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. Backups from previous months accessible here
31 January, 2024
Another Australian black shielded from justice
A senior academic staffer has accused James Cook University of “basically doing nothing” after she complained that the head of the Indigenous Education and Research Centre had allegedly threatened to “spear” her if she didn’t increase enrolment.
The woman alleges Martin Nakata, the Townsville-based deputy vice-chancellor of Indigenous Education and Strategy, made the threat in front of staff and a student three times in two days, first on November 16 at a whole-department training day.
In a complaint to James Cook University’s human resources department and WorkCover Queensland, the woman said Professor Nakata had told her she needed to increase Indigenous enrolment from 670 to 1000, a target she felt was unrealistic.
“He’s a Torres Strait Islander man and because of that and because we’re the Indigenous centre, we have things on our walls, and one of the things is the spear,” she told The Australian.
“He points to the spear and says if you don’t reach that target, I’m going to take that spear off the wall and I’m going to spear (woman’s name).
“On the Friday he repeated the same comment, and later that day he repeated the same thing in front of a student.
“It flabbergasted me. Everybody felt very uncomfortable … they sat there in silence, I think in shock. “I felt totally humiliated, and I was also quite dumbfounded.”
The Australian asked Professor Nakata for a response.
He did not comment but a JCU spokesman said: “(The) university is aware of the alleged incident. All such allegations are taken seriously and handled in accordance with the university’s policies and procedures.”
The woman said she had worked with Professor Nakata for more than five years and they had previously had a good working relationship.
She said she tried to resolve the matter unofficially, by emailing Professor Nakata and telling him she “respectfully requested him” to stop making the comments.
“He said he was sorry and it was just a joke,” she said.
The woman said she had accepted his apology and was keen to work together as normal, but her relationship with him had deteriorated to the point where he did not speak to her. “On a normal day I’d have to speak to him half a dozen times, so that means I can’t do my job,” she said.
The woman said she felt bullied, and made a complaint to JCU’s human relations department on December 3, after she had been contacted about the alleged incident by The Cairns Post.
She then made a claim to WorkCover. “I went to HR and they’ve basically done nothing,” she said.
“He’s a very respected Indigenous academic and he’s very high-profile and I think they don’t know what to do.
“If it was somebody at a lower level, they would have been suspended or sacked. They are trying to work out how to make me want to go away.”
The JCU spokesman said: “JCU has endeavoured to meet with the complainant but scheduled meetings have had to be postponed due to respective leave commitments.”
The woman has been on stress leave and annual leave.
Professor Nakata is the first Torres Strait Islander to graduate with a PhD in Australia and his decades-long research career has focused on Australian Indigenous education.
He was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia in 2020.
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Daniel was forced to have a Covid jab to keep his job. Then he fell gravely ill. Now he has secured a HUGE legal victory
A public servant who was forced to get a Covid vaccination to keep his job, but then fell gravely ill, has won a major legal battle and will be paid compensation.
Daniel Shepherd, 44, received two Covid-19 vaccinations when he was a youth worker at Baptist Care South Australia in 2021 and suffered adverse reactions to the jab.
The father of one started a new job with the Department for Child Protection (DCP) on October 19 that year, but was told on January 28, 2022, that he had to get a booster shot to keep his job as a child and youth worker.
Mr Sheperd was given a Pfizer mRNA jab on February 24, 2022, but a day later he had serious chest pains.
The pain kept getting worse until March 11, when he thought he was having a heart attack and was rushed to Adelaide's Ashford Hospital. There he was diagnosed with post-vaccine pericarditis - an inflammation of the membrane around the heart.
The illness meant Mr Shepherd was only able to work for a few months in a part-time administrative capacity.
DCP acknowledged the pericarditis was caused by the Pfizer mRNA booster shot, but it denied workers compensation liability, saying it was a legal government directive and so was excluded under the SA Emergency Management Act.
But Judge Mark Calligeros, the SA Employment Tribunal's deputy president, rejected the DCP's arguments.
'It is not surprising that some people who receive a dose of Covid-19 vaccine will sustain injury as a result,' he wrote in his judgment.
'It would be astonishing if parliament intended that an employee of the state, injured adhering to an EM (Emergency Management) Act direction, was to be precluded from receiving workers compensation.
'I am not satisfied that parliament intended to deny compensation to employees of the state injured by heeding a vaccination mandate designed to protect the health and welfare of citizens.'
Judge Calligeros added that Mr Shepherd was required to be vaccinated to continue working in healthcare.
This was 'because (the state) sought to protect and reduce the risk of infection to the public and general and those members of the public receiving healthcare services in particular.
'It would be ironic and unjust if Mr Shepherd was denied financial and medical support by complying with the state's desire to preserve public health.'
In a landmark ruling, the judge ordered that Mr Shepherd should get weekly income support payments and the payment of medical expenses.
The ruling came despite SA Health still enforcing a mandatory Covid vaccination policy for some employees, even though similar policies have been dropped in other states.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13023211/Covid-jab-legal-victory-Daniel-Shepherd.html
**********************************************‘We want our school back’: Newington parents, old boys gather to protest co-ed move
Students returning to Newington College on Wednesday were greeted with a parent protest outside the school’s gates, as backlash intensified against a decision to admit girls to the 160-year-old institution.
A group of parents and alumni gathered at a Stanmore park before walking to the private school’s main campus gates carrying placards that called for the college to reverse plans to transform into a fully co-educational school by 2033.
Newington announced late last year that it would admit girls in the junior school from 2026, and become a fully co-educational campus by 2033. The decision, made almost two years after the idea was first floated to the school community, has drawn intense criticism from some parents and old boys.
An online petition objecting to the co-ed move has garnered 2300 signatures, while a separate group of parents is threatening legal action against the college over the plan to enrol girls.
In November, a letter from law firm Brown Wright Stein was sent to the council chairman Tony McDonald on behalf of parents and old boys, challenging the validity of the co-ed plan and arguing it was contrary to the inner west school’s trust, which was established in 1873.
The decision also prompted Newington’s Founders’ Society chairman Greg Mitchell to quit his position and withdraw his bequest to the school.
“I believe this decision is ideologically driven by the minority and is now being imposed on the whole of the Newington community with potentially disastrous consequences,” he told the Herald last year.
The Founders’ Society was established in 2010 to raise money for the college and for student scholarships by asking alumni to donate by making a bequest in their wills.
A separate coalition of parents and old boys have also set up a group called Save Newington College to campaign against the co-ed move and lobby the school to overturn the decision.
“Such a seismic shift in this extraordinary school will destroy the great traditions and heritage that make Newington College the greatest school for boys in Australia,” a message on the group’s website says.
Morgan, who graduated from the school in 1990 and is one of the founders of the Save Newington group, said 640 alumni and current and former parents had registered to be a part of the group.
“The Save Newington group is not directly involved in any legal action, however many of our groups’ supporters are, and we are all interested in its success,” said Morgan. “The group has helped to pass on information from the legal action group to our supporters, including fundraising efforts.”
A former parent at the school, Kerry Maxwell, who is part of the MOONS (Mothers of Old Newingtonians), said she attended the protest to help “speak up on behalf of a lot of families I know that are furious about this decision, but they’re too scared to talk”.
“Parents signed up for a boys’ school. They heard nothing about possible co-ed plans for months and then there is a sudden announcement. Now if parents try and get their boys into other schools they can’t.”
Another old boy, Tony Retsos, who graduated in 1977, said he had “nothing against co-ed” but the school “had been a private elite boys’ school for 160 years and the process to consult about a decision of this kind wasn’t sufficient.”
“All we want is for the decision to be reversed and a proper consultation with all stakeholders. Without more information the decision is unfathomable,” he said.
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‘Divide and conquer’ key to Anthony Albanese’s class warfare
You don’t have to be a dewy-eyed romanticist about the past to believe that in the past year Australia has become angrier and more divided than we can ever recall.
The evidence is everywhere. White versus black, rich versus poor, women versus men, women versus trans, and every other schism one can imagine yawns wider than it ever did. For some, this is not only deliberate but necessary. And, indeed, a damn good thing. You can’t have a revolution without conflict.
However, because Marxist conflict theory and old notions about class warfare are discredited everywhere in Australia (except in our law schools and other radical corners of our universities), it is not politically astute to advertise that you are deliberately stoking conflict. As an instrument of statecraft, inciting and capitalising on division is a decidedly old-fashioned and brutish concept. That is why the Albanese government is polishing its messages to hide its intent. Pull the curtain aside, and its modern political platform is deeply rooted in class, race and gender wars.
While superficially playing a neutral and reassuring game, this government believes Australia is broken and needs radical change, which can only be achieved after, and as a result of, significant conflict. Like its tax policies, none of this was advertised at the 2022 election.
Because most Australians think Australia is basically a pretty good place, which only needs incremental rather than revolutionary change, a political party that wants to make major change must hide that from the voting public.
The voice was a classic example. The government tried to tell mainstream Australia this was a minor change, a simple matter of good manners. It did so even though those drafting the words were saying the opposite. Though the government did fail miserably in its constitutional quest, the ugly and bitter campaign did achieve one of its goals; by stirring up anger and division, it energised activists to intensify their fight.
The most rancorous Australia Day in history is testament to that. The aim of activists is to make Australia Day so contentious it will have to be abandoned. Predictably, those who want to mark Australia Day are not taking this lying down. Peter Dutton’s call for a boycott of Woolworths for its apparent abandonment of Australia Day is in fact reactive – he is simply channelling the anger many feel about the activists.
Moreover, it’s likely that dialling up the rhetoric against Australia Day – with local councils refusing to hold citizenship ceremonies and Tennis Australia refusing to mark Australia Day – will simply generate much more heat and light without effecting any substantive change.
Success by the activists will simply perpetuate the division. If a new Australia Day is chosen, the anger of those unhappy with the change will be directed to changing the new date. Division will become permanent.
A particularly repulsive new form of division has emerged from the grisly merger between the Indigenous sovereignty movement and the pro-Palestine movement. Anthony Albanese cannot wash his hands of what he has wrought. By stoking the “always was, always will be” claims about ownership of Australian land he made it inevitable this particular narrative of colonial dispossession would merge with claims that Israel too is a colonial power. The “always was, always will be” crowd have joined in conflict with the “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” brigade.
As if we weren’t divided enough about Gaza with every conceivable group from the LGBTQ Mardi Gras to the ABC violently split, now we are told to view Gaza through the prism of colonialism and dispossession. When virtually every event in human history is explained by some variant of oppressor/oppressed analysis, and everyone is allocated to one or other of those buckets, it is any wonder we find more and more reasons to divide ourselves up into warring groups?
Mind you, this division into oppressor and oppressed can bring benefits to some members of the allegedly oppressed. Indeed, some members of these groups become the new privileged, immune from criticism or punishment no matter how badly they behave.
For example, until this newspaper exposed the death threats made by Indigenous cultural adviser Ian Brown against white project manager Rochelle Hicks, it appeared Brown’s Indigeneity gave him immunity from the normal legal consequences of his actions.
At the ABC, impartiality rules don’t seem to cover the work of Indigenous affairs editor Bridget Brennan.
In her Australia Day news report, she announced that the country “always was and always will be Aboriginal land”. After the Prime Minister released proposed words for the voice in July 2022, Brennan appeared on ABC’s Insiders panel telling Australians the voice must include reparations. These are the demands of an activist stoking division, not an impartial journalist.
Under this government, class warfare – the forerunner of the kinds of conflict theories that drive colonialism, race and gender wars – remains a critical part of its political playbook.
Anthony – “my word is my bond” – Albanese has reneged on the stage three tax cuts in favour of “divide and conquer” class war politics. The PM is effectively saying, without a hint of shame, that it is fine for him to break the promise that was crucial to winning the 2022 election because it enables him to take from the rich to give to the poor.
You can ignore the PM’s cries of “we had no alternative”. Reneging on stage three was a deliberate choice of one preferred policy among a large number of options. If the PM wanted to provide more cost-of-living relief while still keeping the tax cuts, there would have been many ways to fund it. Spending cuts or deferrals of environmental or industrial policy would be but a few of the obvious ways for him to have kept his promise on stage three while still funding cost-of-living relief.
No, the real reason the PM broke his promise is that he is still “fighting Tories”. Class warfare, it would seem, justifies any dishonesty in the PM’s world.
Wedded to identity politics, the Albanese government is going to war on many fronts, knowingly fermenting division while apparently promising to fix society. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, for example, has released discussion papers aimed at dramatically skewing the law on sexual assault.
Everything is on the table, it would seem, from specialist courts with suitable attitudes, to re-education camps for lawyers involved in this work, to the abandonment of trial by jury in favour of some method of adjudication that will ensure more convictions.
Everything is being considered, it would seem, except for any consideration of the rights of accused persons. They are apparently expendable. Mere roadkill in the path of the new conviction-focused juggernaut.
A successful, peaceful country needs values that unite us. Australians have shown time and again they have no time for class warfare, or warfare based on race, gender or any other form of identity politics. This is why the ALP has spent so little time in office federally since World War II. However, it explains why this Labor government wants to do as much as it can as quickly as it can while it still has a House of Representatives majority and a favourable Senate. It wants revolution not evolution, and is prepared to stoke division to get there. What it needs to remember though is that revolutions have a nasty habit of eating their own.
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30 January, 2024
Dutton commits to defunding Environmental Defenders Office under Coalition government
The Coalition will strip funding from the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) if it wins the next federal election, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has promised.
The EDO is an environmental legal centre that runs litigation and offers legal support in climate change and environment cases.
Federal funding to the non-government organisation was cut by former prime minister Tony Abbott in 2013 but reinstated by the Albanese government when it came into power.
The government committed to providing $8.2 million to the EDO over four years, with the rest of its revenue received from state and territory governments or philanthropy.
But the EDO has recently worn criticism for its conduct in court. Federal Justice Natalie Charlesworth ruled the group had confected evidence and coached witnesses in its legal challenge of a Santos gas project in the Timor Sea.
In the wake of that case, Mr Dutton vowed to revive the Abbott-era cuts if the Coalition won government.
"They have obviously been discredited in a recent federal court case but the federal government has had nothing to say about it," Mr Dutton told resources groups in West Australia this morning.
"The same activists are now seeking to use the courts to thwart Woodside's $16.5 billion Scarborough offshore gas field project here in WA.
"It does stymie existing projects and it does stop new endeavours from taking off. "We think it needs to be defunded."
Mr Dutton's commitment follows a pledge by the LNP in Queensland to pull state funding for the EDO if it wins the next election, and calls from former WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett for the group to be abolished altogether.
On Tuesday, EDO chief executive David Morris wrote to supporters acknowledging the court had been critical of "some aspects of the handling of the case", and said the office was treating that with the utmost seriousness.
"We are reviewing the judgement carefully but as the matter remains before the court, we are limited in making further comment," Mr Morris wrote.
"While this decision was devastating for EDO's clients and deeply disappointing for EDO and supporters like you, our determination to continue providing public interest legal services to communities across the continent is unwavering.
"We provide these services in circumstances where, were it not for EDO, access to environmental justice in Australia would be seriously diminished."
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The hate-filled Aboriginal industry
I have had enough of the Aboriginal industry and the posturing, harassment and denigration that it hurls at everyone else. And I have had enough of its latest destructive offshoot, the campaign against Australia Day. And I have already had enough of the latest campaign for which we are clearly being softened up, namely that the next governor-general should be an Aboriginal or, to use the latest piece of nonsense, that he or she should be someone from the so-called First Nations.
To start with that nomenclature, it is utterly absurd to refer to Aboriginal tribes as First Nations. They were never nations because they have never had any of the attributes that the word has meant to convey and it is false to pretend that they have. That is not to diminish their culture or traditional way of life, which I for one would like to preserve. It is simply to give the thing some sort of rational basis rather than the fantasy world on which the notion of First Nations is built.
Then there is the equally absurd notion that the European arrival in Australia was an invasion. Even if you do not believe Australia was terra nullius at the time, as I believe it was , and no matter what the High Court says about it, the factual reality is that this country was not settled until 1788. There was at the time a general understanding among civilized nations that there was a right and a duty to settle what were largely uninhabited territories and give their people a chance to share in the better life that modern society could give them. The British, and those who came later in waves of immigration, did exactly that, and they were a great success.
Obviously, there were blemishes in the settlement. But the motive behind settlement was good and its benefits were enormous and cancel out the blemishes a thousand times over. Of course, the Aboriginal industry will never accept that argument, because settlement was effected by the European race and to say that the European race could do anything decent or worthwhile is anathema to it.
I happen to believe that white settlement brought great benefits and opportunity to Aboriginals. Indeed, we should forget about Sorry Day and implement a Thank You Day, when Aboriginals and all Australians can give thanks for the bounty, prosperity and national identity we have received for being part of European civilisation.
In any event, if the settlement was an invasion, there is a very obvious and simple way of undoing it and atoning for it, and one that is still available to the do-gooders who have seized on the Aboriginal issue to denigrate all Western civilisation: give the land back, starting with the suburban block to give everyone a chance to share in that noble project. Strange, but I have not found a solitary Australian who will take part in such a gesture. Instead of that, we are content to blame the present generation for every perceived shortcoming of all previous generations, which is grossly unfair and does not help a single Aboriginal to better their lives. Rather, it turns the mainstream Australian population against them, as we saw with the Voice.
Worse still, this hectoring is now destroying our national identity and I worry for the future. No sporting match, no cultural event, no civic activity and no celebration is now safe without uncoupling it from any recognition of Australia Day or any suggestion that it might be an event of which Australia should be proud. And that attitude is utterly destructive for building a national spirit and identity. Just how bad this has become has just been seen by the abuse of Peter Dutton for daring to oppose Woolworths’ virtual ban on products for Australia Day which it presents under the deceitful guise of being a commercial decision. Dutton should be commended for taking a stand and he is emerging as the first Liberal leader with backbone since Tony Abbott. And here is a better policy to defend Australia Day: no money, absolutely none, for any municipal council or other body, private or public, while it will not celebrate Australia Day.
Like me, you probably feel that you could and should have objected to the unrelenting trend to debase Australia. But I have changed and am making my own protest and I hope you will. I have found that, surprise, I can actually live without shopping at Woolworths and without patronising the Nova Cinemas and Readings Bookshops in Melbourne for their abuse of our national day. I assure you: it gives you a great feeling of liberation.
It is said, of course, that our appalling record is shown by failures on Aboriginal health, education, housing and incarceration. There are simple solutions for all of these ills, if only our governments had the guts to use them. The answers are very straightforward. Health: stop taking drugs and start eating decent food. Education: go to school. Housing: start saving up. Incarceration: don’t commit the crime.
On the next governor-general, to say that he or she must be an Aboriginal is tokenism of the worst order. It is based on racism and should be abhorred. It would do as much damage to Aboriginals as was done by the discredited Voice. The appointment is by the Crown, the same Crown that made our national settlement; so how can the same Crown now deny the legitimacy of that settlement?
Finally, on a note of optimism, there is now a new challenge, the proposed treaty which should be opposed with the same vigour that defeated the Voice because it is just as bad, and for very good reasons. Only governments can make treaties. A nation cannot make a treaty with itself or its citizens. And we all know what the lobby will try to include: control over development and the use of land; more tokenism; the right for one race and its non-elected representatives to have more power in government decisions to all other races and to the prejudice of all other races. If you can defeat the Voice, you can defeat the so-called treaty. But only if you try.
We are losing our nation. Even the so-called national broadcaster now maintains that the news comes from Gadigal country, a completely offensive assertion that suggests it is not even part of Australia. The way we are going, Aboriginals may well be the First Nations. But Australia will become the Lost Nation. That is a tremendous sadness and it should be opposed in every way.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/brown-study-281/
******************************************************Anthony Albanese’s broken tax pledge does not make up for losses in cost-of-living crisis
Anthony Albanese’s broken tax pledge would return less than 10 per cent of the real disposable income average earners have lost per week, as a leading economist warns bracket creep is more damaging to workers than interest rate hikes.
As the political battle sharpens over competing tax relief plans for “middle Australia” and the Prime Minister refuses to apologise for his broken election promise, the Coalition has released analysis of national accounts data showing the government has presided over a fall in real disposable income for average earners now amounting to $153 a week.
However, Labor’s new tax model, which reduces the size of tax cuts to higher-income earners to redistribute to lower-wage earners, would deliver only $15 extra a week to an average earner beyond the original stage three cuts. The opposition claims the data exposes the revised tax plan as providing “a drop in the ocean” in addressing the cost-of-living and inflation crisis the Albanese government claims it is addressing with its plan.
The Australian understands the Greens are considering demanding that Labor raise the $18,200 tax-free threshold in order to win the party’s support on the stage three rewrite in the Senate.
The Coalition’s fresh attack on Labor’s stage three broken promise comes as EQ Economics managing director Warren Hogan claimed bracket creep had a worse impact on workers over the past two years than the Reserve Bank of Australia’s 13 interest rate hikes.
A separate analysis of the national accounts by Mr Hogan showed total mortgage interest repayments increased by $18bn a quarter in the two years to September, from about $11bn in the three months to September 2021 to $29bn in the three months to September 2023.
This is compared to the quarterly increase of $26bn in income tax paid over the same period – from $65bn to $91bn a quarter – although high migration numbers have also been a factor in the workforce tax figures. “This government has basically spent its first 18 months in office blaming the RBA for all the misery out there when it is actually income tax that has gone up more,” Mr Hogan said.
“Bracket creep has had a bigger impact on middle-income Australia than the RBA’s interest rate hikes.”
The Coalition’s analysis of national accounts data from the December 2023 quarter shows real net disposable income per person fell by 8.6 per cent in the first 18 months of the Albanese government.
For an average income earner this is a decline in take-home pay of just under $8000. The primary drivers of the hit to net disposable income have been rising prices, rising mortgage payments, falling real wages and bracket creep.
The Coalition claims an average earner would receive just $804 more under Labor’s policy – $15.46 a week – than it would under the existing tax laws.
Opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor claimed this was less than 1 per cent of their annual wage and returned just 10 cents for every dollar they had lost to cost-of-living pressures.
The opposition analysis is based on the difference between what the average full-time wage earner on a salary of around $95,000 would have received under the existing stage three tax cuts as legislated by the former Coalition government and Labor’s new model, which it will need parliament to pass before July 1.
The analysis assumes a 3.5 per cent rise in real wages and a 9.4 per cent rise in prices amid population growth of 3.5 per cent.
This amounted to a loss in real net disposable income of $7953 a year. “Labor is selling their broken tax promise as a solution to the cost-of-living crisis,” Mr Taylor said. “Labor’s failures on workplace relations, energy, housing and tax are driving up the cost of living for all Australians.
“Rather than boost productivity and rein in spending to control inflation, Labor has broken its core election promise to raise taxes. Anthony Albanese has sold his integrity and started a class war for a 10c election sugar hit. Bracket creep is the tax increase nobody voted for. Labor’s broken promise entrenches bracket creep in our tax system.
“Remarkably, it is a tax cut that increases taxes by $28bn on more than four million Australians. Labor is trying to tax its way out of inflation and hardworking families are paying the price.
“Strong economic management, not broken promises, is the only way to provide relief to middle Australians from Labor’s cost-of-living crisis.”
A spokesman for Jim Chalmers accused Mr Taylor of “fumbling around for the usual incoherent excuses to play politics with our bigger tax cuts for middle Australia”.
“This is why nobody takes Angus Taylor seriously. He says he’s for lower taxes then opposes bigger tax cuts for more people to help with the cost of living,” he said. “All those words and he still can’t explain why he wants higher taxes on middle Australia to fund even bigger tax cuts for those on the highest incomes.
“This shows once again his mindless negativity is no substitute for economic credibility, and he will harm not help the workers and families of middle Australia.
“If the Liberals really understood how tough people are doing it in middle Australia they wouldn’t be opposing more help for them via the tax system.”
Mr Albanese on Sunday continued to defend his broken election pledge, having promised in opposition to not relitigate the stage three tax cuts, which he previously supported. He said new legislation would be introduced in “coming weeks” with parliament due to return on February 6.
It would unwind the existing tax cuts – which were due to begin on July 1 – and replace them with Labor’s revised model. Labor will need the support of the Greens, which are hostile to tax cuts, and two of the Senate crossbench – or rely on the Coalition not to stand in the way of the changes.
“We are putting our plan to the parliament and we are hopeful of getting support. We will talk to people across the parliament,” Mr Albanese said Sunday.
“We’ll put it first to the House of Representatives. We will put it to the Senate. And I’m very confident that people will look at the two plans … one of which leaves a whole lot of people behind.
“All those people, the part-time workers, the renters, the people earning under $45,000, (it) leaves them behind and gives them nothing.”
He said the 13 interest rate hikes – 12 of which have come since Labor was elected in May 2022 – had been the driving factor in his change of mind.
“Well, the challenge and the clear obligation that we had was to not put further pressure on inflation. So that was the context here. That was the problem with, you could hand out, the easy politics is to hand out cheques.”
However, the Prime Minister appeared unable to clearly define what salary a person needed to be earning to be considered part of “middle Australia”, despite his claim Labor’s tax model was aimed directly at this group. His comments come after repeatedly defending the stage three tax cut overhaul by arguing the changes will overwhelmingly benefit middle Australia, which is doing it tough in cost-of-living pressures.
“So that, for the average family (that) earns $130,000, instead of getting just $1000, they’ll be getting $2600. That makes a substantial difference to them. So our choice, very clearly, is to give every taxpayer a tax cut. We have done that. We have aimed the biggest benefit … squarely at middle Australia.”
The Coalition has yet to confirm its position on whether to oppose the changes or incorporate them in a broader election tax package that would also reinstate the original stage three cuts.
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Forensic lab’s latest failure
After years of catastrophic problems, revealed by The Australian’s Shandee’s Story podcast, Queensland’s forensic laboratory is undoubtedly overwhelmed in retesting a backlog of about 100,000 samples from more than 30,000 criminal cases dating back to 2007. But its management must do better at prioritising urgent tasks. As Sarah Elks and Michael McKenna reported on Saturday, the lab is taking months to formally identify and release the bodies of a couple killed in a plane crash in October, forcing their grieving son into financial distress and delaying his parents’ funeral.
Private pilots Alwyn, 73, and Jenny Rogash, 75, died on October 28 when their light plane crashed in dense, mountainous bushland west of Mackay, after taking off from Townsville. DNA forensic testing was ordered by the coroner before a death certificate could be issued. Their son, Bryan Rogash, wants his parents’ funeral to go ahead and to deal with his parents’ estate. He can do neither, however, without his parents’ remains or a death certificate. Mr Rogash, 38, is a military veteran who was injured during his RAAF service and is unable to work.
Authorities are relying on a sample of bone to formally identify the couple. But since December 2022, bone samples have not been able to be processed at the lab, forcing Forensic Services Queensland to send them to an Australian Federal Police testing centre interstate. Such poor service is not acceptable. The Miles government needs to intervene.
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29 January, 2024
Misuse of police in hospitals
A former police officer and opposition frontbencher has slammed the Queensland Premier for dismissing concerns about cops being stuck at overstretched hospitals as just doing “their job”.
An ex-Queensland superintendent also weighed in, saying police were being forced into a “terrible situation” amid a “raging crime crisis”.
It comes after The Courier-Mail revealed police were being held up for nearly a week in Queensland hospitals guarding prisoners, left for hours in waiting rooms and made to ramp alongside ambulances with injured or mentally ill people in patrol cars.
A spreadsheet collated by Brisbane officers, obtained by The Courier-Mail, lists three years of occasions when police were kept from their normal duties because other frontline services were too busy.
But in response, Premier Steven Miles said police being tied up at hospitals was “part of their job”.
“Well, it is their job, it’s part of their job,” he said.
“Hospital workers and police work together.
“Sometimes that does mean that police have to spend time at the hospital to keep our hospital workers safe while ensuring that those in custody get the healthcare that they need.”
But LNP Police spokesman Dan Purdie said police initially created the register because of this “growing problem”.
“I’ve been a police officer all my adult life and it was never our job to care for a patient in the back of a police car ramped outside a hospital for up to eight hours, but it is now thanks to a chaotic Labor government that has lost control of services across the board,” he said.
“If Labor believes this is just business as usual, then why did they fight so hard to keep it hidden?”
Former Gold Coast superintendent Jim Keogh said the scenarios were “not the job of the police at all”.
“They are being faced with a raging crime crisis in Queensland, and they are being forced to compensate for the failings in other departments,” he said.
“Those police are trained law enforcement officers and that’s what they should be allowed to focus on – and they are being turned into health managers.”
Mr Keogh said it was crucial each department was “funded and resourced properly to be able to do their own jobs”.
But Health Minister Shannon Fentiman backed Mr Miles, and said it was “the job” of police to offer support to patients at hospital when needed, particularly those with psychosis or in serious mental health distress.
“It is really important that police, as a frontline service, are involved with our ambulance service and our hospitals – particularly for those patients who may have come from prison and need health care, or those patients who are experiencing extreme distress and mental ill health.”
Ms Fentiman said she had spoken with Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll about how beat police were facing a spike in call-outs related to mental health.
“It is definitely part of their job these days,” she said.
Ms Carroll said demand for policing services had “increased exponentially”.
The Health Minister pointed to a rollout of co-responder models over the past few years, which was due to be expanded.
