This document is part of an archive of postings by John Ray on Australian Politics, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written
This is a backup copy of the original blog
30 December, 2022
US comedian's controversial Welcome to Country clip saying 'give it back or shut up' divides Australians
It's just tedious tokenism as far as I can see. It accomplishes nothing but it seems to give Leftists a warm glow. Tokenism is their thing: Very shallow
An American comedian's take on traditional land acknowledgements has exposed division among Australians over whether they are worthwhile or empty of meaning.
A video by US comedian Bill Maher talking about land acknowledgement - used in America and Canada as it is in Australia - on his show Real Time includes him telling the audience the statements are void of meaning when actual action isn't taken.
'To all the people who start every public event now with one of those land acknowledgements where they say, 'I'm standing on land that was stolen from the proud Indigenous people of the Chumash tribe', I say either give it back or shut the f*** up,' Maher said.
The clip has gained more than 48,000 likes since it was uploaded on Sunday.
The acknowledgement of land, or acknowledgement of Country, is typically used in Australia to recognise the traditional owners of the land on which an official ceremony is held. It is usually spoken at the beginning of an event.
While Maher was referring to Native Americans, his words also struck a chord with Australians who flocked to the comments section to share their thoughts.
'Australia has been doing this for years. I think the same thing every time,' one person wrote. 'It reminds me of a prayer before dinner or something,' another said. 'Every single event in Australia, at first I was like 'cool', now I'm like 'I'm done'. 'I did a course at TAFE and every single class our trainer had to do it,' another wrote.
However, not everyone was convinced stripping away the acknowledgement is the right way forward. 'Not exactly in our power to give it back. It's the least we can do,' one person commented. 'Honouring the treaties and relationships,' another said.
Earlier in the episode, Maher said he wished there was more focus on the progress countries - specifically the US - has made in its relationship with Indigenous people than its bloody history.
'That's what's so odd about this time that we're living in,' he said. 'For all the talk of fighting for the soul of America, nobody seems to like it very much.
'A country that started out bad and will always be bad and unable to change, but we have changed. A lot.'
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A young woman has died from complications related to contracting Covid on a holiday with her partner
Heart damage was long played down as an effect of Covid but it is no myth
The 24-year-old woman from Aldinga in South Australia, Hayley Beadman, passed on Thursday, December 27 at an Adelaide hospital after going into a myocarditis-induced cardiac arrest.
Ms Beadman and her partner, Ben Moore, unknowingly returned Covid-positive from Bali on November 23 and soon after, she started experiencing chest pains.
Her family and friends believed she was 'slowly coming back' after her condition seemed to improve in mid-December.
She is being remembered by friends and family as 'one in a million', with a GoFundMe page started by Ms Beadman's friend, Moni Burrell, raising over $11,000 for her partner.
Ms Burrell wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday: 'You have left a hole in all of our hearts.'
Ms Beadman was rushed to Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide's south when she couldn't control her breathing and was experiencing chest pains.
She went into cardiac arrest soon after reaching emergency, doctors diagnosing her with myocarditis due to a positive Covid test.
'We didn’t know we had Covid because we didn’t have any symptoms,' Mr Moore told The Advertiser.
She then underwent 50 minutes of CPR before doctors places her into an induced coma, one nurse dubbing Ms Breadman as 'one of the sickest patients in Adelaide'.
She stayed in the coma for just under a month, waking on December 16, responsive and blinking her eyes. Her family were hopeful for her future.
'She is now awake. She is blinking on demand and her eyes are moving around the room watching everyone,' an update from Ms Burrell on the GoFundMe reads.
Just under two weeks later, Ms Beadman would unfortunately suffer a lethal second cardiac arrest.
She and Mr Moore had been together for five years and recently purchased a house together in Aldinga, south of Adelaide.
'Do the right thing, wear a mask if you're in areas with lots and lots of people, you never know who has COVID,' Mr Moore told the ABC.
'It can happen to anyone.'
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Christian couple who were banned from adopting after saying they would force their child to 'fight the sin' of homosexuality win payout
A devout Christian couple denied the chance to have a foster child because they believe homosexuality is a sin, have been awarded hefty compensation for their 'humiliation and hurt feelings'.
Byron and Keira Hordyk, from Perth, sued the Western Australian government for religious discrimination and received a $3000 payout each, after Wanslea Family Services denied their application in 2017.
The independent agency contracted by the state refused their request after the couple, who have kids of their own, said they would tell a child who says they are gay to 'fight the sin'.
The Hordyks are members of the conservative Free Reformed Church, a denomination that told the Tasmanian law reform institute in February 2021 that they practiced 'conversion therapy' for which they issued 'no apologies'.
Conversion therapy, which has been banned in the ACT, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, attempts to change a person's identified sexual orientation through Bible study and prayer.
The Hordyks had responded to a theoretical question about fostering a gay child by saying they would try to convert them to heterosexuality and that if this was unsuccessful the placement would have to be terminated, the State Administrative Tribunal heard.
'We certainly would not drop them off that day to another home,' the Hordyks said. 'However, we are taught and do believe that all LGBTQ identities are wrong and sinful but there will be people who have to fight against this sin,' they wrote in their answer.
'We will therefore offer our help and try and do what we can to help this child, but if the child continues to be gay and goes on to date etc. the placement will not work as this goes against our beliefs.'
Wanslea denied the Hordyks a foster child on the grounds that they could not provide a physically or emotionally safe environment for a young person who might identify as LGBTIQ+.
In response the Hordyks took the agency to the State Administrative Tribunal claiming religious discrimination. They asked for $3000 each in compensation 'for hurt feelings and humiliation'. Mrs Hordyk told the tribunal she felt 'gutted' and 'devastated' that her beliefs were labelled 'dangerous'.
In his testimony Mr Hordyk said the rejection of the core principles of his life left him feeling 'deflated'.
'It feels unfair for me to have to throw away my beliefs on these issues just so I can be acceptable to Wanslea. My religious convictions take centre stage in all aspects of my life,' Mr Hordyk told the hearing.
Wanslea argued that the couple's rigidity on issues of homosexuality and gender did not flow from their religious convictions.
However, the tribunal did not agree and ordered both the Hordyks be paid 'for the loss and damage they suffered as a result of Wanslea's discrimination'.
At the time they were knocked back by Wanslea, the Hordyks said they were speaking up for other people of faith.
'We do feel we have been discriminated against and also we felt that if we were quiet about this and didn't say anything about it, it could potentially harm or limit any people with the same Christian values as ours from fostering,' Mr Hordyk told The West Australian.
'We hold traditional Christian views on how the Bible teaches us on sexuality and marriage.
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Backpackers in priority lane as numbers near pre-Covid levels
Working holiday visas are being rushed through within an average of 24 hours, lifting backpacker numbers closer to their pre-Covid levels as the government faces calls to raise the eligibility age to 50 to plug critical labour shortages and attract more skilled professionals.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the number of backpackers working in the country had bounced back from lows of just 20,000 during the pandemic to about 120,000 as of last week.
Mr Giles said that, in addition to fast-tracking holiday-maker visas, he had changed the rules to allow backpackers to stay with a single employer for as long as they remained in the country rather than limiting them to one job for six months at a time, arguing Australia was in an international competition to attract talent.
“This is not simply an Australian skill shortage, so it’s important that we have our system moving effectively, because we’re in a global market,” Mr Giles said.
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re competitive with countries like Canada and like the UK.”
“And I’m really pleased that we are in that space now, that people are getting their visas turned around quickly and that employers can now approach this competence as well.”
The changes come as new figures from peak tourism bodies show more than 70 per cent of Australians will be holidaying domestically this summer, ratcheting up demand on tourism and hospitality businesses across the country which have already been struggling for months to find workers.
Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive Margy Osmond sounded the alarm, saying she was pushing the government to halve or remove all visa fees and increase the age of those eligible for working holiday visas from 35 to 50.
“A lot of businesses are still suffering in terms of getting the number of people optimal to run them,” Ms Osmond said.
“This is a massive competitive global market. Many countries have halved or removed visa fees.”
Increasing the age eligibility for working holiday visas to 50 would also give businesses a “wider pool of people with a bit more money likely to be able to afford to travel”.
“We need to fill other jobs as well. It’s not just pulling a beer at front of house; we need professionals,” Ms Osmond said.
Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce chief executive Andrew McKellar welcomed the faster visa-processing times, but called for new requirements forcing backpackers to work in the sectors that needed them most.
“With many businesses unable to satisfy the demand for workers, the government should consider including three months of work in the tourism and hospitality sectors as qualification for extending working holiday maker visas,” Mr McKellar said.
Prior to the pandemic, Working Holiday Maker visas contributed about $3bn a year to the economy, with a usual pool of backpackers of between 150,000 and 200,000. But border closures during the Covid-19 outbreak drove down the number of working holiday visas by 85 per cent – the biggest drop of any visa class.
To fill skills shortages quickly, the government has prioritised Working Holiday Maker visas over others such as international student visas, which the Home Affairs Department in November reported were processed in about 14 days.
International students have played a major part in plugging skills gaps during the pandemic, following a move by the former government to lift the working cap of 20 hours a week.
However, higher education experts have expressed concern that the uncapped hours were creating a “de-facto work visa” for students coming to Australia primarily to earn money rather than study.
While Mr Giles said the practice of visas being used for collateral purposes was of concern and the capping of hours would return by June next year, Ms Osmond called for the uncapped hours to remain for at least all of 2023, if not longer.
“While I perfectly understand this was an interim measure because of problems we were facing, we’re not over those problems,” Ms Osmond said. “The measure should be in place for the full year. That would give industry and students certainty.”
Mr Giles said “people coming here to study should be coming here to study”.
“We have through the pandemic extended the hours that students can work,” he said. “That will continue through to 30 June (next year).
“We are constantly working with universities and other providers to make sure that the integrity of the system – and then fundamentally also the integrity of our schools and education system – is maintained.”
Mr Giles said the decision to process working holiday visas within a 24-hour timeframe was the result of new processes and investments in human resources in the department, arguing the shake-up had “finally got our visa system moving”.
“It’s got people connected to jobs and critically connected people to businesses … to address the skills shortage we are facing,” he said.
However, he recognised the challenges of backpackers getting to Australia, given the cost and availability of flights and accommodation.
“All of these are issues,” he said. “I don’t presume for a minute that changing the migration system in Australia can deal with all of these issues. But … the availability of visas … and turning around working holiday maker applications in less than a day, we are giving certainty to people who are coming here.”
Mr Giles revealed the government had fulfilled its promise to get the total visa backlog down to 600,000, with the number of visas now on hand down to about 599,000.
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29 December, 2022
Kamahl slams ABC host as a 'bully with a black soul' amid calls for him to be sacked over 'disgusting' comment about the singer and cricket icon Don Bradman
Adams is is a Leftist so I am reluctant to defend him but I think he was misunderstood here. He was clearly criticizing Bradman, not Kamahl. He was comparing Bradman to a South African Apartheid believer. Bradman has recently been "outed" as very conservative.
But any mention of race is taboo these days. Adams should have known that. But he was too anxious to get in a dig at Bradman
Legendary singer Kamahl said he feels 'humiliated' by the ABC's Phillip Adams after the broadcaster claimed cricket icon Don Bradman treated him as 'an honorary white'.
The host of ABC Late Night Live created a storm of controversy by making the claim on social media.
In the tweet on Thursday, Adams compared the cricket icon's 13-year friendship with the popular entertainer with his reluctance to meet Nelson Mandela.
'Clearly, Kamahl, [Bradman] made you an Honorary White. Whereas one of the most towering political figures of the 20th century was deemed unworthy of Bradman’s approval,' Adams said in a tweet on Tuesday morning which later went viral.
The comment was blasted on Twitter, with Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine calling Adams 'a disgrace' and leading calls for his sacking.
A tearful Kamahl, now 88, broke down as he told Daily Mail Australia he felt 'humiliated' by Adams' hurtful remark.
The iconic entertainer, who has enjoyed a successful 55 year career in Australia, labelled Adams 'a bully'.
'I think he wanted to put me down, how dare I be so successful? How can I be black and be successful?' Kamahl told Daily Mail Australia.
'He was being flippant but he’s a bully, ironically Adams has possibly the best command of the English language and he chooses to be mean-spirited. I think he was trying to be nasty.'
'Daring to suggest that Sir Donald Bradman invited me to his home in August 1988 as a 'token white' is disgusting at best.
'You may be white, but oh your soul is black!'
Kamahl said he was proud of his 13-year friendship with Bradman, which began with the singer name-checking the cricket icon in a 1988 song 'What is Australia to Me?'
The pair exchanged almost 80 letters and Kamahl was a regular guest for lunch and dinner at Bradman's home in Kensington Park, Adelaide.
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Some Australians spend Boxing Day trashing famous cricketer
Social media’s love affair with cancelling long-dead celebrities has reared its head again, this time with Australian cricket icon Don Bradman in the firing line.
Bradman, known as one of history’s greatest sportsmen, has been dead for 21 years. But now, a dusty old letter addressed to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, two days after the 1975 dismissal election, has apparently “exposed” the former cricketing great as a “right wing nutjob”.
In the letter, which was unearthed by Federation University’s Verity Archer, Bradman urged the new PM to scrap regulations on capital and warned of the risks inflation poses to Australia.
“A marvellous victory in which your personal conduct and dignity stood out against the background of arrogance and propaganda indulged in by your opponents,” Bradman wrote.
“Now you may have to travel a long and difficult road along which your enemies will seek to destroy you.”
Bradman — who was 67 at the time of writing the letter — also warned Mr Fraser about the power of unions and urged for the public to be “re-educated to believe private enterprise is entitled to rewards, as long as it obeys the rules”.
“What the people need are clearly defined rules which they can read and understand so that they can get on with their affairs,” Bradman continued.
“The public must be re-educated to believe that private enterprise is entitled to rewards as long as it obeys fair and reasonable rules laid down by government. Maybe you can influence leaders of the press to a better understanding of this necessity of presentation.”
Social media users and journalists expressed shock that Bradman — who was born in 1908 and raised in an era when horses outnumbered cars on the road — had conservative leanings.
Sydney Morning Herald writer Daniel Brettig described the letter as “extraordinary” and said it showed Bradman’s attempt at an “intervention at an explosive moment in Australian political history”.
Broadcaster Phillip Adams wrote, “Sad. Lost letter from Bradman to Fraser after Whitlam’s dismissal reveals ‘the Don’ to be a RWNJ [right-wing nutjob].”
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Tony Abbott: There are already Indigenous voices in parliament
Goodwill towards Aboriginal people has never been greater and there is all-but-universal support for recognising Indigenous people in the constitution.
But this proposal for a constitutionally entrenched Indigenous voice to the government and to the parliament is way beyond recognition.
It’s a special body for some, but not all, based on how long your ancestors have been in Australia.
Is that what we really want in our constitution: two classes of Australians, based on race? That’s why the coming referendum is almost sure to be the most important issue our country faces next year and why it deserves far more debate in detail than it’s had so far.
Actually, Indigenous people already have a voice.
It’s called the Australian parliament, which now has 11 Indigenous MPs, a record number, all of whom have been chosen and elected in the normal way. Because Australian voters have become so lacking in prejudice and are now so appreciative of the qualities of Indigenous people as to disproportionately put them into our national parliament.
Although our country has never tried harder to give minorities a fair go, Indigenous people especially, that’s not enough for the Albanese government.
Hence this push for a separate and special Indigenous body, over and above the Indigenous MPs already in the parliament, the national Indigenous “coalition of peaks”, and all the Aboriginal land councils that already cover the whole country and represent the traditional owners in whom authority used to rest.
This can’t be because Aboriginal people currently lack a voice. Many Indigenous people speak out powerfully and effectively in our public life.
Nor is it because Aboriginal people currently aren’t being listened to. As the now almost ubiquitous acknowledgements of country, routine presence of the Aboriginal flag alongside the national flag, and angst over Australia Day show, officialdom takes some Indigenous concerns very seriously indeed.
This new voice that the government wants to put to a referendum in the second half of next year is not about listening more closely to Indigenous views or about finally recognising in our constitution that Aboriginal people were here first.
It’s about introducing a kind of co-governance where nothing can be done for 100 per cent of the people without taking into account the concerns of that 4 per cent, some of whose ancestors came before 1788.
As the Prime Minister has said, only a very “brave” government could ignore the voice’s representations. That’s why, should this voice be approved at a referendum, it would constitute something approaching a “third chamber of the parliament”, as Malcolm Turnbull has said.
In fact, the government has two distinct and contradictory positions on the Voice: one, pitched to the wider Australian community, is that the Voice is really no big deal, and that not to support it would be disrespectful to Indigenous people — and perhaps even racist.
The other, pitched to Indigenous leaders and its own activist supporters, is that the Voice would start to redress the shame of dispossession and might help to close the education, employment and life expectancy gap between Indigenous people and the wider Australian community.
Paradoxically, in one of its first decisions, the same government that’s pushing this new Voice totally ignored all the Indigenous voices pleading with it not to scrap the cashless debit card and not to end the alcohol bans in remote Australia which were helping to keep vulnerable women and children safe.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Indigenous voices that this government heeds are largely urban activist ones that want to change the date of Australia Day, rewrite history, conclude treaties between the Commonwealth and groups of its own citizens, and press for reparations; as opposed to those in remote areas whose focus is on getting Indigenous kids to school and adults to work, and keeping communities safe.
Unless the government plans to release a lot more detail — about exactly who could stand and who could vote for this new body; exactly what will and what won’t be within its scope; how much its members might be paid and its deliberations resourced; and how it’s going to be possible to avoid extensive litigation about whether its representations have adequately been considered and responded to (and that’s a lot to think through) — people will be expected to vote essentially on the “vibe”.
And that’s hardly a safe way to make potentially far-reaching changes to the way we are governed.
If this really was likely to produce hitherto unknown solutions to all the scandalous problems afflicting remote Australia, and if this really was likely to generate a hitherto unprecedented united resolve to make a difference, it might just be worth the risk.
But instead of the appreciation that lasting change for the better happens person-by-person, institution-by-institution and community-by-community, and is akin to slow-boring through hard wood, this new body is likely to reinforce separatism and the quest for instant solutions. That’s when it’s not acting as an echo chamber for grievances or a gravy train for activists.
That’s why I hope you will join people like Senator Jacinta Price, a proud Celtic, Warlpiri Australian woman, not just to oppose this unnecessary Voice which would be wrong in principle and bad in practice, but in finding better ways to recognise Aboriginal people in our constitution and to have the original Australians participate more fully in the great life we have here.
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Tesla chaos strikes: Long Christmas holiday queues for charging station reveals the harsh reality of owning an electric vehicle in Australia
The people caught out must be either gullible or a bit dim. Electric vehicles are just not suitable for long-distance travel
Australian Tesla drivers have been forced to wait in 90-minute queues at charging stations as thousands take to the roads over the holiday period.
Queues for charging stations have been spotted nationwide, including in Victoria and NSW.
The huge queues have angered Tesla owners, with many blasting Australia's lack of electric vehicle infrastructure.
ABC reporter Phil Williams shared a video of the electric cars all lined up at a charging bay in Wodonga, on the border of Victoria and NSW on Wednesday. 'Wodonga Tesla charge points overwhelmed with wait times around 90 mins,' he said.
In the footage, Tesla owners can be seen aimlessly standing around their cars as they wait for a charge before getting on their way more than an hour later.
There were similar scenes at a Coffs Harbour charging point in northern NSW on Wednesday, with Teslas stretching through the carpark as drivers waited their turn to power up.
Many Aussies were quick to call out electric vehicles after seeing the footage. 'Think I'll stick to a petrol powered car. Takes less than 5 minutes to fill up my car's tank, pay for the petrol and to then be on my way again,' one said.
'Why anyone would want an electric car that can take up to an hour to fully recharge is beyond me,' another declared. 'They obviously have way too much time on their hands to just wait either waiting to recharge or recharge!'
'So how do you travel during peak periods in an EV? Just be prepared to add 3 hours to your trip? That won't help with the take up of the technology?' a third said.
'I'm an expat Australian and this is the reason I left. We're 10 years behind the rest of the world with EV and innovation,' added another.
Others called for an expansion of the charging network across Australia to solve the problem of long wait times.
'There are eleven petrol stations in Wodonga, multiple outlets for every major brand, and only one place to charge EVs which is just outside the council offices.'
Another suggested: 'Every petrol station should have to fit charging points.'
Others suggested the long wait times were due to the Christmas holidays, while some said it was likely the scenes in Wodonga were from a Tesla club meet-up.
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28 December, 2022
Rogue antibody and mystery pathogen behind AstraZeneca blood clots: study
A rare gene combined with exposure to a mystery pathogen may have caused the blood clotting issues that plagued AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Australia pinned much of its COVID-19 response strategy on AstraZeneca’s vaccine, with 50 million doses produced by CSL’s Broadmeadows plant.
But at the height of the pandemic last year, as millions of Australians were preparing to roll up their sleeves, the vaccine was linked to an extremely rare but deadly blood clot disease.
It left many with a tough choice: get jabbed and take the three-in-100,000 risk of clots, or decline the vaccine and take your chances with the virus. In total, 173 Australians suffered clots, and eight people died.
Exactly what caused the clots has remained a mystery. But this month a team of Australian scientists led by Flinders University’s head of immunology Professor Tom Gordon reported in the journal Blood that they had traced the culprit down a single gene – and a mystery pathogen.
“This was very unusual,” Gordon said. “In 35 years of looking at blood autoantibodies I have never seen anything like this.”
“Exceptionally dangerous”
AstraZeneca’s vaccine is built around an adenovirus vector – a harmless virus modified to carry the genetic code of COVID-19’s spike protein.
After vaccination, the virus infects our cells, which then use the genetic code to produce copies of the spike protein. In turn, our immune system learns to recognise the spike and builds an arsenal of antibodies designed to fight it.
But scientists suspect the adenovirus itself can accidentally bind to a crucial natural protein in the body known as PF4. A small signalling molecule, it’s used to get blood to thicken – important in repairing cuts, for example.
In rare cases, people develop antibodies that can recognise and bind to this combination of adenovirus and PF4. By binding, the antibodies activate PF4, causing it to signal platelets in the blood to clump together.
“Once you clump platelets you get widespread clotting. So they are exceptionally dangerous,” Gordon said.
But that explanation leaves a gaping hole. We all have PF4. Why did only a few people get clots?
A rogue antibody
Working with rogue antibody samples from five people in Adelaide who suffered clots after the vaccine – including one person who died – Gordon’s team made several key discoveries.
First, they discovered the rogue antibodies slotted perfectly into a groove on PF4 that was only exposed when PF4 was exposed to AstraZeneca’s adenovirus.
Then they found the antibodies from the five people were almost identical.
Antibodies vary a lot from person to person; the immune system can make perhaps a million trillion unique types. Pulling identical antibodies from five unrelated people is extremely rare and suggests genes are playing a role.
Genetic sequencing revealed each patient was expressing a gene known as IGLV3-21*02, which was likely responsible for the unique antibody.
Case closed? Not quite.
About four people in every 100 have IGLV3-21*02, but the risk of clotting from AstraZeneca’s vaccine was a fraction of that. Something more must have been going on.
The final clue was hidden in the disease’s speed. It can take weeks for antibodies to be generated to a new virus, but some people suffered clotting just days after getting vaccinated. That suggested, Gordon said, their immune systems had already experienced this strange combination of adenovirus and PF4 – or something that looked a lot like it.
“How can it be? We don’t know. That’s one of the great mysteries,” he said.
Professor James McCluskey, an expert on the genetics of immunity and a deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, called the study “rather remarkable”.
“Antibody genes … can vary genetically from one individual to another. For all these patients to have the same [gene] is just intuitively improbable by chance. So it looks real,” he said.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine remains in use in Australia, but official health advice is to opt for Pfizer or Moderna if you’re under 60. But AstraZeneca continues to be distributed, particularly in low-income countries.
Gordon hopes his study will open up new ways to either test people for genetic susceptibility to the condition or design medicines to treat it.
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Gas crackdown already halting new investments
Future gas and LNG projects valued at $32bn are under threat of having investment stalled or pulled under the Albanese government’s “hostile attitude to Australia’s resources sector” after the Gina Rinehart-backed Senex paused its $1bn Surat Basin expansion project.
Up to 12 gas projects listed in the government’s resources and energy major projects investment pipeline report on Monday are considered to be facing “significant uncertainty” following the government’s crackdown on gas companies.
Amid industry concerns over the government’s one-year $12-a-gigajoule gas price cap, mandatory code of conduct on gas producers and tougher environmental approval regulations, there are rising fears that other companies could suspend projects.
Senex’s decision to halt work on its coal seam gas projects is the latest hit to Queensland’s resources industry, where coalminers Glencore and BHP have shelved or frozen investment amid a running brawl with the state’s Labor government over a shock royalty hike announced in its July budget.
Opposition resources spokeswoman Susan McDonald said “more than $15bn in future east coast gas projects are under a cloud of uncertainty due to Labor’s hostile attitude towards Australia’s energy resources sector”.
Nine projects planned to supply east coast domestic gas, and another three LNG projects that could supply gas to the east coast, are valued at $32bn.
Senex, jointly owned by POSCO and Ms Rinehart’s Hancock Energy after they sealed a $900m takeover of the ASX-listed company in March, announced the $1bn coal seam expansion project four months ago around the same time the federal government was drafting its plans to combat high domestic gas prices.
The coal seam expansion was aimed at pumping more gas into the domestic market by lifting its Atlas project to 60 petajoules within two years.
Senex has left open the possibility of returning to the $1bn expansion if the federal government rethinks its gas industry plans. However, it has paused recruitment and spending on long lead items “pending the outcome of the Albanese government’s mandatory code of conduct consultation process” on February 7.
A spokesman for Resources Minister Madeleine King said the government was “confident Senex will continue to engage constructively with the government as they design and implement the gas code of conduct”. He said the government’s gas price cap applied only to existing projects and not “new projects like Atlas”.
“The government wants to design a measure that does not have a chilling effect on investment, and ensures investment continues to flow to new products,” Ms King’s spokesman said.
“The gas code of conduct, once it enters into force, is not about stripping profits off producers. It’s about ensuring that where gas enters the domestic market, Australian households and businesses are not subject to the exponentially skyrocketing prices that we have seen throughout the course of this year. “That’s not on, and the code will prevent those runaway prices that we have seen previously.”
Acting Treasurer Katy Gallagher this week authorised the gas price cap to begin from Friday, with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission tasked with “closely monitoring” the east coast gas market and enforcing the cap.
Senator Gallagher said without capping gas and coal prices, “the average family would be paying $230 more on their electricity bill next year”.
Senator McDonald said the government was “joining forces with the Greens to implement unprecedented price controls, hand over more power to unions, increase environmental red-tape and fund anti-mining lawfare groups”.
“Coal and gas alone are forecast to earn Australia $223bn but under Labor’s war on conventional energy commodities, 18 coal and gas projects have been reopened for environmental assessment after already receiving approval, and 43 oil and gas projects have been required to redo their consultation,” Senator McDonald said.
“Our regional partners, like Japan and Korea, will be very concerned about Australia’s approach to providing the energy commodities they need to power their economies. All this sends strong signals to international companies that they are not welcome here, so we can expect them to consider halting their investment.”
Liberal Senator Paul Scarr says “basic economics” is all it takes to realise imposing gas price caps at “less than… the market-prevailing price” will create a shortage of investment and, consequently, energy reserve. “It’s an investment-killing concoction,” Mr Scarr told Sky News host Gary Hardgrave. “The consequences are disastrous, especially More
In the government’s major projects report, prepared before the national cabinet slapped a $125-a-tonne price cap on coal, 33 coal projects were stalled in the feasibility stage as lenders and investors, led by pension and equity funds, pull finance for thermal coal projects.
Global mining giant Glencore earlier this month pulled the plug on plans to build its $2bn Valeria thermal coalmine, citing Queensland’s royalty rate increase as a major cause. BHP is also considering the impact of the royalty rate hikes on the life of its Queensland coal operations.
The mining giant has already said it will not invest in Queensland growth projects while the windfall royalty rates are in place, and set aside $US750m in its annual financial accounts for potential early closure and rehabilitation costs.
Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association chief executive Samantha McCulloch said the Senex decision highlighted risks involved with the Albanese government’s gas market intervention.
“No new gas supply means no downward pressure on prices and an increased risk of future gas shortages,” Ms McCulloch said.
“Without this kind of investment, Australia misses out on crucial new gas supply to ease east coast energy system pressures as well as substantial economic returns including hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of local investment in regional communities.”
Opposition treasury spokesman Angus Taylor said market interventions were “adding to red tape and complexity for investors both domestically and abroad”.
“The billions of dollars of projects on hold or under question shows that when we are in a global race for capital, more regulation leads to less investment, which means fewer jobs, less work for small businesses and a slower economy,” Mr Taylor said.
After the Office of the Chief Economist on Monday revealed that resources and energy export earnings will fall by $68bn in 2023-24, down from a record $459bn this financial year, Mr Taylor said it was imperative for the budget bottom line to avoid future slides.
“This makes it all the more alarming that the government is cutting funding support for our resources sector and making extreme interventions that energy experts are warning will cool investment and decrease supply,” he said.
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RBA warning: Our supply-side problems have only just begun
In one of his last speeches for the year, Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe has issued a soberingwarning. Even when we’ve got on top of the present inflation outbreak, the disruptions to supplywe’ve struggled with this year are likely to be a recurring problem in the years ahead.
Economists think of the economy as having two sides. The supply side refers to our productionof goods and services, whereas the demand side refers to our spending on those goods and services, partly for investment in new production capacity, but mainly for consumption by households.
Lowe notes that, until inflation raised its ugly head, the world had enjoyed about three decades inwhich there were few major “shocks” (sudden big disruptions) to the continuing production and supply of goods and services.
When something happens that disrupts supply, so that it can’t keep up with demand, prices jump –as we’ve seen this year with disruptions caused by the pandemic and its lockdowns, and withRussia’s attack on Ukraine.
What changes occurred over the three decades were mainly favourable: they involved increasedsupply of manufactured goods, in particular, which put gentle downward pressure on prices.
This made life easier for the world’s central banks. With the supply side behaving itself, they wereable to keep their economies growing fairly steadily by using interest rates to manage demand. Putrates up to restrain spending and inflation; put rates down to encourage spending and employment.
What’s got Lowe worried is his realisation that a lot of the problems headed our way will be shocks to supply.
The central banks were looking good because the one tool they have for influencing the economy –interest rates – was good for managing demand. Trouble is – and as we saw this year – managing demand is the only thing central banks and their interest rates can do.
When prices jump because of disruptions to supply, there’s nothing they can do to fix those disruptions and get supply back to keeping up with demand. All they can do is strangle demand until prices come down.
So, what’s got Lowe worried is his realisation that a lot of the problems headed our way will be shocks to supply.
“Looking forward, the supply side looks more challenging than it has been for many years” and is likely to have a bigger effect on inflation, making it jump more often.
Lowe sees four factors leading to more supply shocks. The first is “the reversal of globalisation”.
Over recent decades, international trade increased significantly relative to the size of the global economy, he says.
Production became increasingly integrated across borders, and this lowered costs and made supply very flexible. Australia was among the major beneficiaries of this.
Now, however, international trade is no longer growing faster than the global economy. “Trading blocs are emerging and there is a step back from closer integration,” he says. “Unfortunately, today barriers to trade and investment are more likely to be increased than removed.”
This will inevitably affect both the rise in standards of living and the prices of goods and services inglobal markets.
The second factor affecting the supply side is demographics. Until relatively recently, the working-age population of the advanced economies was steadily increasing. This was also true for China andEastern Europe – both of which were being integrated into the global economy.
And the participation of women in the paid labour force was also rising rapidly. “The result was asubstantial increase in the number of workers engaged in the global economy, and advances intechnology made it easier to tap into this global labour force,” Lowe says.
So, there was a great increase in global supply. But this trend has turned and the working-agepopulation is now declining, with the decline projected to accelerate. The proportion of thepopulation who are either too young or too old to work is rising, meaning the supply of workersavailable to meet the demand for goods and services has diminished.
The third factor affecting the supply side is climate change. Over the past 20 years, the number ofmajor floods across the world has doubled and the frequency of heatwaves and droughts has alsoincreased.
This will keep getting worse These extreme weather events disrupt production and so affect prices – as we know all too well in Australia. But as well as lifting fruit and vegetable prices (and meat prices after droughts break and herd rebuilding begins), extreme weather can disrupt mining production and transport and distribution.
The fourth factor affecting the supply side is related: the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. This involves junking our investment in coal mines, gas plants and power stations, and new investment in solar farms, wind farms, batteries and rooftop solar, as well as extensively rejigging the electricity network.
It’s not just that the required new capital investment will be huge, but that the transition from the old system to the new won’t happen without disruptions.
So, energy prices will be higher (to pay for the new capital investment) and more volatile when fossil-fuel supply stops before renewables supply is ready to fill the gap.
Lowe foresees the inflation rate becoming more unstable through two channels. First, shocks to supply that cause large and rapid changes in prices.
Second, the global supply curve becoming less “elastic” (less able to respond to increases in demand by quickly increasing supply) than it has been in the past decade.
Lowe says bravely that none of these developments would undermine the central banks’ ability to achieve their inflation target “on average” - that is, over a few years – though they would make the bankers’ job more complicated.
Well, maybe. As he reminds us, adverse supply shocks can have conflicting effects, increasing inflation while reducing output and employment. The Reserve can’t increase interest rates and reduce them at the same time.
As Lowe further observes, supply shocks “also have implications for other areas of economic policy”. Yes, competition policy, for instance.
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Low-fee private schools rival expensive counterparts in HSC
At Alpha Omega College, a co-ed school in a suburban office block, students don’t wear uniforms, teachers are called by their first names and there is no bell to round up pupils to class.
“It’s not a normal school,” says deputy principal Wesam Krayem. “We do things differently and it makes students feel like there are fewer barriers. We also open the school on weekends and holidays for extra tutoring sessions.”
The western Sydney college is one of multiple lower-fee private schools across NSW that had similar — or better — HSC success rates than schools where fees tip over $20,000 a year, a Herald analysis has found.
Catholic schools that charge fees of about $6000 a year or less — including Randwick’s Brigidine College, Hurstville’s Bethany College and Parramatta Marist High — had a similar or a higher portion of students achieving band-six HSC results as St Joseph’s in Hunters Hill and the Scots College in Bellevue Hill, where parents pay about $40,000 for year 12.
St Clare’s College in Waverley — which charges about $7000 for year 12 — was the highest-ranked systemic Catholic school at 31st out of the 143 top private schools analysed, based on the past two years of HSC results. It had a success rate similar to Barker College and St Ignatius College Riverview, where final-year fees are more than $32,000.
Former chair of NSW Education Standards Authority Tom Alegounarias said fees did not necessarily correlate with consistently high academic performance.
“Results likely reflect all sorts of dynamics beyond the socio-economic backgrounds of students. It could be about the relative effectiveness of the school, and if there is healthy competition among staff and students. Schools might be focusing on academic achievement and the rigours that are needed to get those results. Band sixes are also only one indicator, and are not a reliable indicator of range achievement in schools,” Alegounarias said.
At Auburn’s Alpha Omega College there is an intense focus on academic results and a strict no mobile phone policy for the 500-odd students at the school.
“There is a ‘never give up attitude’ ... students get constant feedback on how they are going. The school is open on some weekends for study groups and algebra workshops,” said Krayem. Parents pay about $13,000 for year 12 at the school.
The Herald’s analysis compared fees with HSC success rates — the ratio of band six results at a school compared to the number of students that sat exams. It used this year’s fees published on school websites, and if these weren’t available took the most recent fees and charges reported or used data from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to estimate fees.
Authorities only release the names and schools of students who achieve in the top band of their subject. Private school sectors have previously suggested the NSW government release more data to reflect the efforts of all students, not just the top achievers.
Fees at Al Noori Muslim School in Greenacre and Al Faisal College are roughly $3000 a year, and those schools had a similar portion of students in the top HSC bands as Knox Grammar and Kincoppal Rose Bay.
Chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW Dallas McInerney said the sector aimed to provide choice for parents through a system of low-fee comprehensive schools.
“HSC results do not account for socio-economic background, fees or enrolment policy, therefore the results of these schools and students are really an against-the-odds story,” he said.
‘We set the bar high’: How Reddam House blitzed HSC maths
Robyn Rodwell, the principal of Catholic systemic school Bethany College, said the school had high expectations of the girls.
“Before we teach a new topic we do pre-testing to find out what they already know, and that way after we’ve taught the unit you can see how much they’ve grown. We also invest in really solid teacher development programs,” she said.
Head of the Association of Independent Schools of NSW Geoff Newcombe said the median fee collected for private schools in NSW was around $5200 a year. “These schools are not selective, and their regular success reflects the commitment of the students, their families, teachers and principals to strong academic outcomes at all levels.”
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23 December, 2022
‘Not reflective’: Former Nationals MP Andrew Gee turns on party over Voice to Parliament stance
This is good for the No vote. It will make clear that the refererndum proposal is controversial -- and controversial refereda tend to be lost -- which will be good riddance to racist legislation
Long-serving Nationals MP Andrew Gee has turned on his own party, claiming it is “not reflective” of regional Australian communities after quitting to join the crossbench in federal parliament.
Mr Gee, who holds the federal NSW seat of Calare, announced on Friday he would quit the Nationals to sit as an Independent.
He said the party’s opposition to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, along with the wake of devastation from recent flooding, was the catalyst for his decision.
Speaking with reporters later in the day, he said he had “lost the faith” in the Nationals amid their dwindling numbers year on year. “The National Party today is very different to the National Party I grew up with,” he told ABC News.
“The National Party you see today is not necessarily reflective of the way our regional communities are growing and developing.”
A month ago, Nationals leader David Littleproud announced the party would be opposing the Voice policy as it would not deal with the real issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. “It will not economically empower Indigenous people,” Mr Littleproud said.
“We believe this will be a voice for Redfern, not for Indigenous communities in regional, rural and remote Australia, in places like Cunnamulla, Alice Springs and Carnarvon.”
Mr Gee said he supported the Voice and had made his position clear to members. “Any party needs opposing political points of view … it makes for a robust discussion and good policy,” he said.
