education data shows how much schools’ funding will alter under the new means-testing ‘direct measure of income’ system. Reforms almost always increase the funding pie, but this shakeup doesn’t increase the pie so much as change the way it’s sliced up.

Parents who choose schools with higher median incomes are expected to chip in more, as they should generally. But the new ‘direct measure’ approach is no cure-all either.

First, the subsidy is based on the median parents’ income across the whole school, rather than what each parent actually earns. Second, parents’ income level isn’t always the perfect guide to how much parents can afford to pay in fees — for some, assets or help from family members would make a better proxy.

And, third, parents’ incomes don’t necessarily measure a child’s educational advantages — which is what school funding ultimately is supposed to address in the first place.

But it’s not necessarily fair to call these failures of the new approach though. There are simply so many flaws with school funding that tweaking around the edges just won’t cut it.

For a start, any subsidy should be paid to parents directly, not to schools — cutting out the middlemen in administration who re-calculate what goes to schools.

The amount of subsidy should be based on each students’ and families’ needs, not their schools’ needs. While the Gonski formula is notionally based on a child’s needs, there’s not necessarily any nexus to supporting individual students’ learning needs.

And the subsidy should be genuinely means-tested for each household, not the schools’ median.

We already provide welfare payments directly to households, adjusted to income and assets tests. Why not provide families with school-aged children a cheque each year equivalent to a basic, means-tested amount to spend directly on schooling?

Schools could then set their fees based on demand factors — like how popular they are and how much parents are willing to pay. Parental choice would keep fees in check, since schools with excessive fees will be less attractive. And public schools could offer market-based fees too; perhaps with some regulation to make sure they remain within reach of locals.

Parents could choose to pay more than the cheque’s amount — much like they do already — but the subsidy would be better targeted. And parents might use the cheque to pay for additional out-of-school support too to provide for their child’s needs. That’s far more transparent, competitive, and efficient than anything currently on the table.

School funding can be improved — not by spending more, but by spending it more wisely.

SOURCE






‘Audiences are sick of being told they’re horrible’

When David Williamson was starting out as a playwright with his satirical dissections of the 1970s in Don’s Party and The ­Department, Australia’s cultural elites were the people he calls the “first-nighters”. They were from the wealthier suburbs, the silvertails and socialites, effectively being paid by the government to attend premieres at the opera and the ballet.

“We thought they were the real elitists because they were being subsidised about $150 a ticket,” Williamson says.

“The most affluent section of our society was being paid the most to see, to us, elitist art forms. The elitism wasn’t contemporary work. It was the opera and ballet, and I think it still is.”

Today’s culturally privileged are not only the rich but also the poorer citizens who work as ­actors, comedians, directors, ­authors, songwriters, filmmakers, painters and curators. They are members of the creative class who hold a mirror to contemporary Australia and tell us what they see. Williamson knows they can rub people the wrong way.

“I do think that some middle-class audiences at the theatre are finding it a little tiresome to get yet another play from yet another minority group, that tells them that they are unconscionable, and beats them about the head, and tells them that they have caused great problems for minority groups,” he says. “I’m sure there is a bit of that. Some sections of the audience are sick of being told they’re horrible.”

A study released this week by Canberra think tank A New ­Approach also highlights the divide in Australia’s cultural life. The authors wanted to hear what “middle Australians” had to say about the arts, and held focus groups with 56 men and women from the suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Townsville. The groups comprised swinging ­voters who worked in offices, trades and other jobs.

In general, they have a very positive attitude about Australian culture, especially activities that inspire the imagination and involve them in their communities. But they showed little interest in the “high arts” that are too ­expensive, too hard to get to, and not to their taste.

“I am not a big fan of the ballet. I have seen it advertised a lot recently — yeah, not really my thing,” said a man from Brisbane. A Sydney woman told the focus group: “Opera, because of how expensive it is, I don’t think it is easily accessible for everyone. And if you haven’t been exposed to that sort of music you might not enjoy it.”

In recent months, the creative class has taken a great deal of interest in what the rest of Australia thinks. The coronavirus lockdown has devastated the arts and cultural sector, shutting down untold exhibitions and performances and locking thousands out of their livelihoods. Opera Australia, the nation’s biggest and busiest ­performing arts company, has cancelled 570 performances to date, costing $70m. Losses across the performing arts will likely ­exceed $540m, not counting screen production, galleries, museums, book publishers and other cultural businesses.

State and local governments have, to varying degrees, held out a lifeline to the arts and culture sector, which will take months if not years to recover. But support from the federal government has been but a blip in total stimulus spending: just $27m for especially ­vulnerable groups. While Arts Minister Paul Fletcher says “billions” of JobKeeper dollars will flow to those in the arts and creative industries, many are not eligible because they work for government organisations or are employed on short-term contracts. Appeals to broaden the JobKeeper eligibility criteria ­appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

Just why the arts have been ignored is causing significant anguish and not a little soul-searching. Broadly, the problems can be identified as a failure to effectively communicate the value of the arts; a disconnect between the elite arts and the general community’s idea of culture; and a ­difference in values between the progressive creative class and the conservative government.

Arts and culture are big business in Australia when you include film and television drama, publishing, live and recorded music, galleries, museums, dance and drama teachers, the professional performing arts and other activities. The government’s Bureau of Communications and Arts Research puts the value of cultural and creative activity at $111.7bn a year, although that ­figure includes creative industries such as fashion, media and information technology.

Taken alone, the creative arts contribute $14.7bn to the economy and employ 193,000 people, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. As an employer, the arts is bigger than finance, accommodation and coalmining, but many people don’t recognise its significance. In a report released this week, the Australia Institute found that 68 per cent of people underestimate the size of the creative workforce compared with coalmining. It’s an indication, says research director Rod Campbell, that people don’t recognise art and culture as an economically dynamic industry and one that employs tens of thousands of Australians.

A second challenge for the arts is to shake off the elitist tag and connect meaningfully with people beyond a rusted-on audience. One approach has been to widen the frame of reference by giving a boost to artists from different cultural backgrounds.

This is the policy of the federal government’s arts agency, the Australia Council. Its corporate plan sets out strategies to increase the visibility of people from cultural minorities, with particular emphasis on celebrating indigenous artists.

The intention is to give fuller expression to the many different voices and perspectives that make up our nation. One of the findings of the New Approach study is that people value those diverse cultural experiences. But a constant emphasis on minorities or identity politics also risks alienating the mainstream, leading to those familiar accusations of cultural elitism and political correctness.

“Very good at preaching to the converted, not so good at talking to nonbelievers,” is theatre director Sam Strong’s diagnosis of the malaise in the arts sector. But he believes that art is also the way to reach across the cultural divide. Strong recently directed Williamson’s Emerald City — the season at Melbourne Theatre Company was cut short by the lockdown — and is due to direct the stage ­premiere of Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, now scheduled for next year.

“That is a great example of a contemporary Australian story that has engaged vast numbers of people,” Strong says of Dalton’s novel. “I think that’s partly because there’s an immediacy to Trent’s writing and a lack of pretension. But ultimately there’s a capacity for people to recognise themselves and their own experience in those stories.”

The divide between the arts sector and the rest of society is perhaps more imagined than real, Strong says. But the question ­remains why the federal government has stayed silent on a substantive rescue package for the sector, and the implicit message is that “what we do isn’t valued”.

Strong is careful not to blame the lack of federal support on an ideological stand-off with the Coalition, believing the sector has to own its own failures. But others do. This month actress Noni Hazlehurst accused the government of “waging a culture war” against the arts by denying industry assistance. And Williamson says conservative governments have long regarded the contemporary arts with suspicion, seeing in a film’s or a play’s social critique an attack on their own kind.

“Conservative governments are quite happy with anything that was written 200 years ago — the opera and the ballet — that’s not threatening,” he says. “But I do think there is an element of conservative governments feeling threatened by contemporary work and, consciously or unconsciously, that’s part of the reason they don’t value and don’t fund the arts.”

Indeed, the Coalition’s relationship with the arts has been less than rosy in recent years. There are bitter memories of budget cuts in 2014 and of former arts minister George Brandis’s radical intervention in arts funding. Coalition funding for the Australia Council remains less than that of the last Labor government. And funding for the arts across all tiers of government is in decline. An earlier study by A New Approach reported a decrease of 4.9 per cent in Australian governments’ arts spending, in per capita terms, in the decade to 2018.

Esther Anatolitis, of advocacy group National Association for the Visual Arts, says what is apparent, more than any culture war, is simply a lack of interest from Canberra in a large part of Australia’s economic and cultural life.

“The fact that the government has failed to respond with a specific stimulus is the clearest demonstration that they just don’t want to,” she says. “The government talks about throwing out ideology … but in practice they are being driven by a set of values, and one of those values is not to support the arts.”

Leaders in the arts sector say they must continue to make the case for investment in an industry that brings economic and other pay-offs: that the arts assist schoolchildren in their learning and concentration, that a strong cultural life aids social cohesion and national identity, that creative activity can help ward off some effects of old age.

But there is also a need to master the politics of persuasion, to read the community’s mood, to break out of the arts bubble and to change the well-entrenched narrative that the arts are elitist or only for the rich.

At the time of coronavirus and the nation’s emergence from hibernation, the stakes have never been higher.

SOURCE

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






25 May, 2020

Coronavirus has left Australia in better shape than most

In one of his final poems before dying at 59, Australian poet James McAuley wrote: “Winter will grow dark and cold / Before the wattle turns to gold.

McAuley (born 1917), a Christian, apparently had in mind eternal life. But he well understood his immediate future on this earth, which was dark indeed.

Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy acknowledged on Thursday that Australia was already in recession, one that had come about so suddenly as to be unique. In Australian history, no government has shut down large sections of the private sector, with or without a pandemic. The same goes for other Western nations.

The economic consequences of the medical response to COVID-19 are new territory. So much so that we do not know whether a depression will eventuate. However, we do know that Australia entered the year with a comparative advantage compared with many other nations.

As Josh Frydenberg pointed out in his well-written and clear ministerial statement on May 12, the Australian economy was in a strong position — when compared with similar nations — at the beginning of the year.

Growth had risen from 1.8 per cent to 2.2 per cent in the December quarter. Moreover, the International Monetary Fund was forecasting the Australian economy was likely to grow at a faster rate than that of the US, Britain, Japan, France and Germany in both this and the next calendar year. And the unemployment rate was reasonable at 5.1 per cent.

The Coalition governments after September 2013 — led by Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison with Joe Hockey, Morrison and Frydenberg as treasurers — worked to reduce the budget deficit of more than $48bn to a balance or near surplus. A constant figure in the budget reform process was Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. The ongoing deficit reduction was accompanied by the creation of some 1.5 million jobs.

Sure, it was not an economic utopia early this year. But the economy was in relatively good shape, contrary to the claims today of some on the green left, including journalists. In short, Australia was well placed to experience an unexpected recession.

It was much the same with novel coronavirus. Like New Zealand, Australia benefits from being an island, which makes border control relatively easy. Australia called COVID-19 a pandemic before this was done by the World Health Organisation. Moreover, early in the pandemic Australia closed its border with China, the centrepoint of COVID-19. This was done contrary to the wishes of the WHO.

The creation in March of what the Prime Minister called the national cabinet — consisting of federal, state and territory leaders — was an important initiative. As it turned out, it made possible a less dramatic shutdown than that advocated by some state and territory leaders and put into practice by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government in New Zealand.

The states and territories are primarily responsible for health, education and law enforcement. But the Morrison government managed to bring about a “black book” approach to the pandemic. In other words, in various stages certain industries were instructed to close. Those not on the restricted list could remain open. So agriculture, construction (of various kinds), mining and transport, for the most part, remained in operation, as did early childhood education.

The left is in love in Ardern who, without question, is a popular leader. However, despite a more comprehensive lockdown in New Zealand than Australia, on a per capita basis the two nations have similar rates of COVID-19 infections and recorded deaths.

Unlike some green-left politicians and commentators, Frydenberg well understands that the task is to open up the economy as soon as this is possible, then to focus on private enterprise and increasing productivity. The Australian economy will not recover fully by means of increasing taxation and regulation.

The way out of the recession ideally should reflect the way in. The Morrison government introduced three initiatives to temper the economic impact of the close down. First up there was the economic reform package aimed at providing economic stimulus, followed by a $66bn support package aimed at business and households. Then came the huge JobKeeper program, aimed at making it possible for employers to connect with employees whom they have managed to keep at work or who are waiting to return to work.

Without question, JobKeeper has made it possible for many small and medium businesses to remain in operation. Again, this will facilitate the path to recovery when COVID-19 abates.

However, there is little doubt that this recession, which essentially has affected the private sector, has led to many shattered lives and businesses.

The men and women who have lost their livelihoods may recover their health, but many will lose their businesses through no fault of their own.

That’s why it is important that the economy opens up as soon as possible. Initially the national cabinet, the first time Australia has experienced such an entity, worked well. But its use may be fading.

The reluctance of the less populous states (Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania) and the Northern Territory to open their borders is detrimental to the important tourism industry and makes the life of small-business operators even more difficult than at present.

The advice of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which advises the national cabinet, is that there is no reason the borders between the states and territories should remain closed.

Here some Australian governments give the impression that they are being run by public servants. Take Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, for example. Early this week she said the opening of the Queensland border was not her decision but that of Queensland’s chief health officer.

There is no evidence that COVID-19 can be eradicated any time soon. It’s up to elected politicians to make decisions to reopen the economy while managing risk.

The federal government, with the recent support of NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, is showing the way. Their approach provides some hope. Otherwise the economic winter will be cold indeed.

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Coldest day in a CENTURY: Parts of Australia's east coast shiver through the briskest May day in 98 years

Global cooling!

Brisbane has endured its coldest May day in a century with the mercury hitting 15C at about 1pm on Friday - and the chilly snap is here to stay.

Including wind chill the apparent temperature was even colder - dropping to 10C at 3pm, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

The cold snap wasn't just confined to the north with New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia also experiencing an icy weekend courtesy of cold fronts sweeping over the states.

Australians have been warned to brace for continuing cold weather as the week progresses and we head into winter, with most major cities forecast with maximums of 20C or lower on Sunday.

The cold fronts also mean the wet weather will continue with large areas of the country forecast to experience overcast conditions and showers.

In New South Wales the cold fronts brought wind, rain and even snow in some places such as the Blue Mountains and Bathurst. 

On Saturday in Sydney, a severe weather warning was issued as massive waves battered many of the city's surfing beaches, including Bondi.

A layer of cold dry air, rain and thick cloud cover is causing the unseasonal weather. 'That acts kind of like an evaporative air conditioner,' meteorologist Lauren Pattie said on Friday. 

Ms Pattie also said the cool weather is expected to persist into next week, with frost possible in some areas from Sunday.

Her Bureau colleague, meteorologist Rosa Hoff agreed, saying the cold weather would continue into Sunday. 

Brisbane is forecast to drop to just 9C overnight, before warming up to a top of 21C by midday, she said. [It was 27 degrees at 1:30pm Sunday]

The last time Brisbane hit a top of 15C like on Saturday was in 1922 - with other regional centres also breaking decades-long records.

Longreach and Charleville in the state's mid-west had their lowest May maximum temperatures in 50 years at 14.6C and 13.2C respectively. 

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Australian universities face an existential dilemma from loss of income

Time for efficiency reforms

Australian universities are "some of the most creditworthy entities in Australia and the world", ratings agency S&P Global says in a report on the effects of COVID-19 on this country's higher education.

This should put universities in a good place for what will be a punishing 12 months to come. The Group of Eight conservatively estimates a revenue downturn of $2.2 billion for 2020.

Already universities with small cash buffers, among them La Trobe University and Central Queensland University, are flagging redundancies.

S&P Global says universities have healthy balance sheets and low debt levels. But that's putting it kindly.

Critics of the university sector refer to lazy capital tied up in buildings and land holdings, which in some cases are used for only the 28 weeks a year when students are actually on campus.

And without shareholders to keep an eye on costs, payrolls have expanded in a heavily unionised workforce.

Robert Leeson, a professor of economics at Notre Dame university in Perth and biographer of the classic-liberal economist Friedrich Hayek, says Australian universities would benefit from some "creative destruction" of their own, reducing the ranks of middle management and making them more efficient.

As the post-coronavirus reality begins to bite, some policymakers are arguing for structural reform in higher education.

National lead partner for education at KPMG, and a former vice-chancellor at the University of Canberra, Stephen Parker, says the last real reform in higher education was 30 years ago when education minister John Dawkins let colleges of advanced education merge with universities.

S&P Global analysts said there was an appetite in Canberra for university reform.

Its recent report said: "We anticipate that when the pandemic is over, there will be greater political pressure on Australian universities to diversify or reduce their reliance on foreign students."

Some industries facing revenue shortfalls after COVID-19 are talking about mergers to get economies of scale and a more stable revenue base. But Australian universities are already large by global standards.

The vice-chancellor of Monash university, Margaret Gardner, doubts that growth by merger is the future for Australian universities.

She says she can't see the policy setting that would underpin mergers. In any case, universities are already very large. Monash has nearly 70,000 students, making it massive by comparison to British and US universities. Professor Gardner says in some senses it is already "merged" with other universities – through joint research projects with domestic universities and by collaboration with overseas institutions.

Also working against mergers is the fact that universities define themselves by their relationship to local communities.

Monash has a strong identity with communities in Melbourne's south-east, not the least because of the massive health market it serves with research and clinical services.

Gardner agrees that universities are going to change but says "the notion that Uni X merges with Uni Y is a very big question that intersects across community and government interests."

If consolidation through mergers is off the table, one way to get greater efficiencies would be a series of more simple alliances doing things such as shared back office, joint tenders for research or submissions to government.

Professor Parker points out the great universities of California are part of a state alliance.

The former vice-chancellor of Deakin University and interim vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia, Jane den Hollander, says alliances are already on the agenda of university councils.

All five universities in WA are members of the Forrest Research Foundation and this might be a good model for sharing costs and ideas, she said, without losing the structure of individual universities.

Another arrangement might be a federated model that brings together universities with a shared "market type", for example Geelong in Victoria with Newcastle and Wollongong in NSW.

"I'm interested in what regional universities do. Universities are to some extent the first pillar of the community," she says, echoing Gardner. "The big question is not just what happens in the capital cities. How do we nurture the regional role of the university?"

There are some long-established alliances, for example the Regional Universities Network or the Australian Technology Network, but these are more to do with marketing than local communities, shared resources or cost-cutting.

Working with business

The most likely university model for collaboration is with business.

This growth-oriented strategy is well established. Long before the government started pushing universities with tools such as performance funding to produce job-ready graduates, business has been moving onto campuses.

Monash University works with GlaxoSmithKline on pharmaceuticals, the University of Newcastle works with Brambles on printed solar collectors, and Sydney University is partnered with Telstra, Microsoft and Rio Tinto.

Edith Cowan University has 12-week work-integrated attachments for science students, and the University of Queensland commercialises research via its spin-off company UniQuest. UniQuest's first patent application for what was to become the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine was lodged in 1991.

The University of NSW Torch Innovation Precinct ("We invite you to join us moving from mining and manufacturing to mass innovation and mass entrepreneurship"), which opened in 2016 and is focused heavily on China, is a "good model for driving growth", UNSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs says. "It's not going to release spare cash. But it covers its costs and it means we can do additional research."

Professor Jacobs says he has been "hammering" the link between university and business for five years. Universities get cash flow and job-ready graduates and businesses get intellectual property.

COVID-19 has also proven the possibility of some cost savings. UNSW Sydney thought it was at capacity three years ago, the vice-chancellor says. Now that idea is "up for review".

Collaboration, between universities or with business, looks like the best option for universities trying to maintain growth in the face of falling international enrolments.

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Strict social distancing rules for lifts, which would have created havoc for office workers around the country, have been ditched

Safe Work Australia reversed its guidelines on Wednesday stating that there was now "no requirement to provide four square metres of space per person in lifts".

The revised rules say that "you must still ensure, as far as you reasonably can, that people maintain physical distancing in lifts and lift waiting areas".

It is a significant back down from the previous rules that would have created a major choke point for returning workers, adding hours to their journey, if only a few people could travel in a lift at any one time to maintain a 1.5-metre distance from each other.

The Property Council of Australia, which had lobbied strongly on the issue with the federal Attorney-General and Safe Work Australia, welcomed the major concession.

"The new guidelines on lift usage are sensible and practical, and give our building owners, managers and their tenants the certainty they need to plan their return to the office in coming weeks,” said the PCA's chief executive Ken Morrison.

“If we hadn't have had this outcome we would have had people milling around unable to get to their offices, posing a transmission risk in foyer areas.

“It provides recognition that if the COVIDSafe app requires a 15-minute proximity test before it does a digital handshake, then riding for a minute or a minute-and-a-half in a lift certainly doesn’t present that risk.”

Darren Steinberg, chief executive of Australia’s largest office landlord, Dexus, welcomed the decision and said the removal of the four square metre restrictions in lifts would go a long way to enabling people to get to their tenancies in a quick and efficient manner.

“It is a far more sensible approach because it is all about the worker experience when we get back to work full time and this would have been a major detractor, spending a significant amount of time waiting for lifts," he said.

But he warned there would still be delays given some restrictions in lifts would remain.

In landmark towers, such as Sydney's Australia Square which has smaller lifts, the previous 1.5-metre rule would have limited lift capacity to just two people.

Workers could have been forced to wait as much as three hours to get to their desks at peak times if all staff were back at work, according to estimates by building owner Dexus.

To ensure lift rides are as safe as possible, the revised rules encourage the use of staggered start and finish times, along with working from home arrangements for some staff.

The Work Safe rules also encourage lift programming to be modified to allow more efficient flow of users.

The updated rules retain the requirements of four square metres of space per person within offices and the need for a 1.5-metre separation between them.

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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 May, 2020

Now that the worst of COVID-19 is over, we must focus on the economy

Scott Morrison

Several weeks ago I said that Australians were a strong people, but with the pandemic upon us, we were about to find out just how strong we were.

Facing the most serious threat to our way of life in generations, Australians have stepped up.  We’ve adapted, made sacrifices, and made sure we have supported each other.

We’ve worked together – employers and employees to save jobs; banks working to save businesses and homes; and even in politics, we’ve found common ground on many fronts through the National Cabinet of states and territories with the federal government.

For many of us, the changes have brought home what is most important – the bonds of family, community and country.

Millions of Australians have been hit by devastating job losses, reduced hours, and business uncertainty. A hard reminder about just how much we depend on a strong economy for the essentials we rely on.

At the same time we have experienced the vulnerability and frustration of isolation, especially tough on those who are older and were more vulnerable to begin with.

These sacrifices have enabled us to do what most countries haven’t. We have been winning our fight against the virus, flattening the curve at the same time as boosting our health system.

While we are no more immune than we were three months ago, we now have much stronger protections in place in our health system.

Like a physical recovery, economic recoveries take time and effort.

Having taken up the fight to the virus and having bought time with emergency lifelines such as JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs, we are now reopening our economy.

The National Cabinet, made up of the state, territory, and federal leaders, has agreed on a three-step plan to achieve a COVID-safe economy and society and is implementing that plan. Step one is almost done.

A key part of step one is finally getting kids back into school. This is also well underway, especially here in NSW.

Treasury estimates that the benefits of step one being lifted will result in 250,000 people going back to work, including 83,000 people in NSW. Step one will put $1 billion back into the NSW economy every month.

By the end of step three, 850,000 people will be able to get back in work including 280,000 in NSW. With NSW representing one-third of our national economy, reopening NSW safely is a critical part of our national recovery.

In the coming months, we need to keep building confidence and momentum in our economy. This will enable us to shift our reliance from emergency assistance programs like JobKeeper, to real and sustainable incomes that can only come by restoring jobs in the workplace.

JobKeeper is an emergency $130 billion lifeline provided by the federal government to more than 6 million Australians in their time of greatest need. It’s the most expensive program in Australia’s history. And then there is the doubling of JobSeeker payments to help all those who are unable to access JobKeeper through their workplace.

These are important emergency supports, but at more than $20 billion per month they cannot go on forever. There is no money tree. All of this money has to be borrowed and paid back.

The JobKeeper and the expanded JobSeeker programs are buying us valuable time to chart our way back, but they are not the plan.

Getting people back into real jobs in growing businesses is the only sustainable way we will get Australians and our economy back on their feet.

But looking to the future, I would rather be in Australia than anywhere else in the world.

The foundation of our recovery will be continued success on the health front.

That means having a COVID safe Australia. Relying on the capability we are building to track and trace the virus. More Australians downloading the COVIDSafe app will strengthen this capacity – it is vital to our national efforts.

As well, businesses, unions and governments are working on efforts to ensure our workplaces are COVID safe. For many businesses, that will mean adjustments to existing layouts, practices and policies.

Beyond the here and now, we need to look at policy settings across all areas and ask a simple question: Are they fit-for-purpose to create jobs and fire economic growth?

On tax, on getting state and federal governments to work better together, in enabling workers and their employers to do better deals where they can both benefit, on getting rid of job destroying government regulation, on making energy more affordable and reliable, and making sure we are training Australians with the skills they need to be successful in their jobs.

This pandemic has shown we can never be complacent about the things we need to do to grow our economy and generate jobs.

While we face the greatest economic shock in 90 years, I am an optimist about what is ahead.

Throughout this pandemic, Australians have shown each other what we can achieve when we work together.

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Coronavirus Australia: We can’t spend the rest of our lives avoiding risks

How good are Australians in a ­crisis? The number of active cases of COVID-19 has fallen steadily for more than six weeks. At the start of last month, there were almos­t 5000 known carriers. Today there is a tenth as many.

If you want to know what a health crisis really looks like, turn to Britain, where 2642 fatalities have been announced in the past week, pushing deaths per million to 521. In Australia there have been just four per million.

That suggests it is safe to let the experts stand down and put the politicians back in charge. The extraordinary powers given to medical officers and police chiefs should be withdrawn to allow the hard work to begin.

Last week’s unemployment figures are just a taste of the post-pandemic misery. JobKeeper payments have kept Australians employed for now, but not every job is salvageable. Hundreds of thousands more people are likely to be out of work when the payments are wound back.

By any reasonable measure, the health crisis has been averted. Yet the experts who were so swift to alert us to the danger in the first place are slow to admit it.

A second wave, however unwelcome, would almost certainly be smaller than the first. We are far better prepared for its arrival thanks to the investment in ­testing, tracing and additional hospital facilities.

Credit also belongs to the Aust­ralian people, who have sacrificed­ much to beat this virus. Those who still have jobs should be allowed to return to them.

As Scott Morrison was at pains to point out on May 1, opening up the economy involves risk. There will be further outbreaks. More people will be infected and some could die.

Yet we are beyond the point where the pain averted by keeping people at home is greater than the pain it causes. And we are well beyond­ the point when the damage­ to the economy ($4bn a week) can be seen as a necessary or proportionate response.

Let us recall the reason for taking these drastic measures. In late March the virus appeared to be spreading exponentially, such that demand for acute hospital beds might outstrip supply.

The lockdown, together with the work of federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, ensured that didn’t happen. The number of intensive care unit beds tripled to more than 7000. Fewer than 100 were occupied by COVID-19 patients at the height of the pandemic. Yesterday 11 were in use.

With our borders closed, the risk that another wave could be large enough to swamp our health services is extremely slight.

The risk is even lower in South Australia. A swift response from Premier Steven Marshall — the closing of state borders, enforced quarantine for South Australians returning home and the appointment of a state co-ordinator under the Emergency Management Act — allowed SA to contain the virus better than most.

Only one new case has been detected in the state over the past three weeks. Of the 439 cases identified, 435 have recovered. Sadly, the other four died.

Yet bars and pubs remain closed. Cafes and restaurants are limited to 10 patrons at a time, making reopening a loss-making option for most.

Police can issue a $5000 on-the-spot fine to anyone reckless enough to invite more than seven guests to a wedding or 20 mourners to an indoor funeral.

Under whose authority is this extraordinary power given to the police? The authority of the SA Police Commissioner himself, Grant Stevens, who was appointed state co-ordinator of emergency manageme­nt on March 22.

Now that SA is, as near as ­dammit, virus free, Stevens is ­entitled to pat himself on the back, drop in at Government House and relinquish his emergency power, which will otherwise not expire until the end of the month.

Don’t hold your breath. Like the health experts appointed to save us from becoming the Italy of the south, Stevens is in no hurry to return to his day job.

SA Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier put on a “Fri-yay” top to celebrate the “fantastic” news of the state’s clean bill of health, but seems less than eager to step out of the limelight. There was no room for complacency, she warned. There was always the threat of a second wave.

Expert as Spurrier and Stevens might be in their respective fields, health and public order is not the expertise we need at this moment.

Our challenge now is avoiding deep, damaging recession. We need experts in assessing the nationa­l interest, weighing risks and evaluating competing public policy goals. We need experts who can balance the need for a healthy population against the imperative of a healthy economy, particularly in SA, where unemployment is at 7.2 per cent, the highest in the country.

In other words, we need the expertis­e of parliamentarians whose jobs depend on recognising the public interest. The power to make decisions should be remove­d from unelected officials and returned to those with a popular mandate.

The hard road is still ahead. Extraordinary public health measures that impinge on indiv­idual liberty were popular six weeks ago, when the shops were out of toilet paper. Today, they are a burden.

Having controlled this virus better than almost anyone expec­ted, by normalising social ­distancing, reducing international arrivals to a trickle and restricting interstate travel to essential business, governments must act quickly to lift restrictions.

The speed of economic recovery will depend on the willingness of businesses to take risks by investin­g and hiring, despite the uncertainties that will bedevil us.

Governments must lead by exampl­e before the culture of risk-avoidance that takes hold in a pandemic becomes entrenched in public and commercial life.

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Public holiday date is moved to create another long weekend for Australians in a bid to boost domestic tourism

A public holiday has been moved forward to create a new long weekend in Queensland as the premier pushes to boost domestic tourism.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Thursday the usual mid-week public holiday for Ekka - the Royal Queensland Show - is being moved back to Friday August 12.

'The Ekka public holiday will move from Wednesday, 12 August to Friday, 14 August to support our tourism industry,' Ms Palaszczuk tweeted.

'For one year only, People’s Day will become the People’s Long Weekend and I’m calling on Queenslanders to use it to boost local tourism.'

The show has been scrapped this year because of COVID-19, but it is hoped the creation of a long weekend will encourage families to further explore their local region.

Ms Palaszczuk on Thursday has also urged the state to plan winter holidays within their regions during the upcoming school break.

She said there had been confusion over the school holiday restrictions, but that Queenslanders would be permitted to travel up to 250km.

'They can holiday in Queensland in their regional areas so I really want to encourage people as much as possible to start planning those holidays and support our tourism industry,' she said.

The announcements come as she faces pressure from the tourism industry and other stakeholders to open the borders.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has repeatedly pushed for Queensland to relax the rules to allow interstate travellers to visit the Sunshine State for a holiday.

But Queensland is holding firm, saying the borders will remain closed until the southern states can bring their COVID-19 cases under control.

Transport Minister Mark Bailey said on Thursday the government won't take health advice from NSW, which has recorded 49 deaths from the virus and is still regularly recording new cases.

'We won't be lectured to by the worst performing state,' he said. 'It's time for Gladys and the NSW government to get their act together and start performing as well as Queensland has on the health front.'

Ms Palaszczuk agreed. 'I hope they get their community transmission under control because that means we will be able to open up sooner,' she said.

The premier is also facing pressure from One Nation leader Pauline Hanson who has engaged a pro bono constitutional lawyer to represent businesses affected by the border closure in a High Court challenge.

'It is unconstitutional for Premier Palaszczuk to close Queensland's border and her actions are causing me a great deal of concern for the economic viability of our state,' Senator Hanson wrote on Facebook.

Ms Palaszczuk said a court challenge was a matter for Ms Hanson. 'But, by the time any action gets to the High Court, I'm quite sure the borders would be open.'

Queensland recorded no new cases of COVID-19 overnight. There as 12 active cases remaining

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Reading wars hit home during lockdown lessons

“Dogs say ‘woof’, cats say ‘meow’, what does the letter ‘a’ say?”

And so it began. Perched at the dining table, armed with a 257-page guide on teaching a child to read, I was about to try to do just that. My daughter, Margot, had been at school for two months when the niggling concerns about her reading progress began.

Aged 5½, she could read and write her name independently, but not much else. Despite years of reading to her, singing songs and learning rhymes — many of which were learned by heart — she had difficulty identifying all the letters of the alphabet consistently, while her ability to link the letters with their various sounds was hit-and-miss.

Her teacher reassured me that she was where she was meant to be for a foundation-level student. Still, I was haunted by a conversation I’d once had with a prominent education academic who suggested all the journalists she knew had their children reading by the time they started school.

One evening, I sat down with my daughter to read one of the readers sent home from school and noticed how her eyes were automatically drawn to the pictures. It was hardly surprising; the images were obnoxiously large, overshadowing the much smaller text. As I suggested she point at each word and try to sound out each of the letters, she ignored me and started blurting out what she guessed they might be based on the image.

Frustrated by my gentle attempts at bringing her attention back to the words, she told me crossly that Eagle Eye was helping her to read.

As an education journalist, I know all about this Eagle Eye character who encourages children to guess an unfamiliar word by looking at the picture. Along with pals Lips the Fish (“get your lips ready to try the first sound”) and Skippy the Frog (“let’s skip that word altogether”), these child-friendly characters are a common feature of classrooms that adhere to the balanced literacy approach to reading instruction.

Balanced literacy emerged from whole-language reading instruction, spawned in the late 1960s, whereby children were expected to learn to read whole words naturally, merely as a result of plentiful exposure to books and writing. While balanced literacy concedes that children may need some guidance, it is based on a problematic theory called multi-cueing, also known as three-­cueing, which surmises that a reader looks for meaning, structure and visual cues to help make sense of what is on the page.

Countless researchers from across the globe have dismissed multi-cueing as an ineffective system on which to base reading ­instruction lacking in any evidentiary basis. Yet cueing strategies are popular in many primary classrooms because children often experience some early success using picture cues and context to identify words, especially when aided by repetitive and predictable texts.

However, as Sir Jim Rose, whose landmark 2006 review of reading in the UK was key to the development of Britain’s Primary National Strategy for Reading, has pointed out, “children who routinely adopt alternative cues for reading unknown words, instead of learning to decode them, later find themselves stranded when texts become more demanding and meanings less predictable”.

Through my work I had written about many schools that had transformed their reading results and they typically shared one common feature: they had implemented a phonics program.

While the mere mention of the word phonics risks sparking an outbreak in the long-running reading wars, the debate has at least moved on from whether to teach phonics — the research says we should — to how it is best taught.

In Victoria, where I live, the­ ­Department of Education and Training promotes a balanced literacy approach to teaching reading, in which phonics is taught in ways deemed “meaningful to children”, such as reading books, having fun with rhymes and writing their own stories.

“Phonics instruction should take place within a meaningful, communicative, rich pedagogy, and within genuine literacy events,” the department’s Literacy Teaching Toolkit states.

With phonics in context, a typical lesson might involve the teacher reading with students and periodically stopping at a word to discuss the relationships between letters and sounds (known as phonemes). Occasionally there may be a lesson on a letter or sound, but they are not typically presented in a systematic, cumulative way.

In many other states, such as NSW and South Australia, public education authorities have endorsed a different approach called systematic synthetic phonics. Also known as “blended” phonics, it involves teaching a child about the individual letter-sound relationships first, then having the child combine or synthesise these sounds to form words. While learning to read successfully entails more than simply learning phonics skills — it also depends on the development of phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension skills — major reviews of the teaching of reading in Australia, Britain and the US during the past 18 years have consistently identified ­phonics as a key component of an effective program.

The research also comes down on the side of synthetic phonics.

According to the NSW Education Department’s guide for schools on effective reading ­instruction: “There are a number of different approaches to teaching phonics, with varying levels of effectiveness. The most effective method is called synthetic phonics.” The document highlights results from a longitudinal study undertaken in Scotland that compared synthetic phonics with two analytic phonics programs.