“The big hospitals that have been mentioned in this spreadsheet, in the last performance data, have seen more and more people presenting, but actually they’re treating people with the recommended time frame,” she said.
But pressed on the inside information showing sometimes ambulances didn’t even show up, Ms Fentiman conceded it wasn’t good enough.
“We have invested in an additional 200 paramedics, just this financial year, they’ve all been employed and they’re all on the front line,” she said.
Mr Miles reiterated that officers had the responsibility to keep the community safe, including health care workers at hospitals. “Obviously, they do their very best to minimise the amount of time spent in those kinds of circumstances,” he said. “But ultimately this is our emergency services, our police and our health services working together.”
The Queensland Police Union declined to comment.
Opposition Leader David Crisafulli slammed the government’s response to revelations that police were being stretched thin, ramping patients and guarding prisoners at hospitals for up to a week.
“For a Premier yesterday to address that police sitting at an ambulance ramp for eight hours is business as usual is not normal,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“If we are given the privilege of governing in October, working harder for Queenslanders will be a priority for us and we will see an end to this chaotic behaviour,” he said.
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International student visa numbers fall amid migration squeeze
The number of international student visa holders approved to come to Australia is on track to plummet by more than 90,000 this financial year, as the federal government rejects an increasing number of applicants to curb the high levels of temporary migration.
The number of visas granted to offshore students dropped to 139,132 in the first half of the financial year, figures from the Department of Home Affairs reveal, with nearly 20 per cent of all applicants rejected. If the approval rate continues 91,715 fewer overseas students will arrive in 2023-24 compared with the past year.
International Education Association of Australia CEO Phil Honeywood said the figures were part of the government crackdown on giving visas to applicants who were more interested in work rights than study, which the government refers to as “non-genuine students”.
“The focus has been on winding back a large number of diploma-level vocational students doing courses such as diploma of leadership, and instead the primary focus is on students who can add skills to the Australian economy,” he said.
The total number of student visas approved – including for non-residents already in Australia – was 195,934, which is also on track to fall below the record 577,295 visas granted in 2022-23.
The change in the numbers is being driven by the number of rejected applicants, with 81 per cent of student visa requests being granted in the past six months.
This is down from 86 per cent of applicants being approved in 2022-23, 91.5 per cent in 2021-22 and 89.9 per cent in the pre-Covid year of 2018-19.
A Department of Home Affairs spokeswoman said visa approvals needed to be “balanced against upholding the integrity of the student visa program”.
“The department has seen increasing levels of integrity concerns across the student visa program,” she said.
“The department received higher levels of fraudulent documents, fraud related to English language testing, non-genuine claims and non-genuine subsequent marriages being presented in student visa applications.
“The department will refuse a visa application to non-genuine applicants who do not meet regulatory requirements and where fraud is present.”
Education Minister Jason Clare said Labor was committed to improving the standing of the nation’s higher education sector and combating exploitation.
“The Albanese government’s migration strategy and the other integrity measures we’ve put in place send a clear message that we will act to prevent the exploitation of students and protect Australia’s reputation as a high-quality international education provider,” he said.
A global push is under way to limit student migration, with Canada seeking to curb its numbers by announcing a two-year cap on foreign students that will cut numbers by 35 per cent, and Britain barring foreign students from bringing dependants.
Migration expert and former immigration department official Abul Rizvi said the decline in student visa approvals reflected a bid from the government to lower net migration and ease the pressure on infrastructure and the housing market.
“The reason I think the government is targeting students right now is to get net migration down to a more sustainable level,” he said. “And in our history, whenever net migration has hit or approached around 300,000, problems have occurred in terms of congestion, inadequate infrastructure and housing, but also many government services start to strain at that level of net migration.
“And of course last year, we hit over 500,000, which is the highest in our history and not surprisingly, all of those things are under strain as a result.”
Mr Rizvi said the Australian, Canadian and British governments’ different approaches to bringing down student numbers were all poorly designed, arguing that the Albanese government’s strategy of upping refusals wasted resources. “Australia’s approach has been to crank refusal rates,” he said. “I personally think all three countries have got it wrong; they’re just doing it badly.
“Not letting dependants come is poor practice, student visa capping in an arbitrary way and it’s also chaotic … and Australia’s approach is subjective refusal rates.
“That’s not very good either, it’s just a waste of resources.”
Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan has accused Labor of pursuing a “Big Australia policy” and allowing a record intake of international students to help “drive overseas migration to a record 518,000 people as Australians endured housing shortages, rent hikes, and a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by population growth”.
“Labor says they’re not running a Big Australia policy but they also said they would deliver the stage 3 tax cuts,” he said.
The rate of visas being granted to international students in the university education sector alone dropped to 82.5 per cent since July, from 87.5 per cent in 2022-23 and 96 per cent in 2021-22.
In the past six months 98,198 student visas have been granted for study in the higher education sector showing a trend downwards from 2022-23 when 261,317 visas were granted through the course of the year, the highest in more than a decade.
While the rate of overseas Chinese university students being granted visas offshore remained steady at about 97 per cent, grant rates for offshore higher education students from India, Australia’s second-biggest market, dropped from 74.2 per cent in 2022-23 to 60.8 per cent this financial year. Grant rates for the third-biggest market, Nepal, went from 65.2 per cent to 48.8 per cent in the same period.
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Bookshop owner sorry for ‘just white kids, no wheelchair, rainbow or Indigenous’ comments
A Melbourne bookstore owner who complained that there were not enough books with “just white kids on the cover” has apologised.
Susanne Horman, owner of the Robinsons Bookshop, railed against the “woke agenda” in publishing last month in a series of posts on X, which have attracted widespread criticism after being shared by the Instagram account coffeebooksandmagic on Sunday.
Ms Horman, who purchased the business in 2007, has since deleted her X account amid the widespread backlash.
“What’s missing from our bookshelves in store? Positive male lead characters of any age, any traditional nuclear white family stories, kids picture books with just white kids on the cover, and no wheelchair, rainbow or Indigenous art, non-Indigenous Australian history #weneedbetterstories,” she wrote in one X post on December 9.
The next day she added, “Books we don’t need — hate against white Australians, socialist agenda, equity over equality, diversity and inclusion (READ AS anti-white exclusion), left-wing govt propaganda. Basically the woke agenda that divides people. Not stocking any of these in 2024.”
She concluded in a follow-up on December 20, “So I am advocating for a substantial shift in the focus of Australian publishers to be in line with public opinion and requests for books and for what is GOOD! We aren’t going to stock books that intend to cause harm and make Australians hate each other.”
Sharing the comments, Emily Rainsford of coffeebooksandmagic wrote that she was “not one for willy nilly ‘cancelling’ but the comments … are so wildly out of pocket that I have no problem suggesting a widespread boycott would be appropriate”.
“She has not only said she wants more white people on covers and in books, but goes further to say that she won’t be stocking anything that … well, what, exactly? Isn’t about white people? And then somehow manages to claim that she’s fighting division,” she wrote.
“This kind of mentality has no place in the modern landscape and I truly hope it will eventually die out with the generation that’s as archaic as her website.”
Ms Horman has since issued a public apology to staff and “anyone who was offended by the comments” which she claimed were taken out of context, The Age reports.
“We clearly state, so there is no misunderstanding, that we fully support and encourage stories from diverse voices, minorities and we are most definitely stocking these important topics and the authors that write them,” Ms Horman told the newspaper.
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Climate of naivety our greatest danger
Hubris is a well-known occupational hazard for self-made billionaires. They risk mistaking obsequiousness for admiration and are vulnerable to the knowledge delusion: the conviction that their business acumen qualifies them as experts about everything.
Andrew Forrest took the opportunity to share his wisdom on international security at a sod-turning ceremony at one of his wind turbine plants this month.
He claimed investing in wind and solar would make us safer in a world where bad actors want to control fossil fuel supplies. “I don’t want machine gun-toting, fruitcake extremists in Yemen, firing missiles in the Red Sea, to dictate if I can drive my kids to school here in Dubbo,” Forrest said. “Why would I back oil and gas when it’s controlled by people like Putin?”
You don’t have to be Henry Kissinger to spot the flaws in Forrest’s analysis. Whatever the assumed benefits of stripping native vegetation to erect wind turbines, they are not an obvious deterrent to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Warships tend to be more effective.
The Russian President may be a man of some influence, but he does not have the power to impose limits on Australian gas or coal production. Punitive royalties and activist judges are much better at doing that.
Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal, pushing Russia into a distant third. We are the third-largest exporter of liquid natural gas, shipping three times more than Russia. We do less well when it comes to pipelines, but that’s a small price to pay for the security of living on an island continent.
We could be more than self-sufficient in oil if we put our minds to it. Geoscience Australia estimates our identified recoverable reserves of conventional oil at 1.8 billion barrels. There is significant potential for unconventional oil, which could be recovered with fracking.
It would be nitpicking to point out to Forrest that Yemenis sweeten their cakes with honey, not fruit. It is true that Iranian-backed terrorists from this dirt-poor but troublesome country are a not inconsiderable threat to our trade with Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa. They pose little, if any, threat to our oil imports, however.
Less than 40 per cent of international oil exports come from the Middle East, almost all of which comes from the Persian Gulf. The tankers the Houthis delight in setting on fire in the Red Sea are bound in the first instance for Europe and the Mediterranean.
One doesn’t have to travel to Dubbo to guess that electric vehicles are seen less frequently outside its school gates than in Cottesloe. For those concerned about domestic energy security, that’s a good thing. While Australia is rich in lithium, cobalt, rare-earth minerals and almost everything that makes a lithium-ion battery, nearly all of it is sent offshore for processing, predominantly to China. The Chinese manufacture two-thirds of electric vehicles, including the BYD Atto 3 and MG ZS EV, the third- and fourth-best-selling electric cars in Australia.
That’s no problem if you live in Twiggy Land, where the People’s Republic of China is a benign player in world affairs and is the country that will turn the battle against global warming. Back in the real world, however, outsourcing our energy future to the Communists in Beijing is about as stupid as government policy gets.
Turning to wind and solar makes us highly dependent on China. Most of the world’s solar panels come from there, and they are aggressively attacking the wind turbine market. Chinese belligerence is the most significant external threat by far to the security of energy supply as we continue to run down our coal-fired power stations and put obstacles in the path of gas.
The most significant risk to energy security, however, is homemade. Labor’s ambitious 2030 energy target and opposition to nuclear power is driving coal out of the energy mix with no alternative source of base-load energy.
Rising interest prices and lengthy approval processes are stifling the growth in insecure, intermittent wind and solar. Reaching the target of 40 new 7MW wind turbines a month has been a little trickier than Chris Bowen seemed to imagine in his first weeks in the job.
Bowen has precious few opportunities to turn sods, so it is hardly surprising he was prepared to travel to the picturesque NSW Central Tablelands this month for a photo opportunity with Forrest at Squadron Energy’s Uungula wind turbine development.
Uungula was the only commercial wind turbine project to reach financial closure last year. Hundreds of renewable projects are “in the pipeline”, as renewable enthusiasts like to say.
Mercifully for the local communities they are helping to destroy, however, precious few of them are likely to get off the ground. Uungula has been in the planning stage since 2011. In 2016, CWP Renewables, the previous incarnation of Squadron, sought approval for 249 turbines on the site that it claimed would be connected to the grid by 2020.
That proposal has since been scaled back to 69 6MW turbines and is unlikely to be connected until the end of 2025 at the very earliest after submitting neighbouring residents to two years of construction hell.
We must be thankful for small mercies. The original proposal threatened 1880 hectares of native vegetation. The revised proposal’s footprint covers just 639 hectares, an area some 1½ times larger than the Perth suburb of Mosman Park.
Sooner or later, the impossibility of reaching the government’s back-of-the-envelope targets will sink in. Governments in a liberal democracy are bound to obey the laws, including the laws of physics. They will take stock of the energy graphs and realise the last thing we need in the middle of the day is more renewable energy, and the last thing we need the rest of the time is energy we cannot rely on.
In a world that grows increasingly unstable and in which we, or more accurately our friends, are already fighting two wars, we will realise we are indeed the lucky country, blessed with abundant resources which we must learn to mine and process ourselves.
We will learn that the greatest threat to our future is not global climate change but homegrown naivety.
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28 January, 2024
How identity politics destroyed Rochelle Hicks’ world
Since nobody else is mentioning it maybe I should: Ian Brown is a white Aborigine. So his possession of genuine "cultural knowledege" is unlikely. He has been given special privilege likely without justification. The bureaucrats made assumptions about him far too quickly. The whole episode is a mess.
The Labor government’s handling of the Rochelle Hicks matter has revealed what happens when identity politics merges with Labor’s old-style brute politics. As one lawyer told me this week, that political merger has turned into a highway to hell.
That’s the road the successful and highly regarded senior executive within Transport for NSW has been forced down. Hicks had project managed the Coffs Harbour Bypass, a $2.2bn infrastructure project. Her performance reviews were excellent. Her career was headed in one direction – up.
That was until her world came crashing down after bureaucrats above her refused to take seriously a death threat made against her made by Indigenous man Ian Brown. Hicks wanted Brown removed for the safety of her workplace, given he had made threats against her and others. In other workplaces, a bad joke could get you tossed out.
Instead, at Transport for NSW, according to its own internal documents, senior bureaucrats decided they should take no action against Brown because he was an influential Indigenous man and a “cultural knowledge holder”. Instead, they tried to get rid of Hicks.
If ever we needed reminding of the wretched influence of identity politics, of its dire and unfair outcomes, here it is. The first reaction of Transport bureaucrats was to effectively side with an Indigenous man who threatened to kill a white woman. They wanted to have the white woman removed. Hicks was forced to stay at home to protect her safety.
Senior public servants in the NSW Transport Department allocated a higher rung in the hierarchy of victimhood to the Indigenous man and perpetrator of the death threat. The white woman who was the subject of a death threat was treated by the public servants as expendable.
So much for the NSW Transport Department’s promise to end gendered violence and to make all workplaces safe for women.
The rot is so deep that when The Australian exposed this scandal, department bureaucrats organised professional psychological support, not for Rochelle Hicks, but for other public servants who may have been upset at our coverage of the debacle.
This baloney should be the stuff of comedy … except there is nothing remotely funny about the mistreatment of Rochelle Hicks.
A mother of two young children, Hicks should be lauded by her bosses as a role model for other women to consider successful and rewarding careers in the male-dominated infrastructure industry. And an example should have been made of the man who made a death threat against her. His swift removal would have signified that the department took violence, and threats of violence, against women very seriously. Instead, Hicks has been forced to engage lawyers; her career is on hold as she fights to be fairly compensated for the end of her successful career.
If departmental heads within Transport are flinching, they have only themselves to blame. It’s their fault that this matter has now entered the political arena.
Now that politicians are involved, Minns has a chance to show the sort of leadership that has been absent throughout this debacle. But, sadly, so far the reaction of the NSW Labor government suggests Minns is just another Labor hack who favours brute politics over doing the right thing.
When National MP Sam Farraway brought a motion to release internal department documents in response to our coverage in November, the Minns government blocked the motion. So much for leadership.
As The Australian reported, one Labor ministerial staffer even tried to smear Hicks to a crossbencher as mentally unstable to avoid internal documents being released. So much for integrity and compassion.
Hicks was delivered another blow when those other political hypocrites, the Greens, sided with Labor. We should never again take seriously the words of NSW Greens MPs about wanting to to protect women against violence.
Release of the documents supported Hicks’ version of events and revealed Transport bureaucrats behaving very badly indeed. The Greens should be in uproar. Instead, they are silent, pathetic patsies to identity politics. These tossers apparently believe all women – except when a black man threatens violence against a white woman.
It was never in anyone’s interest to follow the bone-headed mantra of the left that we “believe-all-women”. Minns need look no further than to the Prime Minister to understand the dangers of that approach.
The Albanese government’s handling of Brittany Higgins’s workplace complaint is the high water mark of maniacal devotion to that inherently flawed ideology. Proper processes were not followed. Higgins’ complaints against her former Liberal bosses were not tested. Some of Australia’s most senior lawyers who have read the Deed of Settlement in Higgins’ favour have laughed out loud at the utter legal crookedness of Labor paying $2.4m to Higgins to inflict political damage on senators Linda Reynolds and Michaelia Cash, and senior Liberal staffer Fiona Brown.
The Higgins matter was patently not handled on its merits by the Albanese government or the Finance Department.
If, from the start, the Hicks matter had been handled on its merits by her bosses, rather than through the warped filter of identity politics, Transport bureaucrats wouldn’t look like a bunch of overpaid muppets.
If the Minns government had dealt with the Hicks saga on its merits from the start, rather than choosing brute politics, it wouldn’t be knee-deep in this mess either.
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"I would prefer to deal with Satan than with my insurer"
After two years of floods inundating the east coast of Australia, thousands of customers are still waiting for claims to be processed.
Figures from the Insurance Council of Australia show that of 160,000 building insurance claims made across four major flooding events in 2022, more than 6,000 are yet to be closed.
More than 4,000 claims made for damage to buildings during the catastrophic flooding across NSW and SE Queensland in early 2022 are still outstanding.
Meanwhile, more than 1,300 building claims made during the south-east Australia weather catastrophe later that year, described as "the most devastating flooding event in Victoria's history", are also yet to be resolved.
The ABC analysed flood events the Insurance Council classified as a "catastrophe" or "significant" in 2022.
The Insurance Council of Australia said the industry was facing a "perfect storm" of multiple climate disasters, supply chain problems, builder shortages and a housing crisis all making their work difficult and delaying claims processing.
"Insurers are now dealing with multiple events across the country at any one time," Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall told the ABC.
"With 250,000 claims emerging from just one event in 2022 [the south-east Queensland and New South Wales floods], it was inevitable that we would have some claims that didn't work perfectly, but we are determined to understand what are the issues around those claims."
Among those struggling with their insurer is the Sibberas family, who live in the rural Victorian town of Rochester.
The northern town was hit by flooding for the second time in two years this month, meaning some customers will be making their second claim in as many years.
Shellei and Paul Sibberas made their first claim in October 2022 when the Campaspe river broke its banks and the water that flowed into their house was knee deep.
Their insurer RACV was initially helpful, Ms Sibberas said, but the situation fell apart once it came to supplying appropriate temporary accommodation.
The couple and their adult son ended up living in two caravans on a property next door, which were subsequently damaged in a storm in October last year. One was taken away to be repaired.
"I was living in a swag in the shed, then we found out that that caravan had been written off," Ms Sibberas said.
Despite their home being insured for $680,000, she said they were initially offered around $240,000, then later $356,000 and then $468,000.
"There is a huge difference," Ms Sibberas said.
"They're trying to tell us majority of the damage was pre-existing, which we know it in fact wasn't."
RACV said their engineer determined there was significant damage to the house's stumps and roof, but it was caused by age and not the flood.
"The pre-existing damage to the roof and timber stumps meant that our builder could not warrant the repairs," a spokesperson said in a statement.
The engineer recommended a dry-out period of six months so the full extent of the damage could be determined.
Vicki Staff from Financial Counselling Australia said the family's experience was common and many financial counselling clients had claims denied because the issuer claimed there were pre-existing maintenance issues.
As the Sibberas family negotiated with RACV, their home continued to fall into disrepair because of the delay in repairs to the water damage. Now, the house will need to be rebuilt entirely.
"Our floors are dropping. We have a roof that has started to drop, so we have a leak in the roof in our lounge room," Ms Sibberas said.
"There were just consistent lies, 'We're going to do this were going to do that'. It all boiled down to lack of communication.
"I would prefer to deal with Satan because it's like dealing with the devil. Mentally, I just cannot do it."
Following the ABC's inquiries last week, RACV contacted the family the next day and agreed to a figure closer to the fully insured amount.
In a statement, a spokesperson for RACV said the insurer responded quickly to the initial claim with offers of temporary accommodation and support, and paid out their contents insurance promptly.
"Throughout the process, we have been in continuous contact with the member," they said.?
"Our focus has been ensuring our members are safe and supported during their recovery.
"We've finalised 93 per cent of claims from the October 2022 Victorian floods. We are working as quickly as possible to complete the remaining 7 per cent."
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Slack prosecution was a penalty in itself for the accused
Charges dropped for defendant. Senior Constable to face court
A magistrate has ordered a senior constable to face court after prosecutors dropped all charges against a man who was still waiting for a brief of evidence nine months after the officer was ordered to produce one.
There was confusion and frustration at Kingaroy Magistrates Court on Monday when Matthew Eric Cross indicated he was about to plead guilty to various charges laid against him.
Mr Cross, 34, was in court for five charges including obstructing a police officer, stalking and breach of bail.
Before the case was heard, Police Prosecutor Sophie Stewart approached Mr Cross to tell him she would asking the magistrate to impose a sentence of three months in jail.
Mr Cross could be heard responding: “Three months in prison just for asking what was going on?”
Senior Constable Stewart told him he could tell his side to the magistrate.
When that time came, Ms Stewart indicated police were offering no evidence for some of the charges before having a brief conversation with fellow Police Prosecutor Barry Stevens.
While this was going on, frustration was palpable in the gallery where Mr Cross’ two supporters were sitting.
“This is a complete joke, they don’t know what they’re doing,” one of them could be heard saying.
Once it was decided three of the charges would be dropped but the others would remain, Mr Cross asked the court: “Before I enter that plea, can I just say that I didn’t even receive the brief I ordered the last court case I was here.
“I just want to deal with this so I can get on with my life. “The last 12 months has been nothing but a drama to the point where I’ve lost everything, two jobs, thousands of dollars. “$460 a day, that’s what I was on before all of this started.
“I lost my job from being dragged into Toowoomba watch house for two days for apparently sticking my finger up,” Mr Cross said.
Magistrate Sinclair interjected explaining he needed to understand what happened with the brief of evidence he ordered police to send to Mr Cross.
“I just need to find out because it’s highly unsatisfactory, it happens frequently that the police officers do not provide material which I ordered them to,” Mr Sinclair said
“What happened to the brief that I ordered to be ready by the first of June, 2023,” he asked the police prosecutors.
Snr Const Stewart replied the brief hadn’t been compiled due to “personal circumstances” of the arresting officer.
“Are they exempt from my orders and directions?” Mr Sinclair asked.
Mr Cross then asked if he could speak again and stressed he needed the brief so he could decide what direction to take.
“I’m here to tie up all these loose ends to get on with my life … something as simple as the brief so I can make a decision,” he said.
The two police prosecutors could be seen speaking to one another again before Snr Const Stewart announced: “Your honour, in relation to all charges for this defendant, the prosecution offers no evidence”.
“You’re dropping the lot?” the magistrate asked.
“Yes, your honour,” Snr Const Stewart replied.
“There you go, it’s all been tidied up,” Mr Sinclair said to Mr Cross.
After Mr Cross and his supporters left the courtroom, the magistrate addressed the prosecutors. “It’s the prosecutor's’ job and the officer in charge’s job to make sure that the directions that I make are complied with. “That means getting another police officer to do it.
“Why has it not happened for nine months?” Mr Sinclair asked.
“It’s not my fault, Your Honour,” Sergeant Stevens said.
Mr Sinclair then ordered the officer who was meant to provide the brief to appear before him.
“I’m going to direct Senior Constable M. Stalley to appear before me in person to show cause for why he shouldn’t be charged,” he said
“I’m going to do that for every officer who doesn’t provide briefs as directed. “He can explain to me what’s happened … it’s far from an isolated case.”
Snr Const Stalley must now appear in person at Kingaroy Magistrates Court on February 9, 2024.
Outside court, Mr Cross told this publication he was going to try and find new employment now he was able to freely work again.
“All of that just for them to drop the charges,” he said before leaving.
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More coal coming
Dartbrook mine set to reopen after 18 years
Australian Pacific Coal and Tetra Resources have finalised a three year US$60 million debt facility with energy and commodity group Vitol Asia.
Dartbrook coal mine near Muswellbrook is a step closer to reopening, 18 years after it was placed into care and maintenance.
Australian Pacific Coal and Tetra Resources announced on Tuesday that they had finalised a three year US$60 million debt facility with energy and commodity group Vitol Asia to cover the cost of reopening the mine through to first coal.
The funding will cover equipment acquisitions, the completion of remediation work and the acquisition of additional mining systems during ramp-up to achieve full capacity.
The companies been working to recommission the mine since September 2022.
"This is a landmark event for Australian Pacific Coal, our shareholders, and the Dartbrook mine," Australian Pacific Coal interim chief executive officer Ayten Saridas said.
"Our ability to secure debt funding for Dartbrook during a period of high inflation and global tension is testament to the quality of the project, the vision and work ethic of the team of people bringing it back to market, and the commitment of our shareholders."
The debt facility will be structured as a loan notes issuance agreement and will involve a three-year facility with repayments commencing after an initial grace period to allow for mine production startup.
"From the moment we engaged with Vitol, they have seen the potential value we can create at Dartbrook," Saridas said.
"They have been thoroughly professional during this process and we are looking forward to working closely with them in coming years.
"Vitol will play a key strategic role in the development of the project following their appointment as sole marketing agent for Dartbrook coal. Dartbrook product is very high quality and we anticipate strong interest from export markets.
The schedule to first coal is under review and will be announced in AQC's quarterly report later this month, Saridas said.
The Independent Planning Commission approved an amended application to reopen the mine in 2019, despite community opposition.
The conditions stipulate that the mine will have to use the Hunter Tunnel rather than transport coal by truck. It must also use existing processing infrastructure and cannot mine the Piercefield Seam to reduce groundwater impact.
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25 January, 2024
Australia Day is a true celebration of the positive
And attacks on it are just Leftist poison. What it celebrates is to the benefit of ALL Australians, including Aborigines. Sad that the Left have stirred up a few Aborigines to protest about it. Leftists have a yen for destruction and destroying a holiday that was widely enjoyed is a triumph to them
Far from the beginning of oppression and slavery on an idyllic continent, the first Australia Day marked the arrival of things previously unknown but devoutly to be wished: the rule of law, liberal institutions, science, markets, and the sacred notion of individual equality in rights and dignity.
This is what makes it truly a day to be celebrated by all Australians, regardless of whether their citizenship ceremony was last night or whether their ancestry in this country stretches back tens of thousands of years.
January 26 is not the anniversary of Britain’s claim of possession over Australia nor of the actual arrival of the First Fleet. But it does commemorate the first flag raising on Sydney Harbour and thus appropriately marks the birth of modern Australia.
To all those arguing for a different date or angsting over whether we should feel pride or shame every January 26, I say name a date that’s more suitable; or better yet study the real history of our country before falling for the cultural Marxist claptrap that British settlement was a disaster, especially for Indigenous people.
Our continent was never going to remain forever the preserve of a few hundred clans of hunter-gatherers. That’s not to disrespect the achievement of the Aboriginal people who had survived, ingeniously, for hundreds of generations in an often harsh environment. But the instant modernity erupted into an ancient land, life was going to change, in the short term, sometimes for the worse, with new diseases and new conflicts; but soon, for the better, with new learning, new opportunities and new protections especially for women and children.
The best Indigenous leaders, such as Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine, recognise this. Looking at the harshness of local life at the time, and at the competing colonial records of France, Spain, Holland, Portugal and Belgium, it’s hard not to conclude that British settlement, for all its occasional blemishes, was more of a deliverance than a curse.
The British government instructed governor Arthur Phillip to “live in amity” with the native people. Phillip himself, when speared at Manly Cove, put it down to a misunderstanding rather than launch a punitive expedition. Under governor Lachlan Macquarie, schools were opened for Aboriginal people and some received land grants. Early land grants often specified that the rights of local people to hunt, fish and camp should be respected. In 1838, after the notorious Myall Creek massacre, white men were hanged for the murder of blacks. When in 1894 in South Australia the right both to vote and to stand for parliament was finally given to women, in what was a world first, that included Aboriginal women too. Hence this notion that the lives of Indigenous people were uniquely or even especially harsh in early colonial Australia is simply not borne out by the facts.
That’s why, as a nation, regardless of our individual ancestry, we really do need to get over the epidemic of breast-beating that every year marks the lead-up to Australia Day. This year, it wasn’t just ultra-woke Tennis Australia that planned a pride day, a disabilities day, and a so-called First Nations day at the Australian Open, but nothing to mark Australia Day; Cricket Australia (before backflipping) announced it would not acknowledge Australia Day as such, rather it would acknowledge on the day that January 26 meant “different things to different people”; and Woolworths announced that it would no longer stock Australia Day merchandise, even though it’s only too happy to celebrate other dates such as Ramadan and Diwali. Worthies such as cricket captain Pat Cummins (no stranger to left-wing causes) weighed in and criticised the date, even though there’s no consensus on a suitable alternative, history cannot be rewritten, and most of the change-the-date brigade don’t actually want the date changed, they actually want Australia Day abolished because of their fundamental objection with any non-Aboriginal settlers on this continent.