“What was purported to be a united front opposing the Voice was put forward, which was not my position. I don’t know why it had to happen so quickly.
“The rest of Australia will get a free vote at a referendum, yet for National Party MPs, a party position has been taken with an expectation we will fall behind that, and vote accordingly. “There just comes a point where you can make too many compromises.”
In a statement, Mr Littleproud said he was “disappointed” in Mr Gee’s decision to leave the Nationals but said he had always been free to make his own decision and vote accordingly on the Voice.
“We will continue to work hard for western NSW and find a candidate who will best represent them at the next federal election,” he said.
Mr Gee has held the NSW seat of Calare since 2016. He was also elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly for Orange in 2011 and served as the Defence Personnel Minister from 2021 to 2022.
Mr Gee said he felt the Nationals’ decision to oppose the Voice to Parliament and witnessing the devastating NSW floods “really brought home to me the importance of being able to stand up and be counted”.
“I can’t reconcile the fact that every Australian will get a free vote on the vitally important issue of the Voice, yet National Party MPs are expected to fall into line behind a party position that I fundamentally disagree with, and vote accordingly in Parliament,” he said in his statement.
“While I respect the views of my colleagues, this just isn’t right.
“As the discussion on this issue around Australia builds, I want that freedom to put forward my point of view as I don’t foresee the Nationals’ policy on the Voice changing.
“While I accept that in politics compromises have to be made, there comes a point where not speaking out freely can compromise the interests of those we represent.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was an “extraordinary political development” but that he respected Mr Gee’s position. “Andrew Gee’s statement is one of principle,” he said.
“I look forward to working with him and members of the Liberal Party, crossbenchers across the board who want to recognise – who see this as an opportunity to unite our nation.”
He said he was pleased Mr Gee would be pushing for a “yes” vote on the change. “Andrew Gee has made a principal statement about his commitment to constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but also a constitutionally recognised Voice to Parliament,” he said
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The tiny Australian town gripped by a child sexual abuse crisis: 'If this was happening in Melbourne or Sydney it'd be front page news'
Reading between the lines, the offenders were Aboriginal. Aborigines tend to be treated leniently by the courts. It's "the soft bigotry of low expectations"
The tiny Northern Territory town of Tenant Creek has been rocked by the actions of two vile rapists who are set to be released from detention mere months after they were convicted of their horrific crimes.
Ezekial James, 28, who sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl in a community near Tennant Creek in the Top End in 2017, causing her to fall pregnant, is eligible for parole only four months after he pleaded guilty to the grisly crime.
In another case close by, a teenager who raped a seven-year-old girl while he was out on parole for arson back in May last year is set to be released less than two months after conviction.
Both cases have sparked outrage over the leniency given to the rapists.
Sky News Australia's Rita Panahi, who spoke to the network's Darwin Bureau Chief Matt Cunningham who covered both crimes, relayed her shock. 'Frankly, if this was happening in Melbourne or Sydney it'd be front page news,' she said. 'It'd be leading the news service for a week.' 'How can such horrific crimes see such lenient sentences?' she asked Cunningham.
Panahi claimed there was difficulty in speaking out against these cases due to fears of being labelled 'racist'. 'How can we elevate these issues?' she continued.
'We'll talk about it on this program, we'll talk about it on Sky News but it seems so many people are terrified to broach this subject because there can be blowback.'
The pair referred to comments made by senator Jacinta Price on the network who suggested that 'until there's an end to domestic and family violence, there won't be an end to these sorts of issues'.
Ezekial James pleaded guilty to raping a 12-year-old girl when he was 23-years-old in 2017. He approached the child near a football ground at night and lured her back to his family's residence where he assaulted her.
The victim returned to her grandfather's home after the traumatising incident and discovered later on that she was pregnant. The girl gave birth at Alice Springs Hospital in August 2018 after being in an 'extremely anxious' state.
Justice Barr described the girl's situation as 'horrible' and the birth as 'very traumatic for a young teenager who did not have the psychological resources to deal with the very stressful situation'.
James was taken into custody by police in December 2021, four years after the 2017 rape, when DNA evidence linked him to the child. He has previously been in prison for multiple offences including two cases of aggravated assault against women and recklessly endangering life.
Justice Barr said it was unlikely he would reoffend before his sentence was suspended.
In the other case, a 16-year-old boy groped a seven-year-old girl while she was watching TV at a house in the Top End.
The teen, who was out on parole for arson, then forced the child into a bedroom where he raped her.
The girl was later flown by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to a clinic in Alice Springs for treatment. She currently struggles to sleep, is too scared to go outside and wants to leave Tennant Creek.
The boy was arrested four days later and was sent to a youth detention centre. He pleaded guilty to the assault and was sentenced in the Northern Territory Supreme Court on November 30.
The boy, who is now 18, is set to be released from detention less than two months after his conviction.
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Why ‘abusive’ dating app users are being outed on Facebook
While our governments dilly dally on a national domestic violence perpetrator database, women across the country are finding innovative ways to alert others about the abusive men on dating apps.
It’s not ideal for citizens to be taking matters into their own hands - not the least because the women at the forefront of this movement are doing so at great risk legally and exposing themselves to trolling and possible payback.
But as the country’s domestic violence toll climbs higher with every passing week and the policy leadership void grows ever deeper, it’s pretty clear females fear they have little choice but to take action.
By my count, 55 women have been killed unlawfully this year. At least 24 of died as a result of violence allegedly perpetrated by current or former partners.
I can’t help but wonder, how many women could have been saved if we did have a national DV perpetrator database accessible by normal Australians.
Sucha database it could also connected be to dating apps to ensure businesses like Tinder, Hinge, Her, Bumble and other online connection tools are blocking abusive people from their platforms.
The death this week of Dannielle Finlay-Jones really rams home the need for a federal database.
Dannielle - a 31-year-old student support office and dedicated women’s footy advocate - was staying overnight at a friend’s place in Cranebrook, NSW, with Ashley Gaddie, who she had only been dating for a short time.
Dannielle did all she could to remain safe, including ensuring she was with others when seeing her new lover.
It’s alleged Gaddie assaulted her sometime between the evening of December 17 and the morning of December 18.
It is also alleged he left her injured in the bed and fled from the scene by crawling out a window.
Dannielle’s friends found her in a critical condition. Sadly, she could not be saved.
Gaddie was arrested after a 12-hour intensive stand-off with cops in the Blue Mountains.
Had Dannielle been able to request his domestic violence history from a federal database, she might still be alive.
But that database does not exist despite extensive lobbying of state and territory governments and the federal government by high profile Australians including journalist and former MP Derryn Hinch.
Joining Hinch in his crusade are the loved ones of domestic violence victims, including Lee Little whose daughter was killed by her partner in late 2019.
A national database can only work if every police force, court and government across Australia works together to share information.
Currently, there are major issues with information sharing between police and courts in each jurisdiction.
Even when details are shared between authorities, civilians are not able to access it.
In Australia, about one quarter of women experience emotional abuse in their relationships, one in three are sexually violated and the same number are assaulted by current or former lovers.
In other words, everyone knows a woman who has been abused and in most cases that woman is themselves.
With such high levels of violence against women, it makes sense to have a shared domestic violence database - accessible under strict circumstances - by women who have concerns about their, or another’s, safety.
Broken Crayon’s Still Colour Foundation founder Rach Mac is a survivor of intimate partner violence.
She is also the creator of a large social media group offering Aussie women the chance to find information on men they are planning to date.
Run at great risk by Rach, the group is the only one in Australia. It’s membership sits around the 4000 mark and it grows daily.
Members post photos and domestic violence histories of the men they know in the group so others can be aware of who they should avoid.
And other women post photos and the dating app profiles of their would-be dates as well as their names, locations and any other relevant information. In someone in the group knows the guy, they will point out any red flags.
Obviously, Rach faces major legal issues including the potential to be sued for defamation should a man find out he has been wrongly spoken about and the risk some women might make untrue allegations.
But Rach says she takes every precaution, including asking to view criminal histories or domestic violence orders.
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Microdosing may be on the rise, but what are the dilemmas?
Many Australians start their working day with a strong hit of caffeine. Sam, a 32-year-old filmmaker, sometimes prefers to take a small amount of LSD instead. "It's like having a strong cup of coffee that last[s] the whole day without the crash," he says.
Sam's not alone. In Australia and around the world, there's been increased interest in people experimenting with tiny doses of illegal drugs in the hope of improving their productivity, creativity and focus at work.
It's a practice known as microdosing.
It involves taking small amounts of psychedelic substances, such as LSD or psilocybin, on a regular basis, explains Vince Polito, cognitive psychologist and senior research fellow at Macquarie University.
Dr Polito is among the academics leading microdosing research in Australia.
"People vary in how often they do it, but ... people tend to microdose a couple of times a week," Dr Polito tells ABC RN's This Working Life.
"It's a completely different ballpark to the type of experience that you might typically associate with psychedelics. People are taking doses that are almost imperceptible."
He says the average Australian microdosing may be "a bit older than what you would expect".
Dr Polito's research published in 2019 tracked 98 people who practised microdosing.
"The average age was mid-30s. They were fairly well-educated, and about 75 per cent had some form of tertiary education, and roughly 70 per cent were either working or studying," he says.
"The sort of broad picture that we got was of people who were microdosing [as] pretty normal members of society."
Dr Polito says the potential negative impacts of prolonged use are still unknown, as more long-term research needs to be done in this area.
Sam, who also works as a university lecturer, says microdosing allows him to drop into a "deep, flow-like state" with his work.
He says creativity is "a big part of my work" and something he can access "a lot more easily with the LSD".
"So rather than having to sort of stick it out for six hours and getting distracted, I [can] drop in for two hours in really deep work and accomplish more than I could otherwise."
Photographer and retail worker Trina, aged 51, has also felt an improvement in her productivity at work since she began microdosing with psilocybin six months ago.
"My productivity was sort of heightened [while microdosing] ... because I was processing ideas quite quickly and had this impatience to bring them to fruition," she says.
"Something that it might take me [about] three hours to put together and photograph would probably take me half the time."
But she's hesitant to mention it to anyone in her workplace.
"I just have a sense with the kind of … people that I work with that they wouldn't really understand what it was, and they probably would just think that I'm taking drugs," she says.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-22/microdosing-in-the-workplace-this-working-life/101760506
************************************22 December, 2022
QIMR Berghofer scientists could have found the ‘masterswitch’ to kill cancer
As I have benefited greatly from immunotherapy, I am pleased to hear of another imunotherapy advance. Specific substances are needed to energize attacks on specific types of cell. Keytruda worked like a charm on my SCCs
Queensland medical researchers are on the brink of a staggering breakthrough that sees palpable tumours completely melting away, offering hope to sufferers of two of the deadliest types of cancers.
QIMR Berghofer scientists have potentially found the “masterswitch” that turns on the immune system to target disease in patients with triple-negative breast cancer and the most common form of bowel cancer, Micro Satellite Stable (MSS) bowel cancer.
The remarkable research findings could finally provide hope for a new, effective therapy but funding is desperately needed to progress the exciting preclinical results into clinical trials.
Associate Professor Michelle Wykes, group leader of Molecular Immunology at QIMR Berghofer, discovered the potential “masterswitch” that turns on a key type of immune cell called dendritic cells while researching immune responses to malaria.
Dendritic cells act like the generals of the immune system waking up other immune cells such as T cells and telling them what to attack and the weapons to use. However, cancer cells are very good at hiding from the immune system. In preclinical testing, the “masterswitch” antibodies make the cancers visible again, so the dendritic cells can go back to work and ‘organise’ the T cells to kill the cancer.
Associate Professor Wykes said further testing of the “masterswitch” antibodies on cancer patient blood samples produced similar results to the testing in preclinical lab work.
“We’re seeing palpable tumours that completely disappear and melt away. In our preclinical lab models, 80 per cent of both the triple negative breast cancers and colon cancers were cleared and hadn’t grown back after ten months. We’re seeing similar results from our tests on samples taken from patients with colon cancer,” she said.
“These patients urgently need help and I have something that I think could really help them, but we need funding to bring us together with a treatment. We’re appealing to the generosity of Australians this Christmas to help us advance this vital research and bring hope to patients and their loved ones,” Assoc Prof Wykes said.
Brisbane mum Justine Dillon was at peak physical fitness when she was diagnosed with highly aggressive stage four bowel cancer and given 18 months to live.
The researchers are working with clinicians at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital who collected samples from patients for the researchers to test in the laboratory.
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Palmer announces sale of Yabulu refinery
Clive Palmer has announced he has entered a share purchase agreement for the sale of the Yabulu Nickel and Cobalt Refinery in Townsville for an undisclosed sum to Zero Carbon Investek.
Mr Palmer is selling his joint venture shares in QNI Resources Pty Ltd and QNI Metals Pty Ltd to Zero Carbon Investek — a special purpose vehicle formed to undertake the acquisition, based in Switzerland.
Mr Palmer said the sale would bring enormous economic and environmental benefits to the people of North Queensland and wider Australia.
“I am happy to announce that this first-class asset has found enthusiastic and expert new owners in Zero Carbon Investek,’’ Mr Palmer said.
“I look forward to the Queensland government and all relevant authorities lending their full support to the new owners. This is a big win for the people of North Queensland providing jobs and economic benefits,’’ Mr Palmer said.
Yabulu operated for about 40 years before its operating company was placed in administration and then liquidation in 2016. About 800 people lost their jobs.
According to Mr Palmer’s statement, it is regarded as a world class, large-scale, globally significant nickel and cobalt refinery asset.
It previously represented a large part of the gross regional product of the North Queensland economy, contributing $1.37bn per year for Townsville and 3960 full-time equivalent jobs across Queensland, with more than half those jobs in and around Townsville.
The statement says the refinery was placed into a high-level of care and maintenance since 2016 and is now looking to restart.
“The Yabulu restart plan is designed to optimise refinery operations, including realising extensive tonnages of nickel and cobalt contained in the tailings storage facility. In September 2022 Yabulu secured a 30-year port access agreement with the Port of Townsville,” the statement says.
It says an 18-month restart plan positions Yabulu to rapidly become among the top 10 largest nickel assets in the world with a production capacity of 53,500 tonnes per annum of nickel and 3700 tonnes per annum of cobalt. Both are strategic and critical minerals playing a major role in industrial processes, global decarbonisation and electrification.
Nickel and cobalt are used for the production of electric vehicles, renewable power generation, battery manufacturing, energy storage, aerospace, defence and health.
According to the statement, Zero Carbon Investek is currently in advanced discussions with a number of globally significant strategic players who are seeking product offtake opportunities, alongside investment.
“Under Zero Carbon Investek, the refinery will directly employ about 800 staff, upon restart of operations, and many more during the construction period,” the statement says.
“To this end, in the longer-term, Zero Carbon Investek is hopeful that the site may unlock opportunities for new domestic industry, including battery or electric vehicle manufacturing.”
The Zero Carbon Investek syndicate is headed by Dr Richard Petty whose career spans more than 30 years in business and academia. He has served on more than 20 public and private company boards and has advised multinational companies and several governments on projects with an aggregate economic impact in the hundreds of billions of dollars. He previously served as a member of the Business20 and was a member of the B20 Financing Growth and Infrastructure Taskforce.
Dr Petty said the Yabulu refinery was positioned for an exciting future. He said Zero Carbon Investek would invest an additional US$800m ($1.19bn) in capital expenditure, post acquisition, further enhancing the facility including transitioning to net zero carbon through the replacement of coal and gas fired steam and power generation with solar, saving up to 500,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum.
“Whilst the restart of the refinery is the key strategic priority, Zero Carbon Investek is also targeting the development of a large scale, 1.5Gw solar photovoltaic plant and battery storage facility at the refinery site to create new industry opportunities and sustainable environmental benefits,’’ Dr Petty said.
“Reducing the carbon intensity of operations through the development of solar PV is a key priority for Yabulu moving forward.
“The Yabulu large-scale solar project will be situated in the Northern Queensland Renewable Energy Zone and is set to become a main contributor to the Queensland Government’s new Queensland Energy and Jobs Plan which has a target of 70% renewable energy by 2032 and 80 per cent by 2035, representing an $85bn investment into the energy system.
“Helping the Queensland Government to achieve such targets whilst boosting the economy and providing jobs is an important part of Zero Carbon Investek’s mission.”
In pursuit of this ambition, Zero Carbon Investek says it has successfully developed agreements with leading researchers at some of the world’s top universities, including Imperial College London and University of Cambridge, who are developing game-changing industry-leading solar technology capable of unparalleled solar power conversion efficiency of 41 per cent, at a small fraction of the cost.
The PV plant will employ more than 50 people and will generate surplus grid scale power, which can be sold locally or interstate.
An associated battery plant will employ more than 50 people and will also allow sales in other states for domestic, industrial and grid scale power generation.
“We look forward to working with the people of North Queensland and relevant authorities to fully realise the potential of this world class asset,’’ Dr Petty said.
The sale is conditional on regulatory approvals, including the Foreign Investment Review Board.
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No greenhouse gas limits for Victoria's coal-fired power plants as Supreme Court rejects challenge
Victoria's coal-fired power stations will not face new limits on how much greenhouse gas pollution they can emit, after the Supreme Court today rejected a challenge brought by an environmental group.
The plaintiff, Environment Victoria, argued the state's environmental regulator had failed to properly consider climate change law when reviewing the operating licences for the state's three coal-fired power stations.
Environment Victoria argued the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) had an obligation to impose limits on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution the plants could emit.
Victoria's Climate Change Act 2017 requires people making certain decisions to consider the effects of climate change.
But in his written decision, Justice James Gorton said he rejected Environment Victoria's argument that the EPA had failed to do so.
He found that the EPA had considered climate change when it decided not to set a target.
Community expectations 'shattered'
Environment Victoria policy and advocacy manager Bronya Lipsi said the decision showed the state's climate laws needed to be fixed.
"I think it sends a message that the Climate Change Act in Victoria is not living up to community expectations," Ms Lipski said.
"We have an expectation that our climate laws will mitigate climate change and reduce carbon pollution."
She said the decision "shattered" community expectations and Environment Victoria would consider the judgement before making a decision about whether to appeal.
In a statement, the EPA thanked the court for its decision and said it was also considering its next steps.
"We have already taken steps to strengthen our processes and ensure climate change is demonstrably considered in all our regulatory decisions," a spokesperson said.
"Scrutiny from organisations like Environment Victoria can only make us better."
Energy Australia, which owned the Yallourn power station, said it welcomed the decision.
AGL, which owns the Loy Yang A plant, and Alinta, owner of Loy Yang B, did not respond.
Plants headed for early closure
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said it would not have been possible to cheaply curb the station's greenhouse gas emissions if the court had ruled the other way.
He said Victoria's energy policy was already geared towards the early closure of the three coal-fired plants to address climate change.
"If you look at the Victorian government's most recent policy positions, before and after the most recent election, you will conclude that these power stations will all be shut down in about 10 years' time, maybe even earlier," Mr Wood said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-21/supreme-court-rules-on-victorian-coal-pollution/101796702
********************************************************‘Materially misleading’: ABC rebuked over Fox News investigation
An ABC report was one-sided! What a surprise!
The ABC has launched a scathing attack on Australia’s communications watchdog after it ruled the national broadcaster had misled viewers in a Four Corners investigation about cable TV network Fox News and its coverage of former US president Donald Trump.
A year-long investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found the two-part program presented by Sarah Ferguson nearly breached standards of impartiality, and that key facts were omitted in a way that misled the audience. The ACMA said the program also included views that were expressed in “strident terms” and were “subjective”, but said the ABC Code of Practice did not apply to opinions.
While Fox News welcomed the ACMA’s findings, the ABC warned the ruling would have negative implications for public interest journalism.
In a statement responding to the ruling, the ABC said it had “serious concerns” about the decision, which could have “negative consequences for the future production of strong public interest journalism.”
It also said it was “deeply concerned” by ACMA’s “subjective characterisation” of the investigation and raised concerns this might affect its statutory role to review the ABC’s compliance with its code of practise.
ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the national broadcaster did not give viewers the opportunity to “make up their own mind”.
“Both audiences and participants are entitled to the full picture. In this case, by omitting information the ABC did not do justice to the story or provide all relevant facts to its audience,” O’Loughlin said.
“Current affairs programs such as Four Corners are not precluded from presenting a particular perspective ...but that needs to be balanced against requirements to gather and present information with due impartiality. The ACMA considers that ABC could have taken greater care in striking that balance in this program to avoid perceptions of partiality.”
The ACMA found two breaches of ABC’s Code of Practice, criticising the national broadcaster for “materially misleading” its audience by omitting relevant context about the appearance of two Fox News presenters at a campaign rally for Trump.
ACMA’s report also said the ABC had failed to include contextual material about the role of social media in inciting the Capitol riots on January 6, and had breached honest dealing requirements for the way it approached Fox News host Jeanine Pirro at her offices, and for failing to disclose the nature of her participation in the program.
But the ACMA agreed with the ABC on a range of other matters, including the accuracy of its reporting of Fox News’ ratings and a decision to broadcast statements that Fox News had supported Trump’s claims of election fraud. It said the ABC did not breach impartiality standards and did not unduly favour one perspective over another.
“The presenter asked probing questions during interviews but overall maintained a measured tone,” the report said.
The ABC said it stood by its journalism and disagreed with all three breaches. It said the findings would have negative consequences for the future public interest journalism, by putting pressure on content makers when selecting an editorial focus. The broadcast also took aim at the ACMA’s characterisation of the program, and whether this aligns with its role in reviewing compliance.
It argued it did not believe it was obliged editorially to include an assessment of the role of social media in the Capitol riots and the expectation it should feature a PR statement by Fox that did not answer questions related to the topic at hand.
ABC news director Justin Stevens said the ABC disagreed the program was not “impartial”.
“This was a comprehensive investigation analysing the role Fox News played in helping promulgate the ‘big lie’ – that the 2020 US Presidential election was stolen. It is as relevant now as it was when it was first broadcast,” Stevens said.
“It is important the public does not lose faith in the democratic process of free and fair elections and journalism like this plays a key part in that.”
A Fox News Media spokesperson said the company was pleased with the findings.
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21 December, 2022
Australian Cardiologist Calls to Halt mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines, Citing Heart Damage
Melanie Leffler, a mother of two in Sydney, Australia, had four COVID-19 vaccines. But on Nov. 19, 2022, after coming down with a sore throat and a runny nose, Leffler tested positive for COVID. She said goodnight to her family—her husband, Mick Hogan, and their two daughters, Clemmie (age four) and Lottie (9 months).
They would never speak to her again.
Died In Her Sleep
Although she didn’t seem particularly sick, the 39-year-old healthcare worker died in her sleep that night. Even though she was quadruple vaccinated, a Dec. 3 article about her death described it as a “Covid tragedy.”
Eighteen-year-old Australian Monica Eskandar couldn’t wait to take her end-of-the-year exams. Instead, Eskandar was rushed to the hospital with severe chest pains. The pain, according to reporting by MSN.com, started just hours after she received a COVID-19 vaccine.
Doctors diagnosed Eskandar with COVID-related pericarditis. Pericarditis is a condition that involves inflammation of the tissues lining the heart.
Eskandar’s symptoms were so severe that she was not able to sit for her exams. Ironically, the reason she got the COVID-19 vaccine in the first place was because it was mandated in order for her to take the exam.
COVID-19 Vaccines Cause Myocarditis and Pericarditis
A growing body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence links heart issues with the mRNA vaccines.
So much so that the CDC and other government authorities in the United States and around the world now recognize that the COVID-19 vaccines are causing myocarditis—heart inflammation which is considered more severe than pericarditis because it causes inflammation of the heart muscle.
In June 2022, the FDA’s Tom Shimabukuro, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., identified as part of the CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Coordination Unit, reported that: “Current evidence supports a causal association between mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and myocarditis and pericarditis.”
Six months later, as of Dec. 2, 2022, there have been a total of 35,718 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis reported to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.
An Australian Cardiologist Speaks Out
After witnessing as many as 70 cases of vaccine-related heart conditions similar to Eskandar’s, Australian Cardiologist Dr. Ross Walker is now saying publicly that he believes there should be a ban on the use of mRNA booster vaccines.
According to Walker, the mRNA vaccines are “very pro-inflammatory,” he told Daily Mail Australia. “ He contended that The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization should never have mandated mRNA vaccines.
“I’ve seen many people getting vaccine reactions, who get symptoms for about three to six months afterwards,” Walker said. “I’ve seen 60-70 patients in my own practice over the past 12 months who have had similar reactions.”
Those reactions have included shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and chest pain, he continued.
Eskandar said that even though her symptoms began immediately after the vaccine, doctors originally denied the connection, telling her it only happens to teenage boys.
“You can’t breathe,” she said. “You can’t sit, you can’t lay down. It’s horrible. You actually feel like you’re having a heart attack.”
Changing Recommendations
After conducting a thorough review of the scientific evidence, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the Florida Surgeon General, directed his state to no longer recommend any COVID-19 vaccines for men under 39 because of safety concerns.
Drs. Walker and Ladapo are not the only medical professionals voicing concerns about the safety, efficacy, and necessity of the COVID-19 vaccines, especially for children and young adults.
Among the doctors who have called for the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns to be halted is Japanese cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Kenji Yamamoto. In a letter published in the peer-reviewed journal Virology, Yamamoto argued that the COVID-19 booster shots are not safe.
In particular, Yamamoto voiced concern over an adverse effect of the vaccine known as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT). Not only that, but since the administration of the vaccine, Yamamoto has seen an increase in the risk of infection among his patients at the Okamura Memorial Hospital in Shizuoka in Japan. Specifically, he cites that many of his patients have contracted severe infections due to “inflammation after heart surgery.” Yamamoto believes that his patients’ suppressed immunity is a result of COVID-19 vaccination.
A Turning Tide?
Several high-profile medical doctors have themselves experienced severe side effects after being vaccinated.
Vaccine researcher Dr. Gregory Poland from Rochester, Minnesota has been struggling with life-debilitating tinnitus.
Belgian immunologist, whom The Atlantic described as “one of Europe’s best-known champions of medical research,” Michel Goldman, was battling lymphoma. He had devastating side effects after his third Pfizer vaccine: severe night sweats, exhaustion, and engorged lymph nodes.
A scan taken after the vaccine revealed that the 67-year-old had a barrage of new lesions, “like someone had set off fireworks inside [his] body.”
Goldman suspected that the COVID booster had made him sicker. His brother, who is also a doctor as well as the head of nuclear medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles hospital, suspected as much as well.
The rapid progression of Goldman’s angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma following the BNT162b2 mRNA booster was published as a peer-reviewed case report in the journal Frontiers in Medicine in November 2021. Since its publication, the case study has been viewed 383,411 times.
While Poland and Goldman still seem to be champions of COVID-19 vaccines, many doctors who once advocated for universal COVID-19 vaccination have since changed their minds.
British cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra initially encouraged the widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines.
But then Malhotra’s father passed away suddenly of cardiac arrest after receiving the jab.
His father’s death prompted Malhotra to begin researching the safety profile of the vaccines. Based on his findings, he no longer believes the theoretical benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the very real risks.
Politicians are also becoming more vocal about ending vaccine mandates.
On Dec. 7, 2022, Senator Ron Johnson led a roundtable discussion called Covid-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work, and Possible Causes of Injuries.
The next day, the House voted for an $858 Billion Defense Bill that included a repeal of the vaccine mandate for the military.
COVID-19 Infection Milder, COVID-19 Vaccines Not Safe or Effective
Cardiologist Dr. Ross Walker called to halt only the mRNA vaccines for young adults in favor of non-mRNA options. But a growing body of scientific literature (some of which has been retracted for political reasons), as well as state data and testimony from clinicians, has shown that none of the existing COVID-19 vaccines is as safe or effective as advertised.
At the same time, with Omicron and other strains replacing the other, more virulent SARS-CoV-2 variants, COVID-19 infection seems to be becoming milder.
Dr. Malhotra said in a recent interview “… this vaccine is not completely safe, and has unprecedented harms”. He concluded in a peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance that a “pause and reappraisal of global vaccination policies for COVID-19 is long overdue.”
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ACT government announces inquiry into Bruce Lehrmann trial
It should find that there were no good grounds for a trial
The Territory’s Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury and Chief Minister Andrew Barr announced the independent inquiry on Wednesday, after a number of “complaints and allegations” were made in relation to the trial.
The inquiry will consider whether the functions of criminal justice entities were “discharged with appropriate rigour, impartiality, and independence”.
Mr Lehrmann, who was accused of sexually assaulting Liberal colleague Brittany Higgins, pleaded not guilty to a single charge of sexual intercourse without consent.
Mr Barr said a full inquiry was the most appropriate response given the “high-profile” nature of the trial and the “serious” allegations made.
“I want to make clear that this inquiry is not about revisiting the trial, any evidence in the trial or the outcome of the trial,” Mr Rattenbury said.
The inquiry will instead consider elements including the decision not to proceed to a retrial and the conduct of police investigators and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
It will also consider whether the support provided by the Victims of Crime Commissioner to Ms Higgins aligned with the relevant statutory framework and the legal framework for addressing juror misconduct.
The inquiry will be able to hold hearings - both public and private - issue search warrants, compel the production of documents, and compel the attendance of witnesses and take their evidence on oath.
ACT Policing, the DPP and Victims of Crime Commissioner have all indicated their intention to cooperate with the Inquiry.
The ACT Government has yet to identify an “eminent legal expert” to conduct the inquiry.
The terms of reference and key timeframes will be finalised in consultation with that expert in January 2023, and a final report is due by June 30.
Whether that report will be made public is a matter for the inquiry, Mr Barr said.
Lehrmann was alleged to have raped Ms Higgins inside Linda Reynolds’ ministerial office at Parliament House after a night out drinking with work colleagues in March 2019.
Mr Lehrmann strenuously denied the allegation and denied ever having sex with Ms Higgins.
He faced trial earlier this year but the jury was discharged in October after misconduct of one of the jurors was uncovered.
Mr Lehrmann was scheduled to face a retrial in the ACT Supreme Court in February next year before the prosecution dropped the rape case against him due to the “unacceptable” risk to Ms Higgins’ life.
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Macquarie Dictionary reviews definitions of 'man' and 'woman'
The editors of the Macquarie Dictionary are considering the definitions of "man" and "woman" in light of shifting modern usage.
It comes after the Cambridge Dictionary quietly updated its definition of "man" and "woman" to include anyone who "identifies as male/female" regardless of their sex at birth.
A spokesperson for Macquarie Dictionary said "the editors are looking at ensuring the entries for woman and man are reflective of Australian English usage" as well as various related terms, including female, male, girl, and boy.
They added while "Cambridge is predominantly concerned with providing a reference for learners of English ... Macquarie seeks to describe Australian English as it is used in the community".
"To fulfil these goals, both dictionaries need to examine a range of different texts, from academic works to social media, from fiction to news reports, and beyond.
"Our intention is to have any necessary changes made to these entries by the update in mid-2023." Macquarie updates words twice yearly, according to their website.
The current Macquarie Dictionary definitions of "man" include "the human species", "the human race", "a male human being (distinguished from woman)" and "an adult male person (distinguished from boy)", while the definitions for "woman" are "a female human being (distinguished from man)" and "an adult female person (distinguished from girl)".
When asked if the definitions of "man" and "woman" would be broadened to include those who "lives and identifies as male/female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth" as Cambridge did, the spokesperson said, "that is certainly part of what we're looking at".
The spokesperson said, however, they were not yet in a position to discuss any specific changes that may be made next year.
The Macquarie Dictionary currently defines "female" as "belonging to the sex which brings forth young, or any division or group corresponding to it" and "of or relating to the types of humans or animals which, in the normal case, produce ova which can be fertilised by male spermatozoa".
When the Telegraph UK revealed the Cambridge Dictionary changes last week, a spokesperson told them they had "carefully studied usage patterns of the word 'woman' and concluded the definition is one that learners of English should be aware of to support their understanding of how the language is used".
It follows various dictionaries updating definitions to keep up with modern usage.
In 2020, Merriam-Webster included an additional definition for "female" as "having a gender identity that is the opposite of male".
The Oxford dictionary also altered its definition of "woman" to include they could be "a person’s wife, girlfriend, or female lover”, not only a man’s, to be inclusive of same-sex relationships. The entry for "man" was also changed to include gender-neutral language in the example of a relationship.
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20 December, 2022
Prominent lesbian doctor reveals ‘devastating’ Covid vaccine injury, says doctors have been ‘censored’
Former federal MP Dr Kerryn Phelps has revealed she and her wife both suffered serious and ongoing injures from Covid vaccines, while suggesting the true rate of adverse events is far higher than acknowledged due to underreporting and “threats” from medical regulators.
In an explosive submission to Parliament’s Long Covid inquiry, the former Australian Medical Association (AMA) president has broken her silence about the “devastating” experience — emerging as the most prominent public health figure in the country to speak up about the taboo subject.
“This is an issue that I have witnessed first-hand with my wife who suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes, including burning face and gums, paraesethesiae, and numb hands and feet, while under observation by myself, another doctor and a registered nurse at the time of immunisation,” the 65-year-old said.
“I continue to observe the devastating effects a year-and-a-half later with the addition of fatigue and additional neurological symptoms including nerve pains, altered sense of smell, visual disturbance and musculoskeletal inflammation. The diagnosis and causation has been confirmed by several specialists who have told me that they have seen ‘a lot’ of patients in a similar situation.”
Dr Phelps married former primary school teacher Jackie Stricker-Phelps in 1998. “Jackie asked me to include her story to raise awareness for others,” she said.
“We did a lot of homework before having the vaccine, particularly about choice of vaccine at the time. In asking about adverse side effects, we were told that ‘the worst thing that could happen would be anaphylaxis’ and that severe reactions such as myocarditis and pericarditis were ‘rare’.”
Dr Phelps revealed she was also diagnosed with a vaccine injury from her second dose of Pfizer in July 2021, “with the diagnosis and causation confirmed by specialist colleagues”.
“I have had CT pulmonary angiogram, ECG, blood tests, cardiac echogram, transthoracic cardiac stress echo, Holter monitor, blood pressure monitoring and autonomic testing,” she wrote.
“In my case the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations.”
Dr Phelps said both reactions were reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) “but never followed up”.
She revealed she had spoken with other doctors “who have themselves experienced a serious and persistent adverse event” but that “vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about”.
“Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration,” she wrote.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), which oversees Australia’s 800,000 registered practitioners and 193,800 students, last year warned that anyone who sought to “undermine” the national Covid vaccine rollout could face deregistration or even prosecution.
AHPRA’s position statement said that “any promotion of anti-vaccination statements or health advice which contradicts the best available scientific evidence or seeks to actively undermine the national immunisation campaign (including via social media) is not supported by National Boards and may be in breach of the codes of conduct and subject to investigation and possible regulatory action”.
Earlier this year, Australian musician Tyson ‘tyDi’ Illingworth said he had been told privately by doctors that they feared being deregistered if they linked his neurological injury to the Moderna vaccine.
Dr Phelps said she had heard stories of vaccine injury from “patients and other members of the community”.
“They have had to search for answers, find GPs and specialists who are interested and able to help them, spend large amounts of money on medical investigations, isolate from friends and family, reduce work hours, lose work if they are required to attend in person and avoid social and cultural events,” she said.
“Within this group of vaccine injured individuals, there is a diminishing cohort of people who have symptoms following immunisation, many of which are similar to Long Covid (such as fatigue and brain fog), but who have not had a Covid infection. These people would be an important subset or control group for studies looking into the pathophysiology, causes of and treatments for Long Covid. It is possible that there is at least some shared pathophysiology between vaccine injury and Long Covid, possibly due to the effects of spike protein.”
She added that “in trying to convince people in positions of influence to pay attention to the risks of Long Covid and reinfection for people with vaccine injury, I have personally been met with obstruction and resistance to openly discuss this issue”.
“There has been a delay in recognition of vaccine injury, partly because of under-reporting, concerns about vaccine hesitancy in the context of managing a global pandemic, and needing to find the balance between risks and benefits on a population level,” she said.
“Reactions were said to be ‘rare’ without data to confirm how common or otherwise these reactions were. In general practice I was seeing cases, which meant other GPs and specialists were seeing cases too. Without diagnostic tests, we have to rely largely on clinical history.”
In July this year, the independent OzSAGE group of which Dr Phelps is a member issued a position statement calling for better systems and management of Covid vaccine adverse events and “recognition of the impact of vaccine injury”.
Dr Phelps, who was heavily involved in crafting the statement, wrote in her submission that the OzSAGE document “outlines the scope but not the scale of the problem because we do not know the scale of the problem”. “This is partly because of under-reporting and under-recognition,” she said.
According to the TGA’s most recent safety update, there have been a total of 137,141 adverse event reports from nearly 64.4 million doses — a rate of 0.2 per cent.
There have been 819 reports “assessed as likely to be myocarditis” from 49.8 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna. Fourteen deaths have officially been linked to vaccination — 13 after AstraZeneca and one after Pfizer.
But Dr Phelps pointed to data from Germany’s pharmacovigilance body, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), which has “undertaken ongoing surveys of vaccine recipients … as opposed to the TGA which only accepts passive reports, or AusVaxSafety whose survey stopped at six weeks”.
“They have found that the incidence of serious reactions occurs in 0.3 per 1000 shots (not people),” she said.
“Considering that the majority of Australian adults have now had at least one booster, this suggests that the incidence of serious adverse reactions per vaccinated person could be more than 1-in-1000. PEI admits that under-reporting is a problem, and observers suggest that an order of magnitude of under-reporting is not unreasonable to consider (most estimates put underreporting at much worse than this).”
Dr Phelps said there was concern some adverse events could “cause long-term illness and disability”, but data was limited because the “global focus has been on vaccinating as many people as quickly as possible with a novel vaccine for a novel coronavirus”.
“Because of this, all of the studies that have been published so far are either small, or case studies only,” she said.
“The burden of proof seems to have been placed on the vaccine injured rather than the neutral scientific position of placing suspicion on the vaccine in the absence of any other cause and the temporal correlation with the administration of the vaccine.”
She noted some countries had gathered significant databases of adverse events, ranging from allergy and anaphylaxis to cardiovascular, neurological, haematological and auto-immune reactions.