At the end of these programs, children in the synthetic phonics group were reading around seven months ahead of children in the other two groups and were spelling eight to nine months ahead of the other groups.

Seven years on, those in the synthetic phonics group had extended their advantage further.

I was attracted to the simplicity at the core of the synthetic phonics approach; the way children were taught sequentially, starting out learning some simple letter-sound relationships, working towards the more complex end of the spectrum. For a parent with no teaching expertise, it seemed somewhat achievable. And with schools effectively set to close indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic, I finally had the time to help my daughter learn to read.

Having asked several literacy specialists and teachers what programs they rated, I settled on one devised by US author Stephen Parker called Teaching a Preschooler to Read (also suitable for primary schoolers). Parker, a retired teacher, has a knack for using plain language to explain a pretty technical topic. The guide, aimed specifically at parents, maps out clearly what to teach, when to teach it and how.

My first task was to refamiliarise myself with what is known in literacy circles as the alphabetic code. As Parker explains, the alphabet itself is only part of the code, with the 26 letters symbolising 44 different sounds. There are 20 vowel sounds (such as the short A in apple or axe but also the longer A in acorn) and 24 consonant sounds (B in bat and D in dad but also “th” and “sh” and the “ng” in king).

A list of those 44 phonemes was my constant companion during the coming weeks, and I swear I started to have nightmares about mixing up those short and long vowel sounds.

Stage one of the program kicked off with teaching my daughter the five short vowel sounds as well as M, N and S .

With a new Sharpie I wrote each letter on an index card and we practised saying the letters and their corresponding sounds every day. We also started to pay more attention to letters in our environment. Walking down the street, I’d point to the number plates on cars and ask Margot whether she could spot any of “her letters”, as we’d call them, and sound them out.

With her confidence growing, we moved on to decoding simple two and three-letter words. As with the letters, I wrote them on the index cards. To make a game, I had her flip them over and attempt to sound them out.

“A-n … An!” She got it on the first attempt.

I asked when she would use such a word.

“I would like an apple,” she replied. I was quietly impressed.

She moved on to the next word.

“M-a-n … Man.” Again no problem.

“N-a-n … Nan.” Ditto.

And that brought us to the word “sun”. She looked at it, then looked at me with a strained ­expression.

“Snake,” Margot said. I asked her to try again, this time concentrating on each letter. “Sam! S-s-s-sit!” She was becoming frantic, reeling off any word she could think of that started with S.

We were done for the day.

The next time we sat down to practise phonics I introduced her to the Decoding Dragon. The invention of Melbourne linguist and author Lyn Stone, the dragon’s job was to chase away those Guessing Monsters, including the hit-and-miss Eagle Eye.

While I was no fan of Eagle Eye, I decided to redeploy him. I told Margot that Eagle Eye had a new job and would help her focus on each of the letters as the Decoding Dragon would help her to sound them out.

Our little sessions continued. Some days were great. Others — quite a few actually — were a grind. Small children have very short attention spans and I learned my daughter has quite a stubborn streak. Overall, I could see a trend of improvement and a growing confidence. Each time she successfully sounded out a new word, I’d place the index card into her “special word box”.

“Look how many words are in your word box!” I said one morning. “I know,” she said, “I’m killing it.”

I made a decision early on to be upfront with the school about tackling phonics at home and my intention to replace the predictable readers for decodable books.

The teacher was receptive and supportive, going so far as to recommend several online apps for decodable readers, many of which were free as a result of the pandemic. However, concerned about the amount of screentime we were already having, I decided to purchase a hard-copy set. At $420 for 60 readers, they weren’t cheap but I felt it was a necessary investment.

One morning I took to Twitter and mentioned how excited I was that the readers had arrived in the post, only to see first hand how divisive their use is in literacy circles.

With titles such as Pat the Rat, The Pan and The Map, decodables are designed so a novice reader can practice reading the words they have already been explicitly taught.

“A pan sits!” mocked one teacher. “Fit rats. No thankyou.”

“Read to your daughter with ‘real-world’ words,” demanded another.

I won’t lie; I don’t particularly love the books. The language is basic and sometimes seems stilted. They won’t win any literary prizes. But they are not aimed at me — a proficient reader — but at a child, for whom deciphering the strange squiggles on the page is a hugely laborious task.

Further, they are merely a stepping stone along the path to becoming a reader

We’ve been at this caper for two months now and have just moved on to stage two of the program, which involves introducing the letters D, P, G and T. In the meantime Margot’s teachers, who have been doing an exceptional job teaching the children remotely, have introduced the digraph “th” as well as a bank of common ­English words such as the, is, was and my.

With school set to resume next week, I find myself reflecting on her progress. Can she read independently? Not even close; we are still very much at the start of this process. But I no longer feel that underlying sense of guilt about whether I could be doing more to help her out.

The word box is getting quite full and my daughter can now read many of them automatically. At night, when I read her a bedtime story, she will stop me to point out words she knows.

The other day I told her she was starting to read like a grown up. “I know,” she replied, “The Decod­ing Dragon has been helping me.”

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 May, 2020

‘It is unconstitutional’: Pauline Hanson threatens to take ‘scaremongering, lawless’ Queensland premier to the High Court for refusing to open up the borders

Pauline is referring to Section 92 of the constitition, which reads "On the imposition of uniform duties of customs, trade, commerce, and intercourse among the States, whether by means of internal carriage or ocean navigation, shall be absolutely free." That "absolutely free" is hard to get around so Annastacia Palaszczuk is clearly breaking the law with her restrictions

Pauline Hanson is threatening to take the Queensland premier to court over the state's controversial decision to keep the borders shut, despite the coronavirus curve flattening nationwide.

With businesses crippled across the state, Annastacia Palaszczuk has insisted keeping the state borders closed is for the good of people's health.

There have been just 1,058 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Queensland, and only 12 known active cases.

It comes as restrictions were eased or lifted entirely across the country, with NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian even encouraging families to book holidays.

With Queensland refusing to do the same, Ms Hanson has vowed to 'take the premier on' over the 'unconstitutional' and 'political' border closures.

'I raised last week that I think it's unconstitutional what the premier of Queensland is doing keeping borders closed for trade and commerce under section 92 of the Australian constitution', Ms Hanson told Sky News.

'Speaking to other people, they totally agree with me.

'I'm calling on Queenslanders who've been affected by either their families being destroyed, or inconvenience or trade.

'Those tourist operators who rely on tourists coming there have had their businesses affected.

'It's unconstitutional to do what they're doing, it's important to hold her to account and I think it's a political move what she's doing.

'When I see my state in dire straights, you've got communities that are dying, we need the tourists from down south coming up through Queensland.

Labor's Ms Palaszczuk, who says she is putting the health of the people she leads first, is also facing pressure from other states to remove the border block.

'The very, very earliest, and only if everything went absolutely perfectly, we might be able to think about opening up our border in July,' Chief Health Officer Jeanette Young said on Wednesday.

'If the tourism industry wants a more realistic scenario they should be preparing for September.'

Dr Young says she herself would like certainty over when the border will open, but cannot commit to any timeframe.

She said a September re-opening may not even be feasible if interstate cases are not brought under control.

Senator Hanson said she had engaged a pro bono constitutional lawyer to represent businesses affected by the border closure in a High Court challenge.

'It is unconstitutional for premier Palaszczuk to close Queensland's border and her actions are causing me a great deal of concern for the economic viability of our state,' Senator Hanson wrote on Facebook.

'There is no cure or vaccine for the coronavirus, and until there is, all states and territories must learn to live with the virus. 

SOURCE  





Australians should say 'ya'll' instead of 'ladies and gentlemen' - according to politically correct new push for 'gender-neutral language'

Australians should be saying 'y'all' instead of 'ladies and gentlemen' or 'boys and girls', according to the United Nations, which has intensified its push for 'gender-neutral language'.

UN Women Australia, a national branch of the global organisation, tweeted part of a its new 'gender-neutral dictionary' on Monday.

The list urged people to replace common words such as 'landlord', 'husband/wife' and 'manpower' with 'owner', 'spouse' and 'workforce'.

A more comprehensive list on the website directed Australians to use Americanisms such as 'y'all' or 'folks' instead of 'ladies and gentlemen' or 'boys and girls'.

According to the guidelines on the website, the list was made to promote gender equality by abandoning gender-based pronouns, such as 'he' and 'she', and replace them with generic terms, such as 'they'.

New South Wales One Nation leader Mark Latham described the guidelines as 'ludicrous'. 'I'd tell them - y'all crazy,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

'My advice to them is that if they want to use "y'all" I'd strongly advice them to go and live in the United States, go to Alabama.'

Mr Latham said UN Women Australia - which strives to achieve gender equality around the world - should be closed down.

The Institute of Public Affairs' Dr Bella D'Abrera said the recommendations curtail free speech.

'The UN's ridiculous attempt to curtail free speech by dictating which words we can and cannot use is a fundamental attack on the very human rights it purports to defend,' she said.

She claimed the UN is more interested in 'social engineering' than maintaining international peace.

The tweet garnered thousands of responses slamming the organisation for the 'tone deaf' post.  'Stop trying to control people's language. It's creepy and unnecessary,' one woman wrote.

Another pointed out many languages other than English largely comprise gendered words.

'Are you going to rewrite all languages that incorporate grammatical gender? Or is that suppressing a culture,' they asked.

'The coronavirus is ripping through countries killing hundreds of thousands of people and this is what this tone deaf incompetent organization is focused on,' a third said.

SOURCE  






Retirees facing financial as well as health risks in coronavirus pandemic

Spare a thought for self-funded retirees in these difficult times. Not only are they in the age bracket most at risk from the virus, but their financial wellbeing in retirement is being put at substantial risk.

The collapse in the stock market, including among most blue chip stocks, is just the start of their financial pain. These big businesses, even if they survive, aren’t likely to pay out the dividends they once did for years to come, if ever.

The financial plans of self-funded retirees are built around dividend projections which therefore no longer apply, and with interest rates so low its not as though they can simply transfer their saving into cash accounts and do any better.

The RBA cash rate is at a record low.

The difficulties self-funded retirees face in low interest rate environments is the flip side to the benefits those of us with homes loans get from lower rates for borrowing.

Lower interest rates has become a way of life, but the prospects of rates surging north again anytime soon seems unlikely. Even if it does happen, it will only be in conjunction with inflation, which erodes spending power at the same time.

On the policy front, there isn’t much there for self-funded retirees to cushion the blow. While Jobseeker and JobKeeper are doling out tens of billions of taxpayers dollars to keep working age Australians in jobs or at least above the poverty line, self-funded retirees are getting no such support.

Even pensioners have received a boost to their pensions to help them get through these tough times. But the self-funded retirees who voted en-masse against Bill Shorten and his franking credits policy have become the forgotten people among Coalition supporters.

Their loyalty hasn’t translated into being looked after now. And because Labor is still licking its wounds from last year’s May election defeat, it hasn’t exactly been inclined to highlight their plight and put pressure on the government to do something to help this large voting cohort.

Rather, Labor has focused its attention on the plight of many casuals who are missing out on JobKeeper, and the university sector which isn’t eligible for the payments. Or childcare users who would benefit from free childcare continuing for longer. Or workers for foreign companies ineligible for JobKeeper. Or indeed anyone who might benefit from Newstart not returning to the low levels it was pegged at previously.

What about self-funded retirees? They truly are the forgotten people in this crisis. Taken for granted by a government that would not have won the last election had it not been for their support. Forgotten by an opposition that has written them off politically.

While I have long been critical of the unsustainable tax breaks for many older Australians, especially those with very large savings, the self-funded retirees who only just miss out on a part pension and concession card benefits are the ones caught in the middle right now.

As Ian Henschke from National Seniors has pointed out, some self-funded retirees — because of this crisis — are now drawing on an annual payout from their investments lower than the annual pension. To survive they would need to draw down their savings right at a time when their value has been halved. He wants to see discussion about legislating a universal pension in the wake of this crisis to ensure that can’t happen.

Whether that is a long-term solution or not is debatable — indeed whether it is fiscally viable is highly debatable. But there is little doubt this cohort of senior Australians deserves more than the cold shoulder.

Especially from a Coalition government.

SOURCE  






Whitehaven Coal's $700m Vickery coal mine expansion plan clears another hurdle

WHITEHAVEN Coal has cleared another hurdle in its push for a $700 million coal mine expansion near Gunnedah, in north-eastern NSW.

The Department of Planning, Industry and Environment has recommended the project is "approvable" and pushed the application to the Independent Planning Commission (IPC).

The application seeks to extend the Vickery coal mine, about 25km out of Gunnedah, and develop a new coal handling and preparation plant, as well as a rail spur line to connect to the main railway that leads to the Port of Newcastle. This would mean the end of coal trucks transporting the goods on the road to Gunnedah.

The project - which went on public exhibition in the latter half of 2018 - attracted 560 submissions with 345 in support of the project, and 201 who opposed the plan.

In September last year, Vickery Coal submitted an amended application. It's expected to generate 450 jobs as well as 500 during construction, as well as a net benefit of $1.16 billion to the state.

The Department released its report on Tuesday and highlighted key issues for the IPC to consider which included impacts on water resources, amenity and biodiversity.

The report from the department will now be considered by the IPC who will hold a further public hearing in coming weeks. The IPC must make a final determination on the project within 12 weeks.

Whitehaven Coal issued a statement on Wednesday welcoming the release of the report.

"We know there is strong support for Vickery from the comprehensive community consultation process that has already been undertaken - 60% of public submissions to the Department of Planning and 75% to the IPC called for the Project to be approved," Whitehaven Coal Managing Director and CEO Paul Flynn said

But in April, the mining giant put all expansion decisions on hold due to "volatile financial market conditions", including the Vickery mine expansion.

"While coal markets in the March quarter have demonstrated their resilience, volatile financial market conditions caused Whitehaven to continue to be cautious in allocating capital to expansion," the company said at the time.

Lock the Gate - a vocal opponent of the expansion plan - has long maintained the coal mine "will damage local groundwater, put an iconic heritage property at risk, and worsen the social damage large-scale mining has already inflicted on the local community".

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







21 May 2020

How scrapping ‘free’ childcare will hurt providers, parents and children

In recent days both the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Education Minister Dan Tehan have indicated that the “free” childcare arrangement they initially promised for six months may be shelved as early as June 28.

To understand why this will be catastrophic for parents and centres you only have to look to the comments the PM himself made when announcing the rescue package.

“Child care and early childhood education is critical,” Prime Minister Morrison explained.

“Particularly for those Australians who rely on it so they can go to work every day, particularly those who are working in such critical areas. I don’t want a parent to have to choose between feeding their kids and having their kids looked after, or having their education being provided.”

He continued: “This virus is going to take enough from Australians without putting Australian parents in that position of having to choose between the economic wellbeing of their family or the care and support and education of their children. I won’t cop a situation where a parent is put in that place with their kids.”

If the government proceeds with its reported plan to pull the rug out on free childcare and “snap back” to the old system on June 28 that is precisely the situation many parents will face.

And other children will no longer have access to the education and support their early learning currently provides – not necessarily because of their parent’s positions – but because up to 86 per cent of childcare centres will be at risk of closing if the old system is suddenly switched back on.

The government’s own review of its rescue package was reported yesterday and it indicates that 86 per cent of centres said the package had stopped them from closing its doors. All of those centres will be in jeopardy without the current relief in place.

According to the government review, attendance rates at centres across the board are currently just 63 per cent of ordinary times, which is well below break-even point, and not viable. Without the lure of free care, operators are expecting those numbers to drop further still.

Given more than 600,000 Australians lost work last month alone it’s highly unlikely parents will be able to afford the same level of care now that they could three months ago.

The government intervened in April because parents were fleeing from centres in droves, driven by either health concerns related to the pandemic, or drastically changed financial positions, or both.

The health risk of COVID-19 is certainly less now than it was in April, but the devastating economic damage this pandemic has unleashed remains alive and well – and is unlikely to be repaired any time soon.

Charging full fees again will place unsustainable economic pressure on parents who are already squeezed; many will no longer be able to afford access to the education and care their children deserve.

Without children enrolled close to pre-COVID-19 numbers this vital sector’s ability to survive will be compromised.

The Prime Minister has said free childcare is not sustainable. But withdrawing this relief early and attempting to snap back while we are still in the midst of the economic fall out of this health crisis is not sustainable either.

Providing “free childcare” is costly and not perfect. But it won’t cost Australia nearly as much as it will if the early childhood education sector falls over altogether. We cannot afford that collapse – not for our economy, our communities and least of all our children.

Instead of unwinding this reform we need to strive for better and spend the next few weeks and months ensuring the early childhood education and care sector is strong enough to emerge from COVID-19 not just intact, but better than ever. For children, educators and families.

SOURCE  






Turnbull left us a dud school curriculum

In his recent memoir, A Bigger Picture, Malcolm Turnbull presents an ego-centred, delusional account of the way he single-handedly solved the school funding issue and ensured Australian students’ dismal performance in international tests would improve.

Wrong on both accounts. Not only was the Gonski 2.0 funding model flawed, inequitable and guilty of penalising low-fee schools, especially Catholic, but the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools also proved to be a dud calculated to dumb down the curriculum further, ensuring even lower standards.

Chapter 40 of the former prime minister’s book centres on the May 2, 2017, press conference announcing a new school funding agreement titled Gonski 2.0, named after the report’s chairman, David Gonski, and the intention to appoint Gonski as chairman of the education review.

Turnbull lauds the event as a political masterstroke as Gonski had been chosen by the ALP’s Julia Gillard when education minister to review school funding and the “I give a Gonski” slogan was a key plank in the left-leaning Australian Education Union’s campaign to attack conservative governments.

By securing Gonski’s involvement, Turnbull boasts: “I’d ensured that all those ‘I give a Gonski’ posters, banners, corflutes, T-shirts and hats were heading to the recycling bin. Because we didn’t just ‘give a Gonski’, we had his support: he was standing right next to me as we announced our new school funding policy.”

While Turnbull writes he had settled the funding wars as schools now had a model that was “genuinely national, consistent and needs-based”, nothing could be further from the truth.

Stephen Farish, the expert responsible for developing the methodology employed by Gonski 2.0 to quantify how much funding non-government schools received, admitted it “clearly isn’t working”. Under Turnbull as prime minister wealthy independent schools were treated the same as low-fee, less privileged Catholic schools.

Even worse, Simon Birmingham, the federal education minister at the time, and Turnbull knew the Gonski 2.0 funding model was inequitable as months earlier the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria had published a paper — Capacity to Contribute and SES Scores — proving the model reinforced disadvantage.

Significant is that the analysis and conclusions reached by the CECV paper subsequently were endorsed by a commonwealth review of school funding chaired by Michael Chaney that concluded the Gonski 2.0 model was so corrupted it had to be replaced by a more equitable way of deciding funding to non-government schools.

By ignoring the CECV’s paper, in addition to endorsing a flawed funding model, Turnbull also demonstrated how politically inept he was by igniting a nationwide campaign led by Stephen Elder, then executive director of Catholic Education Melbourne, arguing for a more equitable funding model.

In addition to launching Gonski 2.0, Turnbull announced the curriculum review to try to achieve excellence in Australian schools by identifying the most effective way to raise standards.

Describing Gonski’s experience and qualifications to determine how to overcome Australia’s academic underperformance as measured by international tests, Turnbull called Gonski “my old school friend, debating partner and neighbour” and “one of Australia’s leading capitalists and a director of banks”.

Not mentioned in Turnbull’s book is that the eventual report published in March 2018 was flawed, substandard and guaranteed to lower standards further.

Instead of explicit and rigorous year-level standards where students would be graded and evaluated in terms of performance, the review embraced costly and unproven educational fads such as progression points and developmental learning. Students would no longer pass or fail as the focus turned to formative assessment and personal growth.

The report also undervalued what American academic Jerome Bruner described as teaching “the structure of the discipline” in favour of content-free, vacuous so-called 21st-century generic competencies.

The review ignored findings by the National Research Council in the US in the acclaimed publication, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School, that a “fundamental understanding of subjects” was essential if students were to become “self-sustaining, lifelong learners”.

Jennifer Buckingham, then a senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, wrote at the time that “the solutions posed in this report will take us further in the wrong direction. If implemented, the Gonski 2.0 report will just be another chapter in the story of Australia’s sad educational decline”.

It’s understandable why failed politicians such as Malcolm Turnbull want to ensure their version of events dominates the historical record. But A Bigger Picture shows how he failed Australian schoolchildren.

SOURCE  






No longer a joke: Why Australia's COVID-19 inquiry campaign won the day

Australia's role in landing an independent investigation into coronavirus was dismissed by Beijing as a joke. Our transgression was not in the substance of the argument but in speaking out of turn.

This uppity island nation of 25 million marshalling support for an independent inquiry infuriated Beijing.

The long standing trade relationship between Australia and China is under strain after the coronavirus halted imports and exports, forcing Australia to look inwards to develop manufacturing.

Good fortune, effective government policy and the public's embrace of social distancing measures had put Australia on course to suppress the virus before any other middle power. Seeing a diplomatic opening, Australia stuck its neck out and pushed for the inquiry.

More significantly, it acted on the rhetoric and began building a coalition with Europe. The prospect of an alliance with the Trump administration had been poisoned diplomatically by White House claims of a "Wuhan lab virus".

This was a historic move by Australia.

Overnight, almost a month to the day since Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne first lobbied for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, the motion to establish one passed the World Health Assembly unanimously.

There were no objections. The resolution had the largest number of co-sponsors in history -137 countries in total for a motion that will examine both the origins of the coronavirus and the role of the World Health Organisation.

The last time Australia had played such a prominent international role was in 2015, when then foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop led calls to establish an MH17 inquiry after 298 people were shot out of the sky by a Russian-Ukrainian missile. The coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 and decimated the global economy.

China accused Australia of running a politically motivated campaign in April. Two trade strikes would follow in early May. They were of course, unrelated, we were told. About $1 billion in the barley and beef trade is now affected.

By Sunday, more than 60 countries had signed on as co-sponsors of the resolution. Its fate was sealed. For Beijing, it was much more preferable for the European Union to be seen as leaders of the resolution than those upstarts Down Under.

Europe has gravitas that Australia does not. Our negotiators recognised this early when they latched the first terms for an independent inquiry onto the draft of a European Union motion on April 29. It was happy to concede the lead, allowing countries to back the call without choosing "sides" in the rancorous three-way dispute between China, the US and Australia. China became one of the last dozen co-sponsors on Tuesday night, just before the vote.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian emphasised the European Union’s role this week after being asked about Australia’s push. "The EU submitted a draft resolution on COVID-19 to this year’s WHA, and the parties reached consensus on the content of the draft resolution after thorough discussion," he said.

"This is a slap to the face to countries like Australia - the most active player in pushing forward a so-called independent probe into China over the coronavirus outbreak, which was then rejected by the international community," China's international state media arm The Global Times said on Tuesday.

Behind the bluster, the reality is found in the actual motion.

The final text of two key clauses in the motion, OP9.6 and OP9.10 are identical to the draft motion agreed to by the European Union and Australia over the weekend. The same document was signed by China on Tuesday.

They establish a mechanism to identify the source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population and "an independent and comprehensive evaluation of the WHO's response to COVID-19" at the "earliest appropriate moment".

Compromise and negotiation saw any direct reference to China removed and terms such as "investigation" transformed into "review", but the substance of Australia's argument largely remains intact.

In fact it is far stronger now that the one initially agreed to by the European Union member states in April. That motion would have focused much more broadly on the "lessons learnt from the international health response to COVID-19".

No doubt questions still remain. China will use its weight, funding of the WHO and influence over developing countries to interpret the "earliest appropriate moment" as only once the pandemic has passed. That could be years away.

The footnotes of the motion reveal the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme will be engaged "as appropriate" to oversee inquiry into the WHO response.

The existing WHO committee consists of seven members drawn from national governments, non-governmental organisations, and the UN system, outside of the WHO itself.

Can they be truly independent inside an organisation that has shown itself to be caught and occasionally paralysed by the rising rhetoric and volatile funding of its two largest members?

But the significance of clause OP9.6 of the resolution should not be understated. The clause allows for scientific and collaborative field missions to enter China to determine the origin of the disease and prevent the establishment of new zoonotic reservoirs, those sites where the virus makes the fateful leap from bat or bird or pangolin to human.

China, which is not named, will argue that the same inspectors should be allowed to enter the US, having pushed the unfounded theory that the disease might have originated there.

The US will likewise argue that inspectors should be allowed into the Wuhan lab, a theory that is also unproven.

So they should. Both superpowers have signed the motion.

SOURCE  






Angus Taylor says it is not Australia’s policy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, despite signing up to the Paris agreement, because the Morrison government will not adopt a mid-century target in advance of a plan to achieve it.

The energy minister said on Tuesday that signatories to the Paris agreement, including Australia, had agreed to hit net zero “in the second half of the century”. But scientists say in order to meet the central Paris goal of keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C – a commitment Australia adopted in 2015 – signatories need to hit net zero by 2050.

A new review of the government’s climate policies headed by former Business Council of Australia president Grant King notes that “like other signatories to the Paris agreement, Australia has agreed to adopt progressively more ambitious targets beyond 2030 and has endorsed the agreement’s overarching long-term goals, namely to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2C – and if possible below 1.5C – by achieving net zero emissions as soon as possible in the second half of the century”.

Major business groups, including the Business Council of Australia and the Ai Group, say Australia should adopt the net zero by 2050 target. Earlier this month the Ai Group called for the two biggest economic challenges in memory – recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and cutting greenhouse gas emissions – to be addressed together, saying it would boost growth and put the country on a firm long-term footing.

Every Australian state has signed up to net zero emissions by 2050, and these commitments are expressed either as targets or aspirational goals.

But asked on Tuesday whether net zero by 2050 was the federal government’s policy, Taylor said: “No.”

“Our approach is not to have a target without a plan,” Taylor told the ABC. He said technology improvements would drive significant reductions in emissions “and we’d love to be able to achieve net zero by 2050, but ultimately that will depend on the pathways of technology to deliver that without damaging the economy”.

The King review has recommended new approaches to reducing pollution including paying big emitters to keep their emissions below an agreed limit, and allowing businesses to bid for funding from the government’s climate policy – the $2.55bn emissions reduction fund – for projects that capture emissions and either use them or store them underground.

The King review proposal to pay emitters to remain below their baseline looks like a voluntary carbon trading mechanism. The review says the idea “could be achieved by crediting emissions reductions below baselines and providing for the sale and purchase of … safeguard mechanism credits by the federal, state or territory governments or through voluntary transactions in carbon markets”.

Despite that clear description in the review, Taylor contended initially on Tuesday the proposal was not a form of voluntary carbon trading. He said the review proposed a “carrot” to give companies an incentive to overachieve on their pollution reduction commitments.

The Coalition has spent a decade opposing carbon pricing, and it abolished the emissions trading scheme legislated during the Gillard government. Rightwingers in the Liberal party also moved against Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership in part because he pursued a policy to reduce emissions in the electricity sector.

But after first saying the King proposal was not a form of carbon trading, the energy minister then argued that principle was “nothing new”. “You can trade Australian carbon credit units now. There is nothing new with that, that’s a pre-existing system we have through the emissions reduction fund.”

It is unclear whether some of the proposals in the review would garner majority parliamentary support, but Taylor said some of the proposals might be able to be achieved without changing legislation.

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 May 2020

Controversial character called the 'Genderbread Person' which teaches children that gender is decided in the brain and is not related to anatomy is dropped after a parent complainedS

Learning material teaching high school students about different gender identities has been pulled from one school.

An unnamed mother in regional NSW complained about the use of the 'Genderbread person' in her 15-year-old son's classroom.

The education tool is used to teach students that anatomy doesn't always determine gender.

The mother advocated against this after her son came home 'angry' over the material being taught in class.

She said she has written to state and federal health ministers but her school's principal. who called on Monday to apologise and reveal it had been removed from the school, was 'the first person in authority' to understand her.

'In over a year of feeling like I have been beating my head into a brick wall, at last a sensible response,' the mother told The Australian.

She said before this members of parliament had 'bounced her around like a hot potato'.

The woman believes the education material targets 'vulnerable children' like her eldest child.

Her child revealed he identified as a transgender boy rather than a girl.

The child's mother contributes the 19-year-old's gender identity to underlying depression.

She is furious the hospital gave her child the testosterone needed to transition.

'Gender and sex are being confused [in school] - it starts to introduce this confusion, especially with vulnerable young people like our daughter,' the mother told The Australian.

'Some parents I've spoken to have said their children who are on the autism spectrum have been sucked into this [trans identity] - these are kids who are looking for somewhere to fit in. Other parents, their kids have had sexual abuse.'

She said children like hers need support and therapy but not drugs.

Jack Whitney, Co-Convenor of the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, argues it is important to have a 'supportive learning environment that values diversity of all students'.

'We understand that education advocates and experts have long called for the inclusion of transgender and gender-diverse educational resources. As such the Lobby encourages the ongoing inclusion of these programs to ensure that the education children receive works towards a future where they are all able to thrive,' Mr Whitney told Daily Mail Australia.

'From our experience, the case reported in The Australian is often because a parent is apprehensive of what they don't know or understand, and their immediate response is to remove their children. However, we argue children have the right to an education that informs them of a world that is diverse and best prepares them to navigate the future.'

He said there is going to be unique needs for every child and it is important staff consult with students, their carers and family on these matters. 

A spokeswoman from the NSW Department of education said their personal development syllabus covers a range of topics such as human anatomy, personal identity, gender roles and expectations and sex-based harrasment and diversity. 

'Gender fluidity is not part of the NSW Curriculum. The department does not endorse the use of associated materials and schools have been made aware of this,' the spokeswoman said.

'The Genderbread resource was not developed by the NSW Department of Education. The school immediately withdrew this resource from future teaching and learning programs, following a request by the department to review its use.

'The Safe Schools program is not and never has been, part of the NSW curriculum. The NSW Department of Education does not promote this program or its resources.'

SOURCE  






Abbott backs Hastie

Tony Abbott has redrawn the battlelines and entered the conversation about China. The former prime minister’s long-forgotten website Battlelines — named after Abbott’s 2009 memoir outlining his political philosophy — has come out of hibernation to get behind Liberal MP Andrew Hastie.

In an email entitled “Looking to the future”, Abbott asks his loyal army of supporters to back Hastie, “a great defender of the values you and I hold so dear”.

Abbott describes the former SAS captain and member for the outer Perth seat of Canning as a “leading voice in the Coalition calling for a stronger Australia”. Hastie is chairman of the powerful parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security.

He also is the public face of The Wolverines, a secret bipartisan group formed in Parliament House to speak out against the Communist Party’s expanding power and which last week added US ambassador Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr to its ranks as an honorary member.

“(Hastie) is a favourite target of the radical left and has been in some tough campaigns,” Abbott wrote. “For years Andrew has been a champion of Australia’s sovereignty and our need to be self-sufficient in times of crisis. I encourage you all to support Andrew and I have asked him to email you.”

The website was set up early last year and raised more than $1m for Abbott’s failed final run at Warringah. We’re told it’s being used to campaign for key conservatives around the country, hand-picked by the former prime minister. It’s a centre-right counterforce to progressive groups such as GetUp that hopefully has more thought than the much mocked satirical superhero Captain GetUp.

The NSW Moderates are suitably unimpressed, saying it’s a pointed snub. “Why hadn’t he gone out in support of a local Liberal,” one whinged, as the behind-the-scenes fight heats up in Warringah. For his part, Hastie is modest about being anointed by Abbott, telling Strewth: “I’m humbled by Tony’s support but I will never be able to match his raw physicality in a pair of Speedos.”

SOURCE  






Remove these roadblocks and our economy will take off

During the lockdown I have been tidying up, throwing out the ­orange jumpsuit I used to wear during that incarceration known as the budget lockup. I don’t see that contrived marketing exercise being resurrected, given the ongoing need for social distancing.

Sorting books into “keep” and “give away” piles, I came across Procuring Successful Mega-Projects. It’s in the keep pile because rebuilding the Australian economy in the post-coronavirus period is likely to involve very large projects, public and private.

You can’t attach “successful” to many recent mega-projects. Most have been public sector ones; the liquefied natural gas projects in Queensland and Western Australia are exceptions.

Consider the over-budget and much delayed Sydney light rail project or Melbourne’s calamitous West Gate tunnel project, now bogged down in a dispute about where to put contaminated soil. The Victorian government bestowed an egregiously generous concession to the toll road operator to construct the tunnel but the project is long delayed.

In the post-pandemic era, there will be an urgent need for Australia to achieve greater self-reliance and build more stable supply chains. The cheap and easy route of offshoring activities should come to an end. In turn, this will involve the construction and operation of large-scale projects.

It’s important here to identify the reasons for our deindustrialisation across several decades. This way we work on fixing the drivers that forced many manufacturers to leave, and to determine the means of achieving a more diversified economy, rather than one dominated by the services sector.

While some might assume cuts to import tariffs were the principal reason manufacturing industry shrank, it had been contracting well before tariffs were reduced. Tariffs were a tax on the poor and an impediment to our exporters.

The way forward involves strong commercial incentives for those considering investing in manufacturing activities as well as minerals processing and power generation. Without affordable and reliable energy, there is no real prospect of a resurgence of manu­facturing. So it was heartening to see Energy Australia give the go-ahead to the expansion of the Tallawarra gas-fired electricity plant in NSW.

The expectation is that there will be more investment in gas-fired electricity generation as the supply of gas from new fields comes on stream and the price moderates. Gas as a direct feeder stock also will be used by new manufacturing plants. The states need to play a role in facilitating this development, but the context of the post-pandemic exigencies will provide the basis for swifter and sensible decision-making to permit exploitation of gas fields.

The capital costs of building large-scale projects in Australia are way out of line with other countries, including the US and China. It is a substantial handicap, particularly compared with the small gap in operating costs relative to comparable economies.

There are four main impediments to the achievement of lower-cost successful mega-projects: approvals processes replete with red and green tape; the lack of competition among head contractors; industrial relations; and the lack of appropriate skills.

By international standards, the approval processes for many developments here are drawn out, expensive and subject to undue legal challenge. Companies commonly must submit reports that are thousands of pages long and governmental approval can take years.

The lack of competition among the head contractors also impedes mega-projects. Some are foreign-owned companies and they generally operate on the basis of not rocking the boat locally. They deliberately refrain from becoming involved in any policy debates — about lifting construction productivity, for instance. They tend to have cosy relations with the building trade unions.

Projects that do begin — mainly in the public sector — are shuffled between the small number of head contractors. Smaller firms subcontracted to work on these must accept conditions imposed on them by head contractors, following commercially onerous, template union enterprise agreements to secure work.

Last week the chief executive of Watpac, a smaller construction company, suggested that big projects could be broken into smaller pieces to inject more competition into the bidding process.

A similar view was expressed by Brent Crockford, chief executive of 12 local companies known as Australian Owned Contractors.

“Simply by breaking up procurement packages, local competition can be strengthened with greater skills development and domestic company growth, leading also to a reduction in the cost blowouts, project delays, company losses and litigation we’ve seen in recent years,” Crockford said.

One issue involves the Fair Work Act’s greenfields provisions. Because agreements can be made for only a fixed number of years, there is scope for costly disruption before a project is completed. A high-profile example was Chevron’s Gorgon LNG project being held up by a handful of workers seeking to alter roster arrangements. The solution to this problem is simple: allow agreements that last for the project’s duration.

The final impediment is also one that should be capable of remediation and without resort to the use of migrant workers. There are significant skill gaps in relation to project management as well as a range of building skills. There should be incentives for education and training providers to fill these gaps. Attention also should be paid to the contracting skills of public servants whose naivety and incompetence have contributed to some disastrous mega-projects

There are many economic challenges ahead, including securing jobs for the many workers who find their previous employer has gone out of business or needs fewer staff.

There are some clear opportunities when it comes to resurrecting parts of manufacturing and other large-scale employment that will have the added benefit of improving our self-reliance.