Of course, Aboriginal people have sometimes been treated harshly in this country: subjected to “protection” regimes, for instance; and denied a clear federal right to vote until 1962; but contemporary Australia has never been less racist and more colourblind (as our immigration intake plus the slight over-representation of Aboriginal people in the current parliament attests) and is certainly far less race-conscious than countries such as China and Japan. That’s why, when it’s not a noxious mixture of ignorance and virtue-signalling, the current disdain for Australia Day manifests an ideological dislike of our country and its people that should not be pandered to if we are to avoid something akin to a collective national identity crisis. If last year’s resounding defeat of the voice referendum meant anything, it was that Australians dislike being guilted about our history and reject being divided on the basis of ancestry. Yet instead of accepting that they’d grievously misread the national mood, pro-voice entities (such as Woolies, which gave the Yes campaign $1.5m of shareholder money, and Cricket Australia, which publicly advocated for a Yes vote) have doubled down on their politically correct virtue-signalling.
There’s no sign that, post-voice, the educational institutions encouraging pupils to write letters of contrition for Aboriginal dispossession or to apologise for their white privilege are rethinking the damage they’re doing to youth mental health or to our long-term national unity. Although Anthony Albanese has said that he accepted the people’s vote, his government is still pursuing separatist local and regional voices, treaties, and so-called “truth telling” to rewrite our history from an activist perspective. He says he supports Australia Day and will personally participate in Australia Day events but his government removed the previous insistence that local councils hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, which some 81 green-left ones have now duly cancelled. While maybe not personally opposing Australia Day, he’s certainly eroding it; and while claiming to support it, he’s green-lit all those who don’t.
As well, he’s enshrined the practice of never appearing before an Australian flag without the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags alongside it (as if the flags of some of us are coequal with the flag of all of us); and he’s entrenched the practice of never beginning an official event or official speech without an acknowledgment of country (as if particular parts of Australia belong to some of us rather than to all of us).
There’s a real opening here for a political leader to commit to ending the angst over our national day by enshrining it in legislation that’s harder-than-usual to change or even to put it in the Constitution. And to promise to have just one flag for one people. This wouldn’t be engaging in culture wars; rather it would be ending them in a way that polls show the vast majority of Australians want. If Peter Dutton were to announce this, building on his decision to oppose the voice while it was still apparently popular, he would cement his position as the national leader the quiet Australians have long been seeking. A country where an angry mob shouts “gas the Jews”, while important institutions snub the national day, really has let itself down.
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Stunning revolt underway against political, corporate garbage policies
Robert Gottliebsen
Something very different is happening in Australia, and it has caught many political and corporate leaders on the wrong foot. Two of the leaders caught by this change, Anthony Albanese and Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci, may have woken up that they had missed the change.
This week we saw remarkable events emerging to underline the drama taking place below the surface as leaders grapple with the 2024 Australia which different to what they had expected.
In my arena I decided to collect 12 key policies of Donald Trump simply to explain to readers, including myself, what was happening below the public Trump bluster and court battles. I made a minimum of comments on those Trump polices which cover issues like migration, crime, gender, buying a house, tax cuts, tariffs, local manufacturing and of course lower energy costs as the carbon debate is turned on its head.
To my astonishment, it sparked a reader frenzy. While the drawbacks of Trump were clearly expressed, the majority of readers embraced his policies with enthusiasm and urged Peter Dutton to copy them. And, of course, none of the Trump policies involved Indigenous Australians or Australia Day. Some invited Trump to come to Australia. They wanted clear policies and leadership.
A special Roy Morgan opinion Poll, shows a majority of Australians (68.5 per cent) now say we should keep celebrating Australia Day – up 4.5 per cent from a year ago — and the date should remain at January 26 (58.5 per cent)
As the largest supermarket retailer, the Morgan poll conclusions represented Woolworths’ customers at a time when a large number of those customers are angry at supermarket prices. Clearly, Woolworths executives had lost touch with their customer base.
Wisely, Banducci took out full page advertisements that in my view represented: a “correction” and of course used all the other media channels to convey the same message.
It was classic damage control.
Then, in a most surprising decision, the Prime Minister announced that Kim Williams would be the new chair of the ABC.
Like Woolworths, the ABC had not realised the fundamental change taking place in its customer base.
I know and respect many ABC journalists, and I am not into ABC bashing. But rightly or wrongly, a big segment of its audience took the view that it was biased and they turned away. (The danger Woolworth faced).
Williams is one of the most forceful media executives in the land and when he says that he wants to restore the ABC reputation for unbiased credibility, and then he will do it. And if necessary, he will do it forcibly.
Albanese must have realised that appointing Williams as the ABC chair will mean that he and his ministers will face a lot more encounters, like the clash between the ABC’s Michael Rowland and the Prime Minister over the tax cut “promise”.
It is just possible the ABC will point out to its audience that the industrial relations bill before the Senate provides a smokescreen for an attack on mortgage and rent stressed people which, if passed, will offset the benefits they will receive via the tax cuts.
It's not an issue Albanese wants highlighted.
As my readers know Albanese by making employing casuals too complex with big fines for mistakes, he effectively stops casual employment which, if legislated, would deliver a 25 per cent cut in take home cash for those who desperately need it. And the smokescreen also extends to an unprecedented attack on the main employer of those under rent and mortgage stress, family business and greatly damages the gig economy which those under stress use to find second jobs to cover their payments.
Williams will demand that both sides of all events — not just the tax cuts and Aborigines – be fairly set out for the ABC customer base which, like the Woolworths customer base, represents the entire nation.
Commercial media needs to watch out because under Williams they face a very different ABC. But we must acknowledge that the Albanese made a decision to “rescue” the ABC in the full knowledge, but it could adversely impact portrayal of the government’s policy stances and will create unhappiness in some sectors of the ABC staff.
For Dutton issues like Australia Day and tax cuts are relatively straightforward but in watching my readers embrace Trump’s wider policy spectrum it became clear that the silent majority that turned their back on the ABC and expressed their views so clearly in the referendum and the Morgan poll have a much wider set of views which differ markedly from the views of sections of the government and large corporations.
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Call to remove all race powers from Constitution
Liberal senator James Paterson has called for the removal of the races power in the Constitution, the set of words that opened the door to the White Australia policy and later legislation on Indigenous land rights, Indigenous health and the protection of sacred sites.
Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, once described the races power as necessary to “regulate the affairs of the people of coloured or inferior races.”
It specifically did not apply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people until 1967, when Australians voted that it should. This was because states were failing in Indigenous affairs and the public wanted to give the commonwealth power to take the lead on Indigenous policy.
Senator Paterson’s proposal to get rid of the races power – section 51 (xxvi) – is likely to stoke debate about separatism and assimilationist ideals. These were recurring themes of an at-times vicious referendum campaign in 2023 when Australians were asked to decide on a proposal for an Indigenous voice or advisory body in the Constitution.
On October 14, 60 per cent of Australians voted No.
Proponents of the voice had argued that saying no to the Indigenous advisory body meant the commonwealth would continue to have constitutional backing to make special laws about Indigenous people without any constitutional obligation to consider advice from Indigenous people about those laws.
Writing in The Australian, Senator Paterson acknowledges that constitutional law experts including George Williams were against repealing the races power without a suitable replacement.
Professor Williams has previously said that doing so would undermine the validity of existing, beneficial laws. “An important achievement of the 1967 referendum was to ensure that the federal parliament can pass laws for Indigenous peoples in areas like land rights, health and the protection of sacred sites,” he wrote in a 2013 essay titled Race and the Constitution.
“A continuing power should be available in such areas, but in a different form.”
Senator Paterson believes the races power can be removed while preserving programs that benefit Indigenous people. “It is true that there are reasons to be cautious, as both Professor Williams and professor Anne Twomey have warned,” he writes.
“There are today laws and programs which are beneficial to Indigenous Australians and may hinge on the race power, such as native title. But surely we are capable of thinking of other ways of preserving these programs without keeping a provision in the Constitution which we would all agree is racist.”
Senator Paterson writes that the resounding defeat of the voice referendum suggests a majority of Australians would support removing any section of the Constitution that divides by race.
“Such a change could unify Indigenous people, those who descend from British settlement, and newer generations of migrants who came to Australia because of our sense of fairness and freedom,” he writes.
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Santos’ Barossa project to be delayed and cost more after environmentalist lawfare
Santos’ Barossa LNG project will produce its first gas three months later than initially scheduled and the development will cost as much as US$300m ($456.3m) more, as the oil and gas company reveals the toll of two legal challenges.
The updated timings and cost is much less than some had feared, and the outlook sent Santos shares up nearly 1 per cent.
Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher praised the work of his staff in keeping the project on track and as much on budget as possible.
“The team has done a great job in keeping Barossa close to the original schedule and managing the costs of delay,” Mr Gallagher said.
Mr Gallagher revealed drilling and pipeline work was now fully underway as the outlook for the company continues to brighten.
First gas from the project is now expected in the third quarter of 2024.
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24 January, 2024
Stage three tax cuts: This was to be a vital reform, it was never populism
The staged income tax cuts legislated by the Coalition government came in three parts. The first two stages were directed at low- and medium-income earners; it was only the third stage that provided any benefits to those earning well above average incomes.
It is a political fact of life that most people have now forgotten the first two stages.
The key to the third stage was meant to be that it represented an important reform to the income tax schedule by introducing a greater degree of simplicity.
A majority of taxpayers would not face any change to their marginal tax rate as they earned more, did overtime or achieved a promotion. Recall here that a key feature was that a 30 per cent tax rate would apply to taxable annual incomes between $45,001 and $200,000.
The stage three tax cuts were meant to be a structural reform. They should not have been considered a cyclical response or a cost-of-living measure per se.
For taxable incomes above $200,000, the top marginal tax rate was to remain at 45 per cent (plus 2 per cent Medicare levy).
This figure was only a slight adjustment from the current top income tax cut-off of $180,000. It’s been $180,000 since 2007, when Peter Costello was treasurer!
Had the top income tax cut-off point been indexed – which is the practice in about half of developed economies – the current figure would be above $250,000 a year.
The reality is that Australia has one of the most progressive income tax schedules in the world, meaning those on higher incomes pay proportionately more tax as their incomes rise.
In fact, we are on a par with the Scandinavian countries. Only in Denmark is income tax revenue higher as a proportion of total tax revenue.
It’s really worth looking at the figures here. According to the most recent ones released by the Australian Taxation Office (for 2020-21), just over 4 per cent of those with incomes in the top bracket paid 35.4 per cent of all income tax revenue.
By any standards, this is extraordinarily progressive.
And here’s a further fact to consider – the proportion of income tax revenue the top income earners have been contributing has been rising year on year.
In 2015-16, for example, just over 3 per cent of income tax earners were in the top tax bracket, contributing 30.3 per cent of total income tax revenue.
Of course, $180,000 a year looks like a very high annual income on the face of it.
Yet if we look at other countries, the incomes at which their top marginal tax rates kick in are proportionately much higher. Think here of the US, Canada, Germany, Britain and others.
When the government talks about the global war for talent, it should be borne in mind that our income tax rates represent a major disincentive for those considering moving here.
There are plenty of countries with much more attractive income tax arrangements.
At this stage, it’s not clear whether the Albanese government will seek to walk back from the final stage of the tax cuts by dumping the $200,000 cut-off and rather retain the $180,000 figure, or make other changes.
It would be a mistake to change the threshold, although there would be extra revenue of some $3bn a year were it to do so. But the notion that the tax cuts “cost” the government is a very strange way of thinking of the issue.
The reality is that real household disposable incomes are being hammered not just by inflation and higher mortgage payments but also the rising income tax take. The government might have higher revenue but it’s at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.
As for the idea of increasing the tax-free threshold (it is currently $18,200), this would have a very slight impact on the disposable incomes of those affected. Bear in mind that those on very low incomes are generally in receipt of welfare payments, which are regularly indexed. It would be a largely symbolic measure.
The fact is that low-income earners contribute very little to overall income tax revenue, with those earning between $18,200 and $45,000 making up nearly 30 per cent of all income tax earners but contributing only 3.2 per cent of total tax revenue. This underlines the progressive nature of our income tax schedule, something altered only slightly after stage three tax cuts come into effect.
Labor voted for the three stages of the tax cuts when in opposition and committed to the final stage during an election campaign. Were the Albanese government to walk back from the stage three cuts, it would be breaking a promise and forgoing structural reform.
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The road to reform in higher education is long and slow
Late next month Education Minister Jason Clare will at last unveil his long-term plan for higher education when he releases the final report of his Universities Accord.
It’s the culmination of something that started 15 months ago and has consumed a huge amount of effort from the Accord panel, education bureaucrats and those who made 800-odd submissions to the review.
The Accord review had broad terms of reference that would have allowed it to be another Bradley Review leading to major reforms. But as it progressed, the heady enthusiasm that marked its beginning gradually waned. It became clear the Universities Accord would be limited in its immediate impact.
It’s main idea for visionary change is to expand university access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds – something to which Clare has a deep personal commitment.
But other goals that are priorities of universities look like being pushed toward the horizon.
For example, as a legacy of the Morrison government, HECS fees are now four times higher for students doing humanities, law and business degrees compared to those doing teaching and nursing degrees. The goal of this Morrison policy, to persuade more students to become nurses and teachers, is not being achieved but we are left with this inequitable fee structure. Fee reform is essential but it does not look likely to happen quickly under the Universities Accord.
Similarly the urgent pleas of research-intensive universities for more research funding are unlikely to be fulfilled in the short term.
The Accord will almost certainly recommend the creation of a new Tertiary Education Commission to oversee universities, and it seems likely that many things universities want, such as fee restructuring and a research funding review, are likely to be shunted to the commission for consideration down the track.
But Clare must find money for any new initiatives – including extra funding for disadvantaged students – from within his portfolio, which is why a tax on international student revenue is expected to be recommended by the Accord review, to the chagrin of nearly all universities.
The upshot is a reform plan that will extend over several terms of government, and, as any observer of politics knows, such plans rarely retain the support they need for that lengthy period.
We all know government works under constraints but, at this stage, it looks like a lot of work has been done to create something that is weighted toward aspiration rather than action.
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Muslims lobby to axe ‘sinful’ university HECS-HELP debts
Islamic clerics are lobbying the federal government to axe the “sinful’’ indexation of university loans for Muslim students, forbidden under Sharia law.
The Australian National Imams Council has told the government’s Universities Accord review that HELP (Higher Education Loan Program) and HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) debts are discouraging Muslims from studying at university.
The imams are pushing for a “culturally and religiously compatible” new funding model for Islamic students.
“The current HELP system, while designed to defer university fees through a loan arrangement, may conflict with the religious beliefs of Muslims,’’ the council told the Accord panel, whose final recommendations will be made public by the government in February.
“According to Islamic laws, the HELP loan is considered riba (usury) and is generally prohibited,” the council said.
“This leaves Muslim students with the difficult choice of either disregarding their religious principles or forgoing higher education.’’
The imams said the Koran and the prophetic traditions of hadiths “explicitly condemn and prohibit riba, stressing that it harms society and promises inequality’’.
Under Islamic law, “loans must be repaid in the exact same loan principal as acquired, even after many years and inflation’’.
“Riba is a major sin in Islam,’’ they told the panel.
Nearly three million Australian university graduates face a combined $4bn increase to their HECS and HELP debts on June 30 if inflation stays at 5 per cent over the next six months.
Under the HECS-HELP scheme, university students take out interest-free loans from the federal government to pay for their tuition fees.
The debt is paid back through the taxation system once graduates begin earning about $52,000 a year.
Graduates need to pay back $78.2bn in outstanding debt, which rises in line with inflation every year to maintain the real value of the loan.
If the annual inflation rate lands at 5 per cent in June, indexation would add roughly $1325 to the average $26,500 debt.
The Canberra Islamic Centre has also complained that the current structure of HECS-HELP loans “inadvertently creates a barrier for Muslim students who seek to abide by their religious convictions’’.
“The issue is not merely theoretical; it has practical implications that discourage, prevent and disadvantage Muslim students from going to university,’’ the Islamic Centre told the panel.
“They face the unfair choice of compromising religious beliefs or foregoing higher education opportunities.’’
The Islamic Centre wants the government to “explore alternative indexing methods’’ for student loans.
Islamic Co-operative Finance Australia – which offers “Sharia-compliant investments’’ – has told the panel that Islamic teachings forbid the charging of interest on loans.
It said the “ideal scenario’’ would be to waive indexation fees for Muslim students. “A no indexation and no interest on debt approach will clear any spiritual doubts amongst Muslim students that the HECS debt is not Sharia compliant,’’ it says.
“Under Islamic law, the imposition of an additional charge on a debt, commonly referred to as ‘riba’, is unequivocally deemed as usurious and unjust.
“Interest-bearing debts are prohibited, and no form of interest or financial gain can be charged on debt.
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Will the crash in critical minerals derail the clean energy transition?
Just as stock markets are surging to new records and property is shrugging aside the impact of more than a dozen rate hikes on the hop, those betting on a bold, new carbon free future are nursing huge losses.
Two years ago, the race began in earnest to nail down global supplies of critical minerals as the world embraced emissions reduction targets that eventually would see the phase out of fossil fuels and a shift towards the electrification of the global economy.
It was a race turbo-charged by an increasingly polarised geo-political environment that pitted America against China, the biggest producer and processor of critical minerals and a domination of battery production.
Lithium prices soared as the US embarked upon a hurried program to shore up supplies of the key battery production component in an effort to reduce reliance upon China. And it wasn't just lithium.
Rare earth prices also shot for the moon along with more traditional metals such as nickel, which also is crucial to manufacturing electric vehicle battery components.
Even rival technologies, particularly hydrogen, found themselves in hot demand as big investors threw billions of dollars into what they believed would be the dominant green energy technology by the next decade.
Can Australia straddle the East-West divide?
The dust has barely settled after Australia and China reached an uneasy truce last month, but our abundance of critical minerals and China's stranglehold on them has us in the middle of a geopolitical tug of war, writes Ian Verrender.
It was a boom that promised fabulous riches for countries with large deposits of these raw materials. It just so happened that Australia found itself, once again, the lucky country with bountiful supplies.
But the recent boom looks to have been something of a bubble, yet another example where enthusiasm and expectations overrode reality. Suddenly, the prices for each of these materials has unravelled in spectacular style.
While the long-term future for some of these materials remains solid, there could well be some high profile casualties from the recent madness.
It's been a common story in resources for centuries. A sudden price hike based upon forecasts of huge demand feeds through to a massive lift in exploration and production until suddenly, everyone realises there's a glut.
It seemed like a sure bet at the time
The dire announcements have been coming thick and fast.
Nickel projects that only recently were given the green light have been put on hold while the value of existing mines are being written down.
Lithium miners, meanwhile, are in a world of pain with many explorers and junior operators facing the prospect either of collapse or the task of looking for something else.
Even established, large scale operators like Liontown and Azure — both of which now are within the orbit of Gina Rinehart — are feeling the heat. Both have been beaten up by investors who have been spooked by the sudden collapse in the price of the raw material as the chart below for lithium carbonate prices graphically illustrates.
Mrs Rinehart late last year built a 19.9 per cent stake in Liontown which she used to thwart a $6.6 billion takeover bid from American giant Albermarle.
While that left Liontown scrambling to raise cash to independently fund development of its massive Kathleen Valley lithium deposit, a banking syndicate including Australia's big four quickly rode to the rescue with a $760 million finance package.
On Monday, however, that financing was pulled, sending Liontown's share price tumbling 21 per cent. At just 94c, it is way below the $3 a share Mrs Rinehart paid last year for the stock, leaving the company's fate and its future in her hands.
Meanwhile, nickel prices this week hit their lowest levels in three years, having halved in the past 12 months, prompting a wave of shutdowns and curtailed expansion plans.
In response to the forecasts of higher demand, Indonesia – with the help of Chinese investment –dramatically increased production, sending prices crashing.
One of the most prominent victims is another iron ore magnate, Andrew Forrest. Just six months ago, his private company Wyloo splashed out $760 million for three mines near Kambalda in Western Australia. This week, he decided to shut them.
The nickel collapse has threatened the viability of BHP's Western Australian nickel operations and just a month ago another producer, Panoramic Resources, was put into the hands of administrators.
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23 January, 2024
Amazing lost art of letter-writing
The article below mentions writing with steel pens. I wrote that way for most of my primary schooling. The trick was to use bought ink instead of school ink. School ink was a dull blue but "Quink" ink was a bright blue and flowed better. Rich kids had "Quink" ink. I never did
Buried among a collection of vintage schoolbooks, he recently discovered a neatly folded criss-crossed letter dated 1879.
A criss-crossed letter, also known as cross-hatching or cross-writing, contains two or more streams of writing, one written over the other at right angles.
"It was in Mum's stuff, some of which was sent to me by a sister and during COVID I finally had time to go through it all and research what criss-crossed letters were," Michael, who lives in Melbourne, said.
The manuscript is hard to read as lines of correspondence cross each other on the page.
He believes the manuscript predates fountain pens and a source from the National Library of Australia agrees, identifying features unique to the genre, including writing tools.
"Steel nib pens with handles" were advertised in Australia as early as 1831, the source said, so it is likely that in 1879 the author would be using a metal nib pen.
An example of this can be viewed at Museums Victoria, along with a history of the pens.
"According to a 2016 article from the Rosenbach Museum and Library, the reason for cross-writing was to save paper or postage, but it also may have become a habit, even when not strictly necessary," the NLA reported.
"It was a system used worldwide, and definitely used in Australia in 1839, see Criss-Cross History Hidden in a Letter, which notes that paper was scarce."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-22/criss-crossed-letter-mystery/103362666
***************************************************Forget the flags, it’s the cynicism we’re not buying
“Woolworths loves Australia, and love being Australian.” So say the websites of several Woolworths locations. And yet Woolworths, along with Big W, Kmart and Aldi, is refusing to stock Australia Day paraphernalia. Mixed messaging much?
One spokesman for Woolworths explained it was partly because “there’s been broader discussion about January 26 and what it means to different parts of the community”.
Sure, so why not just stock the merchandise and let the customer decide? Coles will stock Australiana merchandise, but it assured Australians it was not specifically for Australia Day. Phew!
Ironically, I can buy all my Australia Day gear at The Reject Shop.
Of course, it’s the right of any private business to stock whatever it likes, and Woolworths and other retailers are exercising this right. But this whole business is strange because the retailers are taking a moral stance on an issue that really has nothing to do with them, as though they are churches offering moral guidance.
It would seem many major corporations are increasingly (over)run by agonised souls who on the one hand are climbing the ladder of ruthless, lucrative careerism, while atoning for it by trying to turn profit-driven corporations into beacons of righteousness.
If there was one lesson from the voice referendum, it was that Australians don’t like major corporations preaching about national issues, and especially trying to use their bottomless pit of resources to try to influence the outcome of a national debate.
These retailers have the right to sell what they like, and Australians have the right to avoid them in favour of small businesses to buy everything they need for Australia Day, meat and all.
But the oikophobia – or fear of one’s own nation – on display every Australia Day is not trivial. We are raising a generation in a way that can only be detrimental to the nation in the long run. We are clearly not inculcating a sufficient gratitude for Australia or Western civilisation in our education system, certainly not a sufficient love for democracy over tyranny and terror.
The protests against Israel immediately after October 7 show the dire state of our education system. Amazingly, a “week of action” in schools in support of Palestine was endorsed by several regions of the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union. Many teachers planned to turn up to class wearing pro-Palestinian paraphernalia.
An open letter to the Victorian government signed by hundreds of Victorian teachers and school staff denouncing Israeli human rights abuses continues to gather signatures. Nowhere does the letter condemn the actions of Hamas or demand that Hamas return any Israeli hostages. Nowhere. It’s as though evil Israel just launched a campaign into Gaza for no reason whatsoever. School students began rallying in support of Palestine against Israel soon after the attacks. This is their right, but one must ask whether they are being told both sides of the story.
Israel is a multiracial, multiethnic democracy established as a safe haven for millions of Jews to flee genocide after World War II. It has an Arab minority of roughly 20 per cent that has the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis. It sits in the midst of a region where it is no exaggeration to say millions of its enemies would like to see it destroyed.
Indeed, it would seem many young Australians would like to see it destroyed as well, or at least unwittingly call for its destruction. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is chanted at the protests. It literally calls for the erasure of the state of Israel. How could such a chant be fulfilled except through violence; that is, genocide?
In 2022 the Sydney University Students’ Representative Council passed a motion condemning Israel as an apartheid state. It was titled “From the River to the Sea”.
Many of those same chanters accuse Israel of genocide against the Gazans as Israel does nothing more than seek to remove those in Gaza who would seek a repeat of October 7.
Indeed, innocent people in Gaza are being killed, but perhaps Israel’s critics might consider the people to blame are those who deliberately use Gazans as human shields by launching attacks from built-up urban areas. For Israel to desist from retaliatory action that would take innocent lives would be to sit back and allow Hamas terrorists, and sympathisers, to launch attacks until, as the chant goes, Israel has been obliterated “from the river to the sea”.
If Gaza is to have any future then Hamas must be destroyed, and, atrociously, it fully intends to bring many innocent Gazans down with it. As the Hamas Covenant of 1988 had it, “death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its (the movement’s) wishes.”
How can so many Australians, particularly young Australians, be so blind as to see Israel as the oppressor here? Sadly, it’s pretty clear too many teachers, themselves products of a very one-sided university education, are reluctant to teach both sides of the story.
Many young Australians seem to feel the West and its satellite allies, such as Israel, are at best hopelessly flawed, and at worst positively wicked. This uninformed cynicism has the pernicious effect of muting our national solidarity with Israel, a democracy amid authoritarian regimes, and established in defiance of actual genocide.
The seriousness of a lack of enthusiasm for celebrating Australia Day is not really about flags and bucket hats, it is linked with the ever-growing cynicism towards Western civilisation in general.
We must do more than merely publicly disapprove of retailers who seem to have jumped on the cynical bandwagon. We must demand that some in our national legislature have the courage to stand up and fight for an education system premised on gratitude for Western civilisation and the historically unprecedented free and prosperous lives it has afforded all of us in this great land. Not to mention the promise it holds for millions of outsiders who aspire for something better. This is what we celebrate on January 26.
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‘Golden visas’ axed in crackdown on billion dollar passports-for-sale scheme
A business visa program which makes up a quarter of all the nation’s migration allocations has been quietly axed by Labor over claims it has had a profoundly negative impact on the economy, including a “golden visa” scheme allowing wealthy foreigners to live in Australia if they make investments of at least $5m.
The entire Business Innovation and Investment Program has been closed to new applications, with a shift to more skilled workers expected to boost Australia’s dividend from migrants by $3bn over the next decade.
The Significant Investor visa strand of the program has always – and without subtlety – targeted Chinese citizens, who make up 90 per cent of successful applicants The visa subclass was given the number 888 – which signifies triple good luck in Chinese numerology.
The visa required a minimum investment in Australia of $5m and conferred an automatic right of permanent residence. Investors could gain citizenship even if they spent only 40 days a year in Australia and, unlike other visa holders, they were not required to learn or speak English. There was also no upper age limit.
The crackdown follows revelations by The Australian that foreign criminals and corrupt regime officials have used the red-carpet schemes to acquire Australian citizenship.
While more than 7000 Chinese citizens have been granted Significant Investor visas, not a single applicant in the past 10 years has been rejected under the character test designed to help exclude criminals or those with suspiciously obtained wealth.
The move to replace the Significant Investor and other BIIP visas with more skilled worker visas will boost Australia’s dividend from migrants by nearly $120bn over the next 30 years, according to the Grattan Institute, because business investment visa holders retire about 20 years earlier than the younger skilled workers who will replace them.
The development was welcomed by the institute’s economic policy program director, Brendan Coates, who described the BIIP as “the single worst part of Australia’s skilled migration program”.
“Unlike all the other parts of the program, it has tended to attract older, less-skilled migrants that end up costing Australian taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run in pension and other health costs that far exceed any tax they pay over their lives in Australia,” Mr Coates told The Australian.
“So closing that down and reallocating those visa places to other parts of the Skilled Migration Program will pay an enormous fiscal and economic dividend to Australia.”
The Migration Review, spearheaded by public service chief Martin Parkinson, found that skilled migrants contribute $300,000 more in benefits over their lifetime than those who buy their way into the country.
More than 80 per cent of company directors within the Business Innovation and Stream were in retail or hospitality, which were “sectors not typically associated with major advancements in productivity and innovation”.
A much more tightly controlled Talent and Innovation Visa would create a single, streamlined pathway “to attract relatively small numbers of highly talented migrants to Australia, such as high-performing entrepreneurs, major investors and global researchers”, the federal government said, adding: “permanent residency is an important drawcard to attract these migrants as we compete with other nations in the global race for talent.”
Industry sources suggest an investment of at least $10m into more targeted venture capital projects will be required.
The abolition of the BIIP schemes will cause serious ructions in the multibillion-dollar business investment visa industry, where financial advisers, migration agents, banks and specialist investment firms have reaped huge rewards for more than a decade.
The scheme has brought nearly $12bn in investment to Australia over the past 10 years, but the Productivity Commission has long maintained that the benefits were small, uncertain and accrued mainly to fund managers.
The visas also could be a pathway for “dirty money” into Australia and were prone to fraud, the commission said.
Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo, who was granted permanent residency, was one of the few investors under the program whose visa was cancelled on character grounds.
Security agencies – but not immigration officials – had serious concerns about his links to the Chinese Communist Party, and the prolific political donor was later alleged to have personally delivered $100,000 cash in an Aldi plastic bag to Labor Party officials.