Despite the recognition of heart inflammation associated with the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, Dr Phelps said “even then, there has been a misconception that myocarditis is ‘mild’, ‘transient’ and ‘mostly in young males’, when there are many cases where myocarditis is manifestly not mild, not transient and not confined to the young male demographic”.
Dr Phelps said until there was acknowledgment and recognition of post-vaccination syndrome or vaccine injury, “there can be no progress in developing protocols for diagnosis and treatment and it is difficult to be included in research projects or treatment programs”.
“It has also meant a long and frustrating search for acknowledgment and an attempt at treatment for many individual patients,” she said.
“People who suffer Covid vaccine injury may present with a range of symptoms, and results of standard medical tests often come back normal. And like patients with Long Covid, they too are also asking the medical profession and public health systems for help.”
Earlier this year, Dr Rado Faletic — who previously spoke out about his battle with the TGA — launched Australian advocacy group Coverse to provide support and collect testimony from those suffering vaccine injuries.
AHPRA said in a statement that the regulator had “been clear in all of our guidance about Covid-19 vaccinations that we expect medical practitioners to use their professional judgement and the best available evidence in their practice”.
“This includes keeping up to date with public health advice from Commonwealth, state and territory authorities,” a spokeswoman said.
“Legitimate discussion and debate, based on science is appropriate and necessary to progress our understanding and knowledge. The [March 9, 2021 position] statement does not prevent practitioners from having these discussions.”
She added that as of June 2022, only 11 practitioners had been suspended “in relation to concerns raised about Covid-19”.
“The concerns raised about the practitioners related to the spreading of misinformation about Covid-19 or vaccination advice, including that the Covid-19 pandemic was fake, that the vaccination program was about government led mind control or in some instances representing that patients would develop cancer by having a vaccination administered,” she said.
Dr Phelps, who remains a practising GP, was elected as the first female president of the AMA in 2000.
She was also a City of Sydney councillor from 2016 to 2021, and Deputy Lord Mayor under Clover Moore from 2016 to 2017.
In 2018, Dr Phelps ran as an independent candidate in the by-election for the eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth following the resignation of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, defeating Liberal Dave Sharma.
She spent less than a year in federal parliament, losing to Mr Sharma in a rematch in the May 2019 election.
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University student banned from classes after she questioned the lecturer's controversial views about Australia
A mature-aged university student has been banned from class and told to take a re-education course for questioning her lecturer's anti-Australian views.
Grandmother Rae Rancie expressed her disagreement with some assertions made by her lecturer in the 'Politics of Indigenous Australia' unit at La Trobe University in Melbourne.
The lecturer allegedly said that Australia was a 's***hole country', that 'white people think they are the most superior race on the planet' and the country 'baulked at the thought of Peter Dutton as prime minister'.
For questioning the tutor's narrative, the grandmother claims she was on the receiving end of a lengthy diatribe and prohibited from attending class.
'I have been banned from classes, I had to listen online to a recording, and I was shocked,' she told Andrew Bolt on his Sky News Australia program.
'To be the subject of a nine-minute humiliating tirade from the lecturer calling me 'a difficult student', 'that person', I was 'making her go crazy,' I was 'a real life example of racism and disrespectful behaviour,' how she encourages speech in her workshops, but not my type of speech.'
But Ms Rancie admitted to also making some more controversial statements during her class, which fuelled her tutor's heated response.
While her class spoke about the Stolen Generation, Ms Rancie said: 'I don't think they are stolen anymore. They get taken away from harmful situations. It's the government's responsibility to do it.'
She also suggested that parents 'failing to look after their children' was the reason why so many indigenous children were in detention.
The problematic comments got Ms Rancie banned from class, and she was also advised to take a re-education course. But when she applied to do the re-education course she 'heard crickets'.
Ms Rancie said one one of the reasons she chose to continue questioning her lecturer's narrative was because other students in her class told her in private that they agreed with her.
After passing the class, Ms Rancie sent her lecturer an email wishing her a Merry Christmas and attached a video of Aboriginal senator Jacinta Price speaking.
She explained that she asked her lecturer in the email to look at 'both sides of the argument'. 'I've been told that that was very intimidating and I'm in line for another disciplinary process,' Ms Rancie said.
La Trobe University told Daily Mail Australia in a statement: 'As a university La Trobe welcomes and encourages diverse and opposing views and opinions, however we expect debate to be conducted in a respectful manner.'
'If a student behaves disruptively or disrespectfully towards others in class, we will take necessary disciplinary action, including requiring the student to attend a course in respectful behaviour.'
'As this particular matter is subject to ongoing investigation, we cannot comment further.'
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How the mighty are fallen: Prominent feminist seeks male approval
She has glammed up
Controversial feminist Clementine Ford has opened up about why she has drastically changed her looks since gaining a huge following.
Ford’s dramatic transformation means she has gone from having auburn hair to bleach blonde hair and had a complete style revolution. She started out looking like Andi at the beginning of Devil Wears Prada, and now she looks like Andi at the end of The Devil Wears Prada.
Ford has also lost weight and openly shared her journey online of getting Botox and falling in love with make-up and fashion.
She has gone from having an earthy, minimal, relaxed look to a more chic made-up look, and it is hard not to notice the stark difference.
Ford revealed the sad truth behind her makeover after someone on Instagram accused her of “falling victim to misogyny” by getting anti-ageing treatments and documenting the results online.
The follower said that she’d return to Ford’s Instagram “if you come back from this beauty and anti-ageing Influencer stuff that undermines the really important work you’ve done”.
In response, Ford opened up about why she’d altered her looks, and in a lengthy Instagram story, she wrote: “You can disagree with my thoughts and actions on cosmetic interventions, but please don’t waste my time by telling me you find it sad or disappointing that I, a woman who has spent almost her entire adult career being called ugly, who has been turned into memes, who has had her emotional and physical wellbeing put at risk because of the things I say about men’s violence against women, has found some kind of power in removing some of the means by which men can abuse me online.”
Ford shared with news.com.au that now her appearance has changed she’s less likely to get such horrible messages about how she looks. “For almost all of my public career, I was abused for being ugly, for being fat, for having freckles – even for having a diastema.
“As I’ve gotten older and begun to play more with my appearance, I’ve found the comments have shifted. Now the men who abuse me are more often to say I’ve had too much plastic surgery (I’ve had none), which is a welcome respite from the time someone said I was ‘uglier than a dead dog on the side of the road’.
In 2017 right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos during his Australian tour, projected an old photo of Ford with the word, “unf##ckable” on big screens during his talks in Adelaide and Perth and Ford has also faced constant online trolling.
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Gas price cap offers political sugar hit, until reality kicks in
The fact that the government was able to pass its incoherent energy measures last week came as no surprise. After all, they were a response to a demand posed in panic: don’t just stand there, do something. The trouble is that doing something generally makes things worse, particularly down the track.
The legislation also goes to the heart of this Labor government’s approach to policymaking – delivering on promises made to key stakeholders. In this case, one of the most important stakeholders is the Australian Workers Union, whose membership is quite small overall but relatively strong in parts of the manufacturing industry. You may have noticed Dan Walton, national secretary of the AWU, speaking on the issue and demanding lower gas prices as well as a gas reservation scheme.
There are some manufacturing processes that must use gas directly, with no cost-effective alternative technologies currently available. In the case of the larger firms, you would expect them to enter into longer-term contracts with the gas producers at an agreed price. That some of these users have dragged their feet can be explained by an expectation that the government would intervene to get them a better deal. So much for free enterprise.
For smaller users, they can only access their gas supplies via retailers. This is a key point because, notwithstanding the government’s far-ranging anti-market interventions, there are no controls imposed on retailers. It’s entirely possible retailers will see an opportunity to extract higher margins so the net impact of the price caps on gas will be entirely (or more than) offset. Mind you, imposing price caps on retailers runs the risk of sending some of them broke quite quickly.
There are very strong parallels here with the introduction of Wayne Swan’s Resource Super Profits Tax in 2012. During the consultation period – which by the standards of this recent intervention was lengthy – it became clear the Treasury officials designing the new tax didn’t have the faintest clue about the key features of the resources industry. It was truly embarrassing.
Fast-forward and nothing has changed. Officials were unable to answer some key questions about key terms in the proposed legislation, particularly the definition of a new gas field.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission has a long history of failing to understand the key features of the gas industry, likening it to some sort of infrastructure model. Having said this, the ACCC supported netback domestic pricing – effectively world parity pricing – until very recently.
The AWU quickly realised price caps and the ongoing “reasonable price provision” would not guarantee supply. Hence the powers in the legislation for the Treasurer to demand the companies supply certain quantities of gas. It’s at this point geological and engineering reality collides with Marxist dreaming.
The sad fact is that the rate at which the Bass Strait reserves are depleting is extremely rapid. To be sure, the Kipper field is a bit of help, but it’s small. On one estimate, there will be a fall of close to a quarter in the reserves in the Bass Strait by the end of next year. By the early 2030s, it will be all gone, although extracting from such small reserves will probably be suspended well before then.
But here’s the problem: there is gas in Queensland and most of this is used for the export market, bringing substantial economic benefits to the country. Note here these Queensland fields would never have been developed had it not been for the exporting opportunity. Many of the export contracts are locked in for years into the future.
But even if the government or the ACCC decides more gas is needed in the south, which it will be, there are capacity constraints on the pipelines that were designed for south-to-north transfers. It is simply not possible to rectify this problem quickly.
Australia's coal and gas exports are expected to face up to a $68 billion hit due to a slowdown in global demand… and reduced supply chain disruptions
One solution always was for LNG to be imported into Victoria or NSW – two sites had been identified – to make good this shortfall, particularly at certain times of the year. The irony is that the government’s measures are likely to kill off this solution as the business cases that would justify the investment are weakened.
Sensing perhaps that the package would still not satisfy the AWU’s demand for lower gas prices and plentiful supply – sadly, Santa doesn’t exist in the real world – Anthony Albanese abruptly raised the issue of a gas reservation policy for the east coast. He spoke favourably about the policy that exists in Western Australia.
What the Prime Minister didn’t mention was the fact that a reservation policy in respect of the Queensland fields was explicitly rejected by Labor when it was last in government. That’s right – it was a Labor government that decided against such a policy. There was a (reasonable) fear it would deter investment.
Most economists don’t have a problem with a reservation policy as long as it is determined before the event, when investors can take into account the policy requirements. But it is a serious problem involving sovereign risk after projects have commenced.
In the case of WA, there are immense reserves of gas and the 15 per cent domestic requirement has never been used in full – until recently, at least. It has enabled the state to have low domestic gas prices and there have been some investments, including current ones, spurred by this. Nonetheless, the WA government has so mismanaged its electricity grid that there are now serious problems. The exit of coal generation has been badly bungled and there is even talk of blackouts. Cheap gas is not a cure-all.
Interestingly, the developer of the Narrabri gas field in NSW, which has been many years in the making, has always offered up the gas for 100 per cent local consumption within the state. This offer has never been accompanied by a willingness on the part of the NSW government to facilitate the completion of this project – indeed, quite the reverse.
The recent energy measures demonstrate clearly the lessons of bad approaches are never fully learnt. We are about to repeat the policy mistakes of the 1970s when price caps seemed like a seductively simple remedy. Ironically, these mistakes were recognised by the Hawke/Keating government. The argument for world parity pricing of our resources was until recently regarded as unchallengeable; this is no longer the case. The politics may work for a while but the economics certainly won’t.
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19 December, 2022
Football Australia takes action against Victory as pitch invaders identified
Nobody is mentioning this but I suspect that there were ethnic rivalries behind this riot. Some Melbourne clubs do have a substantial fan base of people from the former Yugoslavia and the manager of Melbourne Victory is Tony Popovic, which is a Balkan surname. So was one side of this riot principally Croatians? Those of us who know Croatians will think of the Ustasha
UPDATE: My guess was right. Below see a photo of one of the rioters released by the police. The slogan on his shirt is in Cyrillic
Melbourne Victory have been hit with a 'show cause' notice by Football Australia after fans invaded the pitch on Saturday night and assaulted Melbourne City goalkeeper Tom Glover. The Victory are facing the prospect of a points deduction and playing games behind closed doors after the atrocious scenes.
The match was abandoned after spectators stormed the field and attacked Glover after he tossed a flare into the stands that had found its way onto the field. Glover was left with a cut on his face after being hit with a metal bucket, while referee Alex King and a Network 10 cameraman were also injured in the chaos.
It came after a week of outrage in Australian football after the men's and women's A-League grand finals were sold to Sydney for the next three years. Fans were expected to stage protests and walk-outs at last weekend's games, but not invade the pitch and turn violent.
On Monday, Football Australia officially slapped the Victory with a show cause notice. FA gave the club until 9am AEDT on Wednesday to show why they "should not face serious sanctions for bringing the game into disrepute through the conduct of its supporters".
FA said the possible sanctions could include "financial penalties, loss of competition points and/or playing matches behind closed doors, or on neutral territory". FA chief executive James Johnson said in a statement: "As we made clear on Saturday evening following the abandonment of the match, we will move quickly to properly investigate this matter and where appropriate, issue the strongest possible sanctions to the club and individuals involved. The show cause notice following our initial investigations is the next step in the process and will allow us to gather more crucial information."
The pitch invaders appear likely to receive lifetime bans. As of Sunday, two men had been identified after coming forward to police.
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Hundreds of public housing apartments empty as waiting list grows
Insane. When bureaucratic incompetence is more damaging than terrorism
Hundreds of public housing apartments at inner Melbourne’s high-rise towers remain empty as the waiting list blows out to 17 months for victims of family violence seeking permanent housing.
Government figures provided in response to questions from The Age confirmed 238 apartments were either empty or being upgraded in the Fitzroy and North Richmond estates alone, representing 5.8 per cent of available properties at Fitzroy, and 18.7 per cent at North Richmond.
The Age was taken on a tour of a building in an estate last week and saw many of these empty, and often newly refurbished, apartments.
In one tower on Fitzroy’s Atherton Gardens estate, half of the 10 apartments on the top floor were visibly empty on Friday. Other floors had at least one apartment empty and up to 40 per cent were visibly empty.
All the vacant apartments seen by The Age appeared to have been freshly painted, and had new carpets and intact appliances.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing acknowledged the “urgent” need for more social housing pointing to the state government’s $5.3 billion Big Housing Build policy as its response.
“Thanks to our unprecedented investment in housing, there are more than 7400 homes either underway or completed across Victoria,” the spokeswoman said.
In a statement, she said properties were rented “as soon as possible” once safety checks and repairs were completed.
The department spokeswoman said 60 properties at the Atherton Gardens estate had been upgraded with 14 still to be tenanted. A total of 47 properties at the 798-unit estate were vacant.
Works were underway to upgrade another 100 apartments at North Richmond, where a further 91 were without tenants out of the estate’s total 1020 units.
City of Yarra councillor Anab Mohamud, who lives on the Atherton Gardens estate, and fellow councillor Stephen Jolly were contacted by a young woman who said reported spending three months squatting in an apartment that had been empty for 18 months at the estate, before being threatened with eviction.
“To know that there’s that many houses available and people are homeless is an affront to us,” Mohamud said.
Mohamud said the department should act faster to get tenants in once works were completed. “These empty apartments are already upgraded, and they’ve been empty for too long.”
Jolly wrote to Housing Minister Colin Brooks last Thursday urging him to intervene in the woman’s case, and by Friday morning housing officers were in contact and offered her a public housing property.
“It’s either gross incompetence or a conscious effort to empty out the towers despite thousands of people on the waiting list,” Jolly said.
But Brooks said managing and maintaining public housing stock was an “imperfect science”.
“We have a program rolling through public housing, upgrading and repairing stock, and so some of that involves having properties vacant so that we could get in and repair, or upgrade that facility,” he said.
“It’s always an imperfect science ... there’s always a number of properties that are vacant as we’re moving into repair and upgrade those facilities.”
Brooks said the public housing waiting list in Victoria had grown to 56,000 – up from 55,000 in March – including the standard and priority lists.
Waiting times on the priority list for public housing, which includes people experiencing homelessness and people aged over 55, reached 15 months – almost 45 per cent higher than the 10½ month target.
The waiting time for vulnerable people who have experienced family violence is even higher, reaching 17 months in the most recent financial year. “There are definitely challenges,” Brooks said.
He said global energy prices, interest rates rises and housing affordability had all impacted the waiting lists.
“It’s exactly why the government a couple of years ago kicked off the big housing build. It’s really good that we did do that because it means that, at the moment, we’ve got a pipeline of projects [and a] pipeline of houses right across the state to deliver social and affordable housing.”
Liberal candidate Lucas Moon, who spent more than six weeks doorknocking high-rise housing estates across the seat of Richmond before the November election, estimated 20 per cent of flats were empty, and another 10 per cent were tenanted but vacant, with mail piling up outside.
“It was pure mismanagement of the resources we’ve got available,” he said.
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Channel 10 BOYCOTTS Australia Day
How to lose friends and fail to influence people
Two top bosses at Channel 10 have told staff that the network will not be celebrating Australia Day saying that employees can come to work instead of taking the day off.
Parent company Paramount ANZ's chief content officer, Beverley McGarvey, and co-lead Jarrod Villani referred to Australia Day as 'January 26' only in an email sent to all editorial and programming staff last week.
The pair told staff it was 'not a day of celebration' for Indigenous people and said employees could decide whether they wished to take the day off as a public holiday or work if they preferred.
'At Paramount ANZ we aim to create a safe place to work where cultural differences are appreciated, understood and respected,' the pair wrote in the email, The Australian's Media Diary column reported.
'For our First Nations people, we as an organisation acknowledge that January 26 is not a day of celebration. 'We recognise that there has been a turbulent history, particularly around that date and the recognition of that date being Australia Day.'
The pair said staff could choose to work through the national holiday if they didn't feel comfortable celebrating it and could take another day of leave instead.
'We recognise that January 26 evokes different emotions for our employees across the business, and we are receptive to employees who do not feel comfortable taking this day as a public holiday,' the email read.
The network bosses were adamant that those who did wish to celebrate Australia Day 'reflect and respect the different perspectives and viewpoints of all Australians'.
Channel 10 was previously applauded for its use of traditional Indigenous names for capital cities during a weather report amid NAIDOC week in July.
Instead of Sydney, the presenter read out the forecast for Gadigal, and for Melbourne, the city was referred to by its traditional name of Naarm.
The network first changed its weather map to include traditional names last year, and was immediately commended on the choice by many Aussies.
Controversy has surrounded the celebration of Australia Day in recent years, with many calling for the date to be changed in respect of Indigenous Australians.
Various councils around the country have boycotted the holiday, saying it doesn't align with their views.
January 26, 1788 was the day the First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove, with Governor Arthur Phillip raising a Union Jack flag.
The date has become increasingly controversial, with many Indigenous people observing it as a day of mourning and instead labelling it 'Invasion Day'.
Just last week, Labor scrapped a controversial rule enforced by former prime minister Scott Morrison that forced councils to run citizenship ceremonies on January 26.
Councils can now hold the citizenship ceremonies any time from January 23 to 29.
Merri-bek Council in Melbourne's north, recently announced it would cease hosting citizenship ceremonies on January 26, and will instead host a mourning ceremony to acknowledge the experiences of Indigenous Australians.
'The very idea that we celebrate, hold parties and welcome new people to this country on this day is pretty shameful,' Councillor James Conlan told a local council meeting earlier this month.
'In a deeply twisted irony... the council asks First Nations elders to conduct their culturally significant Welcome to Country ceremony on a day that signifies their own disposition.'
Merri-bek Council is the third Melbourne council to discontinue Australia Day citizenship ceremonies, after the Yarra and Darebin councils did the same in 2017.
Meanwhile, Channel 10 has been struggling in the ratings with questions now being raised about the station's viability.
Things are so bad the network was forced to cancel its annual Christmas Party, as first revealed by Daily Mail Australia.
The struggling organisation is now officially Australia's fourth free-to-air network after being placed behind the ABC in the ratings race.
10 has just recorded its lowest commercial share since OzTam ratings began with a network share of just 22.1 per cent, well behind its rivals at Nine and Seven.
While spin doctors sprout the network has a younger audience than its competitors, Nine and Seven both beat 10 in total people and their key under 50 demographic.
A string of failures has only added to its woes. Shows like The Real Love Boat, The Challenge Australia and The Traitors were all flops.
The Bachelor franchise has failed to fire over the past few years and the newest edition, The Bachelors, was considered so bad by programming bosses it has been bumped to January.
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Aboriginal elders criticize "Voice" and overuse of 'Welcome to Country'
An Aboriginal elder says constant Welcome to Country and Acknowledgment of Country rituals are not being used correctly and have become 'virtue signalling' for non-Indigenous people.
Narungga elder Kerry White, who stood as a One Nation candidate in the last South Australian election, said the Welcome to Country ceremony has been taken out of context by non-Aboriginal Australians.
'It's an attack on our culture because it is not being used correctly,' she told Sky News on Sunday night. 'It's just virtue signaling.'
According to advocacy group Reconciliation Australia a Welcome to Country should only be performed by a Traditional Owner of the ritual's location and if such a person is not available an Acknowledgment of Country is appropriate.
Ms White said the Acknowledgment of Country is really just a European adaptation of Welcome to Country, which is not being employed in the way Aborigines did.
'(It) was only used when Aboriginal elders welcomed other Aboriginals onto their land for negotiation talks,' Ms White said. 'They didn't use it every day, it was a ceremonial process.
'So, they've taken our ceremonial process and demeaned it by throwing it out there every day in every aspect of what Australian people do. 'And I think that is culturally wrong.'
Ms White also said she disliked terms such as Indigenous and First Nations when applied to Aboriginal people. 'They come up with all these politically correct things they keep calling us which is actually an insult to us and to our culture,' she said.
Ms White said calling Aboriginal people Indigenous was too generic a term. 'Indigenous actually means native to this country, so anyone born in Australia is indigenous to this country,' she said.
'So that creates problems when you are talking about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which means anybody born in Australia can go on that Voice, so they are not truly representing people like the Aboriginal people of Australia.'
Ms White, who has previously said 'mob' is the cultural term Aborigines use also criticised the term First Nations. 'The First Nation term they use for us, that is Canadian it is not Australian. It is not who we are as a people.'
Ms White, who has worked as a nurse and in numerous Aboriginal health capacities, told a recent issue of conservative magazine The Spectator that Aboriginal mobs were divided between those who lived in rural areas and urban dwellers.
She said that the Indigenous Voice to Parliament was the project of urban Aboriginals, who she labelled as 'tick-a-boxers' who had claimed Indigenous ancestry. ‘We, the Aboriginal people from rural and remote Australia do not want it (the Voice),' she told the magazine.
Her criticisms echoed those of Indigenous leader Nyunggai Warren Mundine who told Sky News 'The Voice isn't our voice'. 'It was dreamed up by a whole lot of people, Aboriginal people, in Sydney and Melbourne,' he said. 'The elites in academia.'
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18 December, 2022
More big batteries storing renewable energy to be built around Australia
A joke. They run for a couple of hours and then go flat. So what use are they in any serious power shortage?
It is estimated the batteries will lead to a tenfold increase in storage capacity, with Mr Bowen saying it would revitalise the energy market.
"Some people say the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow and that's true, but we can store renewable energy for when we need it," he told reporters outside the Transgrid battery in Western Sydney.
Where will the battery projects be located?
The batteries will come online by 2025 and together would be big enough to power Tasmania for about three hours.
Three will be in Victoria - at Gnarwarre, Moorabool and Mortlake - while one will be at Liddell in NSW.
Queensland will be home to two, at Mount Fox and Western Downs, while South Australia will also have two, at Bungama and Blyth.
They range from 200-300 megawatts each and will have grid-forming inverter technology, which provides stability to the grid usually offered through coal and gas.
The government estimates the total value of the projects at $2.7 billion.
Mr Bowen said the projects would be some of the biggest batteries rolled out in Australia in the near future. "Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, the more renewable energy we have in the system, the cheaper bills will be," he said.
ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the batteries could underpin the transition to renewable energy in Australia.
"This pipeline of grid-forming projects will help move us closer to an electricity grid that can support 100 per cent renewable energy in the (National Energy Market)," he said.
It came as the federal government unveiled further details about 58 community batteries to be rolled out in regional and urban areas, worth up to $500,000 each.
Electricity providers will use them to store energy generated by solar panels on residential homes, which could then be used by other nearby households.
An extra 342 will be rolled out after consultation.
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Criminologist Dr Terry Goldsworthy says shootings not an indication of extremism on the rise
A former senior cop turned criminologist says the pandemic has helped increase hostility towards police who had to enforce unpopular lockdowns, border closures and vaccine mandates.
But Bond University Associate Professor of Criminology Dr Terry Goldsworthy believes the Darling Downs police slayings were an “aberration” and not a sign that violent extremism is on the rise in Australia.
In an opinion piece for the Sunday Mail following the murders of Constable Rachel McCrow, Constable Matthew Arnold and bystander Alan Dare at Wieambilla last Monday, Dr Goldsworthy said fatal police shootings in Australia were rare.
“In the last five years (before the Darlings Downs killings), no police officer had been fatally shot in Australia,” he wrote.
“In the same period in the US, some 244 police officers were killed by firearms. That is not to say policing is not a dangerous occupation (in Australia) – it is.”
Darling Downs cop killers Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train were crazed conspiracy theorists as well as anti-vaxxers. Dr Goldsworthy said their extremist views were likely hardened by the pandemic.
“Covid unfortunately saw a lot of governments use police for things police aren’t necessarily designed for, such as the enforcement of medical protocols and lockdowns,” he said.
“Some of that enforcement was done quite poorly, especially in Victoria where we saw police using bearcats (armoured vehicles) against lockdown protesters. Bearcats are meant to be used in hostage and terrorist situations, not against protesters.
“Certain kinds of people in the community would have seen that as an overreach of authority and an abuse of power by the state. In some people, it may have set off a chain reaction of fear: ‘Look what the state’s done to us here? What else can they do?’
“It made them even more vehemently anti-state and anti-authority.
“But I don’t think what we saw last week was an indication of any overall trend. I think it was a tragic aberration. I don’t think these people (the Trains) would have been stopped.
“It seems as if they wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, in their own minds, fighting against a perceived evil they saw.”
Dr Goldsworthy said the focus now was rightly on grieving the two young murdered officers, whose funerals are being held next week.
But he said a coronial inquest might look at questions including what intelligence was held about the Trains, why relatively inexperienced police were sent to the property and who lodged the missing person report on Nathaniel Train with NSW police.
He said it could lead to a review of policing in rural and remote areas.
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Wollumbin scientist questions sacred nature of mountain
A scientist who spent years studying Mount Warning Wollumbin has questioned just how “sacred” the site is after a committee recommended closing it to the public forever.
Dr Peter Solomon wrote a thesis for the University of Queensland on his findings from years of study during the 1950s, focusing mostly on the area’s unique geological formations, but said he found no evidence of sacred sites.
Dr Solomon, who went on to obtain a PhD in science at Harvard University and spent decades working with government and private agencies on natural resources issues, contacted The Courier-Mail after reading how a panel known as the Wollumbin Consultative Group had recommended closing the hiking trail because “access is not culturally appropriate or culturally safe”.
Last week there was renewed hope that a compromise could be reached after a “positive” meeting between key stakeholders, but no formal moves have been made to reopen the trail.
Dr Solomon said he was surprised at the recommendations to permanently close the summit trail which followed almost three years of extended “temporary” closures.
“I found that very interesting,” he said. “During my studies I was looking for sacred sites and I came to the conclusion that there were none around. “I certainly don’t think there is enough evidence that it should be closed off to everybody because of the presence of any sacred sites.”
He said the geological wonders of the area meant it should be able to be enjoyed and experienced by the public, even if it meant the introduction of a permit system to regulate access.
“This is a very precious area,” he said. “There is nothing else like it anywhere else in the world.”
The Wollumbin Consultative Group, whose views were published in the Wollumbin Aboriginal Place Management Plan released in October, has declined multiple requests for interviews and comment.
In the October report, the WCG called for the “immediate” closure of the area to the general public, but suggested requests to access the site for scientific purposes could be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
The report identified the Wollumbin Aboriginal Place “as a sacred ceremonial and cultural complex that is linked to traditional law and custom … interconnected to a broader cultural and spiritual landscape”.
It also acknowledged that the “identification of known Aboriginal sites and places within and surrounding Wollumbin AP is not exhaustive”, listing a number of important cultural sites nearby.
On Thursday, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service released a statement confirming any move to reopen the summit track would be at the discretion of the Aboriginal custodians.
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Freedom of association no longer guaranteed in Qld
Do the new laws in Queensland that curtail independent unions breach International Labour Organisation articles that guarantee freedom of association? I suspect so, although it is a complex area of the law with many twists and turns.
The ILO is a UN agency that states explicitly that workers’ groups should be allowed to form organisations without government interference.
“Workers and employers, without distinction whatsoever, shall have the right to establish and … join organisations of their own choosing without previous authorisation,” says the ILO freedom of association charter.
“Workers’ and employers’ organisations shall have the right to draw up their constitutions and rules, to elect their representatives in full freedom, to organise their administration.”
The Queensland government has clearly tinkered with those rights, in my opinion.
A Labor government that sees unions as enemies? Who would have thought?
The ILO charter adds: “Public authorities shall refrain from any interference which would restrict this right or impede their lawful exercise.”
Recent changes to industrial laws in Queensland strengthened the Labor-aligned unions that fund the Labor Party and made it difficult for independent or “rogue” unions to represent their members.
This seems to me to be against the spirit of the ILO conventions that say unions cannot “be dissolved or suspended by administrative authority”.
I believe the state government has improperly muzzled independent unions that offer cheaper fees while refusing to be linked to the ALP. There will be blowback.
Australia is a founding member of the ILO and, along with 187 nations and labor organisations, has signed dozens of conventions guaranteeing workers’ rights.
Have teachers’ and nurses’ rights been trampled by the new laws that seek to stop the so-called “fake unions” from representing their members at the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission? Has the Labor government conveniently ignored ILO conventions?
It looks suspicious to me. Parliament heard the new laws were designed to punish independent unions like the NPAQ (Nurses’ Professional Association of Queensland) and the TPAQ (Teachers’ Professional Association of Queensland) who are members of RUSH (Red Union Support Hub).
Why? They will not kowtow to the Labor Party and every time they sign a new member, they take money from Labor Party pockets.
In Parliament, the Opposition questioned the independence of the QIRC.
The Supreme Court has now become ensnared in the political controversy.
Chief Justice Helen Bowskill has received a letter from an appellant asking whether the president of the QIRC, Justice Peter Davis, should abstain from sitting on her case.
In his submission to Parliament Davis discusses the Red Union Support Hub, the NPAQ and the TPAQ, who he said had featured in a promotional video.
Margaret Gilbert, president of the independent NPAQ, wrote to Bowskill and told her she had not received a response to a letter she wrote to Davis in October asking that he step down from deliberating on a separate case involving her.
The appeal was heard in November 2021 but a judgment has yet to be handed down.
In the letter, Gilbert repeated her request that Davis recuse himself, or step aside.
“I respectfully request that you make an inquiry with the Industrial Court about what is happening with my case,” Gilbert wrote.
“Both myself and my members still feel it appropriate in the circumstances that Justice Davis recuse himself and a new judge be appointed promptly.”
Gilbert also raised Davis’ historical political links with the ALP and revelations in Parliament of Davis’ role in the campaigning for the ALP’s Peter Russo, a fellow lawyer, in the seat of Toohey at the last election before Davis was made a judge.
During the October debate in Parliament, Labor members including Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace praised Davis’s submission in the House.
Opposition members led by shadow Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie, and Member for Southern Downs James Lister, told Parliament that the Labor Party changed the industrial relations laws to favour its own unions.
Lister was especially blunt.
“It is clear that there is a massive opportunity for patronage here and for jobs for the friends of the union movement, which obviously is a payback from the government for funding its election campaigns and for giving them their jobs,” Lister said. “This is sheer and utter corruption. This bill is a disgrace.”
He added: “Union payback is at the essence of this Bill. I have spoken about this beautifully symmetrical love triangle with big ALP, including the parliamentary wing, big unions and the Industrial Relations Commission which work together in a way that can hardly be seen as truly independent.”
Bleijie told the House there are hundreds of thousands of teachers and nurses who will pay more in fees if the independent unions are crushed.
Chief Justice Bowskill declined to say yesterday whether she had responded to the call by the NPAQ for Davis to recuse himself.
The controversy lingers. Beneath the surface a political and legal volcano is set to explode.
Meanwhile, no one in Opposition questioned whether the new laws breached the ILO conventions. Perhaps they should.
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16 December, 2022
'Irreversibly damaged': Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announces abolition of the AAT
This is very sus. No instances of bad decisions were quoted. It sounds like Albanese wants jobs for Labor cronies. Stand by for decisions that really are biased
UPDATE: Malcolm Smith writes:
I used to work as my department's advocate before the AAT between 1998 and 2008, and its abolition was mooted even then. It has nothing to do with the previous government's appointees, and everything to do with the fact that the members are a law unto themselves, and irresponsible.
Details here
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the former government made dozens of politicised appointments to the AAT in its time in office, and that he would end the "cronyism".
"By appointing 85 former Liberal MPs, failed Liberal candidates, former Liberal staffers and other close Liberal associates, without any merit-based selection process … the former government fatally compromised the AAT," Mr Dreyfus said. "Australians rightly expect honesty, integrity and accountability in government."
A new review body will be established in the new year, and already-appointed tribunal members will be invited to continue with it.
For almost 50 years the AAT was tasked with reviewing the decisions of government, including on matters of taxation, immigration and social security. Appointments to the AAT were made by the government of the day for terms of up to seven years, though members could be re-appointed.
Mr Dreyfus said the new body would have a merit-based process for appointing tribunal members, after he accused the former government of sometimes appointing members to review issues such as taxation despite having no expertise in the area.
"The AAT's dysfunction has had a very real cost to the tens of thousands of people who rely on the AAT each year to independently review government decisions that have major and sometimes life-changing impacts on their lives," Mr Dreyfus said.
"Decisions such as whether an older Australian receives an age pension, whether a veteran is compensated for a service injury or whether a participant in the NDIS receives funding for an essential report."
Shadow Attorney-General Julian Leeser said the government's abolition of the AAT made it less accountable to the public. "This government is all about settling political scores," Mr Leeser said.
"I don't buy Mr Dreyfus's spin there will be a new system up and running almost immediately and that nothing will fall through the cracks. It just won't happen."
Politicised appointments reportedly spiked under Morrison
Accusations of politicised appointments have been levelled at former governments of all stripes, though progressive think tank The Australia Institute found a significant rise in what it deemed political appointments after the Coalition won office in 2013.
The think tank found around 5 per cent of AAT appointments under the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments had been made to people with political connections, but that jumped to more than one-third of appointments under the Morrison government.
Government unnecessarily extends jobs ahead of election
Plum jobs worth up to $500,000 a year were extended to Liberal Party-linked individuals by the Morrison government in the lead-up to the election, and many were not due to end for another two years.
It also found a quarter of senior AAT members who were political appointments had no legal qualifications.
Plum jobs that paid as much as $500,000 were sometimes offered to people in the dying days of government before a federal election.
Former NSW state Liberal minister Pru Goward, former WA Liberal minister Michael Mischin, and Mr Morrison's former chief of staff Anne Duffield were among those appointed to the AAT in the final days of the Morrison government.
Bill Browne, The Australia Institute's democracy and accountability director, said reform was urgently needed.
"Whatever body replaces the AAT must be robust and independent, and that means the AAT’s replacement must be carefully designed with an open and transparent appointment process that ensures only qualified, independent members are appointed," Mr Browne said.
Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Greg Barns SC welcomed the AAT's abolition. "Mr Dreyfus has the chance to create a new, impartial and fully independent tribunal that deals with thousands of cases each year involving Centrelink issues, tax issues and military compensation, to name some of the areas," he said. "Today is a win for the rule of law."
Justice Susan Kenney has been appointed as the acting president of the AAT to guide its transition to the new system.
Mr Dreyfus said the new review body would be given 75 additional staff to help clear backlogs, at a cost of $63.4 million.
He said legislation to establish the body would be introduced next year, though likely not until the second half of the year.
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Blast for PM’s ‘Soviet’ plan: higher bills, more blackouts
Throttling future investment for momentary political advantage is very Leftist
Anthony Albanese’s energy market intervention could increase gas bills by $175 per year and push up businesses’ energy costs by 40 per cent, according to independent modelling that warns price caps may trigger supply shortfalls and blackouts in Victoria.
As relations between the private sector and the Prime Minister sank to new lows, Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher accused the government of doing the bidding of trade unions and imposing a “Soviet-style policy” creating investment settings in line with Venezuela and Nigeria.
“If you go out there and you say, ‘Oh, this will inhibit investment, this will create issues for us going forward’, then you’re essentially talking down your industry. They want to be careful that they’re not talking themselves down,” Mr Albanese told Sky News.
“We saw it before the industrial relations legislation where some were out there saying it would immediately result in all this chaos and dysfunction. The legislation passed, the world’s gone on, it has dealt with things.”
New modelling commissioned by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association reveals price caps could heap more pain on families and businesses, in addition to Coalition warnings of energy bill spikes in excess of $700 in 2023-24.
APPEA chief executive Samantha McCulloch, representing companies including Shell, Santos, Woodside, Beach and Cooper Energy, said the ACIL Allen modelling showed the intervention “could see wholesale gas prices up to 40 per cent higher than if the market had been left to do its job”.
“In the long-term, households could pay up to an extra $175 per year on gas bills while businesses cop a 40 per cent increase relative to a scenario with no price caps and in which planned investment is able to proceed,” said Ms McCulloch, writing in The Australian.
“The report also cautions that price caps will encourage additional consumption in the short-term that could put significant strain on gas supplies. It warns of the potential for blackouts in Victoria as meeting peak day demand becomes more difficult due to delays in new supply coming online
“According to the report, these higher prices and energy security concerns are a trade-off for short-term benefits that ‘may be nil or very minimal in the first instance’. It is this near-sighted, populist stance of the government that is at the heart of the industry’s concern.”
Santos, which owns a stake in Queensland’s GLNG gas export project, said the Albanese government’s heavy-handed approach had put Australia on par with authoritarian regimes.