But this will happen only if we get the basics right. All levels of government must commit to ensure this happens.

SOURCE  






Coronavirus Australia: While an elite few savour the serenity, costs mount

A couple of weeks back an old school friend called, roused by ­arguments I’d been making about the damage of national lockdowns.

“I’m in construction doing government jobs that haven’t stopped, childcare for the kids is now free, petrol is cheap and traffic is better than it’s been for years and my commute time has roughly halved to 40 minutes,” he said. “I’m not minding the lack of social interaction, to be honest,” he added.

For those who managed to maintain their incomes throughout, lockdown has had its upside.

For a start, the outright deflation the Reserve Bank has forecast — 1 per cent over the year to June — means some of us might enjoy greater purchasing power even without a pay rise.

I confess lockdown did have a certain ascetic appeal. Opportunities to waste money at restaurants and bars were drastically curtailed, boosting saving. Overpriced scrambled eggs for breakfast on the way to work were out; porridge at home, at less than a tenth the cost, was in.

As a runner, the closure of gyms didn’t bother me. Pointless face-to-face meetings evaporated, saving hours. I only saw people I actually wanted to see; small talk ended.


And for those of us who can work from home, lockdowns, somewhat ironically, have given us greater freedom to structure our work around our lives, rather than the other way around.

For young lawyers and bankers — no one ever cared about “face time” in journalism — the quality of their work will matter more than how many hours they spend at their desk.

Of course, lockdowns have caused extraordinary economic damage. These sorts of benefits have tended to flow to a fortunate minority, especially public servants and corporate elites.

James Stratton, an Australian economist at Harvard, recently estimated that about two-fifths of jobs in Australia could be performed at home, and not all of them well. “Lower-income Australians, less-educated Australians, and rural Australians are more likely to be in occupations that cannot feasibly be performed from home,” he said,

“High-wage employees are three times as likely to be able to work from home as low-wage workers,” Labor MP and former economics professor Andrew Leigh noted last month.

News last week that 7.6 million people, excluding 2 million-odd public servants, are dependent in full or part on the government for their income highlights how much damage mandatory lockdowns can do.

The costs of the lockdown, including joblessness and associated social and economic pain, both during and after, will fall mainly on the young and less educated.

New analysis by economists at New York University released last week found lockdowns were likely to induce an L rather than a ­V-shaped recession, because of “long-lasting negative effects on unemployment”.

They found the “lockdown disproportionately disrupts the employment of workers who need years to find stable jobs”.

Some argue that states and nations such as Sweden that resisted mandatory lockdowns have received little economic dividend ­because their economies have been hit hard anyway.

“Private decisions to avoid social interactions in response to the epidemic would have reduced demand for activities like retail, air travel, hotel rooms, and on-site restaurant meals,” six US economists argue in a paper that finds jobless claims started to surge before states enacted shelter-in-place orders.

It’s no surprise that Sweden, or less draconian US states, will suffer economically given they are surrounded by seriously disrupted economies.

More troublingly, these arguments seem to place zero value on freedom. Being able to sit on a park bench doesn’t show up in gross domestic product, but it’s valuable nevertheless. Being under house arrest for six weeks, as New Zealanders were, is an impost far beyond GDP.

Over the weekend the Queensland Premier, on what must be threadbare justification, said she wouldn’t open the border with NSW. Again, that will affect lives far beyond what they would have been willing to pay for plane tickets or petrol.

But we are where we are. If there’s a serious silver lining to lockdowns it’s that businesses, especially large ones, will become more efficient, freeing up resources. That spells lay-offs, which will be painful for the workers concerned, but ultimately beneficial if they end up engaged more productively than pushing up costs at a bank or utility, causing higher prices ultimately for everyone else.

The long period of having staff work at home — seemingly successfully — was an experiment that would otherwise not have been conducted.

Twitter has told its global workforce of 5000 they can work from home indefinitely. Expect banks to shrink their footprint to save on rent. Big business will slash spending on information technology too. For seven weeks almost none of it was necessary, as employees used their own.

Circumstances will force savings in any case, given big firms have in effect been excluded from JobKeeper (because of the tougher eligibility requirement of a 50 per cent revenue downturn) and their revenue is likely to fall along with economic activity.

For smaller businesses the wage subsidy is working in the opposite direction, keeping enterprises afloat that would have folded sooner, and probably still will once the payments cease.

For years, chief executives of large corporations have been banging on about the importance of being agile. Insofar as that means to operate more efficiently, the coronavirus crisis has made it an urgent priority.

SOURCE  

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




19 May 2020

Philosophy student, 20, claims he faces expulsion from Australian university for 'exposing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party'

A fourth-year philosophy student at the University of Queensland is facing the threat of expulsion this week after speaking out against the Chinese Communist Party.

Drew Pavlou is an elected member of the university's senate and is now facing 11 accusations of 'prejudicing the reputation' of the institution.

The 20-year-old led a series of campus demonstrations last year, in support of Hong-Kong's pro-democracy movement.

He also posted messages to social media criticising China's authoritarian regime and denounced the university's close financial ties with the Communist Party.

However the University of Queensland claim the breaches are not for criticising China but for positioning the statement's as if they were on behalf of the university.

Mr Pavlou believes he is being unfairly targeted.

'I am being threatened with this unprecedented move because of UQ's particularly close relationship with the Chinese party-state; UQ enjoys perhaps the closest relationship of any university with the Chinese government in the Anglosphere,' he wrote in an article for Foreign Policy.

'In addition to funding and controlling a Confucius Institute on campus, the Chinese government funds at least four accredited UQ courses that present a party-approved version of Chinese history to students, glossing over human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

'In addition to these state-backed courses, the Chinese consul general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, serves as an honorary professor at the university.'

Mr Pavlou recently took Mr Xu to court after being attacked at a rally by Chinese nationalists.

'In July 2019, I led a peaceful campus sit-in calling for UQ to completely cut ties with the Chinese state until Tibetans were freed, Uighur detention camps were closed, and Hong Kongers were afforded greater democracy,' he said.

'Masked pro-CCP heavies violently attacked our rally, assaulting me and choke-slamming other pro-Hong Kong students to the ground.'

Following the ugly incident, Mr Pavlou was named in a Chinese state media article by Mr Xu and accused of being 'anti-China'.

As a result, Mr Pavlou claims he then received death threats, unsettling phone calls and letters.

The University of Queensland said in a statement, it rejects the 'unsubstantiated' claims and is not attempting to prevent students from expressing their personal political views or trying to limit their right to freedom of speech.

'The University is an active defender of freedom of speech - it has adopted the principles of the French Model Code into its policy framework,' the statement said.

'Everyday life at UQ demonstrates our ongoing commitment to its protection and promotion.'

The university says any decision at the disciplinary hearing will be made on the basis of fact and evidence and that the process provides a fair and confidential course of action.

The University of Queensland has approximately 10,000 Chinese students bringing in about $150 million to the university in student fees each year.

SOURCE  





Qld premier nervous about reopening border

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has suggested Queensland's border with NSW may not be reopened for months.

"I would say that things would look more positive towards September," she told the ABC on Monday, when asked if a change by the end of May was likely.

The premier has promised to review the border closure at the end of each month.

On Sunday she warned it would be irresponsible to allow border crossings when there's still active community transmission of coronavirus in NSW and Victoria.

Asked about Queenslanders being allowed to visit the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia under a "travel bubble" arrangement, she said:

"I could see that happening before NSW and Victoria. But that's a matter for the premiers there as well."

Queensland's chief medical officer and the deputy premier will travel to Rockhampton on Monday as an aged care facility remains in coronavirus lockdown.

The premier has expressed great frustration with a nurse who kept working at the North Rockhampton Nursing Centre after developing symptoms, and while waiting for coronavirus test results.

"Everyone has a personal responsibility here to make sure that if they are sick, they are not turning up to work," she said on Monday.

A total of 235 staff and residents at the centre have been tested and cleared, with officials waiting on another 37 results.

But Deputy Premier and Heath Minister Stephen Miles says it will be another 12 days before everyone is in the clear.

SOURCE  





Coronavirus lockdown leaves skilled workers stuck in or out of Australia during pandemic

Hundreds of skilled migrants who have been living in Australia for years have been separated from their jobs, homes and even family members by the Australian Government's international travel bans.

Temporary visa holders who happened to be on overseas trips when the border closures came into force in March have been blocked from returning to their lives in Australia.

One Perth family has tried several times to secure a special travel exemption for their 16-year-old son, who they have been separated from for months.

The Fletcher family moved to Australia from the United Kingdom on sponsored work visas but their eldest son Taylor, 16, stayed behind to finish school exams.

Now, the Government will not let him join his parents as planned.

Despite four requests for leave to travel on compassionate grounds being lodged, the Federal Government has refused their son permission to fly to Australia to be with them.

"It's just hard because obviously I miss them, and I want to see them again, I want to see them as soon as I can," Taylor said.

Taylor's mother, Chloe Fletcher, said she had also written to Foreign Minister Marise Payne and WA Premier Mark McGowan, but still had no idea when she would see her son again.

"For any mother to be away from her child for that long — the pain's unbearable," Ms Fletcher said.

The lack of clear criteria for what counts as "compassionate" or "compelling" circumstances has frustrated torn families.

"I don't understand what the actual boundaries are, what makes a compassionate case," Ms Fletcher said. "There are no actual rules or regulations, so we don't know what category we fit into."

Under Australia's coronavirus restrictions on international travel, only citizens and permanent residents are allowed to return from overseas.

That meant many skilled work visa holders outside the country were instantly separated from long-term jobs, homes, partners and pets in Australia.

Holly Haskell rushed to England after her mother died in a car crash in March. She went through the trauma of identifying her mother's body, dealing with police investigations and organising the funeral.

As if that was not hard enough, the Australian Government's travel ban came in just days after the funeral, meaning she cannot get back to her home, job and friends in Melbourne.

She is still working for her Australian employer, doing her shifts in the middle of the night so she can operate in sync with Australian time zones.

Ms Haskell applied for and failed the Government's compassion test for return travel to Australia.

"When I got the declined result, it broke me," she said.  "Apart from work I didn't leave my bed for days. "It felt like in one night not only had my mum been taken from me but my whole life has now been taken from me."

Some temporary visa holders have been paying rent in two countries so they can hold on to their Australian residences, while others have been forced to up-end their homes from afar.

Travel industry worker Alexandra Skiba has lived in Sydney for two years but was visiting family in California when she learned she would not be allowed back in. "My friends are going into my apartment to pack it up for me," Ms Skiba said.

"My boyfriend is in Sydney and I don't know when I'll see him again. "It's heartbreaking to have a skilled visa and not even be considered as someone worthy of bringing back home. It's cruel."

Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said exemptions could be made in special circumstances, but the rules were clear. "We've closed our borders to everybody other than Australians who are returning and permanent residents who are returning," Mr Tudge said.

"That, to be honest, has been one of the most important things — if not the most important thing — that we've done in terms of getting control of this pandemic."

SOURCE  





Greenies often assure us that we will run out of food. David Littleproud claims Australia has the best food security in the world. Is he correct?

Rice, pasta and some canned foods sold out in the weeks after state and federal governments imposed restrictions and urged Australians to stay at home, with a sudden rush to stock up severely straining supply chains.

State and federal government ministers have said repeatedly that buying huge volumes of food and groceries is unnecessary, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison labelling panic buying "ridiculous" and "not sensible".

The National Farmers' Federation also sought to quell concerns about food shortages, telling consumers not to "panic" as there was "plenty of food to go around".

The Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management, David Littleproud, went so far as to declare that Australia "[has] the most secure food security in the world".

"We're a nation of 25 million people," Mr Littleproud told ABC Radio National's Afternoon Briefing program on May 11. "We produce enough food for 75 million."

Is that correct? Does Australia have "the most secure food security in the world"? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.

The verdict: Mr Littleproud's claim is in the ballpark.

According to many studies and experts, Australia enjoys a very high level of food security. The nation produces an abundance of food, exports far more than it needs, and has ample alternative sources of certain foods should they become scarce.

While Australia is not the top-ranked or "most" food-secure nation in the world, according to some comparisons, it nevertheless has plenty of flexibility in terms of food sources and could switch production priorities to alleviate shortfalls. One international comparison places Australia 12th among 113 nations in terms of food security.

Richard Heath, of the Australian Farm Institute, typified the response of the experts.

"By the most basic definition — which is, 'Are we at risk of starving because we cannot feed ourselves?' — we are so far from that, it's ridiculous," he said.

"When you consider the availability of irrigated-water area, the amount of arable land … we are a very secure nation in terms of food."

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






18 May 2020

Ensuring a safe workplace? None of your business

Perils of the tracing app

A person’s home is their castle, but their business is not. Your family and friends can be bossed around, but an employee or a flatmate cannot.

This is the illogical approach our federal government is taking with its confusing and draconian new rules around the COVIDSafe tracing app.

Don’t take this issue lightly; everyone must wade through the detail and avoid any breaches because the penalties are excessive.

The Privacy Amendment (Public Health Contact Information) Bill 2020 clarifies the offences that can be applied to anyone who might require a person to use the app.

The bill typifies the Morrison government’s authoritarian bent. It is confusing and contrary.

An action is either allowed or prohibited, depending on the type of premises a citizen is in when they take the action, as well as the type of relationship the citizen has with the person they take the action against.

The bill is unfair to commercial operators. The government has seen fit to place extraordinary restrictions on business, which is understandable in a pandemic. However, in the same pandemic, the government prohibits business from placing restrictions or requirements on employees and customers.

In a personal context, if a person doesn’t have the app, you may be able to deny them entry to your home. However, this depends on the nature of your relationship.

“A person will not be liable for this offence if they require a person to use COVIDSafe before entering their private residence, reflecting the normal expectation that a person is generally free to deny another person access to their home for any reason,” Attorney-General Christian Porter said this week.

So your home is your castle when it comes to family and friends. Your home is not your castle, though, if the person without the app is a flatmate or if a commercial relationship applies.

To clarify, I am told by the government that you are not allowed to insist a cleaning lady, for instance, must download the app, but you can deny her entry to your home if she doesn’t. Clear as mud?

Porter says “this exemption is limited — it would not apply to other situations covered by the offence involving a commercial relationship, such as a landlord-tenant relationship, a share house relationship or an employment relationship”.

When it comes to a business context, the government has decided that a business owner has fewer rights than a residential occupier.

If a person owns a business, the government thinks the business is not the person’s castle, because they are not free to deny another person access for any reason.

A person may own the building, may own the business, may have built it from nothing, and may have more invested in it than their home but, nevertheless, they are not allowed to insist their staff members have the app, or deny entry to someone without it.

Anyone who gets these rules wrong, in a personal or business context, can be fined $63,000 and sent to prison for five years. Imagine being sent to prison for telling someone they must download an app.

I guess this is the sort of nonsense we must expect when there are too many ex-lawyers in the political ranks.

This issue will prove to be of particular interest to our hospitality sector. As the industry attempts to emerge from an enforced shutdown, it will face extraordinary challenges.

During the period of closure, hospitality businesses incur fixed costs with zero revenue. Payment can be delayed but not denied; loans and losses won’t disappear once doors reopen, and many operators are fast approaching a debt cliff.

Your pre-pandemic favourite haunts cannot be taken for granted.

According to the Australian Hotels Association, which represents more than 5000 hotels, pubs, bars and taverns, the typical pub, before interest, wages and rent, has fixed costs of about $32,000 a month.

This includes $7000 a month on insurance, $10,000 on land tax and $3000 on electricity network charges, which apply even when all the power is turned off.

Spare a thought here for the venue owners.

They’ve been shut down and now, depending on which state they are in, they are being allowed to open with restrictions that may or may not make it viable.

On the one hand, they have their customers, who want service in a safe place; on the other, they have the layers of government, with all their demands, and somehow they need to earn enough to keep going and pay back all the debts incurred while shut down.

Finally, they must manage all this with the threat of public humiliation and closure should a staff member or patron come in while infected and cause a cluster to form.

And in all this they are not allowed, with the threat of prison, to make their premises as safe as possible by insisting that all staff and patrons have the app.

You may think this extreme, but a person who owns a business should be allowed to decide who they employ and who they serve.

Further, they should be allowed to make their premises more appealing by declaring it a safe place, to the extent that safety is possible.

SOURCE  





Coronavirus: Newmarch House nightmare exposes fatal flaws in care homes

During this pandemic, “We are all in this together” has been the morale-boosting slogan du jour. However, while we are patting ourselves on the back for our success in handling the pandemic, people in aged care have suffered this terrible illness and died alone.

They were the collateral damage of a system that herds old people together in institutions that we call care.

The outpouring of praise for aged-care workers by federal Health Minister Greg Hunt on Wednesday is all very well, but this is no substitute for the immediate questions that must be asked about Sydney’s Newmarch House and the whole model of an institutional system that has been found wanting.

As I know from bitter experience, the relatives of these people are probably too numb with grief and misplaced guilt to ask the questions that must be asked right now. However, the public deserves to know why the residents were not vacated from this facility and placed in isolation in hospital as soon as the first case was diagnosed. We know most of the intensive care wards around NSW are empty of COVID-19 patients, and a surge workforce at Newmarch was put in place only after three residents had already died.

Nursing infected patients within a hospital is very different from within a nursing home, where barriers were apparently so lax that infected people were being moved through common areas. Why were the families of residents kept out of communication, and why were those who tested negative not allowed to be removed by relatives, even to their own homes?

When the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission finally threatened to take away the institution’s licence, I, like many others, thought: “It’s about time.”

All these questions must be answered. However, blaming just one system failure in one institution or one set of bureaucrats is not going to be the answer here. The real underlying culprit is the aged-care system itself. We have come to rely too much on the institutional model of aged care in Australia. We have comforted ourselves with the idea that care in an institution equals real care. Blithe reassurances by politicians and the sector that “overall” they did a good job just don’t cut it.

I have had multiple experi­ences with institutional aged care. My parents were in not one but three institutions across a period of four years. All of these institutions were top quality, with all the latest facilities, kind staff, with reasonable staffing ratios. Of course, families always have to fill in the gaps, which was not a problem. Most of these places welcome the families and the best institutions regard their job as helping the family rather than the other way around. My husband and I even moved in for a week when my dad was dying, and we fed and nursed him ourselves. However, in every single one of these institutions there were problems, and none was the result of neglect or abuse but simply a result of the institutional mentality.

An aged person’s welfare is totally subsumed by the necessities of institutional life and its basic routine. In our experience, this led to my parents — married for 68 years — being separated in the first institution they were placed, simply because they had different needs. That is the way an institution is efficiently run, but needless to say they were moved to a place where they were not apart.

I came to see that long-term ­institutional care is fundamentally damaging to old people. First, their physical health is always precarious, and they are constantly exposed to some level of infection. No matter how clean the institutions are, minor infections — typically things such as eye infections — spread like wildfire and major ones are common, especially in large institutions. There are often minor epidemics. While my parents were in the last of the three places, there was a gastro outbreak. However, fundamentally, the major problem with institutional care is the subtle mental effect of isolation from a normal family and social milieu. Many experts have pointed to this.

Aside from the effects of sudden removal from their home where they have lived for decades, everyone in aged care is old. Think about it. The mostly young female staff do not interact with the residents in the same way as people would interact outside the institution. There is no real freedom.

The language we use betrays this. We speak of putting people intocare, and there they will stay. The principle of “ageing in place”, the preferred Australian institutional model, is somewhat ironic since the place is where they do indeed stay — with a few outings.

They mentally stagnate. In short, there is no chance to experience any normal life or social ­interaction — one of the most important bulwarks against progressive dementia.

So what can be done in a ­society where people are very loathe to look after their aged parents themselves? In 2018, a Flinders University-sponsored study found that smaller group housing produced much better physical and mental outcomes. This is pretty consistent with other overseas research and practice. However, the first thing is to give people who are generous enough to look after their own parents the proper support and incentives.

Countries that have the most innovative models of aged care have recognised the fundamental flaws in an institutional model. In many ­European countries, including France and Germany, which have family unit taxation systems, the elderly in a family are counted as double tax deductible. In other countries, respite care, both in the home or in a small institution, is also favoured.

Australia is behind the times in pushing a large institutional model of care for the aged. However, unfortunately, social workers and medical staff are fixated on it as the only outcome. I will never forget the bland fatalism of the doctor and social worker at the hospital where my mother was languishing long after a broken shoulder had healed, telling me that taking Mum home was not a good idea — because “after all, she is institutionalised now”.

SOURCE  






Tutoring industry slumps, with least-coached cohort to take next tests

Students sitting next year's selective school and opportunity class tests could be the least-tutored cohort to undertake the competitive exams, as fewer students receive academic coaching during the coronavirus pandemic.

Chief executive of the Australian Tutoring Association, Mohan Dhall, said the tutoring industry had taken a "massive hit" as centres were forced to suspend face-to-face teaching and parents paused discretionary spending during an economic downturn.

Leila Bunguric used to tutor face-to-face. She now runs her business online from her Lugarno home.
Leila Bunguric used to tutor face-to-face. She now runs her business online from her Lugarno home.CREDIT:BEN RUSHTON

The majority of centres have lost between 30 and 50 per cent of students since late March. Some have salvaged businesses by moving online and seen demand for digital services surge. A small minority have continued in-person tuition while others have closed altogether.

"Most centres have seen a massive downturn in student numbers and are struggling to get by," Mr Dhall said. This could give rise to the "least-coached" cohort sitting the next round of competitive entry tests to selective schools and opportunity classes.

"There will definitely be a difference in how students go. But I think that’s a healthy thing," he said.

Dux College, with centres in Bondi Junction and Parramatta, moved online but attendance dropped by 40 per cent.

"This is due to both students' financial situations being impacted, and their preference for face-to-face classes. There are also as much as 80 per cent fewer new inquiries than this time last term," a spokeswoman said.

Fifty per cent of Alchemy Tuition students stopped tutoring in the two weeks following lockdown restrictions in late March. New bookings were also down 30 per cent in April.

"We are an in-home service and even as far back as February we had some parents cautious of having people come in to their home," chief Nic Rothquel said. "As family budgets tighten up, they are less willing to spend the money on extra support."

Mr Dhall said he anticipated a slow recovery for the industry. "On the other side, there will be fewer good operators. Those who understand learning well will thrive, but a lot of businesses will not continue," he said.

Leila Bunguric runs separate online and face-to-face tutoring businesses. She has observed a small decline in face-to-face appointments but a surge in digital interest. "The website has had an increase in sales and schools requesting access to our resources," she said.

But Mr Dhall said while some businesses had moved online effectively, most were traditional in the way they tutor. "Some are doing three-hour online classes where the tutor is speaking at them, with notes on PDF," he said.

"Kids are experiencing very mixed results from online learning. The transition has been hotchpotch at best, or ill-considered and reactive. It then becomes a disappointing learning experience."

Some centres are optimistic. Kumon coaching college has been providing digital instruction while distributing paper worksheets through pick-up or postage services.

Its enrolments were down 10 per cent in April, but it expects to see an increase in demand when schools go back. "Parents will naturally be concerned that their children’s progress in maths and English has possibly declined throughout this disruptive period," a spokesman said.

Other operators are stepping into the vacuum left by the closure of many tuition centres, offering free content, online resources or scholarships to new students.

Tony Hanlon, national director of teaching at North Shore Coaching Colleges Australia, said there had been a drop in attendance but it had been "really great to trial new delivery modes".

Majeda Awawdeh, founder of Global Education Academy, said while some parents had been hesitant about online delivery, they were getting new enrolments from interstate.

SOURCE  




Full-time school to put extra pressure on transport, roads

Principals are bracing for public schools to return to full-time teaching on Monday week, but there are concerns about how a transport system already nearing its safe social distancing capacity will cope with an influx of thousands more students.

The government will reveal the next stage of its back-to-classroom plan in the next few days, but has already flagged it wants all students back by month's end. "That is still our goal, and our hope," said Education Minister Sarah Mitchell on Friday.

A public transport plan is also expected this week, to explain how the system will cope with thousands of students who travel long distances by public transport or car every day. At some popular schools, students travel from 150 different postcodes.

Last Wednesday, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the staged return to school was progressing well. "We anticipate that after next week there is a chance the vast majority of students will be back to face to face learning."

Principals are hoping for details soon, so they can prepare. They have not been formally informed of changes to the original plan, which was to move from one to two days per week, but "we're expecting to skip that [two-day] phase, and go directly to full time [on May 25]," one principal said.

Even when students began returning back for one day of face-to-face teaching last Monday, many stayed for more, said Primary Principals Association President Phil Seymour. "As the week went on, [primary schools] got more and more kids," he said. "The parents were saying they loved it so much, they wanted to keep going.

"Principals are saying, 'if it's going to happen, let's get into it' - just give us some notice so we can get ready. I think it will go back into full production." Across the whole public system last week, numbers were steady at about a third of students on campus daily.

Late last week, Ms Berejiklian asked workers who were not already using public transport to avoid it during peak hour (which runs from 7am to 11am), amid concerns that mass transit systems drove the spread of COVID-19 overseas.

There were also concerns about 'carmageddon', if those commuters drove to work instead.

But school students are heavy users of public transport. NSW Department of Education figures show that at some popular selective schools, such as Sydney Boys and Girls, students come from about 150 different postcodes across the city.

Others travel long distances to private schools, while almost half of students at public secondary schools live outside their catchment areas. School buses are exempt from social distancing guidelines, but many students use trains.

School-related travel also represents about a fifth of vehicle traffic on the roads during term time.

Geoffrey Clifton, a transport expert at the University of Sydney, said the government's transport plan needed to factor in schools, given social distancing rules might limit trains to a third of their seated capacity, or about 33 people per carriage.

"[Students] make up a fair portion of the peak hour," he said. "If parents who would have let their kids go on public transport decide to drive them to school, that's going to have an impact on the road network.

"I'd recommend that [if school resumes full time on] the 25th of May, as many adults work from home as they can, to give it some space to function. If we declare that a work from home day, at least in the first couple of days we'd work out what's working and not working."

SOURCE  

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





17 May 2020

The remarkable reason why Bunnings hardware store has been spared from a devastating coronavirus outbreak

Bunnings may have been spared from becoming a coronavirus hotspot because the layout of their stores provides significant space for customers and staff. 

Contact tracing studies from China have revealed rates of infection were higher among friends, family and relatives who live together or those who work in confined spaces such as offices and restaurants. 

Bunnings and other retailers may have avoided infections because aisles, walkways and checkouts are placed far apart.

Alongside enforcing strict social distancing and hygiene measures, the layout of Bunnings provides significant space between customers which limits close interactions.

Muge Cevik, a physician and scientist at Scotland's University of St Andrews' School of Medicine, examined the studies from China which looked at the close contacts of coronavirus cases as of May 4.

She posted a thread on Twitter and used this data to explain why retailers have low infection rates despite operating through the pandemic and serving thousands of customers.

'The risk is highest in enclosed environments; household, long-term care facilities and public transport,' Dr Cevik said.

'High infection rates seen in household, friend and family gatherings, transport suggest that closed contacts in congregation is likely the key driver of productive transmission.

'Casual, short interactions are not the main driver of the epidemic though keep social distancing.'

Although she came to this conclusion, Dr Cevik said it was based on limited data.

Canberra Hospital infectious disease physician Professor Peter Collignon said even though retailers and supermarkets are considered enclosed spaces, hygiene measures and social distancing have reduced infection numbers.

'I think it makes a lot of difference,' Prof Collignon told news.com.au.

He said research found infections in enclosed spaces were up to 20 per cent more likely to occur in places where people spend a significant amount of time with each other.

'Customers are in the stores for a short period of time,' Prof Collignon said. 

Prof Collignon said the customers don't seem to be getting infected, but the main risk comes from staff spreading it to other staff members.

'All of those things reinforce that if you are close together, without adequate face protection, you are more at risk,' he said.  

SOURCE  






Brisbane opens up -- in groups of 10

Women have flocked to nail salons for manicures and pedicures while others have enjoyed the sunshine with a day at the park as coronavirus restrictions continue to ease across Queensland.

Almost every seat was taken at salons in Brisbane on Saturday morning, as customers deprived of professional nail care since the country went into lockdown on March 25 rushed in for a touch up.

Beauty and nail salons can open for a maximum of ten people at a time while home opens and auctions can resume along with general retail.

Cafes, public parks and playgrounds also buzzed with activity as Queenslanders headed outside to embrace the sunshine.

Restaurants and cafes can now have up to 10 people dine in, while groups of 10 can congregate outside for recreational purposes as the state emerges from isolation.

'It is great to see some familiar faces returning,' Coffee Club manager Kaili Yang told AAP as she took orders from a pair of jovial regular customers at their favourite table.

The Brisbane cafe in the leafy inner-city suburb of Ascot was among the many that opened their doors to customers on Saturday.

The eased restrictions also saw exercise classes returning to the city's New Farm Park, where fitness trainer Chris Tuck coached his first group in 10 weeks.

'It's awesome to be back together again feeding off each other's energy," he said of the six people he had just finished training.

Many families are also out and about as children clamber into playgrounds that had also been closed to control the spread of the virus.

'She is loving it,' mother-of-two Jo Williams said as she pushed her four-year-old daughter Hannah on a swing in the same park.

'Both the kids have missed the outdoor activity and interacting with children.'

A maximum of 10 people can now also attend a wedding, while up to 20 are permitted at indoor funerals, and 30 at those held outside.

Road trips are also back on the agenda with residents allowed to travel up to 150km from home, increasing to 500km for those in the outback.

It comes as the state recorded just one new COVID-19 case overnight after a passenger from the Coral Princess cruise ship tested positive. It brings the total number of cases diagnosed to 1055.

Just 13 remain active, five of these are in hospital with three in intensive care. Six Queenslanders have died from coronavirus.

Health minister Steven Miles said the continued low number of new cases, which were mostly people returning from overseas, suggested the first round of easing on social distancing measures two weeks ago had not led to increased transmission of the virus.

'That gives us great confidence going into today,' he told reporters.

Meanwhile, 193 people have been tested for COVID-19 in central Queensland after a nurse working at a Rockhampton aged care facility was diagnosed with the disease on Friday.

All have returned negative results, including 114 residents at the North Rockhampton Nursing Centre, where the nurse worked.

Mr Miles said it was the best result that could have been hoped for but work continues at the facility to reduce the risk of the virus spreading.

Chief health officer Jeannette Young said the case highlighted why the community needed to stay vigilant.

She said the eased social distancing restrictions could allow the virus to spread more easily in the community.

'Which is why we must all - all 5.1 million Queenslanders - must every morning when they get up think, have they got any symptoms,' she said.

'If you do, stay home and go and get tested.'

SOURCE  






Left demands global action but cringes before Beijing

The China debate is playing out through a tired and lazy cultural cringe that infects our politics, particularly on the left, and is based on an unwarranted inferiority complex that is deeply embedded in our cultural life. This makes it all too easy for some to slip into a kowtowing posture.

To advance our nation’s interests it is vital to understand its strengths and vulnerabilities, and to have a firm sense of our place in the world along with that of other nations. In my time working with then foreign minister Alexander Downer he bristled at the description of Australia by politicians and academics as a “little country” or even a “middle power” and insisted we were, in fact, a “significant” country.

Speaking to Asialink in Melbourne in December 2005, he confronted this head on. “We’re not a little country — we’re a country with significant strengths and resources,” he said, noting our distinct characteristics and values. “Australia is a significant country, with global interests and not just a regional player.”

This is more than rhetoric — the UN has 193 member nations and Australia ranks as the 14th largest economy, the sixth largest land mass, with a population ranked about 50th and a military assessed as the 15th most powerful. Look at it this way: on such metrics, we sit in the 90th percentile of nations.

Forgive me for harbouring an old-fashioned but well-founded sense of national pride, but it seems to me that people who sit in our parliament ought to share this sense of place. We are, after all, one of the world’s oldest and most successful democracies, with more than our share of Nobel prizes, Olympic medals, Bookers, Oscars and Grammys.

But when Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh was asked this week why we should not take up our trade disputes directly with Beijing rather than defer immediately to the World Trade Organisation, we got one of those cringe-worthy moments. “But what’s the alternative for a country that makes up 0.3 per cent of the world population?” whined Leigh. “If it comes to muscular one-on-ones, then a country the size of Australia will lose every time.”

This exposes a key problem with our foreign policy debate — sure, there is ideology at play, commercial interests, and more than a little politics, but the core dilemma is that inferiority complex. The same people who argue we should lead the world on climate change or spit in the face of Donald Trump go wobbly when we dare put our case to China. And it is not all about might, because the same protagonists also run anti-Australia lines when they come from Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur or even Dili.

The predisposition to take the foreign side against Australia has become a defining characteristic of the left. For much of last century this might have been explained in ideological terms, fuelled by anti-American fervour.

Now, we can see the Cold War hangover but it is infused with a dose of 21st-century identity politics. This is the self-loathing of those who prefer shame about a white, Christian and Anglo nation in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than pride in a multicultural success story, founded through British institutions in a land of indigenous heritage, that helps to forge a better world.

Leigh told the ABC that Scott Morrison should not have suggested an independent investigation into the origins of a pandemic that has killed 300,000 people and sideswiped the global economy. “When you act on your own,” said Leigh, “you do find yourself being back in that realm that John Howard found himself in with the infamous deputy sheriff statement.”

This “deputy sheriff” taunt was used by former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans as well. Back at the Chinese embassy, it would have brightened the spirits of the ambassador, Cheng Jingye, who finally had a pleasing cable to send back to Beijing.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews boasts about his state’s commitment to China’s Belt and Road initiative, an international infrastructure and influence scheme that our federal government — which has carriage of ­foreign relations — has chosen to avoid. The states need to stay out of such matters and stick to their constitutional priorities.

Just weeks ago Cheng was threatening us for raising a COVID-19 investigation. “The tourists may have second thoughts,” he told The Australian Financial Review. “Maybe the parents of the students would also think whether this place, which they find is not so friendly, even hostile, is the best place to send their kids to. So, it’s up to the public, the people to decide. And, also, maybe the ordinary people will think why they should drink Australian wine or eat Australian beef?”

China has since banned imports from four of our abattoirs, hiked tariffs on our barley and heightened post-pandemic fears for our wine, tourism and university sectors. With this unfolding, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she was worried about a trade war and would write to the federal government to urge it to avoid one.

Say what? Is Australia the problem here? At least West Australian Premier Mark McGowan, despite mouthing similar concerns, had the good sense to lobby the Chinese consul-general as well as Canberra. Business leaders with deep commercial links to China, such as Kerry Stokes and Andrew Forrest, constantly urge Canberra to button up. What price our national values?

This is not to underplay the trade concerns. But if we do not want to be subservient and eternally bullied, we need to stand up for ourselves.

The contradiction inherent in the interventions of Leigh and Evans is that they claim when Australia independently speaks for national and global interests we are seen as a lapdog of the US. But presumably if we hide ­behind the skirts of the Statue of Liberty, the G20 or UN, and go along with whatever multilateral entreaties emerge, we will be perceived as ­independent. This is a nonsense.

As a former US ambassador, director-general of ASIO, secretary of Defence and of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Dennis Richardson has a broader and deeper grasp of these issues than most. He told me recently on Sky News that Cheng’s threats were “blunt, unnecessary and foolish” and the government had a “legitimate interest” along with the rest of the world in a proper inquiry, which would happen only with “a lot of behind-the-scenes activity”. He said we were “not an outwardly patriotic country” but when threatened we were “pretty determined” and “Australia is not going to be intimidated by threats of that kind”. Let us hope he is right.

The previous month I interviewed former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr who, to be fair, backed some sort of inquiry but he quickly segued to America. “I think there are lessons to be learned all over, I mean at the very start of this, when we knew what it was, we were dealing with a virus, Fox News, a vital media outlet in the US, was saying this was a conspiracy and we had … a US President who was getting up in his very entertaining press confer­ences saying it was no more dangerous than the seasonal flu.”