The Australian has also previously revealed concern that wealthy members of Cambodia’s Hun Sen regime have bought their way into Australia through the scheme, with at least 80 significant investor visas granted to Cambodian nationals in the past decade.
Many nations that offered golden visa schemes have shut them down to stop corrupt foreign officials parking their wealth in “safe” countries, leaving Australia as one of the last Western countries where it was possible to buy a right of residency and, ultimately, a passport.
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“No, you’re not going to school’: Why more Qld parents are keeping their kids at home
While once seen as alternative, homeschooling is becoming increasingly popular for families from all walks of life.
In Queensland, Education Department data shows 10,048 children were registered for homeschooling in 2023, a huge surge from the 1108 kids enrolled a decade ago. In South Australia, there are 2443 registered homeschoolers and 11,912 in Victoria. NSW has the highest number of registered homeschooled students in the country with almost 12,500.
The Low family in Bargo, NSW, is part of that group. Pediatric occupational therapist Jessica Low, 35, and her husband, researcher Dr Mitchell Low, 35, have five children and have never sent them to school.
“The biggest factor for me is child development,” Jessica Low says, drawing on her experience gained over the past nine years she has spent working as an OT. “Just physically they don’t even have the proper core strength to sit at desks for long periods in early childhood. “That’s why you see kids flopped over with their head in their hands.
“And they’re not even allowed to sensory regulate themselves because if they start wriggling and fidgeting, they’re told to stop.”
Low says her oldest children – Penelope, 9, Josie, 7 and John, 6 – are thriving at home, and so too is their family.
“If my kids were in school we would have such little connection,” Low says, noting that learning begins from the moment they wake up.
“A big part of our day is breakfast. They all have jobs, one clears the table, one does the dishwasher. It’s learning to work as a team, learning to communicate with one another.
“There are sibling fights which they may need guidance to resolve. These are important skills for them to learn.”
Home education looks different for every family, shaped by each state’s regulations.
Generally, children are expected to meet outcomes that are in line with their schooled peers. For example, the Low family follows the NSW syllabus and is checked by a moderator at least once a year.
But Low says she adapts everything so they are learning through play, adding: “Kids just need to spend time playing, running, jumping, climbing trees.”
Educator and parenting specialist Maggie Dent, 68, echoes this sentiment. She’s spent much of her life’s work advocating for kids to spend less time at desks and more time playing, particularly in the formative years.
“Our children aren’t moving enough. And the lack of movement impacts the way the brain is shaped,” Dent explains.
“Children as young as five are doing a lot more sitting on mats and at desks than they used to.”
Dent says Australia’s education results “have crashed” over the past 20 years when compared with other countries.
She cites Finland as a positive example of where children are assessed not just on a curriculum but with a focus on social and emotional intelligence.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development measures the education standards of 41 participating countries through its Program for International Student Assessment. Finland ranks fourth in the PISA, while Estonia is the highest performing OECD country. In those two countries children don’t start compulsory schooling until the age of seven.
Australian children are strapping on their backpacks and heading into compulsory schooling at age five, resulting in a rank of 17.
“There is no evidence that starting earlier gets better results. In actual fact we see just the opposite. Teachers are telling me all the time that the curriculum is so crowded, and they have to so do much more assessment that it’s taken the joy and fun out of teaching,” Dent says.
“So what happens is children start to hate learning, they start to lose their curiosity and they start really struggling in social environments because there aren’t enough play opportunities.”
Dispelling the myth of social isolation, homeschooling programs such as the We Are Nature Network in Perth, Western Australia, provide a nature-based classroom for children aged four to seven. It’s run by teachers who’ve left the education system.
On the day I visit, co-founder Emily Patterson starts the morning by reading The Troll, by Julia Donaldson, on a picnic rug under a tree. There are 10 pairs of eyes watching intently.
Some of the kids are sitting on their parents’ laps, others are eating from their lunch box. Nearby three little boys who are climbing a tree turn to look and listen every now and then.
Another boy hops up from the rug and picks up a stick he’s found lying nearby. He starts tapping the stick on the dirt. No one seems to notice, they’re all too engrossed in the story, including the little boy with the stick. He’s listening to every word Patterson reads.
At one point a golden retriever being walked off its leash comes past and story time quickly turns into a collective dog patting session.
“A huge value of mine is being outdoors and playing,” Patterson, 31, says.
The mother-of-three left her job as a primary school teacher when she had her first son, Taj, seven years ago, and hasn’t looked back.
“I thought, I’ll create something that feels right for my family, but also where other kids can come and feel good about learning.”
There is limited research on the academic outcomes of homeschooling because many parents choose for their children not to sit exams. A 2014 NSW government report found homeschooled children who participated in the NAPLAN tests scored “significantly above the overall NSW average”, but noted just 10 per cent of homeschooled children took the tests.
“There is such a focus on academics at school, but you can learn to read and write at 90. You can learn anything at any age. The first seven years of life are absolutely critical to social and emotional development. You can’t get that time back,” Patterson says.
For some families homeschooling is something they never thought they’d do, but made the decision based on issues like bullying, mental health and a lack of support for neurodivergent children.
“We don’t factor neurodivergent kids and their unique needs into teaching environments at all,” Dent says.
“Many parents are asking why would I put them into a system that is ‘one size fits all’, when I can keep them home and still be doing all the things that help them learn.”
Just like school, homeschooling isn’t for everyone. It does involve sacrifices with some families having to weigh up the financial burden of having one parent give up employment, typically the mother, to stay home.
And while all the mothers I interviewed have managed to continue working flexibly around their children’s education, they do all agree on one downside: the scarcity of personal time. Nevertheless, it’s a compromise willingly embraced.
“That’s probably the only thing because I’m with them all day,” Lycett reflects. “So at night time, I need a little bit of time to myself. But other than that, they are great kids, we love being with them.”
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22 January, 2024
Bruce Lehrman was not guilty but the Federal government was?
The litigation stemming from the accusation of rape levelled at Bruce Lehrman by Brittany Higgins is still very much ongoing but I think a major anomaly in the matter needs to be highlighted
Allegations of rape do not normally go to trial unless the police foresee a substantial probability of a conviction resulting. The police did not see sufficient grounds to proceed in the case of the Higgins allegations. But as a result of political pressure, an attempt was made to prosecute Lehrman. So the evidence for the allegation was weak from the beginning. The prosecution failed without a verdict being rendered so Lehrman continued to benefit from an assumption of innocence.
In the absence of a guilty verdict in the matter, one would have thought that all possibilty of a damages claim would be lost. There is nothing that you could sue Bruce Lehrman for. So how could Higgins get a payout for her allegations? How could she get a payout for something that did not happen?
She did get a payout and she did so by suing the government. Apparently, the government could be guilty even if the respondent in the rape claim was not.
That is a very strange set of circumstances. How could the government be guilty when the alleged rape at the centre of the matter had not been proven to take place?
But the government was simply a much softer touch. They did not ask for evidence of anything. An accusation alone was enough for them to throw taxpayer money at Ms Higgins without further enquiry.
And note that the payout was broken down so that only a small amount was for legal expenses. Most of the payment was for losses and damages alleged suffered by Higgins, something for which we have her word only.
So the payout was clearly an abuse of justice. If a mere accusation is enough to inspire a government payout, why do we have courts at all?
The Albanese government paid Brittany Higgins more than $2.4m compensation in a settlement that relied entirely upon the former Liberal staffer’s version of events, despite contrary versions from key witnesses who were excluded from a single-day mediation of her claim.
Lawyers described both the amount and the speed of the settlement – finalised just days after Bruce Lehrmann’s rape trial was abandoned in the ACT Supreme Court – as “extraordinary” and “unprecedented”.
The deed of settlement between Ms Higgins and the commonwealth was released on Thursday in the defamation trial brought by Bruce Lehrmann against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson over Ms Higgins’ allegation on The Project that she was raped by him in Parliament House in 2019, after her lawyers successfully asked that personal medical information be excluded.
Justice Michael Lee, presiding over the trial, had earlier stated there was “a disparity between the evidence (Ms Higgins) gave in these proceedings and the truth of the matter”, which made the settlement deed “substantially relevant”.
The document shows that the commonwealth did not admit it had breached its duty of care to Ms Higgins when it paid her the multimillion-dollar settlement, contrary to claims she made to the court earlier this week.
The document reveals that the federal government ensured it was released from any future claims by Ms Higgins but left former Liberal ministers Linda Reynolds and Michaelia Cash open to further legal action by the former staffer, a carve-out clause that was not fully communicated to either of the two senators.
Ms Higgins testified on Tuesday that “the commonwealth admitted that they breached their duty of care and that they didn’t go through proper processes, so that’s actually why they settled with me”.
However, the deed of settlement – dated December 13, 2022 – expressly states that the parties have agreed to resolve all claims between them “without any admissions of liability”.
The one-day mediation took place 10 days after ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold announced he would not be proceeding with a retrial of rape charges against Mr Lehrmann due to Ms Higgins’ fragile mental health.
The deed shows that the total amount paid to Ms Higgins was $2.445m, not $2.3m as the former staffer stated in the Federal Court on Tuesday.
Ms Higgins received $1.48m for loss of earning capacity for 40 years; $400,000 for hurt, distress and humiliation; $220,000 for medical expenses; $100,000 for “past and future domestic assistance”; and $245,000 for legal costs.
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Our lost leaders
Albo thought he could lead but is now crippled -- both politically and psychologically -- by his huge blunder with the "Voice"
We are living through an age of extreme populism, meaning the mainstream political class rarely has the courage of its convictions. If indeed there still are convictions among modern leaders. The recipe for political success these days is dictated by winning, little more.
When politics shifted from a calling to a vocation, it professionalised, so that entering parliament became little different to entering the workforce.
That’s the benign loss of conviction we see domestically.
Overseas the rise and rise of populism is manifesting in far more scary ways. Perhaps we should be grateful.
Finding ways to secure three more years in office rather than putting policy passion first is now the key performance indicator Australian mainstream politicians judge themselves by. Which is why I’m not entirely critical of Anthony Albanese’s decision to seek a voice to parliament via constitutional reform.
Sure, the campaign was poorly crafted and badly argued, and the need to enshrine such change was questionable in the first place. But at least he was prepared to have a crack, in a policy area he believes in, in a political climate in which change is becoming harder to achieve.
Unfortunately, the lesson learnt in failure is that political reward for effort is questionable, meaning further passion in policy is unlikely. Subsequently, pursuing constitutional reform to become a republic has been ruled out, even though becoming a republic is part of Labor’s policy platform. Even though the Prime Minister appointed an Assistant Minister for the Republic.
What republic? What advocacy for a republic? What agenda or timeline to one day become a republic? As embarrassing as this executive position now is, it will be even more embarrassing if it’s not junked at the next reshuffle.
When populism always trumps ideological or policy convictions the mantra from political leaders becomes “I am your leader, let me follow you”, rather than displays of leadership enacting unpopular but necessary reforms. Political scientists have studied representation and leadership theory for decades. The form of leadership we increasingly are seeing today fits within the delegate model: elected politicians simply reflecting the will of their community rather than seeking to shape it.
Which to a certain extent is fine for local MPs championing their constituencies; parish-pump politicians looking to secure local funding for roads and community halls or outcomes for individual voters who seek their assistance.
But much more is needed when it comes to executive government. The trustee model of representation essentially calls on political leaders to do what they believe is in the best interests of voters, even if it’s not always the popular course of action.
Eighteenth century conservative philosopher Edmund Burke championed such leadership. It resulted in a very short political career when he announced such intentions shortly after election to the British House of Commons. He was voted out at the next election.
While there is rarely virtue in putting principles ahead of pragmatism all the time, it’s important for politicians to retain some policy integrity along the way.
Political leaders, having been briefed by their bureaucracy on the various needs of the nation, should determine that major reforms are necessary and worth the political risk, even if voters aren’t necessarily equipped to automatically agree. Especially if the recommendations from the bureaucracy fit within their party’s ideological platform and their own values.
It is the job of politicians to win the argument championing necessary reforms. That skill is waning. To be sure, ideological reforms have long been championed in this way, such as when British prime minister Margaret Thatcher pushed her economic agenda in the 1980s, proclaiming: “Yes, the medicine is harsh, but the patient requires it in order to live.” Her concern was Britain’s declining economy and international standing. Thatcher’s turn of phrase was reserved for her cabinet because in politics such frank proclamations rarely are well received.
Modern politicking and “gotcha” journalism work against the ability for politicians to make unpopular decisions. The contest of ideas that ideological differences generate naturally adds to the difficulty of enacting policies. But it has become worse than that. Pragmatism now dictates how oppositions calibrate what they choose to support and oppose more so than ideological differences do.
You can’t blame politicians for opposing what their convictions disagree with, but what about when opposition is dictated by nothing more than political advantage?
Plenty within the commentariat are quick to level this accusation at Peter Dutton, for example, because of his opposition to the voice. I’m not sure that’s a fair assessment; his convictions led him to that position when opposing the voice was decidedly unpopular, as those same commentators were quick to report. But there are other examples where the Coalition is led by populism in opposition rather than ideology. This transformation has become so entrenched that convictions seem to entail little more than kowtowing to the mob. They have become intertwined with populism.
The catch-22 for anyone who supports heady reforms (economic or social) as we count down to the next election in the coming 12 months is that the government doesn’t have policy courage, burnt by the voice campaign.
Meanwhile, the opposition is unlikely to support necessary but unpopular reforms because it sees political advantage in wedging Labor, even if the government finds a policy backbone.
Gone are the days of Paul Keating and Bob Hawke doing what’s right but unpopular. Also gone are the days when the Coalition in opposition puts the national interest above political advantage, as John Howard did in the 1980s, backing many of Keating’s micro-economic ideas against the urgings of Liberal Party strategists.
Thirty years on, everyone knows the Australian federation is broken structurally and in need of reform, but no one in a position of political power is prepared to risk doing something about it. This isn’t an ideological debate, yet it still isn’t on the political agenda.
The same goes for the need to institute wholesale tax reforms. Instead, what we get are piecemeal changes at best, such as the stages one, two and three income tax cuts, unconnected from adjustments to wealth, consumption and rent tax reforms.
Who in mainstream politics will risk their career by bucking the trend – to lead, rather than follow?
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Back to School Warning on Forced Marriage of Students
Our charming Muslim population I guess
Australian school communities are being urged to watch out for signs of forced marriage and raise the alarm if they suspect a student is in danger.
Teachers and classmates are often best placed to spot human trafficking, according to Australian Federal Police.
A family history of leaving education early, being uneasy about an upcoming family holiday, concerns about marrying at a young age and being worried about physical or psychological violence are common signs to look out for, the force said.
Red flags also include control outside the home, such as surveillance, having limited control over finances or life decisions and restricted communications.
Commander Helen Schneider said most reported victims are young women and girls but it can also affect men and boys.
“Forced marriage is not limited to any cultural group, religion or ethnicity,” Commander Schneider said.
“Anyone can be a victim of forced marriage, regardless of their age, gender or sexual orientation.”
Police define the crime as person entering marriage due to coercion, threats, deception or without fully consenting due to factors like mental capacity or age.
It’s been a crime in Australia since 2013 and applies to legal, cultural or religious ceremonies here and overseas.
Federal police received 340 reports of human trafficking, including forced marriage and sexual servitude, in 2022/23.
That’s a 15.6 percent increase on the previous 12 months, with Commander Schneider describing the rise as encouraging considering it’s thought to be under reported.
“Disrupting human trafficking represents an excellent outcome, unlike other crime types where we focus on prosecution,” she explained.
“Instead of prosecuting a forced marriage, if we can prevent it from occurring in the first place, then it’s a positive outcome for would-be victims and investigators.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/back-to-school-warning-on-forced-marriage-of-students-5570258
*************************************************More anti-car policies from Greens
Brisbane could be harder for drivers but easier for cyclists and pedestrians under a sweeping proposal by the Greens to "de-prioritise" cars in favour of people.
The Streets for People Plan includes 100 "traffic-calming projects" designed to slow or reduce the number of cars in Brisbane's neighbourhoods.
As part of the plan, the party has vowed to spend $500 million over the next four years on 200 pedestrian crossings, 35 kilometres of bike lanes and 200km of footpaths.
Brisbane LNP deputy mayor Krista Adams said Brisbane drivers should be "very concerned" about the possibility of the Greens getting into power.
She said the party's "radical agenda" would mean higher taxes and less funding for road infrastructure.
"This latest attack on motorists by the Greens' self-declared anarchist candidate is further proof that anyone who owns a car in Brisbane should be terrified about a Green/Labor coalition of chaos running City Hall," Cr Adams said.
"This reckless and costly plan will cause widespread traffic chaos and force Brisbane households to pay higher rates and rents."
Plan to end 'car-centrism'
Greens mayoral candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan said his party's plan would put pedestrians first and free families from car dependency.
Mr Sriranganathan, a longstanding critic of "car-centrism", said the major parties had prioritised wider roads and more cars at the expense of everybody else.
He said Brisbane's walking and cycling network was full of gaps, which meant pedestrians had to "live in fear" because of the car-centric city planning.
"If you wouldn't feel safe letting your child walk or ride to school, that shows our active transport infrastructure isn't up to scratch," Mr Sriranganathan said.
"Wherever you go in the world, the most popular and pleasant neighbourhoods are the ones where cars are de-prioritised … we want Brisbane streets to serve as vibrant public spaces where active transport comes first."
Close calls
Greens Paddington candidate Seal Chong Wah said her ward was neither safe nor convenient for pedestrians.
Ms Wah said she'd been told by Paddington locals about close calls with traffic, particularly those with limited mobility.
The Brisbane mum said she witnessed the issue firsthand, when two students narrowly avoided being hit by a large four-wheeled drive at Rosalie Village.
"One of the very first acts of the new LNP councillor was to cancel a vital pedestrian crossing project at Rosalie Village," Ms Wah said.
"Rosalie Village is a beautiful community hub packed with local businesses, cafes and restaurants, but everyone knows it's not safe for pedestrians."
The plan also includes protected bike lanes on 15 high-priority corridors and lower speed limits on certain residential streets.
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21 January, 2024
The collapse of conservatism
James Allan below writes well but takes insufficient notice of the fact that conservative policies have always undergone a lot of change. Consistency in answer to the question "What is a conservative?" will always be hard to find over the long run. That is because ALL politicians have to react to changes in the world about them and changes in reality will often require changing policies.
That is not to say that there is abolutely no consistency in what makes a conservative. Consistecy CAN be found but it is at the pychological, not the policy level. In a nutshell, the essence of conservatism is caution and the essence of Leftism is anger. Whatever they do, conservatives will be cautious, as they see that, at the time
In the developed Anglosphere countries over the past couple of centuries, there has been a general understanding of what it means to be a conservative voter. In rough and ready terms, with plenty of arguments and differences at the periphery, conservatives wanted to keep in place the main tenets of the core institutions, practices, conventions, and principles that had worked up till then. They were for conserving. Not everything, always and forever. Not in aspic jelly with no changes or innovations ever allowed but rather with a prima facie weighting towards the status quo and with the burden on those proposing change and restructuring to make a clear case why the novel was preferable to what was already in place. Gradual reform over idealistic revolutionary aspirationalism. Clearly, as I said, there was plenty of room for intra-conservative fights and disagreements. But the general proclivity for the established and ‘what already was in place and seemed to work moderately well’ was plain.
Spelled out in those terms it is pretty obvious that the desire to conserve what happens to exist is contingent. It depends on where you happen to be and when. No sane person would want to be described as a ‘conservative’ in today’s North Korea, and only religious zealots in today’s Iran. Put bluntly, there is an element of luck as to whether it makes sense to be a Tory or conservative. It is time and place contingent, along with depending on the sort of instincts, preferences, and political taste buds the individual brings to the table.
I am a big fan of the Scottish sceptical philosopher David Hume, one of the all-time greats. In fact, I did my philosophy doctorate on his moral and legal thinking. But Samuel Johnson, London high Tory, wit, and author of the first real English dictionary, was rather scornful of Hume. His renowned biographer James Boswell reported Johnson as saying of Hume ‘that he’s just a Tory by chance; if anything he’s a Hobbesian’. I’ve always thought that Johnsonian description of Hume rather excellent. It’s just that Johnson meant it as a stinging criticism whereas I think it shows the genius of Hume.
In a way, it is just chance whether it is sensible for anyone to be a Tory or favour conservative political positions. And that brings us to the present day in countries such as the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia. Because what should those described as ‘conservatives’ want to conserve right now? You might think ‘the presumption of innocence’ would be a no-brainer. But vote for the Libs in 2019 and you got a prime minister, Scott Morrison, who wouldn’t grasp or adhere to this principle if it walked up and hit him in the head. Just ask Bruce Lehrmann. Or Christine Holgate. Or a fair few of his own cabinet ministers. And let’s be clear that today’s Australian legal fraternity hardly makes one confident it cares much, if at all, about this formerly core precept in the criminal justice system.
Or take the notions of free speech and an impartial and questioning media. No one with a functioning brain could have come through the pandemic years with any confidence our present institutions and establishment class uphold either of these. The same goes for upholding our core civil liberties. I don’t mean rushing off to bring picayune standards against the government when those seeking to come to this country illegally are involved. Our judges can be counted on to do that. I mean that over the two and half years of the pandemic, we saw the ‘greatest inroads on our civil liberties in two hundred years’ (the words of former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption, and they’re correct), and yet not a single country in the Anglosphere saw judges do anything. And I mean countries with potent bills of rights included. The judges pushed back against government Covid brutality not one whit. The legal establishment was all in on the fear-mongering and enforcement of what a moment’s thought would have told you were nonsensical rules dreamt up by puffed-up bureaucrats. (Did you see Mr Fauci in the US last week concede that the six-foot separation rule was just made up out of thin air and had no scientific basis?) Put it this way, those of us known as ‘conservatives’ have very little reason to want to conserve the ABC, do we? And given its profligacy, making up out of thin air the ‘National Cabinet’, and willingness to facilitate state premiers’ thuggery, tell me what there is to want to conserve about today’s Liberal party? (I avoided mentioning the state Liberal iteration in Victoria because, well, it is so pathetic it doesn’t really feel fair picking on people who take sides against those who simply believe that those with XX chromosomes will always be different than those with XY chromosomes, and that public policies will sometimes have to reflect that core fact about the external, causal world however much it might hurt some people’s feelings.)
I could keep going for some time. Treasury and the RBA seem to be completely in thrall to Keynesianism. They just whitter on about GDP and never mention Australia’s pretty ordinary to awful recent record as regards GDP per person. A side effect is that our political class is addicted to big immigration to keep GDP looking okay even as it makes individuals poorer, traffic far worse, and house prices more astronomical. (And yes we should all feel sorry for today’s younger generation because it is way, way harder to buy a house today than when we were all younger – look at average wage to average house price – and no amount of shunning a daily flat white will fix that.) Put bluntly again, I don’t see much reason to conserve the economic thinking that prevails at present. Heck, the entire political caste, with only a few exceptions here and there, seem to be out of sync with the average voter. The Voice referendum sure showed that while exposing the faultlines in the Liberal party. Then there’s the universities, (not what they were I can assure you all), the corporate boardrooms, the list goes on.
So what do we voters formerly known as ‘conservatives’ do when much of what was worth conserving has been jettisoned? Tough question. But I think I’ve gone a long way in explaining the appeal of Mr Trump, the so-called populist parties in Europe, and the current Tory leader in Canada, Mr. Poilievre, who is up 10-15 points in the polls. He’s promised all sorts of ‘radical’ policies such as halving the CBC’s budget. And we ‘conservatives’ love it.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/taking-conserve-out-of-conservative/
******************************************************Crooked Greenie scientist
The University of Western Australia scientist found by the Federal Court to have “lied” when preparing a report that helped block Santos’s $5bn Barossa gas project had earlier been compelled to make multiple corrections to another disputed piece of work.
But oil and gas giant Woodside Energy says it will not be carrying out any review of the work done by Mick O’Leary that found the undersea pipeline at Woodside’s contentious $US12bn Scarborough LNG project would have little to no impact on archaeological heritage values in the rock art-rich Burrup region.
The findings delivered this week by Federal Court Justice Natalie Charlesworth savaged Dr O’Leary’s research into the potential impact of Santos’s Barossa pipeline on underwater cultural heritage sites and sacred dreaming places of Tiwi Islanders.
In handing down her decision dismissing the Tiwi Islanders’ legal challenge to Barossa, Justice Charlesworth was scathing of Dr O’Leary’s conduct while carrying out cultural mapping.
“Dr O’Leary’s admission was freely volunteered, such that he did not lie to the court. But he did lie to the Tiwi Islanders, and I find that he did so because he wanted his ‘cultural mapping’ exercise to be used in a way that would stop the pipeline,” she said.
“It is conduct far flung from proper scientific method and falls short of an expert’s obligation to this court.”
The court’s findings cast new light on the stoush that has played out inside UWA in recent years, with Dr O’Leary’s colleagues having previously raised issues with some of his methods.
UWA researchers led by geoarchaeologist Ingrid Ward and her husband Piers Larcombe in 2022 wrote a paper that was highly critical of the findings made by Dr O’Leary and others in their research into Indigenous artefacts on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula.
Dr O’Leary and his colleagues fired back with a retort describing the critique as a “wet straw man”. The response dismissed “armchair critics ignorant of recent developments in the field” and said “their critique is detrimental to the development of this entire field of archaeology, as well as damaging to the rights and interests of coastal Indigenous communities throughout Australia”.
But Dr O’Leary also went on to publish in June 2023 a correction to his original report, making multiple revisions to his original text. Those corrections included addressing errors in three statistical analyses and “additional discussion of interpretations”.
That original report was prepared by a group called Deep History of Sea Country, a collection of academics from various Australian universities and which has won more than $2m in funding from the Australian Research Council since 2017.
The group’s project with the biggest ARC grant – worth just over $1.1m – began on July 1 last year, just a fortnight before the corrections to the original report were formally published.
Despite Dr O’Leary’s corrections, in December Dr Ward and Dr Larcombe’s paper was retracted. The journal Geoarchaelogy said the retraction was the result of “evidence confirming that the required university approvals were not sought prior to the research being conducted”.
Dr Larcombe, who had earlier questioned whether Dr O’Leary should maintain his position at UWA in the wake of the Federal Court’s findings, said he still stood by the scientific content of the criticism. The retraction, he said, was “not about the quality of the science” and that the process that led to retraction was still under review.
Woodside, meanwhile, confirmed that it would not be re-examining the work Dr O’Leary did for the company when it was assessing the cultural impact of its proposed Scarborough pipeline.
Dr O’Leary in 2021 helped design a research project to assess areas of archaeological prospectivity along the pipeline route within the proposed development area. Sea level changes since the last ice age mean some artefact-rich and heritage-rich areas of the Burrup Peninsula are now underwater, and Dr O’Leary’s research helped establish that the Scarborough pipeline plans would not damage potentially undiscovered rock art examples. The Scarborough project has attracted opposition from some Indigenous groups, with one of those – Save Our Songlines – last year securing a court injunction against Scarborough’s seismic testing program.
“Woodside does not intend to reassess an earlier scope of work undertaken by Dr O’Leary between 2020 – 2021, which was also subject to independent expert review. Dr O’Leary was one of several contributors to a suite of work relating to the identification of submerged cultural heritage, which also included close consultation with Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation,” a spokesman for the company said.
“Woodside considers Dr O’Leary’s contribution was within his area of expertise and exceeded baseline industry standards.”
The Federal Court’s findings have also sparked scrutiny of the potential conflicts that can arise when academics are commissioned to consult on projects.
Professor Peter Ridd, a physicist who was sacked from his role at James Cook University after he flagged concerns over some of the university’s climate change research, told The Weekend Australian that Santos should consider taking legal action against UWA in the wake of the court’s findings.
He said it would take such a legal challenge for universities to increase the intellectual rigour and scrutiny applied to consultancy work. “If Santos actually takes UWA to court, it will start to concentrate the minds of universities to actually do the job they’re supposed to do,” he said, adding: “UWA should carry a significant fraction of the responsibility for what happened.”
Santos declined to comment on whether it was considering any further legal options.
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Consent laws ‘criminalise spontaneous marital sex’, says Queensland Law Society
New sexual consent laws in Queensland could criminalise married couples having spontaneous sex and be misused in messy divorce cases, the state’s peak legal body warns.
The Queensland Law Society has told state MPs their attempts to replicate consent laws in other jurisdictions – which demand a person get “affirmative” consent before sex – could lead to miscarriages of justice.
But the parliamentary committee reviewing the consent bill has ignored the Law Society’s warnings and recommended the bill go to a vote.
The Queensland Law Society, in a submission to the committee, said the state’s proposed bill could criminalise spontaneous sex between long-term partners because they would be required to explicitly communicate consent.
“A long-term married couple may have spontaneous sexual intercourse without any prior explicit communication because their history enables them to understand each other’s non-verbal behaviours,” the submission reads. “(The bill) is an inappropriate extension of the criminal law.”
NSW, the ACT, Tasmania and Victoria have reformed consent laws in recent years to adopt an affirmative model, in the wake of the MeToo movement after many alleged victims came forward to reveal their experiences with sexual assault and the justice system.
Queensland’s recommended reforms come as the federal government on Saturday releases a national framework guiding consent messaging for young people, which champions consent as “affirmative” and “communicated”.