“This Soviet-style policy is a form of nationalisation. This will result in companies needing fiscal stability agreements with the government before new gas supply projects can take investment decisions in order to secure capital, just as would be the case if they were operating in Argentina, Venezuela or Nigeria,” Mr Gallagher said.
“Every business owner in Australia should be alarmed at what the federal government has done. If it doesn’t like your business, your profits or the prices you charge for your products and services, it will regulate you. And it will regulate you if the unions don’t like your business.”
The ACIL Allen modelling, based on four scenarios including delays or cancellations of the Port Kembla LNG import terminal and Santos’s Narrabri project, found retail gas prices would rise by between $70 and $175 a year between 2026 and 2040. Wholesale gas prices could rise by between $1.50/GJ and $4.50/GJ from the current price, fuelling an increase of between 10 and 45 per cent.
However, the Prime Minister pushed back against doomsday scenarios and compared industry concerns to those of employers ahead of the government’s controversial IR shake-up. Mr Albanese said there would not be any investment or supply shortfalls as a result of the government’s gas price cap.
“The idea that somehow this decision will inhibit investment, if the investment was good (under $10) prior to 2021, based upon that price, then the higher price that’s allowed, by this temporary measure should do nothing whatsoever to inhibit investment,” Mr Albanese said.
The three big Queensland LNG exporters met Resources Minister Madeleine King on Thursday to discuss progress on the heads of agreement, which governs the producers to offer supplies to the domestic market.
That agreement was imperilled earlier this week after Shell suspended talks with buyers to supply new gas into Australia’s east coast, blaming the government’s series of measures which it warned could lead to shortages and gas rationing.
Mr Gallagher, who warned that manufacturing jobs would be lost as gas supplies dwindle, said gas rationing could follow as producers curtail supply.
“This winter or the one after, the federal government will have to decide between rationing gas and breaking LNG export contracts because this policy will damage Australia’s access to the capital inflows our industry needs to develop new gas supplies and that Australia will need to fund the energy transition,” Mr Gallagher said.
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Australia Day citizenship ceremony limits relaxed by Albanese government
A reasonable compromise
Local councils will be able to move citizenship ceremonies to a day near Australia Day, in a major reversal of a Morrison government policy by the Albanese government.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles on Friday announced the “pragmatic” change that would allow councils to hold the ceremonies on Australia Day or the three days before and after – from January 23 to 29.
“Invasion Day” protests are also held on Australia Day - the day on which local councils were previously compelled to hold their citizenship ceremonies.
“Invasion Day” protests are also held on Australia Day - the day on which local councils were previously compelled to hold their citizenship ceremonies. CREDIT:CHRIS HOPKINS
It follows Merri-bek City Council in Melbourne announcing plans to follow the lead of Yarra and Darebin councils by moving its Australia Day citizenship ceremonies away from January 26, which many Indigenous people consider a day of mourning.
“The Australian government has today announced an update to the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code, removing red tape to allow councils to hold Australia Day citizenship ceremonies on or around Australia’s national day, as a part of their Australia Day celebrations,” Giles said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Labor supported citizenship ceremonies being held on Australia Day but “the rules, the way that they were fashioned [by the previous government], meant that citizens who are not part of the decisions of when ceremonies would be were missing out on becoming Australian citizens”.
“We want people to become Australian citizens. And that is why we should not place red tape for ideological reasons in front of that opportunity.”
Opposition immigration and citizenship spokesman Dan Tehan criticised the move, claiming Labor had relented to pressure from local councils.
“Make no mistake, this is Labor laying the groundwork to abolish January 26 as Australia Day despite Anthony Albanese promising during the election campaign that Labor had no plans to change the date of our national day,” Tehan said.
“It is a great shame that the Albanese government won’t stand up for Australia Day. We can celebrate the best of us on January 26, and honour the truly incredible richness of our history that spans 65,000 years.”
But Albanese dismissed Tehan’s claim, saying “I support Australia Day, the government supports Australia Day”.
In a sign the federal government anticipated the policy change would be criticised by the federal opposition, Giles urged local councils to stick with January 26 for their citizenship ceremonies, despite the policy change.
“Australia Day holds great significance to many people across Australia. Our national day provides all Australians with the opportunity to reflect, respect, and celebrate,” he said.
“It is the Australian government’s strong expectation that councils conduct ceremonies on January 26. The Australian government implores councils to have new citizens as their key focus, recognising that many community members want to complete their journey to Australian citizenship in connection with Australia Day.”
First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria co-chair Marcus Stewart, who is also part of the federal government’s referendum working group on the Indigenous Voice to parliament, welcomed Friday’s decision and thanked local councils for listening to First Peoples.
“Celebrating January 26 just rubs salt into old wounds at a time we should be finding ways to bring everyone together,” he said.
“[Former prime minister] Scott Morrison tried to whip councils into line with his outdated world view by punishing councils that chose to take a stand in solidarity with First Peoples. So it’s good to see those punitive rules scrapped.”
The peak body for local councils, the Australian Local Government Association, also welcomed the move as a “common-sense decision”.
“Common sense has prevailed as Australia Day is an important recognition of our diverse origins and what it means to be Australian,” ALGA national president and City of Sydney councillor Linda Scott said. “Hosting citizenship ceremonies is a great honour for councils, and it’s one we take very seriously.”
Earlier this week, Merri-bek City Council, which was formerly known as Moreland Council, confirmed plans to shift its ceremony away from January 26.
The council made the move despite Darebin and Yarra Councils being stripped of their rights to hold citizenship ceremonies at any time of year in 2017 by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in retaliation for pulling the plug on January 26 ceremonies.
Merri-bek mayor Angelica Panopoulos welcomed the federal government’s shift on Friday, saying the council would hold its next citizenship ceremony on January 24 instead.
“We are grateful that the federal government will allow us, and all councils, to listen to our communities and make decisions that are right for us when scheduling citizenship ceremonies in January,” she said.
Giles also announced the reinstatement of Yarra and Darebin’s right to conduct citizenship ceremonies.
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Rita Panahi: The war against boys is having a damaging impact on the education gender gap
For more than three decades women have outnumbered men at Australian universities.
The education gender gap is widening, with boys trailing girls from primary school to university, but there appears to be little concern about correcting the imbalance.
If men were outnumbering women at university since the 1980s there would be an outcry but no one in authority seems terribly troubled by the fact that, according to University Admission Centre analysis this year, being male is “greater than any of the other recognised disadvantages we looked at”.
There are a multitude of programs to correct the gender disparity in the few areas where male students do better, such as engineering, to encourage greater female participation.
Some universities even lower entry requirements for girls to boost female representation but there are few, if any, schemes to address the education gap for male students.
For boys one of the biggest areas of concern is literacy, where by year 9 they trail girls by about 20 months, according to NAPLAN data — which also shows reading standard for this cohort fell to a record low, with 13.5 per cent of boys unable to read at the minimum standard.
Writing about the gender literacy gap, the Centre for Independent Studies’ Glenn Fahey warned that “boys in Australian schools are at a decisive educational disadvantage”.
Best-selling author and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has long argued that the decline in men’s academic performance is bad not just for boys but for society.
He explains the situation in educational institutions is far worse than basic statistics indicate. “There are whole disciplines in universities forthrightly hostile towards men,” wrote Peterson, who says anti-male sentiment in academia is demoralising and demotivating young men.
Indeed the war against boys, and masculinity, is evident even in boys’ schools. Messages about “toxic masculinity” and “male privilege” are unrelenting, as they are in popular culture.
Can you imagine the outrage if the term “toxic femininity” was used to describe traits synonymous with womanhood?
We must stop treating young men like they’re born guilty or that their natural masculine instincts are detrimental to society.
We have a great deal more to fear from weak, inept men than strong, capable ones.
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15 December, 2022
The defence against the Brittany Higgins damages claim was muzzled
The government was determined to pay her, presumably to set the matter to rest. Once again, justice had nothing to do with it. It was feminist concerns that mattered
The Albanese government muzzled former Liberal minister Linda Reynolds in her defence against Brittany Higgins’ multimillion-dollar lawsuit, threatening to tear up an agreement to pay her legal fees and any costs awarded unless she agreed not to attend a mediation.
Ms Higgins reached a confidential settlement with the commonwealth, believed to be worth up to $3m, at the mediation on Tuesday over the former staffer’s claims she was not supported by Senator Reynolds or Liberal Party frontbencher Michaelia Cash after the alleged sexual assault by Bruce Lehrmann in Parliament House.
Senator Reynolds is understood to have been determined to defend herself against Ms Higgins’ allegations but in correspondence obtained by The Australian, the commonwealth’s lawyers told her she could not take part in the mediation.
Senator Reynolds was therefore unable to dispute any of Ms Higgins’ allegations about a failure to support her or properly investigate the incident, some of which were contested at Mr Lehrmann’s trial.
Senator Reynolds gave evidence that Ms Higgins told her during a meeting on April 1, 2019, that she had been very drunk and woke in a state of distress after the incident on March 23, 2019, but did not say she had been sexually assaulted.
Senator Reynolds’ then chief of staff, Fiona Brown, said Ms Higgins told her during a meeting on March 28 – five days after the alleged rape – that she remembered “him (Lehrmann) being on top of me” and on April 1 was offered support and encouraged to speak with police.
Senator Cash told the trial she first learnt of an incident in October 2019 but Ms Higgins disclosed the matter related to an alleged assault only on February 5, 2021.
Mr Lehrmann pleaded not guilty in the trial, which was later aborted because of juror misconduct. He has repeatedly stated his innocence.
The Australian understands Senator Cash was also sent a letter muzzling her and instructing her not to attend the mediation in return for her legal fees being paid by the commonwealth.
Neither Senator Reynolds nor Senator Cash was asked for evidence that contested Ms Higgins’ claims.
The taxpayer-funded settlement was revealed by Ms Higgins’ lawyers in a late-night statement on Tuesday apparently designed to minimise media coverage.
Legal sources have expressed astonishment that such a complex and expensive settlement was resolved in a single sitting.
Senator Reynolds said she was unable to comment on the matter. “I did not participate in the mediation and I have not been informed by the department of the outcome,” she said.
Her lawyers, Clayton Utz, in a letter dated December 9, 2022, accused the government of seeking to hamper her ability to defend herself against Ms Higgins’ claims and of not meeting Legal Services Directions.
“We find it difficult to see how, without any further particularisation of the causes of action that Ms Higgins seeks to rely on and any evidence in support of the same, the commonwealth could possibly be satisfied of the criteria for settlement on the basis of legal principle and practice and ‘a meaningful prospect of liability being established’ in accordance with those directions,” they said.
Clayton Utz partner Ashley Tsacalos noted a provision in the Legal Services Directions that “settlement is not to be effected merely because of the cost of defending what is a spurious claim” and must be on the basis of written advice from the Australian Government Solicitor “that the settlement is in accordance with legal principle and practice”.
It is not known whether the AGS provided such advice.
The commonwealth’s lawyers had also demanded they take control of Senator Reynolds’ defence – even though the commonwealth had previously claimed it was unable to provide legal advice or act for her, forcing her to employ her own legal team.
Dr Tsacalos questioned whether Anthony Albanese, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus or Finance Minister Katie Gallagher had the power to impose conditions under the parliamentary regulations “in circumstances where all have previously made public statements supporting Ms Higgins and her version of events”.
Under the Parliamentary Business Resources Regulations, they were all “involved” in the matter, according to Dr Tsacalos.
He quoted numerous examples from Hansard, including Mr Dreyfus, when opposition legal affairs spokesman, directly citing Ms Higgins’ statement “I was raped inside Parliament House by a colleague and for so long it felt like the people around me did not care what happened because of what it might mean for them”.
The parliamentary regulations forbid such conflicts of interest by those making decisions on legal assistance, he said.
Similarly, Mr Dreyfus ought not to make any decision about controlling the conduct of Senator Reynolds’ defence, Dr Tsacalos said.
“Such decisions and involvement have a direct impact on Senator Reynolds’ ability to mount a proper defence,” he said.
The other potential “approving ministers” to grant legal aid under the parliamentary regulations – the Prime Minister and Ms Gallagher – were equally involved in the case. Ms Gallagher was central in pursuing the saga against the former Morrison government when in opposition.
“Considering the consistent and public position taken by the Prime Minister and other senior members of his government on the claims made by Ms Higgins, it may be impossible to find a minister in the federal government who had not taken a similar position and, therefore, who ought not make any decision … to control the conduct of Senator Reynolds’ defence,” Dr Tsacalos said.
On Monday, Mr Albanese declined to answer questions from the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas about whether it was a conflict of interest for Ms Gallagher to sign off on a settlement, given her earlier engagement on the issue and whether she should recuse herself from any involvement in it.
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Drugs, vaping, weapons: Queensland state schools incidents ‘skyrocketing’
Queensland state schools handed out more than 40 drug-related disciplines a day this year in a major spike that Education Minister Grace Grace says is from a crackdown on vaping.
The latest Department of Education data has revealed an increase in school suspensions and exclusions for drug-related incidents, including for vaping, tobacco and medication.
As of November 15, 2022, Queensland state schools handed out 7853 suspensions or exclusions for drug-related incidents, up from 7514 in 2021.
State school students were also disciplined for bringing weapons to campus 520 times, below 2021 results where 657 disciplinary actions were enforced.
E-cigarettes were labelled as a “public health crisis” in a recent study while educators say vaping is rife across public and private schools.
Education Minister Grace Grace said vaping was a broader health issue that needed to be addressed by a society as a whole.
“The growth in drug-related incidents relates primarily to the increase in students suspended for vaping,” Ms Grace said. “Vaping is banned at all Queensland state schools and a range of resources are available to help schools reduce its prevalence. “Schools will play their part, but these issues do not start and finish at the school gate.”
Ms Grace stressed that the vast majority of 570,000 students across 1258 schools were well behaved, and that every incident was taken seriously.
LNP Education spokesman Dr Christian Rowan said the number of drug-related incidents had “skyrocketed” compared to the five-year average of 4120 per year from 2017-2021.
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Talks revive hopes for future of Mount Warning Wollumbin trail
Its closure ignited controversy around the country, but hikers have been offered a glimmer the popular Mount Warning Wollumbin summit trail will open to visitors again.
Hikers on the iconic Wollumbin summit could be accompanied by Indigenous tour guides in a last-ditch effort to keep the Mount Warning trail open to the public.
The track to the popular mountain top – the first place in Australia to catch the day’s sun, has been shut for almost three years in a succession of “temporary” closures citing Covid-compliance and later maintenance issues.
The fate of the trail – which attracts more than 100,000 visitors annually, was seemingly sealed in October with the release of a Wollumbin Aboriginal Place Management Plan which recommended the “immediate” closure of the area.
However, a meeting will be held on Thursday “to provide a forum for key stakeholders, including local government and the tourism industry, to provide input to future decisions regarding Wollumbin”.
It has left the door ajar for hopes some sort of compromise could allow visitors to return to the mountain, which has special significance for the Aboriginal people according to the Wollumbin Consultative Group which has recommended the area “should not be a recreational space for the public to visit or use for tourism”.
Tweed Mayor Chris Cherry, who will attend Thursday’s meeting, said she still held out a small hope that hikers could return to the much-loved attraction “in a respectful way”.
She said she would like to see group hikes led by Indigenous guides in a bid to properly manage the site and teach visitors about Aboriginal culture.
“My preferred outcome would be that the mountain could be shared with the wider community,” she said. “I’m going into the meeting with an open mind.”
She also proposed an “Uluru-style” transition period where people could visit the park again until a permanent closure if the Wollumbin Working Group would not reconsider a move to officially reopen the trail. “It could be managed in a way that allows people time to visit again before the closure became permanent,” she said. “It could be much like the way Uluru had that transition period (before climbing was banned).”
Member for Tweed Geoff Provest backed Cr Cherry’s suggestion for Indigenous guides to lead climbing groups on the mountain. “I like the idea of charging people to go up there, having Indigenous rangers leading hikes,” he said. “We’ve seen that elsewhere and this would be the perfect fit.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service said the organisation would “support the advisory committee and facilitate its engagement with Aboriginal custodians”.
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Teachers don’t always follow evidence on what works, research finds
Australian students are being held back by poor teaching practices and lack of direction in the classroom, researchers say.
A major survey of teaching practices by the government-funded Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) found that managing disruptive behaviour was also a major downfall in Australian teachers’ adoption of the best evidence on teaching practice.
Schools were overly reliant on suspension and expulsion, rather than working towards creating focused classrooms and respectful students, the survey found.
Most Australian teachers did use evidence of what works to inform their teaching practice, but many factors – including a lack of time and confidence – often prevented them from adopting the most effective practice to help students learn, AERO found.
Maximising the use of evidence-based teaching practices was critical to turning around stagnant and declining outcomes in Australian schools, as evidenced by NAPLAN and PISA results, the report argued.
More than 930 teachers and school leaders were surveyed about their teaching practice.
Head of research and evaluation at AERO, Dr Zid Mancenido, said the study provided important insights into the classroom practices of Australian teachers.
“For the first time we can see what is working well and what needs to change about how evidence is being used in Australian schools,” Mancenido said.
He said he hoped the research would drive support for more teachers to effectively use evidence and reverse Australia’s recent declines in student achievement.
“The findings show promise but need to go much further if we are to lift educational outcomes for all students.”
The survey found that 64 per cent of teachers have regular access to instructional coaching on using evidence to improve their teaching, and 73 per cent work at schools that set aside regular times to discuss evidence that could improve their teaching practice.
But it also found that 36 per cent allow unguided instruction or independent inquiry time for students to discover answers for themselves, and 71 per cent design lessons that match the different learning styles of their students.
“These practices are not supported by evidence,” the report found.
The report also surveyed teachers on their classroom management practices, and found that just 61 per cent of teachers frequently tell students to follow classroom rules.
It cited research from the OECD’s latest Teaching and Learning International Survey (2018), which showed that a quarter of Australian teachers need to wait a long time for students to quieten down so that teaching can begin, and a third lose a lot of time because of students interrupting the lesson.
Adam Voigt, chief executive of consultancy Real Schools, said many teachers felt pressured to deliver the content of a large curriculum at the expense of focusing on what students are actually gaining from the lesson.
“There is the kind of pressure that teaching has become a job where what you are trying to do is get through the curriculum so that you can tick off ‘Yes, I taught this’, but it actually isn’t something that engaged the students and got them activated,” Voigt said.
Many teachers, particularly early career teachers, are looking for robust guidance on how to manage disruptive behaviour, something they are inadequately prepared for in initial teacher education.
“We’ve still got a lot of focus in our pre-service teacher training on the what of teaching, but not the how,” Voigt said.
Dr Jordana Hunter, Grattan Institute program director for education, said keeping up-to-date with research evidence is a big challenge for time-poor teachers: “There needs to be more opportunities for expert teachers, with strong mastery of the research evidence in their subject area, to work with other teachers in their school.”
Hunter said it was disappointing that less than half of surveyed teachers said they would encourage a colleague to stop using a teaching practice that isn’t supported by good evidence.
“Every student deserves best-practice teaching,” she said.
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14 December, 2022
A reward of $millions for a fantasy
Brittany Higgins's rape claim went to trial but was not substantiated, so nobody owes her anything. Even the police thought there were no grounds for the prosecution. The payment was a victory for PR, not justice. It was pursued by feckless prosecutor Shane Drumgold only because of political pressure
That a person who has been hospitalized on mental health grounds could be a reliable witness is a derisory idea. The man she defamed in her delusions was hugely stressed by the prospect of a long and undeserved jail term but he survived mentally with only the usual supports - family etc.
“At a mediation held today, the Commonwealth and Ms Higgins settled her claims,” Blumers Lawyers said in a statement.
“At the request of Ms Higgins, the parties have agreed that the terms of the settlement are confidential.”
Higgins had alleged she was raped by former colleague Bruce Lehrmann, but the case was aborted in October after jury misconduct.
A second trial scheduled for early next year was also scrapped because of concerns over Higgins’ mental health.
Lehrmann has always maintained his innocence and will no longer face any charges.
Two former Liberal ministers Linda Reynolds and Michaelia Cash had also been named in the documents.
This masthead revealed on Sunday that Higgins was seeking more than $3 million in compensation: $2.5 million for future economic loss, past economic loss approaching $100,000, general damages of $100,000, future assistance with domestic duties of some $200,000, and past and future out-of-pocket expenses of a further $150,000 approximately.
Blumers Lawyers did not disclose the final settlement figure in the statement released late on Monday night.
The decision by the Commonwealth to settle the case comes as ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr prepares to order a formal inquiry into the trial of Lehrmann after an extraordinary war of words erupted between the territory’s director of public prosecutions and police.
Barr said ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury and the Director-General of the Justice and Community Safety Directorate briefed cabinet on Monday afternoon “regarding the issues raised by the actions of authorities involved in the Lehrmann trial”.
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Greens to support Labor’s emergency energy plan, securing budget package
The Greens have secured a deal to help Australians switch from gas in return for supporting the government’s emergency energy bill.
The Prime Minister recalled both houses of parliament for Thursday to deal with the energy crisis, following a deal struck with states and territories on Friday.
The package entails an unprecedented market intervention, which would cap gas prices at $12 a gigajoule, and coal at $125 a tonne, for 12 months.
The government will also dole out $1.5 billion in power bill assistance to eligible households and small businesses, as well as instil a code of conduct.
While Peter Dutton has slammed the government, saying it still hasn’t released legislation it plans to get through parliament, Greens leader Adam Bandt said his party would support it.
In exchange, the minor party had secured a package which would be included in next year’s budget which would focus on helping people switch from “dirty and expensive” gas appliances over to electric.
The package will be targeted towards low and middle income earners, people who live in public housing, renters and people “traditionally cut out” from accessing energy savings which come with switching to electric.
When it comes to building the package, the government will consult with the Greens to achieve their shared bid to ramp up renewables and reduce reliance on gas.
Mr Bandt said while the Greens would support the government’s legislation in return, the party wanted to see a freeze on power bills for two years and impose a windfall tax on coal and gas companies.
Meanwhile, the Opposition Leader said the cost of recalling parliament from 9am on Thursday was already going to cost around $1 million, and that the opposition, the Greens, and the crossbench were still waiting for legislation.
“There’s no time for consideration of what’s being put before us – not just for the Liberal party or the Coalition, but the Greens and independent members as well,” Mr Dutton said just before 1pm.
“If the government had a plan, they should have presented it in the October budget. They had five months between the election and the budget to put together a plan.
“Now we’re a day away from parliament being recalled, a week before Christmas, and the government has not released its legislation.
“If the Prime Minister hasn’t got the legislation ready, he shouldn’t recall parliament at great expense.”
Mr Dutton said the Coalition supported providing support to families, but would like to see it as a Bill separate to the price caps – which the opposition does not support.
Given the government has received the support of the Greens, it does not need the support of the Coalition.
Independent senators Jacqui Lambie, David Pocock and Tammy Tyrrell have all said they will support the energy relief package.
Senator Pocock says he wants the government to do more to support “electrification” further down the line.
“I have made it clear to the government that this Bill, while importantly will provide some relief to households and small businesses, doesn’t go far enough,” he said.
“The solution is electrification, the solution is getting on with this transition and ensuring that households benefit, that our small businesses benefit from this and that no one is left behind.
“While I will be supporting this package, I want to see a lot more in the way of an electrification.”
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A Sydney climate protester who halted freight trains by suspending herself above a rail line has had her most serious charges dropped
Emma Dorge was arrested in March after participating in one of a series of unauthorised actions by environmental protest group Blockade Australia to disrupt a freight line to Port Botany.
The 26-year-old was arrested after she suspended herself from a pole above the line to draw attention to climate change.
Police charged the activist on four counts including endangering safety of a person on a railway, inciting others to commit a criminal act, remaining on private land without a lawful excuse and refusing to comply with police directions.
Prosecutors agreed to drop the more serious charges of endangering safety and incitement given the activist pleaded guilty to the two lesser charges, Dorge's lawyer Mark Davis told AAP.
Before her hearing on Wednesday in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court, Dorge told AAP she stood by her actions in April and believed the NSW government had passed the "draconian" protest laws as a result of how effective the campaigns were.
"I'm really more concerned about runaway climate change. They can't throw the floods and the wildfires in jail," she said.
"The courts are just another kind of violent mechanism that the state uses to repress us."
Dorge is among a number of climate activists who have faced court this week charged over disruptive actions after the state government passed laws to punish disruptive climate protests earlier in the year.
Activists convicted under the laws face fines of up to $22,000 and two years in prison.
The construction workers' union has announced it will campaign to end the "anti-democratic" laws that criminalise protest in NSW.
"The CFMMEU will not sit by while any government in this country seeks to remove one of the cornerstones of our democracy," union national secretary Christy Cain said in a statement.
"If these laws are allowed to stand no worker, no citizen, no member of the community will be safe from the threat of government overreach."
Dorge's action went viral after Seven Network's Sunrise host David Koch suggested authorities cut the rope while she was suspended from the pole during a live interview.
The case has been adjourned to December 22 and Dorge is out on bail.
https://au.yahoo.com/news/sydney-climate-protester-enters-plea-011237542.html
********************************************Time to end the arms race of early university offers
Australian universities have been major contributors to Australia’s human and social capital. The success and reach of their civic mission over the past 40 years are largely due to a highly effective response to three challenges of universal education: access, equity and excellence.
Some 1980s policy genius in the form of income-contingent loans for tuition costs (HECS) largely solved the issue of access by lowering barriers to entry. The related challenges of equity and excellence have been met with a history of university admission based on public examinations, common across all schools (the HSC) and recently coupled with school-based assessments, which are moderated to support fairness across the cohort.
This approach formed the basis for a predictable and transparent pathway to university for school leavers seeking that option. Evolved versions of HECS and the HSC are still with us, however, there is a major disruption afoot with the growing prevalence of early entry offers. Already, the signs are concerning.
This week, both the Higher School Certificate and ATAR scores (a creature of the university sector informed by HSC outcomes) will be released. They will be accompanied by an explosion in the number of early-entry offers to university for school leavers; thousands of these offers were issued months ago.
The consequences and scale of this unregulated practice are not well understood. There is no obligation on the universities to release early offer figures, indeed, many refuse such requests from the media.
Nearly 25,000 students have applied for early offers through the state’s admissions centre (UAC), and others applied directly to individual universities, meaning more than half of the school-leaver cohort could have an early offer of some form.
Post-COVID financial pressures are driving the university sector to increase enrolments and, in the competition to attract students, early offers have transformed from a “first mover” advantage into an arms race. While universities claim these schemes are “holistic” and reduce “exam stress”, the significant financial interest behind them is undeniable.
There might be some benefits to the early offer regime, but they appear to be tilted in favour of universities, they get the planning and operational certainty and income projection. The upside for the students is less clear, particularly in the case of unconditional or low-stake offers, which can come as early as April of year 12.
There are increasing reports that many students with early offers “check out” of their studies, lose motivation, or do not fully invest in final exams. This is not a helpful dynamic for either them or their peers without early offers, who need to remain fully applied. More broadly, has the question been asked: why condition students to a consequence-free examination season or assessment or desensitise them from the rigours of the learning experience?
Defenders of the open slather approach to early offers are often the harshest critics of ATAR, who cite wellbeing concerns to push back against assessments. Some early-offer programs ignore the ATAR entirely.
The early-offer university students will inevitably collide with reality and learn assessments and exams do matter and maybe their HSC-lite experience hasn’t really prepared them for the next step-up. Wait, what? I’m not getting an unconditional, early offer of graduation for my BA?
The critics of ATAR ignore the fact that it remains the most reliable available predictor of university performance. We know that the vast majority of school leavers still use ATAR in their university admissions and that ATAR remains a significant predictor of grades and completion rates.
Obviously, ATAR is an imperfect measure on its own, but there are already adjustment factors (formerly known as bonus points) as well as a host of scholarships (rural, ATSI, dux, financial hardship, etc.) designed to address its limitations.
The explosion in early offers has occurred without a clear rationale in support of students. To its credit, the NSW government has commissioned a review of early offers, with new guidelines being developed. Here are some suggestions. One, early offers should be required to be conditional; a minimum academic requirement is perfectly reasonable. Two, there should be a limit to just how early these early offers can be made (say, September). Three, early offers should be managed centrally through UAC rather than directly with individual universities, thereby allowing regulators to monitor the effects of the various schemes.
The HSC is a world-class credential designed for students pursuing university and vocational and employment pathways alike. Vice-chancellors should respect its role and, more broadly, the symbiotic relationship between schools and universities. All early offers might have a place but, in the meantime, we need to insist on more transparency and standardisation.
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13 December, 2022
Albo’s gas cap folly
If the threat of gas rationing and blackouts on the first day of winter this year taught us anything it is that maximising the supply of reliable and baseload power is the only way to ensure the lights stay on, right?
Australia is currently facing multiple economic crises on a number of fronts.
However, there are three that the federal government is seemingly determined to exacerbate, namely Australia’s gas supply shortage, rapid rises in the cost of living, and our record low private business investment as a percentage of the economy.
The cost of living crisis is a handicap on the quality of everyday Australian life, and if private businesses are not investing in the Australian economy, then that minimises the opportunities available to Australians to help offset cost of living pressures.
These three crises are all linked to the policy of Net Zero emissions by 2050, introduced by the former Morrison government in 2021 and legislated by the Albanese government in 2022. Net Zero, by design, requires the removal of gas from the national energy market to make way for ‘green’ energy such as wind and solar.
One of the first acts of the Albanese government, when elected in May, was to legislate the Net Zero target. This has accelerated the closure of coal projects across the country, expanded the scope of green activist lawfare against critical resource projects, increased power prices, and localised a global gas supply shortage, even though Australia is one of the most energy resource-rich countries on Earth.
The consequences wrought by the policy of Net Zero emissions by 2050 fuelled the energy crisis that the east coast continues to suffer through.
And the depths of this crisis cannot be underestimated. In the year 2022, how can it be that on the first day of winter this year, the Australian Energy Market Operator warned that gas rationing may be necessary to ensure that Australians could keep their lights and heaters on? This lack of supply made electricity prices surge.
In response, the Prime Minister recently floated imposing price caps on energy companies. This was a reactionary and short-sighted response. The proposal is also evidence the federal government does not have a cogent plan to get us out of the energy wilderness that is biting into the hip pockets of mainstream Australians.
Price caps will act as a direct deterrent for companies wanting to do business in Australia’s already over-regulated energy market, with Woodside Energy indicating they will no longer invest in projects along Australia’s east coast if this policy was adopted.
Woodside’s threat of withholding new gas investment on Australia’s east coast in response to the proposed price caps would worsen Australia’s record low private business investment and exacerbate Australia’s gas supply issues.
The vacuum created by private businesses deciding that investing in the Australian energy market is all too hard, opens the door for government agencies to fill the gap. You only have to look at the proposal to re-introduce the State Electricity Commission in Victoria, which is pursuing a renewable energy target of 95 per cent by 2035. It means instead of baseload power coming back into the market, even more taxpayer dollars will be used to push the ideological obsession with unreliable and experimental solar and wind energy, proven time and time again that it cannot deliver the power we need on scale.
The federal government should be fostering policies that increase the supply of gas. Increasing the supply of gas (and coal) is the only way to meet demand, and to drive down record energy prices.
These policies include repealing the Climate Change Act 2022, saying no to Net Zero, and exiting the Paris Climate Agreement.
Unfortunately, the far more likely outcome is that baseload power will continue to be forced off the national energy market in favour of unreliable solar and wind power leaving Australians with higher energy bills, insecure supply of power, and lower levels of employment.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/albos-gas-cap-folly/
*****************************************************Environmenta vandalism
A ‘lawfare’-laced New Year as activism reaps its rewards from environmentalist judges: that is what last month’s three ground-breaking judicial decisions that rejected fossil fuel developments on environmental and social grounds, have ensured for Australia’s major export industries – coal and gas. ‘There is now the risk of more delays and obstacles in the progression of important energy projects, postponing new supply that is needed to deliver energy security, emissions reductions and substantial economic returns for Australians’, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association CEO Samantha McCulloch told the media.
Upheaval across Australia’s oil and gas industry is expected after Santos’ loss of a Federal Court appeal against a decision to cancel its $5.3 billion development approval due to inadequate consultation with local indigenous people; coal projects are under a cloud following both the Queensland Land and Environment Court knocking back a huge Galilee Basin development on the basis of overseas customers’ emissions and, incredibly, human rights and the NSW Independent Planning Commission’s heritage-based decision against Glencore’s plans to extend its operations.
Added to this is the uncertainty generated at the federal level by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in responding to an environmental activist request by implementing reviews of 18 of the previous government’s approvals of proposed new coal and gas projects which include major companies like Woodside, ConocoPhillips, Whitehaven and Glencore. The Australian newspaper reports that resource analysts fear that there will be a new front opened in Australia as these 18, of which 13 are coal projects in Queensland and four in NSW, with a gas project in WA, covering $100 billion in investments and 175,000 jobs, could face legal action to block progress.
November’s three negative decisions follow repeated examples of the damaging economic consequences of judges usurping the role of elected parliaments by imposing their own activist versions of environmental law. The consequences include increased sovereign risk that puts in doubt the foreign investment essential for Australia’s future, uncertainty over the supply of vital funding for affordable and reliable energy, denial of mining approvals on grounds unsupported by legislation, and the costly delays to billions of dollars of projects through the lawfare encouraged by so many anti-mining judgements.
The Queensland Land and Environment Court’s rejection last month of a proposal by Waratah Coal to build the biggest thermal coal mine in Australia in the Galilee Basin aimed at producing almost four times as much as its neighbouring Adani mine (which is at last operational after years of legal obstructionism), prompted little public outcry beyond a perceptive article in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail under the heading ‘Is this the death warrant for the coal industry?’ and describing the judgement as reading like ‘a green manifesto that will have major ramifications for Queensland’.
But the mining industry kept shtum. The reason? Waratah’s owner is the combative Clive Palmer; instead of the much-needed principled assault on this destructive anti-mining precedent, there was an overwhelming reluctance to be seen to be effectively supporting such a divisive figure.
Yet the court’s recommendation to the state government is untenable. Its president, and former climate activist, Judge Fleur Kingham, asserted not only that climate change was a key issue but that the project’s climate impact would limit human rights. This is the first time a Queensland judge has recommended rejecting a mine based on the climate impacts of coal burnt overseas. ‘Wherever the coal is burnt the emissions will contribute to environmental harm, including in Queensland.’ It is also the first time Queensland’s Human Rights Act has been used to object to a mining project on climate change and Indigenous cultural rights grounds.
But this is not the first time that courts or tribunals have falsely asserted that Australia’s Paris obligations, its state and federal emission reduction and net-zero targets mean that no new mines or major extensions of existing ones can be accommodated. That parliaments, whose responsibility it is, have not passed laws imposing that prohibition means that there is no legislative basis for this judge-created assertion and, on the contrary, governments, which stress the word ‘net’ before ‘zero’, are involved in projects offsetting CO2 emissions so that there is no automatic link between a new coal mine or gas field and the volume of emissions.
Even more controversial is Judge Kingham’s conclusion that, ‘In relation to climate change, I have found that the following rights of certain groups of people in Queensland would be limited: the right to life, the cultural rights of First Nations peoples, the rights of children, the right to property and to privacy and home, and the right to enjoy human rights equally’, all would be threatened by the consequences of emissions-induced climate change. ‘For each right, considered individually, I have decided the importance of preserving the right, given the nature and extent of the limitation, weighs more heavily in the balance than the economic benefits of the mine and the benefit of contributing to energy security for Southeast Asia.’ This is at odds with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who, while aiming at net zero by 2050, has a stated position that Queensland coal exports will continue for ‘as long as the market dictates’.
The NSW anti-coal judgement reflects a different problem. On top of its criticism of the outcome, the mining industry expressed serious concern about the process, in which the state government has delegated decision-making to a three-person panel with no accountability either to the government or the public. But at least the NSW Independent Planning Commission did acknowledge that the proposal, which it rejected on (questionable?) heritage grounds, was, in the absence of any clear governmental policy guidance, not inconsistent with net zero or Paris obligations or Australia’s varied emissions targets and so could not be denied on that ground.
Activist judges with a penchant for creating their own unlegislated rules with which to enforce their environmental agendas, please note.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/business-robbery-etc-105/ ?
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University Leftism is now hugely influential
I was recently pleased to hear Senator Alex Antic decrying the state of education in our schools, citing in his speech several horror stories from parents. The examples are endless, but what we may resolve with total assurance is this: radical ideologies have hijacked our schools, and our children’s futures are in grave peril – or so say conservative politicians.
Every radicalised school teacher, in addition to all those involved in administrating a school or implementing a primary or secondary curriculum, holds some kind of tertiary teaching degree – so where do you think their radicalism was sown and cemented?
It is not the schools but the universities that are responsible for the destructive political and socio-cultural crisis that plagues Australia today.
Everyone is going to university. At the end of 2021, a record 50.2 per cent of Australians aged between 15 and 74 held bachelor’s degrees. That is approximately a 500 per cent increase over the last twenty years. Moreover, 62 per cent of school-leavers intended to commence at university in 2021, whereas approximately only one-tenth were committed towards TAFE or college studies.
Therefore, if it is not already the case, we may conclude that it will not be long before the majority of eligible Australian voters hold a tertiary qualification.
Of course, this would be wholly inconsequential if universities were simply striving to teach and advance knowledge. But what was once the proud objective of the 11th century Bolognese, or the 12th century Oxonians, or the 13th century Parisians, is no longer the case. The overpowering priority in Australian universities seems to be this: disseminate radical sociological ideologies underpinned by, amongst other things, pseudo-morality, irresponsibility, hedonism, and victimhood as quickly as possible.
I could cite example after example until I turned blue in the face to justify this assertion; instead, it might be more revealing if we all simply seek out a relative or a friend and ask them for their worst university horror story. Because if ‘lived experiences’ are considered to be appropriate source material by today’s academic standards, then perhaps I should introduce into my argument that I am a recent graduate of several schools within the Arts faculty.