This was a bizarre attempt to draw equivalence between China’s dastardly denials — ­allowing a virus to spread around the world for at least a month ­before issuing alerts — and the US which, like many countries, was caught short, underestimating the seriousness of the pandemic, partly because of Beijing’s deceptions. Such diversions serve no purpose other than to ease pressure on China. Thankfully, the Australian Workers Union is speaking sense, writing to the Prime Minister urging him to resist Beijing’s bullying. This unusually useful union intervention seems to have injected a bit of titanium into the spines of some Labor MPs, while creating internal divisions.

Beijing will be pleased at some aspects of our debate: the US alliance raised as a bargaining chip; Labor and the unions splitting; big business cleaving away from the Coalition; and the states taunting Canberra. It is not too much to ask for all our politicians to readily argue a pro-Australian case.

“The fault here is with Beijing and the Chinese government,” says Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Michael Shoebridge. “China repressed information, prevented action and didn’t ask for international help and they inflicted suffering and death on their own people and the rest of the world — that’s why they don’t want this inquiry. But that’s exactly why the Prime Minister was right to call for it.”

SOURCE  






How COVID-19 exposed the fault lines in Australian education

In the past month, Australian parents have watched Commonwealth and state leaders brawling over whether schools should remain open. They have seen those same leaders struggle to control the three school sectors, which have different masters and divergent interests. And they have witnessed the stark inequity all this division has created, all while having an unprecedented insight into their child's learning over the kitchen table. They have been left anxious, confused, and wondering how all this high-level division and bureaucracy actually helps their kids.

If there is a silver lining to the COVID-19 school dramas, some hope it will be a new resolve to tackle problems that have been festering, and to change the habits of decades. "Just because it's hard, doesn't mean we shouldn't try," says one. But others fear the issues are so deeply entrenched in the structure of government, not even the pandemic will be a catalyst for change. "In the end it seems like a close call," says another. "It has highlighted the frailties of the system, but has not been bad enough to make it collapse in on itself."

The coronavirus crisis has reminded Australians of the vital role schools play in society. They are essential to the economy, not just because they allow parents to work, but because they educate the workers of the future. They are a safe place for our most vulnerable kids, and they bring the community together. When schools shut, everything shuts, which is why Prime Minister Scott Morrison has fought so hard to keep them open. But he came up against an insurmountable hurdle; the Australian Constitution.

States run schools, not the Commonwealth. That's why each attempt by Morrison and education minister Dan Tehan to get their way - by directly urging parents to send their children to class despite the premier's instructions, or accusing Victorian Premier Dan Andrews of taking a sledgehammer to his state's education (an accusation Tehan later withdrew) - has ended with them backing down. It is the issue that has most threatened the unity of national cabinet.

That powerlessness has been a frustration for federal politicians over decades; they spend so much money on schools but have such little influence over them. "There is perennial dysfunction in federal-state relations," says one close observer, who does not want to be named. "The best case scenario is almost always that the states go through the accountability motions, which is itself distracting and sucks up resources, and do what they were going to do anyway."

Adrian Piccoli, a former NSW Education Minister, says the Commonwealth has one, blunt tool at its disposal to influence schools. "It's called money," he says. The federal government makes funding conditional on reforms, then the states "spend a lot of time working out how to get the money without doing it," Piccoli says. Failed Commonwealth initiatives include the independent public schools push, and repeated attempts to introduce performance pay for teachers. Tehan has so far only had two takers in his attempt to introduce phonics checks around the country.

Co-operation has improved recently; there are now national teaching standards, and a national curriculum (although NSW and Victoria kept their own). But debate continues over whether they have been useful, or just create another tangle of bureaucracy. "I don't know at what point we will stop pretending that the federal government can significantly improve schools," says Ben Jensen, chief executive of education consultancy Learning First.

In the past few years, the Commonwealth has also formalised its role as the main funder of non-government schools, which has made it "much more directly involved in funding some sectors of schooling than almost anywhere else in the economy," says Peter Goss, School Education Program Director at the Grattan Institute.

Federal politicians - particularly Coalition ones - have encouraged the growth of the private school sector because they encourage parental choice. Some also believe they want to use the private systems - which are regulated but not run by states - to extend their influence over schooling.

"[Private schools] are in between [the two governments] - not really accountable to anyone," says one insider.

But that hasn't worked either. Private schools might doff their cap to governments, and co-operate on policy issues, but they will ultimately make decisions in the interest of their own students - as highlighted in the COVID-19 crisis when Victorian private schools rebuffed federal Education Minister Dan Tehan's attempt to use money to get them to defy the premier, and again when their NSW counterparts ignored the NSW government's plan to return students to school in favour of their own. "We now see some of the consequences of that support for independent schools," says Goss. "They are harder [for governments] to control."

That has ramifications for public schools, too. The public school sector feels pressure to match the approach of private schools, lest it be seen to have lower standards. Private schools have influenced government policy a few times during the pandemic; back in January, the NSW Department of Education backflipped on its plan to allow students returning from China - where the virus had taken hold in Wuhan - to go straight back to school after private schools asked them to stay home for two weeks. Earlier this month, NSW public schools scrambled to bring back year 12 because private schools did it first.

But even within the government sector, many argue that the COVID-19 crisis has shown how little influence state education chiefs have over their own schools. When NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian asked parents to keep their children home on March 23, teachers in NSW public schools rushed their lessons online. While the department developed a website featuring guidelines, templates and training material for teachers and parents, each school had to develop their own strategy.

"We need to ask really big questions about why we haven't had any economies of scale and quality assurance [during remote learning]," says Rachel Wilson, an associate professor of education at Sydney University. "The teachers are killing themselves doing lesson planning, while they should be given material that's quality-assured, and spending their time working on their relationships with students."

Critics say this was the result of years of cutting back central education departments, and shifting most responsibilities to schools. There are many benefits to school flexibility, but it also means that in a time of crisis the department - which has been running distance education for 100 years - can no longer swiftly intervene at school level.

"What we've seen in COVID-19 is weak central systems, which have often not had the ability to provide a high-quality starting point for how to move online - or how to bring kids back in [to the classroom]," says Goss. "They've had to figure it out by themselves. I fear we are about to see this play out again, as schools reopen."

NSW Department of Education Secretary Mark Scott rejected suggestions the department's response was inadequate. "The feedback we've had overwhelmingly has been gratitude for the creation of that learning from home website - the traffic around that has been absolutely enormous," he says. "There's been more traffic to that ... than there was to the NSW Health website in the heat of the pandemic, because of the quality of support that was provided."

Within all this, the deeply entrenched inequities in Australia's school system have become more pronounced. While some schools had top-notch online learning systems ready to launch, others have had to scramble to not only furnish their students with laptops and internet access, but give them tables and chairs. In some more disadvantaged areas, schools - both public and private - also delivered food to their students, knowing that the only decent meals they received where the ones they were fed at school.

"Some schools were able to pivot rapidly and extensively," says Paul Kidson, an education academic at the University of Wollongong and a former independent school principal. "They were well prepared, they could roll stuff out, flick switches. Other schools were struggling to provide that support at school, let alone deliver it remotely. That's a funding issue, but it does go to the core of how structural inequities were just reinforced at a moment like this."

The problems frustrating the education sector for years they have been thrust into the spotlight by COVID-19, not only via headlines about the high-level battles between governments and sectors, but by the unprecedented insight millions of parents have had into their own children's education, as they helped them with lessons. "If you can take any positive out of this whole experience, is that schools are front of mind for a lot of people now," says Piccoli.

Dr Jensen argues the parental insight into their child's everyday classroom activities could be the most significant by-product of the COVID-19 crisis. "It's shone a light on the weeds of teaching and learning - that is where teachers live, and where all the hard work is done," he says. "Education policy has not gone into the weeds for a decade-and-a-half. We have been hopping out of providing support at that level, and instead all this money is going into the high-level stuff."

While observing the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis in Canberra, Kidson has spied an opportunity for reform. If the national cabinet has carefully considered the advice of medical experts during this time of crisis, without ideology or agenda, could it not do the same for education in a post-pandemic world? "There has been this profound respect and honouring of the professional knowledge," he says. "Put aside partisan politics, put that aside for the national good. This serves as a blueprint of what can be the case. Just because it's hard, doesn't mean we shouldn't try."

For Piccoli, COVID-19 has provided yet another argument for Australia following the lead of Canada, and dumping the federal education ministry altogether - a proposal also outlined by former Coalition opposition leader John Hewson last week. "In Canada, the provinces run their own systems, and to me that kind of competitive federalism is most effective," says Piccoli. "Each jurisdiction learns off the other ones, from their successes and failures.

"When you try to standardise things, in education or anywhere else, I don't think it works as well. NSW had a basic skills test, and the other states wanted to do the same thing, so they made it national [in the form of NAPLAN]. But once it's national, you can't change it. National bodies should set a strategy, and state regulators should be responsible for the implementation of that strategy."

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 May 2020

Australia’s staggering virus reversal

A vital figure has improved by more than 900 per cent since the peak of the pandemic in Australia.

Australia has recorded a staggering virus reversal, with the number of hospital patients with coronavirus falling almost 900 per cent since early April.

Health officials revealed on Wednesday there were just 50 people fighting COVID-19 in hospital, well down on the 448 recorded just five weeks ago.

But experts have urged people not to get too complacent, especially as states and territories gradually begin to ease their restrictions.

Australia is considered the envy of the world for successfully flattening the curve and maintaining a relatively low rate of virus cases and deaths.

While the United States and United Kingdom continue to struggle with the pandemic, the Australian government has unveiled a three-step plan to lift restrictions and move towards a “new normal”.

More than 900,000 tests have been carried out around the country since the pandemic began, and yesterday the whole country recorded just 13 new cases. The number of active cases has fallen to 700 nationwide.

But state premiers and health experts have stressed that people must continue to practice social distancing measures and get tested for the virus if they feel unwell.

At a press conference this morning, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it was important that people continue to get tested. "Please know that many of us will need to get tested multiple times," she said.

"If you have a symptom and you get tested and you're negative, in a few weeks' time you might feel unwell again, you need to come forward and get tested again. "Do not just assume that once you get tested and it's negative that you are cleared. Quite the contrary. If you develop symptoms at a later date, you do need to come forward and get tested again."

Australia’s death toll rose to 98 on Wednesday after an 81-year-old passenger from the Ruby Princess died in NSW.

Meanwhile, Labor has said the Government is putting livelihoods at risk by not expanding the job subsidy program JobSeeker to more people who need it.

The federal opposition argued university and aviation staff should be entitled to it, as both sectors have been hit hard by the virus-driven shutdown.

In addition, shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned the government to “be smart” about cutting off JobKeeper on its six-month deadline of September 27. “If you need to target it, if you need to taper it, if you need to do different things for different industries or for different kinds of workers, then put something on the table,” Dr Chalmers said. “But don’t just assume that everything’s going to be fine one day in September.”

A key factor in reopening the economy – the COVIDSafe app – is now doing its tracing work after all states and territories signed up to privacy and security protections.

Five medical practitioners who are also MPs are set to throw their weight behind the app, which is now in the pockets of 5.6 million Australians.

David Gillespie, Katie Allen, Mike Freelander, Richard Di Natale and Andrew Laming will jointly plead for greater support for the app in Canberra on Thursday morning.

SOURCE  





Coalition crackdown on class action suits

The attorney-general is squaring up for a fight with the class action industry and the litigation funders that bankroll claims on behalf of groups of people.

Litigation funders who bankroll class action lawsuits are coming under the microscope amid concerns they claw back too much of the final settlements from successful cases.

Attorney-General Christian Porter says many litigation funders are taking up to 30 per cent of legal settlements, leaving members of class actions to fight over the scraps once legal fees and costs are paid.

"This industry is demonstrating outcomes that cannot be said to be consistent with the interests of justice of the litigants," he told parliament on Wednesday.

A coalition-led parliamentary inquiry will examine the impact of class actions on businesses hit by the coronavirus.

It will also look at the relationship between litigation funders and lawyers acting for class action members, and the impact of a Victorian plan to allow lawyers to charge contingency fees.

Mr Porter said class actions had tripled over the past decade, with median returns to members dropping to 51 per cent when litigation funders were involved. When funders weren't involved, the median return was 85 per cent.

"Why would we not inquire into that phenomenon?" Mr Porter said.

Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the inquiry was a shameless attempt to protect the government's big business mates.

"The biggest source of new class action cases in 2019 came from consumer actions arising from the banking royal commission," Mr Dreyfus told parliament. "The same royal commission that the government voted against 26 times."

He said class action suits provided a vital path to justice for ordinary Australians.

Mr Dreyfus said the government had yet to respond to a 2018 Australian Law Reform Commission report on litigation funding.
"And why? Because that independent report ... didn't give the government the answers that it wanted," he said.

Earlier this year, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and two affiliated companies were ordered to pay $2.6 million in damages to three women at the centre of a class action on faulty pelvic mesh implants.

The federal government will also pay $212.5 million to settle three class actions launched by victims of toxic firefighting contamination.

Mr Dreyfus said it was no coincidence the inquiry was announced just days after victims of the government's robodebt scheme signed up to a class action.

Major employer body Australian Industry Group welcomed the new probe. "The inquiry needs to investigate the outrageous levels of returns that litigation funders (many of which are overseas firms) are receiving," chief executive Innes Willox said.

SOURCE  






Suicide prevention modelling considered

They are right to see mental health as the next big problem but the idea that government can do anything about it is laughable

As virus restrictions begin to ease, many are breathing a sigh of relief – but for thousands of Aussies, the most dangerous time is still to come.

“We need to continue to support others as they are at home because loneliness and anxiety, depression, they're all real and they're all potential consequences of the good things that people have been doing,” Health Minister Greg Hunt told Today this morning.

The University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre (BMC) last week released its modelling of the adverse impacts of COVID-19 on unemployment, social dislocation and mental health, resulting in a “tragically higher rate” of suicide which may increase if the economy deteriorates further.

“The modelling shows that there may be a 25 per cent increase in suicides, and it is likely that about 30 per cent of those will be among young people,” it said in a joint statement with leading Australian mental health experts.

“We are facing a situation where between an extra 750 and 1500 more suicides may occur annually, in addition to the 3000 plus lives that are lost to suicide already every year.

“Such a death rate is likely at this stage to overshadow the number of deaths in Australia directly attributable from to COVID-19 infection.”

The statistic of 1500 deaths, being a more than 50 cent rise in suicides, was the result of a worst-case scenario modelling an unemployment rate of 15.9 per cent and youth unemployment at almost 35 per cent.

The centre focused on the NSW North Coast Primary Health Network, using the region's 530,000 people and a combination of suicide statistics and productivity data to get an idea of the “national picture”.

The link between the mental wellbeing of Australians and our economic performance is “often overlooked”, co-lead of the BMC’s new Centre for Mental Wealth, Associate Professor Jo-An Atkinson, said today.

The modelling considered scenarios where specialised mental health services were increased by two to 11 per cent per year, based on pre-COVID-19 capacity.

Within that sector are mental health GPs, psychiatrists, allied health professionals such as specialist social workers and community mental health services.

Researchers found an eight to 10 per cent reduction in suicide, self-harm hospitalisation and emergency department (ED) presentations could be achieved by investment in a combination of specialised mental health services, IT-enabled co-ordinated care and post-suicide attempt "assertive after-care" such as active outreach and enhanced contact to someone after an attempt.

This investment hypothetically prevented 53 suicide deaths, 669 suicide attempts and 4516 emergency department presentations over five years in the NSW north coast region alone.

“This would translate over the five years to 2650 lives saved, 33,450 fewer suicide attempts and 225,800 fewer presentations to EDs nationwide (if similar conditions apply),” the centre said in a statement on Wednesday.

It also found that without urgent and effective action, up to half a billion dollars in productivity losses would be directly attributable to mental health and suicide in a “coronavirus-impacted world”.

BMC co-director of health and policy, Professor Ian Hickie, wants to see mental health services strengthened with the same sense of urgency as ICU beds were more than doubled for the pandemic.

“In the same way that hospital beds and intensive care capacity were increased in preparation for COVID-19 cases, the national capacity to provide rapid and effective care for those with a mental health crisis can be increased immediately,” he said in a statement today.

“We now need to be smart about tackling the mental health curve.”

Last week, Prof Hickie told ABC 7.30 it had been “entirely possibly to actually predict deaths by suicide”, just as fatalities from the coronavirus itself were forecast, “by modelling those factors we know will lead to deaths, particularly in young people”. “All of these have gone through the roof in the last six weeks,” he said.

Today, in regards to the latest modelling, he urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to ensure young people do not suffer “lifetime consequences” of the economic downturn.

“The results show ... different levels of investment in mental health programs and services will play a vital role in supplementing efforts to increase community connectedness and the social and economic supports required to help flatten this curve,” Prof Hickie said.

“We need to be proactive about mental health, and learn from the past but also look to the future.”

The federal government today appointed a deputy chief medical officer for mental health, Associate Professor Ruth Vine, previously Victoria’s chief psychiatrist.

“We take this very seriously," Mr Hunt said. “That's why we're trying to get ahead of the curve with mental health in just the same way we have done with the virus.  “We are certainly not out of the woods with the virus … but equally with mental health.”

Prof Hickie described it as a “most significant step forward” and said Dr Vine was an “excellent choice”.

“Greg Hunt has put mental ill-health on the same level as physical ill-health in the post-COVID-19 world,” he said.

Professor Patrick McGorry, the executive director of youth mental health centre Orygen, told the ABC the meeting of state and territory leaders on Friday would be a “watershed” moment. “It’ll be a test of National Cabinet’s commitment to this,” he said.

SOURCE  





China export ban threats could be saved by Australia’s baby formula industry

The dairy industry will meet with agriculture minister David Littleproud in a phone hook-up from Canberra on Wednesday night, to discuss a possible threat to one of Australia’s key exports.

As relations continue to deteriorate between Australia and China, an export industry worth $1.1 billion a year may be in jeopardy.

But Graham Forbes, president of the Dairy Connect farmers’ committee, told 7NEWS.com.au while the growing conflict in Canberra is concerning, the industry is pinning its hopes on China’s enduring love affair with Australian powdered gold; baby formula.

“Of course farmers are concerned about the situation but we’re trying not to jump to any conclusions,” he said.  “We have to establish whether (these threats) are fair dinkum or just speculation.”

Forbes said the industry was hoping China’s consistent enthusiasm for high-quality milk powder and ready-to-use baby formula will insulate dairy farmers from the growing war of words between Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye.

On Tuesday, China announced a suspension of beef imports from four major Australian abattoirs in an escalation of trade tensions between the two nations.

While the temporary ban was attributed to “labelling issues” by the Australian Meat Industry Council, it came on top of a threat to lob an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley, ostensibly over allegations of systematic dumping.

But the string of threats and actual suspensions are being viewed in some diplomatic and political circles as retribution for Morrison’s ongoing lobbying on the international stage for an independent inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve had no official confirmation of action against the industry yet,” Forbes told 7NEWS. “But given the barley and beef, well, it has implications.  “We’re just hoping it all doesn’t run off the rails.”

Australia exports more than 30 per cent of the dairy it produces, including cheese, butter and milk as well as milk powder and formula. One third of all of it goes to China, our biggest trading partner.

The figures are strikingly similar to another export industry now perceived to be under threat because of the diplomatic stoush with China.

Tony Battaglene, the chief executive of the wine industry’s peak body, Australian Grape and Wine, said product to China made up more than one-third of its total exports, worth $1.1 billion a year.

“We’re always nervous when there is potential for disruptions, and the coronvirus has made the market even more nervous,” he said. “But we’ve been trading with China for a long time, so I’m hoping we’ll stay in a reasonably good place.”

Battaglene said he was inclined to agree with recent comments made by past and present Labor figures, including Kevin Rudd, Gareth Evans and Joel Fitzgibbon. ‘We would prefer political and diplomatic issues remain behind closed doors.’

They have accused the Morrison government of jeopardising relations with our largest trading partner by engaging in “chest beating” and “sabre rattling” over the issue of an independent inquiry into the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the Hubei province of central China, and an alleged cover-up by the Chinese government concealing the true extent of the outbreak in the early months.

Chinese business management academic Professor Hans Hendrischke from the University of Sydney Business School said talk of trade sanctions between China and Australia based on political grievances were premature.

“China is careful to insist the current trade restrictions are linked to technical issues,” he said.  “This leaves the door open for a solution through government to government dialogue.”

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






14 May 2020

High noon for cashed-up cowboys of class actions

Wednesday may mark the beginning of the end for the predator’s picnic that is Australia’s litigation funding industry. If all goes to plan, the Morrison government will ask the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services to take a close look at Australia’s ­escalating class action industry, examining especially the role of litigation funders and lawyers’ contingency fees.

The inquiry is so overdue it’s not funny. When a new asset class provides returns on invested capital of 390 per cent, and an internal rate of return of 624 per cent, that ought to be a big fat clue that something is awry.

Welcome to Australia’s litigation funding industry, where Omni Bridgeway, formerly IMF Bentham, confessed to these astronomical returns in the Murray Goulburn class action in its public filings. And that was after the court slapped down the funder’s expected return of 562 per cent.

From being a rarity less than 10 years ago, litigation funders now finance three-quarters of all class actions in Australia. And the plundering of plaintiffs is attracting foreign capital. Global hedge funds, even Harvard’s endowment funds, are piling into Australian-based litigation funds.

The committee might notice the inverse correlation between the riches showered on funders and the returns to the victims who were supposed to benefit from the enhanced “access to justice” that litigation funding was supposed to offer. In its 2017 submission to the Victorian Law Reform Commission, the National Union of Workers highlighted a class action for unpaid redundancies owed to its members. They were awarded $5,107, 259 by the Supreme Court. The entire award went to pay the fees of the funders, lawyers and accountants.

The Australian Law Reform Commission has found class actions involving litigation funders result in an average return to class members of just 51 per cent after commissions and fees. By contrast, the average return to class members of legal actions without litigation funding is 85 per cent.

Promises about offering plaintiffs greater access to justice have become a smokescreen for ripping them off.

As The Weekend Australian reported on Saturday, the Department of Defence settled three class actions arising from leaks of PFAS, a toxic firefighting chemical, from its bases into local aquifers and land.

Of the $212.5m settlement, the lawyers took $30m and Omni Bridgeway raked in $51.5m. One group of plaintiffs, the people of Oakey, whose lawyers had once predicted a $200m pay-off, received only $16.4m to be shared between 450 people — about $36,000 each on average. Many of those plaintiffs had no say in agreeing to this pathetic deal.

That access to justice has become a licence to gouge innocent consumers while tipping untold riches into the pockets of litigation funders is not the only baleful consequence of Australia’s descent into a hellish class action free-for-all.

The torrent of funded continuous disclosure claims has caused an insurance strike among D&O insurers, focusing company directors on self-defence rather than growing productivity, creating jobs and wealth. Eventually more companies will simply delist or move offshore to avoid the avarice of roaming litigation funders.

Five key ingredients have turned Australia’s class action system into a predator’s picnic for litigation funders.

First, there are ridiculously low thresholds to launching a funded class action: law firms and litigation funders need find only one lead plaintiff and believe there are seven more.

Next, litigation funders can magnify the class to include anyone answering a generic description, boosting the settlement figure and thus the funder’s take. Best of all, the class members need not have seen the funding agreement, let alone consented to it.

In any other industry, regulators and politicians would scream blue murder about such a dodgy system. So would a royal commissioner with a remit to investigate the financial services industry.

And that raises the third reason Australia is the destination of choice for foreign-backed litigation funders. They can roam free, happily unencumbered by laws, duties and regulations that apply to all other providers of ­financial services.

Plaintiffs can thank a guileless Labor government for falling for all the guff about litigation funders providing greater access to justice without realising that removing regulation would unleash a new class of predators on to both plaintiffs and defendants.

In 2009 the Full Federal Court in the Multiplex case decided that litigation funders were offering a “managed investment scheme”. Normally that attracts a serious regulatory regime to protect consumers. But when finance minister Chris Bowen granted litigation funders a neat exemption, their ­already booming business model went gangbusters.

Indeed, Labor governments, federally and in Victoria, have shown a remarkable tenderness towards the interests of litigation funders and law firms that benefit from them. Chief among them, Bill Shorten’s alma mater Maurice Blackburn, the Melbourne law firm that has the biggest slice of class actions in Australia, 17.9 per cent; and Slater & Gordon, whose former partners include Julia Gillard, which comes second.

The cosy links between these blue-blood Labor law firms and ALP governments, not to mention the generous donations the law firms have made to the ALP, deserve close scrutiny when asking how we ended up being a paradise for funders and their law firms at the expense of plaintiffs.

The fourth key ingredient is the fact litigation funders face few risks. It’s not as if they need big returns to justify taking on losing cases. Omni Bridgeway bragged to investors in March about an 89 per cent success rate while ­Litigation Lending Services has a 94 per cent success rate.

The final ingredient in the predator’s picnic is ridiculously high returns. While not every case wins Omni Bridgeway a 390 per cent return, it reported to investors in its March 31 update that its cumulative return is 134 per cent. Nice work if you can get it.

There is a real opportunity for the parliamentary joint committee to clean up the gorging by the growing number of litigation funders in this country. It can start by getting rid of funding arrangements and orders that allow litigation funders to co-opt class members into agreements they knew nothing about, in favour of a more honest “opt-in” system. It should consider imposing a duty on funders to act in the best interests of class members, just as other providers of financial services owe their clients. And why not a prohibition on aggregate funding and legal costs from exceeding a reasonable percentage of any award? As for lawyers licking their lips, trying to secure contingency fees so they can muscle in on the action? The parliamentary committee should tell them they’re dreaming if they think that blatant conflict of interest is on the cards.

After all, somebody somewhere should finally put the interests of justice for plaintiffs ahead of a law firm’s burgeoning bank balance and a litigation funder’s juicy rates of returns.

SOURCE  



  

   
Statistics boss charts Australia's way out of COVID

Like pandemics through history, coronavirus is dividing us by numbers. Statistics tell the story of suffering.

As the nation — and seemingly the entire world — tracks the trajectory of the ubiquitous "curve", the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is working quietly in the background, measuring the fallout and looking to spot early signs of recovery.

For Australian Statistician David Gruen, COVID-19 crisis means disruption.

"At the moment what we've got is something like 15 per cent average occupancy in our 10 offices around Australia, so most people are working from home," he told The Australian Financial Review.

Through video meetings and regular link-ups with his senior staff, Dr Gruen says the ABS is prioritising data that can offer a near real-time snapshot of where the economy is, including businesses and households.

Now in charge of the ABS's 2300 people, the national census and about 500 annual data releases, Dr Gruen isn't wasting the COVID-19 crisis.

"It has been a huge opportunity and the organisation has risen to the challenge," he says.

"In responding to my questions about what we could do to help, there was a flowering of things suggested. New ideas and ways we could speed things up.

"A lot of technology goes on under the hood. If you're going to run surveys quickly, in order to make them representative, you don't necessarily get a representative sample from over the telephone. In the background you have to weight the survey in such a way that it is representative."

Already the ABS has asked the big four bank bosses to hand over valuable customer transaction data, a part of moves to capture more accurate consumption and business spending patterns during the crisis.

Dr Gruen says that extra data will help "improve our capacity to estimate consumption and spending by businesses", stressing it would not compromise commercial or privacy sensitivities.

"People have been very receptive because I think in a crisis people want to help and there's been a lot of that," he said.

But he has also signalled a push for location-specific data on the coronavirus, information which could be used by state and territory governments to control the spread as lockdown restrictions are eased.

New interactive maps created by the ABS can now identify older populations and those with high levels of chronic health problems, data which could help guide testing, containment and health responses down to the suburban level.

The detailed information can provide a snapshot of age, health problems and other potential challenges during the three-stage lifting of physical distancing rules and the looming new era of public health and hygiene.

The push for alternative data sources comes as tech companies, banks, and data miners have monetised all kinds of information, previously the preserve of organisations like the ABS.

Today in Australia any number of business hoard access to real-time numbers of spending, selling, online behaviour and even physical movement.

"What we can do usefully there is to show where the concentrations are, of both older workers in different industries and also older people with health conditions that potentially put them at risk," Dr Gruen said.

Well-known across the government and top ranks of the public service, he has been consulting widely, including with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and senior Treasury officials.

Key questions include how the ABS is collecting and shaping data on unemployment – a major statistical point in building monumental policies such as the Coalition's $130 billion JobKeeper program.

The ABS has begun releasing critical payroll data, which gives insights into Australians' job status and employers wage bills.

The Treasurer said this month that ABS data has been critical to the government's management of the pandemic, praising its broad range of detailed data sets.

As Prime Minister Scott Morrison charts the "road out", the work of the ABS will remain central to major policy moves from Canberra.

The ABS has attracted criticism for changes to the presentation of some of its statistical releases, especially in the lead-up to the launch of its new website.

The much-cherished PDF for national accounts have been progressively removed, making it harder for ordinary people to navigate simple headline figures.

The ABS has phased out its PDFs, replacing them with less user-friendly Excel spreadsheets.

SOURCE  







Rex takes fight to Qantas and Virgin

Regional Express Holdings will capitalise on the turmoil from Virgin Australia’s collapse and invest $200 million launching capital city services to compete with Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Mark II.

In a move that could harm the sale price achieved by Virgin’s administrators, the regional airline operator is working on a business plan that includes leasing 10 narrow-bodied jets as well as employing new pilots, cabin crew and ground staff.

Virgin's administrator, Vaughan Strawbridge, has called for indicative bids for Virgin to be lodged by Friday. Industry sources say the business was worth about $1 billion depending on the amount of secured and unsecured debt.

Several consortiums have shown interest. They include Canadian infrastructure investor Brookfield, Wesfarmers, private equity companies Bain Capital and BGH Capital and distressed debt specialist Oaktree.

Rex’s deputy chairman John Sharp said the move by Rex to start a new capital city airline would require about $200 million in capital investment.

This would be achieved through the sale of new shares in Rex, which has been listed on the ASX since 2005. The company is controlled by executive chairman Lim Kim Hai and his business partner and Rex founding shareholder, Lee Thian Soo.

“We have been talking to half a dozen private equity and investment banking entities about investing in this new venture,” Mr Sharp told The Australian Financial Review.

“We are working with those parties and will narrow that down to one in the next three weeks or so.

“The most significant aspect of this is we will be the only capital city operator that is debt-free.”

Three-airline market

Mr Sharp, a pilot and former transport minister in the Howard government, said competition would be good for consumers and the economy. “We may well have a three-airline market,” he said.

Mr Sharp said the new Rex capital city operations would be a cross between Qantas and Jetstar but with a lower cost base.

“This will be halfway between a full-service airline and a low-cost airline,” he said.

The plan is to start flying between Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth early next year when the airline industry comes out of the coronavirus freeze.

SOURCE  





Queensland university in the pocket of China

Liberal senator James Paterson has taken aim at universities' reliance on international students, using a speech in Parliament to reveal confidential details about the University of Queensland vice-chancellor's pay incentives to deepen ties with China.

In a late-night speech on Tuesday, Senator Paterson said a whistleblower from the university had given him a copy of last year's senior staff remuneration report, which showed vice-chancellor Peter Hoj had received a $200,000 bonus based partly on his success in growing the university's relationship with China.

According to Senator Paterson's read-out of the document, one of the key performance indicators Professor Hoj was judged against was a "sound and strategic positioning in China" because of its growth as a research provider and it being a "very important source of international students" for at least another five years.

The remuneration report noted Professor Hoj had visited China six times over 2018 and 2019 and the demand for UQ courses from Chinese students had "continued to grow strongly and we will likely end up with 63 per cent of commencing international students coming from China in Semester 1, 2020".

Professor Hoj was awarded his "significant" bonus in 2019 even though, Senator Paterson said, he had not been as successful against another key performance indicator seeking "greater diversity" in the international student body to make the university more financially resilient.

"Despite his failure to achieve this KPI, the vice-chancellor was awarded a bonus of $200,000, a significant sum in anyone's language. Perhaps this is because the remuneration committee regarded the achievement of the China KPI as more significant," Senator Paterson said.

"But far from an achievement warranting a bonus paid from student fees and taxpayers dollars, the prospect of 63 per cent of the university's foreign students coming from only one country should have been an alarm bell for the chancellor Peter Varghese, and the governing body of the university, the UQ senate."

Senator Paterson said international students were welcome on campuses and brought a range of positives but universities had not properly managed the risks in the market.

"Even before the coronavirus, there were good reasons to be concerned about this dependence, particularly on students from China," he said.

"There was always a risk of a downturn in this market, whether due to natural economic events or as a result of deliberate policy measures introduced by a foreign government we have limited influence over."

He said over-reliance on China also presented non-financial risks because the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party does not uphold free speech and open academic inquiry. "These non-financial risks are readily apparent at UQ," he said.

Senator Paterson pointed to the matter of Univesity of Queensland student activist Drew Pavlou, who is facing disciplinary action related to his protest activities, which have targeted the university's China ties.

Senator Paterson criticised UQ for its approach to hosting a Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute culture and language centre. He said the original agreement had been "hopelessly inadequate" as it handed too much power to the Beijing-based headquarters.

The university has also offered four courses established with Chinese government funding – an arrangement which has since been ceased.

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




13 May 2020

Poll: Australians more comfortable with easing of coronavirus rules

Australians are increasingly comfortable with governments easing restrictions designed to slow the spread of coronavirus, but people surveyed in the latest Guardian Essential poll also want lockdowns and travel bans reinstated if infections surge.

The latest poll comes as the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, will use an economic update to parliament on Tuesday to quantify the gains to gross domestic product if governments roll out the full, three stage, agreement to end the lockdowns signed off by the national cabinet last week. Frydenberg will report the GDP gains from easing coronavirus restrictions nationally will be $9.4bn a month.

The treasurer says implementing stage one of the easing – which involves the reopening of retail outlets, permits cafes and restaurants to seat 10 patrons rather than just offer takeaway, and also encompasses the opening of outdoor gyms, playgrounds and skate parks and the return of schools – will boost GDP by $3.1bn.

The Morrison government over the past week has been ramping up public focus on the economic and fiscal cost of the pandemic restrictions. Frydenberg will note the end of lockdowns will see 850,000 Australians return to work. With individual states in control of the timetable for easing restrictions, Tuesday’s economic statement will break down the employment gains by state of returning to business-as-usual, and also quantify the GDP gains by state.

Australia’s two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, are moving more slowly than other jurisdictions because they have had higher numbers of infections. The GDP gains for NSW of implementing all three stages would be $3.1bn and in Victoria, the gain would be $2.2bn. In employment terms, NSW would see 279,550 jobs return over the three stages, and Victoria 216,085 jobs.

While Morrison has been careful not to inflame relations within the national cabinet, a number of Victorian Liberals have used the resumption of federal parliament to blast Daniel Andrews for hastening slowly on dismantling restrictions.

With Australia moving to a period of easing restrictions, concern about the threat of the virus increased in this week’s Guardian Essential survey. 49% of respondents say they are quite concerned, compared with 46% last week. But people remain satisfied with both federal and state government handling of the crisis.

The latest poll of 1,067 respondents shows a majority of Australians are comfortable with the broad direction set by governments last Friday. Only a quarter of respondents now oppose an easing of the social distancing rules, compared with half the sample at the end of April.

But the survey also points to nervousness about the consequences. It shows 77% of people would support restricting travel to places if there are new clusters of infections. More than half of respondents, 67%, would also support increasing fines for people found to be breaching remaining restrictions, and 63% would support a return to restrictions enforcing physical distancing and closing workplaces nationwide if there was a new surge of cases.

Respondents over the age of 55 are more likely to support a snapback to restrictions than the cohort between 18 and 34.

Australians also remain cautious about the CovidSafe app, which is part of the government’s surveillance toolkit to trace recent contacts in the event people become infected with coronavirus. There are now more than five million registered users. Only 38% of the sample would support making downloading the app mandatory in the event there are new clusters of infections.