The QLS said it did not support a provision in the bill that "a person who does not offer physical or verbal resistance to an act is not, by reason only of that fact, to be taken to consent to the act”.
“It should not be passed because it artificially limits the circumstances in which consent is, in fact, given and is not good law,” the submission reads.
“Queensland law already recognises that silence or lack of resistance does not equal consent in R v Shaw (1996) when the Court of Appeal stated that ‘a complainant who at or before the time of sexual penetration fails by word or action to manifest her dissent is not in law thereby taken to have consented to it’.”
The QLS said the proposed laws could be weaponised by parties undergoing disharmonious divorce proceedings, which could result in a “miscarriage of justice”.
“Take a long-term married couple (as an) example again. Suppose that five years later they are divorced. Person A subsequently alleges that the ‘spontaneous sexual intercourse’ was rape. Why should Person B be prevented from saying that s/he believed there was consent arising from the context of their previous long-term loving relationship where sex was often initiated on the basis of non-verbal cues and without physical resistance,” the submission reads.
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties agreed with the QLS submission, adding that there is not enough clarity around what the consent laws would look like for those in long-term relationships.
“For example, a couple in a long-term relationship have sex every Friday night after dinner, they need something more than the relationship and its understandings to establish consent,” the QCCL submission reads.
“However, the proposed statute does not make it clear what that is.”
But on Friday afternoon, the report from the state parliament’s Legal Affairs and Safety Committee recommended the government adopt the controversial bill, saying “many stakeholders supported the implementation of an affirmative consent model”.
“This bill implements a host of recommendations from multiple inquiries, including the Hear her Voice reports from the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce, the Commission of Inquiry into the Queensland Police Service, and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse,” the report forward, written by Labor MP Peter Russo, says.
“Years of investigations, reviews, hearings and submissions at both levels of government across Queensland have shown one thing – the need for change.
“This bill is about change. Changing how we think about and treat consent. Changing how the criminal justice system responds to coercive or controlling behaviour. Changing how juries are to be directed, how first-time domestic violence offenders can be channelled towards rehabilitation, and what considerations exist when deciding bail and sentencing.”
Queensland Liberal MPs said the inquiry into the bill did not go far enough to address the concerns of the QLS and the QCCL, and “significant concerns” remain about its present form.
“It cannot be enough to only discuss some of the more minor concerns raised by learned and serious stakeholders,” an addendum to the report, written by Laura Gerber and Jon Krause, reads.
“This report should have reflected the significant issues raised by submitters, and it is the opposition’s opinion that at present this is seriously deficient. These serious issues have largely been ignored.”
The government has three months to respond to the committee’s report.
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Australia day is worth celebrating
Senator Jacinta Price astounded the nation during the recent referendum campaign when, courageously, she dared tell a journalist there were no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation.
The only continuing impacts, she said, were positive.
Pointing out that Aborigines have the same opportunities as other Australians, she said that constantly telling them they were victims was ‘the worst possible thing’ that can be done to any human being, creating the impression that ‘someone else’ was responsible for their lives.
She said that those in remote communities who experience the ‘highest rates of violence in the country’ do not do so because of colonisation.
It was because ‘young girls are married off to older husbands in arranged marriages’.
These were certainly not the answers expected by the many Australians indoctrinated by our seriously failing education system as well as those in the mainstream media who would push a victimhood agenda.
Chairing the function, the Sydney Morning Herald’s David Crowe challenged her unorthodox denials about colonialism.
‘Would you accept that there have been generations of trauma as a result of that (colonial) history?’ he asked.
Referring to her mixed-race background, Senator Price said this would mean that those whose ancestors were brought to Australia in chains as convicts were also suffering from intergenerational trauma.
‘So, I should be doubly suffering from intergenerational trauma,’ she declared.
This brought the house down and Mr Crowe moved immediately to the next question.
In one fell swoop, Senator Price exposed what Keith Windschuttle long ago named the fabrication of Aboriginal history.
Little wonder that the big talking point across Australia after this was that hers were the words of a future prime minister.
That struck terror into the heart of the ruling elite wondering what on Earth they had unleashed.
The establishment does not of course accept the landslide defeat of the Voice referendum, just as they do not accept any refusal to agree with every new dogma imported into Australia and designed to undermine Western civilisation, however ridiculous.
The Voice referendum has taught Australians two things.
First, rank-and-file Australians are far more capable of taking common-sense decisions for the benefit of the country than their elite rulers.
Second, a small but determined far-left minority plans to take over and seriously damage the country. They will never stop raising new ways to undermine Australia.
Australians are realising the danger of compromising on fundamental matters.
Among these is Australia Day.
It represents exactly what Jacinta Price was arguing. What 1788 unleashed was of course not perfect, but its consequences have been of great benefit to all Australians.
Although they deny it, the Albanese government’s policy is to undermine Australia Day. Why else did it remove the requirement that naturalisation ceremonies take place on Australia Day?
Now, over 80 local councils have joined the Albanese campaign to change Australia Day.
Yet councils are famously only about the three ‘Rs’– roads, rubbish, and rates. Foreign policy, global warming catastrophism, or undermining Australia Day are not within their purview, nor do they need useless overseas trips and vast expense accounts.
Let them have a sword of Damocles over their heads ? recall elections, either for a specific alderman or a whole council.
This could be triggered by a petition of no confidence signed by, say, five to ten per cent of voters.
Australia Day, it must be emphasised, commemorates a settlement, not an invasion.
It was inconceivable this continent would not have been settled or otherwise acquired, although most European or Asian powers had shown little interest.
Only the British and French did, and only the British had both the will and the capacity to settle the country. They were by far the best colonisers and the ones most inclined to treat the Aborigines fairly with Governor Phillip instructed in detail to ‘conciliate’ the ‘affections of the Aboriginal people’, and to live in ‘amity and kindness, with them’, and moreover, ‘to do them no wrong’.
As to the Aboriginal people, rather than life being utopian, it epitomised Hobbes’s description of primitive life as ‘nasty, brutish and short’.
Their reaction to British settlement has been misrepresented as involving frontier wars. That there was nothing that could be referred to as a frontier war has been painstakingly demonstrated by Keith Windschuttle in his book The Break-Up of Australia, published by Quadrant Books in 2016 and discussed at length in ADH TV interviews.
Rather than resistance in any significant way, what occurred was a mutual accommodation of the indigenous people into the settlement. As Windschuttle observes, by 1805, barely ten years after the establishment of the Hawkesbury settlement, and after only ‘a handful of interracial incidents’, Governor King found the ‘most effective punishment’ he could impose on Aborigines was to ‘deprive them of the company of British settlers’.
The best reward he could offer was to ‘allow them to come back into colonial society again’.
The important point to remember is that the British did not come alone with their extraordinary, unprecedented First Fleet.
They brought with them what are still the pillars of the nation, the rule of law, the English language, our Judeo-Christian values, and access to a sophisticated form of government, probably the most sophisticated in the world at the time.
As to the rule of law, those who would liken the penal colony to a gulag should be reminded that the very first case brought in the colony was by a convict, reported as Cable v. Sinclair [1788] NSWKR 11.
Brought by Henry Cable against the captain of a ship in the First Fleet concerning the theft of goods, the court found for Cable, who later became a successful businessman.
Can those who say NSW, as a penal colony, was a gulag, point to a similar case where a Soviet court made a similar award? This case illustrates how the settlement was already the basis of the development of an extraordinary country, one which is gradually being devastated by the delinquency of its ruling class.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/keeping-australia-day
************************************18 January, 2024
Muslim hate speech is ok
Under NSW hate speech law, Andrew Bolt was successfuly prosescuted for criticizing the claims of some people with white skin to be Aborigines. That was construed as "hate".
The speech below is virulent hate, not the simple comment that Bolt made. Yet it skates. How come? There appears to be special liberties for Muslims
NSW Police have dropped inquiries into a cleric who prayed to Allah to “kill them one by one” in reference to “Zionist Jews”, saying the comments did not breach state hate-speech protections.
On Tuesday, The Australian revealed that Sydney sheik Kamal Abu Mariam – who has ties with former All Black Sonny Bill Williams and former league star Anthony Mundine – gave a sermon at Roselands Mosque last year, in which he made the call during an Islamic prayer.
The Australian can also reveal, in that same sermon, the sheik described the virtues Allah would bestow on martyrs, and how those unable to fight in the Middle East could still “receive rewards”.
“Oh Allah … beat the (usurping) Zionist Jews,” the sheik said in Arabic, translated to English by The Australian.
“Oh Allah, we hope you count them and kill them one by one, and don’t keep any (one) of them … shake the ground under their feet … make an example of them.”
The sheik’s comments appeared to be referring to “Zionist Jews” in Israel, as opposed to those in Australia – although a well-placed legal source said that distinction “should be irrelevant”.
On Wednesday, a NSW Police spokeswoman said the force could not pursue the matter further. “As a part of the investigation, the content of the (sermon) video was reviewed and it was ascertained that it did not meet the threshold of any criminal offence,” she said.
Section 93Z of the NSW criminal code, which outlaws incitements of violence on the basis of race or religion, was recently strengthened by the government, which removed the requirement for police to seek approval before laying charges.
Williams and Mundine have said they helped donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to help fund a new mosque “spearheaded” by the sheik and, in 2018, the former All Black called the religious leader his “spiritual guider” in a post to Twitter, now called X.
During the sermon, in English, Sheik Abu Mariam also cited the Hadith and referenced what Allah bestowed upon martyrs.
“He (a martyr) will be forgiven with the first drop of blood that comes (from) him,” he said. “He will see his place in paradise … given a crown upon his head.”
The sheik warned the audience there were “consequences for those who laze around”. “He who does not fight for the cause of Allah, nor speaks within himself about fighting the cause … he dies on a branch of hypocrisy,” he said, acknowledging that those he was preaching to would struggle to fight to become a martyr.
“We might not be able to do the first (fight for Allah), due to the circumstances and where we live,” he said.
The sheik said Muslims who boycotted Israeli-linked products would still receive “rewards”.
Federal opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said if the state government failed to act “it was time the federal government did”.
“There are anti-incitement provisions in the Commonwealth Criminal Code for this purpose,” the senator said, citing section 80.2A, which outlaws urging violence against a group on the basis of religion or race.
“If they are not used now it makes a mockery of the law and will only lead to more hateful conduct with devastating consequences.”
Visiting Australian National University constitutional law professor Matt Qvortrup, when provided with Sheik Abu Mariam’s comments, said that the rhetoric would be prosecuted in the UK. “I don’t see how it wouldn’t (breach British legislation),” he said. “Naming a group and (saying Allah) should kill them – that would have fallen foul of UK laws.”
Premier Chris Minns said he would change existing laws if they proved inoperable.
“We are not averse to changing the laws around hate speech if we don’t believe that they are capturing the kind of inflammatory and racist rhetoric that’s designed to pull people apart,” he said.
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Google Strikes Solar Farm Deal to Accelerate Net Zero Transition in Australia
Internet giant Google has stepped up its net zero transition in Australia by investing in a new solar farm in New South Wales (NSW).
On Dec. 19, data centre firm AirTrunk, Swedish energy company OX2, and Google announced a partnership on renewable energy.
The three companies have agreed to enter into a long-term Power Purchase Agreement and will develop a 25-megawatt solar farm in Riverina, NSW.
OX2 will be responsible for constructing the solar farm, while AirTrunk will buy the renewable energy generated by the farm and associated energy attribute certificates with time-matching to Google’s consumption.
The move is Google’s latest effort to achieve the goal of operating its offices and data centres on 24/7 “carbon-free” energy in Australia by 2030.
“Industry collaboration and innovation are crucial to achieving our ambitious sustainability objectives, including our efforts to drive a substantial increase in carbon-free energy capacity across the Asia Pacific region,” said Mel Silva, the managing director at Google Australia.
“As part of our broader Digital Future Initiative, this project will see us support local infrastructure to tackle big challenges like climate change while also further solidifying the foundations of a growth-centric yet sustainable digital economy.”
AirTrunk chief customer and innovation officer Damien Spillane believed the partnership would play an important role in helping Australia achieve net zero emissions.
“Our collaboration with Google and OX2 will deliver new renewable energy capacity into the grid on the east coast of Australia,” he said in a statement.
“Developments like this are critical to accelerating progress towards a carbon-free future in Australia.”
The three companies expected the solar farm to commence operation in 2025.
However, they did not disclose the amount of investment needed to build the project.
Google is not the only tech company that is aggressively pursuing net zero emissions.
Other global tech giants such as Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple also have ambitious net zero goals.
In 2021, Facebook declared that it had achieved net zero after cutting 94 percent of emissions in three years, while Apple announced that it aimed to become carbon neutral with its entire supply chain by 2030.
Google Executive Admits Significant Mining Is Needed for Net Zero
Amid the race to net zero, Google is aware that the company needs a significant amount of key mineral resources from mining to secure a carbon-free future.
During a June conference in Seattle, Mike Werner, the head of circular economy at Google, outlined the need for new mining activities to keep up with product demand and the net zero transition.
“We’ve done some modelling, and it’s pretty clear that we are not going to reach net zero without significant mining,” he said, according to GreenBiz.
“I don’t know that the broad sustainability community has really understood that.”
While Google had tried to extract minerals from old appliances, it was not enough to meet the company’s consumption.
Mr. Werner also predicted that countries around the world would need to remove “trillions and trillions of tons” of soil to get the minerals required to build the technologies and infrastructures for net zero.
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Aborigines can make threats of violence with no consequences
The Aborigine concerned
When an Indigenous adviser to Transport for NSW threatened to kill senior executive Rochelle Hicks last year, government officials tried to have Ms Hicks removed from her high-level job instead of sacking the man who made the threat.
Internal department documents reveal that just days after a terrified Ms Hicks demanded that action be taken against cultural heritage manager Ian Brown, her boss sought to remove her from the Coffs Harbour Bypass project because the incident was placing the $2.2bn project “at significant risk”.
Last year, The Australian revealed Mr Brown was allowed to stay in his contracted role “because he is Aboriginal and a cultural knowledge holder”, with Transport for NSW officials fearing the massive project might be shut down if he was sacked.
Ms Hicks, the deputy project director for the Coffs Harbour Bypass, said she had been “used as a sacrificial lamb” by executives who baulked at taking action against an Aboriginal man over conduct that would never be accepted from a white man.
Mr Brown – who was the subject of apprehended violence orders in 2020 – made the death threat against Ms Hicks during a meeting at the Coffs Harbour Local Aboriginal Land Council on 26 June, stating: “If I see Rochelle I will kill her.”
When another participant told Mr Brown he couldn’t make such threats, he responded: “It’s not a threat, it’s a fact.”
Ms Hicks was not present at the meeting but was left shaken when informed of the threat three weeks later – and was distraught when her bosses refused to immediately remove Mr Brown from the project. She says her boss, project director Greg Nash, told her that removing Mr Brown “wouldn’t be an option as it may go political, which would cause project issues”.
When she asked Mr Nash’s superior, Peter McNally, if they accepted Mr Brown’s violent behaviour because he was Aboriginal, Mr McNally allegedly replied: “Absolutely we do. They are treated differently and absolutely we put up with the behaviour because he’s Aboriginal.”
Newly released documents following a call for papers by Nationals MP Sam Farraway substantiate Ms Hicks’ account of the incident and its aftermath and also reveal the plan to remove her from her job after she complained.
On Friday July 21, Ms Hicks sent an email to Mr Nash, copied to Mr McNally, complaining about their inadequate response.
“Do you and Peter McNally accept this language towards women outside of Transport? I am distraught at your lack of support as a leader, and I’m even further upset by the phone conversation I had with Peter McNally … indicating I have to find a solution because Ian Brown is Aboriginal (and) I must accept these behaviours.”
The following day Mr McNally sought support to have Ms Hicks removed from the project.
In an email to TfNSW officials Martin Donaldson and Andrea Rooke, Mr McNally wrote: “We’ve been aware of challenges with Rochelle’s behaviour … of greatest concern has been her open criticism of the project director Greg Nash … which has had a divisive effect on the team.
“It’s critical that we maintain a focused and stable team on the project and retaining Rochelle on site at this point will only further undermine this and place further stress on her.
“As such I need your support to remove her from the project on Monday so that we can address what is a developing rift in our own team placing the project, as well as Greg and Rochelle personally, at significant risk.”
Ms Hicks has stated she was unaware of any issues with her behaviour at any point in the project. These issues appear to have only surfaced following the complaint being lodged.
On Monday July 24, another official advised: “I suggest we may need to seek approval under the EIR delegations 3.21 suspension of employee with or without pay.”
Mr Farraway, a former transport and roads minister who worked with Ms Hicks on the Coffs Harbour Bypass project, says she was “nothing short of professional” and was “a fantastic part of the team”, adding: “They tried to performance review her out of the job and it took months and months before they really started to deal with the issue of the Ian Brown incident. You can see from the documents that no one wants to deal with it.”
Many of the documents released under Mr Farraway’s call for papers have been marked confidential and heavily redacted. Others have not been not released on the grounds that they contain personal information or are subject to legal professional privilege.
In handwritten notes released, Mr Nash defends his “measured” response, claiming Ms Hicks is “acting unreasonably” and “punishing LALC” (the Local Aboriginal Land Council, for whom Mr Brown was working).
He says Ms Hicks is “unable to fully understand the gravity of a knee-jerk reaction” and is using the incident “as a vehicle to inflict damage on myself by taking a moral high ground”.
“Reckless behaviour from RH (Rochelle Hicks)”, he concludes.
Despite subsequent claims by the minister and department that Mr Brown was immediately removed from the project, the documents show this was not the case.
When a decision was finally made to ban Mr Brown from the site, emails reveal something close to panic engulfing the TfNSW team as they prevaricate on informing Coffs Local Aboriginal Land Council chief executive Chris Spencer of the decision.
Mr Spencer had “committed to disciplinary action” against Mr Brown but “he would not expand what this would include”, one official reported.
By late September – more than two months after Ms Hicks sought action over the death threat Mr Brown had made against her – the TfNSW team were still trying to draft a contractual letter to Mr Spencer confirming that Mr Brown was to be excluded from project sites.
A Transport for NSW spokesperson said any complaints made concerning alleged unacceptable workplace behaviour were examined by Transport for NSW and a decision made as to whether appropriate action is to be taken.
“In this case, the Head of Regional Project Delivery, who is responsible for the project and the team delivering the Coffs Harbour Bypass and the relevant decision maker for Transport for NSW, reviewed the complaint and decided no further action be taken against the employee. There was no suspension of the employee.”
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TV trigger warnings are out of control
The warnings on what we now call ‘content’ (i.e. what we used to know as films and TV shows) are getting ever more ludicrous. Almost everything made before 2000 now carries a cigarette packet-style exhortation or exculpation about race, sex and offensive attitudes.
But it’s getting even crazier. A friend of mine was channel hopping over the festive period and caught a stern banner, on nostalgia channel That’s TV, reading, all in capitals:
CONTAINS ADULT HUMOUR AND REFLECTS THE STANDARDS, LANGUAGE AND ATTITUDES OF ITS TIME. SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND THIS CONTENT OFFENSIVE.
What was this antediluvian horror? Birth of a Nation? Song of the South? No, it was an episode of Birds of a Feather – from 2015. Cast your mind back, if you can, to the standards, language and attitudes of the unfathomably distant 2015. Politicians such as David Cameron and Nigel Farage were making headlines. Pop stars Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith were all the rage. And Prince Andrew was in hot water after he was named in documents concerning disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein. So much has changed!
These warnings seem to exist merely to stave off idiots on social media complaining to Ofcom
These warnings are definitionally stupid. They take their viewing audience for fools and treat adults like children. They seem to exist merely to stave off idiots on social media complaining to Ofcom – and often only a solitary idiot, like the one person who lodged an objection to the blacking up in the forgotten children’s sitcom Rogue’s Rock, broadcast on Talking Pictures TV in 2020. The idea that a channel is endorsing what happens in a work of fiction is bizarre – it’s like accusing Penguin Books of endorsing murder because it publishes Crime and Punishment.
Then we have the utter vapidity of stating ‘this programme reflects the attitudes of its time’. How could it not? Is there anybody out there who tunes in to On the Buses from 1971 and is surprised that it reflects the attitudes of Britain in 1971? What attitudes were they expecting it to reflect – those of the Thermidorian Reaction in France in 1794? The attitudes of the Khanate of the Golden Horde circa 1320?
There is also the arrogance of it – the confident pronouncement from a high plane of moral and political certainty. There are, of course, never any warnings for idiotic or hotly contested ‘progressive’ attitudes on screen today.
This silliness set me thinking. In future will there be content warnings on the TV and films made nowadays? If sanity prevails (and that’s a big if), what might such warnings look like? Perhaps something like this:
The ethnic origin of some historical figures may be incorrectly portrayed for DEI purposes, as was commonly done at the time this programme was made. This patronising practice was wrong then and it is wrong now.
This film was made at a time when characters were assigned virtue or villainy on the basis of their race or other identity characteristics. This is obviously deeply offensive and discriminatory and we do not support it.
This TV show contains heavy-handed ‘messaging’ that was intended to close down debate and normalise the crank belief that there are somehow more than two sexes, and that human beings can change sex. These outdated attitudes belong to the past.
This content is from a time when writers were constantly policed by social media and by other writers using the now-discredited theories of ‘lived experience’ and ‘positive representation’. Content creators were not allowed, or were afraid, to use their imagination and instincts to write characters and situations. Some viewers may find this offensive.
This content was made in the 2020s, when it was thought that good writing is showing that the Right People are Good, and the Wrong People are Bad. It also contains puerile attempts to shock and disorient the viewer. Viewer discretion is advised.
This content contains a warning about its content. It was made at a time when idiots presumed the morality of every piece of fictional behaviour depicted was endorsed by the channel that funded it and screened it.
And of course:
This film was made in the 2020s – and therefore it does not accurately reflect those times, or indeed any time in history.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/tv-trigger-warnings-are-out-of-control/
************************************17 January, 2024
Charity warns vulnerable households bearing brunt of green energy schemes
A leading charity has called for a major shake-up of green scheme costs and tariffs in the power market, saying they were currently disadvantaging poorer and vulnerable households.
St Vincent de Paul, in its latest report into the residential electricity market, found prices for both power and gas rocketed on average last year as part of the hangover from the energy crisis in 2022.
The report found costs across the board rose as turmoil in the wholesale markets collided with increased interest rates for poles-and-wires companies.
It also found that green scheme costs to encourage the uptake of clean energy were rising quickly as governments tried to fast-track the transition.
They now accounted for between nine and 12 per cent of a typical household energy bill, the charity found, and were highest in Victoria at $188 a year for a customer using 6,000-kilowatt hours.
Among the schemes were the federal government's large- and small-scale renewable energy targets, while Vinnies noted each state had its own policies that contributed to costs.
Central to the charity's concerns was the way the costs were recovered.
Costs not shared equitably
Vinnies manager of policy and research Gavin Dufty said these costs were typically moved on to the consumption charges of all customers.
Mr Dufty said variable consumption charges were still the main way power retailers recovered their costs, with fixed supply charges making up a much smaller portion of a household's bill.
He said households which were able to afford and install clean technology such as solar panels, batteries and heat pumps were able to avoid many of these charges by generating and storing much of their own electricity.
However, he said many other households, especially poorer and tenanted ones, did not have the same flexibility.
"I think it's the legacy of the old market," Mr Dufty said.
"We had an old vertically integrated market where households didn't have new technologies that they could bolt onto their homes like batteries and solar.
"So the costs were sort of shared evenly – if you consumed a little bit more, well you paid a little bit more.
"But now that households, through the types of appliances they have, can sort of make significant changes to their consumption, it does become quite regressive.
"The costs aren't shared."
According to Vinnies, the disparity in how green scheme costs were shared was a problem that "warrants a debate around how governments pass on the cost" of the policies.
The group said consolidated revenue and taxation would be more equitable but noted public balance sheets were already overstretched.
Another option, it said, would be "to only apply green scheme costs to usage above a set threshold".
Green gulf to get worse
Regardless, it said urgent changes were needed because the inequity would only get worse as more and more households that were able to added clean technology.
"We're not saying we shouldn't do that," Mr Dufty said of pursuing green energy schemes. "It's about how we allocate those costs."
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Your future home has been sacrificed in a political sweetheart deal
The infrastructure and construction sector has been one of the worst affected by persistent worker shortages, with a December report from Infrastructure Australia finding the sector faces a shortage of 229,000 workers.
This ought to be a wake-up call for the federal government, which just a week prior to the release of the report regulated a form of hiring commonly used by the construction and infrastructure sectors.
The federal government’s Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023 passed the Senate during the last sitting week of 2023 with crossbench support, but only after most of its more controversial elements, such as increased restrictions on casual work, were deferred until later this year.
One controversial aspect of the Bill however was included – the so-called ‘crackdown’ on labour hire arrangements.
The increased restrictions on labour hire arrangements, misleadingly titled the ‘same job, same pay’ reforms, brings workers who are currently hired through an agency under the control of the federal government’s trade union masters, particularly the CFMEU. The practical effect of this new law is to capture labour hire workers in the collective bargaining system, which adds to project costs and dramatically reduces flexibility.
Labour hire arrangements provide businesses with surge capacity, enabling them to meet unexpected increases in demand for their services and providing workers with a flexible form of employment. Not anymore. This new law will significantly curtail the ability of businesses to rapidly adjust their operations in response to changing market conditions.
It was not a ‘loophole’ that needed to be ‘closed’, despite the government’s claim. Given the country is currently experiencing a persistent worker shortage crisis, regulating a form of work that has traditionally been used to meet surge demand, and making the employment system more rigid, makes little sense – it will only exacerbate the problem. And the reforms deny Australians the right to choose the form of employment that best suits their personal circumstances.
The Institute of Public Affairs’ submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics’ inquiry into the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill, found the average quarterly number of new private houses on the market over the past two years of worker shortages is almost 20 per cent lower than the two years prior to the Covid pandemic.
The legislating of ‘same job, same pay’ only worsens the situation, adversely affecting construction businesses, which utilise labour hire arrangements at twice the rate of the economy-wide average.
This will drastically increase the cost of construction at a time when Australians are struggling to purchase a home or find a place to rent.
A significant reason for this is the government’s unprecedented and unplanned increase in immigration, forecast to be no fewer than 1.7 million people between now and 2028, which is driving up demand. This increase in migration will exacerbate the nation’s housing shortfall, leading to a shortage of more than 252,000 homes over the same period.
Removing flexibility in the labour market will not help the construction sector address that projected shortfall and build the homes that Australians desperately need. ‘Same job, same pay’ will, in fact, prolong two of Australia’s most pressing crises.
The present trajectory is a scenario in which housing supply is driven down due to increased costs and an artificial scarcity of labour, while demand for housing is driven up by record immigration. Such an equation defies logic; it can only be explained by the federal government’s decision to put the interests of its union mates ahead of those of ordinary Australians.
Australians deserve real solutions to the urgent economic problems we face in 2024. At a time when the nation is facing a housing shortage, and the cost of housing skyrockets, how can it be in the national interest to make it harder for businesses to hire the people they desperately need to build houses?
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DEIndividualising our universities
Treating people unequally on the basis of race is racism
The NBA is the least ‘inclusive’ employer in the world. Its employees look nothing like the wider American population. Some 90 percent of the league’s players are black whereas the black share of the overall US population is only about 13 per cent. In fact, the whole US Olympic basketball team, made up of NBA stars, is 100 per cent black. This is as it should be because they’re the best players. It’s simple. Professional sports is a meritocracy; it is not a top-down HR-engineered ‘equality of outcome’ world. (I refer to the competitors, not the team executives.) No team owner aims for ‘cosmetic diversity’ in sport. And revealingly, no one on the progressive left argues for more white basketball players, or even more Asians or Hispanics.
You see, sport reveals everything that is fundamentally wrong with DEI; its core undermining of equality and its undercutting of the ability to produce the best possible product. This is so obvious in top-level US sport, and there is so much at stake monetarily, that no one with skin in the game dabbles in the idiocies of DEI thinking in terms of the team they put on the court.
Of course, if you find a smart, hard-working Vietnamese (or any other) immigrant who outperforms white candidates you should hire him (or her). That, however, is not what DEI demands. No, DEI is premised on ‘equality of outcome’, on getting the same statistical percentages of a group into some highly desirable job X (it’s only ever good jobs or emoluments) as they represent in the wider population. Let me be blunt. ‘Equity’ is the polar opposite of equality of opportunity. Drill down and you see it seeks equality of outcome, full stop. That’s the game all variations of affirmative action are playing. It’s just that DEI is one of the most malign and pernicious variants.
In fact, ‘equity’ necessarily presupposes that all differences, everywhere, and all the time, are the result of discrimination and nothing else. That’s why it REQUIRES treating people unequally based on race and other immutable characteristics.
One of the most important battles all conservatives (and classical liberals for that matter) have to fight is to eliminate the HR DEI bureaucracies everywhere. We need them gone from the public service, from the big law firms, from the big corporations, and from the universities. Take the last of these, which I know only too well. A recent report in the US revealed that at just two major US state universities (Ohio State and the University of Michigan) there were over 100 DEI commissars (my term) employed. And they earned over US$10 million per year collectively – at just two of hundreds of US universities.