Nowhere is today’s radicalism more pervasive than in the Arts. Regrettably, this is another point that is often overlooked. The Arts are largely ignored by the political class – Tony Burke, who I must say went to this year’s federal election promising artists Nirvana Down Under, has even now begun to disappoint – when in fact it is the Arts that hold an incalculable influence over society. This is both a beautiful and terrifying reality. It is the Arts that brought us, for instance, Jane Eyre and To Kill a Mockingbird, but also Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto. More recently, whilst we might say that engineers did not conceptualise Black Lives Matter to the extent that Arts faculties did, they wasted no time in subscribing to the movement’s doctrine.
I clearly recall one of my undergraduate classes, which purported to concern English grammar. In this class, I was encouraged to submit my preferred pronouns, asked to cultivate a safe learning environment for my peers, asked whether I required any trigger warnings, permitted to allocate 10 per cent of my grade myself so long as I was honest, and assured that if my mental health were impaired one week I could consider some of the course’s assessment items as optional. When we finally did come to discussing semantics, one of the very first things the class was taught was that English grammar arose to separate the rich from the poor.
Thus, here are three summarised propositions I offer to readers:
* More than half the country, virtually, holds a university degree.
* Universities at large are teaching radical sociological ideologies.
* Tertiary graduates (particularly graduates of Arts faculties) more often than not hold the greatest influence over society, determining its popular trends.
In these propositions, I think, there lies a recipe for total political domination. And that’s why I’m worried. Because, just as Labor has institutionalised the unions, the Greens have taken for themselves the universities.
Radical ideologies and the Australian Greens go hand in hand. Here are just a few positions they took to the federal election:
Ban the construction of new coal, oil and gas infrastructure.
Ban all political donations from the mining and resources sector and ‘other dirty industries’.
Unpack ‘white privilege’ and ‘white fragility’.
$1.07 billion to build First Nations owned healing places.
Amend section 44 of the Constitution so that dual citizens can run for Federal office.
End offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru.
Reduce military spending to 1.5 per cent of GDP.
Introduce legislation that prohibits Australia exporting weapons.
Increase Australia’s humanitarian intake to 50,000 per year.
Appoint a Minister for Equality and an LGBTQ+ Human Rights Commissioner.
$15 million to facilitate transgender ‘surgical procedures’.
20 per cent of the Australian Public Service to be disabled by 2030, via quotas.
Cut $61 million for school chaplains (to ‘make schools safer’).
More importantly, though, these are, to me, the Greens’ most striking promises, and funnily enough they all have to do with education:
$19 billion for free childcare.
$49 billion for fully-free public schools.
$477 million to end rape culture in public schools.
Abolish student debt.
Lifelong free education for all.
Guarantee every student a liveable income.
10 per cent increase in university funding.
The Greens’ disproportionate prioritisation of the education sector, particularly the tertiary education sector, seems telling.
Moreover, in analysing the three Queensland seats that fell to the Greens – Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith – in accordance with 2021 Census data and themes previously discussed, we cement our argument further in fact.
Of the thirty Commonwealth divisions in Queensland, Brisbane, Ryan, and Griffith all have the highest populations of tertiary students. Brisbane leads the charge with 25,030 tertiary students. Griffith comes with 22,830 tertiary students and Ryan with 21,403 students. In comparison, the Queensland division with the smallest number of tertiary enrolees is Maranoa – but that’s still 5,302 students. Interestingly, Maranoa is the safest Liberal-National federal seat in Queensland.
Interestingly again, the five Queensland divisions with the smallest populations of tertiary students – Maranoa, Wide Bay (5,175), Kennedy (5,302), Flynn (5,456) and Hinkler (5,504), all saw first-preference swings to their respective Greens candidate between 1 per cent and 2 per cent; the exception is Wide Bay, which actually saw a first-preference swing against the Greens in the order of 0.5 per cent.
So, does correlation equal causation, or am I grasping at straws?
Of course, there is no way to be certain – but we’d be fools not to heed the warning laid bare before us. Australian politics is no longer organised within the framework of a two-party system, but rather a two-and-a-half-party system. The Greens function as a major political organisation, with the funds, media, manpower, and now universities as institutions to match. But they also masquerade as an insignificant, disorganised minor party that serves no other purpose than to facilitate protest votes or proxy votes for Labor. In the case of the latter, the Victorian state election in key seats like Glen Waverly and Ashwood demonstrates as much.
By my estimates, Labor’s short-term solution is to embrace a long-term catastrophe. Because the Victorian state election also shines a light on the former Labor seat of Richmond, a seat in which Labor’s first-preference vote decreased sharply by 11.6 per cent, and a seat that is now condemned to four years under the Green yoke.
If I could make two recommendations to my native Liberal Party, they would be this:
Look to the future of our country, and in so doing regard the Greens as the true Enemy. Labor is now the sparring partner.
Lay the groundwork to launch some sort of large-scale public inquiry, be it a Royal Commission or otherwise, into the ideological and commercial abuses of Australia’s tertiary institutions. Expose what goes on behind the closed doors of not all but so many lecture theatres..
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/universities-are-the-new-green-unions/
*********************************************Sometimes being innocent is no protection from injustice
Bruce Lehrman is innocent but that has not protected him from what happened outside the courtroom
The golden thread rule running through criminal law in our common law system is that a person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This rule of law is crucial to the operation of a fair trial and a fair outcome.
The rule presupposes that the accused person who pleads not guilty to a crime for which they stand accused is as innocent as any other person inside or outside the courtroom. Even as innocent as the accuser.
In the recent ACT case of The Crown v Bruce Lehrmann, the accused man Lehrmann was charged with raping a woman known as Brittany Higgins in March 2019.
Lehrmann pleaded not guilty. There was a trial where a jury could not unanimously convict him, and the Prosecution subsequently dropped the charges.
Lehmann was therefore innocent before March 2019, after March 2019, and now is still innocent after December 2022. At no stage in this process is he anything other than innocent. He is as innocent as the prosecutors, as the judge, as the accuser Higgins, and every journalist, commentator, and politician who sought to presume him guilty.
I am not trying to defend Lehmann. He does not need defending. I am here to defend the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and the bedrock of our legal system which is continuously coming under attack.
The main problem is that the attacks on the law are coming from those who are sworn to uphold it.
The former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese both made remarks which presupposed Lehrmann’s guilt by apologising to Higgins. The former Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister each take oaths upon accepting their office to uphold the laws of Australia and they each have shown that they had no respect for the presumption of innocence.
The Prosecutor Shane Drumgold, a lawyer who must have sworn to uphold the laws of the ACT, made the most extraordinary public statement, ‘In the light of the compelling independent medical opinion and balancing all factors, I have made the difficult decision that it is no longer in the public interest to pursue a prosecution at the risk of the complainants life.’ If a victim’s life was truly at risk, and the person who placed the victim’s life in that terrible state can be prosecuted for the crime, then it is precisely in the public’s interest that such a prosecution be mounted.
The truth is that there was not enough evidence to pursue the matter and find Lehrmann guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
No doubt, Mr Morrison, Mr Albanese, and Mr Drumgold were concerned of the media reaction when uttering their comments.
This is sadly not an isolated incident.
In February 2022, a six-week trial of a Northern Territory Police officer Zachary Rolfe took place. Rolfe was charged, inter alia with the murder of an Aboriginal man, Kumanjayi Walker, after being called to investigate a domestic violence incident in November 2019.
Rolfe pleaded not guilty, therefore prior to the trial he was innocent, during the trial he was innocent, and after being found not guilty by the jury he was still innocent.
After the verdict Adam Bandt, leader of the Greens Party and a member of Parliament in Melbourne, was most vociferous in alleging that justice was not achieved for Walker. His utterings, and the media commentary, contributed to an inquest being conducted in the Northern Territory about the shooting. Precisely who is on trial at the inquest, because it can’t be Rolfe, he has already been found not guilty. The rule of law is on trial in that inquiry.
In a recent case in Sydney a former footballer, Chris Dawson, was tried for the murder of his wife. He also pleaded not guilty. Therefore, he was innocent before the trial and during the trial. He was innocent until the judge sitting alone found him guilty of the crime. Now he is no longer innocent unless the conviction is overturned on appeal. The fact is he is guilty now.
In all three cases justice was served by the fact of an objective trial, where the media input is irrelevant, and the evidence is paramount.
The accused exercised a right to plead not guilty and therefore profess innocence. The verdict is the result of justice being played out.
Lehrmann could not be found guilty, and no further proceedings continued. He is therefore still innocent, and justice is served. Rolfe was found not guilty; he is still innocent, and justice has been served. Dawson was found guilty; he is, therefore, no longer innocent and justice is served.
Justice, the rule of law, and the presumption of innocence, has therefore worked in three completely different circumstances to present the correct outcome yet many sections of the media and political activists are committed to trying to change the system.
In the current system the prosecution has the resources of the state behind them, police powers of investigation, well-paid and always very competent lawyers, funds to use scientific evidence, and expert witnesses to present such evidence. Armed with all those resources if they can’t convince twelve people of the accused’s guilt then the accused is probably innocent. That is precisely why the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
No fair-minded person wants a guilty person to walk free. Nor do they want an innocent person to be imprisoned.
Laws change constantly both Federally and State-wide and usually for the better. The fundamentals of the common law system, such as the presumption of innocence have not changed over 120 years and for good reason, they work to preserve justice.
At the end of the trial process there can be degrees of guilt. The guilty person is always permitted to ask for lenience in sentencing. There is not however a degree of innocence.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/12/there-are-no-degrees-of-innocence/
************************************12 December, 2022
‘Woke’: Australia’s London embassy erases history by removing high commissioners’ portraits
Australia’s embassy in London has been accused of cancelling more than 100 years of history with the removal of the portraits of the nation’s high commissioners to the UK.
Staff at Australia House on the Strand have quietly removed the photographs of our top diplomats in London, which previously adorned the walls along the stairs.
They will now be warehoused, with the images put on a website instead.
Sources in London claimed the images were stripped because they were of “white men” who were “symbols of patriarchy”, with the embassy wanting to appear more inclusive.
“This is just another woke erasure of history. Just because someone happened to be of a certain gender or race does not mean their contribution should be hidden,” a political source said.
“It’s entirely against the idea of treating people equally, no matter their race or background.
“It’s also terrible for Australia’s global reputation to be endorsing divisive identity politics, to tell the world that we are backwards and embarrassed about our past. Australia’s diplomats should be aware that Brits do not look kindly on cancel culture these days.”
Lynette Wood, Australia’s acting High Commissioner to the UK, denied there was an agenda behind the removal of the portraits. “This is certainly not true at all,” Ms Wood said.
The High Commission said in a statement the portraits would be put online instead of being returned to the walls of Australia House. “The portraits of former High Commissioners are in the process of being digitised,” a statement said.
“Following digitalisation, the portraits will be archived on the Australian High Commission website, enabling greater access to the important historical information on all Heads of Mission who have served in the UK.”
The disappearance of the portraits has been the talk of London’s diplomatic circles, with their absence noted at a recent function.
“The excuse about ‘digitalisation’ is obviously total nonsense. They should at least have the guts to admit their true motivations,” a source added.
There were 26 portraits honouring each of Australia’s High Commissioners to the UK, honouring those who led the diplomatic mission.
Images of former High Commissioners George Brandis, Alexander Downer, Mike Rann and John Dauth all the way back to the first to take on the role, Sir George Reid and former Australian Prime Minister Andrew Fisher.
Foreign dignitaries walked past the portraits on the way to the High Commissioner’s office on the upper levels of the grand building.
Australia House on The Strand stitches together the fabric of expat society in London. The building hosts receptions, including welcoming Australians who were invited to the Queen’s funeral in September.
Australia’s Ashes teams are also usually welcomed at functions there, while business and political leaders from across the world are regularly wined and dined there.
The building was one of the most expensive in the world when it was built, and has featured in movies including as the set of Gringotts bank in the Harry Potter movies.
The office of Foreign Minister Penny Wong was not told about the move before the portraits were taken down.
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On potential energy solutions, too many deny the facts on nuclear
Facts and truth are loose concepts in the climate alarmists’ arsenal. As we pass one “tipping point” declared a decade or two ago, we are warned of new tipping points a decade hence.
It is an endless campaign of urgency, more marketing than science. We muddled our way through the “critical decade” only to be galvanised for the “decisive decade” ahead.
The more you examine science, the more complex the unfolding patterns and policy responses become. The more you interrogate the facts, the more the catastrophist scenarios and simplistic solutions are exposed.
Just because climate scientists predict change does not give licence to journalists and activists to fit up normal weather events as proof of their mooted climate dystopia. Meanwhile the wildest claims of the climate alarmists pass unexamined.
Last Saturday Anthony Albanese visited Renmark, in South Australia’s Riverland, which is experiencing a major Murray River flood that could turn out to be the third worst of the past 100 years, matching 1974 but falling below the 1931 flood, and way short of the 1956 monster. Yet the Prime Minister used the current high river to push his alarmist message.
“Climate change is real,” he said, axiomatically. Then came the hyperventilation: “And I’ve witnessed since I’ve been leader of the Labor Party, I’ve visited areas of tropical rainforests that have never burnt before that have burnt during the bushfires, during the summer of 2019 and 2020, that came after, of course, a period of drought.”
This is a familiar routine of blaming recent natural events on climate change, suggesting this is all worse than it used to be, and boldly ascribing the same causal factor for droughts, floods and bushfires. Most media regurgitates this stuff; like pandemic paranoia, climate alarmism fits into that vortex where media and politicians find mutually beneficial hyperbole.
I asked the Prime Minister’s office which rainforest Albanese claimed had burned for the first time, and it did not answer. Back in that terrible summer there were two prominent references to “unprecedented” burning of rainforests, both of which were quickly debunked when I checked the record.
Guardian Australia ran Australian National University climate academic Joelle Gergis in September 2019. “I never thought I’d see the Australian rainforest burning. What will it take for us to wake up to the climate crisis?” wrote Gergis, a member of the Climate Council. “As a scientist, what I find particularly disturbing about the current conditions is that world heritage rainforest areas such as the Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland are now burning.”
Soon enough media was alive with the horror of rainforest burning for the first time. Yet in October 1951 The Cairns Post had reported, “A bushfire in Lamington National Park today swept through a grove of 3000-year-old Macrozamia palms … The fire has burnt out about 2000 acres of thick rainforest country.”
So, nearly 70 years earlier, before global warming, rainforest burned in Lamington. Why would media run with fantasy over reality?
Around the same time climate activist and former NSW fire commissioner Greg Mullins told ABC regional radio: “There are fires breaking out in places where they just shouldn’t burn. The west coast of Tasmania, the world heritage areas, subtropical rainforests, it’s all burning. And this is driven by climate change, there’s no other explanation.”
A few minutes of online research put the lie to that. The South Australian Chronicle reported in February 1915 about lives lost in the “most devastating bushfires ever known in Tasmania sweeping over the northwest coast and other districts. The extent of the devastation cannot be over-estimated”. And The Canberra Times in 1982 reported a “huge forest fire” burning out 75,000ha of dense rainforest on the northwest coast.
This fudging in favour of catastrophism is the rule rather than the exception. The lack of curiosity or scepticism from media is astounding, but then even the weather bureau plays along.
In early 2019 when the Bureau of Meteorology proclaimed a new national record for the highest overnight minimum of 35.9C it was dramatic news around the nation. But neither the BOM nor anyone else in the media bothered to reveal that the weather station, at the western NSW location of Noona, had been in place for little more than a year – so all we really knew was that it was the hottest night in Noona for about 18 months.
That same year on January 24 the BOM proclaimed the hottest maximum ever recorded in a capital city – 46.6C in Adelaide. Again, it was big news around the country, but the weather bureau failed to mention the same site had measured a maximum a full degree higher in 1939. The only reason the 2019 record beat the 1939 reading was because the BOM’s temperature “homogenisation” had revised the early record downwards by more than a degree. You do not have to question the BOM’s methodology to wonder why it is not forthcoming with these relevant facts when it announces its new records.
Examples abound. We are constantly told Pacific Islands are about to be swallowed by the ocean when studies show the landmass of islands is growing, both through natural processes and human intervention.
The bracing predictions of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth are conveniently left unexamined – remember sea levels were to rise 6m, hurricanes were going to be more common and snow would retreat from Kilimanjaro – these and other predictions remain stubbornly unfulfilled.
Never mind, because politicians and media leap on every storm, drought, flood and fire as evidence we are experiencing these dire predictions already. This aversion to reality or disdain for truth extends to the energy policies proposed to deal with climate by reducing emissions.
There is a pretence being perpetrated on the public that this nation can power itself, affordably and reliably, on renewable energy plus storage. Worse, it is often insinuated that Australia’s efforts to reduce our 1 per cent share of global emissions can somehow change the weather, even though global emissions continue to rise.
Addressing the energy cost and supply crisis this week, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said: “This crisis is caused by coal and gas prices, anybody who says it’s caused by renewables is lying, and that needs to be called out, renewables are the solution to this crisis, not the cause.”
He had better tell Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe, who had this to say last month: “It is difficult to make predictions here, but it’s probable that the global capital stock that is used to produce energy will come under recurring pressure in the years ahead. If so, we could expect higher and more volatile energy prices during the transition to a more renewables-based energy supply.”
Sounds a hell of a lot like the transition to renewables is putting upward pressure on prices. This is obvious when you consider the massive investment required in intermittent generation, regulated transmission and storage, all of which need to be funded by taxpayers and consumers.
This was made plain by Alinta Energy chief executive Jeff Dimery last month when he predicted price rises of at least 35 per cent for consumers. “The cost of the transition is going to be for a raft of reasons more expensive than it otherwise would have been a few years ago, and we need to make the public aware of the cost of transition,” he told Ross Greenwood on Sky News.
Are Lowe and Dimery telling lies? I think not. Bowen wants to pretend that a trillion-dollar transition away from fossil fuels to a renewables-plus-storage model will be cheap and painless.
In fact, the evidence suggests it is impossible. The International Energy Agency says almost half the reductions to get to net zero by 2050 globally will have to come through “technologies that are currently at the demonstration or prototype phase” – you only have to look at the energy crises facing every economy going down the renewables path to see this reality playing out.
Yet even on potential energy solutions, too many deny the facts. Bowen, Albanese and even modern Labor’s nuclear energy realist, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, argue a domestic nuclear energy industry would be uneconomic – “the most expensive form of energy” – for Australia. This too, flies in the face of verifiable facts. The IEA’s 2020 analysis of electricity generation costs found that “electricity from the long-term operation of nuclear power plants constitutes the least cost option for low-carbon generation”. The politicians cite “most expensive” when the apolitical global experts talk about “least cost” – yet our national debate fails to interrogate these issues.
On current technology the great advantage of nuclear, despite considerable capital costs, is reliability, durability (a new plant will last at least 60 years) and the leveraging of existing transmission infrastructure. By comparison, renewables require massive overbuilds (so capacity triples demand to cover intermittency across different locations), battery storage (which is inadequate and prohibitively expensive), firming generation (probably gas) and at least 28,000km of transmission lines to link generation projects across vast distances. Additionally, solar panels and wind turbines will need to be replaced every 15 to 20 years.
So the initial capital cost of wind generation needs to be multiplied four or five times before it can be compared to nuclear. And nuclear is getting cheaper and easier with the development of small modular reactors.
If we have regard for the facts, and we want to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, no politician ought be able to reject nuclear on cost grounds. But there is far too little focus on reality right across this debate.
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Australia's leaders ignoring the reality of our energy problem
Coal-fired power is being withdrawn from the system by woke public companies and gas developments have become almost impossible thanks to activist lawfare which means prices are going to keep on rising, writes Peta Credlin.
While Anthony Albanese peddled the fantasy that Labor policy could cut household power bills by $275 a year, the reality – confirmed by the ACCC on Friday – is that “the median annual bill for residential customers” has increased by $294 (or 23 per cent) since April.
On Friday, a panicked national cabinet promised as-yet-unspecified rebates for consumers, plus price caps on coal and gas. But this is robbing Peter to pay Paul, won’t make much short-term difference to power bills, and is a massive breach in the hitherto accepted principle that governments can’t dictate to businesses the prices they charge.
The Albanese government claims that households will be $230 better off, but the modelling behind the spin says that prices will still rise by 23 per cent over the next financial year, despite the deal, rather than 36 per cent otherwise.
And I am sure it’s not lost on you that the same consumers set to receive these promised energy rebates are in fact the same taxpayers paying for them!
We are in this energy mess because too many people in authority assume that because solar panels and batteries can run a house, renewables can run a whole economy too.
As a result, coal-fired power is being withdrawn from the system by woke public companies. And new gas developments have become almost impossible thanks to activist lawfare. So, prices will continue to skyrocket and widespread blackouts, or forced rationing for heavy industry, are almost inevitable because the only new power coming into the system doesn’t work when the sun won’t shine and the wind won’t blow.
This is the unavoidable result of a power system that’s been run for years to reduce emissions rather than to produce affordable and reliable electricity.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s latest green catchcry “dispatchable renewable power” is an oxymoron; a contradiction in terms.
By its very nature, wind and solar power can’t always be available – unless, of course, they’re coupled with something else like batteries, that can’t produce grid-scale power for more than a few minutes; pumped-hydro which is expensive, environmentally fraught and still years away at grid scale; green hydrogen which remains completely unproven; or gas, which has so far sustained the move to renewables, but which is going to be more and more expensive as demand explodes but supply is constricted by yet more eco-extremism.
That’s the reality that Friday’s national cabinet meeting simply refused to face. Instead, it put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, with its price caps on coal and gas and rebates for consumers.
Capping fossil fuel prices guarantees that there will be less investment and, over time, shortages of coal and gas, even though fossil fuels will for decades continue to be needed to keep the lights on.
And, I repeat again, government-funded rebates on power bills means taxpayers funding consumers. In other words, us funding us.
Once the principle of price control is conceded for gas and coal, what about price control for other “necessities” such as rent and food? This is a massive departure from economic normality and a slippery slope towards a command economy apparently connived at by both sides of politics through the national cabinet.
No one who matters seems to be listening to the few sane voices still in our energy debate.
David Fallu, head of Tomago Aluminium, NSW’s biggest energy consumer, pointed out last week that his business would still need gas to “fill the breach when renewables aren’t generating”.
Trevor St Baker, a big investor both in renewable and in coal-fired power generation, said that the Liddell Power Station, that produces 10 per cent of NSW’s power, would have to be kept operating beyond April next year to ensure that the lights stayed on (yet there are plans to, literally, blow it up with dynamite). Even the Business Council of Australia said that “price caps will send the wrong signal to investors … when we need to be getting new supply into the market”.
And while both shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have made the obvious point that this is policy on the run, the Opposition hasn’t said what, precisely, it would do differently, such as refusing to allow the exit of coal until there’s a reliable dispatchable alternative, presumably because Liberals like NSW Treasurer Matt Kean share Labor’s coal-phobia and emissions obsession.
No one should fall for Labor’s spin that Putin’s war is to blame for higher power bills. The war started in February and in the months that followed until they won the election in May, Labor promised they would cut power bills. It is only after they won, that this promise was dropped and the war emerged as their excuse.
Rather than Putin, the real problem is the massive and accelerating shift from power from fossil fuels that’s available 24/7, to power from the wind and the sun that depends entirely on the weather and that therefore has to be “firmed” with gas. An honest conversation with the Australian public is long overdue about how we can have reliable and affordable power OR much lower emissions but not both, at least in the absence of nuclear.
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Covid vaccine mandate revoked for Queensland police
Queensland police will no longer be made to get the Covid vaccine after the direction was revoked this morning.
Queensland police will no longer be made to get a Covid vaccination, after the direction was revoked ton Monday morning.
In a memo to staff today acting Deputy Commissioner Shane Chelepy said public health advice suggested the virus would persist in the community for some time “with the severity and risk presented scaling up and down at various intervals”.
The Courier-Mail has confirmed 16 police officers and six staff members have been sacked for disobeying Covid-19 vaccination directions. A further 100 police have been sent discipline proceedings notices while 50 staff have been sent show cause notices.
It’s unclear what discipline action these officers will now face however Mr Chelepy in his memo to staff said they would still be investigated and “dealt with in line with our discipline processes”.
“While the Covid-19 public health environment continues to remain unpredictable, following the removal of the Public Health Emergency Declaration and changes to the public health risk environment, the QPS has reviewed the current Covid-19 vaccination requirements and it has been determined to revoke Commissioner’s Directions No. 13 and 14 as of Monday 12 December 2022,” Mr Chelepy wrote.
“The Deputy Chief Health Officer of Queensland was consulted as part of the review process conducted by QPS to determine the outcome of the direction.
“Following the revocation of the mandate, any conditions attached to exemptions granted by the Vaccination Exemption Committee (VEC) will no longer apply. Members who had conditions attached to their exemptions will be required to engage with their local management to arrange a return to business as usual.
“Members who were subject to discipline action for failure to comply with the Commissioner’s Directions will still be investigated and dealt with in line with our discipline processes.
“The outcomes for these employees will need to be reviewed on an individual basis, with consideration given to the nature and details of each matter.”
Mr Chelepy said there would still continue to be unknown risks for officers.
“As we transition to a different phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, all members are strongly encouraged to continue to follow all advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) and receive Covid-19 vaccines and boosters as recommended according to their age and individual health needs.
“In this new operating environment, there will continue to be unknown risks, as well as an increased risk of potential exposure, so it important to follow health recommendations to reduce the spread of this virus.
“Members should be aware and familiarise themselves with current Queensland Government Covid-19 advice which uses a traffic light system to assist individuals with what they should do to reduce the risk of catching and spreading Covid-19. The traffic light levels – red, amber, green – are based on the current level of risk in the community,” he said.
“The current traffic light level is amber – which means moderate rates of community transmission and Queensland is coming off a wave or may enter a new wave.
“We must be mindful of the virus’s ability to mutate into potentially more transmissible and serious variants. The QPS must maintain the ability to act on these developments and to issue future directions to ensure we maintain a ready workforce to meet our legislative responsibilities.
“The uncertain Covid-19 operating environment requires us all to remain vigilant, and I thank you for your ongoing commitment. Our people have already done the hard yards and should be proud of our collective effort to limit the impact of this virus on our organisation.”
A police spokesman confirmed the service would continue to assess all matters “currently initiated in relation to the Commissioner’s Directions on vaccination requirements, including disciplinary matters and proceedings before the courts and tribunal”.
The spokesman said 16 police officers and six staff members had been dismissed for disobeying the direction and would not be reinstated.
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11 December, 2022
The coming crash of the climate cult
Viv Forbes
The Climate Cult worships two green idols – electric vehicles and wind-solar energy. This is part of a futile UN scheme promoting ‘Net Zero Emissions’ which aims to cool the climate of the world by waging war on CO2 plant food.
Green worship is the state religion of all Western nations. It is promoted by billionaires with other agendas, and endlessly repeated by the UN, the bureaucracy, all government media, state education, and most big business leaders.
The promotion of electric cars and trucks will cause a great increase in the demand for electricity to replace diesel, petrol, and gas.
We live beside a major highway connecting Ipswich and Boonah in Queensland and we can hear the roar of the traffic.
The road is quiet at night, but as day dawns, the real workers start moving – big diesel trucks off to pick up the day’s loads of gravel, machinery, cattle, tanks, pipes, hay, timber, bricks, and concrete. Then comes the traffic that sustains urban life – meat vans, milk tankers, and refrigerated trucks of produce to fill supermarket shelves every day. Around sunrise come the commuters heading for city jobs, and the city’s electric trains, lifts, and escalators start to run. Then kids are delivered to school and sirens announce the occasional passing of ambulances, fire engines, and police bikes and cars. Finally, the tree-change bureaucrats cruise past in their electric cars heading for their leisurely staggered starts. By 9 am the traffic falls off.
To achieve Net Zero nirvana, all of this early morning traffic rush must be battery-powered. Untold thousands of batteries will need to be fully charged overnight – well before the vast paddocks of Chinese solar panels can deliver one amp of green electricity.
Listen here to Australia’s new Prime Minister during the recent election campaign explaining how roof-top solar will charge all those Tesla batteries overnight…
Australia’s reliable coal/gas power stations could charge batteries overnight, while city demand for electricity is lower, but the green religion demands closure and demolition of anything using hydro-carbons. But Green engineers have the solution – intermittent wind power plus big batteries will re-charge millions of vehicle batteries before dawn.
But what keeps trains, lifts, hospitals, and refrigerators going if we have a still night followed by another cloudy day? More batteries or Snowy 9 Pumped Hydro? And if the still cloudy weather continues, what will re-charge the Big Batteries and re-pump the hydros? And will Greens apply the same conservation standards and delaying tactics to wind, solar, hydro, and power line construction that they now apply to coal mines?
The Queensland Premier has a $62 billion green plan to close all coal power stations, cover the countryside with wind/solar clutter, plan whole cities of battery charging stations, build the ‘world’s biggest’ pumped-hydro batteries (net CONSUMERS of electricity) and become a world leader in ‘green hydrogen’ (huge CONSUMERS of electricity and water). Soon after the last coal power plant is demolished, in a snap of still, cold, cloudy weather the lights will go out, electric trains will stop, and battery-powered food deliveries to the cities will falter. There will be uproar in Parliaments, and all Green/Teal/ALP governments will fall. The ABC will blame ‘climate change’.
Energy Realists will take over. They will immediately place orders for dozens of modular nuclear power plants.
But this energy reality will come too late. Long lines of city dwellers with bicycles, wheel-barrows, and old diesel utes will flee from the hungry cities.
Some of these power refugees may get jobs harvesting potatoes and onions with digging forks, milking cows by hand, or plucking and cleaning chooks.
Re-powering and re-building will take decades.
All this for zero climate benefits – the world has passed the peak of this interglacial and the next long glacial cycle is edging closer.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/12/the-coming-crash-of-the-climate-cult/
****************************************************A plague of environmentalist judges
A ‘lawfare’-laced New Year as activism reaps its rewards from environmentalist judges: that is what last month’s three ground-breaking judicial decisions that rejected fossil fuel developments on environmental and social grounds, have ensured for Australia’s major export industries – coal and gas. ‘There is now the risk of more delays and obstacles in the progression of important energy projects, postponing new supply that is needed to deliver energy security, emissions reductions and substantial economic returns for Australians’, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association CEO Samantha McCulloch told the media.
Upheaval across Australia’s oil and gas industry is expected after Santos’ loss of a Federal Court appeal against a decision to cancel its $5.3 billion development approval due to inadequate consultation with local indigenous people; coal projects are under a cloud following both the Queensland Land and Environment Court knocking back a huge Galilee Basin development on the basis of overseas customers’ emissions and, incredibly, human rights and the NSW Independent Planning Commission’s heritage-based decision against Glencore’s plans to extend its operations.
Added to this is the uncertainty generated at the federal level by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in responding to an environmental activist request by implementing reviews of 18 of the previous government’s approvals of proposed new coal and gas projects which include major companies like Woodside, ConocoPhillips, Whitehaven and Glencore. The Australian newspaper reports that resource analysts fear that there will be a new front opened in Australia as these 18, of which 13 are coal projects in Queensland and four in NSW, with a gas project in WA, covering $100 billion in investments and 175,000 jobs, could face legal action to block progress.
November’s three negative decisions follow repeated examples of the damaging economic consequences of judges usurping the role of elected parliaments by imposing their own activist versions of environmental law. The consequences include increased sovereign risk that puts in doubt the foreign investment essential for Australia’s future, uncertainty over the supply of vital funding for affordable and reliable energy, denial of mining approvals on grounds unsupported by legislation, and the costly delays to billions of dollars of projects through the lawfare encouraged by so many anti-mining judgements.
The Queensland Land and Environment Court’s rejection last month of a proposal by Waratah Coal to build the biggest thermal coal mine in Australia in the Galilee Basin aimed at producing almost four times as much as its neighbouring Adani mine (which is at last operational after years of legal obstructionism), prompted little public outcry beyond a perceptive article in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail under the heading ‘Is this the death warrant for the coal industry?’ and describing the judgement as reading like ‘a green manifesto that will have major ramifications for Queensland’.
But the mining industry kept shtum. The reason? Waratah’s owner is the combative Clive Palmer; instead of the much-needed principled assault on this destructive anti-mining precedent, there was an overwhelming reluctance to be seen to be effectively supporting such a divisive figure.
Yet the court’s recommendation to the state government is untenable. Its president, and former climate activist, Judge Fleur Kingham, asserted not only that climate change was a key issue but that the project’s climate impact would limit human rights. This is the first time a Queensland judge has recommended rejecting a mine based on the climate impacts of coal burnt overseas. ‘Wherever the coal is burnt the emissions will contribute to environmental harm, including in Queensland.’ It is also the first time Queensland’s Human Rights Act has been used to object to a mining project on climate change and Indigenous cultural rights grounds.
But this is not the first time that courts or tribunals have falsely asserted that Australia’s Paris obligations, its state and federal emission reduction and net-zero targets mean that no new mines or major extensions of existing ones can be accommodated. That parliaments, whose responsibility it is, have not passed laws imposing that prohibition means that there is no legislative basis for this judge-created assertion and, on the contrary, governments, which stress the word ‘net’ before ‘zero’, are involved in projects offsetting CO2 emissions so that there is no automatic link between a new coal mine or gas field and the volume of emissions.
Even more controversial is Judge Kingham’s conclusion that, ‘In relation to climate change, I have found that the following rights of certain groups of people in Queensland would be limited: the right to life, the cultural rights of First Nations peoples, the rights of children, the right to property and to privacy and home, and the right to enjoy human rights equally’, all would be threatened by the consequences of emissions-induced climate change. ‘For each right, considered individually, I have decided the importance of preserving the right, given the nature and extent of the limitation, weighs more heavily in the balance than the economic benefits of the mine and the benefit of contributing to energy security for Southeast Asia.’ This is at odds with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who, while aiming at net zero by 2050, has a stated position that Queensland coal exports will continue for ‘as long as the market dictates’.
The NSW anti-coal judgement reflects a different problem. On top of its criticism of the outcome, the mining industry expressed serious concern about the process, in which the state government has delegated decision-making to a three-person panel with no accountability either to the government or the public. But at least the NSW Independent Planning Commission did acknowledge that the proposal, which it rejected on (questionable?) heritage grounds, was, in the absence of any clear governmental policy guidance, not inconsistent with net zero or Paris obligations or Australia’s varied emissions targets and so could not be denied on that ground.
Activist judges with a penchant for creating their own unlegislated rules with which to enforce their environmental agendas, please note.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/business-robbery-etc-105
******************************************************What the federal government's coal price cap means for power bills, generators and Queensland's royalties
The federal government has announced a price cap on gas and coal to help ease the cost of energy.
While some of the details still need to be nutted out, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said parliament will move to place a temporary cap on gas at $12 a gigajoule, and that states will be capping coal at $125 per tonne.
Along with the caps, Mr Albanese said the federal government would provide up to $1.5 billion to support households and small businesses.
The PM said federal, state and territory governments were "determined to provide some relief" through "extraordinary measures".
How does a price cap lower your power bill, in theory?
Australian energy economist Bruce Mountain, who heads up the Energy Policy Centre, said the price caps may not actually work to bring down energy bills as hoped.
That's because there are a number of elements that make up your energy bill.
Professor Mountain said making the electricity is one part of the cost — as is customer service, shipping, selling, billing and marketing that electricity to the consumer.
"So in principle, decreasing the cost of any one elements of that cost stack will decrease the cost to the end customer … at least, that's the hope," he said.
Professor Mountain said because of the complexity of our energy markets, we can't be sure how capping one element of the chain is going to play out — or whether coal or gas companies will pass on the discount to the consumer.
How will the price cap affect the big coal generators?
First of all, the price caps only affect the local market and won't impact the coal we export.
In the local market, there are only a few generators that look likely to be affected, Professor Mountain said.
"The vast bulk of the coal that's burned in Australia is contracted forward," he said. A forward contract is an agreement to buy or sell an asset at a future date at a specified price.
"Those forward contracts — which are the price they're paying now — are at a substantially lower price than what we see in the market now," Professor Mountain explained.
"But we can say at this point it is only a few generators, one or two that we know, are buying coal at prices that are a premium to the $125 cap. "So they're the ones at the moment to focus on."
Origin Energy's Eraring power station in NSW's Hunter region appears to be paying more than $125 a tonne already.
The station can either accept the price cap or choose to find another market for it overseas, Professor Mountain said.
"Eraring is our important, big electricity generator in the market," he said. "It would be a loss of have a generator that's critical to the market right now, so I think the market would find it hard to actually sustain its total loss.
"If we lose all of their production, there would be pretty big price effects because you'd need to pump up a whole lot of gas-fired generation, certainly during winter and the evenings and mornings."
Will Queensland's coal royalties be affected?
This week Queensland's mid-year financial and economic update forecast new coal royalty tiers will deliver $2.95 billion this financial year.
But Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said those royalties have "nothing to do with" the price caps.
That's because the vast majority — 90 per cent — of the state's coal is exported internationally.
Stanwell and Gladstone are two Queensland coal-fired generators that provide energy to the local market. Stanwell is government owned and Gladstone is privately owned.
Professor Mountain said he doesn't believe these two generators are currently paying a premium, so they may not be impacted by the cap.
As part of its agreement with the federal government, Queensland will not impose any cap through legislation. Instead it will issue a direction to its government-owned corporations.
Asked whether state-owned generators would be out of pocket, the Premier said "I doubt it, they're in a very good situation".
"We have an abundance of coal … we are the energy powerhouse of the nation."
She also emphasised that the price caps would have a 12-month expiry date. "It's good that it's only for one year — it's a temporary measure," she said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-10/queensland-coal-price-cap-power-bills-royalties/101740538
**************************************************Parks Australia: when bureaucracy turns racist
Imagine telling a Brit of migrant origin that they’re forbidden from visiting the White Cliffs of Dover because they are a spiritually important geological feature – or that anyone with the wrong skin colour looking at them would cause distress and offence. What about if all non-white tourists were banned from Stonehenge because those who aren’t indigenous to the area are somehow violating the spirit of traditional ownership and tarnishing the land with their presence? How about a ‘welcome to country’ to all migrants every time they enter a public hall?
Yeah, I can hear the court cases and media outrage already. What unbelievable racism!!! White supremacy!!! How dare you offend migrants!!! They are just as British as anyone else!!! The press would cry, and they would be right, yet the conversation is identical to what is taking place in Australia.