While just over half the sample (55%) agrees the CovidSafe app would help limit the spread of Covid-19, less than half the group surveyed agrees that they are confident the government will adequately protect any data it collects (45%) and not misuse that data (44%). Just under half the sample, 47%, express concern about the security of their personal data if they download the app.

A majority of the sample would favour a reduction in the number of temporary migrant worker visas permitted in Australia after the Covid-19 outbreak. The shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, last week called for a reduction in temporary migration post-pandemic.

SOURCE  







Keeping middle seats empty for social distancing is not feasible, the airline industry argues

Of all the safety steps airlines are taking to lure travellers back onto their planes in the coronvirus era, the empty middle seat is the most alluring.

What passenger in an aisle or window seat hasn't wished or even prayed that the person heading down the aisle is not bound for the unoccupied seat next to them?

Qantas, Virgin Australia and many other carriers are granting that wish in the name of social distancing by blocking middle seat assignments and/or not filling planes to capacity to assure passengers it's safe to fly.

But passengers shouldn't get too giddy about the extra space, experts and some airline executives say, because it won't last forever.

"It's a lovely soundbite," said John Grant, senior aviation analyst with aviation analytics firm OAG. "It's just not practical."

He says the social distancing measures will be temporary, lasting perhaps through the Thanksgiving travel booking season.

It all comes down to money. Airlines make money when they fill a certain percentage of seats, and leaving middle seats empty means they'll have to charge more for the remaining seats.

The figure for low-cost carriers including Southwest and JetBlue, according to OAG: 52 per cent more per passenger on average.

The International Air Transport Association, which has come out strongly against permanent social distancing on planes because it says the risk of virus transmission is low and the new mask requirements will provide more passenger protection, says average fares would jump 43 per cent to 54 per cent around the world depending on the region.

In North America, filling just two-thirds of the plane by keeping middle seats empty would boost the average ticket price by 43 per cent, from $202 to $289, based on 2019 figures, IATA says. Airlines in the region need to fill three-fourths of their seats to break even, the group says.

Most travelers won't be willing to pay the price, critics and skeptics of permanent social distancing say. Leisure travelers, the passengers the industry expects to return first when travel demand comes back, are notoriously price sensitive and lured by cheap fares.

SOURCE  






Post-COVID, Australia and NZ may have gained in international attractiveness

Joe Sixpack had little to do with America’s emergence as a scientific and technological superpower after World War II.

The US deliberately welcomed and encouraged brilliant foreigners to settle in the country. Simon Kuznets in economics, Albert Einstein in physics, the list is endless. Cast your eye down the list of Nobel laureates awarded to Americans: more than a third are foreign born.

Australia and New Zealand, having — for now at least — “defeated” COVID-19, unexpectedly find themselves in a more attractive position to attract the best and the brightest, along with cashed-up foreign boomers seeking a COVID-free retirement.

Economically, being COVID-free may prove a mixed blessing for the two countries, which make up less than 1.5 per cent of global economic output, and a scintilla of the world’s population.

Some of their biggest exports have shrivelled up. International tourism made up almost 21 per cent of New Zealand’s export earnings last year, and higher education was Australia’s fourth largest export. Exports, however remote they may seem to many, allow us to afford goods and ser­vices from abroad.

Australians and New Zealanders won’t be able to go abroad without a period of quarantine on return. And the prospect of a two-week quarantine will deter all but the most determined tourists and business people from visiting.

But for longer, or permanent, stints the imposition won’t be nearly as onerous. Certainly, well-off seniors in Europe and North America may be prepared to pay a hefty down-payment in the millions — enough to fund their healthcare costs and more — for a permanent visa to Australia. The government already offers significant investor visas for anyone worth $1.5m or more — why not a significant senior subclass?

The rest of the world will live under the spectre of stage three or four lockdowns for potentially a few weeks every year until a vaccine is found for the coronavirus, or some sort of herd immunity is achieved. That’s a highly ­disrup­tive prospect for researchers too.

Kyle Daniels, a postdoctoral fellow with the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation in California — which imposed a Victoria-style lockdown on March 19 — says research at universities in the US has largely been shut down.

“This is an opportunity for Australia to establish collaborations with universities in the US, perhaps by taking in postdocs and graduate students from labs in the US that aren’t functioning normally right now,” he tells The Australian. “There are a lot of American scientists who would love to get back to work in a stable environment like Australia. And some of that talent would stay in Australia afterwards.”

Oliver Hartwich, executive director of the New Zealand Initiative, says our universities could diversify their appeal to students who would have picked US or British institutions as well. “And why not offer Australian and New Zealand grounds to the Bundesliga and the Premier League? Bring in the players and everyone, quarantine them for a couple of weeks and let them start playing the rest of their matches in sports grounds and empty stadiums here,” he says.

It’s not crazy. Olympians will need to keep training, and millions of euros in broadcast rights are at stake right as the world’s top sporting codes face ongoing disruption from COVID-19 restrictions.

Weeks of experience working from home, for white-collar workers at least, have eroded the relevance of time zones and formal working hours, playing into Australia’s and New Zealand’s hands.

Eric Knight, a pro vice-chancellor at the University of Sydney who recently returned from a stint at Stanford University, says Austrade and federal and state governments should mobilise the one-million plus Australian diaspora to encourage decision-makers in US multinationals to shift jobs and R&D here.

“Companies like Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook have all opened major offices in recent years to try to address their structural talent shortfalls, and have located them in a nearby, strategic ally: Canada,” he says.

“Australian software engineers are no less intelligent or hardworking than their American counterparts and are no more than a flight away.” Their average wage, he adds, is about a third of those in California too.

Any campaign would be more successful if the government brought forward tax cuts slated for 2024, which include a flatter income tax scale and a higher income tax threshold of $200,000.

Excluding European nations and New Zealand, Australia’s top marginal tax rate cuts in at the lowest multiple of average earnings in the world, on OECD figures. New Zealand’s is 33 per cent, ours is 47 per cent. High-income earners might deserve a break, having just funded the biggest social security transfer in our history on top of a decade of bracket creep.

COVID-19 has made Australia and New Zealand a lot poorer, but it needn’t be forever. Being COVID-free will have economic cachet, though whether it’s enough to offset the damage remains to be seen.

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Only reliable electricity can give Australia the economic jolt needed for recovery

These past few months have taught us many things, including the fact many state government ministers are none too bright.

Competition for the wooden spoon has been fierce, including Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, who claimed the response of her department to the runaway COVID-19 outbreak at a Melbourne abattoir had been “perfect”. Mind you, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has been giving her a run for her money.

But the competition is not confined to health. The recent actions of South Australian Energy and Mining Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan demonstrate a failure to appreciate the new economic challenges and his determination to hammer the last nail in the coffin of the worst-performing state economy.

Last week, this minister expressed his support for SA accelerating the date at which the state should reach 100 per cent renewable electricity generation. The current time frame is 2030.

I don’t know what he thought he was doing attending the launch of the newly constructed gas-fired electricity generation facility at Barker Inlet in Adelaide last November. The minister raved about the plant, built by AGL Energy, being “good news for affordability and reliability of electricity supplies in South Australia”. Are we to assume that the plant will be closed down by 2030 (or before) for the state to meet its renewable energy target?

And I wonder how he interprets the depressing results of SA becoming an electricity island earlier in the year? As a result of the need to repair the interconnector linking SA with Victoria, the Australian Energy Market Operator was forced to drastically curtail the amount of renewable energy generated in the state and instead rely on expensive gas generation to ensure the stability and reliability of the grid.

The cost of managing the power system was $310m in just the first quarter of this year, more than double the previous record set in 2008. It is estimated that managing the grid accounted for 8 per cent of all energy costs compared with the historical average of between 1 per cent and 2 per cent.

South Australian voters might have expected a change of direction when the longstanding Labor government was voted out. But the Liberal government headed by wet Premier Steven Marshall is every bit as beholden to the renewable energy players as the previous government.

The dream is that a new interconnector will be constructed between SA and NSW that will allow the excess renewable energy generated in SA to be exported to NSW — when the wind blows and the sun shines, that is.

And because the interconnector will be regulated, consumers will bear the cost. This will significantly inflate electricity prices.

According to the witless policy advice to the SA government, reliable electricity could be imported from NSW and Victoria to offset the inherent unreliability of renewable energy, even given the addition of short-living and expensive batteries. This way the illusion of SA being 100 per cent renewable can be maintained.

The economics of baseload or intermediate electricity generation in those other states is undermined by virtue of renewable energy being sent across the border. And let’s not forget that the NSW government has silly plans in relation to the promotion of renewable energy, too. The same goes for Victoria and Queensland.

At this rate, all the eastern states could become an electricity island, awash with unreliable energy and insufficient backup.

Into this policy quagmire comes the advice of the ideological Australian Energy Market Operator, telling us that it would be technically possible to have 75 per cent renewable energy electricity generation. That’s if we spent a lot of money — for example, on more expensive interconnectors, transmission and distribution — and changed the rules to favour renewable energy providers even more than they do now. This is poor advice.

The only sensible alternative in the post-COVID world is to junk the obsession with renewable energy (which is an inefficient way of reducing emissions, particularly when measured on a life-cycle basis), to kill the subsidies and to secure affordable, reliable electricity based, in all likelihood, on new gas plants.

When green rent-seekers start calling for a green new deal — more subsidies for renewable energy — the response should be that we have had a green new deal for more than a decade. And it has worked out badly for Australia’s industrial competitiveness. It’s time for a change.

And when the rent-seekers moan about fugitive emissions from gas, tell them these have already been taken into account when emissions are calculated by the federal government. Estimates, including by the CSIRO, put fugitive emissions at between 1 per cent and 1.4 per cent of total production.

With the lower price of gas this year and the possibility that new reserves will be developed in the Bowen and Beetaloo basins and possibly Gippsland, we are on the cusp of an exciting new phase for electricity generation and other heavy industry. With cheaper and reliable power, it’s easy to foresee substantial investments in the manufacture of explosives, paper, glass and bricks, and in food processing, among other possibilities. It simply won’t happen if we depend on renewable energy.

To be sure, we won’t need to junk the raft of renewable energy that already exists in the electricity grid, although some will begin to wear out in the not-too-distant future. (Several overseas renewable energy construction companies are already leaving the country.) But only firmed electricity — that is, 24/7 power with backup — should be accepted from these providers, a requirement that exists in most parts of the world.

We have paid a heavy penalty — some of the highest electricity prices in the world — for allowing renewable energy providers to offer electricity into the grid without bearing the costs of reliability and stability (frequency/inertia).

Unless the SA government takes a realistic stance in relation to energy and other matters, the place will be just a footnote in our economic history in 50 years.

And I haven’t even mentioned the urgent need for the federal government to cancel the expensive and unviable submarine project. That might be the last straw for the state’s economy — or a wake-up call for the South Australian government to get real rather than chase rainbows.

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 May 2020

China relations sour over tariff threat to Australian barley

It's a strange day when China thinks an Australian product is too cheap

Australia's souring relations with China have grown more bitter with the Morrison government given 10 days to stop the nation's barley producers being slapped with tariffs of up to 80 per cent.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said he was deeply concerned that "unjustified duties" may be imposed on Australia's barley exports which last year reached a drought-affected $600 million.

The nation's barley producers have been given 10 days to respond to a determination by China's Ministry of Commerce which has been conducting an anti-dumping investigation into Australian grain imports since 2010.

The ministry is considering two separate tariffs of 73.6 per cent and 6.9 per cent on Australian barley shipped to China.

China has alleged that Australian farmers produced barley at a price lower than its "normal" level through 2014, 2015 and 2016, undermining local producers.

The ministry's move comes as relations between Australia and China have deteriorated in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Australia wants an independent investigation into the origin of the virus.

Senator Birmingham said Australian barley producers, largely from Western Australia and South Australia, operated in a competitive global market without any trade distorting subsidies.

"We have worked with the Australian grains industry to mount the strongest possible case against China’s anti-dumping investigation," he said.

"We will use the remaining time before China finalises it’s decision to continue our efforts to resolve this matter satisfactorily and will seek to uphold the integrity of our world leading barley producers.

While Australia has launched anti-dumping cases against China, this is the first started by China against Australia.

WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan said the move could not come at a worse time for her state's farmers who were just starting to seed this year's crop.

She said the WA government would directly lobby the Chinese consul-general on the issue which was a substantial threat to the state's farmers as they had few other markets for their high-quality malting barley.

“We strongly believe there are no grounds for the claims that Australian barley is being dumped or subsidised in the Chinese market," she said.

SOURCE  





Students return to school in NSW and Queensland today - but there'll be no assemblies or combined lunch breaks and classes will look VERY different

Students in New South Wales and Queensland will return to school on Monday as the states inches towards relaxing COVID-19 restrictions.

Students in NSW will return for one day of face-to-face learning per week from Monday, with attendance to increase over the course of the term.

The state government is working towards a target of a full-scale return by term three.

The Berejiklian government on Sunday announced the easing of a broad range of restrictions as the state continues to flatten the curve.

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews - who will on Monday announce changes to lockdown rules as a May 11 state of emergency expires - has yet to reveal when students in the state will return to school.

But the return to classroom teaching comes as education authorities in Queensland prepare to enforce a range of measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

While primary school students will be free to use play equipment, gatherings of pupils may be limited by staggered lunch breaks and play time.

The principal of Mango Hill primary school Tracy Egan told ABC News staff may even need to personally take children to their parents' cars to stop transmission.

'We'll be really using our stop, drop and go lane and we expect our parents will strongly support that,' Ms Egan said.

Hand sanitiser use will also be a priority in the classroom, as well as a ban at first on any events involving large congregations of students like assemblies.

Some schools are even planning to implement virus-proof protocols in their tuck shops and cafeteria - including an online-only order system.

The return to classrooms has come with a warning in NSW, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian promising any surge in numbers of confirmed cases could see a return to tighter measures. 'If there is evidence or if there is data that shows ... a huge spike, then we'll have to go backwards,' Berejiklian said.

'But similarly, if the data shows us that we're doing better than expected, we can move forward and be faster.'

The government has urged parents to be vigilant about their children's health and to keep them away from school if they exhibit any symptoms of coronavirus.

Social distancing guidelines will be maintained in classrooms and extra health measures will be in place, including additional cleaning and health equipment in sick bays.

Lunch breaks will also be staggered.

Ms Berejiklian said it is not compulsory to send children to school and parents would not be penalised for keeping them at home.

'It's never been compulsory to force parents to do one thing or another, we've been very clear about that in New South Wales,' she said.

'But our strong recommendation is face-to-face teaching needs to start. 'We want to get to full-time face-to-face teaching as soon as we can - and the best health advice is schools are safe environments.'

Children meanwhile enrolled in kindergarten, prep, and years one, 11 and 12 will be the first cohorts to return to school in Queensland.

The state government will assess the statewide response to the partial reopening of classrooms this Friday, before the go-ahead is given for those in other year levels.

It is proposed students between years two and 10 will return to school from May 25.

The staged approach is part of the Queensland government's wider plan to reopen the state following the flattening of the coronavirus curve.

The NSW government on Sunday announced the winding back of restrictions from Friday, including allowing people to leave their homes for recreation.

The new relaxing of restrictions will allow up to five people to visit a home, including children.

Outdoor gatherings of up to 10 people will also be allowed, such as a physical training session or sitting down in a park.

Restaurants and cafes will also be allowed to have up to 10 patrons at a time, while ensuring they maintain social distancing of 1.5 metres between people and four square metres space per person.

A total of 10 guests will be allowed at weddings, and up to 20 people at indoor funerals and up to 30 at outdoor funerals.

Religious gatherings and places of worship can also welcome up to 10 worshippers.

SOURCE  






Bank boss sees nascent signs of post-pandemic recovery

Australians have begun to emerge from a spending shutdown during the depths of the coronavirus crisis in a trend that gives the country’s biggest bank greater confidence about an economic recovery ahead.

Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn said the bank had seen a rebound in household spending over the past two weeks after a dramatic 20 per cent fall in March and early April.

But in an exclusive interview, Mr Comyn warned that some employers would collapse and some households would need continued help from their banks well after the federal government is due to end its emergency assistance in September.

"The overall economic impact, particularly if you use spending as a proxy, has been nowhere near as large as it has been in some countries," Mr Comyn told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

"What we have seen in the last fortnight is that we’ve started to pick up. That number of total spend is now down 10 per cent on the prior corresponding period. About two weeks ago we started to see a pick-up."

An early surge in requests to defer loan repayments has moderated, in another sign that Australian banks are in a better position than those overseas to handle the number of business and household customers having trouble making payments.

"The take-up was very rapid in that first week or two but it has tapered off," Mr Comyn said of the offer to customers to defer loan repayments for six months.

"I think it is broadly about 10 per cent of our home loan book, which is still significant. But, given the scale of the disruption to peoples’ lives and to the economy, it is certainly within the bounds of what we would have expected."

Mr Comyn, who also chairs the Australian Banking Association, said it was "broadly" true to say the bank had managed the loan deferrals through its own resources rather than relying on federal aid, but he praised the level of cooperation with the federal government.

As treasurer, Scott Morrison targeted the banks with a $6.2 billion levy three years ago and announced a royal commission after pressure from Labor to investigate a series of scandals over the abuse of customers.

Mr Comyn said he hoped the banking industry’s work during the coronavirus crisis could "reset some of the relationship" between business and the community.

The bank boss downplayed a report last month that Mr Scott Morrison had "roasted" the banks for being too slow, saying it was not "entirely accurate" even though some pressure over policies was to be expected.

"I certainly feel that we’ve done a lot over the last couple of months and I do think certainly our people and customers are seeing through our actions the real intent of both the Commonwealth Bank and the broader industry," he said.

Mr Comyn said the shape of the recovery was impossible to predict but some employers would not survive the downturn, especially in sectors that depend on international tourists.

"Realistically, it’s not going to be entirely smooth. I think the situation is just too uncertain and there are too many variables," he said.

"I think what we will see is that it will take some time before people have the same level of confidence to return to their daily lives and their economic activity."

While the JobKeeper payment of $1500 per fortnight has supported workers without increasing the official unemployment rate, the Commonwealth Bank is using other measures to gauge the impact on jobs and gross domestic product.

"I think the participation rate is going to fall and the hours worked could be down 20 per cent, and that’s a very good indicator of income and output," he said.

"Overall, the support that’s been put in place from the federal government has definitely played a role in softening that economic impact."

Mr Comyn would not comment on the bank’s financial performance, given he will release the results within days, but said some customers would not survive the downturn.

"For businesses that were struggling before February this year, it is going to be very difficult for them. There will be parts of the economy and some businesses that won’t be able to recover," he said.

"Our role is to provide, within reason, as much support as we possibly can to get as many viable businesses through this period and be able to facilitate broader economic growth and financial stability."

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'On fast forward': Australian stocks stage recovery

Top stock pickers at investment bank UBS say Australia's sharemarket has staged a full recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, rallying 20 per cent despite a near-certain recession and widespread unemployment.

Most sectors have already "digested" the crisis and are looking ahead to the 2021 financial year, the bank claims, confounding analysts who expected a drawn-out recovery after pandemic scares fuelled a 40 per cent drop in early March.

"It's like the market is on fast-forward," Pieter Stoltz, equity strategist at investment bank UBS, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. "I'm surprised at how quickly it's priced in this recovery."

Analysis by Mr Stoltz assessing what companies were set to benefit from the relaxing of coronavirus restrictions highlighted a number of businesses in the retail, transport and gaming sectors.

These included casino giant Crown, fashion retailer Premier Investments, toll road operator Transurban and buy-now, pay-later provider Flexigroup.

The local bourse has posed a stronger and more resilient upswing in the face of negative macroeconomic conditions, research from Mr Stoltz and his team reveals, which compares the ASX's recent recovery to other notable crises such as the global financial crisis (GFC)

Australia's unemployment rate will be at 9 per cent by Christmas, the Reserve Bank expects, and economists have pencilled in a near-certain recession, with the broader economy to contract 8 per cent by the end of June.

Despite this backdrop, Mr Stoltz said the market has already begun a long-lasting recovery, drawing a stark contrast to the GFC where the country avoided a recession but the market fell 54 per cent over 17 months before reviving.

Mr Stoltz said the economic 'hibernation' many businesses have been in since March will allow a swifter and more seamless return to normality, unlike other crises where investors faced months of uncertainty over the rate of recovery.

This has been reflected in the pace of earnings downgrades from analysts overtaking the rate of the price fall, reflecting a broad re-rating of companies to account for the post-crisis world.

"The speed of negative earnings per share forecasts has accelerated indicating that the market is close to fully digesting the impact of this crisis on company profits," Mr Stoltz said.

Other sharemarket experts are also hopeful about a potential turnaround. Pengana Capital chief executive Russel Pillemer said the market had already "baked in" any negativity associated with the coming recession or jobs figures, though he noted he was still being very cautious in the near term.

"You always need to be cautious in these highly volatile environments trying to pick a top or trying to pick a bottom," he said. "Contrary to popular academic belief, markets are not rational."

Looking towards the 2021 financial year, analysts are priming for huge earnings growth thanks to a lower base of earnings in 2020. Goldman Sachs recently forecasted retailer JB Hi-Fi's earnings before interest and tax to rise 21.3 per cent in fiscal 2021.

Mr Stolz said these bullish predictions will likely be short-lived, as overly optimistic analysts temper their expectations as earnings season draws nearer.

"Those 2021 numbers are likely to move down, so we probably won't see the high growth rates that consensus implies right now," he said.

But for Mr Pillemer, his sights are firmly set on 2021 and beyond, saying his funds' cash-on-hand are at record lows as they've poured money into snapping up undervalued stocks for the long term.

"We haven't seen these sorts of buying opportunities for many years because the market's been so finely priced," he said.

"I think the world's going to go through a soft period for a while, but if you can look through that it's a fantastic time to be investing."

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








11 May, 2020

NSW teachers to adapt lessons to focus on most important aspects

Students will learn a stripped-back version of the NSW curriculum for the rest of term two, with educators given permission to factor learning disruptions from the last six weeks into their teaching plans and focus on the most essential content.

A staged return to school begins on Monday for NSW public schools, but Department of Education Secretary Mark Scott said it would be a while before regular calendar events such as assemblies, excursions and school sport resumed.

Principals will spend this week closely monitoring attendance rates, school drop-offs and staff room distancing while teachers will also reconsider their original lesson plans for the second half of term two.

"There are a lot of requirements, particularly in the K-10 curriculum. Guidance has been given from the NSW Education Standards Authority that not all aspects of the curriculum are equally important at this point," Mr Scott told the Sun-Herald.

"Teachers will focus on the most important concepts. Deep engagement around the more important aspects of the curriculum will be the priority. That allows teachers a level of flexibility to identify where students are up to and recalibrate what's been taught in light of the disruption to learning in recent months."

Parents are still permitted to keep children at home during the phased return to school period, so long as students remain engaged with learning. Mr Scott said it was hard to predict how many would choose to stay home, but he expected the "vast majority of families will follow the guidelines" and send kids to school on their designated day.

School attendance dropped as low as 6 per cent at the end of term one, but hovered between 15 and 17 per cent last week.

Schools across New South Wales will reopen this week as part of a staggered and slow return to the classroom.

"We want to look carefully at the experience of schools in coming days. We want to see how schools are adapting to social distancing requirements for adults. We want to look at the flow of students in and out of school, and how we work with parents around that," Mr Scott said.

The department's next goal is getting all students back into classrooms full-time. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has flagged she wants full-time attendance by the end of May, however Mr Scott did not commit to a date. "We’re waiting to learn from [this week] and think that is a wise course of events," he said.

At that stage students would resume normal teaching and no longer undertake the one mode of remote learning. The department's policy around keeping children at home would also be reconsidered.

But Mr Scott said it will still be a while before schools are fully operating. "For a period of time there will be no assemblies, excursions, work experience, sport or cultural events," he said.

"There will be some big events on the school calendar that won’t happen this year. The 2020 school year will have some significant differences and we’re just going to have to manage that carefully."

Without NAPLAN tests this year, the department will work with schools on assessments to identify gaps in student wellbeing and learning. "Good teachers will do regular low-stress assessment anyway, to check where students are at. This will become a priority when schools become operational again," Mr Scott said.

The Department of Education found about 10 per cent of its roughly 806,000 students has experienced a technology gap at home, meaning they did not have either a device or fast broadband access to complete remote learning activities.

"It was striking to us the number of students in metropolitan Sydney who did not have Wi-Fi or any technology in the home beyond a phone," Mr Scott said. "In metropolitan schools, you could have 100 or more students. And that disadvantage was not a factor of remoteness; it was right in the midst of the suburbs."

He said the department would become more cognisant of the technology divide in homes after the pandemic. This could involve purchasing technology for schools that is also appropriate for loaning out, and focusing on laptops instead of desktop computers.

SOURCE  





Privacy advocates not paranoid

Those who have expressed privacy concerns about COVIDSafe have been mocked and dismissed. But these concerns are valid. After all, government has spent years warning us about online privacy.

Last year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry concluded, “consumers are generally not aware of the extent of data that is collected nor how it is collected.”

Back in 2013, then Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus asked for an inquiry into online privacy because of technological growth and “changing community conceptions of privacy.”

Internationally, Facebook, and Google have faced enormous fines for privacy breaches — $5 billion and $170 million respectively.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hauled before a Senate Committee to answer questions about invasion of privacy and electoral interference.

These initiatives were spearheaded by governments — because they believed the public were being deceived by Silicon Valley, which was breaching the public’s trust.

Now government is asking us to trust them with our data.

Compared to Google and Facebook, the government app COVIDSafe does collect extraordinarily little data. The app asks only for your first name, postcode, and telephone number; and uses Bluetooth – not GPS – to register close contacts.

To safeguard privacy, the Morrison Government has introduced legislation to ensure the app is only used for its stated purpose, and that police and security agencies do not have access.

But this may not be sufficient.. Legal experts have warned the US government could gain access to the data — because the app data is stored on US company Amazon’s servers.

Furthermore, unlike private companies such as Facebook and Google, the government could potentially use the app as a form of coercion. Business groups have already suggested downloading the app should be a requirement to enter pubs, restaurants, and shops.

After dangling the juicy carrot of COVIDSafe as a way to end the lockdown so we can ‘go to the footy’,  it is not unimaginable government would make having the app a condition of entry to businesses or events.

Hopefully, we can install enough safeguards so COVIDSafe is not misused.

Privacy advocates are not paranoid, we are simply attuned to a threat the government pointed out.

SOURCE  






Australian universities angry at 'final twist of the knife' excluding them from jobkeeper scheme

Universities are incensed by the third set of changes in a month designed to exclude them from the $130bn jobkeeper wage subsidy program, labelling them the “final twist of the knife” that will ensure none qualify.

New rules for the program, released late on Friday, specify universities must count six months of revenue when calculating their projected downturn, a tweak that puts $1,500 fortnightly payments per worker out of their reach.

On Monday, the University of Sydney, one of the last institutions still in contention for the funding, announced it is no longer eligible.

The move follows a decision in April to exclude universities from the more generous threshold for charities to access the program, meaning they must show a full 50% drop in revenue or 30% for those with revenue of less than $1bn a year to qualify.

On 24 April the government clarified that universities must count their commonwealth grants scheme funding towards their revenue, despite a change allowing other charities to leave out government grants.

Under the new rules, while other organisations such as businesses and charities can calculate their losses over one month or one quarter in order to qualify, universities must show the required decline from 1 January to 30 June.

The Innovative Research Universities executive director, Conor King, said after successive changes to jobkeeper it now appears “no university can claim it”.

“Universities have turned with every twist of the knife, only to be left to heal ourselves each time,” he said. “This seems to be the final twist of the knife.”

“The lack of support will impact how well universities will function in 2021 and beyond.”

The University of Sydney vice-chancellor, Michael Spence, told staff on Monday he believed it qualified and had applied on the basis of “the significant loss of revenue from student suspensions and withdrawals in March for semester 1”.

“The government has changed this rule for universities and extended the period in which to demonstrate revenue loss … this means we will no longer be eligible to receive jobkeeper funding,” he said.

Spence reassured staff that anyone who was paid a salary top-up in April in anticipation of receiving jobkeeper funding in May will be allowed to keep the payment.

A spokeswoman for La Trobe said the university believed it was eligible for jobkeeper based on a decline in projected GST turnover of more than 30% when comparing March 2020 with March 2019. But the university was then disqualified by the inclusion of commonwealth grant scheme funding.

“By applying for jobkeeper, we acted in good faith by following the published ATO guidelines,” she said. “We are very disappointed that the application criteria have changed again.”

In April the education minister, Dan Tehan, announced a support package including a guarantee on $18bn of projected university funding and $100m of regulator fee relief, shared with the rest of the tertiary sector.

Universities welcomed the package as a first step but warned it wouldn’t be enough to prevent an estimated 21,000 job cuts in the next six months in Australia’s third largest export sector.

Labor’s education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, said the government “seems determined to do nothing while universities suffer big job losses and campus closures”.

“That will hurt families and communities right across Australia, including in regional areas.”

A spokesperson for the education department said the rules were changed because the monthly measurement of revenue applied through the “normal test” was “potentially subject to larger variations due to timing issues than underlying economic drivers would suggest”.

“Accordingly, the six month test is designed to smooth out any timing variations.”

SOURCE  






WA's decision to keep its mines open amid coronavirus may have saved Australia's economy

Stephen Easterbrook manages risk for a living and as he watched COVID-19 spreading across the globe and edging closer to Australia, he was nervous.

Mr Easterbrook is the managing director of Breight Group, a Perth based mining services company which prides itself on its safety training for scaffolding workers.

When he learned the West Australian Government had deemed mining an essential service, the former rigger breathed a big sigh of relief.

"Prior to hearing that, there was a lot of sleepless nights," he said.

But the reprieve has come with a price for fly-in, fly-out workers.

Some Breight Group staff are now working on mine sites in WA's north west for up to six weeks at a time.

The longer swings were an attempt to minimise people movement and prevent the spread of the virus.

"We've got guys that are working four, six weeks away from their families," Mr Easterbrook said.

"This shows a commitment to the value of the mining industry, that we're all prepared to [make sacrifices] to keep ourselves employed, and also what we're able to do by contributing to the Australian economy to keep it going."


WA's decision to keep workers flying in and out of mine sites has been praised by Federal Treasury Secretary Stephen Kennedy.

"Western Australia … deemed mining an essential service in the sense in which they were imposing their restrictions," he told a Senate committee late last month.

"These were important, carefully calibrated decisions. "As long as the health risks are well managed in what's a reasonably low employment environment, that's a very important economic flow."

Analyst Philip Kirchlechner, from Iron Ore Research, was even more explicit. "By keeping the mines open … Western Australia is supporting the whole country," he said.

"Iron ore miners are paying company tax which goes to the Federal Government, so it's all the Australian people [who] benefit from the taxes the mining companies pay."

It has helped that despite the virus, China has kept buying iron ore from Australia and two of the nation's biggest competitors, Brazil and South Africa, haven't been able to operate as normal.

Mr Kirchlechner said Brazil was on the brink of reopening two mines forced to close because of a deadly dam collapse when COVID-19 hit. "Because of the virus, the restart of those mines has been delayed," he said.

"South Africa and also India have put in stoppages, they have put in place lockdowns for the whole country, so South Africa's iron ore production has been affected and its guidance has been reduced about 50 per cent."

WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt said deciding whether to keep mines open was a big call, but he believed his Government got it right in keeping the industry going. "It was an incredible time, one of those things that I think I'll look back for the rest of my life," Mr Wyatt said.

"Because as the coronavirus was coming at us and our numbers were, you know, something like 20 a day … you got a real sense of fear in the community … how far we were going to have to put the brakes on everything to get the virus under control … and I think we got that right."

Mr Wyatt said the crisis had underlined the importance of WA's mining sector.

Ben Wyatt wearing a grey suit and pink tie, smiling outside an office building.
WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt said the coronavirus crisis underlined the state's economic importance.(ABC News: Julian Robins)
"I think Australians now really understand what Western Australia has been talking about for such a long period of time — that is, we have a world-class mining sector," he said.

"The fact we've been able to keep it operating during this time has not only protected the Western Australian economy, but has underwritten the Australian economy.

"I know Josh Frydenberg, the Commonwealth Treasurer, every day will be waking up and thanking Western Australia's mining sector."

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






10 May, 2020

Coronavirus: Australia is fortunate Abbott took action years ago

“No one could have foreseen five or 10 years ago the situation we face,” Emmanuel Macron declared in early March, as he sought to explain the shortages of personal protective equipment and respirators that had plunged France into a devastating crisis.

“When you are living through unprecedented events, one cannot blame people for not having expected them.”

Yet few surprises were more predictable. Indeed, beginning with the H5N1 avian influenza in 1997, France’s public health planners had started preparing for pandemics whose severity would test the country’s health system to its limits. As a prescient government report explained in 2005, it was almost certain France would, at least once in the two subsequent decades, be struck by a highly infectious virus for which there was neither a cure nor a vaccine.

Faced with an escalating contagion it could not contain, the country’s health system would be paralysed by scarcities of staff and materials, forcing the government to trigger a prolonged economic and social shutdown whose costs would stymie growth and shred an already tattered social fabric.

Given those risks, the only sensible option was to increase surge capacity at every bottleneck point, making it possible to rapidly scale up the system’s ability to identify, isolate and treat victims.

At the same time, despite the disruption they could cause, large scale war-gaming exercises needed to be carried out regularly to ­ensure that seemingly watertight plans for dealing with a pandemic were operationally effective.

Those warnings echoed when the H1N1 swine flu influenza appeared in April 2009. With many of the report’s recommendations still being implemented, Nicolas Sarkozy’s new health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, drastically escalated the country’s preparedness, including by ensuring its stockpiles of vital supplies could sustain a pandemic lasting a year or more.

As things turned out, the crisis didn’t eventuate. But rarely has a country paid a higher price for dodging a bullet.

A pharmacist who was not a graduate of France’s elite training institutions, Bachelot was pilloried for having overreacted, and narrowly missed formal censure for misusing public funds.

After she was shuffled aside, her successors did everything they could to avoid ending as she had. Adopting a just-in-time approach to preparedness, the stockpile was run down, and then dispersed. “Live fire” tests of system resilience were abandoned.

Yes, ­elaborate plans were put in place, as were bureaucracies tasked with their implementation; but like TS Eliot’s “hollow men”, they were a “Paralysed force”, trapped “sightless, between the motion and the act”.

The consequences, once COVID-19 struck, were sudden, concentrated and dramatically visible. The failings, however, had been ongoing, diffuse and hard to detect. Nor were they France’s alone. Belgium, whose COVID-19 death rate is by far Europe’s highest, was even more poorly prepared, having destroyed its decaying national stockpile of protective equipment in 2017 and 2018.

Italy should, in theory, have been well placed. In practice, its pandemic plans were mainly ­ignored and, in any event, like France’s, the UK’s and Spain’s, didn’t adequately cover the aged-care homes that the disease decimated.

Even the Scandinavian countries were far from ready, as reforms that shifted stockpiling responsibility to local health ­authorities weakened national co-ordination.

Just how satisfactorily our own system has performed, history will judge. But if we entered the crisis on a stronger footing than most, much of the credit must go to Tony Abbott. No health minister in Australian history has put greater emphasis on increasing the country’s ability to cope with a pandemic.

It is true that by the time he became health minister in 2003, the initial steps had been taken, beginning with the formation of the National Influenza Pandemic Action Committee in 1999. We were, however, starting from an extraordinarily low base.

Although the need to contain infectious diseases had underpinned the decision to establish the commonwealth Department of Health in 1921, successive governments had convinced themselves that quarantine and vaccination sufficed to protect Australians from viruses originating overseas.

By 1977, a review could confidently assert that despite sustained growth in international trade and travel, “the disease threat to people has reduced to almost insignificant proportions”.

HIV-AIDS, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and the H5N1 virus shattered that illusion. However, it was only under Abbott that a viable ­national system was developed, encompassing a greatly expanded stockpile of medical supplies, the first systematic testing of national pandemic preparedness and an enhanced capacity to procure vaccines and antivirals.