Now don’t kid yourself. Our Australian universities are also chock-full of these massively overpaid DEI bureaucrats whose core remit is to undermine merit and equality of opportunity. So don’t tell me we don’t have an ideological problem in our unis and that this isn’t a core cause! (The search for cosmetic diversity is also a core cause in the collapse of viewpoint diversity, as an aside.)
Well, at least in a few US states we are now seeing Republican legislators doing something about this. Some are completely defunding the DEI bureaucracies in state universities. There are moves to stop state governments from contracting with big companies that enforce DEI policies. My Lord, my kingdom for an Australian Liberal party that might actually do any of those things! I’ll be blunt. The first step to reforming our wholly broken universities (those rankings of world universities are a complete joke, by the way, as every insider knows) is to completely defund the entire DEI bureaucracies. Because as things stand now does any reader really believe that in today’s universities, a young white male gets equal treatment with non-whites and with women as regards available scholarships, consideration for job openings or for promotions, pick your favourite criterion?
It’s time for our right-of-centre politicians to grow a spine and do something about this. That’s a wish, not a serious expectation.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/deindividualising-our-universities/
*********************************************Australia on Track to Terminate Dual Citizenship for People Convicted of ‘Serious Crimes’
Legislation that would give courts the power to take away dual citizenship from Australians has passed the House of Representatives and entered the Senate on Nov. 30 for heated debate.
The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Repudiation) Bill 2023 enables the court to strip a dual Australian of their citizenship if they commit serious offences.
These include terrorism, treason, advocating mutiny, espionage, foreign interference, foreign incursions and recruitment and certain offences in relation to explosives and lethal devices.
Labor Minister Murray Watt, discussing the legislation in the Senate (pdf), said the bill provides an “appropriate mechanism” to deal with dual Australian citizens who have “committed crimes that are so serious and significant that they demonstrate the repudiation of their allegiance to Australia.”
“The bill promotes the value and integrity of Australian citizenship and the ongoing commitment to Australia and its shared values, while also contributing to the protection of the Australian community,” he said.
The power to cease the citizenship of an Australian under the legislation would be left to the courts, as a judicial ruling, rather than via executive power of government.
“Under the legislation, the court would only be able to make a citizenship cessation order if the Minister for Home Affairs makes an application for the order,” Mr. Watt explained.
Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson said the coalition supports the bill because it “enables the citizenship of a convicted terrorist to be removed.”
However, he explained Opposition leader Peter Dutton wrote to Prime Minister Albanese with amendments (pdf) to “strengthen” the bill.
“If the government is able to agree to these amendments, which we have also circulated in the chamber and which should now be available to senators, that would make it very easy for us to support the swift passage of the bill,” he said.
Coalition Seeks Amendments
Mr. Paterson explained the amendments expand the list of offences to include advocating terrorism and genocide; advocating violence against Australia’s national interest; child sex offences; and other serious crimes.
“We are concerned that it doesn’t capture slavery; torture; use of a carriage service for child abuse material; use of a carriage service involving sexual activity or causing harm to a person under 16; urging violence; advocating terrorism; threats to security, including training with a foreign military; offences related to monitoring devices in the Criminal Code; harming Australians, including the murder of Australians overseas; and many other matters,” he said.
The Greens did not support the bill due to concerns that dual nationals would be treated differently than Australians holding citizenship only in Australia.
Australian Greens Whip Senator Nick McKim said, “the Greens will not be supporting this legislation.”
“If you’re a dual national, you'll be treated differently under the law to someone who is just an Australian citizen,” he said.
“If you’re a dual national and this bill does become enduring law in Australia, which I suspect it will, and depending on what the High Court has to say about it, and I expect the court will be asked to think about this in due course—pending those two matters—it will create two different classes of people that are treated differently under the law,” he said.
Opposition deputy leader Senator Cash said the bill was rushed through the House of Representatives and had a number of “very clear gaps.”
“There’s a reason we are talking about this bill today: because it is nothing more and nothing less than a cover for the government’s failings in relation to the NZYQ case,” she said.
“Now, as Senator Paterson has said, in the interests of improving this bill for all Australians, the coalition will be putting forward a number of what we say are small amendments but incredibly serious amendments which will actually strengthen the bill we have before us.
Senator Claire Chandler, on behalf of colleague Mr. Paterson, moved for the legislation to be referred to an intelligence and security parliamentary joint committee after it passes the Senate.
Ms. Paterson moved a motion on behalf of colleague Mr. Paterson that after the bill is passed, it be referred to the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security for inquiry and report by March 14, 2024.
However, the Senate journal (pdf) indicates debate on the bill continued before being interrupted for Senators statements on other matters.
Law Council Raises Concerns
Meanwhile, the Law Council of Australia has raised concerns that the bill is proceeding through parliament with “insufficient scrutiny.
In a media release on Nov. 30, the Law Council suggested the bill be referred to committee prior to passing the Senate, not after, as has been proposed.
“At the very least, this Bill should be referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) to allow proper scrutiny—before, not after, the Bill passes,” Law Council of Australia president Luke Murphy said.
“Any measures pursued to remove the citizenship of an Australian engages the key legal principles on which our democracy was founded, and therefore demand careful consideration by the Commonwealth Parliament and Australian citizens themselves. Such measures should be reserved for the most extraordinary of cases.”
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16 January, 2024
Federal Court rejects Indigenous heritage claim against Santos gas pipeline
Gas producer Santos is free to install a vital gas pipeline from its $5.5 billion Barossa gas pipeline after the Federal Court rejected claims it could damage Indigenous cultural heritage.
On Monday, Justice Natalie Charlesworth lifted an injunction – which she had imposed in early November and revised two weeks later – on laying the pipeline to allow work in the northernmost part of the route away from the Tiwi Islands.
In her judgment, Charlesworth said differing accounts from witnesses from the Jikilaruwu, Munupi and Malawu people led her to conclude the beliefs and customs that formed the intangible cultural heritage the applicants claimed could be damaged by the pipeline were not broadly accepted within their communities.
Charlesworth said there was a “lack of integrity” in some aspects of an exercise that married science and traditional belief in evidence to show there was an ancient lake near the pipeline route, undermining her confidence in the existence of such a lake.
Concerns over tangible cultural heritage along the pipeline route from the time the area was not underwater were rejected by Charlesworth, who found there was a negligible chance of archaeological remains.
The Barossa project has been dogged by legal challenges based on concerns over protecting Indigenous culture.
In September 2022, the Federal Court found the Adelaide-based company had not adequately consulted traditional owners – led by Tiwi Islander Dennis Tipakalippa – before submitting its plans to the offshore environment regulator NOPSEMA and ordered it to stop drilling for gas at Barossa.
The decision threw the offshore oil and gas sector into turmoil as companies withdrew their plans lodged with the regulator and launched new rounds of consultation to ensure the plans could withstand a similar legal appeal.
After a series of legal hearings, NOPSEMA in December accepted Santos’ revised plan for drilling at Barossa and, according to the regulator’s website, the work will commence in January.
Despite the legal challenges, Santos as recently as October said the key project remained on track to start production in the first half of 2025 within the budget of $US3.7 billion ($5.5 billion).
The Barossa field will supply gas to Santos’s Darwin liquefied natural gas plant that shut down in late 2023 when the gas supply from the Bayu-Undan field in Timor-Leste waters was exhausted.
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‘F’ for Failing to Train Our Future Teachers Properly
The Australian education system is in crisis. It is failing at a most basic level, which is to teach young Australians how to read and write.
All you have to do is look at this year’s NAPLAN results to see how bad things really are in Australian schools.
One-in-three Australian students are not meeting the basic standards of numeracy and literacy. In contrast, just 15 percent of students are exceeding expectations.
The majority of Australia’s Year 9 students use punctuation at a Year 3 level. To put that into perspective, 15-year-old teenagers have the writing ability of 8-year-olds.
And the majority of those teenagers are struggling to be able to put a sentence together, let alone insert a comma or an apostrophe correctly.
As adults, these Australians will struggle to get jobs or manage their finances. It renders them unable to perform simple tasks such as accurately filling out vital forms, following maps, or reading instructions on a packet of medication. An illiterate and innumerate society is a non-functioning society.
These are truly shocking statistics. And it’s not happening because of a lack of funding for schools.
Every single Australian should be asking why, given state and federal governments are throwing more money than ever at the problem, the 2023 NAPLAN results reveal a system in steady decline.
Each year, all levels of government spend around $120 billion on education.
Australians should know that one of the central causes of this decline is what future teachers are being taught during their training at university.
A new report by the Institute of Public Affairs, “Who teaches the teachers?” has found that—instead of being taught how to master core academic curriculum such as reading, writing, mathematics, history, and science—teachers are being trained by their university lecturers to be experts in identity politics, critical race theory, radical gender theory, and sustainability.
The teaching of woke ideology accounts for 31 percent of all teaching subjects, which is equivalent to one-and-a-quarter years of a four-year Bachelor of Education degree. Meanwhile, fewer than 1-in-10 teaching subjects are focused on literacy and numeracy.
Future teachers are spending far more time talking about gender fluidity, climate change, and how racist Australia is, than they are things like phonics, mathematics, and grammar. It is no wonder that young Australians are hopelessly lacking in basic skills but very good at going to protests.
Universities are not only failing to equip teaching graduates with the knowledge and skills required to effectively teach core curriculum subjects, but they have replaced core skills and knowledge with woke ideology and political activism, which in turn produces legions of poorly educated child activists. And it looks like a lot of trainee teachers do not want this either.
Currently, the average completion rate for students in a teaching degree at universities is 50 percent, while the average attrition rate across all courses is 17 percent. Moreover, 20 percent leave the profession in their first three years as a teacher.
The system is clearly failing both trainee teachers and the students they go on to teach. It is a system in urgent need of reform.
Under the federal government’s “back to basics” plan, there will be a new accreditation regime for teaching degrees.
This means that it will be mandatory for universities to instruct trainee teachers in evidence-based reading, writing, arithmetic, and classroom management practices, based on the proven educational science about what works best to promote student learning.
While the “back to basics” concept is a step in the right direction, it will not solve the related problem of teachers being schooled in woke ideology.
As long as these subjects continue to dominate teaching degrees, the nation’s teachers will continue to be ill-prepared for the classroom.
This does a disservice both to them and their future students.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/f-for-failing-to-train-our-future-teachers-properly-5550003
*******************************************************Government burdens on our primary industries
Last year was a challenging one for our primary industries, with more and more interventions from the government, and many of those living in the city not understanding the import or cost of these interventions.
In agriculture, it’s no longer dangerous fires, droughts and floods that are the main problem, it is the man-made problems. Government-made ones.
Onerous regulations restrict farmers from being able to protect their families, staff, pets, homes and investment from bushfires because governments dictate firebreaks of inadequate dimensions.
Governments also dictate the building of vast tracts of solar panels, wind farms, and transmission lines to traverse farming land. It is estimated by the IPA that one-third of prime agricultural land could be at risk. What do governments and the media think this will do to the price and availability of fresh food? Perhaps some of these renewable eyesores could be placed in city parks, rivers and on city beaches to give inner-city folk a better idea of their visual and physical impact; but of course there’s no chance of that happening because that’s where the majority of voters live.
And although farmers are upset, and frightened by the fire risks posed by solar panels, and don’t like the bird-killing wind turbines being placed on their properties, this is just the prelude to the impossible financial burden awaiting them under net-zero policies. For a typical outback station to replace, for instance, all its existing vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs) will cost the owner between approximately $10.4 and $11.5 million, not to mention whatever compliance fines may be levied. Some of the EVs required haven’t even been produced yet.
But there’s more. If your station has, say, fifty windmills, which are essential to get the daily water that stock need to survive, and you are required to change those to solar pumps at $70,000 a pop, that’s another $3.5 million.
And it doesn’t stop there. Stations run on diesel-fuelled generators, so if you change them to solar panels you will also require expensive giant batteries. And as farmers well know, the sun doesn’t shine at night.
How many farms and stations will be able to pay for all this? How many farmers and pastoralists could afford net-zero policies, without a mining company in their back pocket?
Blind Freddie can see, all such costs and more of net zero would need to be passed onto city folk.
Will inner-city voters still be happy when forced to eat inferior quality food coming from overseas that is not as fresh as they have long been used to, and not produced with our clean air and water, nor to our high environmental and health standards?
When primary industries are forced to carry onerous government burdens, Blind Freddie knows the costs must be passed on to consumers. In the case of local councils, higher costs ultimately mean higher rents and fewer services.
Then there’s payroll tax. If you think it doesn’t affect you, that it’s just something businesses pay, well guess what? As Blind Freddie knows, that cost is also passed on to you.
And even if you don’t own a car, the excise on fuel adds to inner-city costs because everything consumed requires transportation, and that requires fuel. It’s hard to think of anything that isn’t touched by the government’s fuel excise. Committing to abolishing this ‘nasty tax’ would help immensely with the rising costs of living.
Australians are dealing with the rising cost of food, energy, fuel, housing and so much more. Yet too often, rather than helping to alleviate these pressures, government policies add to them.
Take our pensioners, the vast majority of whom are sadly going through distressing times. How we can do this to our elderly is beyond me. They should be allowed to work if they want to, and as often as they want to, without upper limits on hours, and without onerous, complicated paperwork, and discriminatory rates of tax imposed on them simply for trying to improve their living standards.
My blood boils that our veterans, who have served our country, many risking their lives, are also faced with complicated paperwork, and unfair discriminatory taxes if they work hours beyond what is okayed by the Canberra bureaucracy. It means that many live in poverty, even homelessness, thanks to government restrictions on how long they can work.
As for our uni students, they need real work to build up experience and so they can save money to buy a safer car, or put towards a home. Students should also be permitted to work as many hours as they wish.
Why, with a worker shortage crisis, record debt, and rising living costs, can Blind Freddie see what should be permitted, but our government cannot?
We need policies that help Australians. We need policies that make investment in our country worthwhile. If we have any interest in maintaining our living standards we should be doing what other countries do and roll out the red carpet for investment. Expensive government-funded trade trips and trade personnel located overseas are a waste of money unless governments cut the costs and delays caused by government red tape. And Blind Freddie can see that the forcing the overburdened taxpayer to fund lawfare does nothing to encourage investment.
The old but true law of supply and demand still applies; if you decrease the supply of a commodity, such as gas, while demand remains the same or increases, it’s inevitable that prices will increase. The way to reverse this is not by government intervention, but in fact the opposite – by removing red tape and negative policies and encouraging the investment needed to bring on more supply. It’s time for common sense.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/blind-freddie-sees-what-governments-cannot/
********************************************Arguing with the woke left: Like wrestling an eel
Take the gender pay gap. The broadly held assumption is that this is wrong and needs to be reduced. The argument then leaps into proposals for various misguided means of reducing the pay gap. Examples include imposed pay hikes for female-intensive occupations or forcing companies to reveal information about their gender pay gaps.
The more legitimate way of thinking about this issue is to ask why the gender pay gap, using the best measurement possible, exists, and why it persists. The next step is to see if the factors that typically influence earnings can explain the gap. These include education, qualifications, occupation, industry, hours of work, job tenure, and the like. Note that we are in the positive realm.
After taking these factors into account, it turns out that the residual gender pay gap can be almost totally explained by the existence of ‘greedy jobs’ that require long and unpredictable hours and often extensive travel.
Women typically shy away from greedy jobs. The pay gap is not about systemic discrimination according to the evidence. Indeed, Claudia Goldin of Harvard was awarded the Nobel Prize last year for this insight and her empirical research.
Now unless we can do away with greedy jobs – and that seems unlikely although a degree of job redesign is possible – the gender pay gap is likely to continue notwithstanding the bleatings of the woke left and many gormless politicians. Costly, ineffective policies are an inevitable consequence of the failure to accept the evidence.
But let me return to the direction of argument used by the woke left when they know they are beaten on facts and logic. One typical accusation is to label the opponent in a debate as ‘alt-right’ or ‘far right’. This conjures up notions of white supremacy, even the KKK. The idea is that if the label can be made to stick, then no one need pay any further attention to the points being made by the dubious contrarian.
But here’s the thing: when this alt-right/far right tagline is ignored, you will often find that what is being proposed is actually sensible stuff, common sense in most instances. Pointing out the dangers of the rapid exit of coal-fired power plants and their replacement with highly subsidised intermittent, land-gobbling energy is hardly alt-right. It’s pointing out the bleeding obvious.
Another tactic of the woke left is to accuse opponents of engaging in conspiracy theories. The idea is that rational people don’t believe in conspiracies and so any line of argument put forward by conspiracists should be immediately rejected.
We saw this in relation to the Covid vaccines that were rapidly developed. It simply makes sense to point out that there was no long-term evaluation of the vaccines and there could always be unforeseen risks, such as serious adverse reactions.
The fact that it became clear very quickly that the vaccines had no measurable impact on population transmission had to be concealed by the advocates of vaccine mandates. Accusing anyone who pointed this out of being a conspiracist was a handy way of achieving this. When dictatorial public health officials, working hand-in-glove with Big Pharma and self-serving politicians, are in charge, this is the puerile level to which debate can quickly descend.
Another more subtle manipulation of debate is to suggest that opponents are mere populists and therefore their arguments should be dismissed. According to elite opinion, anything that smacks of populism must be rejected.
Of course, this rather begs the question of what is populism. It can’t just be something that is popular. After all, politicians can never get elected if they simply propose a suite of policies that are deeply unpopular. The underlying message seems to be that if something appeals to a large number of relatively uneducated people, this is populism and, by definition, is bad.
We saw this argument being used in overdrive during the Trump years in which many of his policies were decried as mere populism. But surely ‘draining the swamp’ was essentially a good idea; standing up to China made geo-strategic and economic sense; and attempting to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants was much needed.
Talking about immigration, many on the left are in favour of completely open borders and essentially disapprove of any initiatives to control the flow of migrants. To counter any alternative points of view, it is common for accusations of xenophobia and racism to be thrown about.
In other words, impugn the character of those making the case for limiting immigration, be it legal or illegal, and hope this is a winning device in the argument. Of course, it’s also necessary to ignore the preferences of the citizens, but the populist point can be made in this context.
The short-hand accusation of labelling something as neo-liberalism or trickle-down economics is often used as a device in debates about economic policy. The idea is that those who disagree with the woke left policy prescriptions of higher government spending and taxes as well as more government regulation and intervention should just be dismissed because they are using discredited theories.
It’s not clear what the proponents mean by these terms – is neo-liberalism just standard economic theory? – but the intent again is to query the standing of those who make alternative arguments. It’s so much easier than debating the main points. There is always the fear that, head-to-head, it is entirely possible that the contest would be lost.
Arguing with the woke left does seem akin to wrestling an eel. But the reality is that when opponents resort to fatuous tactics which are not really any more than name-calling, you know that you are on the winning side. If that’s all they’ve got, sticking to the theory and empirical evidence will always be a winning formula in the long run.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/arguing-with-the-woke-left/ ?
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Councillor Fights to Scrap Indigenous Ceremonies Before Council Meetings
Cumberland City councillor and former mayor, Steve Christou, has pledged to put a stop to Aboriginal “Welcome to Country“ Indigenous ceremonies if his party gains a majority in September’s council elections.
His stance has been met with criticism, however, from the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, who say he has “politicised the issue in the hope of winning votes.”
Council CEO Yuseph Deen said, “The candidate has got bigger issues to worry about if that is the case, when his point of difference to other candidates is race-based, rather than what positive initiatives he can bring to the Cumberland City Council"—located in western Sydney.
But Mr. Christou is standing firm, saying he sees the ceremony as alienating to new migrants to Australia. “It ’s been so overdone and watered down, it’s lost its significance,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Originally, the majority of Australians accepted the fact that there might be a ‘Welcome to Country,’ at say, a major event [like] a citizenship ceremony.
“But now they’re being turned around, like confetti shoved down everybody’s throats. And when we get a Welcome to Country speaker that says this land was stolen ... that just that causes division.
He says his party, known as Our Local Community, want “something a bit more meaningful, and which is inclusive of everybody
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15 January, 2024
Surrogacy advocates defend family-making practice, after Pope Francis calls for blanket ban of 'deplorable' act
I must say that I find it distasteful when male homosexuals are given access to surrogate parenting. I think all children need a mother. In the case below, however, the actual mother -- the egg donor - remains in close contact so I am less disturbed by that
Stephen Page and his husband Mitch were brought to tears when a friend offered to become a surrogate mother and give birth to a child for them so they could form a family.
"It was Christmas Day, of all days, when she said she loved us both and wanted to be our surrogate," Mr Page said.
"Then a very good friend offered to be an egg donor. "Both of them were giving the gift of life to us."
That gift is now a "magical", four-year-old girl named Elizabeth who has taken to calling Mitch "Dad" and Stephen "Daddy", so they know who she is referring to.
The women who helped to bring Elizabeth into the world are also part of her life, as they remain close friends of the family.
As the Pages are based in Brisbane, Elizabeth was born through an unpaid, altruistic surrogacy arrangement, the only kind of surrogacy legal in Australia.
A nationwide ban on commercial surrogacy — which is available to prospective parents in several countries overseas — means it is illegal to pay surrogate mothers in Australia.
But all types of surrogacy are back in the spotlight following a call earlier this week by the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, for a worldwide ban on all forms of surrogacy.
In his yearly speech to diplomats in Vatican City on Monday, the pope declared surrogacy to be a "deplorable" act that exploited poor women.
"I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother's material needs," Pope Francis said.
"A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract."
Pope Francis has previously described surrogacy as using a "uterus for rent" and a practice that commercialises motherhood.
The Catholic Church also opposes in-vitro fertilisation, abortion, artificial contraception and homosexual sex, although in a landmark ruling in late 2023, Pope Francis approved blessings for same-sex couples.
The Archdiocese of Brisbane did not respond to the ABC's requests for comment on the pope's latest condemnation of surrogacy.
Mr Page, who is a fertility lawyer and surrogacy advocate, said the pope's comments were hypocritical, as the numerous cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests meant the church did not have the high ground when it came to sexual morality.
"It's a bit rich to hear the Catholic Church, of all institutions, talking about women's and children's rights given their history," Mr Page said.
"They should put their own house in order first," he said.
However, Mr Page said there were legitimate concerns about women being exploited overseas, with the majority of Australians who pursue surrogacy to create or expand their families going abroad to find surrogate mothers.
He said, in his opinion, surrogate mothers should be allowed to receive payments in Australia, because the current system disincentivises local surrogacy, resulting in more people entering into commercial arrangements overseas.
A Monash University paper, 'Australian intended parents’ decision-making and characteristics and outcomes of surrogacy arrangements completed in Australia and overseas', noted that overseas surrogate mothers and the babies they gave birth to had worse health outcomes, including higher rates of preterm births, multiple births, and neonatal intensive care, than babies born via surrogates in Australia.
Sweeping changes to ACT surrogacy laws proposed
The ACT government proposes changes to the territory's surrogacy laws, including allowing single people to access surrogacy and removing the requirement for the intended parent to have a genetic connection to the child.
The researchers found that overseas surrogacy practices included many cases of multiple embryo transfers and anonymous egg donations, which are both illegal in Australia.
Their survey revealed the most common reasons Australians sought international surrogacy were difficulties finding a local surrogate and the complicated legal processes at home.
"Improving access to surrogacy at a domestic level would reduce the number of people engaging with international arrangements and, in turn, reduce the potential for harm," the paper found.
There were 213 Australian babies born through international surrogacy in the 2021-22 financial year.
This compares with 100 surrogacy births reported by Australian and New Zealand fertility clinics in 2021.
'A beautiful extended family'
Surrogacy lawyer Sarah Jefford said she felt blessed to become the surrogate mother for two Melbourne dads in 2018.
The podcaster said in her view she was receiving the gift of life just as much as she was giving it.
She said throughout the process she formed an intimate bond with the two dads and her surrogate daughter, who is about to turn six.
"While they gained parenthood and the ability to raise and parent her, what we gained together was this beautiful extended family," Mrs Jefford said.
"I am her Aunty Sarah and we spend time together, I've babysat for her, and we celebrate milestones like birthdays and Christmas together."
Growing Families global director Sam Everingham said there needed to be a global framework to regulate surrogacy overseas.
The Australia-based research organisation advises governments and families who are considering undertaking surrogacy.
Mr Everingham said some countries had very poor protections for surrogates, but the solution was not a blanket ban on all surrogacy.
He said Australian surrogacy was very highly regulated. "We've got many thousands of surrogates who do so in an ethical manner," he said.
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IPA poll reveals overwhelming majority of Aussies want to celebrate Australia Day and are against changing the date
Less than one in five Australians want to change the date of Australia Day while nine in ten Aussies say they're 'proud to be Australian'.
A new poll from the Institute of Public Affairs surveyed more than 1,000 Australians about their attitude towards Australia Day.
It found nearly two-thirds of Australians, 63 per cent, agree the date of Australia Day should stay as January 26 - the day the First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove in 1788.
In recent years, the national holiday has grown increasingly controversial with many Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians referring to it as 'Invasion Day' because it marks the beginning of Australia's colonisation.
However, only 17 per cent of survey participants believe the date should be changed while 20 per cent had no opinion.
The 2024 result closely aligns with the IPA's previous annual survey results, which also found the majority of Australians want to keep Australia Day on January 26.
Data collected also revealed the only age group in which the majority supported a date change was 18-24-year-olds.
IPA deputy executive director Daniel Wild blames young Australians' attitude on 'relentless indoctrination' in schools.
'Australia is the greatest nation on earth. Our way of life and freedoms are the envy of the world and they must be cherished and celebrated,' he told the Daily Telegraph.
'It is concerning just 42 per cent of those aged 18-24 support Australia Day on January 26.
'This is a direct result of relentless indoctrination taking place at schools and universities - a strong majority of younger Australians beyond the years of formal education support our national day.
'You can hardly blame young Australians for having a negative view of their country given they are continually told it is not worth celebrating or fighting for.'
NSW upper house member Rachel Merton has been a vocal for keeping Australia Day on the 26th. 'On the 26th of January we celebrate the miracle of modern Australia,' she said.
'We recognise the incredible courage and vision of Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, and give thanks for the privilege of living in the world's greatest democracy.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12961361/Australia-Day-January-26-change-date.html
*********************************************EV charging company ChargePoint pulls the plug on Australia as US-owned network shuts down stations in NSW, Victoria and Queensland
Electric car charging firm ChargePoint will shut down its network of almost 50 stations in a major blow to Anthony Albanese's plan to turn Australia green.
The US-owned company confirmed in an email to company members that it would shut down its charging stations in NSW, Victoria and Queensland from February 1.
ChargePoint told its customers it will 'no longer maintain a presence in Australia' and would cease operations of its 46 charging ports.
Electric vehicle owners have until the end of January to use the charging stations - which can only be accessed with a credit or ChargePoint card - despite the brand's app no longer working.
ChargePoint installed its first EV station in Australia in 2010 and expanded across the country's east coast as popularity of electric cars rose among motorists.
However, in 2020 the brand stopped maintaining its charging ports in Australia, with its network of stations operating via remote support from the US.
ChargePoint claimed it would shut down its charging ports in May, last year, after its local and US divisions split.
However, it took an additional seven months for the company to finalise its exit from the Australian market.
The move comes after ChargePoint announced it would be firing 12 per cent of its global workforce.
The Californian-based company share price reached a peak of $US46.10 in late 2020 but is now sitting at an all-time low of $US2.
Customers who have remaining credit on their accounts after February 1 will be refunded their full amount.
It comes after Australian EV charging company Tritium closed its doors on its local factory before Christmas, leaving the jobs of up to 400 workers uncertain.
The troubled fast-charging firm announced the closure at the company's annual general meeting that it would shut Murrarie, Brisbane factory on December 22.
Tritium confirmed it would consolidate manufacturing operations at its Tennesse base in the US in a desperate bid to save money after its share price plummeted 98 per cent.
The company will keep a research and development business in Brisbane and has claimed only 75 workers will be laid off when the factory shuts, but did not disclose if there will be further rounds of redundancies.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited the factory in March, last year, to publicise it as a shining example of his advanced green manufacturing ambitions.
The Prime Minister labelled the achievements of the Aussie start-up, founded in 2001, as 'extraordinary'. 'This company has grown in a very short period of time to operate in 42 different countries,' Mr Albanese said. 'This is my third visit to Tritium. Every time I come back, I hear about more revenue, more jobs being created, and more countries where Australia is exporting to. 'This is a great success story here... and the capacity that they have to grow further is just extraordinary.'
The federal government refused to step in with a rescue package for Tritium despite the importance of chargers for the increased take-up of electric vehicles.
Tritium submitted an application to the government's National Reconstruction Fund, which aims to rebuild Australia’s industrial base, but was reportedly rejected.
The $15 billion fund was created to provide loans, guarantees, and equity for projects to create secure, well-paid jobs and drive regional development.
However, Tritium failed to secure new funding to safeguard their factory's future and was forced to shut its doors.
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Big switch: The Sydney suburbs rejecting public education
Parents want to avoid the chaos of government schools
More Sydney parents are pulling their children out of the public education system at the end of year 6 and enrolling them in private high schools compared with a decade ago.
The growing exodus of students to private schools comes after years of sustained public focus on teacher shortages and debates over education funding.