White Brits are the Indigenous owners of the UK, but they’d be laughed at if they asked for special consideration surrounding their culturally sacred sites. There’s an assumption that Brits – or anyone of European descent – aren’t entitled to a connection to the land or their ancestral places. They’re stuck in racial purgatory because they – alone of all conquering civilisations – must suffer the loss of their identity as penance for dragging the world into the modern era. It doesn’t matter how terrible the sins are of other nations (plenty of which make Europe look like a panda petting zoo), the collectivists want to destroy Western dominance and they’ve decided to use imagined race politics to do it.
For a nation to maintain civil peace and cohesion, there is an understanding that all citizens are equal. Public spaces – such as National Parks – are the property of citizens to be funded by, looked after for, and enjoyed by everyone. Australians are entitled to feel a spiritual connection to their homeland, regardless of the colour of their skin. To suggest otherwise is outright racism and shame on the Liberal Party for failing to stand against Labor and the Greens on this issue that will see the children of this country ranked like a Bunnings paint chart. A sensible person would expect parents to be horrified at their children being saddled with the crimes of people who share their skin colour, but plenty of inner-city affluent families see the sacrifice of their children’s innocence as some kind of social purification. They love watching their children being punished.
The argument that a person’s DNA defines their affinity to the land is nonsense. A ‘white’ person born in Australia, who works the land and spends their whole life in the bush, will have a deep spiritual affinity. They will not have some kind of mystic connection to a country in Europe that they’ve never been to simply because, five generations ago, a distant relative was born there. It makes about as much sense as claiming Aboriginal Australians have a spiritual connection to Africa (instead of Australia) because Africa is the true origin of their genetic ancestry and a place where their elders spent millions, rather than tens of thousands, of years. After all, if we want to play the idiotic game of counting ancestors, all of us spent more time together in Africa than in any other place in the world.
Race politics is a political weapon brought out by the worst regimes as a way to divide society and scam money or power from whichever ‘race’ is being demonised. If our political class had any moral strength, this sort of behaviour would qualify as a crime.
Parks Australia was set up as a benign organisation to take care of national and marine parks, but recently they have turned into the Race Police, locking Australians of the wrong colour out of their publicly funded shared environments.
As an organisation, they have already been savaged by people old enough to remember how much better Australia’s parks did when they were open to the public and managed properly. The ‘lock up’ policies remain widely blamed by people who live around national parks for being the true cause of huge bushfires (that politicians wrongly attribute to climate change) due to poor maintenance of fire trails, the banning of grazing animals, prevention of farmers managing burn offs, and general poor upkeep by park rangers. Of course, Parks Australia gets really nasty when they are criticised by the public, but tough luck – they deserve it. Coastal areas in particular have seen the loss of their native wildflower fields due to management failing to maintain the regular burn-offs required to preserve the habitat with political concerns for ‘koala habitats’ drowning out any reasonable discussion.
Since then, Parks Australia have progressed from locking Australians out of public land due to ‘wildlife protection’ and are engaging in race-based lockouts justified by ‘honouring spiritual connections’ to the land by small Indigenous groups.
These public parks are paid for – and previously enjoyed by – all Australians, but now places like Mount Warning have been locked down. Closed during the pandemic (for reasons that are obviously complete nonsense), the park never re-opened to the public and has been renamed. Not only are people of the wrong race forbidden from walking the previously public track frequented by 120,000 people a year, but Australians are also banned from taking photographs – photographs! I bet Google Maps isn’t stopped from taking satellite imagery of the park.
As one person wrote on Facebook, ‘The whole of Australia will be deemed cultural land before too long, and we won’t be able to climb any mountain or cross any river. Disgrace.’ This sentiment was repeated by another who wrote, ‘My culture says I will climb that mountain whenever I feel like it. Sick of this over-regulated country … time to start giving the finger to authority.’
There are plenty of other similar comments. One might say that Parks Australia is one of the chief bodies responsible for sparking racial tension between Australian citizens by actively discriminating against them.
People are, quite rightly, asking why they should fund the upkeep of public parks if they are not allowed to enjoy or even photograph them. Why should a racist level of bureaucracy receive a single cent of public money?
Mount Warning is a natural geological feature. It was not built by a single Indigenous hand. As such, it is the joint property of all Australian citizens – a shared ancestral land for all who call themselves Australian. That was why national parks were set up in the first place. Any group that claims it is culturally unsafe or offensive to allow another person to visit due to their race – is racist. It is a sentiment that cannot be justified and should instead be openly shamed by all decent and moral people. Imagine if someone banned Indigenous people from climbing the Harbour Bridge because it would be ‘culturally unsafe’. Those times are gone, and allowing Indigenous groups to resurrect racism for political privilege and money is – as one Facebook user wrote – a farce.
Which brings us to what we might hope is the last straw.
Recently, Parks Australia sent out a letter of demand to the Herald Sun wanting them to remove a cartoon of Ayers Rock (Uluru). The cartoon by Mark Knight showed Ayers Rock looming over Parliament to symbolise the coming Voice to Parliament referendum.
Parks Australia attempted to say that drawing the national (and natural) geological feature violated its media guidelines surrounding ‘sensitive and sacred sites’ without a permit.
‘These artworks do not have media permits and breach media guidelines. To comply with the EPBC Act, media guidelines, ICIP (Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property) laws and show respect for Anangu land and culture, we ask that you remove any artwork breaching these conditions and showing Uluru.’
A permit. To draw Ayers Rock. Most Australians were outraged to discover that such a ridiculous guideline existed and demanded Parks Australia explain itself.
To be frank, most people told Parks Australia to ‘get f—d’ or some variation on the theme of unprintable outrage.
The permits were meant to ‘protect Anangu against inappropriate use and benefits to others from the commercialisation of their Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property’. What, like the decades of Tourism Australia ads that dug the regional community out of poverty? That kind of commercialisation? Before commercialisation, no one cared about locking people out of Ayers Rock because there was no guilt-money in it. If anything, the actions of Parks Australia is a form of commercialisation by gate-keeping licenses to draw the rock.
The Herald Sun met Parks Australia with a few scary looking lawyers and pretty quickly, Parks Australia replied:
‘Staff sent Mr Knight an email about the Ulu?u-Kata Tju?a media guidelines which was not appropriate. It isn’t a request that should have been made and we apologised for the error.’
An error or an embarrassment? Legal demands are rarely sent ‘by accident’. Someone made a conscious decision to draft it, pen it, approve it, and hit ‘send’.
Telling a cartoonist that they cannot draw Ayers Rock is pretty close to banning images of Mohammad. Roping off sections of culture for ‘special groups’ is not just a slippery slope – it’s a nightmare cliff that ends in division, hatred, and animosity.
‘It made me feel like I had done something wrong. I thought it was a very nice image and low and behold, ironically, I was asked to take it down,’ said Mr Knight.
That’s the point of race politics. Australians are being made to feel like they’ve done something wrong by enjoying an afternoon on their favourite walking track – or taking a selfie in the middle of the bush. It’s the art of creating outrage out of nothing and then shaking the collection bucket for reparations.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/12/parks-australia-when-bureaucracy-turns-racist/
************************************9 December, 2022
Chicken Little Propaganda Dressed As Science Permeates New Climate Report
The Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO have delivered their biennial dose of depression about the climate in their latest State of the Climate report.
The climate has warmed by 1.5C and there is barely a single benefit – it is all disaster.
It is often said, “if it is too good to be true, it probably is” and you are being conned. What about too bad to be true? Can a gently warming climate have no significant benefits at all?
The only marginally encouraging part of the report is about northern Australia. There might have been a slight reduction in cyclone numbers, and there has been a bit more rain in recent decades.
Apart from that, the report reads like the Book of Exodus – one disaster after another. Only the frogs and boils are missing.
But it is significant that the period when Egyptians were building pyramids, which was hotter than today’s climate, is often called the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
The word “optimum” was an indication that scientists working in the era before climate alarmism could see some advantage of a warmer climate.
A sure sign that the report tries too hard to find disaster is when it discusses coral bleaching and the Great Barrier Reef.
It stresses that there have been four bleaching events in the past six years, which it implies were devastating. But for some reason, the report fails to mention that this year the reef recorded its highest amount of coral since records began in 1985.
This proves that all the hype about coral loss from bleaching was greatly exaggerated. But the report writers were obviously untroubled by the contradictory evidence.
They ignored it.
And they also ignore the fact that corals grow about 15 percent faster for every degree temperature rise, and that almost all the corals on the reef also live in much warmer water near the equator.
We should expect better coral, and it should extend further south. That is not too bad, is it?
Why doesn’t the report mention that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere improves the water utilization efficiency of dryland plants, which occupy most of Australia, and that this has caused plants to thrive?
According to NASA satellites, there is a “greening” of Australia of at least 10 percent. Overall, the world has seen the area of green leaves expand by the equivalent of twice the area of the United States in just 35 years.
In a changing climate, there will be winners and losers, and it might be that the net effect is a major problem. But if the report writers will not even mention the good bits, how can we have any confidence in its findings?
The latest report should ring alarm bells – but not just about climate. Is this an excellent tool of propaganda, or is it a scientific statement?
We should all worry about whether groupthink has taken hold of the BOM and CSIRO.
We should worry when the BOM says it has recently adjusted all the temperature records, reducing the temperatures a century ago by up to a degree. Can we have any confidence they did this with good scientific reason?
And we should worry about the BOM’s claims that the fire seasons are now much worse than in 1950. Why is all the information on huge bushfires before 1950 ignored – like the devastating 1851 Victorian bushfire and the 1939 fires?
It is not like there is no data before 1950.
Did they ignore that data for a good reason? Is this similar to the US fire statistics, which are often reported by authorities as having a major increase in fire acreage burnt since the early 60s, but fail to mention that there was almost 10 times more acreage burnt in the “dust-bowl” period in the 1930s?
In the next decades, Australian governments plan to spend hundreds of billions attempting to prevent climate change. Before we do that, maybe we could spend a few million doing an audit of BOM and CSIRO reports.
Maybe we would find that adapting to a changing climate is by far the best way to proceed. We might even find that some of what we have been told is wrong.
Why will the conservative parties not commit to an audit? Who would argue against a bit of checking of the science, when the Great Barrier Reef statistics prove scientists got something badly wrong?
And the latest report is a sure sign that the BOM and CSIRO are drifting into political advocacy rather than science, observation, and objective prediction.
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ESG superannuation funds are bad investments
This year Australian ESG superannuation funds lost over 10 per cent of their members’ wealth.
Business, where the profit motive is explicitly dominant and where the hundreds of millions of direct and indirect owners want to see it remain the crowned ruler, might be expected to reject spending that syphons off profits to political causes… And yet, nearly every firm funnels funding to politically acceptable causes, in the main involving those of a social and environmental nature.
Sometimes, pressured by governmental regulatory stances, like the soon-to-be mandatory reductions on the top Australian emitters, a growing number of firms also engage in expenditure that replace fossil fuel derived energy with more expensive wind and solar. Also important is the avoidance by superannuation fund managers of investments in firms deemed to be involved in globally harmful activities within the ‘Environment, Social and Governance’ (ESG) framework. Once targeted at avoiding gambling, tobacco, and alcohol, the hallmark of these causes is now environmentalism, particularly avoiding fossil fuel producers.
Stocks favoured by sentiment will see their values rise in relation to their underlying earnings. But can this persist indefinitely without it being matched by increased profits?
Canstar and Chant West are among the organisations that monitor superfunds’ performances. About half of the funds scrutinised adopt the contemporary ESG doctrine that involves seeking to exclude firms producing fossil fuels from within their portfolios.
For many years, firms following this approach could offer credible claims that they were also performing well in terms of their overall returns. This is no longer the case. The following table draws from the superannuation fund monitors to show the ten worst fund performers in 2022, alongside the funds’ average performances over the past five years and their ESG status.
The six funds having performed worst are all ESG oriented, avoiding investments in firms mining coal and other hydrocarbons. This year they lost over 10 per cent of their members’ wealth. Those ESG funds that previously had strong performances were heavily invested in tech and property stocks, which had experienced above average gains. Tech stocks have now seen falling prices; this may also be true of property but most property funds have extensive holdings of un-listed investments (Virgin Money is one property fund that exclusively invests in listed property and showed an 11 per cent fall in value this year). Added to this is another factor: the recent buoyancy of the coal, gas, and oil stocks that the boycotting of which leaves ESG funds disadvantaged compared to funds that are more purely focused on returns.
Most funds’ marketing material includes words that warn that past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance, while extolling their past success. Thus Unisuper, which has divested from coal stocks, still has on its site that it led the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) pack in terms of returns as at August 2021. But during 2022, Unisuper has lost 4.4 per cent of its members’ wealth. Similarly, with remarkable chutzpah, having this year lost 15 per cent of its members’ funds, Australian Ethical is running a TV promotional campaign featuring outlandish characters extolling the fund’s virtues, ‘Because I want my environment like I want my stocks – THRIVING!’
As a consumer protector, APRA has the power to force chronic under-performing funds to merge with a better-performing fund; four were forced to do so this year. However, now that the ESG funds have become demonstrably vulnerable to this sanction, industry bodies are calling for its dilution – even to prevent the under-performers being named, ‘If linked to deliberate strategies for climate change or other ESG issues.’ To buttress this protection of ESG under-performers, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors is seeking to intensify ESG reporting requirements, the objective of which is to ensure few stand-outs. ESG reporting is already mandatory in the UK, EU, New Zealand, and Canada.
The share of wind and solar in global electricity supply has risen from zero at the turn of the 21st century to 10 per cent today (22 per cent in Australia with policies aiming at over 80 per cent). These are intrinsically high cost and low reliability energy sources. But private sector subsidy-seekers and institutional support on the back of the confected climate scare together with government subsidies have underpinned their growth. How will this be affected by newly evident financial realities in a competitive market for superannuants’ savings, where the savers’ prime concern is the returns they receive?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/esg-climate-virtue-bleeding-super-dry/
**************************************************Courage is the cure when faced with medical censorship
Kara Thomas
The Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS) is on a mission to restore medical free speech in this country and ensure the loyalty of doctors and all health practitioners remains first and foremost with patients – not bureaucrats or politicians.
AMPS is currently touring the country, booking out venues, as we continue our fight to Stop Medical Censorship. This week we have our final events in South Australia and all are welcome to attend.
AMPS is refusing to silently comply with unscientific and unaccountable public health messaging. Our dedication is to advocate for our patients’ best interests as our primary concern as outlined by the Codes of Conduct. We take seriously our Code of Conduct, which is consistent with the Declaration of Geneva, and says:
I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity and the International code of medical ethics, where our duties as members of the medical profession instructs physicians to help prevent national or international ethical, legal, organisational, or regulatory requirements that undermine any of the duties set forth in this Code.
Both the declaration and ethical principles were issued by the World Medical Association after the second world war when systematic gross human rights abuses took place under national laws. History does not look kindly on Medical professionals who were found to be complicit in human rights violations. AMPS doctors across the country are risking careers that took decades to achieve to question government dictates supported by secret health advice as they seek answers. These practitioners have decided the price of silent compliance when things don’t seem right is a price they are not willing to pay.
The gagging of doctors in Australia for questioning government public health campaigns such as the Australian COVID-19 Vaccination Policy and using threats to their careers and livelihood as a tool to enforce compliance, is a national disgrace.
Engagement, not censorship, with the health sector is what was recommended in our 2019 pandemic preparedness plans to understand the impact and effectiveness of the pandemic response measures reflecting the on-the-ground experience of the health sector and public concerns, and evidence of the effectiveness of approaches. Instead, our governments issued joint statements during 2021 outlining action can be taken against a practitioner that doesn’t provide health advice consistent with public health campaigns.
Questioning ‘the messaging’, even with scientific evidence, can result in investigation and disciplinary action including immediate suspension of registration.
This has culminated with what appears to be the legislating of these joint statements through the recent passage of the dangerous and dystopian Health Practitioner Regulation National Law that prioritises Public confidence over public health and safety. It appears censorship is how the Ministers of Truth (sorry, Health) in this country have decided they are going to achieve their goal of public confidence.
Having the public believe government policies are keeping them safe is apparently more important than convincing data or evidence to demonstrate safety.
The human, social and economic consequences of their policies may be demonstrating the greatest public health mistake in human history, but doctors have been and continue to be forbidden from questioning public health messaging to ensure you continue to think the government is ‘keeping you safe’.
Not only is this legislation a dangerous disgrace but likely a constitutional infringement on our right of political communication as outlined by Constitutional Law Professor Augusto Zimmermann at our recent WA symposium. Publishing his statements in an article in Quadrant titled the Menace of Medical Censorship in Australia, Professor Zimmerman concluded this law is unconstitutional.
‘Because it suppresses freedom of political communication by censoring and punishing dissenters through serious threats to careers and livelihood, as a means to undemocratically control public debate and general perception through enforced medical censorship.’
Our country is experiencing unprecedented rates of adverse reactions with excess all cause mortality now exceeding 17 per cent, a massive increase in anxiety and depression and massive impacts on our children with a recent study finding that children born during the pandemic have significantly lower IQs. Now what should doctors in Australia do after researching the available evidence and finding obvious scientific conflicts, outright absurdities and unanswered questions about our response to Covid? What would you want them to do?
The choices are: comply with government public health campaigns and keep silent; or fight for answers risking investigation and disciplinary action from AHPRA and national boards.
AMPS is taking the perspective of Dr Paul Oosterhuis, an honourable doctor who was suspended for sharing information that undermined confidence in the government Covid public health campaign. He states, ‘Censorship kills. My responsibility is to the Hippocratic Oath, as basic ethics compels me to share data that I believe is definitely in the public interest.’
Our National Tour fulfils the recommendation of our pandemic plans to discuss the impact and effectiveness of the pandemic response measures reflecting the on-the-ground experience of the health sector and public concerns. We all need our practitioners to question what doesn’t make sense for the health and safety of the public. Every practitioner that learns the truth as British Cardiologist Dr Aseem Mulhotra did, the more practitioners will use their right to refuse to comply with treatments to which they conscientiously object.
Dr Mulhotra said, ‘He slowly and reluctantly concluded contrary to his own initial dogmatic beliefs Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is far from being as safe and effective as we first thought.’
Medical ethics and the codes we have sworn to uphold compel us to use our right of political communication to advocate for our patients as our primary concern. AMPS is seeking public health and safety based on the principles of transparent, accountable evidence-based medicine to replace the political-based medicine we are currently witnessing in this country.
Creating public confidence through enforced public ignorance is not science, it is propaganda.
Our Code that we have sworn to uphold can not be overridden by demands of adherence to National laws that have resulted in possibly the greatest miscarriage of medical science we will witness in our lifetime. We take seriously our ethical obligation to prevent national or regulatory requirements that undermine our duty to our patients and medical ethics. History only repeats if we have not learnt from it. We cannot be complicit, courage is the cure.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/courage-is-the-cure/
****************************************************US Congress gives the green light to Australian submarine officers training on US nuclear boats
Australian submarine officers have been given the green light to train on American nuclear-powered boats in the first AUKUS law ticked off by the US Congress.
US politicians have also opened the door to leasing nuclear submarines to Australia – or even providing access to the Air Force’s futuristic B-21 stealth bomber – as part of a mammoth $1.2 trillion defence spending package.
The bipartisan 4408-page bill also includes $382m to upgrade Darwin’s RAAF Base, as the American and Australian governments finalise the details of an expanded US military presence down under.
The bill – which passed the House of Representatives and will soon be approved by the Senate – requires US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to order an independent assessment before the end of next year on the challenges of implementing the AUKUS pact.
This would cover issues including personnel and resourcing, information sharing, security protocols and export controls.
Politicians also called for the assessment of “alternatives that would significantly accelerate Australia’s national security”, such as leasing or handing over “legacy” US submarines, or “the conveyance of B-21 bombers”.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, who was in Washington DC this week for talks with Mr Austin, described the B-21 as a “cool looking aircraft” but said acquiring it was not on the radar. “We should just remember that literally the Americans have just announced it themselves and are getting it operational, so there’s no conversations about B-21s,” he said.
The submarine training program was developed by the bipartisan AUKUS working group led by Democratic Congressman Joe Courtney, who said it would “help ensure that Royal Australian Navy officers are ready to pilot these world-beating submarines expertly upon arrival”.
News Corp revealed earlier this month that five Australian Navy officers had already joined the US Navy’s world-leading onshore nuclear propulsion training program in South Carolina.
Republican Congressman Blake Moore said: “This is just the beginning of a new era in global maritime defence co-operation. My colleagues and I look forward to continue fostering this critical alliance in defence of the rules based international order and freedom across our nations.”
President Joe Biden’s signature is required to lock in the $1.2 trillion package, which also scrapped the Covid vaccine mandate for the military and featured up to $14.7bn in security assistance and fast-tracked weapons for Taiwan.
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8 December, 2022
‘Book ban’ angers academics amid claims University of Tasmania ‘in crisis’ due to ‘all powerful’ VC and management ‘cadre’
A war on tall bookshelves?? Bureaucracy gone mad. As you would expect of a retired academic, I have tall bookshelves at home. Am I in danger? Would I be welcome in Tasmania?
University of Tasmania academics say they have been ordered to remove books from shelves and throw away their “life’s work”, all in the name of “safer spaces”.
A parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday heard senior academics allege UTAS was in “crisis” and had “lost its direction” due to an erosion of academic influence by a rampant “management cadre”.
“What we’ve been seeing in recent times is the growth in the management level and them assuming more of a role in directing academic activities,” UTAS Emeritus Professor Stuart McLean told the Legislative Council inquiry. “As an example, an edict came around recently that books were to be removed from shelves in … academic offices.”
Outside the inquiry, several academics confirmed to The Australian they had been ordered to remove books above shoulder-height, as well as all records that will not be used in the next year.
“You can’t have anything left in the office – it is deeply puzzling, and quite bizarre,” said one academic, on condition of anonymity. “Most academic offices are lined with books … and dumping much of your life’s work in the bin is hard to do.”
Academics said some had dodged the safety auditors, retaining ceiling-high books; others had been allowed to keep some above shoulder-height as long as they had an “industrially-rated step ladder”.
UTAS safety and wellbeing director Chris Arnold said any actions were about “keeping our people safe”. “Throughout 2020 and 2021, we ran a series of safety-focused clean-up days in all areas of the university, which resulted in cleaner, safer spaces for our staff and students,” Mr Arnold said.
“Some of the advice we provided included ensuring workspaces were not cluttered in ways that inhibited access or created fire and trip hazards, and that heavy items – like large books or boxes of equipment and items like glass sample slides – were not kept on shelves above shoulder height.”
The LegCo is inquiring into UTAS’ governance under state law, with peak bodies hoping it will lead to a model to restore academic freedom at universities nationally.
Senior academics are pushing for an increase in elected academic representation on key bodies.
Distinguished Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick told the inquiry even UTAS’ academic senate, of which he was until recently a member, was dominated by managers.
“So the majority of people on the academic senate are in upper level management positions and a minority are elected from the academics,” Professor Kirkpatrick told the inquiry.
“It’s not really giving an academic perspective on the courses and on the teaching programs. It’s a perspective that’s dominated by the people who are managing the university.”
Distinguished Professor Jeff Malpas told the inquiry UTAS was “in crisis” and “looking like a third or fourth rate” institution, due to the “McKinsey-ite” management model of Vice Chancellor Rufus Black.
“The governance structure has fallen into complete decay as a result of a centralised approach that concentrates effectively all power in the VC – and that’s a sure-fire recipe for disaster,” Professor Malpas said.
Former UTAS chancellor Michael Field has defended the current UTAS council as having the “right balance” and dismissed the reform push as a “harking back” by “retired academics”.
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Excess deaths in 2022 ‘incredibly high’ at 13 per cent
Almost certainly due in the main to people with other illnesses not getting treatment during the Covid panic
The Australian government should be urgently investigating the “incredibly high” 13 per cent excess death rate in 2022, the country’s peak actuarial body says.
An extra 15,400 people died in the first eight months of the year, according to new analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data by the Actuaries Institute, with around one-third of those having no link to Covid.
Karen Cutter, an actuary of more than 25 years and spokeswoman for the institute’s Covid-19 Mortality Working Group, said 13 per cent was an “incredibly high number for mortality” and that it was “not clear” what was driving the increase.
“Mortality doesn’t normally vary by more than 1 to 2 per cent, so 13 per cent is way higher than normal levels,” she said.
“I’m not aware [of anything comparable] in the recent past but I haven’t gone back and looked [historically]. They talk about the flu season of 2017 being really bad, and the mortality there was 1 per cent higher than normal. So it’s well outside the range of normal.”
She added, “In addition to Covid-19 deaths, there are significant numbers of non-Covid deaths – it is not clear what is causing these as there are many factors at play.”
“Looking at mortality and how that might be different from expectations is part of the core of what we do,” Ms Cutter said.
“A lot of insurance products rely on mortality assumptions – life insurance, death and disability, superannuation – it crosses over a lot of things. Similarly with morbidity. I tell my friends we do all the maths behind insurance.”
While sounding the alarm was one thing, Ms Cutter said what happened next was a “very good question”.
“I think the government should be looking at it – I don’t know to what extent they are or not, I don’t know what kind of investigations are underway,” she said.
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How couple's dream Tesla roadtrip turned into a nightmare after they became stranded without a charger deep in the country
Bernadette and Stephen Janson from Sydney hired a Tesla Model 3 for the recent six-day journey to Echuca in rural Victoria as a 'try-before-you-buy' test run.
But the pair ran into trouble on day three of the journey when, with 12 kilometres of battery left, they went to hook their car up to an electric vehicle charging station in the town of Leitchville on the NSW-Victoria border.
They realised their Tesla didn't have the cord they needed for that station and so they went to the next nearest charge point in the adjacent town on what battery they had left - but that one wasn't working.
'Massive drama today, we had enough charge to drive to the next town of Cohuna where there is a charger only to discover it's not working,' Ms Janson said in a video shared to TikTok.
'We've been on the phone for three hours getting the run around between the car hire company, RACV and NRMA.'
Ms Janson said she eventually spotted a tow truck that had stopped nearby and 'rushed over to grab the driver' but even he couldn't help with the correct cables or any way to charge the car.
'But he did say he knew of a lady that lives in Cohuna with a Tesla so we called her and she told us that to get enough charge to get back to Echuca would take about six hours,' she said.
'It's 2pm now and we've been at this (place) since 7am so frankly that's not ideal'.
The problem was only solved after the car hire company agreed to foot the bill for a tow truck lift to yet another charging station because they had not included the extra charging adapter they initially needed in their hire car.
'But we're going to have to extend our road trip for another day,' Ms Janson said.
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Glencore pulls plug on $2bn Valeria coal project in Queensland
Glencore has pulled the plug on a $2bn coalmine in Queensland, backing away from the major thermal coal development in the face of the state’s royalty increases and the federal government’s industrial relations changes.
The mining giant, Australia’s biggest coal producer, is understood to have written to both the Queensland and federal environment departments over the last week to withdraw applications for approval of the Valeria project.
A spokesman for Glencore confirmed the company had cancelled its plans to build the 16 million-tonne-a-year coalmine, which was tipped to create more than 1200 permanent jobs when it began production in 2024.
He said the project’s future status was now “under review”.
“This decision has been made in the current context of increased global uncertainty and is consistent with Glencore’s commitment to a responsibly managed decline of our global coal business,” the company said in a statement.
Global factors – such as the need to reduce carbon emissions, rising geopolitical tensions, and long-term uncertainty over future demand for coal – were a factor in the decision, but the spokesman confirmed domestic political uncertainty made it less attractive.
“Abrupt decisions like the Queensland super royalty hike have damaged investor confidence, increased uncertainty and raised a red flag with key trading partners,” he said.
“Genuine and timely consultation with companies on the detail of policy reforms is crucial to avoid continued uncertainty.”
Queensland’s royalty increases have been fiercely opposed by the state’s coal producers. But the federal government’s proposed changes to industrial relations laws, which will allow multi-employer bargaining, have also been criticised by the resources sector.
Valeria is also one of 18 gas and coal projects that will receive additional scrutiny from federal environmental authorities and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, after environment activists launched legal action in July aimed at ensuring their impact on climate change would be considered before any approval was granted.
Glencore’s decision is the latest sign of unrest over the extraordinary royalty increases introduced in the state’s July budget that are now expected to deliver $3bn to the state’s coffers in the current financial year, up from initial estimates of $765m.
Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick unveiled the figures on Wednesday during a mid-year budget update, and was unrepentant about the decision to introduce the surprise royalty rise. “This shows that coal royalties are worth fighting for, delivering a fair share for Queenslanders,” he said of the new royalties projections.
In response to questions from The Australian on Glencore’s Valeria decision, Mr Dick noted that the company’s public statement attributed the decision to “increased global uncertainty”. “Queensland Treasury’s report on long-term global coal demand released last month makes clear that while demand for Queensland thermal coal is set to resume its decline, demand for Queensland metallurgical coal will remain strong over coming decades,” Mr Dick said.
“Investment decisions around mining projects are ultimately a matter for proponents.”
BHP has also threatened to end future investment in the growth at its Queensland coal operations in response to the new royalty regime, and has also been a strident critic of federal Labor’s industrial relations reforms.
But Glencore’s move to scrap the development of Valeria is the first major project cancellation in the wake of either, and comes after the company confirmed on Tuesday night it expected to wind down production at other Australian thermal coalmines over the next four years, including Liddell, Newlands and Integra in NSW.
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The Left’s racism against Senator Price: The "Wrong" Aboriginal voice
In the name of equity and inclusion, Australia’s marquee satire publication, The Betoota Advocate, has written an astonishing (and some may say racist) article equating Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to an ‘Uncle Tom’.
In a piece entitled, Senator Jacinta Price Officially Promoted To ‘One Of The Good Ones’ By Her Redneck Overlords, the journalist suggests Price cannot think for herself as her intentions are to appease her ‘white superiors’.
Announcing the decision with the party leaders on Monday was Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Indigenous woman who has made a name for herself over the last couple years by saying exactly what the rednecks what to hear on Sky News as a professional devil’s advocate.
The article attributes Price’s success in politics to her role as Sky News Australia’s ‘professional devil’s advocate’ and claims that she has been ‘promoted from her previous role as “the only one they have” to her shiny new position as “one of the good ones”.’
This decision to oppose The Voice, while extremely damaging for the Federal Coalition’s electability in 2026, has done wonders for the political trajectory of Senator Jactina [sic] Price, who has officially been promoted from her previous role as ‘the only one they have’ to her shiny new position as ‘one of the good ones’.
To be sure, this foul racial commentary is not just on Price; it robs Indigenous Australians of their true voice – the very thing Betoota is advocating for through their satirical attempts.
And yes, it is satire – but in the world of cancel culture and painfully meticulous social justice activism, this sort of race-baiting is only given a pass when it spews from a left-leaning publication that supports certain political goals. For a comparison, look at Mark Knight’s recent satirical cartoon on the Voice to Parliament, which was quickly censored.
Similar to when Biden proclaimed, ‘you ain’t black’ if you vote Republican, this kind of rhetoric puts Indigenous Australians in a position where they become anti-Aboriginal if they vote ‘no’ in The Voice Referendum, or are accused of supporting racism if they hold conservative values.
Likewise, all Australians fall into these categories if they do not subscribe to the left-wing orthodoxy.
Meritless arguments such as this are a logical fallacy known as ‘the appeal to emotion’, which the Left has weaponised to bypass fact and manipulate the public towards their side through emotional blackmail.
This tactic is used in two ways. Firstly, to defend people who are a part of the cultural elite, often by turning them into victims of the Right; secondly, to viciously label someone who offers a counter thought as one of the many ‘isms’ or ‘phobias’ which will see the target ejected from the public square, their logic-based opinions delegitimised, and their person forced into Soviet-style apologies.
Unsurprisingly, Jacinta was not offered membership into the cultural elite.
Instead of highlighting Price’s long list of achievements as an advocate for Indigenous Australians and fighting against domestic violence, the government, commentariat, media, and keyboard warriors have joined Betoota in demonising Price as the ‘devil’s advocate’ and narrowing down her success to obeisance towards ‘Her Redneck Overlords’.
Where is Paul Barry, Lisa Wilkinson, Peter FitzSimons, Clementine Ford, Louise Milligan, or Jane Caro when you need them? What about all the social warriors who have, in part, built a career out of festering public outrage, creating pseudo-victim narratives to push their ideology, and acting as Australia’s arbiters of morality? They have remained silent.
It is clear, however, the Left offers a pathway to redemption for members of conservative parties:
Central-West NSW Nationals MP Andrew Gee has been quick to point out that he disagrees with his party’s official stance and is a supporter of the Voice, as someone who doesn’t think stoking racist hot buttons amongst frustrated rural voters is really going to achieve anything other than a few Murdoch headlines and ruined Christmas dinners.
The overall logic truly is flawed on many fronts; ‘It is not racist to say an Indigenous Woman is not thinking for herself when opposing our view’; ‘We will bridge the gap between the racial divide by encouraging intolerance towards other views’; ‘We believe in every Australian’s right to vote on the referendum, but democracy has failed us if the majority of Australians vote no’; ‘Vote yes to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and anyone who disagrees should not be allowed to enter the debate.’
With this line of thinking infecting our Federal Parliament, Australia’s democratic process is rotting. The federal government has amended tax laws to give deductions to people donating to groups campaigning for ‘yes’ to the Voice, all the while organisations pushing for ‘no’ will not receive this incentive.
Furthermore, the government will spend $75 million on educating Australians on what the Voice means and preventing misinformation. With the term ‘misinformation’ being used in contemporary times to shut down critics, it is doubtful this money will be used to showcase both sides so Australians can make an informed decision.
Instead, it will fund a monolithic view on the referendum and extinguish the contest of ideas. How is this fair or democracy in action?
Rather, we will be subjected to weak, superficial arguments, which will be allowed to flourish without question or criticism.
Just like the Betoota Advocate, which advised conservatives to heed the warning from the Victorian State Election and not to question the Voice, as the Coalition lost because they delved into the ‘murky culture wars’.
This analysis is materially wrong. The Victorian Liberals lost because they were a Labor-lite government offering no point of difference. They had budgeted for larger debt than Labor, had more aggressive climate change policies than the federal Labor government, and banned a long-serving MP from the party room because he was anti-abortion, along with a candidate whose father was a member of a conservative church.
Despite this blatant failure to accurately peruse politics, we are meant to listen to them when it comes to changing our constitution, while conservatives who ask highly pertinent questions are removed from the discussion.
Instead, they are denounced as the root cause of the Culture Wars when they respond to the Left’s attempt to radically change long-standing institutions that have generated overall net positives for society.
The attack on conservatives around the world is profound. Nevertheless, we should pay homage to the likes of Price, who are fearless in their conviction to fight for values that have made the West the greatest civilisation in human history and willingly withstand severe public backlash in this pursuit.
I suggest these concrete cowboys give up their comfortable city lives for a few days and visit a remote community with Senator Price before they try to besmirch her reputation again.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/the-lefts-racism-against-senator-price-a-voice-that-refuses-to-obey
************************************7 December, 2022
Courtney spent four years at uni. Two more years before she could teach was asking too much
Absurd. Even a one-year diploma is mostly a waste. Classroom apprenticeship is all that is needed
Two-year master’s teaching degrees should be abandoned in favour of a one-year course to help plug chronic teacher shortages, cut student debt and entice people into the profession, new research has found.
Schools across the country are grappling with unprecedented teacher shortages – especially in maths and science – while confidential data reported last year showed more than 100,000 students in NSW are taught by someone without expertise in their subject.
Courtney Haroon, who has a forensic science and chemistry undergraduate degree, said she would have swapped her two-year master’s teaching qualification for a heavy-loaded, intensive one-year course if that had been an option.
“An accelerated course wasn’t an option, but a one-year degree and then going into paid, supervised work in the classroom is a great solution,” said Haroon, who is in her first year of work at Gilroy Catholic College in Castle Hill and plans to teach year 11 and 12 chemistry.
“I was searching for a lab-technician job, but I realised I needed to be helping other people.”
A policy paper released by conservative think tank the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) argues mandating a two-year requirement for postgraduate teaching is crippling supply and is a major disincentive to aspiring teachers, particularly those wanting a mid-career change.
It means students are hit with double the tuition fees, at roughly $4000-a-year, and are delayed in earning income, which in NSW public schools is $70,652 for the first year of teaching, the paper says.
Figures from October show 2458 vacant full-time teaching positions across more than 1200 NSW schools; and 75 public schools in NSW have five or more full-time teacher vacancies, with 36 of these in Sydney.
Last month Castle Hill High, Alexandria Park Community school, Northbourne Public and Murrumbidgee High had more than 10 vacancies each.
The one-year graduate diploma of education, currently held by about 60,000 teachers nationally, was phased out from 2016, and students now complete a two-year master’s course and pass literacy and numeracy tests, while undergraduate students take on a four-year degree.
The number of people gaining a postgraduate qualification in education has declined by 23 per cent in about a decade.
Glenn Fahey, education research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, said the two-year master’s is a “regulatory relic”, and the longer course is no guarantee a new teacher is more prepared for the classroom.
“About 60,000 teachers hold a one-year graduate diploma. Are we implying that something’s wrong with their skill set? If we can confidently say that as the evidence suggests that these teachers are as effective and as knowledgeable in the classroom as their peers it waters away the justification for the longer qualification,” Fahey said.
“We need more teachers, but we’ve created more obstacles making it harder to become one.”
Report author Rob Joseph said the assumption that lengthier degrees produce higher standards was unfounded.
“A longer degree is no guarantee a new teacher is more prepared for the classroom. It’s the quality of time in training, not the quantity of time, that leads to teachers being classroom-ready,” he said.
Data from the Universities Admissions Centre, which only captures post-grad students who apply through UAC to some NSW universities, shows a spike in applications in the first year of the pandemic. However, it was at a six-year low for 2022 entry, with 580 applicants.
Teaching standards are set by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, and the institute’s deputy chief executive, Edmund Misson, said one year was not enough time to learn how to teach well.
“Teachers need good preparation, and we don’t think that can be done in 12 months of equivalent full-time study,” Misson said.
Claire Wyatt-Smith, the director of the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education at ACU, said one-year teaching degrees could be appropriate in some instances.