Convinced that “responsible governments have no option but to take reasonable, practical and proportionate precautions against all credible threats, even at the risk, in hindsight, of seeming to have overreacted”, Abbott stared down criticism from all sides of politics.

But, while the legacy of those ­initiatives persisted, the commitment to preparedness waned as the threat of pandemics seemed to recede.

The last serious national “war-gaming” of our health system’s preparedness occurred in 2008. Yes, the H1N1 pandemic, which was ably managed by Nicola Roxon, acted as a test ground; but by 2020, many of the critical weaknesses it highlighted — such as the dangers posed by cruise ships, the difficulties involved in deciding on school closures and the need to have clear processes for de-escalating the public health response as the risks diminished — had faded out of sight and mind.

That, as GK Chesterton suggested, may be in the nature of human affairs: we forget, and forget that we have forgotten. But ­viruses won’t stop emerging, nor will the tendency of authoritarian regimes to suppress news of outbreaks. And more often than not, the adequate forewarning we crave will not arrive.

Meanwhile, burdened by fiscal deficits, Australian governments will always choose the urgent over the important. Sooner or later, confident that we can manage the contingencies we know, and having dismissed as improbable those that are unfamiliar, we will sleepwalk into the next devastating surprise.

But before that is allowed to occur, Tony Abbott’s words of 15 years ago should be seared into the nation’s collective memory.

“If it happens,” he wrote, “a serious pandemic will test Australians’ character in ways unknown for half a century. Keeping troubles in perspective, acknowledging that much won’t work out as planned, facing the prospect of untimely death, have not normally been ­required of modern Australians. Under such circumstances, to maintain the optimism and generosity of spirit that characterises Australians at their best would be a formidable challenge. Perhaps we will be spared this cup of suffering. Perhaps the contemplation of epic disasters might help Australians deal better with everyday problems. Almost certainly, preparing thoroughly for disasters which don’t eventuate will help prepare for those which do.”

SOURCE  







Coronavirus: Universities in turmoil as dirty little secrets come out

These are tumultuous times for Australian universities. This week alone, at the University of Adelaide, the vice-chancellor has taken “indefinite leave” and the chancellor has resigned. In unrelated moves, other VCs signalled their intent to move on even before the COVID-19 crisis hit. Michael Spence is leaving the top job at the University of Sydney at the end of the year. There are departures by other university leaders, including at the University of Queensland.

Is it foolish to hope for different, improved leadership at our major universities? Certainly, if incoming VCs are smart, they will turn their attention to domestic students who have long been ignored in favour of cash cows in China. But to understand what stands in the way of providing Australian students with an excellent university education, one needs to first understand the entrenched problems at our biggest tertiary institutions.

This week, Inquirer spoke to someone who knows first-hand how universities are run, what their motivations are and what has gone wrong in the past 15 years. This insider, a high-flying professor of media and communications, says Australia’s major universities essentially are run by two people. Their names are Joe Stalin and John Elliott.

The communist dictator needs no introduction. But Elliott might; the rambunctious Australian businessman became famous in the 1970s and 80s for his aggressive pursuit of money and for not giving a “pig’s arse” about his critics.

The professor is speaking only slightly tongue in cheek when she says universities are beholden to the worst forms of authoritarianism and laissez-faire economics.

Before unravelling that, first understand that this prominent professor says she would normally put her name to what she tells Inquirer “in a heartbeat”. Except for one thing: “I would get sacked,” she says. “My contract says that I cannot bring my university into disrepute so if I put my name to this, my job would be in jeopardy. And I have a mortgage to pay.”

Put another way, these are escape clauses for poorly run universities to avoid scrutiny by people in the know.

But back to Stalin and Elliott. Stalin’s authoritarian fist was particularly evident in a tutorial room at the University of Technology Sydney for first-year communications students. A few weeks ago, a young student — we will call him David, as he doesn’t want to get blackballed by university administrators — decided to quit his communications degree. He sent a thoughtful and honest email to his lecturer and tutor explaining why. He said he hoped the feedback would be used in a constructive way so future students might discover intellectual curiosity rather than authoritarian censorship.

David wrote that he “found the course and tutor extremely prescriptive in opinion, presenting very niche ideological standpoints as absolute objective fact, (and) this was reinforced by a proactive effort by you to shut down any opposing point of view. Anytime I suggested anything that went against the consensus, I was shut down and even laughed at.” The young law student says he enrolled in communications expecting respectful, philosophical discussions about our political systems. It didn’t turn out that way.

Going by David’s experience, tutorials should be renamed dictatorials about identity politics, victimhood and shame. Instead of encouraging students to think, listen, learn and discuss issues, the tutorial room in David’s communications degree became a place where his different views were mocked and ignored as “inherent ignorance (from) a white male”.

Speaking to Inquirer this week, he said even putting aside the silly politics of the course, what are students going to do with guff about the whole world being a battleground where every smaller group is oppressed by a “dominant group”? Maybe get a job at the ABC?

“Never in my entire life did I expect to be alienated from class discussion because of my skin colour or my gender, especially in a class supposedly attempting to break down such barriers. I cannot believe that in this day and age my identity was held paramount in deciding if I was correct, not what I had to say. I wonder what the response would have been had I suggested a fellow student’s opinion was inherently invalid purely because she was female,” David wrote to his lecturer. The lecturer wrote a cursory response, saying she was pleased that he was able to withdraw without incurring course costs.

Monolithic thinking is dangerous, particularly at universities. If tutorials cannot accommodate a genuine diversity of views, including those of David, then universities don’t deserve a dime from taxpayers.

Alas, it’s not just little Stalins running dictatorials who are dumbing down a university education for Australian students.

As the professor of media and communications tells Inquirer, the greedy corporatist agenda of university administrators, relying on a gravy train of international students, mostly from mainland China, is also lowering standards at universities that crow about their rankings.

She says chasing fees from international students has been under way for 15 years, with foreign agents acting for our universities to arrange “huge parties and junkets” for potential overseas students and also the “doctoring” of English language tests. The professor says she has seen hundreds of foreign students arrive with band 6 scores — meaning competent — on the standardised speech, reading and writing tests known as the International English Language Testing System. She would give them no more than a band 3, which is “extremely limited” according to IELTS.

These results have big ramifications for foreign students who are out of their depth, struggling in a foreign country away from families, without the skills to learn properly. And the consequences for local students are equally poor.

“Masters and postgraduate students’ programs, which are the money-spinners to attract foreign students, have been dumbed down often to a point where the standards expected are below that of what we expect of undergraduate students,” she says.

While her heart goes out to struggling foreign students, she says students with insufficient English language skills mean “domestic students are frequently irritated, particularly with group assignments. They are paying a lot of money for a postgraduate course and many definitely feel they are not challenged enough.”

These dirty little secrets about foreign cash cows and dumbed-down courses, previously whispered about among lecturers and students, deserve to be exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic as the tap of money from international students dries up.

“Without in anyway being xenophobic, reliance on international students is the wrong answer. It’s an add-on, that’s all. We should be really focusing on how we educate Australians, and thinking about what we need to build a strong economy and society,” says the professor.

Our best universities could start the post-COVID reform process by treating domestic students better. One young man recently reapplied to enrol in a full-fee masters program at one of Australia’s grandest sandstone universities. His marks were a tiny fraction away from the entry mark for the course. Within minutes of sending a thoughtful and polite email seeking admission, explaining special circumstances that would have lifted his score over the threshold, he was effectively told to rack off.

Smart businesses wouldn’t be so brazenly rude and dismissive about new full-fee paying customers when they are running under capacity because of the economic lockdown. Our small businesses are eagerly trying to attract customers in new ways, adapting wherever they can. But our cashed-up major universities run by overpaid VCs have grown arrogant and complacent. They would rather go cap in hand to the federal government pleading for more taxpayer money after they have raked in Chinese money to fund research papers to bump up their rankings to attract more foreign students. All the while they have dumbed-down standards, leaving local students without a quality education. It’s a disgrace.

Having worked in Australian universities for 20 years, at very senior levels, the professor says “the level of bureaucracy is insane, the systems are not serving … the students. It’s a plague on our house.”

Perhaps when our politicians, who collect taxes and spend our money on our behalf, understand what has gone wrong at our major universities, VCs of taxpayer-funded universities will feel a moral imperative to step up with better leadership, improve standards and ensure that Australian students are getting the very best education.

SOURCE  






Coronavirus: Unlike Labor, unions, Scott Morrison is for the workers

It’s only a few months ago that green-left types, including quite a few journalists, took delight in sneering at Scott Morrison as “Scotty from marketing”. Now, however, a more appropriate term would be “ScoMo for the workers”.

It was around the turn of the 20th century that the Australian Labor Party was created out of the trade union movement. For many decades Labor presented itself as the friend of the working class, as did the trade unions.

But that’s quite some time ago, as the labour movement’s response to the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates.

No person or organisation is responsible for Australia’s economic plight. The Morrison government acted in accordance with medical advice that COVID-19 was a pandemic and chose to close Australia’s border with China.

The first decision was taken ahead of the World Health Organisation; the latter against the WHO’s advice at the time. Both initiatives were correct — and timely.

Australia’s last crisis took place when World War II began in September 1939 during the time political conservative Robert Menzies was prime minister.

Labor, under the leadership of John Curtin, refused to take part in a war cabinet. When Curtin became prime minister in October 1941, he did not invite the opposition into a national government.

Consequently, Morrison’s decision to announce what he termed a national cabinet in late February — comprising the heads of federal, state and territory governments — was very much a first for Australia.

Despite the coexistence of Coali­tion and Labor heads of government, the new entity has worked well. Its first apparent significant disagreement turns on the reopening of schools. This illustrates the new divide in Australian politics.

Unlike some other nations, Australia took a middle-road response at the onset of COVID-19. Senior Coalition ministers convinced the national cabinet to adopt a whitelist rather than a blacklist with respect to the lockdown. In other words, instead of listing businesses that could remain open, the national cabinet listed only those that were required to close. This limited the extent of the economic shutdown.

Like Australia, New Zealand benefits from being isolated at a time of pandemic.

Under Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand went for a near total lockdown. Australia, on the other hand, kept open as many industries as possible. Since, per capita, the impact of the virus on each nation is about the same, it appears that the Australian approach is sound.

But the problem remains. An unintended consequence of the lockdown has seen elected officials and their advisers close down large sections of the private sector with the restrictions implemented by police, local government rangers and the like. In the process, entrepreneurial Australians running big, medium and small businesses have suffered a significant hit that, in some cases at least, will prove fatal.

Then there are the personal and medical impacts of social distancing. Some Australians live in large, comfortable homes or apartments. Others live in small homes with few amenities. Some Australians live with partners and/or children. Others live alone. Some have access to outdoor areas. Not so some others. It’s much the same as schooling. The wealthier and better educated a household is, the better equipped it is to deal with home schooling. It’s the children of the poor and less well-off who suffer most from school closures. Plus parents of children with disabilities.

In days of old when Labor Party and trade union leaders focused on the needs of lower-income earners and those in genuine need of welfare, it would be expected that both organisations would be in the vanguard of getting children back to the classroom.

Yet today it is the Labor governments of Victoria (Premier Daniel Andrews) and the ACT (Chief Minister Andrew Barr) that have been most reluctant to support the Prime Minister’s attempts to open the schools as soon as possible. They have the backing of the teachers’ unions, in particular the Australian Education Union.

As The Australian reported on Wednesday, a recent Treasury analysis reveals that classroom closures have contributed to more than 300,000 job losses and a 3 per cent hit to economic activity. Put simply, parents who have to mind children cannot get to work, even if employment is available.

The reluctance of some Labor leaders to reopen schools, with the broad support of the teachers’ unions, is in defiance of the advice from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee that it is safe to do so. And so a situation has developed whereby teachers in government schools on full pay oppose reopening schools to the disadvantage of private and public sector employees alike, including parents of special-needs children.

The public-private sector divide on the impact of COVID-19 is evident in the media coverage.

Asked about what her listeners were saying about school closures on ABC television’s Insiders program on April 26, ABC Radio Melbourne presenter Virginia Trioli said teachers were terrified about going back to school. She seemed unaware that listeners of commercial radio stations in cities and towns might have had a different response to reopening of schools.

On the same program on Sunday, another panel discussed whether schools should open. Right at the end of the program, presenter David Speers announced the “breaking news” that a government school in Victoria “will have to shut because of a coronavirus case”. Whereupon panellist Patricia Karvelas, another ABC presenter, stated “that changes everything doesn’t it”.

It didn’t. It turned out that the teacher who contracted COVID-19 did so outside the school and had no contact with students.

Meanwhile the Andrews government in Victoria appears to have mishandled a serious breakout of COVID-19 at a Melbourne abattoir.

The Morrison government is focused on the rights of all employees, including those who are not professionals and who work in the private sector. Its aim is to have as many people who want to work at work. That was the priority of the Labor Party and the trade union movement at the time of the last pandemic. But, alas, not today.

SOURCE  





Coronavirus: Science is clear on climate and the pandemic

Climate activists seldom waste a crisis, whether it is a drought, a bushfire or a viral pandemic. Having failed to come up with a way to blame the pandemic on climate change (yet), the green left is ­begging for more renewable ­energy funding to boost the post-pandemic economy.

They also reckon the corona­virus response offers a template for global warming policy. “Above all,” The Sydney Morning Herald editorialised this week, “Australia should take the same evidence-based scientifically led approach to climate change as we took to COVID-19.”

This is the same newspaper that editorialised last September about how the Prime Minister should have attended a climate speech in New York, not by a scientist but by a teenage activist. “Scott Morrison should have gone to hear Greta Thunberg,” counselled the Herald.

Presumably, the pandemic has turned the paper’s focus away from teenage slacktivism and back to science. It makes sense given that Earth Hour in March couldn’t make much of a mark when everything was ­already shut down, and school strikes don’t real­ly cut it when the kids aren’t in their classrooms to start with.

So, science it is. Let’s take up the Herald’s challenge and compare a science-based pandemic response to the climate policy debate.

The COVID-19 pandemic, like rising global greenhouse gas emissions, is a global problem emanating largely from China. The big difference is that by banning overseas arrivals and enforcing strict quarantine rules, Australia has been able to isolate itself and deal with the virus within our borders.

This has been Australia’s single greatest scientific advantage: isolation. It has meant that all the other actions we have taken — from hospital treatments to social distancing, from testing to infection tracing — have delivered ­material benefits for this country, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world.

By contrast, the atmosphere knows no borders; we all share the same air and experience whatever climatic variations occur globally, regardless of the policies of individual countries. On climate action Australia is beholden to what the rest of the world does or does not do; we could cut our emissions to zero and our climate would still be hostage to rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.

The science is clear. If global emissions growth delivers a warming planet and dire climate changes for Australia, our own emissions reductions effort will do little more than reduce the economic resilience we need to deal with the consequences.

The appropriate analogy ­between climate and COVID-19 is to imagine how effective it would have been for this country to impose social-distancing measures but still allow tens of thousands of international visitors to arrive every day. Our anti-infection measures would have been rendered almost as futile as our emissions reduction schemes.

The fundamental evidence-based point the green left continues to ignore is that the minuscule reductions in our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions have been eclipsed many times over by ­increases elsewhere. According to the National Greenhouse Gas ­Inventory, annual emissions to September last year were 531 million tonnes, 69 million tonnes (or 11 per cent) less than the corresponding period in 1990. Across those same three decades, annual emissions in China alone rose from 3265 million tonnes to 13,405 million tonnes — from more than five times our total emissions to more than 25 times.

You don’t need to be a Nobel laureate to look at those facts and work out the likely impact of Australia’s renewable energy target on global atmospheric conditions and climate patterns. Those who pretend our policies make any difference globally are indulging in a giant deceit or a grand delusion. Our efforts are mere gestures, and science tells us that gestures will not save a planet.

The economic pain Australians have inflicted on themselves has produced no environmental gain. The cost-benefit analysis is stark: the cost in the energy sector alone tops something like $100bn, while there is no gain or, to be generous, the negligible benefit that we might have marginally reduced global emissions increases. The only plausible argument for deepening our emissions reduction ­effort is to suggest that where we go, others will follow. But like our early settlers who believed the rains would follow their ploughs, this theory is bound to end in heartache.

Malcolm Turnbull’s secret gift to our political debate, Guardian Australia, had a treatise this week from an unlikely triumvirate pushing the pandemic-climate coupling. “If we have learned anything from what we have already endured in 2020 it is that stopping an emergency is far better than responding to one,” said Australian Council of Social Service chief Cassandra Goldie, Australian ­Industry Group chief Innes Willox and Investor Group on Climate Change chief Emma Herd.

This stuff is trite and superficial. It is a level of political advocacy that demeans their case.

The coronavirus pandemic was and is a real and present danger. We know it is highly infectious and kills people, mainly those who are elderly or already ill. Even then, there is widespread and ongoing scientific research and debate trying to ascertain precisely how virulent and contagious it is. We can see the damage that is done when the virus runs rampant.

The science on stopping the spread of a virus is simple. We need to avoid direct human contact and be careful with indirect contact.

There has been no scientific ­debate about how to deal with the problem. The dilemma has been in deciding what is practical — we could all self-isolate in our bathrooms for a month, which would stop the virus but destroy our society — so we have had ongoing debates and adjustments to balance the battle to slow the spread of the virus against the sustenance of our community and economy.

Our domestic response is being sullied by political science. Buoyed by their successful suppression of the pandemic, some premiers have fallen into egotistical mission-creep; forgetting that their aim was to restrict infections to a level our health system could handle, they now see every new case as a personal and political blemish.

We need to prize our society, its economic viability and its self­-reliance above a zero-tolerance policy on COVID-19 that we would never apply to influenza, cancer or syphilis. To fight HIV-AIDS in the 1980s the left took ­delight in promoting condom-protected promiscuity; to battle the coronavirus Daniel Andrews demanded that lovers who did not live together should not even visit each other. This viral puritanism could have flattened more than the curve. Thankfully, Andrews was sweet-talked out of it.

“Our success in flattening the curve,” that Herald editorial continued, “has been because the ­advice and science have been believed and clearly communicated.”

This is a very unscientific ­simplification of what the nation is enduring. The whole conundrum of the pandemic response has been balancing the scientific objective of minimising human contact against the economic imperative for human engagement. If it were science alone, we would all be wasting away in our bathrooms.

Likewise, notwithstanding the futility of Australia reducing carbon emissions while they rise globally, any attempt to reduce emissions here is far more complicated than merely following the science. It is scientifically accurate to declare that burning fossil fuels generates CO2 emissions, therefore if we stop doing it emissions will reduce. But what would we do for affordable and reliable energy? How would our civilisation function without this crucial input? And if science reigns supreme, why would we not embrace scientifically proven, emissions-free nuclear energy?

The wrongheadedness of the Herald’s sloganeering was laid bare when it declared: “We have also learned in the past couple of months that working together as a nation we can actually beat global threats and climate change should be no different.” This is utter tripe.

We have banded together to solve a national problem. Look outside our borders and you can see COVID-19 chaos in the US, Britain, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. Australia cannot solve the global pandemic unless we come up with a vaccine (which would solve our export diversification issues, too). Science suggests we cannot come up with a vaccine for global warming.

This all underscores the scientific absurdity that anything the Australian federation can agree to do on emissions reduction policies can make the slightest difference to global atmospheric conditions or improve the climate in Australia or anywhere else. Any rational scientific analysis of national climate policy can only conclude that it will have an infinitely greater impact on our economy than our environment — yet that is precisely the aspect the green left ignores.

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 May, 2020

The silent COVID-19 death toll: Far more Australians will kill themselves because of coronavirus lockdown than those who die of the virus, experts say

There are fears suicide rates could rise by 50 per cent across Australia because of the impacts of coronavirus restrictions.

New research predicts an extra 1,500 suicide deaths across the country over the next five years as a result of the economic fallout of the coronavirus.

The modelling from the Sydney University's Brain and Mind Centre found the rate of deaths linked to suicide would be more than four times the number of deaths directly caused by coronavirus, The Australian. 

Early modelling forecasts a 25 per cent jump in suicides, based on an unemployment rate of 10 per cent. But if job losses cause unemployment to reach 15 per cent, the rate of suicide could climb by 50 per cent. Around 3,000 deaths are caused by suicide each year across Australia. 

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has been briefed on the research and will present the modelling to the national cabinet next week.

The federal government announced a $74million boost for mental health support services on March 29. At the time suicide support services such as Lifeline were already reporting a 20 per cent increase in normal call volumes. 

The new research has prompted leading health officials to call for a more cohesive approach to address concerns around a mental health crisis linked directly to the pandemic.

Researchers say young people will suffer the most, as well as people in regional communities, which have already endured economic downturn linked to the bushfires, the drought and floods.

The modelling reveals the annual rate of suicide could rise from 3,000 to 4,500 - and youth suicides would represent almost half of those figures.

Former mental health commissioner and the head of the Brain and Mind Centre, Ian Hickie, said Australia is yet to see the worst impacts of a national economic downturn.

'What happens in recessions, and we know this from the 2009 GFC, the Asian financial crisis and the Great Depression, is that suicide rates go up dramatically in recession… and they hurt the young the most… we can watch it and see it happening …or we can get ahead of the curve,' Professor Hickie said.

'The impacts of unemployment will be greatest among the young, those who live in rural and regional Australia, and those areas hardest-hit by job losses will not recover quickly.

'As restrictions on physical distancing and isolation are eased, Australia's mental health system, already poorly designed and seriousl­y under-resourced, must urgently be equipped with the capacit­y to respond to the expected influx in demand for services,' he said.

The Australian Medical Association is backing the calls for urgent action to deal with concerns mental health issues caused by COVID-19 could spark more deaths in Australia than the virus itself.

SOURCE  





Coronavirus: Pandemic unleashes internal conflict for conservatives

Around the world and in Australia economic recovery from the COVID-19 attack is generating an ideological conflict in right-wing politics between two schools — pro-market economic liberals and pro-government interventionist conservatives keen to use state power.

The contrast is monumental and the coming struggle is irresistible. This pandemic has seen the greatest recruitment of state power since the war to salvage economies in the form of huge spending, wage subsidies, expanded social welfare, controls on human contact, support for companies and emergency liquidity — yet governments, including the Morrison government, want recovery based on business, seeking a pro-market, competitive, anti-protectionist restoration of the ­liberal economic order.

Not surprisingly, it won’t be that easy. Everybody agrees there is no simple retreat to the pre-virus economy. But economic liberals and interventionist conservatives see the future in vastly different ways. Critically, this conflict is about both means and ends.

The liberals want an economy even better geared to pro-market, pro-productivity reforms to generate growth, with Josh Frydenberg saying the “values and principles” that guided Coalition reforms in the past “must guide us again in the future”. The values he lists are personal responsibility, rewarding effort, “unleashing the power of dynamic, innovative and open markets”, private enterprise spearheading job creation, rejection of higher taxes, reducing business costs and being “vigilant” against rising “protectionist sentiment”.

The best statement of the alternative view — and have no doubt it is an alternative — comes from NSW Liberal senator Jim Molan, an icon of the party’s conservative wing, in a recent article: “The market has never, and will never, deliver Australian security. The market monumentally failed to deliver security in Australia over the last few decades. There are limitations in viewing the world solely through an economic lens. COVID-19 has heralded the end of a particular phase of globalisation and the question becomes how Australia should recalibrate its policy settings to secure its sovereignty in the new circumstances.

“We are now acutely aware of the vulnerabilities associated with untrussed globalised supply chains and ‘just-in-time’ logistics. In the event of a future crisis bigger than COVID-19 we need to ensure that Australia can take care of its own needs in vital areas including food, medicine, energy, IT, fuels, industry, transportation and defence … self-reliance improves resilience which improves sovereignty.”

This is a call for transformed governance and revised national goals based upon increased security threats at every point. Many Liberal conservatives are talking along these lines. No commitment here to Frydenberg’s vision of enduring Liberal principles igniting a growth recovery — without which the Morrison government’s re-election hopes are dismal.

This is a fundamental conflict about the meaning of today’s crisis and how it should be interpreted by the Liberal Party in the national interest. Andrew Hastie, chair of the parliamentary committee on intelligence and security, has long argued Australia must push back against China, reclaim its sovereignty, toughen its resilience, reduce its economic dependence on Beijing, strengthen its traditional defences and rethink foreign investment policy to deny China’s ownership of critical assets — an agenda that runs towards a whole-of-government outlook.

Two cultural take-outs from the pandemic will shape democratic governance everywhere. The first is the elevation of community co-operation and public institutions over individual liberty and autonomy. The age of individual narcissism and self-expression will be in retreat. The age of social co-operation and effective public institutions will be resurrected. COVID-19 ­ bequeaths a deeper sense of our vulnerability.

The new emphasis will fall on community interdependence and mutual support in family, workplace and industry, along with the need to resurrect a virtuous civic culture, well-run and well-funded healthcare institutions and a business culture that prioritises respect for employees. In this redefinition of what constitutes a good society classical liberals will be marginalised unless they transform.

The second takeout is the rising tide for sovereignty, self-reliance and resilience. Morrison knows this and has declared the essential lesson from the crisis is sovereignty — but that notion has multiple policy meanings.

Rana Foroohar from the Financial Times says: “If the past 40 years were about efficiency, the next 40 will be about resilience. The signs are everywhere. Witness calls from progressives such as Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to put a halt to mergers in the middle of a pandemic or Republican senator Marco Rubio’s prescription for ‘creating a more resilient economy’. There’s little daylight between the Rubio and Warren view of industrial policy which means these shifts are likely to come no matter who’s in charge after the November (American) election.”

In his New York Times article Rubio denounced past decades when America “made the conscious choice to facilitate offshoring to China”, the consequence being the 2016 campaign when people “felt helpless as they watched jobs disappear and their communities crumble because businesses and lawmakers prioritised maximised short-term gains over the long-term security of America, its communities and its peoples”.

Rubio’s point is that COVID-19 has humiliated America because China has monopolised the “critical supply chains”, leaving the nation scrambling for essential medical supplies. His message: our society must change because the “short-term hyper-individualistic ethos” based on a services economy that doesn’t produce enough physical goods has led to a crisis where people cannot leave home, cannot shake hands and cannot enter a place of worship. Rubio will move for a “sweeping pro-American industrial policy” off the back of strong public support.

What does Scott Morrison say? He talks repeatedly about resilience, raising the question: how does this translate into policy? Many observers believe there will be no return to pro-market liberal economics. Commentator and Financial Times editorial board chief Philip Stephens wrote: “The return of government to centrestage marks the close of an era in which power and responsibility migrated from states to markets. To watch governments throw trillions of dollars into the fight to prevent economic collapse is to appreciate just how absurd was the preoccupation of recent decades with balanced budgets, public deficits and debt-to-GDP ratios.”

There is intellectual turmoil and vibrancy throughout the ­centre-right in America and Britain about the precise path forward. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump won elections as friends of the working class, spending big, championing government intervention, kicking Adam Smith into history’s dustbin, at least for a few decades.

The Economist notes that US conservative intellectuals such as Yuval Levin and Oren Cass reject market fundamentalism for a more flexible, constructive government interventionism. The thesis of Levin’s latest book, A Time to Build, is that liberalism has been blind to the massive ­social crises engulfing America. Cass wants an end to the “economic piety” under which markets have failed to address the actual needs of US workers.

A book, After COVID-19, in effect a blueprint for Australian resilience, has been released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute under the leadership of its director, Peter Jennings. It says the pandemic is “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to transform economic and strategic policy, argues for an expanded national security state as a central organising principle and challenges liberal economics across the board. This is a frontal assault on much of the economic establishment.

Morrison takes a broad view of sovereignty. He thinks it can encompass both a competitive private sector and security self-reliance where needed. He will probably seek a synthesis between these rival conceptions. Consider the irony — liberal economics and the national security state have been the two singular glories and winning issues for the Liberal Party for decades. The question now is: are they in conflict with each other?

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Coronavirus Australia: Parents shut-out of QLD school grounds

Queensland parents won’t be allowed onto school grounds to deliver young children to their classrooms from next week.

The state will begin a staged return to normal school operations from Monday, with the coronavirus crisis easing.

The first to return will be students in prep, and years one, 11 and 12, along with kids at kindy.

All other grades will return a fortnight later, on May 25, as long as the initial test run goes smoothly.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says the staged return should be safe, as long as there are robust protocols to prevent the virus from spreading again.

“The parents won’t be able to go into the school gates,” she told the Seven Network. “(Schools) will be putting in place very clearly where parents can drop off the kids.

“They will leave the car, go in the front gate. For the junior years, we need to make sure they’re as close as possible to the classrooms.”

School staff will have to maintain the 1.5m social distancing rule. But that’s not true for students when they are inside classrooms because it’s been deemed impractical.

For now, there’s no plan to reopen boarding schools, after Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said she’d not yet been able to envisage safe protocols to limit risks from things like communal eating and showering areas.

The Queensland Teachers Union says staff face a frantic time to prepare classrooms, work on lesson plans, deliver remote learning, and supervise kids who are still in school - all at the same time.

Other challenges include the absence of teachers who are either vulnerable themselves, or who care for people who are. “That’s several thousand workers that won’t be available,” Mr Bates told ABC radio on Tuesday.

“These are the issues we’re going to have to work out over the next four days.”

The premier has already said it will be at least June before Queensland’s borders, restaurants and cafes reopen, given active hot spots in NSW.

But talks will begin this week with the hospitality sector about when a return to more normal trading might occur.

“June’s a good ambitious target … I can’t say whether it’s early June or late June,” the premier said yesterday.

Queensland has recorded three more coronavirus cases to take the state’s tally to 1038. The new cases relate to people who had recently returned from London and Los Angeles while another had been on an overseas cruise.

Of the 1038 confirmed cases, just 52 are active with 46 located in southeast Queensland.

SOURCE  






Childcare scheme is crippling centres and frustrating parents

When the government announced childcare would be free in April, under a scheme put in place to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, it sounded like a dream. But if you’re about to return to work after having a baby, you might find that instead of free childcare, you now won’t have any at all.

The scheme was announced in response to some centres rapidly losing revenue as parents fearful of COVID-19 pulled their children out. Other parents were paying hundreds of dollars a week to hold their place while keeping their children at home. The sector needed a solution. But the government’s answer has only made the situation worse. This week, Uniting NSW/ACT will stand down 45 staff across its 56 centres because it is now losing $1 million a month under the scheme.

Childcare places are always in demand. I put my daughter’s name down on 11 waiting lists and when I finally secured a place, I breathed a sigh of relief. But when I called the centre manager about my child’s first day, she said the government was now paying about a third of the centre’s usual revenue and parents weren’t allowed to pay anything, even if they wanted to. So she’d had to cut staff and places.

The JobKeeper program helps if centres qualify for it, but it doesn’t pay a full-time carer’s wage or help employees on visas. The story was the same at other centres I called – they could no longer afford to take new enrolments. My friends who are also about to return to work confirmed their spots have also disappeared.

The government is implementing schemes at record pace to keep the economy afloat and people safe. But the very scheme meant to help struggling parents is instead frustrating them and crippling centres, which have been left with not enough revenue to meet their expenses.

On Friday, Education Minister Dan Tehan said top-up payments would be made available to some centres that did not qualify for Jobkeeper or which had seen a large increase in demand since the end of February. But this amendment does not address the scale of the problem. It won’t make a difference to the centres I rang last week. Even with the new scheme and JobKeeper combined, they couldn’t meet costs last week.

The government is learning what parents have known for a long time – childcare is expensive. This is because quality care costs money and mandated educator-to-child ratios are high.

Early childhood education doesn’t just enable parents to work or study. It furthers a child’s education, prepares them for school and can even improve their health over their lifetime. An economic analysis by independent enterprise The Front Project showed that for every dollar invested in early education, Australia receives $2 back over a child’s life.

Yet such critical work is badly paid. I worked in childcare for years and was only on close to the minimum wage. Governments have never properly funded this sector, despite its importance to our children’s – and our nation’s – wellbeing.

Parents have already lost their childcare spots and employees their income. Centres are struggling to stay afloat. This rushed scheme needs to be fixed before centres go bust, to ensure centres have adequate revenue to provide quality childcare to all families who need it.

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 May 2020

Pro-China University bullies student critic

The University of Queensland is going to extraordinary lengths to silence its most effective critic, a 20-year-old philosophy student who has campaigned against the university’s tight links with the Chinese Communist Party.

Drew Pavlou came to public attention in July last year when, while leading a protest in support of Hong Kong democracy activists, he was assaulted by men who gave every impression of being heavies working for the Chinese state.

He then was targeted by a torrent of online hate and death threats from patriotic Chinese students. China’s consul-general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, praised the violence, drawing a rebuke from Foreign Minister Marise Payne. Pavlou decided to seek a protection order against the consul-general through the courts.

Pavlou’s safety was threatened further when China’s state media vilified him, in effect giving official blessing to patriotic thuggery. He was no longer safe on campus.

How has the university responded to these events, surely one of the most worrying assaults on free speech?

None of the pro-Beijing students or the thugs who assaulted Pavlou has been disciplined. Xu, whom UQ had appointed an adjunct professor, appears to be as welcome as ever at the university.

Instead, irritated by Pavlou’s robust criticism, pranks and sarcasm, UQ seems to have decided to intimidate him into silence.

In February, Pavlou posted a mock Facebook announcement of a forthcoming “UQ Confucius Institute Panel: Why Uyghurs Must Be Exterminated”. A bit of undergraduate humour? Not for the mandarins at UQ.

University lawyers Clayton Utz wrote a letter to Pavlou that itself reads like a prank. It accused him of “making false statements” because, in fact, the Confucius Institute has no involvement with “the alleged event”. There follows a page and a half listing the rules and by-laws it claims he has viol­ated, and ends menacingly: if he fails to remove the post and will not agree to refrain from making “false and misleading” statements, then the university “reserves the right to commence proceedings”.

Pavlou complied with the first demand. But then UQ sought the nuclear option. On April 9, the disciplinary board delivered a 186-page document detailing 11 charges. Pavlou has been summoned to a secret meeting at which, if he cannot explain himself, he can expect to be expelled.

Most of the allegations are trivial to the point of risible. UQ somehow manages to construe jokes, obvious hoaxes and social media badinage as forms of harassment and bullying or acts that prejudice its reputation. It’s true Pavlou’s activism is often provocative and his criticisms sharp, at times over the top, but whatever case the disciplinary board might have had is vitiated by the series of frivolous allegations against him, the effect of which is to indicate the board itself is engaged in harassment and bullying.

The first allegation is that he used a rude word on Facebook (closely monitored by the university) to describe students enrolled in the bachelor of advanced finance and economics. The university claims this constitutes “discriminatory, harassing or bullying behaviour … towards these students”.

It is laughable. Can they produce one student among several hundred aspiring corporate executives who read Pavlou’s Facebook page and felt discriminated against, harassed or bullied? If they could, would anyone take them seriously?

Pavlou deleted his mock “Why Uyghurs Must Be Exterminated” announcement but the university won’t let it go. It claims “a member of the public” (either a fool or a satirist) complained the planned event was “absolutely disgustingly racist and fascist” and they’d be there to protest, and claims Pavlou’s post harmed the university’s reputation by “indicating to the public that UQ supports an ‘extermination’ of the Uyghur people”.

Seriously. One begins to suspect that Pavlou has a secret sympathiser on the board conspiring to make the “allegation notice” so outlandish as to be laughed out of court.

But the next allegation takes a more sinister turn. It’s alleged that Pavlou was guilty of behaviour that “unreasonably disrupted staff or students” when at 12.30pm “on or about 26 February 2020” he took a pen from a shelf at the university stationery shop, wrote something with it, put the pen back and left the shop paying only for three sheets of card.

This kind of surveillance and reporting to authorities has more in common with Beijing’s Orwellian social credit system than what we’d expect on an Australian campus. It’s clear that someone high up at UQ decided, through exasperation or vindictiveness, to “throw the book at Pavlou”.