Department of Education enrolment figures, which track the progression of public pupils through each year of their schooling, show more than 9000 year 6 students left the public system between 2021 and 2022, equating to 21 per cent of the year 6 cohort.
When schools in the rest of NSW were included, the exodus grew to more than 12,000 pupils in 2022, the latest year for which data is available.
In Sydney, the local government areas Canada Bay, Bayside and Cumberland recorded the biggest declines, with the number of students attending public high schools falling by more than 50 per cent between year 6 in 2021 and year 7 in 2022.
NSW Secondary Principals’ Council president Craig Petersen said public schools perform just as well as private schools in the HSC and other academic tests after socio-economic effects are considered.
“Parents are choosing to send them to the non-government sector because there is a mistaken belief they will get better results, but it is a fact that our public schools perform at least as well as non-government schools,” he said.
Grattan Institute education program director Jordana Hunter said it was important for the state system to make the case to parents that public schools can provide a high-quality education.
“Parents choose school for a range of reasons, one of them is the peer group they’re selecting for their children. Parents from more advantaged backgrounds can seek out schools with children from similar social groups,” she said.
“The consequence of that is the increased concentration of children from disadvantaged backgrounds in public schools, that can create challenges in terms of teaching and learning.”
Anglican Schools Corporation chief executive Peter Fowler, whose organisation oversees 18 schools in Sydney, said successive state governments had not built public schools in growing areas on the city’s fringes.
“There is not as broad a choice for parents, so they’re looking at what the independent schools have to offer,” he said.
On school tours, parents were less interested in the buildings and more interested in the culture and what classes were like. “They liked to speak to existing students about their experiences, they wanted to hear about that, not the facilities in the school,” he said.
Demographer Mark McCrindle said the shift to the private system, replicated around Australia, was in part driven by older millennials (born from 1981 onwards), who were increasingly opting for faith-based schools for their children, despite a declining percentage of Australians identifying as religious.
“They’re not churchgoers or mosque attenders – they’re saying, some of the values which come from that particular educational foundation does work,” he said.
Catholic Schools chief executive Dallas McInerney said his sector had its strongest growth in more than a decade in the past year. “We’re welcoming more and more families from non-Catholic families. It is a vote of confidence in Catholic schools,” he said.
A St Paul’s Grammar School in Cranebrook, which is a non-denominational Christian school in Sydney’s west, principal Ian Wake said parents who were not particularly religious were drawn to the focus on mental wellbeing for their child.
“Across the board, there has been an increase in mental health issues and anxiety. We have appointed a coordinator of wellbeing and a wellbeing framework throughout the school … that appeals to parents,” he said.
Mother of three Liz Henry from Cremorne sent her daughters to the local public primary school. “My experience of public school has been very positive,” she said.
However, she decided to send them to a religious school for their secondary education. She had attended a single-sex private high school and wanted a school for her daughters that went beyond academics.
“It was important to me and to us as parents that there was a code of conduct or a set of values which were going to be instilled into our children … It didn’t have to be religious but there had to be some guiding principles,” she said.
A NSW Department of Education spokesman said there were currently 800,000 students enrolled in public schools– meaning the majority of school-aged children were educated in public schools.
“Through our new plan for NSW Public Education, we are explicitly aiming to make NSW public schools the first choice for young people and their families,” he said.
That plan, released in November, said the Department was addressing staffing shortages in public schools by giving teachers pay rises of up to $10,000 and would bolster student wellbeing via whole-of-school approaches. Success in some areas would be measured via “increasing community confidence in public education”.
“We have taken strides to ensure public schools continue to be the first choice for the majority of families, such as the recent historic pay rise for over 95,000 teachers, making them some of them the highest-paid public school teachers in the nation,” he said.
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Pregnant nurse Ella refused to get a Covid jab and was duly sacked from her job at a children's hospital. Now she's plotting revenge
A passionate nurse is threatening legal action after she was sacked this week for refusing to get a Covid jab in 2021 - even though the mandate for healthcare workers was repealed in September 2023.
Ella Leach, 29, secretary of the Nurses Professional Association QLD, sued Queensland Health for her 'unfair dismissal' last weekend.
The seven-months pregnant mum-to-be is also demanding an apology from Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace for making 'misleading' comments about her case.
Ms Leach claims that by firing more than 1,200 nurses in a similar position, the state's government is 'just trying to prove a point' in the middle of a health care worker shortage.
'Terminating experienced nurses in a critical workforce shortage after keeping them in limbo for over two years, which to all appearances seems to be a power play… .I don't think, passes the pub test,' she told Daily Mail Australia.
'This is not about me. This is about thousands of healthcare workers prevented from working in their profession.'
Ms Grace had said there had been 'specific circumstances' behind Ms Leach's firing when she was asked about the decision to sack her.
According to Ms Leach however, the only allegation listed in her termination letter regarded her refusal to comply with the vaccine mandate.
'Ms Grace has my permission to elaborate further about the 'specific circumstances' surrounding my case,' she told the Courier Mail.
'Considering another pregnant nurse was sacked from Queensland Health two days after myself, I know that this is not an isolated incident.'
The Minister had previously said that 'there was more' to Ms Leach's case than met the eye, but that she was unable to disclose any extra details due to privacy concerns.
'It's very hard to comment on an individual case, but I think there's more to this case in relation to this,' Ms Grace said.
'We are doing all that we can to attract health workers but quite clearly, when directions are given, we expect them to be followed.'
In a letter replying to the Minister, Ms Leach wrote that she had 'relinquished any right to privacy' and was 'eager' to hear the circumstances that Ms Grace was referring to.
'I am yet to receive any further information ... beyond what was espoused in my termination letter,' Ms Leach wrote.
'Otherwise, I would like to receive an apology from you for portraying my circumstances of dismissal as anything other than what they were - a pregnant Queensland Health nurse being dismissed for disobeying a Health Employment Directive that is no longer in force.'
Queensland's hospital system has been plagued since the pandemic by long waiting times and ambulance ramping.
Ms Leach believes this is almost entirely due to a chronic lack of staffing.
'Nurses are pushed to the point of burn out, women are unable to give birth in our rural facilities and forced to have caesarians far from home - and all exacerbated by the fact that we don’t have enough nurses and midwives in our healthcare facilities.'
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ms Grace's office and Queensland Health for comment.
Ms Leach worked as a registered nurse for seven years and had experience in neurosurgical, neurology, orthopaedics, medical and oncology.
Prior to the pandemic she had never been subject to disciplinary processes or management intervention.
Speaking to Sky News Australia on Tuesday, Ms Leach said that the drama had taken her attention away from her pregnancy.
'I should be focused on the joys of becoming a first time mum but it has been overshadowed by this whole process,' she said.
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14 January, 2024
Man acquitted of murder seeks $5.5 million from police
The fragrant Queensland cops again. I can never get over the Barry Mannix case, where the Queensland cops pressured a kid to confess that he had killed his father. See here:
https://lylawyers.com.au/blog/false-confessions/
and more details herehttp://www.tony-koch.com/index.php?page=detail&id=585
The kid got off only because someone else confessed to the crime!My own experience with them was also not impressive. When my car was stolen I gave them a piece of evidence that identified one of the thieves. They "lost" that piece of evidence and made no further enquiries. The officer who "lost" the evidence, Constable Turgeon, appeared to suffer no consequences for her "negligence". I wrote to the police minster, Rob Schwarten, about the matter at the time but the response was effectively, "So sad, too bad". More details here:
https://memoirsjr.blogspot.com/2008/07/schwarto-and-queensland-police.html
A man who was jailed for six-and-a-half years and later acquitted of murder is suing two police detectives for $5.5 million, claiming he was subject to malicious prosecution.
Steven Mark John Fennell, 64, filed a statement of claim in Brisbane Supreme Court in late December alleging the two detectives who arrested him engaged in misconduct during the investigation.
Liselotte Watson, 85, was found dead on November 13, 2012 in her home on Macleay Island about 30km southeast of Brisbane.
Mr Fennell then aged 56, was convicted in the Supreme Court in March 2016 of murdering defenceless grandmother Ms Watson by using a hammer to inflict horrific head injuries.
"(The detectives) took steps to embellish, manipulate, misrepresent or deliberately conceal aspects of the evidence," the lawsuit claims.
Mr Fennell's lawsuit also alleges the detectives engaged in misfeasance in public office by using the Crime and Misconduct Commission to force him to answer questions.
The two detectives and the Queensland government, which was also named in the lawsuit, are yet to respond to the claims.
The prosecution in 2016 told court that Mr Fennell, who delivered junk mail at the time, murdered Ms Watson in order to steal her money and offset his gambling losses.
The jury rejected Mr Fennell's denials and reached a guilty verdict after deliberating for almost two days.
The High Court of Australia unanimously ruled in September 2019 that Mr Fennell's convictions be quashed and he be acquitted.
Mr Fennell spent 2373 days in pre-trial custody and prison and has claimed damages for "false imprisonment" and loss of income.
He claimed the two detectives did not give him the required warning before interviewing him in the days after Ms Watson's death and recorded his answers without telling him.
The lawsuit also claimed the case was taken to trial without any direct or forensic evidence connecting him to Ms Watson's death or the alleged murder weapon and relied on flawed accounting to determine he could not afford his gambling.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8482599/man-acquitted-of-murder-seeks-55-million-from-police/
*************************************Antisemitic madness is everywhere now
It makes the brainless and the losers feel smart
For many, it was to be a respite. An escape. A place to unwind and be among nature, music, dance, yoga – a sanctuary of sorts. A safe space. The website promised an experience based on inclusivity. This promise was undoubtedly fulfilled for many Woodford Folk Festival goers, unless, of course, you were Israeli or Jewish.
Israeli backpackers flocked to Woodford keen to, at least temporarily, leave the massacre of October 7 behind them.
‘We came because we heard that it’s an amazing festival,’ said Ami, a young Israeli.
‘I went with a friend whose boyfriend was kidnapped and then killed in Gaza. Our goal was to clear our minds and leave the city – be in nature. Instead, the experience turned out to be very triggering.
‘The people there had no idea what they’re talking about. One girl on stage in shorts was holding an Aboriginal and Palestinian flag, yet if she dressed like that in Gaza she would be shot straight away.’
And for local Jewish residents, the experience was not much different.
‘As a person who’s been going to Woodford since my early teens, I’ve always found it a place of refuge and I felt safe. Each time I’d go to Woodford it felt like coming home,’ said Penny. ‘Yet this year was different. It was filled with extremely distressing experiences. It was disheartening to see casual one-sided references to the war in an inflammatory way.’
And then there’s Hagar, who has been travelling in Australia for close to a year. She is a Nova festival goer and has many friends who lost their lives on October 7, as well as friends who have fallen while serving in the army in this current war. The Nova music festival is where more than 350 young Israelis were murdered. Others were raped, tortured, or kidnapped and taken into Gaza. Some are still being kept hostage.
It was the first time, she said, during her travels in Australia that she had encountered such anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments from the other people in attendance.
‘The people they [the protestors] are supporting killed my friends and reminded me of the horrible events of October 7,’ Hagar said.
‘It [Woodford] is not an experience which I will remember as being good, [with some festival goers] supporting murder and rape in a modern society and it felt like our side wasn’t heard or given a chance to tell our story.’
The Woodford Folk Festival near the eponymous South East Queensland town has been and gone for another year. The festival is held annually over six days and six nights, following Christmas through to New Year’s Day. More than 2,000 local, national, and international, artists, musicians, and presenters put on over 500 acts. Around 125,000 people flock annually from around the globe to the event. The festival is run as a non-profit organisation supported by corporate sponsors as well as receiving state and federal government sponsorship. The festival organisers tout the event as a festival ‘based on a vision of inclusive and creative community and culture…’ and ‘…kindness, empathy, goodwill and generosity are collectively extended to all’.
For a certain minority, this year’s festival was anything but ‘inclusive’ or filled with ‘kindness, empathy, and goodwill’. Instead, it was marred by pro-Palestinian supporters high-jacking the festival, turning the event into mass political grandstanding.
‘I’m a regular attendee at Woodford Folk Festival and have worked there multiple times,’ said Imogene, who is neither Jewish nor Israeli.
‘This festival holds a very special place in my heart and is definitely considered to be one of my favourite festivals in Australia. However, I was really disappointed this year by the insensitivity towards the large Israeli and Jewish community who have supported this festival for many, many years.
‘I understand that this art and musical festival always has a hint of politics, however, this year’s festival was heartless and very inappropriate. It was incredibly unfair towards the Jewish community to have people protesting about Gaza and Palestine with signs like ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ during such a sensitive time. In festivals you should feel a sense of belonging, instead people were parading the extinction of Israel with no real understanding of the depth of their words. There were groups of people gathering at the village green with flags, and posters, and wearing Keffiyeh (which is culturally inappropriate in itself), and then parading these around the festival. People even put ‘Free Palestine’ stickers on Israeli food trucks and signs. Can you feel the suffocation? Musicians and artists praying for the people in Gaza with no remorse or prayers towards Israelis who are sitting right in front of them. It was absolutely heartbreaking!’
Imogene shared that throughout the festival her Jewish friends came up to her in tears and shared how unsafe they felt – in a festival that should be bringing nothing but love and light, she said.
‘After the horrific events that happened on October 7, in particular at the Nova festival, you can imagine the hurdle Israelis and all affected had to overcome to even bring themselves to this festival, to then feel suffocated, unsafe, and to be reminded of these events by people dressing up like the ones who brought this terror in the first place.
‘While I love this festival and all that goes into it, I was very disappointed and disheartened by the large number of beautiful people who were torn apart from all of this – including me.’
Israeli-born Australian Sivan attended the Woodford Folk Festival with her two children, aged 6 and 9. Sivan had never been to Woodford and was looking forward to spending the day at a festival that she thought would be a peaceful, welcoming, and inclusive environment. As a Jewish Israeli, what she experienced was quite the opposite. She felt unsafe, not welcome, and her children felt scared, threatened, and fearful from what they experienced.
Sivan’s best friend, Danielle, lived on Kibbutz Oz – one of the kibbutzim massacred on October 7. The parents of Sivan’s friends, Orly and David, were both gruesomely murdered by Hamas. What makes these slayings particularly grotesque is that the terrorists filmed the murder and sent the footage of this horrific act to their daughter, Danielle. Sadly, this experience is not unique to Sivan. Many Queenslanders have a close connection to the horrors of October 7.
As Sivan strolled around the Woodford grounds, she encountered a group of Palestinian protestors sporting Palestinian flags and signs. The group chanted ‘Free, free Palestine’ and ‘Genocide’. She asked this group whether they knew what had happened on October 7.
They did not respond and avoided engaging in conversation with her. She asked again. No response. She then asked them to close their eyes and imagine terrorists breaking into their houses, murdering families, slaughtering babies. One of the protestors responded with: ‘That never happened.’
Sivan said her children were left extremely scared after the encounter. Sivan said she came to the festival to enjoy the shows, the workshops, the music, and dancing: the putative community spirit of the festival. Yet the reality of the festival was anything but enjoyable. A little later, she was confronted by yet another protest.
Jewish friends of Sivan had flown up from Melbourne with their daughter to attend the festival. They had paid for two days but after the first day did not feel comfortable returning to the overtly anti-Israel environment.
An Israeli backpacker, while watching a performance, was confronted by a Palestinian flag and a mentioning of all ‘the murders in Gaza’ during the show. Another Israeli backpacker went to order some food from an Israeli food truck. A sticker had allegedly been stuck to the van: ‘Warning: Do not buy this product. Supports Israel. A country that is exceedingly violating international law, the 4th Geneva Convention, and fundamental human rights. Stand up for human rights. Boycott Israel until it respects international law. #BDS.’ Not only is this incorrect, as many international law experts will confirm, but one has to ask what a locally owned/run business has to do with Israel? Just like every other Aussie, they were there to enjoy the festival and, hopefully, make a quid while they’re at it, not to be subjected to boycotts and acts of antisemitism. The IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Association) defines what constitutes antisemitism, including: holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
Prior to the start, both Israelis and Jews had shared their concerns with Woodford management. According to them, these concerns were allegedly met with justifications of free speech. Festival organisers provided assurances that they would respond quickly and decisively to any incitement of hatred.
The Woodford Folk Festival is a partly state and federal sponsored event and as such ought to be wholly exempt from politics and expressions of controversial opinions. Furthermore, it runs directly counter to Woodford’s stated aim of ‘love’ and ‘coming together as humans’ etc. etc. It is indeed incumbent upon the festival organisers to ensure that no festival goer is offended, but is instead able to enjoy the music, dance, art, the natural environment, and workshops.
‘I left Israel 2 months after the war started,’ Yasmin says. ‘In the first 2 months, I have not experienced any negativity from people here, even the opposite, people whom I interacted with were very supportive and understanding in conversations when I told them I am from Israel.
‘During the Woodford Festival, I was exposed to the most Palestinian and pro-Palestinian content so far in my trip. On the first day, there were Palestinian flags on the main stage at an event, which made me feel very uneasy and unsafe. They then set up a stand with their propaganda. It was the opposite to feeling welcome and at home; it was very uncomfortable. We tried to talk to the management about our feelings to no avail.
‘We talked to the police about how this makes us feel but they informed us that this was authorised by the management.
‘People at the festival asked me why don’t I go to another country and live there? What they don’t understand is the connection we have to our country, our land. It is where I live, where my cultural heritage is.
‘In my eyes that flag [Palestinian] is a symbol of Israeli annihilation, which was attempted on October 7. When I see that flag I feel my life is in danger. I did not enjoy this festival. I would have liked to have something to represent how we feel and what the Israeli side has been through. It felt like very one-sided opinions and views.’
One Israeli backpacker summed up the general sentiment: ‘If I knew it would be such an anti-Israel festival I would never have gone. I thought it was supposed to be a peaceful, welcoming festival. I came to escape – to experience positive, good vibes and be among nature – to have a good time. Yet it felt violent, aggressive, toxic.’
In my opinion, the organisers of the Woodford Folk Festival have failed miserably in their mission, vision, and values of inclusivity, kindness, empathy, goodwill, and generosity collectively extended to all. They have allowed what is one of the great festivals of ‘human connection and love’ on the annual calendar to descend into something else entirely.
‘It was the first time I felt unwanted and rejected because I am Israeli,’ Amit said. ‘I felt minimised – like someone is pointing a finger at me because of where I am from.’
I wonder if this was the experience event sponsors had hoped for…
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/a-festival-of-exclusivity/
***************************************************Landlords’ human rights at stake, says lobby group, as fight gears up over renting rules
The peak lobby group representing real estate agents in NSW has warned the Minns government that its proposed rental reforms, including an end to no-grounds evictions, could breach the human rights of landlords, in a concerted push to water down the proposed laws.
Labor is facing significant pushback to its proposed rental reforms from industry groups that vehemently oppose the changes and has delayed their introduction as Premier Chris Minns concedes there is “more to do” on the legislation.
In submissions to a consultation paper on the reforms released last year, the Real Estate Institute of NSW warned the Minns government that the changes were “not fair” to landlords and would “drive away existing investors from the property market”.
The institute, which serves as the state’s lobby group for real estate agents, raised the spectre of Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that people have “the right to own property” and “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”.
It argued that the proposed reforms “unjustifiably impede on a landlord’s right to make choices about their asset” and warned that the government “would need to be confident” the changes were not in breach of the 1948 declaration.
Barry Johnson, president of the Real Estate Institute, said ending no-fault evictions would mean the right of landlords to make decisions about their property would be “restricted”.
“Investing money into buying a property is a big cost,” Johnson said. “Stamp duty is a big cost, interest is a big cost. So if you didn’t feel as though you could control that investment, you probably wouldn’t have made it in the first place.
“For a government to start changing the rules about what you can do with your property after you’ve made that investment in good faith … it is removing the rights of that individual.”
While Labor intends to keep its commitment to ending no-grounds terminations, the breadth of the pushback from the industry has complicated the reforms.
The government previously said that a bill would be introduced by the end of last year, but Minns could not give a timeframe on the new laws on Friday.
A particular sticking point is what model of no-grounds reform will be adopted.
In 2022, Victoria introduced laws banning the use of no-fault evictions for both periodic and fixed-term leases after the first lease cycle. In Queensland, no-fault terminations can occur only at the end of a fixed-term lease.
Minns conceded there had been “mixed views” on the proposals, and said the government had not decided on which model it would adopt. “We’ve got to make a decision, in all candour, about that,” he said.
“One of the good things about looking at the other states and how their programs have rolled out is you can assess their impact on the market and what it’s done for rental prices. So there’s more to do there, I’m not going to lie.”
In 2021, the Queensland government walked away from an earlier plan to end no-grounds evictions on all types of leases because, as Housing Minister Leeanne Enoch argued, it would breach the state’s Human Rights Act.
Leo Patterson-Ross, the head of the NSW Tenants Union, a renters’ advocacy group, said the argument was spurious, pointing out that, at the time, the Queensland Human Rights Commissioner disagreed with the government.
“Asking you to give a reason for ending a contract is not an arbitrary deprivation; it’s just saying you need to tell the person what the reason is,” Patterson-Ross said.
“Reforming no-grounds evictions is not about arbitrary. It’s removing arbitrariness by asking you to give reasonable grounds.”
Across the property industry, stakeholders have been lobbying the government against introducing a new tenancy framework that, they say, will exacerbate housing supply shortages by discouraging investment.
Property Owners’ Association of NSW president John Gilmovich said the reforms would “take more control over owners’ property” and encourage “investors to leave the market, which is making the situation worse not better”.
“The latest reforms serve to cloud the issue about how to solve this critical problem and paint property investors as the villains, when investors are actually a very big part of the solution,” Gilmovich said.
But Patterson-Ross pointed out that other jurisdictions had stricter rules around a landlord’s ability to end tenancies and had “much greater density” than NSW.
“I think if you use common sense you can understand that basically since the 1970s there has been progressively a more consumer-protection focus on the rental system, and there are more landlords than ever,” he said.
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Over 300 Endangered Eagles Killed or Injured by Wind Turbines in Tasmania: Study
Over the past decade, wind turbines and transmission lines have led to the deaths or injuries of 321 endangered eagles in Tasmania, according to a study.
More cases are believed to be unreported due to a lack of systemic research on wind farms and public information.
Published in Australian Field Ornithology, the study looked at Australia’s two largest raptors, the wedge-tailed and white-bellied sea eagles.
It found that from 2010-2022, wind farms caused the deaths of 268 eagles and injured 53, with state-owned power company TasNetworks reporting 139 deaths, and eagle rescuers witnessing 91 deaths and 50 injuries.
Study author Gregory Pullen said the number of eagle deaths was a “stark reminder” that an urgent solution was needed to mitigate further harm to the vulnerable species.
“The real number can only be higher since surveying at wind farms is incomplete,” Mr. Pullen noted in the study.
“Specifically, it is only close to turbines, is periodic, and does not involve all turbines or all habitat around each turbine, scrub often being excluded.”
Of great concern is that 272 deaths involved the endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, and 49 of the vulnerable white-bellied sea eagles.
Future of Birds Unclear
Both species could face further risk as the expansion of wind turbine construction continues amid the federal government’s net-zero push.
“Accelerated deaths of the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle and white-bellied sea-eagle are a grim reality if thousands of new wind turbines and hundreds of kilometres of transmission lines are erected across Tasmania to meet a legislated doubling of renewable energy production by 2040,” Mr. Pullen said.
The study estimated that less than 1,000 Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles remain and emphasised ongoing monitoring to ensure the species does not become extinct.
It includes observing the number of eagles, stability of breeding pairs, nesting success and surviving chicks, presence of juvenile birds, and whether disruption to the natural habitat causes dislocation.
While the Tasmanian government has guidelines in place to protect threatened eagles, Mr. Pullen found that these have not contributed to real-life decisions regarding wind farm placement.
For instance, despite great differences in eagle densities across Tasmania, there are currently no designated “no turbine zones.”
Some researchers have suggested Tasmanian eagles be fitted with GPS trackers, but the concept has been slow to establish and has yet to be used in wind farm planning.
The study comes as Tasmanian authorities continue their push towards net zero, recently inking a deal with the German city Bremen.
State Energy Minister Guy Barnett said the collaboration was evidence of the state’s plan to become a leader in large-scale green hydrogen production by 2030 to meet both domestic and international demand.
“This joint declaration demonstrates the opportunity the rest of the world sees in Tasmania and confidence in the government’s renewable energy agenda,” Mr. Barnett said in a statement on Sept. 17.
“Tasmania is well placed, with our 100 percent renewable electricity, abundant water supplies, and excellent port infrastructure to seize these important opportunities with international partners.”
Scientist Questions Wind Power Reliability
There are concerns, however, over the viability of large-scale renewable energy generation.
One Oxford University mathematician and physicist has criticised wind power saying it is historically and scientifically unreliable, noting that governments are prioritising “windfarm politics” over numerical evidence.
Professor Emeritus Wade Allison made the assertion in response to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, where the “instinctive reaction” around the world was to embrace renewables.
“Today, modern technology is deployed to harvest these weak sources of energy. Vast ‘farms’ that monopolise the natural environment are built, to the detriment of other creatures,” Mr. Allison said in the report, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“Developments are made regardless of the damage wrought. Hydro-electric schemes, enormous turbines, and square miles of solar panels are constructed, despite being unreliable and ineffective.”
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Make Australian civics education great again
The 2019 National Assessment Program Civics and Citizenship (NAP-CC) results, published in 2021, indicate that only 53 per cent of Year 6 students and 38 per cent of Year 10 students (notably, girls outperformed boys in both year levels) met the benchmark in civics and citizenship education.
This trend is alarming, especially considering Year 10 is the last year civics is taught in schools.
The decline in civic understanding among young Australians underscores the need for education resources that are not only informative but also engaging.
The history of bipartisan efforts in civics education in Australia is noteworthy.
For instance, the Hawke government’s establishment of a parliamentary committee led to the recommendation of incorporating civics and citizenship lessons into history and social science curricula.
Following the 1993 election, Paul Keating initiated the Civics Expert Group to enhance young Australians’ political understanding and engagement.
Subsequently, John Howard introduced the ‘Discovering Democracy’ program in 1997, which extended beyond traditional school settings to higher education and vocational training.
These government measures demonstrate the cross-party commitment to strengthening Australian civic knowledge and participation since the 1980s.
In this context, prime ministerial libraries situated within or affiliated with Australian universities play a pivotal role. Housing rich collections of historical documents and personal letters, these libraries provide tangible connections to the past, making the study of political history more relatable and engaging for young learners.
Such libraries surpass their role as mere archives, functioning as dynamic hubs of education and civic interaction. By hosting exhibitions, conferences, and fostering scholarly publications, the libraries bring historical documents to life, connecting past political decisions to contemporary discussions and learning.
Last month’s 5th anniversary of the official opening of the John Howard Prime Ministerial Library at Old Parliament House underscored the critical role of these institutions in public education.
Other prime ministerial libraries, like the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library at Curtin University, the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at Adelaide University, and the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne, act as gateways to Australia’s recent past.
They are more than repositories; they are vibrant educational platforms. Yet, their full potential in engaging new generations in political history remains largely untapped.
Expanding their reach and impact, particularly in making historical knowledge accessible and engaging to a broader audience – including younger Australians – is crucial.
At the very least, they could provide a wealth of teaching resources with a simple online search.
This expansion requires a holistic approach involving a solid national framework, substantial support from both government and private sources, and strong leadership.
Only with unwavering backing from all parties – including national cultural institutions – can these libraries truly thrive and fulfil their mission.
Despite the longevity of civics education in Australia since Federation, its relegation to the back corner of a classroom is a serious oversight.
Neglecting this fundamental aspect of education raises a real risk of depriving future generations of the skills needed for informed democratic participation.
As emphasised by UK educator and political biographer Sir Anthony Seldon, an understanding and respect for the past are vital for making better decisions and fostering better individuals.
This principle is essential for imparting a comprehensive understanding of Australia’s political heritage and its ongoing relevance to the younger generation.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/make-civics-education-great-again/
************************************11 January, 2024
National rental prices rose 11.5% in the past year, with combined capital city rents up 13.2%, PropTrack data shows
When are governents going to stop persecuting landlords in the name of tenant protection? Both tenants and landlords end up being hit by government stupidity. Landlords cop losses from bad tenants and tenants pay higher rents to get a place
Housing advocates call for urgent reform to address growing crisis as capital rents hit average of $600 a week
Australia’s record shortage of rental properties will continue to drive prices up for tenants, analysts say, with a new report revealing combined capital city rents rose 13.2% year-on-year.
Data from PropTrack, the property analytics division of REA Group, has revealed national rental prices rose 11.5% over the past year, with combined capital city rents up 13.2% to an average of $600 a week, driven by large increases in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
“Maybe the small silver lining, the small comfort to renters, is it is a bit slower than what we saw the previous year, in 2022, when we saw growth just shy of 18%,” the PropTrack senior economist Angus Moore said.
“So there are some signs that things, at least in some parts of the country, are starting to slow down.
“But we’re still seeing very strong growth in places like Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. So we’re far from out of the woods for renters.”
Median advertised rents nationally rose 1.8% over the December quarter to $580 a week, bringing rents up 11.5%, or $60 a week, compared with a year ago.
“No matter how you cut it, that’s extremely quick growth in rents,” Moore said.