“If the first degree a student completes covers content knowledge and skills for the curriculum content the person will teach, then a one-year postgraduate teaching degree could be appropriate,” she said, adding that making sure students have adequate experience in classroom is critical.
A spokesperson for the NSW Education Department said the number of permanent vacancies in public schools fluctuates throughout the year for a range of reasons, but most position movement occurs towards the end of the school year.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said it was hard to switch mid-career, especially when you have a mortgage and children, which is why he has asked his teacher education expert panel to consider options such as paid internships.
Shadow federal education minister Alan Tudge welcomed the CIS report which backs the Coalition’s position on initial teacher education.
“Understandably, not many professionals can afford to take two years off work mid-career to retrain as a teacher. Shorter pathways are required if we are to make this an attractive choice for the best and the brightest,” Tudge said.
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Peta Credlin: Voice to Parliament threatening to be most divisive referendum in 70 years
Anthony Albanese wants us to believe the Voice to Parliament will be a benign body, but it will be a dramatic change in the way we see ourselves as Australians, writes Peta Credlin.
Last Thursday, our country moved a big step closer to dramatic change in the way we see ourselves as Australians, and ultimately how we’re governed, with the introduction to the parliament of enabling legislation for an Indigenous Voice referendum to be held later next year.
Not only will we be asked to change the constitution, but – for the first time in our history, if this bill is passed – we’ll be asked to vote in a referendum without the benefit of an official “yes” and “no” case, sent by the Australian Electoral Commission to every household to inform voters’ decisions. The government insists that this is no big deal because advocates on both sides can send out whatever they like online.
In fact, the government’s failure to fund both a “yes” and “no” case is blatantly one sided and unfair because also passing the parliament last week was a change to the law to give tax deductibility for donations to organisations campaigning for a Voice but no such support to any organisation opposed to it.
On top of that, there’s $235 million set aside to fund the referendum and out of that, we learnt last week, will be a massive “educational” campaign to “counter misinformation” about what the Voice means.
The legislation doesn’t specify what “misinformation” means and the government is strangely silent too, but the experienced adviser in me says this will be taxpayer money used to shut down any arguments against the Voice lest voters work out it isn’t the benign, symbolic-only change the PM claims it is.
In a sign of the ugliness to come, we saw an illustration of what Voice advocates regard as the “misinformation” that the government wants to re-educate us about. In response to the federal National Party’s decision formally to oppose the Voice, on the grounds that it’s wrong to divide Australians by race in our founding document; and that the Voice is more likely to foster a “them and us” grievance than practical improvements in Aboriginal people’s lives, Indigenous leader and activist Noel Pearson unleashed a spray at fellow Indigenous leader Senator Jacinta Price, which seemed designed to intimidate her into silence.
Pearson, who supports the Voice, said that Price – who describes herself as a proud Celtic, Warlpiri Australian woman – was only against the Voice because she’d been manipulated in a “redneck celebrity vortex” and was being used to “punch down on other black fellas”. He couldn’t accept that she’d made up her own mind, and argue against her on the merits, but had to play the “Uncle Tom” card accusing her of being brainwashed into hurting her own people.
With the Prime Minister declaring that support for the Voice is just being “polite” and implying opponents of the Voice are disrespectful of Aboriginal people if not actually racist, this is threatening to be an even more divisive referendum than the bid to ban the Communist Party 70 years back.
Will government-funded education include formal denunciations – Pearson-style – of any Indigenous person, like Price and like the former ALP national president, then Liberal candidate Warren Mundine, brave enough to stand against the mob on this issue?
This sense of unfairness associated with a bid to make some Australians more equal than others based on whether some of their ancestors were here before 1788 will only be inflamed if the government looks like it’s giving a leg up to just one side, and doesn’t play fair on something as important as constitutional change.
Unlike normal legislation, that can readily be changed by an incoming government, any change to the constitution is for keeps. Short of further change, backed by another referendum, once something is in the constitution, what it means is determined by the unelected and unaccountable High Court rather than by the elected and accountable government of the day.
So, if this referendum is carried, there will be an Indigenous Voice to advise the parliament and the government on anything that affects Indigenous Australians; it would take a “brave” government, in the PM’s words, to ignore its advice; it can’t be abolished; and exactly what it all means will have to be sorted out from time to time by the judges of the day.
As confirmed in recent days by Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney too, the Voice will be the body that gets to work and negotiates a treaty between Aboriginal Australians and the rest of us, and likely financial reparations too.
Wake up Australia, is this really want you want?
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Liberty is a conservative value
Recently-elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has repeatedly demonstrated a deep understanding of conservative values. By way of example, in January 2021 Meloni penned an opinion piece for the daily il Giornale in commemoration of the first anniversary of the death of the English philosopher and writer Sir Roger Scruton in which she declared that it would be her intention to promote his figure as one of the pillars of European conservatism. Among other things, Scruton was instrumental in forming underground networks of dissident academics in the old eastern Bloc, including Vàclav Havel.
In the piece, Meloni wrote of his ‘extraordinary ability to describe and explain the profound reasons for his love of both the small and the big, that according to him are both worth conserving’. To this end, Meloni cited Scruton’s belief in ‘the protection of the traditions of small communities and the struggle for the highest social and political conquests, such as the liberty of people subjugated by the yoke of the Soviet Union, were of equal importance’. She took aim at the many European Union leaders and parliamentarians who rather than defend the liberty of their fellow citizens, pass innumerable laws and regulations that oppress them.
In other words, conservatives believe in individual liberty. History has proven that.
In America, let’s not forget it was the Republican Party that freed the slaves, and fought a civil war to ensure they stayed free. It was a Democrat President, Woodrow Wilson who, upon assuming office in 1913, mandated that the federal workforce be segregated by race, leading to the reduction of black civil service workers’ income, thereby increasing the significant income gap between black and white workers.
In this country, it was the Liberals that created the modern university system. It was the Liberals that brought an end to the White Australia Policy (created by the ALP and the unions), put forward the 1967 Referendum, and signed the ANZUS Treaty.
The conservative belief in liberty also extends to the belief in small government. As Dennis Prager wrote recently, the defining characteristic of the Left is bigger and therefore more powerful government. This extends to a critical aspect of liberty: free speech, which has never been a left-wing value. Everywhere the Left is dominant – government, media, universities – it stifles dissent. The reason is simple: no left-wing movement can survive an open exchange of ideas, therefore it suppresses it. Why else would China put on trial a 90-year-old cardinal, Joseph Zen, in Hong Kong for ‘endangering national security’ by supporting pro-democracy protesters?
Should any further evidence be required as to why liberty cannot be a left-wing value, witness how the Left conveniently ignores events in Iran, where mullahs are beating to death quietly defiant young women.
Sir Robert Menzies understood better than most the centrality of liberty in conservative values. He knew that the more liberty individuals have, the less power the government has.
The Liberal Party today would do well to recall the following words of Menzies’ Forgotten People speech of May 22, 1942:
We say that the greatest element in a strong people is a fierce independence of spirit. This is the only real freedom, and it has as its corollary a brave acceptance of unclouded individual responsibility. The moment a man seeks moral and intellectual refuge in the emotions of a crowd, he ceases to be a human being and becomes a cipher.
To discourage ambition, to envy success, to have achieved superiority, to distrust independent thought, to sneer at and impute false motives to public service – these are the maladies of modern democracy, and of Australian democracy in particular.
How relevant those words are today! Elected politicians, public servants, and the corporate managerial class, thanks to, as Chilton Williamson Jr highlights, their economic incompetence, historical illiteracy, cultural confusion, and ideological delusions, have shirked their proper responsibilities and decided ‘for the common good’ to stake out a regulatory claim by meddling needlessly in every nook and cranny of, thus wreaking division and stifling individual thought. As this country’s 28th Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, stated so presciently in his maiden speech to Parliament in 1994:
In the quest to solve social problems, government reaches into our schools, our workplaces, and even our bedrooms. Government tells us what we should think, whom we should like and how we should feel […] (which is) guaranteed to tear Australians apart rather than bring us together.
Former Prime Minister John Howard in A Sense of Balance wrote that the philosophical base of the Liberal Party means valuing the individual ahead of the collective, embracing free enterprise, and supporting freedom of speech, worship, and association. Howard goes on to observe that timidity on these issues by the Liberal Party alienated many of its traditional supporters, who found ‘somewhere else to go’, thus aiding in the defeat of the Morrison government in May.
In the words of Hamlet, ‘Aye, there’s the rub!’ There are many who would argue that the demise of Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister means that conservatives need to learn to live with big government and try to make it work a bit better.
That view seemingly ignores the point Howard made: that when conservatives abandon their values, the voters will abandon them.
The fact is that Liz Truss’s departure from Number 10 is a symptom, not a cause, of what is wrong with centre-right politics across the Anglosphere.
In Britain, the Conservative party long ago decided it didn’t want to be a conservative, centre-right party.
Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, other than on Brexit, governed as a left-of-centre, zeitgeist-observing Labour leader might.
The two Conservative leaders before Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron, had accepted all of Labour’s social agenda, with Cameron’s only conservative feature being an attempt to control spending and bring the budget into balance, plus some modest tax cutting.
Now, under a Conservative government, Britain’s tax take is the highest since the sixties, soon to become the highest since the fifties.
We have been here before. Advocates for economic freedom are back where they were in the seventies as policy dissidents. Yet, they won the argument then and they can win it again. To do requires conviction.
Nick Cater stated recently that the Coalition cannot assume that the votes it lost to minor parties and independents on the centre-right will automatically come back. The bulk of the 660,000 Coalition votes that disappeared between 2019 and May this year were lost in suburban and regional Australia – the new ‘forgotten people’.
As Greg Sheridan wrote in the Australian, ‘To win in politics, you have to be willing to lose everything. You have to believe in the nation, care about the culture, believe in your own values.’ This is the reason why Howard won four elections, and in two elections Tony Abbott won 25 seats from the ALP. They believed in: lower taxes, smaller government, respect for the individual, the family as the greatest stabilising force in our society, national sovereignty, and the rule of law.
The sooner the Liberals remember that liberty is a conservative value, the sooner they might taste electoral success.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/liberty-is-a-conservative-value/
********************************************************Back to basics for NSW schools
Ailing literacy skills across Australia has triggered a major overhaul of one state's education system with grammar and punctuation the areas most in need of improvement.
The English syllabus has been redesigned in a bid to improve the literacy skills of NSW students in Years 3 to 10 following a 10 year decline.
Grammar, punctuation and sentence structure will be at the heart of the new curriculum to help students better express complex ideas and clear sentences.
A new mathematics curriculum is also due to be released this week and will focus on improving students' sequencing and reasoning skills.
The NSW syllabus refresh follows dismal NAPLAN results this year, which saw the literacy skills of teenage boys plummet to record lows.
One in six boys failed to meet the minimum standard in grammar and punctuation while 12 per cent could barely read at a basic level.
This year's NAPLAN results revealed girls performed better than their male counterparts, especially when it came to writing.
According to the results, 81.6 per cent of boys reach the minimum standard for writing, compared with 90.8 per cent of girls.
Parents who want to improve their child's writing have been urged by their teachers to encourage them to read more, and widely.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the new English and mathematics syllabuses were significant milestones in the curriculum overhaul.
'If our NAPLAN results have shown us anything, it's that we need to focus on the explicit teaching of grammar, sentence structure and punctuation in high school. Focusing on those foundational skills is key to success,' he said.
'It is vital that NSW students are developing strong skills in both literacy and numeracy so they can succeed in school and beyond.'
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the new mathematics syllabus would encourage students to form a deeper understanding of the concepts.
'In other words, students will need to not only know Pythagoras' theorem; they will need to be able to explain how it works in practice and why,' she said.
A new core-paths structure will replace the current three-tiered approach to better prepare students for HSC maths - which will be mandatory from 2025.
The new curriculum will be available to teachers during 2023 so they can prepare classes for students and will in implemented in all NSW schools in 2024.
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6 December, 2022
The wave of investment into renewables could bring forward the closure of coal plant by up to a decade
Mark Collette above
This guy is a loon. He proposes to replace dispatchable coal power by new dispatchable gas-fired generation. What a waste of capital investment! It won't please the Greenies as gas is a "fossil fuel" and it will create a huge cost burden on already high gas prices. New demand must push gas prices higher. Maybe they are banking on Russian gas becoming available again. We can hope.
Power giant EnergyAustralia has revealed plans to spend $10bn over the next decade building new electricity generation as part of a broader industry push on green spending, a move that may hasten the departure of NSW’s last coal plant by up to a decade.
Ahead of a planned intervention into Australia’s domestic energy market, the nation’s third-largest electricity retailer and generator set out the new investment target to be split across renewables, storage and solar and battery systems in households.
The wave of investment required to hit Labor’s aim of tripling renewables capacity to 82 per cent by 2030 could also bring forward the closure of EnergyAustralia’s Mt Piper coal plant by up to a decade.
The Mt Piper facility was expected to be the final NSW coal plant to shut in 2040, but that timeline may jump forward by as much as 10 years depending on how quickly replacement generation is installed in its place.
“I‘m worried more about closures happening faster than new entry at the moment,” EnergyAustralia managing director Mark Collette told The Australian. “There’s a lot of modelling out there that shows a lot of closures coming. Historically, Australia’s had maybe three big coal closures in the past 10 years, with Australia facing something like 15 in the next 15 years.”
Asked if an expected wave of green investment would accelerate the exit of Mt Piper, Mr Collette said: “All of the coal-fired power stations in the country, I’d expect all of them to be gone as soon as there’s replacement technology available.
“So for Australia, the challenge is long duration storage. At the moment, coal and gas form that insurance for the system, so we can get through all weather conditions. The date at which coal closes is purely about how quickly we can have replacement from those sorts of services.”
The September quarter produced “a massive acceleration” in the timetable for closure of coal-fired generation on the east coast, according to consultancy EnergyQuest.
EnergyAustralia’s $10bn spending plan over the next decade mirrors a plan by Canada’s Brookfield to invest an extra $20bn in Origin Energy through to 2030 to build new renewable and back-up energy capacity should it prevail with a live takeover bid under way.
The nation’s other big player, AGL Energy, has also said it would need to find up to $20bn to accelerate its exit from coal generation, after announcing plans to bring forward the closure date of its Loy Lang A power station in Victoria.
EnergyAustralia has been in talks with investors to help fund its multibillion-dollar pipeline of projects, with the company’s parent, Hong Kong-listed CLP, previously pointing to a deal with pension giant CDPQ for its Indian business as a potential model it would consider for Australia.
“Our primary areas to invest in are behind the meter to bring the best of small-scale energy technology with grid technologies for customers. And then in flexible capacity, which is the reliable capacity that underpins a very high concentration of renewables and brings it to life,” Mr Collette said.
The company plans to install a giant battery at Wooreen in Victoria’s Gippsland region, a gas-fired power station near Goulburn in NSW, Lake Lyell pumped hydro in NSW along with the Tallawarra B gas plant.
“We can quite clearly see that for our market share it’s quite easy to get to investments of $10bn over the next 10 years. The energy transition is quite expensive and like all players, we’re working on the best ways to fund that transition,” Mr Collette said.
The energy industry is bracing for an expected intervention, with the Albanese government prepared to intervene in South Australia and Victoria on a gas price cap at $11-$13 a gigajoule amid a stoush with states on imposing coal price caps to lower bills.
EnergyQuest said targeting temporary financial support for consumers who are most vulnerable to energy price shocks would be a far better solution.
“Moves to cap gas prices would not only increase east coast gas demand and reduce supply, but it would also amount to a whopping and inefficient fossil fuel subsidy of over $20 a gigajoule,” EnergyQuest chief executive Graeme Bethune said.
“The Treasurer is getting $50bn of windfall gains to his budget through the increases in company tax and Petroleum Resource Rent Tax from the spike in fossil fuel prices. The states already have a mish-mash of energy grants for energy cost relief that could be much better targeted through the Commonwealth welfare payment system.”
Large manufacturers are being offered gas contracts for 2023 at rates up to five times the level being offered last year, with the government warning factories will shut down unless it makes an urgent market intervention to cut prices.
Oil and gas industry sources, who are concerned about Jim Chalmers expanding the petroleum resource rent tax to subsidise retailers and households, have said the government would face constitutional issues if it imposes price caps on east coast gas producers and not WA producers.
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Push for Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold to go over Lehrmann rape trial
That a "she said" / "He said" case went to trial is a disgrace
A leading Canberra criminal lawyer has called for the resignation of ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC and an investigation by the ACT Integrity Commission into the decision to prosecute Bruce Lehrmann for the rape of Brittany Higgins.
Peter Woodhouse, the managing partner of Aulich lawyers, said an investigation by the Integrity Commission was needed after revelations by The Weekend Australian that police believed there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Mr Lehrmann, but could not stop the DPP from doing so because “there is too much political interference”.
The police reservations about prosecuting Mr Lehrmann were expressed in diary notes made by the ACT Police Manager of Criminal Investigations, Detective Superintendent Scott Moller, and in executive briefing notes made by investigators, which included serious concern for the mental health and wellbeing of Ms Higgins.
On Sunday, Mr Drumgold was reported to have expressed “serious concern about the potentially unlawful sharing of police material” after publication of the documents by The Australian.
Mr Woodhouse said the Integrity Commission “needs to explore whether Mr Drumgold let his own thirst for media attention or own political affiliations cloud what is supposed to be his independent judgment in such matters”.
He said it was “astounding” that Mr Drumgold had announced the decision via press conference and asked whether the DPP was “hoping to get on the front foot and was attempting to pre-emptively cover his backside, knowing this fallout and the exposure of the rift between his office and ACT police was coming”.
At his press conference on Friday, Mr Drumgold stood by his belief that there were reasonable prospects of securing a conviction in the case.
However, according to Mr Woodhouse, “what is abundantly clear is that there does not seem to be anybody in the ACT legal system, outside of Mr Drumgold’s office, who shared that view, including senior members of criminal investigations in ACT policing”.
“The DPP in jurisdictions such as ours are supposed to be politically independent.”
Mr Woodhouse notes that Mr Drumgold has tenure until December 2025, designed to allow him to operate without political interference, and can be removed from office only in exceptional circumstances.
“If Mr Drumgold’s decision to prosecute Mr Lehmann has been influenced in any way by political pressure, his position as ACT DPP is not sustainable and he must resign. It appears the ACT system is irreparably broken and there is only one way to quickly fix it and to restore public faith in the criminal justice system in the ACT. Shane Drumgold must resign as ACT DPP.
The claims of political interference in the case come from notes Superintendent Moller made of a conversation with his boss, ACT Deputy Chief Police Officer (DCPO) Michael Chew, on June 17 last year while discussing the Higgins/Lehrmann sexual assault case.
“DCPO (Mr Chew) advised he had a meeting with DPP who stated they will recommend prosecution. DCPO stated ‘if it was my choice I wouldn’t proceed. But it’s not my choice. There is too much political interference.”
At that point in the investigation, more than half of the witness list had yet to be interviewed by police, but it appears the DPP, led by Mr Drumgold, had already decided to prosecute.
Some media reports of these developments over the weekend wrongly claimed it was solely the decision of the Australian Federal Police to lay charges in the case.
A statement prepared by Detective Superintendent Moller, obtained by The Australian, reveals that on 30 July 2021, Mr Chew “directed that the investigation move to charge Bruce Lehrmann via summons … he stated that this direction was based on legal advice received from ACT DPP and the Independent Investigational Review conducted”.
Other senior legal figures have also been highly critical of Mr Drumgold, including prominent Sydney barrister Gray Connolly, who tweeted that his behaviour was “shameful” and had produced “a catastrophic result” in the case.
Mr Connolly echoed the comments of other lawyers that Mr Drumgold’s public statements on the merits of the case were “entirely improper” and that it was “a sad day for the rule of law”.
“Prosecutors speak in court through the cases they make and not through media re cases they abandon. In any serious first-world jurisdiction, Drumgold’s position would be untenable.”
Mr Connolly described Mr Drumgold as “a DPP (who) trashes centuries of prosecutorial ethics and obligations, by simultaneously withdrawing a criminal prosecution in the court & then try to continue it in the media”.
The barrister said the presumption of innocence should extend all the more strongly to a person against whom charges have been withdrawn by the DPP.
“You cannot – even as the most newly admitted lawyer let alone as a very senior prosecutor – simultaneously withdraw a case from the courts and then also try and run that same case in the media. It is simply horrific.”
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National cabinet walking a tightrope on energy policy
This week’s national cabinet meeting is one of the most dangerous gatherings of national leaders in recent times. Inexperienced in energy complexities, politicians and public servants could easily plunge the east coast of the nation into chaos, especially as the industrial relations legislation has destroyed business trust in the Albanese government. The first energy plan that was proposed, a price cap, may be rejected on the grounds of state opposition. But those state objections were almost irrelevant: the “cap” was a recipe for chaos.
Now a tax is being proposed on energy producers, where the revenue will somehow be diverted to help industrial and domestic consumers. That proposal has less risk and some advantages but again has the potential to create chaos. To help readers understand the dangers facing the nation I will first detail what is likely to happen if there is a price cap and then look at some of the potential repercussions of a tax.
I strongly urge all the ministers and public servants in the national cabinet to study the research work of Commonwealth Bank energy economist Vivek Dhar, which I have found invaluable.
Each east coast state is different. We start with NSW. Purely on the basis of cash production costs, and ignoring their enormous capital costs, renewables are the cheapest form of energy. Accordingly, in a price cap regime, as the lowest cash cost source of electricity, renewables will take the first slab of demand – assuming the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.
On the basis of a proposed cap of between $11 and $13 a gigajoule, the next lowest cost level is gas-fired power stations. Unless there is some form of complex quota, gas power stations will therefore run flat out as a baseload operation, creating gas shortages.
Then comes black coal generators which, because of the gas price cap, suddenly become the highest cost power provider. But black coal power generation needs constant output and is extremely expensive and dangerous if it is forced to be the swing producer. It is a recipe for chaos in the generation of power in NSW. Queensland will be affected in a similar way but not as severely. Then comes poor old Victoria and its infamous energy policy, partly based on preserving ALP inner city lower house seats.
Victoria is more dependent on gas than any other east coast state, and the energy regulator says that Bass Strait will go into steep decline in about three years. Woodside and Exxon are prepared to spend large sums trying to extend the output for a few more years.
The WA-based Woodside has been blunt: if there is a low price cap that money will not be spent. Victoria can swing.
Victorian government politicians scoff and demand that gas should be piped down from Queensland and NSW at the low cap price. It’s nonsense, of course. Even if such a supply is legislated, the pipe network was designed to send gas north, not south and although changes can be made to improve the “south delivery”, there will be a massive shortfall for Victoria – especially as NSW and Queensland power stations will be absorbing as much gas as possible.
Daniel Andrews’ decision not to develop Victoria’s large onshore gas fields which don’t require fracking has worked: there was no green decimation of ALP inner-city seats in the recent election.
Without the Woodside/Exxon “rescue” expenditure, Victoria has the choice of developing its onshore gas or suffering huge shortfalls in about three years’ time, when the next election is due. The inner-city green seat issue remains. Victorians voted against gas development, so can’t complain if they are hit hard by the repercussions of any price cap.
The alternative of a profits tax creates even greater complexity.
Any extra profits-tax calculation somehow or other must adjust for different cost structures in different areas. It is highly likely to put out of business the wrong energy producers. And again, almost certainly, Woodside will tell the government to jump into Bass Strait if taxes are boosted.
And then comes the issue of who in the community receives the “subsidy” benefit funded by the tax. Small business is probably the most likely to benefit, but the industrial legislation has an employment definition that is problematic and will not stop carnage. It is possible the distribution of the tax will be based on a green agenda. There may be a delay between revenue collection and money distribution, which will hit both enterprises and consumers.
There is no way anyone will be happy. To try and sort out this mess we must start with the basics.
If the politicians and public servants in Canberra are prepared to do their homework between now and the cabinet meeting, they will discover that the ideal way to operate a non-nuclear power system like Australia is to have renewables and coal providing the base power loads. Gas and hydro cater for demand swings. Over time the coal runs down, replaced by extra renewables, including hydro.
And in time gas will be reduced by batteries, extra hydro and other means. Carbon-based power generators can be encouraged to engage in regeneration agriculture and growing saltbush and other plants whose root systems store carbon in the soil.
Of course, even better, maybe we boost power supplies via smaller nuclear power units — but that is hard for politicians to endorse. Nevertheless, their back is to the wall and nuclear technology is improving. The old waste problems are rapidly diminishing.
But again, there is no trust because of industrial relations. So where there is lack of trust combined with inexperience there is grave danger of a total mess.
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Mask wearing disrupts decision-making ability, Queensland study finds
Mask wearing can seriously disrupt a person’s ability to make decisions, particularly when they feel under pressure, a new Queensland study has found.
Dr David Smerdon of the University of Queensland's School of Economics studied 8500 worldwide chess players aged between 5 and 98, comparing how they played a game of chess both with and without masks on.
After analysing almost three million individual chess moves he found wearing a mask substantially reduced the quality of a player’s decisions.
But the disruption to decision making was also only temporary and players were able to recover from their initial brain fog within four to six hours, before returning to their normal playing capability.
“We found that the early part of the game you’re not playing as well as you usually would,” Dr Smerdon said.
“The data showed masks were more likely to decrease performance in situations where there was a demanding mental task with a high working memory load.
“The decrease in performance was due to the annoyance caused by the masks rather than a physiological mechanism, but people adapted to the distraction over time.
“The results suggest that the effect of masks may depend on the type of task, the duration of the task and working memory load.”
Dr Smerdon said it was important to find out what -if any- kind of effect mask wearing had on the general population, with his initial findings also indicating minimal disruptions to children’s decision making.
“From a methodical point of view, it’s been hard to get evidence on this topic and chess gave us those circumstances as it requires calculation, memory, problem-solving and pattern recognition and has been used extensively in psychology, neuroscience and economics to measure changes in cognitive performance,” he said.
“What surprised me was the level of effect for experts, particularly in very important games, the effect is very large.
“When we looked at just juniors, up to the age of 18 we didn’t find any effects of mask (wearing), and that could be because of the comparison of kids to the overall (study) numbers or maybe because they are just more adaptable.”
Dr Smerdon said understanding the impact of mask wearing could help individuals and organisations, particularly if it becomes mandatory again in future.
“A lot of communities have discussed mask policies since they were introduced,” he said.
“This is something to keep in mind for occupations in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics as well as other professions that demand a high level of working memory such as language interpreters, performers, waiters and teachers.
“For example, education policy makers may need to bear in mind the disruptive effects of masks when designing exam conditions to address concerns about student health and fairness.”
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Teachers banned from Christmas activities, holiday countdowns
Queensland schools have been accused of playing the Christmas “grinch” after some teachers claim they were warned against hosting Christmas festivities or countdowns to the holidays in their classrooms.
The message has been slammed by the Teachers Professional Association of Queensland, which described the decisions as “grinch-like”, but the Education Department said it had not issued a directive on these issues and insisted it leaves these decisions to individual principals.
A state high school teacher posted in an online group that their school’s executive team had banned a Christmas holiday countdown because “it sends the wrong message”.
Several teachers responded to this post saying their current or former schools had similar views on Christmas activities and holiday countdowns.
However, many teachers replied saying their schools encouraged celebrations.
The Courier-Mail has seen correspondence in which a state high school staff member defends their support of students’ end-of-year celebrations after the staff member alleged they were criticised by their principal.
The staff member makes the point that they did not see the celebrations that spanned a matter of minutes affecting the students’ exam performances after a year of hard work.
TPAQ secretary Tracy Tully said she had received an estimated 50 reports in the past few weeks from members saying their school had issued directives around Christmas classroom celebrations, end-of-year celebrations, or holiday countdowns.
She said these reports were coming from state schools, describing them as “frightening” and “almost communistic”.
“This is abnormal what we’re seeing this term – the rhetoric is militant,” she said. “Teachers are feeling lost and sad that they can’t farewell their students in the ways they have done previously.
“The norm is for classes to have a party and kids to bring a plate of food and give gifts – this still happens in many primary and high schools.”
Even parents were saying they had always given Christmas gifts and now they were not sure whether they were allowed to, Ms Tully said.
“The Christmas lights have been turned out,” she said.
The Education Department said it did not issue directives around Christmas holiday countdowns or festive celebrations.
“Principals are best placed to make decisions about celebrating Christmas in their schools, in consultation with their local communities,” a department spokesman said.
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5 December, 2022
The Energy Minister's timetable for solar panel and giant wind turbine installation has collided with the roadblock of cold, hard reality
The good news is that the green jobs revolution we were promised in Labor’s Powering Australia plan has begun. The bad news is that most of the new jobs are in China, where a third of a million workers are employed manufacturing panels alone.
China controls 95 per cent of global photovoltaic panel production and its grip on the market is increasing. Manufacturing clean-energy units is a dirty business requiring a lot of energy, 60 per cent of which comes from coal. The International Energy Authority estimates that global production of solar panels is responsible for 51 mega tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, some 60 per cent more than Australia’s entire industrial manufacturing sector.
Four out of 10 solar panels are manufactured in Xinjiang, the home of the Uighur ethnic minority, an estimated million of whom live in concentration camps. The US Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which came into force this year, creates a presumption that anything made in Xinjiang uses modern slave labour and cannot be imported into the US without clear and compelling evidence to the contrary.
That ugly debate has barely surfaced in Australia where the virtue of Labor’s legislated targets is simply assumed. Energy Minister Chris Bowen has faced next to no scrutiny from the gallery about his failure to deliver cheaper electricity or the wisdom of relying on brutish communist China for our future energy security.
Buried in the fine print of last week’s first annual progress report to parliament by the Climate Change Authority is a warning that our dependence on China for renewable energy infrastructure leaves us vulnerable to a geopolitical shock not unlike that European nations now face because of reliance on Russian gas and coal.
High commodity prices and supply chain challenges have increased the price of solar panels by 20 per cent in a year. There are similar rises in the price of batteries and, while Australia might benefit in the short term as one of the world’s largest sources of lithium, most of it is processed in China.
Bowen said last week that the Climate Change Authority’s warning will “need to be an ongoing focus”, which is some way short of saying he is taking it particularly seriously.
The authority’s statement to parliament exposes the modelling Labor relied upon for its Powering the Nation plan as worthless. A year ago, Anthony Albanese claimed the Reputex modelling was “the most comprehensive modelling ever done for any policy by any opposition in Australia’s history since Federation”. Now we learn its key objective, a 43 per cent emissions cut by 2030, won’t be achieved with the current settings.
The forecast of a $275 decrease in household energy bills in Labor’s first term went out the window long ago. Treasury forecasts energy bills will rise by 56 per cent in the next two years.
The promise of green jobs will be partly fulfilled, but it seems highly unlikely there will be anywhere near the 600,000 Labor promised or that many of them will continue beyond the construction phase.
Our reliance on the Saudi Arabia of solar panels is only one of the risks that makes the fulfilment of Labor’s grand plan highly improbable. The authority notes community acceptance, or social licence, cannot be taken for granted.
Australians may be in favour of clean energy in theory but they don’t want a wind or solar mega-plant in their backyard. Nor do they welcome the new transmission lines that connect them. Opposition is growing in regional and rural communities from Tasmania to Townsville.
In summary, Bowen’s timetable of installing 670,000 solar panels and 40 giant wind turbines every month from now until the end of the decade has collided with the roadblock of cold, hard reality. The only way to make the grid accommodate 82 per cent of greenish energy in the mix will be to hasten the exit of coal and gas and shut down heavy industry.
Rather than admit its pre-election modelling was wrong or bow to the economic reality that the huge capital investment in wind, solar, storage and transmission will push up the cost of energy, the government is resorting to coercion. If the markets won’t conform to the government’s perfect plan, they must be forced to do so.
Placing a ceiling on the price of coal and gas is one of the crudest forms of economic interventions known to humankind. Rather than address the shortage of supply, the government plans to add another disincentive to new investment.
Milton Friedman said the surest way to turn tomatoes into scarce commodities was to pass a law to prevent them being sold for more than two cents per pound. “Instantly you’ll have a tomato shortage,” he said in 1978. “It’s the same with oil or gas.”
Rising coal and gas prices are not the fault of Vladimir Putin, greedy energy company boards or a shortage of investment in wind, solar and batteries. They are the predictable consequence of placing unreasonable financial and regulatory burdens on the investment of capital in new and expanded resource extraction.
The distortions are already apparent. Woodside Energy is threatening to withhold new gas investment on Australia’s east coast, where the shortage of gas is most keenly felt. Who can blame it if the size of the return on its capital will be determined by political decisions made in Canberra.
Bowen, sadly, is not the kind of person to reach for a plan B, even if he had one. Those who have dealt with the minister say he does not welcome contrary advice. Just ask Paul Broad, the former chief executive of Snowy Hydro, who resigned after falling out with Bowen over the technological readiness of so-called green hydrogen.
Friedrich Hayek could have been thinking of Bowen when he described the mindset of the central planner: “The man of system … so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it.”
The Prime Minister would do well to use his Christmas break to consider an early cabinet reshuffle.
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A wrinkly ambassador -- and she's only 65
In the Biden administration, Caroline Kennedy is the ambassador to Australia.
65-year-old Caroline Kennedy — the daughter of JFK and Jackie Kennedy —has also sought to grab the political limelight. Now the ambassador to Australia, Caroline stepped into the political ring when she announced her bid for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s New York Senate seat in December 2008 after Clinton had been named Secretary of State. But Caroline quit the race two months later.
“When she found out what Democratic politics actually means, she bowed out,” said Leamer. “She didn’t want to have to answer questions or reveal her taxes. She behaved like a princess.”
Caroline went on to support Barack Obama’s campaigns for president, comparing the former president to her father in a New York Times opinion article in 2008.
“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” she wrote. “But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president, not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
Caroline was named to Obama’s Vice-Presidential Search Committee and was one of the 35 national chairs of his 2012 re-election committee. A year later, Obama chose her to become ambassador to Japan, a position she occupied until 2017.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/03/legacy-of-kennedy-greatness-thins-out-through-generations/
**********************************************‘We changed everything’: How 56 schools transformed their teaching and boosted results
In Rebecca Brady’s kindergarten classroom students answer a string of rapid-fire questions about nouns and verbs as they hop between coloured hula-hoops splayed on the floor.
The energetic exchange means easily distracted six-year-olds barely have time to look away before Brady pulls their attention to the next exercise. They are captivated.
“It’s playful and fun, but the teacher is in control and leading the lesson,” she explains.
For the past two years, her school, St Bernard’s primary just south of Batemans Bay, has been in the midst of a classroom revolution.
“We’ve changed our whole approach to teaching. We use a lot of repetition, fast-paced learning and intense explicit instruction; behaviour is improving, and the children are so engaged. It’s been a huge turnaround. Kids don’t have time to disengage.”
Brady is one of hundreds of teachers across 56 Catholic schools in NSW and the ACT that have embraced “high-impact” explicit instruction, an approach partly embedded in old-school teaching methods. It shuns student-led and inquiry-based learning in favour of a direct, traditional instruction style.
Behind the teaching overhaul is Ross Fox, the head of Catholic education in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, who fours years ago decided stagnating academic results across his stable of schools required urgent attention. He called on Lorraine Hammond, an influential explicit teaching advocate from Edith Cowan University, who has implemented “high-impact instruction programs” at more than 50 schools in Western Australia and the Kimberley region.
“Any school that takes up a teacher-led approach to instruction will achieve outstanding results because learning to read, write and spell are not naturally occurring processes,” says Hammond.
Teachers and principals from the Canberra Goulburn archdiocese visited Western Australia to see how explicit teaching, regular assessment and phonics-based reading programs were being rolled out at a handful of schools there.
“I felt a huge moral imperative to turn things around. We had to think deeply about why what we were doing in the past wasn’t translating into improved results, particularly in reading,” Fox says.
“If you want students to know something, you tell them. We know there is a way the brain learns, a science behind it, and effective classroom instruction involves breaking down information into small chunks and then building on that, rather than letting the student lead their learning.
“This approach is one way we can try and close the equity gap in student outcomes,” he says.
The 56 schools are at the end of their second year adopting the explicit, evidence-based teaching approach, known as the Catalyst program, and internal analysis of NAPLAN results shows promising signs.
“Our primary schools are showing statistically significant improvement in NAPLAN reading between 2019 and 2022 for year 3 and year 5. And results have improved relative to NSW averages, particularly for reading,” Fox says.
At St Bernard’s, where a quarter of students are from a disadvantaged background, this year’s NAPLAN results are even more pronounced: 94 per cent of year 5 students achieved the top four bands for reading. In 2017, this was just 69 per cent.
Almost 90 per cent of students achieved in the top four bands for year 5 numeracy, compared to 73 per cent in 2017.
“Before we changed everything we were throwing too much information at the kids at once. Children can only process new information when broken down in pieces and then building on that. It’s how knowledge is moved to long-term memory,” Brady, who has been a teacher for a decade, says.
Fox believes one of the key changes has been improved co-operation across the schools, largely due to the common approach and schools and teachers are now learning from each other.
“Previously we had half of school cohorts in tutoring and intervention programs. Dramatically improving results was the only option,” he says.
All the classrooms across the system are simple: desks generally face the front of the room – rather than in huddled groups – and the teacher instructs from the front of the room.
“Quite a few of our schools have had to buy new furniture because a lot of it was designed to have pupils facing each other,” Fox says.
“Teachers need to keep control of students’ attention. You don’t want children looking and talking to their friends unnecessarily as part of the lesson. Desks are now lined in rows, student face the front, and they frequently use small whiteboards to answer teacher questions to demonstrate they’ve understood a concept.”
The changes adopted at Fox’s schools are aligned with the phonics-based approach taken in NSW primary schools, which is embedded in its new kindergarten to year 2 curriculum, after internal Department of Education research found balanced literacy to be less effective.
NSW students improved in primary school reading in the latest NAPLAN results, and are ranked in the top three jurisdictions by mean scores in all domains.
“At St Bernard’s there is a sense of order and rigour in their teaching. It has it transformed the academic lives of the students but changed the culture of the school too,” says Hammond
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Vinyl in revival as young listeners splurge on old media
I seem to be "with it" for once. I still have all my old vinyl records and recently hooked up a turntable to play them
My setup
In Victor Milazzi’s aptly named Vinyl Revival store in Fitzroy, Melbourne, a record renaissance is underway.