If UQ wants to counter criticism of its China links it has vast resources with which to do so openly, both within the university and more broadly. Instead, it has set up a kangaroo court hoping to browbeat an undergraduate into submission or to expel him.

In the context of UQ’s documented discomfort with Pavlou’s political activism — especially his highlighting of links between the university, its vice-chancellor and various agencies of the Chinese Communist Party — the threat of expulsion can be read only as an attempt to silence legitimate political activism on the campus.

SOURCE  






‘Death sentence’: Morrison rails against herd immunity idea

Herd immunity is the only alternative to a vaccine so he is relying on a vaccine arriving soon

Scott Morrison has railed against the coronavirus herd immunity strategy being pursued by some nations, describing it as a death sentence.

The Prime Minister said the US, Britain and Sweden – which have all tried for similar strategies – were nowhere near reaching immunity targets.

“That’s a death sentence,” he told 2GB radio host Ray Hadley on Wednesday.

Instead, the virus had wrought “death and destruction” on those countries, he said.

Britain has one of the world’s worst coronavirus tolls, with nearly 30,000 deaths and more than 195,000 confirmed cases.

In the US, more than 70,000 people have died and there are more than 1.23 million infections.

Sweden, which has a similar population to Australia, has more than 2800 COVID-19 deaths from 23,000 confirmed infections.

“This could have all happened here. We could have gone down that path,’’ Mr Morrison said.

By Wednesday, Australia had fewer than 7000 infections, with 97 dead.

But weeks ago, the country faced a much grimmer outlook, with “thousands, if not tens of thousands, and certainly in terms of people contracting the virus, potentially hundreds of thousands”, the PM said.

“This idea of herd immunity, nobody’s got herd immunity. I mean the United States haven’t reached it, Sweden hadn’t reached it, the UK hasn’t reached it,” he said.

Instead, Australia has pursued a “suppression” strategy to try to defeat the coronavirus. Describing that plan more than a month ago, Mr Morrison said Australia’s lower-than-forecast numbers were a tribute to support for social distancing and other strict regulations imposed by state and territory governments.

SOURCE  





Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk provides update on coronavirus

QUEENSLAND Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has revealed the state has recorded no new cases of coronavirus overnight while also announcing a domestic violence summit to combat a spike in brutal attacks. It means there have now been 1043 cases in Queensland, of which 52 are active cases

There have been over 120,000 tests since the outbreak earlier this year, including about 2,400 more in the past 24 hours.

Premier Palaszczuk said it was good news, and that her Government was now focused on jobs.

She said the Government would be holding meetings tomorrow with tourism operators and the hospitality industry. “A lot of work continues behind the scenes of making sure that we have our roadmap in place for the recovery,” she said. “Of course that is front and centre. We need to get people back to work. We need to get people back into jobs.”

Health Minister Steven Miles said nine patients were in hospital, including several who were in intensive care. “We were really pleased to see a rebound in the testing rate,” he said. “In the last more than 24 hour period, we had 2457 Queenslanders tested for COVID-19.

“It’s results like today’s, no further COVID-19 cases, that will allow Queensland to continue to ease those restrictions.”

SOURCE  







Coronavirus: Old or young – every life has a different value and we accept that

When the pandemic has passed, there will need to be a reckoning of responses by state and federal governments. The reckoning should focus in particular on the costs incurred and the benefits accrued from the Morrison government’s decisions, how and when they responded to the health crisis, the costs of lockdown, and when and how they unlocked the economy.

This reckoning should not be downplayed as negative or unfair criticism of governments forced to fly in the dark, hampered by ­incomplete modelling, hamstrung by medical experts who are all trained, and paid, to expect the worst, and hindered by their political aversion to risk.

This should be about constructive learning, gathering information, comparing real outcomes to the modelling and the experts’ advice, and doing a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of responses. We might learn we need a precautionary principle to the precautionary principle because overreactions are not usually cost-free.

But a few straw men must be dismantled first. Some say we should put people ahead of economics. Scott Morrison says every Australian matters. Some say it is wrong to ignore the old.

If only dealing with COVID-19, not to mention settling on many other policies, were that simple.

Choices we make are never ­between a person, or people generally, and the economy. As rich and fortunate as we are, the starting point in Australia is still that resources are limited. That is the case whether we are talking about taxpayer dollars in federal coffers used by government for the people, the supply of livers, hearts and lungs for patients on a transplant list, or the availability of ventilators to coronavirus victims. When resources are limited, they must be rationed.

Governments and policymakers are confronted by tough questions every day about where to spend money. Safer roads will mean money taken from some other area. More money put into prostate cancer for men may mean less money for breast cancer. This is the reality that confounds those who say that we must put people ahead of economics.

No one is saying we should ignore the old either. However, the doctors I have spoken to, many who have worked for more than 30 years in Australia’s best teaching hospitals, acknowledge they make decisions every week about older patients that they don’t have to make about younger ones. Age, unfortunately, is inevitably a determinant in health decisions. As one senior anaesthetist told me last weekend: “These decisions are often shrouded in secrecy, but we don’t have unlimited resources to treat everyone to the maximum.”

The committed Catholic accepts that sometimes he has to make difficult decisions. This is not something he or his colleagues are comfortable with. But reality cannot be wished away by saying that all lives matter. They do. Life is precious. But no life is priceless. Lives are priceless only in a fictional place called La La Land where resources are infinite.

Another doctor pointed to the decision-making infrastructure purposely built to determine who gets a set of lungs or a heart transplant. These are dreadfully difficult decisions about who will live and who might die, given the demand for organ transplants exceeds supply. And when allocating scarce resources, the age of a ­patient is relevant because doctors are asked, among many other things, to decide who will get more years of life from a new set of lungs or a new heart.

Measuring the responses to COVID-19 raises similarly confronting issues that many prefer not to think about. Obscuring the difficulty of these issues with simplistic sound bites such as putting ­people ahead of the economy is unhelpful at best and dishonest at worst.

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet already has a document that many will find confronting. It is called the Best Practice Regulation Guidance Note: Value of Statistical Life. The note “provides guidance on how officers preparing the cost-benefit analysis in regulation impact statements should treat the benefits of regulation designed to reduce the risk of physical harm”.

The concept of “the value of statistical life” is an estimate of the value society places on reducing the risk of dying. The modelling starts with a young adult with 40 years of life ahead and uses a related concept called the “value of a statistical life year”, which is an estimate of the worth society places on a year of life. Drawing on research in 2007, and updating in 2019 dollars, the August 2019 Guidance Note suggests the value of saving the life of someone who has 40 years of life ahead is $4.9m, and a value of a statistical life year is $213,000.

The note draws on work that argues these estimates will vary according to the characteristics of people affected and the nature of the risk or hazard: “For example, society may be willing to forgo more to prevent the death of a young person, or to avoid conditions that significantly reduce the quality of life.”

The point of the Guidance Note is to make clear that these key concepts, though highly contestable, should be one input into assessing proposed regulations. In other words, comparing the statistical value of lives saved and the costs of implementing the regulation. Given that decisions to deal with COVID-19 needed to be made quickly, the Prime Minister granted an exemption from the usual regulatory impact statement and this kind of analysis. But after the pandemic has passed, we need a hard-headed and rational analysis of the responses to COVID-19. Indeed, the Morrison government has already committed to a post-implementation review within two years to assess its decisions.

It will have to include many tricky and tough questions. How many lives were saved? What was the average age of death from COVID-19 (not with COVID-19) compared with the average mortality rate in normal periods? How did deaths from COVID-19 compare with an awful flu season that kills young people too? How many people died from other medical conditions that were not treated because of the lockdown? How many additional suicides or cases of domestic violence were caused by the lockdown? Did more children drop out of school when schools were closed?

How much money did governments spend dealing with COVID-19 and how many businesses were brought asunder by the lockdown?

What other financial impacts arose from locking down the economy?

Could older Australians, who are most vulnerable to COVID-19, have been protected with different responses that carried fewer costs? In other words, could we have handled this crisis differently?

Only by providing answers to very tough questions will future governments have more complete information at their fingertips the next time a pandemic threatens.

This is not an immoral endeavour. It is not even a utilitarian one. It is simply one driven by realism and honesty about the imperfect world in which we live. The worst outcome would be to blindly ­assume that governments performed so terrifically that an investigation into this pandemic, not just its origins, but its handling by governments, is not needed.

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 May, 2020

Westpac to withdraw support for thermal coalmining after 2030

Note that this is for thermal coal only.  Metallurgical coal exports are big too so the Greenies may not be appeased

Westpac has promised to stop supporting thermal coalmining, joining other major financial institutions in promising it will not back the fossil fuel industry through investments or loans beyond 2030.

It leaves ANZ as the only big Australian bank not to have pledged to get out of thermal coal, the dirtiest fuel used in mass electricity generation.

Environmental activists said Westpac’s commitment, which over the next decade includes not taking on new thermal coal customers and limiting support for mines or projects in existing coal basins, was “another nail in the coffin” of the thermal coal industry.

It came as Westpac decided to not pay an interim dividend to shareholders after it posted a first-half profit slide because of hefty impairment charges related mainly to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Australia’s second-largest lender reported a 70% slump in cash earnings to $993m for the six months ended 31 March, from $3.30bn a year earlier. Net profit was down 62% to $1.19bn.

A bank statement released on Monday said Westpac recognised climate change was one of the most significant issues that would affect long-term prosperity of the global economy “and our way of life”. It committed the bank to managing its business in alignment with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, including a transition to an economy that has “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In a list of principles, the bank said climate change was a financial risk, that addressing it would create opportunities and called for the re-introduction of a carbon price.

It promised to lend another $3.5bn to climate solutions over the next three years and ensure its financing of electricity plants supported a path to zero emissions.

“Westpac’s preferred policy position is that a broad, market-based price on carbon is the most effective, affordable, flexible and equitable means of achieving emissions reductions at the least cost across the economy,” it said.

On thermal coal, it said it would support existing customers as it reduces its exposure to the fossil fuel to zero over the next decade. It would continue to offer finance for metallurgical coal, used in steel production, while supporting technology developments to reduce the steel industry’s dependence on it.

On oil and gas, it said it would assess their role in the transition to a low carbon economy while providing finance in line with its commitment to the Paris deal.

Climate activist group Market Forces said Westpac’s commitment on electricity lending should “squeeze out” new coal power plants and make it near impossible to finance new gas generation. It pointed to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that found meeting the Paris goal of keeping global heating as close to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels as possible meant energy from gas must fall 25% below 2010 levels by 2030.

The group’s executive director, Julien Vincent, said the bank’s stance was a nail in the coffin of thermal coal and a warning to the federal government if it planned to boost fossil fuels on the way out of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This plan shows it won’t be happening with Westpac’s cooperation,” Vincent said. “Last year, the Commonwealth Bank was the first to commit to be out of thermal coal by 2030 along with all three of our general insurers. Now, anyone trying to operate a coalmine or power station in Australia by the end of this decade will need to do it without Westpac as well.”

Market Forces said it hoped the new policy meant Westpac would reverse its recent lending trends, including $5.4bn in loans to coal, oil and gas projects since 2016, far more than the bank made available to renewable energy projects.

The activist group found Westpac increased its new investments in fossil fuel projects by 8% in 2018-19 compared with the previous year. The bank said its overall exposure to climate polluting industries, including longstanding investments, fell by 16%.

The Investor Group on Climate Change, representing institutional investors with funds under management worth about $2tn, said Westpac’s policy was a positive step that reinforced a global trend among international financiers to strike out or limit coal financing.

The group’s chief executive, Emma Herd, said in the past few months some of the world’s biggest funders of coal projects, including Japanese banks Sumitomo Mitsui and Mizuho, had ruled out directly funding new coal plants. Others, such as HSBC, had tightened existing policies.

May House, an economic analysts with the Australian Conservation Foundation, welcomed the announcement and called on financial institutions to ensure their financing and investment portfolios were focused on both rebuilding the economy and addressing climate change and biodiversity loss.

“For Australia’s big four banks, this does not end at setting an exit date for financing thermal coal, but should extend to ruling out funding any new or expanded oil and gas projects,” she said.

SOURCE  






‘Cashed-up activists’ should not be able to hold up developments, Australia's resources minister says

The federal minister for resources, water and northern Australia, Keith Pitt, says “cashed-up activists” should not be able to hold up developments that have been approved by a government agency “simply because they can afford to”.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Pitt said Australia had “some of the strongest environmental protections in the world” and the government had “no intention to change how strongly we protect the environment”. But he said a review of Australia’s environmental laws needed to consider how assessment processes could be “streamlined” for companies developing major projects.

“For individual companies who are making investment decisions there needs to be consistency, particularly around the timeframes and how long particular approvals might take, regardless of whether that is local, state or federal government levels,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be up to cashed-up activists to be able to hold up particular projects for a decade, simply because they can afford to.”

Pitt’s comments follow the environment minister, Sussan Ley, saying last week the government was prepared to make changes to national environment laws before former consumer watchdog head Graeme Samuel completes an independent review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

The statutory review of the act occurs every 10 years. A draft report is due in June and the final report in October.

Ley has not indicated what, if any, changes to laws are under consideration, but the government has emphasised a desire to reduce the amount of bureaucracy for companies applying for environmental approval for large projects.

Australia has the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world and a poor track record in taking steps such as registering critical habitat and recovery planning to protect threatened species.

Pitt did not specify which sections of the EPBC Act he believed needed reform. “I’ll leave those comments to Sussan,” he said. “In general terms we have some of the highest environmental standards in the world and they’ll be maintained.”

But he said businesses had consistently raised concerns about multiple layers of bureaucracy at state and federal levels and duplication of laws related to environmental assessments.

Pitt said Ben Morton, the assistant minister to the prime minister and cabinet, was examining “red and green tape” and “having discussions around the potential for bilateral agreements between the commonwealth and states”.

“I’m a practical, commonsense sort of guy,” Pitt said. “If you have an approval for a specific element which is exactly the same between the two levels of government, one would assume that you should be able to get that approval from both levels with the one application.”

At present, there are bilateral assessment agreements that allow proponents to prepare a single set of documentation for decision-makers at a state and federal level for some parts of the environmental assessment process.

But a recent draft productivity commission report on regulation of the resources sector states that developers continue to call for bilateral approval agreements, which would see state and territory decision-makers responsible for decisions under the EPBC Act, rather than the federal environment minister.

Pitt did not identify specific reforms he thought were necessary in this area and said he was “waiting for the outcomes of the review”.

Cameron Holley, a professor of law at the University of New South Wales, said Australia’s environmental laws were quite strong on paper when it came to protecting matters of national environmental significance. But he added: “It comes down to implementation. The state-of-the-environment report is a good place to start and the trends are not good. It speaks to their effectiveness.”

The most recent state-of-the-environment report showed a downward trajectory for many species.

Peter Burnett, an honorary professor of law at the Australian National University, said it was difficult to compare the effectiveness of different systems of environmental law around the world. He said Australia’s laws were “strong on paper but they’re under-resourced and under-implemented so the outcome is they are not as strong on the ground”.

Burnett also said there was not enough detailed data and information collected on Australia’s environment.

“When you look at the general reports [such as the state-of-the-environment report], looking at the big picture, you can see we’re not heading in the right direction,” he said. “But often we don’t have the detailed information to say that a particular decision contributed to a certain loss.”

James Trezise, of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said Australia led the world on mammal extinctions and “all our environmental indicators are heading downwards”.

“Our environment laws have fundamentally failed and Australia needs much stronger environmental protections if we are going to avert the worst of a growing climate and extinction crisis.”

SOURCE  






The coronavirus can’t stop the windpower blowhards, let alone economic reality

For Australian energy, 2020 started precariously.  The bushfires showed the vulnerability of the nation to its subsidy-induced reliance on renewable energy.   

Average prices in January reached near-record levels.  In addition, the market manager was forced to intervene spending over four times as much as normal — $310 million — buying services and compensating suppliers in order to stabilise the system.  

In February, low demand, an influx of renewable energy, and high supplies of hydro brought about a halving of the previous month’s prices.  These conditions continued in March when they were reinforced by a forced cessation of demand and ample gas supplies caused by the COVID-19 crisis. 

And in April prices fell to $35 per MWh.  Such levels were last seen five years ago, before wind/solar subsidies caused closures of two major coal power stations, resulting in a two-and-a-half-fold increase in prices and, due to the higher share of intermittent electricity, a permanent lift in unreliability.   

Forward markets indicate that prices that were previously forecast at $75 per MWh are now at around $55 per MWh, a level that will be maintained through 2021.  This trend could continue in later years if, as is constantly threatened, one of the big three aluminium smelters were to close, thereby reducing national electricity demand by five per cent.  

Long term, the low prices cannot be maintained with the current wind/solar-rich generation, even if there is an-ongoing de-industrialisation. Wind and solar costs are difficult to estimate since the contracts are confidential and the headline price contains various contingencies.  CSIRO estimated the cost of wind at around $50 per MWh and Bloomberg New Energy Finance at $40-74.  Lazards put the cheapest wind at $52.  On some estimates, large scale solar is cheaper. China, which in the March quarter of 2020 announced approved more new coal capacity than in the whole of 2019, is clearly unimpressed with such estimates.   

One reason for this may be that intermittent renewables also need a firming contract which presently costs $40 per MWh but which Snowy Hydro says will fall to $25-30.  Add to this, wind (but not solar) earns a discount on the average spot price because of its lesser availability during high price events (when typically, there is little wind).  According to the Energy Council, wind on average received in 2018/19 24 per cent less per MWh than the average spot price in South Australia (in NSW it was only five per cent less).  

A further cost is that seen in January this year when the market manager had to buy, and charge to wind farms, frequency control services (FCAS) and require backoffs, with wind farms also choosing to back off to avoid high FCAS charges. 

Thus, if the spot price is $55 per MWh, a wind farm capable of a variable production cost of $50 per MWh would need $90 per MWh because of its earnings being discounted by, say 20 per cent, or $10 per MWh; a hedge cost at, say, $30 per MWh

In addition, it would have other costs caused by the lack of system strength and FCAS charges. 

Offsetting these penalties, wind and solar receive the renewable subsidy, which last year averaged $31.5 per MWh (about $457,000 per turbine). Forward prices have this declining to around $20 per MWh.  Long term it has to fall to zero which means a wind/solar dominated system would deliver electricity with support to offset wind/solars’ intrinsic unreliability at best at $80 per MWh.   

Wind and, to a lesser degree, large scale solar is now a mature technology and is likely to see cost reductions not dissimilar from those of nuclear of fossil plant.  

In Australia a system dominated by coal plant, supplemented by fast start hydro and gas, can provide a highly reliable electricity supply system at around $55 per MWh.  China and other developing countries would probably not be able to match this as they lack the low cost and conveniently located coal we have on the East coast.  Even so, they will have nuclear/fossil fuelled electricity at far less than the $80 we can hope for from our present policy settings. The energy intensive industries are therefore likely to migrate away from Australia and other industries will see costs higher than they need, an outcome of which is a lower exchange rate and lower living standards.    

The market manager, AEMO, has released a plan that indicates the network could accommodate up to 60 per cent “instantaneous penetration of wind and solar and could be adapted to accommodate 75 per cent.  AEMO does not specify what the costs of this would be.   

Meanwhile, renewable energy lobbyist Martijn Wilder, who the Commonwealth has appointed to head up hand-outs to renewables through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, finds their appointee is calling for more monies to be directed into renewables as a result of coronavirus.  His views are supported by the head of the Business Council who opined, “Every dollar we invest in energy, should be a dollar towards a lower carbon economy”. 

Maybe we just want to be poorer than we need to be.

SOURCE  






Capitalism is not finished - and we'll need it to escape this abyss

Since federation, the economic governance of Australia can be conveniently divided into three contrasting periods. Phase one, which featured industry protection and centralised wage determination, lasted from 1901 to 1983. During these years, the state was dominant in almost every corner of life and the economy was characterised by periodic crises triggered by external shocks.

Although the Liberals were in power during much of the post-war era (1949-72, 1975-83), Australia was closer to socialism than capitalism. From Ben Chifley to Malcolm Fraser, every prime minister accepted the power of the state to manage the economy.

This model began to fray in the 1970s and collapsed in the mid-1980s when we experienced the currency and balance-of-payments crises. Australia, as then-treasurer Paul Keating warned, could become a “banana republic”.

Australia was only saved from this fate by Bob Hawke’s Labor government. Showing political courage, he created a new economic orthodoxy, which liberated market forces, privatised state entities and opened up our protected economy.

It was a Nixon-in-China moment: when a political leader defies expectations by doing something that would anger his supporters if taken by someone without his credentials. In this case, the former union leader upset Labor’s old socialist guard while winning support from conservatives, led by the likes of John Howard.

The result was two decades of productivity-enhancing reform and, from the early 1990s, almost 30 years of growth with low inflation, low unemployment and, according to the Productivity Commission, no great widening in inequality.

Tragically, this second phase of economic governance ended during the global financial crisis of 2008-09. “Neoliberalism” had come to an end, declared Kevin Rudd, and social democracy would save global capitalism.

Ever since, Labor and Coalition governments have rested on the windfall of our China boom and settled into the complacency of prosperity. The result: productivity slowdown, wage stagnation and record-high household debt as the growth of government spending continued.

Australians have become used to relatively benign economic growth stretching over the decades. Now, thanks to the coronavirus crisis, we have entered a new and dangerous environment. Even on the more optimistic forecasts, a lot of Australians are going to nurse losses in jobs, businesses and hopes and dreams.

What now? What should define phase four of our economic governance?

Alas, crises can produce worse policy, and nowhere is that as true as with the growing calls for massive state intervention in the post-COVID economy. The left welcomes the birth of a new permanent era of government activism while some on the right proclaim the end of free trade and globalisation.

What passes for the new zeitgeist grimly echoes Ronald Reagan’s quip about government: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it.”

However, although relief in a crisis is a proper role of government, there should be no ideological validation from the radical, albeit temporary, emergency measures designed to save lives. There is no crisis of capitalism, but there is a liquidity crisis that has been caused by the decision of governments to shut down most commerce to stop the spread of a virus.

Higher levels of government intervention will only lead to sclerosis, the raising of taxes, the suppression of enterprise and unsustainable debt. Higher levels of protection will just increase prices of imported goods and risk drawing us into a slump of the sort that what was experienced in the 1930s.

Australians don’t think in terms of big or small government: we are instead a practical people who just want the state to act as a fair umpire that promotes individual freedom without creating an unacceptable level of insecurity. We also know there is a long-run cost to dependency on the state, including an aversion to risk that boosts entrepreneurial spirit necessary for innovation and prosperity.

If Canberra addressed the fundamentals of taxation, spending, regulations, education and the workplace, it would put in place the sound bases from which a long-lasting recovery is possible, not merely a short-term bounce out of the abyss.

But can Scott Morrison do a Bob Hawke and implement a reform agenda that removes obstacles to growth? Can Josh Frydenberg do a Peter Costello and embark on budget repair? And, crucially, can the opposition give bipartisan support to a new reform agenda, just as the Coalition did in the reform heyday in the ’80s? The answers will determine how we get out of this crisis.

SOURCE  

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








5 May, 2020

Labor internal angst at Kristina Keneally's call to lower immigration

Kristina Keneally's call to give Australians "first go" at jobs by cutting temporary migration has won cautious support from unions but divided Labor MPs who are worried the home affairs spokeswoman was freelancing with policy aimed at more conservative voters.

Several of Senator Keneally's colleagues privately voiced frustrations on Sunday about her decision to write an opinion piece arguing against the "lazy approach" used by governments to prop up economic growth through immigration and suggested that the overall migrant intake could be less under Labor. Other MPs publicly defended Senator Keneally, arguing that Australia's use of temporary migrants was a debate that needed to happen as the nation recovered from the coronavirus crisis.

In an opinion piece for The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age on Sunday, Senator Keneally said Australian workers must "get a fair go and a first go at jobs", and the country had an unprecedented chance to overhaul the immigration system, particularly the temporary worker intake which was not capped. It was not the first time Senator Keneally has called for the government to look at temporary migration, but it was her strongest suggestion yet that the overall number of migrants would be lower under Labor.

"The post-COVID-19 question we must ask now is this: when we restart our migration program, do we want migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis? Our answer should be no," she wrote.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said on Twitter that too many employers had used the temporary visa system to avoid hiring local workers and were exploiting people whose visa status and security depended on their employer. Ms McManus argued this had led to systematic wage theft. Victorian Labor MP Ged Kearney, former president of the ACTU, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age she welcomed the debate on whether to overhaul the immigration system.

"I think we really do need to have the conversation and get the balance right – and it may need to be a lower overall intake, but the focus should be on temporary migration and increasing permanent migration," she said.

Immigration is a vexed issue for Labor with the party occasionally being accused of over-compensating in response to Coalition attack campaigns over border security. Bill Shorten, when he was leader in 2016, caused controversy with an “Australia First” television advertisement which featured almost all white people and pledged that Labor would “build Australian first, buy Australian first and employ Australians first".

Multiple senior Labor sources confirmed the issue of whether to restart a debate on the size and composition of Australia's immigration program had been discussed at shadow cabinet level but no decision had been made on a change of policy. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese did not respond to a request for comment.

"This is still just Kristina's view at this stage, not the party's," one shadow cabinet source said.

Senator Keneally, who emigrated to Australia from the US, also caused frustration among senior Labor MPs because they were blindsided by her opinion piece. It wasn't featured in the original talking points circulated by Mr Albanese's office to MPs on Sunday morning. A second round of talking points - the party's message on the topical issues of the day - was sent out later in the day which included Labor's position on immigration.

One Labor MP from the Left faction, which tends to support a more-open approach to migrants and refugees, said they were concerned about being accused of "dog-whistling".

"We don't have a problem with the call to look at temporary migration, but we don't have to sound like Peter Dutton while doing it," he said.

Another Labor MP said: “This is a very sensitive issue. The ALP has torn itself apart over this issue in the past. This is an issue that needs to be handled very sensitively."

Labor's education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, said immigration was an important part of Australia's multicultural make-up, but Labor's view had always been that the number and composition of the intake should be in the national interest.

“Immigration is a really important part of our economic success story. One of the reasons the Australian economy has been growing at all, frankly, in recent times is because of strong immigration numbers," she said.

Victorian Labor MP Julian Hill said the COVID-19 crisis had exposed the Morrison government's failure in migration policy, "and in particular the massive explosion in temporary migration".

“Morrison has tried an enormous con job trumpeting a fake cut to migration, which is really just sleight of hand cutting valuable permanent migration while lower skilled permanent migration explodes," he said.

Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge accused Senator Keneally of not having a consistent position on temporary migrants.

"She wants to give temporary migrants welfare payments so they can stay in Australia, but now says she doesn’t want temporary migrants," he said.

Senator Keneally said in her piece that although migration would be a key element to the way the Australian economy recovered from the pandemic, changes had to be made to the current system which had resulted in an over-reliance on temporary workers.

The setting of limits on the migrant intake may be moot point for years with Australia's immigration to take a serious hit coming out of the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week revealed Australia's net overseas migration numbers would drop by 85 per cent in the 2020-21 financial year, compared to 2018-19 numbers.

SOURCE  






Year 12 given priority as schools plan return - but not all parents are happy

NSW public high schools are encouraging year 12 students to return to school full-time from next week as independent schools increasingly resume normal classroom operations.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian wants students at school one day a week from May 11 but high schools are prioritising year 12, with many providing full-time classroom teaching from next Monday.

Newtown Performing Arts High has written to parents telling them school resumes full-time for year 12 from May 11, while Killara High is open "each day for those year 12 students who wish to attend".

Other high schools ? Sydney Girls, Tempe and Greystanes ? have allocated at least three or four days.

Their decision comes as a growing number of independents schools, including St Andrew's Cathedral School, are asking year 12 students to return five days a week from next week.

Headmaster Dr John Collier said: "Parents have overall received this very well."

But parents across the state have mixed views about the safety of returning to school and using public transport. Those with year 12 students were more concerned about the loss of up to six weeks of HSC preparation time.

Anne-Maree Williams from Peakhurst said she was glad to be sending her 18-year-old son Jack back to his secondary Catholic college because he was in his crucial final year.

"He needs to be back in the classroom with his teacher and learning with his mates because it is the most important year," she said.

Keeli Cambourne from Nowra said she was keen for her son Archie Lasker, 17, to return to complete his HSC and wishes schools had not gone into lockdown.

But a mother from Ryde, an area that has experienced COVID-19 outbreaks, said her daughter in year 7 was"really unhappy about going back to school".

The mother, who did not want her name published, said her daughter felt like children were "being used like guinea pigs", and that it was impossible to socially distance in the high school corridors.

A Southern Highlands mother of two teenage boys, who also did not want her name published, said she liked the idea of her sons returning for social reasons, but felt anxious about the potential health risk. "I will send them and follow the rules. But I'll feel anxious," she said.

A spokesman for Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said: "We deliberately gave our 2200 NSW public schools the flexibility to implement the return to classrooms in a way that benefits all their students. These individual school plans are examples of principals using this flexibility to provide for all their students while prioritising their HSC students."

NSW P&C Federation president Tim Spencer said parents had very mixed views about sending their children back and many saw online learning from home as "treading water".

The Australian Parents Council, which represents parents of children at independent schools, said "many are fearful about sending their children back to school for face-to-face teaching".

President Jenny Rickard said she had received mixed views from parents but "predominantly it is expressing concern".

Parents were also concerned about risks associated with the risk of infection on public transport.

NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos said teachers were concerned and "looking closely" at infection outbreaks in New Zealand and Victoria where a teacher at a primary school has tested positive for coronavirus.

The concerns of teachers and parents were raised as federal Education Minister Dan Tehan admitted he had overstepped the mark and withdrew his comments after accusing Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews of a “failure of leadership” for not reopening schools.

Melissa Socrates from Sydney's northern beaches said while she had faith in government assurances that it was safe for her to send her three children back, she still felt slightly worried about the safety risk.

"I am relatively comfortable with them going back. I'm a little bit apprehensive but I'm comfortable with the way the schools are approaching it in terms of the social distancing and staggering the years coming back," she said.

SOURCE  






$300m clean energy fund to back fossil-fuel hydrogen projects
The Morrison government has committed $300 million to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and instructed it to invest in new hydrogen energy projects including those powered by fossil fuels.

The move makes clear the government's position on the debate over the potential to develop an emissions-free hydrogen industry powered exclusively by renewable energy.

"Gas and gas transmission networks already play an essential role in energy reliability, but gas has even more potential as a resource to produce and transmit hydrogen," said Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor.

Renewable energy advocates, along with Labor-led governments in Queensland, Western Australia and the ACT, argue fossil-fuelled hydrogen should be barred from public funds, which should flow to “green hydrogen” powered by renewables. State governments contribute to regulation of the energy sector through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

But crucially for Mr Taylor, he secured majority support at the November COAG meeting to develop a hydrogen industry under a "technology-neutral" approach including all power source options.

Hydrogen has emerged in recent months as a key element of the Morrison government’s emissions reduction strategy, which Mr Taylor said would be based on a "technology investment road map".

Mr Taylor said his goal was to back projects that could reach a long-term goal of producing hydrogen at $2 a kilogram – the point "where hydrogen becomes competitive with alternative energy sources in large-scale deployment across our energy systems".

The announcement of the Advancing Hydrogen Fund follows a crash in the global oil market crash. The fall has flowed on to lower gas prices, which Mr Taylor said “provides us with an opportunity for strategic economic stimulus”.

The government has estimated an Australian hydrogen industry could create more than 8000 jobs and generate about $11 billion a year in GDP by 2050.

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has said a domestic hydrogen industry could underpin an energy export boom for Australia, and Australia should develop it using renewables and fossil fuel to avoid the risks associated with reliance on any one fuel source.

"By producing hydrogen from natural gas or coal, using carbon capture and permanent storage, we can add back two more lanes to our energy highway, ensuring we have four primary energy sources to meet the needs of the future – solar, wind, hydrogen from natural gas, and hydrogen from coal," Dr Finkel said.

"Think for a moment of the vast amounts of steel, aluminium and concrete needed to support, build and service solar and wind structures.

"What if there was a resources shortage? It would be prudent, therefore, to safeguard against any potential resource limitations with another energy source."

In time, green hydrogen could take over and drive a net zero emissions global economy, according to Dr Finkel.

The Advancing Hydrogen Fund will provide debt or equity finance to commercial projects requiring $10 million or more in capital, which Clean Energy Finance Corporation chief executive Ian Learmonth said would fill market gaps created by "technology, development or commercial challenges".

Mr Taylor recently announced a $70 million fund for green hydrogen project development through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

SOURCE  







Principal who ignored official advice and told parents to keep their children home from school is stood down from her job

A school principal has been stood down after she went against official advice and told students to stay at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last Friday, Bronwyn White, principal of Halls Head College in Mandurah, Western Australia, sent an email to parents, advising that only children of essential workers and those unable to stay home come to school for the start of Term Two.

'We cannot adequately apply physical distancing and safety requirements if we have the entire College community recommencing Week 1. We simply do not have the physical space required with 1,450 students,' Ms White wrote.

But on Tuesday, she was forced to retract her statement by the WA Department of Education and replaced by an acting principal for the new school term. 

Halls Head College teachers said they had great respect for Ms White and were 'shocked' by the Department's decision to stand her down. 

'Everyone supported her (Ms White's) decision and understood her reasons for sending out the email,' one teacher told The Mandurah Mail.  'Teachers don't know how to find the space if all students return. It's just not right that she has been stood down because of this.'

Meanwhile, Western Australian Secondary School Executives Association president Armando Giglia told ABC radio the department was going through usual processes. 'Bureaucracy is bureaucracy,' Mr Giglia said on Thursday. 'She had the best interest of the students at heart - nobody denies that.'

Ms White's conflict with the Department of Education began on Friday with her email to parents, advising only certain students come to school at the start of term.

For the first week of term (April 29 to May 1), she advised only children of essential workers or those unable to stay at home attend school.

She also said only Year 11 and 12 students should return for the second and third weeks.

This goes against the WA Department of Education has encouraged all students to return to school ever since its initial announcement on April 17. 'From Wednesday 29 April, public schools are open for all students whose parents/carers choose to send them to school. Students at school will be taught a face-to-face program and timetable,' the Department's website reads.

'Year 11 and 12 students are strongly encouraged to attend to learn in classrooms as they are at a critical point in their schooling.'

On Tuesday, Ms White apologised to parents via email and retracted her advice as it 'was not in line with Departmental expectations'.  'I apologise for any confusion created by the letter sent out last Friday,' she wrote.

'I need to retract the letter sent last week that was not in line with Departmental expectations. I am writing to confirm that school is open for all students to attend.

'The expectation is that school will be running as per normal. All classes will run Face to Face with a normal timetable operating and both at home and online learning will also be accommodated.'

The Department stood down Ms White and replaced her with acting principal Alen Kursar, who will take her place indefinitely. 

Ms White was noticeably absent from the start of the school term on Wednesday.

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









4 May, 2020

School folly

If the Ruby Princess has been Australia’s single most avoidable slip-up on spreading coronavirus infections, the most unnecessary stuff-up in the societal and economic response has been the way students have been shunned from schools. Most students are yet to return to classrooms they never should have left.

We have known since the virus first arrived on our shores — and research and experience have only reinforced it since — that, unlike common colds and influenza, COVID-19 rarely infects children, their symptoms tend to be mild and they don’t seem to spread it. This serendipitous reality means schooling need not be disrupted beyond handwashing and distancing measures, special arrangements for vulnerable or older teachers, and efforts to limit interactions between parents, teachers and other adults.

There are plenty of test cases with infections detected among students and teachers in a handful of schools in various states where they have been controlled. In South Australia schools were never shut and there was only one case — a student infected by a teacher — and it was resolved with no further infections.

The clear and consistent advice from the chief medical officer has been to proceed with schooling but, under pressure from teachers’ unions, state governments have given students the Dusty Martin “don’t argue”. Fittingly, Victoria has been most delinquent, with NSW and Queensland not far behind. Students have suffered most, but the restrictions have seriously encumbered parents and added to our societal sclerosis. The states should admit their mistakes and resume schooling on Monday.