While baby boomers long ago sold their extensive record collections for CDs, the twenty-something audience is rediscovering the joys of vinyl records, spurred by a quest for sound quality and a desire to support artists.
Milazzi was one of few who kept his record collection, initially selling records from an upstairs studio in North Carlton in 2010. While this retail operation still exists, it’s the hipsters browsing along Brunswick Street that are his main clientele.
The retailer not only sells records, but turntables, amplifiers and speakers. The store’s vinyl stash, all new and repressed, come in original cover designs including David Bowie’s Brilliant Adventure, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and The Cure’s Wild Mood Swings. And what would a cred record store have if it didn’t include INXS’ live recording from Wembley Studio or Duran Duran’s Future Past, complete with a couple of intertwined fluorescent figures on the front cover?
Priced from $45 to up to $100, there are also a number of contemporary artists in the mix such as Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish. When Milazzi first went into the business over 10 years ago, records were sold for considerably less, around $15 to $20.
“Of course, before vinyl took off, you could always find one or two records in second-hand stores for just a couple of dollars,” says Milazzi, whose selection of turntables ranges in price from $500 to up to $3000. “Whatever you hear on the radio or through streaming can be produced in record form.”
At the time of interviewing Milazzi, a young couple enter the store. They are upgrading their turntable (to a Project A1 priced around $700) and going through the records to add to their extensive collection.
“We got into vinyl about six years ago, listening to everything from jazz to Duran Duran and Queen,” says Oscar, 22. For Oscar and his partner, Grace, buying records is a good way of supporting artists. One of their most expensive records is by jazz musician Oscar Peterson, costing at the time $120. “It’s the quality of the sound you get from records that keeps me buying more. And it’s something that feels very tangible every time you move the needle across,” he adds.
Architect Jesse Linardi, design director of DKO Architecture, enjoys playing records on his SL 1200 in his kitchen while preparing a meal. A re-released 1970s design, his system comes with a magnetic touch plate that allows him to mix and scratch the sound he’s looking for.
“It’s a bit like driving a manual rather than an automatic,” says Linardi, who estimates the entire package including turntable, speakers and amplifiers can easily start north of $10,000. “It’s certainly the best way to listen to electronic music.”
For Milazzi, the popularity of vinyl could be attributed to nostalgia, reflecting the past. But it’s also about buying the complete ‘package’, which often includes the printed lyrics of the songs enclosed within the cover. He is also seeing vinyl as being a popular gift choice for special occasions such as weddings, where guests go in together to purchase a turntable and speakers, with individuals or couples buying records to help establish a record collection.
And while many baby boomers ditched their record collection, some are now reacquainting themselves with vinyl and enjoying the music they grew up with
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Why Millennials have fallen in love with their grandparents’ furniture
I seemto be "with it in this too. In the last couple of years I have replaced about half of my furniture with the brown varnished items of the '30s and '40s. Example below
Millennials and Gen Z are driving soaring demand for secondhand and restored mid-century furniture, with brands beloved by their grandparents’ generation such as Parker, Chiswell and Wrightbuilt attracting shoppers.
Characterised by clean lines, pieces made from teak wood and vinyl plastic, with an overriding emphasis on comfort, styles from the 1950s to 1970s are hot property on social media and online marketplaces.
Mid-century’s influence was seen in recently published tours of the mansion homes of Gen Z influencer Emma Chamberlain (in Architectural Digest) and Millennial skincare mogul Zoe Foster Blake (in Vogue Australia), each showcasing retro-inspired rooms and pieces. But the style is also prized in more humble homes.
Jessica Cale has turned her maternity leave side hustle as a suburban mid-century reseller into a full-time gig.
“Our quintessential kind of client, they live in Marrickville [in Sydney’s inner west], they’ve got a bit of disposable income but not too much, they’re under 30,” she said.
She runs her business Retro Bay out of her home in Mortdale, in the city’s southern suburbs, with her husband, Joel. They sell the salvaged and restored pieces on Facebook Marketplace, where there was a 13 per cent increase in home furniture listings in Australia between 2020 and 2021.
Furniture and household items make up more than half of the secondhand platform’s 2 million vintage listings, data from parent company Meta shows.
Joel said younger people, who grew up in the height of flat-pack popularity, were looking for more environmentally friendly ways to furnish their home.
“Buying a second-hand piece of furniture of higher quality will keep two other pieces of lesser quality out of landfill,” he said.
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4 December, 2022
Her poor mental health was why Brittany Higgins went missing during first trial
And her poor mental health was why the retrial was abandoned. Ironical that she was ever taken seriously. It seems that she was delusional from the start. The claim was a he said / she said affair with no corroborating evidence. Except for feminist politics the case would never have gone to trial A serious miscarriage of justice based on an accusation from a mentally unwell woman was narrowly avoided
Brittany Higgins was hospitalised on mental health grounds during the first trial after she went missing and police were called to locate her in Canberra.
News.com.au can reveal for the first time the reason for her disappearance after the ACT Supreme Court lifted an October 10 suppression order.
The serious incident involved multiple police cars being called to search for her and an ambulance being dispatched to her hotel.
She was located by police walking in the rain and taken to the Canberra hospital before she spent five days at a Canberra mental health clinic.
At the conclusion of her treatment, she returned to court to complete her cross examination.
New evidence that the “ongoing trauma” associated with the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann poses an unacceptable risk to the life of the complainant Brittany Higgins has prompted prosecutors to drop the rape charge and not proceed with a second trial.
Mr Lehrmann has consistently denied the allegations.
ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold confirmed today he had reviewed new medical evidence regarding Ms Higgins.
“I have recently received compelling evidence from two independent medical experts, that the ongoing trauma associated with this prosecution presents an unacceptable and significant risk to the life of the complainant,’’ he said.
“The evidence makes it clear this is not limited to the harm of giving evidence in the witness box, rather applies whether or not the complainant is required to re-enter the witness box in the retrial.
“Whilst the pursuit of justice is essential for my office and the community, the safety of a complainant in a sexual assault matter, must be paramount.
“In light of the compelling independent medical opinions, and balancing all factors, I have made the difficult decision that it is no longer in the public interest to pursue a prosecution at the risk of the complainant’s life.”
Ms Higgins was readmitted to hospital on Thursday.
The former Liberal staffer granted permission for her friend and supporter Emma Webster to release the following statement.
“Brittany is in hospital getting the treatment and support she needs,’’ Ms Webster said.
“The last couple of years have been difficult and unrelenting.”
“While it’s disappointing the trial has ended this way, Brittany’s health and safety must always come first.”
“Brittany is extremely grateful for all the support she has received, particularly from our mental health care workers.”
But until now any reporting of her October 10 hospitalisation was prohibited by the Supreme Court.
The trial was briefly delayed during the second week as a result, with Ms Higgins unavailable to appear in court.
Former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann, who was charged with one count of sex without consent in ministerial office of Linda Reynolds in the early hours of March 23, 2019, pleaded not guilty.
He was never convicted and the jury was discharged without reaching a verdict after an allegation of juror misconduct.
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Police doubted Brittany Higgins but case was ‘political’
The most senior police officer on the Brittany Higgins case believed there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Bruce Lehrmann but could not stop the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions from proceeding because “there is too much political interference”, according to diary notes made by the ACT Police Manager of Criminal Investigations, Detective Superintendent Scott Moller.
In a separate executive briefing last year, Superintendent Moller advised that investigators “have serious concerns in relation to the strength and reliability of [Ms Higgins’] evidence but also more importantly her mental health and how any future prosecution may affect her wellbeing”.
The executive briefing lists a series of concerns by senior police, including that Ms Higgins had repeatedly refused to provide her original mobile phone; had deliberately deleted messages from a second phone; had lied about seeking medical attention after the incident; and had joked about wanting “a sex scandal” a month before the incident. Some became issues at the trial.
The briefing, dated June 9, 2021, states that “there is limited corroborative evidence of sexual intercourse taking place or consent being withdrawn or not provided”.
An attached minute signed by Detective Inspector Marcus Boorman, the investigation manager assigned to the case, states: “Investigators at this juncture have a number of concerns regarding inconsistencies in disclosures and other evidence obtained during the investigation. In light of the issues identified, serious concerns exist as to whether there is sufficient evidence to prove the alleged offence.”
The documents obtained by The Weekend Australian also reveal that Ms Higgins texted boyfriend David Sharaz in May last year saying: “F..k it, if they want to play hard ball I’ll cry on The Project again because of this sort of treatment.”
None of the texts or the police doubts about the case were revealed to the jury.
Superintendent Moller made notes of a conversation with his boss, ACT Deputy Chief Police Officer Michael Chew, on June 17 last year while discussing Operation Covina – the Higgins/Lehrmann sexual assault case.
At that point in the investigation, The Weekend Australian understands, more than half of the witness list had yet to be interviewed by police, but it appears the DPP, led by Mr Drumgold, had already decided to prosecute.
In the diary note, Superintendent Moller wrote: “Insufficient evidence to proceed.
“DCPO [Mr Chew] advised he had a meeting with DPP who stated they will recommend prosecution. DCPO stated ‘if it was my choice I wouldn’t proceed. But it’s not my choice. There is too much political interference’. I said: ‘That’s disappointing given I think there is insufficient evidence’.”
The following day Superintendent Moller forwarded a copy of the interim brief of evidence to Commander Andrew Smith to conduct an independent review of the investigation. The result of that review is not known.
Ms Higgins first spoke to police on April 1, 2019, a week after the events at Parliament House, but informed them two weeks later she did not wish to continue with the allegations. On February 5, 2021, she re-engaged with police, telling them she had been interviewed by the media and didn’t want to do an evidence-in-chief interview until her interview with The Project host Lisa Wilkinson had aired on television.
The following day “police advised Ms Higgins the intended media events … may jeopardise any subsequent criminal investigation; however Ms Higgins made it clear to police she was not willing to provide investigators with a formal statement in relation to the allegations until the media stories had been published. Ms Higgins stated that she wanted to ensure the sexual assault investigation was ‘active’ in anticipation of the media events.”
The TV program aired on February 15 and Ms Higgins sat down with police for her evidence-in-chief interview nine days later.
At that interview investigators reiterated to her the need to examine her mobile phone for potential evidence. “Ms Higgins refused to hand over her phone despite being explained the evidential value of the process,” the police report says.
The AFP statement of facts prepared by Superintendent Moller reflects police frustration over difficulties in obtaining Ms Higgins’ mobile phone after the interview to extract data.
On March 15, when police had arranged for a second time to meet Ms Higgins to obtain the phone, she failed to turn up or to respond to calls. “During the afternoon on the same date police observed Ms Higgins on commercial television at the March4Justice march at Parliament House,” Superintendent Moller wrote.
On May 5, 2021, Superintendent Moller was informed that ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates had advised that any contact with Ms Higgins was now to go to her rather than directly to Ms Higgins.
Three weeks later, Superintendent Moller and other detectives met Ms Higgins, who was accompanied by Ms Yates, at the Winchester Police Centre in Canberra, where she gave a second interview.
“During this conversation I stressed to Ms Higgins the importance of refraining from participating in any media interviews in relation to this matter,” Superintendent Moller says in his police statement.
On this occasion Ms Higgins handed over a mobile phone.
Police recovered a text exchange between Ms Higgins and former boyfriend Ben Dillaway dated February 7, 2019, six weeks before the alleged rape, in which the pair joked about wanting a political sex scandal.
“The bar for what counts as a political sex scandal nowadays is REALLY low,” Ms Higgins wrote.
“I want a sex scandal I can be like whoa. Impressive. Didn’t think he had it in him,” Mr Dillaway wrote.
“Exactly! A sex scandal the party can be proud of. Another Barnaby but without the baby haha,” Ms Higgins responded.
On July 12 last year Superintendent Moller again met Ms Higgins and Ms Yates, this time at AFP headquarters in Brisbane to update her on the investigation.
“Ms Higgins advised that any photos taken on the night of the incident were saved on her Google drive attached to her iCloud but she could not recall taking any photos.
“Ms Higgins advised (of) the photo of an injury to her leg she took herself on WhatsApp during budget week, however she could not recall the exact date. Ms Higgins advised she shared this photo with The Project on 19 January 2021.
“Ms Higgins advised she had seven iPhones since 2019, most had been supplied by the government as part of her work and they had been returned when she changed jobs, however Ms Higgins was happy for police to take the old phones she had.”
During the conversation Superintendent Moller showed Ms Higgins text messages between herself and Mr Sharaz on May 21, 2021 about her sending him an audio file because she was “clearing out her phone ahead of the police”.
“Ms Higgins told me that the files she had sent to David Sharaz and deleted from her phone related to taped conversations of her talking to various ministers and she was concerned she had committed an offence by taping the ministers so she didn’t want the police to find them.”
Ms Yates returned later that day and handed over two iPhones from Ms Higgins.
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Federal parliament overturns 25-year-old ban on euthanasia laws in ACT and Northern Territory
The federal parliament has lifted a 25-year-old ban that prevented the territories from making voluntary assisted dying laws.
Every state in Australia has already legalised voluntary euthanasia.
However, in 1997, the Commonwealth imposed a veto on the Northern Territory and the ACT, specifically barring them from doing so.
Thursday's Senate vote ends that ban, paving the way for the two territories to debate and pass their own laws.
The chamber and public gallery broke out into applause as senators agreed to repeal the ban, without a formal count of votes for and against.
Among the onlookers were several ACT MLAs, including Chief Minister Andrew Barr. Former NT chief minister Marshall Perron was also in the gallery.
Mr Perron's Country Liberal Party government had introduced the world's first legal euthanasia scheme in 1995, before then federal Liberal backbencher Kevin Andrews led the Commonwealth push to abolish it.
Thursday's Senate vote followed hours of debate across several sittings, involving almost all senators and, earlier, many MPs. The main parties had allowed parliamentarians to vote according to their conscience.
It was the fourth attempt to revoke Mr Andrews's ban on the territories, following earlier, unsuccessful efforts in 2008, 2010 and 2018.
Mr Perron thanked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for "doing what his five predecessors didn't do".
"And that's facilitate the debate on returning power to the territories," he said. "There has been a bill before parliament to do exactly that, continuously now, for 18 years."
Advocates highlight 'unconscionable' divide
Labor had promised before this year's election that it would allow a debate on the longstanding ban.
Independent ACT senator David Pocock had also pledged to push for a vote on territory rights.
Ultimately, two Labor backbenchers — Canberra's Alicia Payne and Darwin's Luke Gosling — introduced the bill that eventually passed through parliament.
Television producer and comedian Andrew Denton, who founded the euthanasia advocacy group Go Gently, was on hand to watch the final vote.
He expressed "deep gratitude" to parliamentarians, "on behalf of all advocates, and particularly those who died painfully or had loved ones who died painfully".
"It is unconscionable that here, in the ACT, somebody dying of cancer does not have the same end-of-life choices as somebody living less than 30 kilometres away in Queanbeyan."
During the debate, NT Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy said past justifications to intervene in and control the territories made little sense today.
"Yes, we do have a small population in the Northern Territory, but we have big hearts," she said. "We have great thinkers, we excel at so many levels."
Senator McCarthy said that since Mr Perron introduced his world-first legislation in 1995, the NT "has grown, exponentially, in skills, and knowledge, and ability to make its own decisions".
"Why is it we are constantly told we cannot make decisions for ourselves?"
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Climate change pest who blocked the Sydney Harbour Bridge is JAILED for her 'selfish and childish' stunt
A protester who blocked the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a protest over climate change has been sent to prison after a magistrate slammed her for her 'childish stunts' and 'selfish emotional' actions.
Magistrate Allison Hawkins sent Deanna 'Violet' Coco to prison for a minimum of eight months after she pleaded guilty to seven charges, including using an authorised explosive not as prescribed, possessing a bright light distress signal in a public place, and interfering with the safe operation of a bridge.
The 31-year-old sat at the front of the public gallery at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on Friday, wiping tears from her eyes as she held hands with her mother and another female supporter.
At 8.30am on April 13, Coco drove a large hire truck along the Cahill Expressway on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and purposefully blocked a lane during peak hour, the court was told.
While the truck was obstructing traffic, she stood on top of it, held a lit emergency flare and livestreamed the event.
After 25 minutes, police arrived and forcibly removed the protesters from the iconic Sydney landmark, with Coco resisting arrest.
Defence lawyer Mark Davis told the court a 'salient fact' in Coco's case was that she only blocked one lane on the Sydney Harbour Bridge when there were five.
'One lane was blocked ... it was a deliberate decision to only block one lane,' Mr Davis said.
'To put it simply, the traffic may have still been moving, there was no suggestion there was backup of traffic.'
The court was told Coco suffered from 'serious anxiety surrounding climate change' and her actions were personally motivated, as her boyfriend had been arrested for a similar protest on a football field.
Mr Davis said his client was in a 'high state of emotion' and would not have ordinarily conducted the offence.
Ms Hawkins questioned Mr Davis´ defence: 'Normal members of the community going to work and going about their ordinary business are not entitled to being disrupted because she´s in a high state of emotion.'
The defence lawyer said climate change anxiety was the 'most prevalent anxiety' in Coco´s generation.
'There may be an overwhelming threat of doom, they sense they aren´t being heard, the government isn´t doing enough, it´s leading to these types of actions,' Mr Davis said.
Ms Hawkins found there was an 'intended element of planning' in Coco´s offending.
'You stopped during peak-hour having obtained a flare and truck, and the banners and glue, to halt peak-hour traffic in the city at that particular time with the aim of gaining maximum exposure,' the magistrate said.
'You knew this was illegal, you knew you would be arrested and you knew there would be consequences.'
Ms Hawkins told Coco she let an 'entire city suffer' due to her 'emotional reaction' and failed to take into account the other people she affected.
She said the 31-year-old´s actions deserved condemnation from both the court and the community.
'You do damage to your cause when you do childish stunts like this. Why should they be disrupted by your selfish emotional actions?' Ms Hawkins said.
'You are not a political prisoner, you are a criminal.'
Coco was convicted and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment with a non-parole period of eight months.
She hugged her mother and friend before she was handcuffed and led out of the court by two corrective services officers.
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2 December, 2022
Top Qld oncologist found guilty of ‘unnecessary death’
The doctor has surrendered to his accusers but I don't think he needed to. Imunotherapy can work miracles and it can be argued that is should be tried first before leaping into surgery.
His decision to use ipilimumab is perhaps questionable. It is an older drug that can have severe side effects. Since Keytruda has now been approved for use with melanoma, that would have been a better choice. But it may not have been available under any protocol in 2018
But, as his colleagues say, he should have recognized the side-effects of ipilimumab as they emerged and gone straight into surgery at that point. So there was a degree of negligence there. But as a busy chief oncologist in a public hospital, such omissions can happen. It was probably his workload that was principally to blame
A top Queensland oncologist has been found guilty of professional misconduct, after a melanoma patient died “unnecessarily” due to the doctor’s multiple failures in diagnosis and treatment.
Paul Norman Mainwaring is a former director of oncology at the Mater Hospital and more recently practised at Canossa Private Hospital in Oxley.
He is now co-founder and chief executive of cancer diagnosis biotech company XING Technologies.
In a decision published on Tuesday, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal member John Robertson found that the 57-year-old’s “multiple failures” and, in particular, his initial treatment decision by immunotherapy for the melanoma patient in 2018 was “very serious”.
“The expert evidence against (Mr Mainwaring) is overwhelming, (his) multiple failures and, in particular, his initial treatment decision are therefore very serious,” Mr Robertson states in his decision.
Mr Mainwaring admitted during the tribunal hearing on September 15 that he “acted in a manner that was substantially below the standard reasonably expected of a registered health practitioner of an equivalent level of training and experience”, the decision states.
He also accepted his various failures in treatment decision-making including failure to seek other specialist opinions, and failure to keep notes amounted to professional misconduct.
He has surrendered his medical registration.
The decision states that a 76-year-old patient, known as PB, lost 11kg in weight and “tragically died” in Brisbane on 25 May 2018 after he developed an infection from severe diarrhoea and a perforated gastrointestinal wall which was a “known complication” of the immunotherapy called ipilimumab, with four doses by infusion between January and March 2018.
“Ipilimumab was not the appropriate treatment for the patient given the patient’s melanoma was either a stage IIB or stage IVa; has known side effects due to its high toxicity, including colitis and diarrhoea,” Mr Robertson wrote in his decision.
“The appropriate approach to the patient’s condition was to “wait and see”,” Mr Robertson wrote.
The tribunal heard that three experts in the field - Benjamin Brady, a specialist oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Centre in Victoria, Victoria Atkinson a medical oncologist at the Princess Alexandra Hospital and Brian Bell, the executive director of medical services at the same hospital - concurred that the choice of ipilimumab as a treatment was not clinically appropriate.
Dr Brady and Professor Atkinson told the tribunal that the patient “had an avoidable and unnecessary death” with Professor Atkinson stating that PB “had at worst, a completely resected stage IVa melanoma and had a very high likelihood that he would be cured from his cancer”.
Mr Mainwaring’s diagnosis of the man with a more serious metastatic melanoma “was neither clinically appropriate nor accurate”, when he was more likely to have a less-serious form of melanoma.
Dr Brady also considered that the risks and benefits of the treatment were not adequately emphasised to PB by Mr Mainwaring and that he failed to ask a colleague for a second opinion or for any help in managing PB’s treatment.
Mr Mainwaring has not practised for over three years and surrendered his registration in February 2019.
Prior to surrendering his registration, he had permanently retired as medical oncologist at Canossa Private Hospital and he told the QCAT hearing that he had no intention to return to practice.
“But for his voluntary cessation of practice in 2019, the seriousness of the conduct would ordinarily warrant the respondent be disqualified from practice for a lengthy period to send an appropriate message of denunciation to the medical profession and the community at large,” Mr Robertson wrote.
Mr Mainwaring told the tribunal he deeply regretted the tragic circumstances surrounding PB’s death and offered his sympathies to his family, and he was remorseful for his conduct.
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Revenue NSW has cancelled 33,121 fines in wake of the landmark ruling this week
Australians fined thousands of dollars for flouting Covid rules let out a sigh of relief this week with 33,000 fines ruled invalid - with many more expected to be refunded soon.
A landmark court case has seen the fines of tens of thousands of NSW residents withdrawn and the validity many more across the national thrown into doubt.
A Supreme Court judge Dina Yehia SC ruled two infringements imposed by police were invalid after hearing the wording on the penalty notices did not meet the legislative requirement of the Fines Act.
The ruling saw Revenue NSW has cancelled 33,121 fines, with the validity of another 30,000 also now in doubt.
Marrickville mother Karina Williams was fined $1,000 while buying fish and chips with her boyfriend in Croydon Park, just a few hundred metres from her home.
The single mother had failed to register her movement in the Canterbuty-Bankstown council, which at the time had been considered an LGA of concern.
Ms Williams and her partner, who had not been outside his LGA, were both slapped with a $1,000 fine for the perceived breach in August 2021.
For the mother-of-two, who was supporting her two teenage children on JobKeeper, the 'unaffordable' fine became a source of major anxiety.
The unpaid fine attracted several fees before it eventually prevented her from reapplying for her driver's licence after a suspension.
Ms Williams, with the help of lawyers from the Aboriginal Legal Service, was able to quash the debt, but the fine remained on her police record.
There were 62,138 Covid fines issued in NSW totalling $56,587,740.
Of that total, 16,462 fines worth $14,688,520 had been paid as of September, and before Tuesday's decision just 1,363 had been withdrawn.
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What is Ozempic and why is there a shortage of it?
Judie Thompson recently drove to a pharmacy 45 kilometres from home to replenish her dwindling supply of the drug she says changed her life. Thompson, 64, from Brisbane, began using the drug in March to manage her type 2 diabetes. Since then, she has lowered her insulin usage from five injections a day to just two – and lost 20 kilograms.
“It’s changed my life totally,” she says. “I was 107 kilos when I went on it, and I started losing weight as well as noticing how well my insulin was working.
“I walk my dogs, which I haven’t done in 10 years. I’m so happy to be me now.”
The drug, Ozempic, which comes as a weekly injection, has been approved in Australia for treating type 2 diabetes but is also sought after because it can help with weight loss, as is its weight-loss-specific counterpart, Wegovy, in the United States. Ozempic is now a “Hollywood drug”, according to some reports. Asked how he got to look “so ripped”, billionaire Elon Musk tweeted it was down to “fasting … and Wegovy”.
Now there’s a global shortage of Ozempic. It will not be available in Australia until April, affecting people who use the drug to manage their diabetes.
What’s causing the shortage? Who should be using Ozempic? And is it a magic shortcut for weight loss?
Ozempic was created by Danish drug company Novo Nordisk in 2012 and approved for use for type 2 diabetes in the US in 2017 and in Australia in 2019. In July 2020, it was listed on the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme (PBS) so that it costs about $40 (or $6.60 with a concession card) for a monthly course of weekly injections. The same amount on a private script, or “off label”, can cost $130 or more.
About 1.3 million Australians were newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 2000 and 2020, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Diabetes is caused by the body’s inability to use and/or produce insulin, a hormone that controls blood glucose levels.
In clinical trials by Novo Nordisk, it was discovered that semaglutide, which Ozempic contains, had a dual effect: it could also lead to weight loss in patients.
Semaglutide stimulates cells that make insulin while suppressing glucagon, affecting blood glucose levels, says leading endocrinologist and obesity specialist Professor Joseph Proietto at the University of Melbourne. “Semaglutide is an analog of one of our own hormones that we make in our small bowel called glucagon-like-peptide-1 [GLP-1],” adds Proietto, who established the weight control clinic at Austin Health. He says GLP-1 slows gastric emptying “so that it makes you feel fuller for longer, and then it goes to the brain and suppresses hunger. And both of those actions help with weight loss.”
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Rio Tinto chief scientist Nigel Steward says hydrogen ‘hype’ faces tough tests in reality
Rio Tinto’s chief scientist has fired a shot across the bows of companies and governments banking on green hydrogen “hype” as a solution to global warming, saying the company does not see hydrogen as a serious alternative to fossil fuels as an export commodity.
Speaking at Rio’s London investor day on Wednesday, Rio chief scientist Nigel Steward said the company did not believe hydrogen could be used as an “energy carrier” in the near future, given its production costs and problems with shipping it around the globe.
“Hydrogen is much hyped, particularly as an energy carrier. We don’t see hydrogen as being used as an energy carrier,” he said.
Mr Steward’s comments fly in the face of the ambitions of Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group, which plans to spend billions in the hope of turning green hydrogen into a major seaborne commodity.
But the Rio chief scientist warned investors that recent research suggested that direct shipping of hydrogen at scale could even exacerbate global warming.
“If we want to use hydrogen as an energy carrier, and we‘re going to transport it around the world as liquid hydrogen, that’s problematic because 1 per cent of the hydrogen per day is lost to the atmosphere,” he said.
“Recent studies have shown that hydrogen actually has a global warming potential five to 16 times greater than carbon dioxide. So what this means is it is better to burn natural gas than it is to transport hydrogen around the world and then consume that later.”
Fortescue and other hydrogen hopefuls have said they plan to tackle the issue of energy loss in transporting liquid hydrogen by instead producing ammonia as a means to transport the commodity. But that would require additional chemical processes that would use even more energy, making its use less efficient.
Mr Steward said Rio believed hydrogen could have a major role to play in global energy transition, but said the mining giant believed it was best consumed where it was produced.
“We see hydrogen being used for its unique chemical properties. As a reducing agent for production of green steel, as a reducing agent for ilmenite in the smelting process to make iron and titanium, and also as a source of energy for calcining alumina in our refineries,” he said.
But even that would require a significant technological breakthrough to bring production costs down, he said, given hydrogen production requires significantly more energy to produce than even aluminium smelting.
“It’s a very, very energy intensive material. It requires four times the amount of energy per tonne to produce than aluminium – and we think of aluminium as being very energy intensive,” he said.
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1 December, 2022
The Finnish example
In considering the article below, some caution is needed. One should, for instance, not mistake the initial results from a policy change for the final effects. Finland was for some time a world leader in education results on the PISA criteria but it has slipped back to sixth place recently
There are also ways in which Finns are different. Psychologically, they are famously taciturn for intstance. That may help Finns to minimize conflict
Sociologically, all Finns are clearly aware of their heroic struggles with the Soviets. That clearly fosters a sense of brotherhood among them -- something very conducive to acceptance of socialist policies
So what works well in Finland might not transfer well to other societies
The leader of the nation ranked as the happiest in the world arrives in Australia on Thursday, and it presents a great opportunity.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will meet his Finnish counterpart, Sanna Marin, on Friday and will surely be interested to learn more about Finland’s success and how it might apply to Australia.
Finland has led moves towards emphasising wellbeing in economic decisions, of the kind that Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has commenced since Labor took office in May.
Finland is famous for its well-resourced schooling and equality in education funding. This contrasts with the considerable inequalities that remain in Australian school funding almost a decade after the Gonski review’s call for change. Those recommendations lie dormant.
Finnish experience shows that equality between schools – a mutual striving for all schools to be good schools – is the best way to lift a nation’s educational excellence. That collective striving relies on valuing, trusting and fairly rewarding the teachers in those schools.
People will obviously be happier if allowed to pursue what they really want to do with their lives, rather than be pushed into an occupation their parents or others deem to be of suitable status. Encouraging those who choose different vocational paths from a professional career, for instance, contributes to Finland’s happiness. Being in a trade such as a plumber, electrician or carpenter is more valued than here.
Students in Finland are encouraged to follow their natural curiosity. We learn most effectively through trial and error. In Australia, there is too great a requirement for competitive high-stakes testing. This leads to the recitation of pre-prepared “right answers”. It causes anxiety for young people, but it also fails to foster creativity and innovation.
Finland has a remarkable history of innovation, due in part to its strong investment in research and development, which has helped it establish niches of design and production excellence for export. The best-known example is the Nokia company, which dominated global mobile phone production for more than a decade. Australia can learn from this approach to rectify our own underinvestment.
Gender equality is also advanced in Finland. Prime Minister Marin has spearheaded initiatives to increase paternity leave. Last year, paid parental leave in Finland was extended to 14 months, of which almost seven months is allocated for fathers. While some of that paternity leave can be transferred to mothers, most has to be taken by fathers for the family to gain the full entitlement. This “use it or lose it” minimum requirement is the only proven way to lift men’s role in caring for their children.
The new Australian government has made a welcome decision to extend paid parental leave to six months. However, it still needs to demonstrate how fathers will be encouraged to actually take that leave. That will support more mothers to return full-time to the workforce. The proportion of women in full-time jobs in Australia is 20 percentage points below Finland.
Finland is also the least corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International. It stands at equal No. 1 on that index, alongside Denmark and Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand, who Sanna Marin met on Wednesday. Australia languishes at No. 18, underlining the need for the National Anti-Corruption Commission being legislated in our federal parliament this week.
Finland has consistently pursued social democratic policies, the kind that Australia needs to revive if it is to boost its happiness, educational achievement and gender equality. Marin’s visit should provoke us to ponder the question: Do we want to become even more like America, or be more like Finland? We are poised between those two poles on so many indicators.
Measurements have shown, for instance, that an American with tertiary-educated parents is almost seven times more likely to enter tertiary education than a fellow citizen whose parents had no post-school education. In England, the difference is six times and in Australia, it is four times. In Finland, however, you are almost no more likely to get a tertiary education simply because your parents did. Finland has thus created extraordinary intergenerational opportunities for people from less privileged family backgrounds, based on genuine merit.
Australia can learn from this to further realise the full talents of our people to achieve what they want according to their interests and abilities. Our success, indeed our happiness, need not be determined by inherited advantage.
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Police officer who shot and killed Gabriel Messo may have committed homicide, coroner says
Stupid armchair criticism of a split-second decision
A junior police officer who gunned down a man as he savagely stabbed his own mother in broad daylight may have committed homicide, according to Victoria's coroner, who has referred the case to state prosecutors.
Gabriel Messo died after being shot three times by a Victoria Police officer who confronted him as he brutally attacked his mother in a public park in Melbourne's north-west about two years ago.
The assault was so ferocious that his mother, Lilla Messo, lost an eye and developed an acquired brain injury. She ultimately survived the attack.
Mr Messo's death was being investigated by the Victorian State Coroner John Cain, who today found that the first two shots fired by Constable Emmanuel Andrew was an acceptable use of force.
"The level of force used was not disproportionate to Constable Andrew's objective to prevent the assault from continuing and to protect Lilla from really serious injury," Judge Cain said.
But Judge Cain said he was "gravely concerned" about the third shot which was fired just five seconds after Gabriel Messo, who was by that point unarmed, had stopped attacking his mother and was moving away from police as he clutched his torso.
"I have formed a belief to the requisite standard that an indictable offence may have been committed by Constable Andrew in connection with Gabriel's death," Judge Cain said.
"The indictable offences I have formed a belief to the requisite standard include but are not limited to … of homicide, causing serious injury intentionally, conduct endangering life or assault."
He has referred the case to Victoria's director of public prosecutions, who will ultimately decide whether to criminally charge Constable Andrew.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said he was confident prosecutors would assess whether to lay charges as quickly as possible.
"We will await the findings in due course," the chief commissioner said.
"I know this will be an incredibly difficult time for the member involved and Victoria Police will continue to support him during this process."
Police union backs officers involved in Messo shooting
Police Association of Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt strongly condemned the coroner's findings and said the two police officers attending the Gladstone Park assault had made the right decision.
"We've got a decision to make as a community in Victoria. I can tell you now, police forces around the world are being roundly criticised for attending scenes and doing nothing," Mr Gatt said.
"These officers did something. They went and saved the life of a Victorian, a vulnerable Victorian who had been assaulted there for 17 minutes."
Mr Gatt said the situation needed to be quickly resolved by prosecutors for the benefit of police officers who had been "tormented" by the years-long wait.
He said that he had spoken to both officers and they were shocked by the coroner's findings.
"Does that make us angry? Yes it does," he said.
"Because police officers are asked to do this each and every day, and they shouldn't have to do it under the shadow of this sort of persecution."
Mr Gatt warned the findings could have lasting implications for policing in the state.
"Most people in the community would understand the terrible message this sends to police officers across Victoria," Mr Gatt said.
"Police officers who will get out of their cars and question 'should I rush in and do something or should I sit back, save I be criticised in the cool light of day, years and years later?'"
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Washing machine repairman wrongly targeted as a suspect in the William Tyrrell investigation is awarded almost $1.5MILLION in damages
Crooked cops again
A washing machine repairman who was wrongly named as a high-profile suspect in the investigation into William Tyrrell's disappearance will receive almost $1.5million in compensation.
Bill Spedding sued the NSW Police alleging detectives maliciously pursued him while investigating the disappearance of the three-year-old from his foster grandmother's home in Kendall, on the NSW north coast, on September 12, 2014.
His case before the NSW Supreme Court sought compensation for reputational harm and psychological treatment. Mr Spedding also sought exemplary damages to punish police for purportedly using the courts for an improper purpose.
The tradesman was an early high-profile suspect in the disappearance, with police searching Mr Spedding's Bonny Hills home and draining his septic tank in January 2015. But they found no evidence linking him to William.
Bill Spedding was awarded almost $1.5 million in damages after suing the NSW Police Force for malicious prosecution. Above, outside court on Thursday with his wife Margaret
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Bill Spedding was awarded almost $1.5 million in damages after suing the NSW Police Force for malicious prosecution. Above, outside court on Thursday with his wife Margaret
A coronial inquest later found Mr Spedding had an alibi on the day of William's disappearance. He was attending a school assembly for a child in his care that day, and had a receipt from a nearby coffee shop.
During the police investigation into Mr Spedding, the tradesman was charged in April 2015 over the historical child abuse claims, spending 56 days in custody and then being released on strict bail conditions.
The charges were later dropped by prosecutors.
Mr Spedding alleged that the charges were levelled against him in a bid to intimidate and place pressure on him.
Mr Spedding's lawyers claimed a police investigation prior to those charges being laid was 'done in extreme haste' in three or four weeks.
'The investigation was not in any way professional, careful or proper,' said Mr Spedding's lawyer Adrian Canceri during closing submissions in August.
Mr Spedding has claimed the anxiety and depression he suffers were caused by the prosecution and the public attention it brought.
Clear evidence emerged that the complainants had been coached by another person to make allegations and another person's evidence undermined the case, Justice Harrison heard.
Barrister Adrian Williams, for the State of NSW, had argued that misunderstandings occurred but it didn't follow that police were acting maliciously.
William Tyrrell has never been found
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Coalition slams proposed changes to referendum rules
The Coalition says Labor is exposing the Voice referendum to a misinformation campaign by scrapping laws requiring voters to be posted a pamphlet that outlines the arguments for the Yes and No cases.
The Albanese government on Thursday introduced legislation to the lower house to modernise laws governing how the referendum will be conducted.
Among the proposed changes contained in the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022, is the ditching of a provision that requires households to receive an official pamphlet outlining the proposed change to the Constitution, comprising up to 2000 words each on the Yes and No cases.
Shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser said the proposed change would compromise the quality of public debate in the lead-up to the national vote and risked creating an avenue for misinformation and interference to circulate.
“This is not about whether you vote yes or no,” Leeser said. “This is about ensuring the government provides information so that Australians can make an informed choice.
“A successful referendum will only occur if the change is clearly explained, and there is transparency and detail.”
Shadow special minister of state Jane Hume said the scrapping of the pamphlet was worrying as misinformation had already played a role in Australian elections.
“But this is more than just an election, this is changing Australia’s governing document - it could not be more important,” she said.
Introducing the bill on Thursday, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister Patrick Gorman said while the government had decided against publicly funding formal Yes and No campaigns, it would fund a civics education campaign, which would inform voters of the facts around the referendum.
“This information will provide voters with a good understanding of Australia’s Constitution, the referendum process and factual information about the referendum proposal,” Gorman said.
He said the pamphlet requirement was first introduced in 1912 and was an outdated mechanism for informing voters in a digital age.
“As the next referendum will be the first in the digital age, there was no need for taxpayers to pay for a pamphlet to be sent to households,” he said.
“Modern technology allows parliamentarians to express their views to voters directly and regularly through a wide range of sources, such as television, email, and social media that did not exist when the pamphlet was introduced in 1912.”
The bill will be referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which will report in early 2023.
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