As we all struggled to come to grips with the vagaries of this pandemic, schools were wise to invest in online schooling plans in case we lost control. They deserved time at the end of the first term to make those preparations — but, having done that, you get the sense they feel obliged to put those plans into action.

Certainly, it would be unfair for teachers to run two streams, one for classrooms and the other online. It needs to be one or the other and, on the facts as we know them, it should be the classroom. Some political and media commentary has been deliberately or unforgivably ignorant; complaining about contradictions such as why it might be safe to go to school yet unsafe to go to a cinema.

Such smartarsery ignores the importance of schooling, the lower susceptibility of young people, the controlled environment of schools and the whole intent of the measures: they are not primarily about protecting people from life-threatening situations but are aimed at slowing the spread of a virus that mainly threatens the elderly.

Fatality rates for people aged under 50 are a fraction of 1 per cent, and deaths under 20 years of age are unheard of, except for rare instances with serious pre-existing conditions. So, arrangements for schools, workplaces, shopping, entertainment and sport have been about slowing the spread of a highly infectious disease, not hiding from a deadly threat.

Studies show anything up to 50 per cent of those infected may never know it, while more than 80 per cent of those who develop symptoms won’t even need to consider hospitalisation.

When he declared that playing golf was “not worth someone’s life” Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews became the epitome of this wrongheaded fearmongering.

Families should not be huddled at home as if to avoid a killer virus; they are doing no more than their civic duty to slow the spread of a virus that mainly threatens others. It is the elderly and the sick who have most to fear.

The more we control the situation, the better we protect the vulnerable and ensure our health system copes. Teaching schoolchildren should not be more dangerous than running a supermarket checkout or selling sandwiches.

If we tried to generate a list of people with the requisite experience in managing the medical, public health, economic, business, social, and law enforcement aspects of a coronavirus pandemic, we would come up with no one. We are making this up as we go along. Those who are certain that other nations have succeeded where we have been left wanting are having a lend. We just cannot be sure yet.

There is plenty of expertise to be drawn on; medicos, scientists, economists, bureaucrats, police and politicians used to multifaceted policy problems. But the global scale, rapidity of spread, closure of businesses, deliberate suppression of economic activity, and calculated imposition of social isolation are all unprecedented on their own merits, let alone as a clutch of simultaneous dilemmas.

Much of the media targets Don­ald Trump over the disaster that has unfolded in New York City and elsewhere. But, so far, the death rate per million people is worse than the US in Italy, Bel­gium, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Britain, Sweden and Ireland. We have yet to see this play out in the developing world. This pandemic is likely still in its early stages.

If we are forced to live the next year or longer without a vaccine, who is to say what strategy will be revealed as superior?

Countries with higher death rates will have developed broader exposure and community immunity that could stand them in good stead, so that countries such as ours might be left wondering how long we can afford to drag out the process.

Alternatively, if treatments and vaccines become available within months, other nations will have suffered health system crises, unnecessary deaths and economic pain in an excruciating trifecta that countries such as ours have avoided.

But, crucially, we have the choice — we have bought time and options to work out next steps. This is the true measure of Scott Morrison’s success.

After resisting the overeager shutdown merchants early on, the government now faces pressure from the other end. The supposed hardheads are urging the government to let it rip, suggesting the way we have avoided a crisis renders our preventive measures excessive, even though they see in Milan, New York and London what could befall us.

Risk mitigation is a devilishly difficult practice for public assessment. Think of Shane Fitzsimmons, who headed NSW’s Rural Fire Service for a decade. It was his job for more than a decade to minimise the bushfire risk and maximise the ability to protect lives and property.

Yet in the wake of the worst bushfire season his state has seen, where limited fuel reduction, bad planning and miscued control burns all played a role in the devastating and deadly outcome, he has been lauded as a hero.

In the pandemic fight, Morrison and the premiers faced media predictions just two months ago of hospitals being overwhelmed within days and a death toll of 150,000 or more.

With fatalities yet to reach 100, and daily national new infections sometimes not reaching double figures, the criticism is now about overreacting. Go figure.

Citing bolstered bed capacity not yet required as proof of over-reaction, you might as well argue that because most fire trucks extinguish only one blaze a fortnight, the fire department must be over-resourced. Perhaps if NSW had cleared wider fire breaks around national parks, forced property owners to clear around houses in bushfire-prone areas or thrown more resources into extinguishing blazes that burned for weeks in national parks, the state would have faced less trauma and tragedy, and Fitzsimmons would have been attacked for overdoing precautions.

Six weeks ago we were disturbed about where this would lead and I wrote: “This pandemic is a terrible dilemm­a for policymakers: at one end of the spectrum, they could be destroying small and large businesses (the life’s work of their owners) and tossing people into unemployment in an effort to stem a disease that might be best dealt with by protecting the elderly and the frail; at the other, they could allow a pandemic to smother our society, overwhelm our hospitals and lead to tens of thousands of premature deaths.”

We can see already that Morrison and his state and territory colleagues in the national cabinet have saved us from the latter scenario. Job well done.

Their challenge now is to remove restrictions as quickly as possible, to reactivate society and the economy behind secure national borders, without allowing the virus to run riot and destroy all that we have preserved. Every day of isolation exacerbates the economic and social pain.

The strong bias must be towards freeing up the economy, getting people back to work and protecting the vulnerable.

Getting back to school would be the best start.

SOURCE  






How COVID-19 restrictions affected our health overall

Flu numbers are down. Less road fatalities have been reported. Emergency departments are quiet.

Social distancing and restrictions on public gatherings appear to be stopping the spread of COVID-19 in Australia, but these measures are also producing a range of other health outcomes – good and bad.

Flu

Influenza cases are dramatically lower this year, with 20,216 cases reported to the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System compared to 43,108 cases for the same period in 2019.

"Influenza levels in the community are currently low due to social distancing measures and better hand hygiene," a NSW Health spokeswoman said.

However, a spokesman for the federal Health Department said the number of influenza cases in 2020 is 26 per cent higher than the average number of cases over the past five years.

There have also been significant declines in other communicable diseases such as Legionnaires' disease, whooping cough, sexually-transmitted diseases such as chlamydia and gonorrhea, dengue and Q fever – but an increase in Rotavirus.

Chance Pistoll, a GP and lecturer in primary care at Melbourne Medical School, said there had been a significant increase in people attending their GP for the influenza vaccine.

"This is a really great unintended outcome and it looks at this stage we might have dodged a bullet with respect to avoiding the worst of the flu season," he said.

Avoiding doctors

There is mounting evidence that people with chronic health problems are avoiding visits to the doctor, Dr Pistoll said. "Most GP practices have seen a 20-30 per cent reduction in patient's coming in during the pandemic."

Dr Pistoll said there had been a 75 per cent reduction in diabetes tests ordered by GPs in Victoria and NSW, while referrals for new cancer diagnoses had fallen by around a third.

"There is a real risk that we could see a significant upswing in mortality after the pandemic due to deaths from preventable illnesses," he said.

Emergency departments

Health authorities warned people in March to stay away from emergency departments unless they required urgent medical attention as hospitals braced for the impact of coronavirus.

However, St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst has had fewer patients attending its emergency department. The ED's medical director Paul Preisz said "it is difficult to imagine that the current lockdown is not a major cause".

"We have some indirect evidence that social distancing, hand washing and other measures to combat COVID-19 have very likely decreased the transmission of other viruses including colds and flu," he said.

Dr Priesz said the closure of bars and clubs had affected the number of people attending the emergency department "although we do have other reports that domestic violence rates may have increased".

At Westmead Hospital, there had been a small increase in domestic accidents and injuries as a result of more people working from home or attempting DIY projects.

NSW recorded 24 less road fatalities in the year to March 31 compared with the previous 12 months – there were five less road deaths in March compared to the average monthly toll of 105 deaths.

Domestic violence

The United Nations Population Fund predicted last week that domestic violence would soar 20 per cent because of the global lockdown. But the number of domestic violence assaults recorded by police did not increase in March despite the implementation of social distancing.

The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research said this could be due to victims being less able to report because of home confinement with their perpetrator.

Mental health

Maree Teeson, director of The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use at the University of Sydney, said there were reports from Australia and the UK showing a rise in poor mental health – especially among young adults and people with insecure jobs.

"Economic downturn, loss of employment and financial stressors are well recognised risk factors for poor mental health and suicide," she said.

Jennie Hudson, the director of the Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University, said increased anxiety and loneliness were to be expected, but the return to school and work posed a mental health risk for some people.

"Because of isolation and lockdown we have been avoiding situations that might typically make some people feel anxious like presentations at work, interacting with others, public transport," she said.

Dr Pistoll said there had been an increase in patients with mental health issues relating to COVID-19 and the social and economic fallout of the lockdown measures.

"I wouldn't be surprised if in hindsight a big upswing in the burden of mental health is one of the legacies of the pandemic in Australia," he said.

Healthy habits

A spokesman for the federal Health Department said more home cooking could lead people to control and reduce the amount of sugars, salt and saturated fats they consume.

"However, as families stay home there is also the potential for increased snacking and poor dietary behaviours associated with easy access to discretionary foods in the fridge and pantry," he said.

Many people were exercising less because of the closure of gyms and sporting clubs, which Professor Hudson said was a risk to physical and mental health.

"For those who have stayed at home and reduced their physical activity, it will be important for long-term health to gradually increase activity to a healthier level," she said.

But she said practices developed during the pandemic such as good hygiene, flexible working environments, access to telehealth and parents connecting with their child's education could have long-lasting health benefits.

Professor Hudson said the COVID-19 restrictions had produced "secretly-loved joys". "For me, I have loved playing more games with my kids, having lunch together, my weekly extended family Zoom calls, and lying in bed a little longer in the morning," she said.

Unhealthy habits

The closure of gambling venues and cancellation of most sports had affected access to gambling. But Sally Gainsbury, co-director of the Gambling Treatment and Research Centre at the University of Sydney, said social isolation and a decrease in available recreational activities created a risk of Australian's turning to internet gambling.

The National Alcohol and Drug Hotline has experienced almost double the caller demand for January through March compared with the same time last year, a spokesman for the federal Health Department said.

"Drug and alcohol treatment and advocacy services suggest this may be due to Australians becoming more aware of problematic alcohol and drug consumption for both themselves and their family members during the COVID-19 lockdown period."

SOURCE  






'Let's get the campuses open': Minister wants uni students back for semester two

Almost 1.5 million university students should be back on campus by July after federal Education Minister Dan Tehan declared he wanted to see the sector return to face-to-face teaching for second semester.

Mr Tehan also warned the shock from COVID-19 had triggered an "urgent" look at the international education business model at universities. Vice-chancellors, joined by Labor, are calling for a major rethink of Australia's higher education funding system as a potentially sustained drop in full-fee-paying overseas student enrolments threatens to shrink the sector.

Universities were forced to close campuses and move to online learning upon the introduction of strict social distancing measures, adapting rapidly as they also weather the loss of billions in lost international student revenue. Onshore numbers of overseas students are down 30 per cent on last year's levels.

"The first step has to be our campuses reopened here for domestic students and those international students who are onshore. That's the first priority of the government," Mr Tehan told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age.

"My hope is that we will hear sooner rather than later about a move back to campuses being reopened, with adherence to the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee guidelines around social distancing. But campuses will be looking to reopen for semester two."

Asked about the prospect of border restrictions being eased for 2021 international student arrivals, he said: "Let's get the campuses open. I mean that's a pretty important first step ... then, obviously, things will flow from that."

As universities confront the ramifications of the pandemic, Mr Tehan said the sector had already been scrutinising its reliance on international education, especially the concentration of Chinese students, but "there is no doubt that COVID-19 has led to more urgent thinking about the sector’s reliance on international education" and how that model will look in the future.

The vice-chancellors of Western Sydney University, La Trobe University and University of Sydney warned a lasting impact on revenue would need to be confronted by government as enrolment numbers remain depressed by the ongoing global ramifications of the pandemic.

WSU vice-chancellor Barney Glover said it would be essential to look at the funding model, especially "the underfunding of research and how we can maintain our world class research capability in the face of several years of recovery in international education".

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence said university researchers had proved their value through the unprecedented bushfire season and the COVID-19 crisis and their efforts needed to be funded.

"What is the government’s support for that research system going to be? And in particular what is it going to be if the international student market is not as robust as it has been so far? And I think that’s a major policy question for the country coming out of this crisis."

La Trobe vice-chancellor John Dewar said: "Working on the assumption that international numbers are not going to rebound for 2, 3, 4 maybe even 5 years, I think that will sharpen the focus on what government can and will do for the sector."

Labor education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said the nation needed to take "really serious look" at university financing.

"Putting international education on a stronger and more sustainable footing will be part of that. Making sure there is adequate funding for education and research is a really important part of that. There must be a greater role for public funding," she said.

Australia's spending on research and development fell to 1.8 per cent of GDP last year, below the OECD average of 2.4 per cent. University research spending has held up but it has been heavily subsidised by revenue from international students.

Mr Tehan said international education was a key driver of economic growth and employment and he wanted it to recover. "Rebounding strongly through going back to those areas which were enabling our economy to grow is going to be very important and international education was a key component of that," he said.

"Rather than look at them picture as glass half empty, I think we need to look at it glass half full and the bigger decisions have to be around how do ensure diversification? How do we deal with sustainable growth? And how do we make the case for why this is so important economically for the nation?"

SOURCE  






Rents falling as dole rises to give low-income households relief

Doubling the dole has kept a portion of the rental market affordable for the unemployed for the first time in 11 years, while leading economists also expect rent prices in Sydney and Melbourne will drop significantly.

The federal government in March temporarily boosted the JobSeeker allowance by $550 a fortnight to help households through the coronavirus pandemic. The effectively doubling of the benefit is now coinciding with major disruption to the usually tight rental market giving low-income households their first major relief in over a decade.

At the same time, housing experts are seeing early signs of a glut of vacant homes due to Airbnbs becoming standard rentals, home sellers choosing to lease rather than sell and international students staying abroad.

In the past 30 days SQM Research's capital city rental price index has recorded a 3.1 per cent decline for houses and a 2.5 per cent drop for apartments.

"It's very likely to keep falling from here," managing director Louis Christopher said, adding there were 15,000 more rental listings compared to the same time in 2019.

He cited the closing of the international border "freezing up" both short and long-term arrivals as the main issue.

"Last year we had net migration of 240,000. This year could be close to zero but, no matter what, 170,000 dwellings are being completed this year."

CoreLogic recorded rents up 0.3 per cent nationally in March but this did not capture the full impact as most social distancing measures and restrictions began late in the month. The housing research business predicted "a large, temporary demand shock to the rental market over the June quarter".

Domain economist Trent Wiltshire said there had been a rapid rise in new rental listings in the past month and pointed to more younger workers affected by coronavirus either moving back home with their parents or joining sharehouses.

The sudden drop in international students, combined with temporary visa holders who lose work going back overseas, is also behind a rapid rise in listings.

Mr Wiltshire said the biggest rise in new rental listings is in Sydney's inner city, eastern suburbs and northern beaches, and Melbourne's inner city, Prahran and St Kilda.

About a third of rental listings had dropped their asking rent on the real estate sales website, he said, with apartments most affected.

"We will see rents fall quite significantly over the next six months."

These declines will be a further boost for those on JobSeeker with Anglicare Australia's Rental Affordability Snapshot released on Thursday recording 1040 of 70,000 listings analysed were now within the budget of someone on the raised JobSeeker allowance. This is the best outcome for low-income households in 11 years of the survey.

Without the welfare increase just nine rentals would be affordable for JobSeeker recipients.

Anglicare executive director Kasy Chambers has urged the government to keep the increase in JobSeeker in future. Senator Jacqui Lambie and the Australian Council of Social Services this week backed the call for a permanent rise in the dole.

"We must raise the rate of these payments for good. If they are halved in six months – and if pensioners and people with disability are left out – renters will be pushed even deeper into poverty and homelessness," Ms Chambers said. Anglicare is also urging the government to invest in affordable housing to help meet a shortfall of 500,000 homes.

However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday said the increase in JobSeeker did not represent "a change in the government's view about the broader role of the social safety net in Australia".

Property listings site REA Group chief economist Nerida Conisbee said Sydney's house rents were flat but unit rents were down 4 per cent on the property portal but this "moderate" impact may not reflect negotiations currently under way.

"It is likely that the rental market will continue to face challenging conditions, which will become more pronounced over the next month."

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 May 2020

Shutdowns are risky times for men

Bettina Arndt

The big news in the feminist press this week was the Family Court has just announced a new triage system prioritising family violence matters. Such cases will now be able to be rushed through the courts within 72 hours.

“Our calls answered!! Thank You!” enthused Women’s Safety NSW which had been pushing out press releases reporting “alarming evidence” alleging “domestic abusers are using their shared care rights as a tool for further abuse during COVID-19.” They claim the closure of safe places for child handovers means women are forced to compromise their safety using informal arrangements to hand over children to abusive ex-partners.

So now the Family Court is to strengthen its policy of giving priority to cases where there are allegations of violence with a new dedicated COVID-list. Rest assured the Court will be less interested in the other major component in the recent 39 per cent increase in urgent applications to the Family Court – fathers being denied contact with their children.

Men who have spent years battling through the court system for decent parenting plans are discovering such hard-won victories count for little under the new COVID-19 social order where ex-partners use the virus as a reason to deny contact.

Corona child access battles

I’m hearing from many of these men. Yesterday a psychologist wrote about a father who spent over four years and huge sums fighting to get reasonable custody of his young child. As soon as COVID-19 hit his ex-wife denied all access claiming she was worried about the child’s health because of the father’s work, even though he was in a very safe job. She produced doctors’ letters claiming this posed a risk to the child and eventually the father agreed to stop working in a desperate attempt to still see his son. He’s now  moved in with a family member to save money so he can still pay maintenance and lawyer’s bills but the mother’s lawyers are still making moves to cut back on the very minimum contact he currently has with the boy.

Of course, there are also men whose fears about the virus leads them to overreact, like the fathers who try to bully ex-partners who work in high risk jobs like hospitality or nursing to self-isolate from their children. But since it is mostly mothers who have the major care of children, they are usually the ones with the power.       

There’s a very interesting blog by Robert Franklin, published on the National Parents Organisation website, commenting on current articles about sharing parenting which quote judges and lawyers sensibly saying that despite the pandemic parents should work together and abide by court orders. But Franklin then includes an extract from an article in The Atlantic by writer Deborah Copaken, who shares custody of her 13- year-old son with his father.

Copaken’s reaction to the pandemic was simple. She decided it was safer to keep the boy with her:

‘“I’m keeping him home from school,” I texted my ex the next morning: a unilateral decision, not an opening to a dialogue.’

She followed this up with another text to the father:

“Hey, hey, we need to talk about parenting in the era of corona. All things being equal, I’d be happier if he just stays here until the plague is over, but maybe you could do bike rides together outside?”

It’s perfectly acceptable for this woman to boast that she decided to violate the court order: “If you’re a Mom with possession of the kid, hey, do whatever you choose,” observes Franklin.

It says a lot that the magazine editors clearly thought this was fair enough.

Men at risk

Last week I received a tragic letter from a man who is facing his own court battle. After I wrote back to him trying to find someone to help him, I received another email which ended with the chilling line:

“I have been close to ending it all and your email literally was a life saver.”

Seventy per cent of Australia’s suicide victims are male and our biased court system has long been a key part of this problem. Now the corona virus is putting even more men’s lives at risk as divorced fathers deal with yet another obstacle in their fragile relationship with their children.

That’s not the only way this pandemic is putting pressure on vulnerable men. Just wait until the economic consequences of the lockdowns really start to kick in and more men lose their jobs. 

It is now very unfashionable to talk about the burden men face providing for their families but the reality is that here in Australia males are more than twice as likely as women to be a couple’s primary breadwinner. Being the major provider for a family carries a real punch when it comes the impact of losing a job.That pesky legacy of “toxic masculinity” still  connects a man’s earnings to his sense of self-worth and achievement.

Data from Australia’s leading longitudinal study, HILDA, shows in 2018 that males were the primary earner in 58 % of couples – 20 per cent of the women earned no income. In over 40% of dual earner couples, the female earned less than half that of the male, mainly due to working part- time.

So, it is hardly surprising that the loss of that key income hits men hard. Just look what happened after the financial crisis. British data showed 1,000 suicides linked to unemployment from 2008-2010,  84%  of which were male, according to an analysis published in the British Medical Journal.  And men dealing with this personal crisis rarely have the social networks nor inclination to seek out the help they need to get through.

But there’s no way such analysis will impact on current media coverage promoting women as the real victims of the current economic crisis, as more jobs are being lost in retail, hospitality and healthcare sector which employ more women.

The barrage of stories about the stress this is placing on families has forced governments to dig deep for more money for mental health services. Our Federal government recently allocated an additional $74 million specifically for mental health services that are coming under strain during the coronavirus pandemic.

That money is to be shared amongst all the usual services, like Lifeline and Beyond Blue which in January received a $64 million funding boost for suicide prevention strategies. Most of that money will be spent supporting women, according to a detailed analysis by the Australia Men’s Health Forum (AMHF). Even Movember, the huge men’s health fundraising organisation, gives most of their suicide money to a programme called “Way Back” – 60% of people who benefit from this service are women.

But – wait for it – some of the new corona-related mental health funding is being directed at men. A very select group of men. Men’s Referral Services is to get more of the new mental health funding to deal with perpetrators of domestic violence. This is an organisation which proudly boasts of their expertise in weeding out the men who ring their help lines claiming to be victims of domestic violence but who are, in fact, perpetrators.

As for real victims, truly vulnerable men – MRS has no time for them and neither sadly, does our government.

Well, that’s it for now. Sorry about the grim tidings. Like most people, I’m enjoying some of the funny material floating around the internet at present. Here’s one of my recent favourites.



Via email:  bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Coronavirus: Victorian health officer’s ‘Captain Cook or virus’ tweet sparks outrage

An angry lady. 

Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer is facing calls to resign after comparing Captain Cook to the coronavirus on the anniversary of his arrival into Botany Bay.

“Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror. Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices and completely change how they live in order to survive,” Dr Annaliese van Diemen tweeted on Wednesday – the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival.

“COVID-19 or Cook 1770?” she asked.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told Today this morning that Dr Annaliese van Diemen should be stood down.

“I think she should go. I think it’s pretty obvious in the middle of a pandemic the second highest medical officer in the state of Victoria should be concentrating on the people of Victoria and the crisis associated with COVID-19,” he said.

“Instead she is off running culture war debates. I think she is unfit for that office and she should go.”

Labor MP Richard Marles also said the tweet was unhelpful but did not say she should be sacked,

The tweet sparked outrage from Victorian Liberal frontbencher Tim Smith, who described it as ill-timed, “culture wars crap”.

“What's with the culture wars crap from a state health bureaucrat at a time like this?'” he said.

“Captain Cook didn't invade Australia. He charted the east coast of Australia.

“She is calling Captain Cook a virus. I mean, how ridiculous. Why would you say such a thing during a pandemic?"

Former state opposition leader Matthew Guy also jumped in, describing Dr van Diemen as “a complete fruitcake”.

“No wonder the COVID-19 rules are different in Victoria to anywhere else in Australia. We are being governed by hard left nutters,” he said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier said the tweet was “divisive” and called for Dr van Diemen to step down.

“The Deputy CHO’s comments are divisive. She holds a senior position giving advice to the Premier and ministers on COVID-19 that are impacting all Victorians. She should be impartial not political,” she said.

But Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos stood by the health officer on Thursday, saying “angry MPs” should instead be focusing on the virus.

“The Deputy Chief Health Officer is doing an outstanding job protecting Victorians from this deadly pandemic. Criticism from angry MPs is irrelevant to the fight against this virus,” she said.

Others on Twitter said Dr van Diemen should be free to express her views on “historical issues”.

But Liberal backbencher James Newbury noted that the tweet was posted at 10:16am on Wednesday, “during work hours, when funded by the taxpayer”.

“The Public Administration Act requires that a public servant must be impartial, apolitical and behave in a way that sustains public trust,” he said.

Dr van Diemen was appointed as Deputy Chief Health Officer in November. She has worked at the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services since March 2016.

SOURCE  





Coronavirus Australia: The decision that saved Australia from a COVID-19 death toll of thousands

A leading infectious disease expert has praised Australia’s rapid response to coronavirus, claiming our death toll could have spiked to devastating heights had the decision to block flights from China not been made early on.

Professor Sharon Lewin this week shot down claims that our success in the battle against the deadly infection was merely due to “good luck”, attributing our low fatality rate to the Government’s decision to bar or quarantine travellers from China in early February.

It comes as the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to be free of all known cases of COVID-19, South Australia boasted a week free of new infections, and the Northern Territory reported just three patients left to recover from the virus, with the rest of Australia not far behind.

Prof Lewin, director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, spoke as part of a COVID-19 webinar held by the Australian Academy of Health and Medical science on Wednesday, where she rebutted claims by a contributing expert that Australia was “lucky”.

Touching on the decisions to be made surrounding the economy as Australia continues to crush the curve, Australian National University economics professor Warwick McKibbon commented that we were “lucky” to be in a position where such conversations could start.

“I think we’re in a very good place,” Mr McKibbon said.

“We’re in a place where almost no other country is in except for New Zealand and South Korea, so I think the luck was there but I think it’s overplayed. I think it’s overplayed by the people who made the wrong arguments at the beginning.

“We had some bad luck – where we had a couple of cruise ships that were let in, and that was bad luck but we managed it,” he said.

SOURCE  






Perrottet's recovery plan to axe 'inefficient' stamp duty, payroll taxes

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet plans to abolish stamp duty and reform the broader tax system as he faces down a $9 billion hit to the state's bottom line in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Herald, Mr Perrottet said unemployment could double to be as high as 10 per cent by the end of the year – or 420,000 people out of work – the worst level in three decades.

"This is the biggest challenge facing our generation," Mr Perrottet said. "There is no place for pre-pandemic thinking in a post-pandemic world."

Mr Perrottet said a five-point recovery plan for NSW would focus on improved productivity, tax reforms, deregulation, digitisation, trade and investment.

"There is no better time to rid the states of inefficient taxes that hold back economic growth and I am talking stamp duty and payroll taxes," Mr Perrottet said.

"We are not going to tax our way back into prosperity. Increasing or decreasing taxes is not tax reform."

When asked which state tax was at the top of his reform agenda Mr Perrottet replied: "Stamp duty. I’ve raised it before, I think we need to get rid of inefficient taxes."

Stamp duty, also known as transfer duty, taxes the sale of all properties in NSW and last year raised $7.5 billion for the state's coffers. After payroll tax, stamp duty is the biggest source of taxation revenue for the states.

The tax has been widely condemned as inefficient, with economists like former Federal Treasury secretary Ken Henry arguing it creates "all sorts of economic and social distortions," including unfair hurdles for aspiring homeowners and disincentives for those seeking to downsize or move around for job opportunities.

Mr Perrottet’s commitment to replace stamp duty will reignite debate over state-led reform, particularly following the recent remarks of Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe who argued land tax should be at the top of the agenda.

The Treasurer said the health response and recovery remained "paramount" but it was critical that the economy was operating as much as possible.

"The longer a business remains closed, the less chance it has of opening up again," he said.

"We want as much of the economy open as possible and the more we practise social distancing, the more chance we have of that."

SOURCE  

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






1 May, 2020

Total virus cases in Australia fall below 1000, only one new case in 24 hours as UK toll soars

Senior officials from the Department of Social Services have told a parliamentary committee the number of people on JobSeeker rose by about 500,000 from February to April, with another 400,000 expected to apply by September. The estimates haven’t changed despite the government announcing its wage subsidy program since projections were made.

The government has doubled the JobSeeker payment - formerly known as Newstart - and expanded eligibility to income support for the period of the coronavirus pandemic.

But the department’s secretary Kathryn Campbell remained tightlipped on whether the government would consider maintaining the higher rate after the pandemic is over.

She said all options were on the table but the department was in the early steps of creating advice for the government.

Ms Campbell said the disability pension was ineligible for the boost because it was designed for people who were in the workforce.

Almost 600,000 businesses have applied for the JobKeeper wage subsidy - a payment of $1500 a fortnight - to support more than 3.3 million workers. The figure is well under the estimated six million workers over a six-month period when the policy was costed at $130 billion.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the emergency measures have a set lifespan and a wind back will be needed to ensure the federal budget does not blow out further.

“Labor has serious concerns about the impact this will have on the hundreds of thousands of Australians whose jobs remain uncertain, and the impact this will have on the economy when or if the government suddenly snaps back the payment,” Labor senator Katy Gallagher said.

The number of active coronavirus cases in Australia has fallen below 1000 for the first time in more than five weeks.

And in the 24 hours from Tuesday to Wednesday, only one new case was reported Australia-wide as the number of COVIDSafe app downloads passed three million.

A total of 986 people were confirmed to have the deadly virus as of Thursday morning, with 5670 of the 6744 cases recovered. Ninety people have died.

The remaining 13 cases identified on Wednesday were close connections to other known carriers, meaning Australia is successfully tracing the virus and limiting its reach in the community.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt described the statistic as possibly “the most important” in the fight against COVID-19 so far.

“There was only one case from an unknown source, only one case of community transmission across Australia,” he said.

“That is perhaps the most important figure I have had the privilege of raising since coming into this role and dealing with the coronavirus issue.”

SOURCE  







Coronavirus Queensland: Zero new cases recorded

Queensland continues to smash the coronavirus curve with zero new cases again recorded on Thursday and just four cases this week. The state’s tally still sits at 1,033 with 943 of those sufferers now recovered.

There have been 13 new cases since last Thursday and four since Monday.

Tragically, six Queenslanders have died from the virus during the pandemic. More than 108,000 tests have been conducted.

Just one new case was recorded on Wednesday and that was from a person returning from an overseas trip.

It comes as Queensland scientists lead the world in edging closer to a vaccine with UQ researchers confident millions of doses of the cure could be in mass production within months.

SOURCE  






Australia has successfully flattened the curve of coronavirus infections, but is it too soon to re-open the country?

Australia’s deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth says random testing is not the answer to controlling coronavirus.

Dr Coatsworth said there were now 6746 cases across Australia, with only eight new cases recorded in the past 24 hours.

“There have been 90 deaths due to coronavirus, and in our intensive cares at the moment, there are 36 patients with coronavirus, and 25 of those are having their breathing supported with a ventilator,” Dr Coatsworth told Today on Thursday morning.

But he said the idea of testing random members of the public was not a way to bring the virus under more control in Australia.

“Random testing of the public, while it may seem a good idea, does have problems associated with it,” he said.

“If you test very, very large numbers of people, you can get what’s called false positives, so results where the person didn’t actually have the virus.

“Where we test people with no symptoms, in the first instance, it is more likely to be in areas where we know there might be transmission - so, in the health care, the residential aged care setting we have just spoken about.

“But really what we want people to do at the moment is if they have got symptoms, any symptoms of a cold, go and get a test. That’s the first priority at this point in time.”

SOURCE  






Stokes calls for Canberra to back down on China

China bashing is moronic.  You might as well bash a brick wall

Media mogul Kerry Stokes has used the front page of The West Australian newspaper to call on the Prime Minister Scott Morrison to appease China's anger at Australia's push for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Stokes, who controls the paper's publisher Seven West Media, also mounted a defence of the exotic animal wet markets where the virus is believed to have broken out.

"If we're going to go into the biggest debt we’ve had in our life and then simultaneously poke our biggest provider of income in the eye it's not necessarily the smartest thing you can do," his newspaper reported him saying.

Mr Stokes is the second Western Australian billionaire to attempt an intervention in Australia's relationship with China this week.

Yesterday, iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest was accused of ambushing the Australian government after he parachuted one of China's top diplomats into an official event, blindsiding Health Minister Greg Hunt.

SOURCE  

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






Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.





Most academics are lockstep Leftists so readers do sometimes doubt that I have the qualifications mentioned above. Photocopies of my academic and military certificates are however all viewable here


For overseas readers: The "ALP" is the Australian Labor Party -- Australia's major Leftist party. The "Liberal" party is Australia's major conservative political party.


In most Australian States there are two conservative political parties, the city-based Liberal party and the rural-based National party. But in Queensland those two parties are amalgamated as the LNP.


Again for overseas readers: Like the USA, Germany and India, Australia has State governments as well as the Federal government. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


For American readers: A "pensioner" is a retired person living on Social Security


"Digger" is an honorific term for an Australian soldier


Another lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here


Another bit of Australian: Any bad writing or messy anything was once often described as being "like a pakapoo ticket". In origin this phrase refers to a ticket written with Chinese characters - and thus inscrutably confusing to Western eyes. These tickets were part of a Chinese gambling game called "pakapoo".


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



My son Joe


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


I am an army man. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.


The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies or mining companies


Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.


The Rt. Rev. Phil Case (Moderator of the Presbyterian church in Queensland) is a Pharisee, a hypocrite, an abomination and a "whited sepulchre".


English-born Australian novellist, Patrick White was a great favourite in literary circles. He even won a Nobel prize. But I and many others I have spoken to find his novels very turgid and boring. Despite my interest in history, I could only get through about a third of his historical novel Voss before I gave up. So why has he been so popular in literary circles? Easy. He was a miserable old Leftist coot, and, incidentally, a homosexual. And literary people are mostly Leftists with similar levels of anger and alienation from mainstream society. They enjoy his jaundiced outlook, his dissatisfaction, rage and anger.


A delightful story about a great Australian conservative


Would you believe that there once was a politician whose nickname was "Honest"?

"Honest" Frank Nicklin M.M. was a war hero, a banana farmer and later the conservative Premier of my home State of Queensland in the '60s. He was even popular with the bureaucracy and gave the State a remarkably tranquil 10 years during his time in office. Sad that there are so few like him.


A great Australian wit exemplified



An Australian Mona Lisa (Nikki Gogan)


Bureaucracy: "One of the constant laments of doctors and nurses working with NSW Health is the incredible and increasing bureaucracy," she said. "It is completely obstructive to providing a service."


Revered Labour Party leader Gough Whitlam was a very erudite man so he cannot have been unaware of the similarities of his famous phrase “the Party, the platform, the people” with an earlier slogan: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer". It's basically the same slogan in reverse order.


Australia's original inhabitants were a race of pygmies, some of whom survived into modern times in the mountainous regions of the Atherton tableland in far North Queensland. See also here. Below is a picture of one of them taken in 2007, when she was 105 years old and 3'7" tall




Julia Gillard, a failed feminist flop. She was given the job of Prime Minister of Australia but her feminist preaching was so unpopular that she was booted out of the job by her own Leftist party. Her signature "achievements" were the carbon tax and the mining tax, both of which were repealed by the next government.


The "White Australia Policy: "The Immigration Restriction Act was not about white supremacy, racism, or the belief that whites were higher up the evolutionary tree than the coloured races. Rather, it was designed to STOP the racist exploitation of non-whites (all of whom would have been illiterate peasants practicing religions and cultures anathema to progressive democracy) being conscripted into a life of semi-slavery in a coolie-worked plantation economy for the benefit of the absolute monarchs, hereditary aristocracy and the super-wealthy companies and share-holders of the northern hemisphere.


A great little kid



In November 2007, a four-year-old boy was found playing in a croc-infested Territory creek after sneaking off pig hunting alone with four dogs and a puppy. The toddler was found five-and-a-half hours after he set off from his parents' house playing in a creek with the puppy. Amazingly, Daniel Woditj also swam two creeks known to be inhabited by crocs during his adventurous romp. Mr Knight said that after walking for several kilometres, Daniel came to a creek and swam across it. Four of his dogs "bailed up" at the creek but the youngster continued on undaunted with his puppy to a second creek. Mr Knight said Daniel swam the second croc-infested creek and walked on for several more kilometres. "Captain is a hard bushman and Daniel is following in his footsteps. They breed them tough out bush."


A great Australian: His eminence George Pell. Pictured in devout company before his elevation to Rome





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