Units in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane had seen particularly sharp increases in the past year, he said, with median prices rising 17.2%, 15.6% and 16.7% respectively.
Perth has seen the fastest rental growth over the past year, with median advertised rents for dwellings up 20%. Compared with pre-pandemic prices, median advertised rents in Western Australia’s capital are up 66%, as the city now has the second lowest vacancy rate in the country, behind Adelaide.
Moore said January was often the busiest time for the market and rents were expected to continue to climb, albeit at a slower pace, across the year.
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Coles supermarket makes a huge Australia Day announcement after Woolworths goes woke
Look for a backdown from Woolworths. This holiday was a big celebration until the Left started attacking it
Coles will sell Australia Day merchandise despite Woolworths making the controversial decision to axe the products from shelves this year.
A Coles spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia: 'We are stocking a small range of Australian-themed summer entertaining merchandise throughout January which is popular with our customers for sporting events such as the cricket and tennis, as well as for the Australia Day weekend.'
Woolworths, which also owns Big W, shocked the country on Wednesday when it announced it will not sell any Australia Day merchandise due to a decline in demand. Kmart made a similar announcement in 2023.
'There has been a gradual decline in demand for Australia Day merchandise from our stores over recent years,' the supermarket giant said in a statement.
'At the same time, there's been broader discussion about 26 January and what it means to different parts of the community.'
The decision from Woolworths has been met with widespread outrage, including from NSW Premier Chris Minns and millionaire businessman Dick Smith.
'We should always celebrate that day because it's the start of modern Australia,' Mr Smith told NewsCorp.
'I am a patriotic Australian and I'm disappointed they have made that decision.'
Mr Minns said the decision from Woolworths came as a surprise. 'In 2024, I would've thought there was enough demand from customers for Australia Day products,' the premier said.
Prominent Indigenous leader and businessman Warren Mundine said Woolworths executives are 'living in a fantasy world.'
'These corporates are totally out of touch with the real Australia and yet they keep on coming out and trying to push this nonsense on us to make us ashamed of who we are and what our country is.' 'We should be celebrating who we are,' Mr Mundine declared.
Conservative social commentator Carla Efstratiou questioned why Woolworths had celebrated Diwali, an Indian holiday, but not Australia Day.
'Australia Day is being phased out by big corporations and eventually by the government,' she claimed in a TikTok video.
'(Woolworths) say it's because there's been a steady decrease in demand, but make no mistake, this is entirely thought through, it's entirely planned. 'Australia Day will cease to exist in a few years.'
Ms Efstratiou's audience were divided over the boycott in the comments. 'I'm gonna celebrate it more and more every year! I refuse to give in to the woke bull****' one person commented. 'Australia Day is 26th January end of story. Don't like it stay home and have a sleep for the day,' a second wrote.
A fourth shared: 'Who is this affecting? Does anyone actually celebrate the day? Like sure it's a day off but is anyone really celebrating?' 'Doesn't Australia Day celebrate genocide? Who wants to celebrate that?' one said.
Australia Day, observed each year on January 26, marks the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 when the first governor of the British colony of New South Wales, Arthur Philip, hoisted the Union Jack at Sydney Cove.
But for many First Nations people, it is regarded as 'Invasion Day' or the 'Day of Mourning', with many campaigning for the holiday to be abolished completely or the date changed.
While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hasn't explicitly mentioned any plans to change the date, a rising number of councils and state governments are choosing to cancel traditional Australia Day activities, including citizenship ceremonies.
Director of conservative political lobbying group Advance Australia Matthew Sheahan said Woolworths had demonstrated why Australia Day should be protected by law.
'It's time for the PM to show some leadership here and prove he's on the side of mainstream Australians who are proud of this country,' he said.
'If Albo or Woolies wants to abolish Australia Day they shouldn't be allowed to without taking a proposal to the Australian people and letting us have our say.'
In recent years Invasion Day protests have overshadowed any festivities with thousands attending rallies in major cities demanding the date be changed.
Large protests are expected this year after the referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the constitution was voted down in October.
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Climate Change Minister Defends 2030 Emissions Target After Wind Energy Hub Blocked
Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is standing firm on Australia’s 2030 renewable energy target after a wind energy hub was blocked.
This comes after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek blocked a proposal to build offshore wind turbines at the Port of Hastings.
Mr. Bowen backed the decision on the project, noting the government is not planning to operate many offshore wind farms in Australia by 2030.
He noted the government is carrying out “proper environmental approvals and assessments.”
Mr. Bowen said while the government was “moving fast,” they were also, “moving appropriately and prudently,” highlighting that there was “time to work through these issues.”
“There’s a long lead-up for offshore wind. This is not related in any meaningful way to the 2030 target because we don’t expect much offshore wind to be operating in Australia by 2030,” he said in quotes reported by the Australian Financial Review.
“Setting up a new industry from scratch takes time, and we envisage most of the projects to be generating power post-2030.”
The Australian government’s 2030 target involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent lower than 2005 levels by 2030.
Mr. Bowen noted government officials have met to discuss a potential new application for the Victorian government’s offshore wind plan.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, also from the Labor Party, has expressed dissatisfaction at the government’s decision on offshore wind but intends to submit a new application.
“I think it’s pretty fair to say we’re not particularly happy with this decision, particularly when it comes in an environment where we’re really proud to be leading the nation on establishing offshore wind,” she said earlier this week.
“We have very strong renewable energy targets, and we have them for a reason. We have them because we need to make this transition to provide energy security through renewable energy sources, and offshore wind is a big and important part of that.”
The project was rejected due to risk of unacceptable risk to surrounding wetlands, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water found.
Liberal National Party Senator for Queensland Gerard Rennick suggested that the government’s decision to block the project could be used to “push back” other wind farm projects.
“Tanya Plibersek the Federal Environment Minister has overturned a proposed offshore wind farm in Victoria,” he said.
“What’s so significant about this is that the government now formally recognises the damage that wind farms cause. This can be used as a precedent to push back against other wind d farm projects.
“Those politicians who think that renewable energy should take precedence over our environment should be ashamed of themselves.”
“Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said the energy transition must take precedence over protecting internationally renowned local wetlands, after federal minister Tanya Plibersek blocked a project central to the state’s offshore wind industry on environment grounds.
It comes as a local community in Tasmania has launched legal action against a billion-dollar wind farm project.
Community group Circular Head Coastal Awareness Network has opposed the project for the last four years on the basis that it is situated along the migration flight path of the orange-bellied parrot. It is estimated that there are 81 adult parrots of this species left in the wild.
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University degree dropouts reach record
The rate of students completing their degree within six years hit a record low in 2022 as cost-of-living pressures and plentiful job opportunities pushed up dropout rates.
Federal Education Department data shows 25.4 per cent of students who commenced their studies in 2017 had dropped out by the end of 2022 – the highest rate since records began in 2005 – and 1.3 percentage points higher than the previous corresponding period.
Record attrition rates are running in parallel with decreased interest in university study, with overall numbers down 13 per cent since 2016.
More than 50,000 students drop out each year. High attrition rates come with huge personal costs, including student debts, which rise in line with inflation. Such indexation pushed debts up by 7.1 per cent in June 2023.
Experts also point to opportunity cost – the career paths and full-time work that were sacrificed in favour of a study route that didn’t work out – which is almost impossible to calculate.
“On average, students pay [more than] $12,000 for their incomplete course,” said Andrew Norton, a higher education expert from Australian National University.
“They miss out on the additional lifetime earnings that university graduates typically receive. The time they spent at university could have been used working or studying at TAFE. And the online survey [by the Grattan Institute] shows that most people who drop out feel they have let themselves or others down.”
The pandemic would have kept students at university since there was little hope of getting a job, Mr Norton said. But since the economy opened up and with skill shortages rife, many students would have been attracted into full-time roles to help counter the cost-of-living bite.
Government data points to poor and disadvantaged students as being far more likely to drop out and carry the burden of student loans.
“It is possible that the strong labour market in 2022, in conjunction with increasing costs of living, had a greater influence on decision-making about higher education for [those] students,” a report from the Education Department says.
Incongruously, it is those universities that tend to have the highest student satisfaction ratings that have the highest dropout rates. This is especially the case for regional universities.
“The bottom three performing higher education institutions remained unchanged from 2020,” the report says. “Southern Cross University, the University of New England and CQUniversity have attrition rates 1.5 times more than the average.”
University of NSW, University of Melbourne and Monash remain the top three performing universities, with attrition rates of about 5 per cent or lower. It is even lower for those dropping in second or subsequent years – about 1.5 to 2 per cent.
Ian Li, director of research and policy at the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, said four-year completion rates at some Group of Eight universities were artificially low because of large numbers undertaking double degrees and longer undergraduate programs, such as veterinary science, medicine and dentistry.
An explanation for the low student satisfaction, but low attrition at these universities is probably a combination of too-high expectations and a sense of entitlement countered by high academic ability, Professor Li said.
These universities enrol large numbers of full-time, city-based, often privately educated school leavers with high ATARs, compared to regional and outer metropolitan universities.
School results are important. Students with ATARs below 60 are twice as likely to drop out of university as students with ATARs above 90.
Just over two thirds of students – 69.8 per cent – complete within nine years of starting. Three universities – Charles Darwin, Swinburne and University of Tasmania – have just one in every two students graduate within nine years.
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10 January, 2024
The Sydney suburb YIMBYs love to hate, where nothing is allowed to change
I am rather sympathetic to the NIMBYs here. Amid a housing shortage, tearing down existing houses for ANY reason would seem to need justification. By all means build blocks of units but do so where no significant demolition is required -- eg. farms and gardens
I realize the issue is the land value in older suburbs, which makes it profitable to tear down and rebuild, but facilitating that is not a local counil priority
Vincent Crow remembers the exact date – December 8, 1974 – he wrote to the National Trust asking it to consider heritage listings in his home suburb of Haberfield, in Sydney’s inner west.
“I said, ‘The houses here are being destroyed’. Modernised, you might say,” he recalls. A few years later, the Trust began listing parts of Haberfield, and in the mid-1980s, the Haberfield heritage conservation area was gazetted in the local environmental plan.
Today, all of Haberfield – a suburb of 6500 people about 6.5 kilometres from the CBD – remains a heritage conservation area (HCA), where development is strictly limited to preserve its form and character.
That makes it enemy number one for so-called YIMBY (yes-in-my-backyard) housing advocates, who want to see greater density around the city, especially in areas well-connected to transport.
Sydney YIMBY co-founder Justin Simon says the demographics tell the story of a suburb slowly growing older and richer alongside its houses. Census data shows Haberfield’s population barely changed between 2006 and 2021, while the number of dwellings dipped from 2505 to 2388.
In the same period, the median age jumped from 42 to 46, and median weekly household income leapt from $1291 to $2761. Half of Haberfield residents own their home outright, while just 17 per cent are renters – less than half the Greater Sydney average.
“It is a suburb that gets one or two years older in terms of median age every census,” Simon says. Then there is the median price of a three-bedroom house: “The cost of entry to Haberfield is $2.5 million.”
Haberfield is at the pointy end of a debate about whether heritage protection – especially broad heritage conservation areas that span entire streets or suburbs – is unreasonably prohibiting development, pushing up prices and making it harder for young people to buy or pay the rent.
Unlike many parts of the inner west or eastern suburbs, where HCAs contain rows and rows of Victorian terraces, Haberfield is significant as it was Australia’s first planned “garden suburb”.
Starting in 1901, real estate agent and Ashfield alderman Richard Stanton conceived it as an antidote to other parts of Sydney. Haberfield was to be “slum-less, lane-less and pub-less”.
Homes were to be single-storey, with one house per block. The standard lot size was 695 square metres, with setbacks to provide front gardens and brush box street trees out the front. No two houses were to be the same, though most were built in the Federation style.
“With Haberfield, there are hardly any houses that by themselves are outstanding architectural masterpieces,” says Crow. “It’s just the fact that it’s a single-storey garden suburb.”
Crow, 74, has lived at his three-bedroom Dudley Street property since he was eight. He also has a nearby investment property, leased to the same tenant for 15 years. The retired history teacher, who has been president of the Haberfield Association three times, says arguments to sacrifice heritage for more housing density are illogical.
“Heritage areas in the inner west are heritage because they are old. That’s what heritage is,” Crow says. “Obviously, you can’t keep everything. [But] if you are going to bulldoze it, you are going to destroy part of Australia’s heritage.”
He also argues it’s important to preserve family homes with a backyard for those who want one. “If you demolished the houses in Haberfield and built apartments, you’d only be building more of what you’ve already got elsewhere.”
Crow conceded cost was an impost in Haberfield. Asked whether heritage protection had the effect of squeezing out younger people, he said: “I haven’t really given that much thought, actually.”
Crow said the answer to Sydney’s housing woes may lie in decentralisation: people could move to places such as Albury, Bathurst or Orange. “It’s up to the government to provide incentives like jobs to attract people out there,” he said.
Darcy Byrne, the Labor mayor of the inner west, says Haberfield’s heritage value is obvious and ought to be respected. But he notes the large lots and homes set it apart from the municipality’s other heritage areas. “By definition that prices a lot of people out,” he says. “There’s obviously an equity issue in maintaining houses that are that big.”
Byrne says Haberfield suffers from having such little shop-top housing, which has helped other suburbs in the inner west thrive. “It’s a downside to keeping things precisely as they are. I’m not proposing that has to change, but we should be honest about the tradeoffs,” he says.
“I personally think Haberfield could benefit from having a pub or a small bar. I don’t think you can just rip up the heritage conservation zone, but I also don’t think you can just wrap the place up in glad wrap and preserve it indefinitely as it was 100 years ago.”
Haberfield’s heritage controls have come back to the fore this year as Inner West Council grapples with a vacant, 1.9-hectare block of land – a former Army Reserve depot – on Hawthorn Parade. The block was subdivided 20 years ago for new residential development but remains vacant due to flooding concerns.
Four of the 21 lots have been sold, and this month, the Department of Defence said it intended to put the other 17 on the market in early 2024. Due diligence on alternative uses was completed in January 2022 and came up with nothing, the department said.
Because the current rules do not contemplate the construction of new homes in Haberfield, Inner West Council is currently exhibiting site-specific development controls to ensure any new homes constructed on the site match the surrounding Queen Anne-style Federation houses, including a requirement that at least 50 per cent of each block is landscaped area.
Many controls are much more specific, such as mandating garage doors to be “simple timber or metal cladding in a recessive dark colour”.
YIMBYs, however, want those rules ripped up. Simon says the federal government, which wants the country to build 1.2 million homes in the next five years, should just gift the site to the NSW government for public housing units.
Labor councillor Philippa Scott said the council had advocated that exact position to Defence, but was rebuffed. “It’s a done deal,” she said. “We don’t live in a perfect world.”
Crow and the Haberfield Association want the block converted to a public park, not housing. A life member of the ALP, Crow is upset his federal MP – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – has not yet met with the Haberfield Association’s army land subcommittee about the issue. “We’d only be too happy for him to come down and talk to us,” Crow said.
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Long-awaited judgment upholds open justice in whistleblower Collaery case
Prosecuting a lawyer for fcr defending his client was always going to smell. Fortunately the case fell over. Now we know the final reasoning
A heavily redacted document, relating to the now discontinued case against Canberra lawyer and whistleblower Bernard Collaery, has finally been made public after more than two years.
The ACT Court of Appeal judgment reveals it is likely a judge "gave too much weight" to national security and "too little weight" to the administration of justice when determining if certain matters would be heard in open court.
Mr Collaery and his client, the ex-Australian Secret Intelligence Service spy known as Witness K, were charged over allegedly leaking classified information about an alleged Australian spying operation in Timor-Leste.
Charges against Mr Collaery were discontinued by the federal government in 2022, following protracted legal proceedings.
Mr Collaery had been set to stand trial in October 2022, charged with four counts of unlawfully communicating classified information in media interviews and a single conspiracy charge.
The charges related to Mr Collaery revealing Australian spies had bugged a government building in the nation during negotiations to carve up lucrative oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.
Much of the now vacated trial was set to be held behind closed doors, after Justice David Mossop made a ruling under national security legislation to ban public disclosure of certain information.
This order had been sought by then-federal attorney-general Christian Porter, with the effect being that significant parts of Mr Collaery's trial would be held in closed court.
Mr Collaery subsequently challenged the ruling in the ACT Court of Appeal, which unanimously allowed his appeal in October 2021.
While Mr Collaery and his team agreed some sensitive information should not be made public, they had argued material relating to "the truth of six specific matters" should be dealt with in open court.
However, the published reasons behind this decision were not made public until Tuesday, due to a bid to take the matter to the High Court and the retirement of two of the appeal judges on the case.
In the published judgment, former Chief Justice Helen Murrell, Justice John Burns and Justice Michael Wigney found it was likely Justice Mossop "gave too much weight to the risk of prejudice to national security and too little weight to the interests of the administration of justice in the circumstances of this case."
They also found that evidence led by the attorney-general was "replete with speculation and devoid of any specific basis for concluding that significant risks to national security would materialise" if the matters were heard in open court.
"The open court principle stands as a bulwark against the possibility of political prosecutions by allowing public scrutiny and assessment."
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Nurses in Queensland who were stood down during the pandemic for refusing to get a Covid vaccine are being sacked despite the lifting of mandates
Nurses in Queensland who were stood down during the pandemic for refusing to get a Covid vaccine are being sacked despite the lifting of mandates months ago.
Ella Leach, secretary of the Nurses Professional Association QLD, was one of those who was recently notified through a letter she had been fired, even though she is seven months pregnant.
'I should be focused on the joys of becoming a first time mum but it has been overshadowed by this whole process,' Ms Leach told Sky News Australia.
When asked why the Queensland Health Department would continue pursuing employees who are no longer in breach of any vaccine rule, Ms Leach said she felt the authority was 'doubling down' on its position during the pandemic.
In September 2021 all Queensland Health staff working in facilities where healthcare was provided were told they must be vaccinated for Covid, however, this directive was repealed in September 2023 by new director-general Michael Walsh.
'They're just trying to prove a point with us,' Ms Leach said. 'There's no sensible reason why they would continue with this action.'
'We know that our hospitals are screaming out for staff. We're seeing ambulances ramped outside hospitals, people dying in ambulances, our rural areas are suffering.'
Ms Leach said she was one of at least 50 staff she knew of that had been fired since September 25 last year.
Ms Leach's former employer Children's Health Queensland said in a statement it is 'unable to comment publicly on the employment situation, including disciplinary action, of individual staff'.
'Employee disciplinary matters are handled on a case by case basis and governed by robust and equitable processes.'
Ms Leach said she was aware some staff had been told they could reapply for their old jobs. 'In my role as the secretary I've seen hundreds of letters sent to staff about this matter.'
'They say they've been looked at on a case by case basis but they are templated letters and they insert what you've written back to them and say ''even if we haven't addressed your concern don't think we haven't taken it into account'',' she claimed. 'Then they just terminate you, it's disgraceful'.
'I've spoken to nurses who have lost their homes over this'.
In repealing the vaccine mandate, Mr Walsh said wide ranging advice had been submitted that informed the decision. This included employee feedback, expert clinical advice, official immunisation advice, and a 'human rights assessment'.
Similar vaccine mandates for health workers were lifted in NSW at the end of 2022 but the mandate still stands in Victoria.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12941457/Vaccine-mandates-nurses-stood-Queensland.html
********************************************Logging operations to continue between NSW and Queensland after judge rejects environmentalists' court bid
Environmentalists have lost a legal challenge to a forestry agreement between the NSW and Commonwealth governments, meaning logging operations can continue within a vast coastal area between Sydney and the Queensland border.
The North East Regional Forestry Agreement was originally signed in 2000 and renewed in 2018.
The North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) asked the Federal Court to declare that the renewed agreement did not meet the definition of such agreements under relevant laws.
On behalf of the alliance, the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) argued the Commonwealth was required to assess environmental values and principles of ecologically sustainable management when it was renewed, but failed to do so.
These included impacts on endangered species, climate change and old growth forests.
Justice Melissa Perry today rejected that argument and ruled the requirement to assess environmental values applied only when the intergovernmental agreement began, not when it was extended.
Summarising her decision, the judge said the effect of a regional forest agreement was not to leave a "regulatory void" with respect to the regions covered by the agreement.
Rather, it provided an "alternative mechanism" by which the objectives of biodiversity laws could be achieved through intergovernmental agreement.
"The question of whether or not to enter into or vary an intergovernmental agreement of this nature is essentially a political one," Justice Perry said.
"The merits of which are matters for the government parties and not the courts to determine."
The evidence considered by the court
A deed extending the agreement was executed under former prime minister Scott Morrison and former premier Gladys Berejiklian.
As part of the extension, there was an assessment report which relied on published data and formal five-yearly reviews of regional forestry agreements.
But the EDO argued there was no "reasonably contemporaneous" assessment of the projected impacts of climate change on forests.
In her full written judgement, Justice Perry said there was no expert evidence presented to court allowing it to assess whether the information relied on to extend the agreement was out of date.
She also noted all parties agreed the Commonwealth was aware of and had published material recognising Australia's weather and climate were changing.
In relation to endangered species, the EDO argued material relied on at the time of renewal was also not reasonably contemporaneous.
But Justice Perry similarly highlighted a lack of expert evidence that would allow the court to assess that claim, including whether historical information was no longer relevant or whether more recent data on endangered species existed.
'People will take to the front lines'
Greens MP and former Environmental Defenders Office lawyer Sue Higginson said it was a disappointing outcome, although it was always a "very ambitious case" by NEFA.
She said the final words from Justice Perry in the court this morning that the matter was in the hands of politicians sent a "very strong message".
"I do suspect people will take to the front lines again, as they've been doing," Ms Higginson said.
"All eggs will be placed in the basket of pressuring those that have the power to change the direction forest management is taking, and that is squarely on our politicians right now."
North Coast Environment Council volunteer Ashley Love said an end to that type of logging is especially important as work progresses on the Great Koala National Park.
The park will connect 300,000 hectares of state forests and existing national parks between Coffs Harbour and Kempsey on the mid-north coast.
Forestry industry relieved
The case was the first challenge to a regional forestry agreement in NSW.
Prior to the decision, NSW Nationals leader Dugald Saunders raised concerns that if the EDO won, "serious ramifications" would follow, including an "almost immediate shutdown" of the forestry industry.
More than 5,000 workers could have been impacted, Mr Dugald said.
He said NSW had "some of the strictest regulations" in the world when it came to forestry operations.
Andrew Hurford said the forestry industry felt relieved by the court outcome on Wednesday.(ABC North Coast: Leah White)
President of Timber New South Wales Andrew Hurford said the industry was buoyed by the court's ruling today.
Mr Hurford said the Regional Forestry Agreement process was designed to managed the resource comprehensively, and that 87 per cent of forest in the region were reserved from harvesting.
"We just need a bit of balance here," he said.
"We manage 12 per cent of the public estate in a sustainable fashion, very careful of the environment and very careful to ensure that we have timber availability into the future."
'It's not the same forest now as it was then'
North East Forest Alliance president Dailan Pugh disagreed with the reliance on an assessment done three years prior to the original agreement.
"It's extremely disappointing that the federal and state governments can do these regional forest agreements based on an assessment done in 1997, and to continually renew them," he said.
He said the assessment was based on "reasonable information available at the time", but argued that more information was now available.
"We know that climate change ... is having a major impact on our threatened species," he said.
"It's not the same forest now as it was then, and our species have continued to decline despite the regional forest agreement.
"The judge has said it's not a legal issue, it's a political decision, so it's up to the politicians to decide whether that is an acceptable approach."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-10/nsw-forestry-court-decision-logging-nefa/103300986
************************************9 January, 2024
‘What are they trying to achieve?’ Liberal MPs urge caution on religious discrimination
Should religious schools be allowed to reject homosexuals as students and as staff? The basic clash here is between the Biblical view of homosexuality and the current secular view. The two are probably irreconcilable. They certainly have been so far. Putting it crudely, are homosexuals admirable or an abomination? The Bible view is very clear, in both the Old and New Testaments.
Real Christians endeavour to live as the Bible commands. Is it the word of God or is it not? If you think it is, your course is clear. Christians have died for their faith so a "worldly" law is not likely to move them. They would be quite likely to defy it
The issue is likely to be decided by the need to placate Muslims. Prosecuting Muslim school leaders for practicing Islam will just stick in all throats. In the Hadiths, Mohammed tells his followers that homosexuals should be thrown from the top of tall buildings. That is pretty clear disapproval
Two federal Liberal Party MPs are warning that a debate over religious discrimination laws must not again descend into a culture war that captures LGBTQ Australians in its crosshairs, as faith leaders and equality advocates urged the Albanese government not to delay legislating.
Tasmanian MP Bridget Archer and NSW senator Andrew Bragg were among a small bloc of moderate Liberal MPs who broke ranks with their party room in favour of stronger protections for LGBTQ students during the former Morrison government’s failed attempt to pass religious discrimination laws on the cusp of the 2022 federal election.
A renewed debate on the issue is expected to kick off when federal parliament returns in February and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus releases the findings of a review by the Australian Law Reform Commission. The review is designed to inform the government’s plans to legislate a religious discrimination framework while also bolstering protections for LGBTQ students and staff at religious schools.
Archer and Bragg said their positions remained unchanged on the issue and that any reform must simultaneously protect people of faith while also repealing laws that provided a legal basis for discrimination against LGBTQ teachers and students.
Archer, who went a step further than the other moderate Liberals and crossed the floor to vote against the Morrison government’s proposed religious discrimination act, said while she supported protections for people of faith from discrimination, she remained concerned the issue would again be caught in a fight over “identity politics, culture wars and moral panics that never really ends well”.
“The Albanese government needs to be very clear from the outset if they are introducing this legislation, what are they trying to achieve? What’s the problem we’re seeking to solve? This would be worthwhile to justify what I would guarantee will be the damage to people on the way through,” she said.
Archer said a clear lesson from the last parliament was that vulnerable Australians, in particular LGBTQ students, were exposed to a protracted, divisive debate.
The debate devolved into a political fight over whether faith schools should retain legal exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act to discriminate against gay and transgender students and staff, including in employment and enrolment practices. The Morrison government’s proposal to couple its religious protections with a ban on schools expelling gay students, but not trans students, inflamed the debate.
Of the six Liberals who split from the party room in 2022, only Archer, Bragg and MP-turned-NSW senator Dave Sharma remain in parliament after the others lost their seats at the election. Sharma declined to comment.
Bragg said he had written to Dreyfus in 2022 urging Labor to deal with the issue early in their term. “I agree with the religious leaders that the government shouldn’t leave this to the last minute – that’s a recipe for disaster. I do believe there is a strong case for federal protections for people of faith,” Bragg said.
“I don’t want to see any minority group, whether it’s LGBTQ groups or it’s a religious group, damaged as part of this debate. I think that’s very achievable, but Labor has to deliver a constructive, collaborative process.”
After the Coalition’s aborted attempt in 2022, Labor went to the election promising its own religious discrimination and anti-vilification laws to close a gap in the federal law – which already has anti-discrimination acts covering age, race, sex and disability – while also outlawing discrimination at faith-based schools against staff and students based on their gender status and sexual orientation.
Dreyfus received the report from the law reform commission in December and is expected to release it in February, with religious leaders and equality groups hopeful laws will be introduced into parliament before July.
What’s the proposed religious discrimination law about?
Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli said he was eager for an exposure draft of Labor’s legislation to be made available in the first half of the year.
“The further delay in the release of the [Australian Law Reform Commission] report until February pushes out the timeline for the government in dealing with the Religious Discrimination Bill. This raises the risk of pushing the bill into the election cycle, which would be most unfortunate, and should be actively avoided,” Comensoli said.
Anglican bishop of South Sydney Michael Stead insisted that no Anglican schools wanted the right to discriminate against LGBTQ students – a view echoed by other faith groups – and said he expected the sticking point this time around for religious institutions would be securing their rights to preference staff who reflected the school’s religious ethos in hiring practices.
“The last thing that any of the communities want is for this to still be an election issue next time around. I’m really hopeful that it can be done in this calendar year,” Stead said.
Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown said after years of failed attempts to change the law it was vital the Albanese government did not delay these reforms any longer.
“Students should be able to go to school and be supported to learn and grow as who they are, and teachers should not fear losing their jobs because their sexuality or gender, or because they support a student who is gay or trans,” Brown said.
“We urge all MPs to deal with this issue in a measured and respectful way to spare LGBTIQ+ communities, particularly young people, the distressful and hurtful debate that took place when this issue was last before federal parliament.”
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Tanya Plibersek blocks Victorian government’s plan to build wind turbine plant at Port of Hastings
Tanya Plibersek has blocked plans by the Victorian government to build a plant to assemble wind turbines for offshore windfarms because of “clearly unacceptable” impacts on internationally important wetlands.
Plans to build the terminal at the Port of Hastings – seen as critical for the state’s strategy to develop an offshore wind industry – included dredging up to 92 hectares (227 acres) of the Western Port Ramsar wetland and reclaiming 29 hectares of seabed.
The environment minister wrote in her rejection of the proposals that “large areas of the [wetland] will be destroyed or substantially modified as a result of direct impacts of the proposed action”.
The Victorian government set aside $27m in its last budget to progress the development, which it said would support “wind construction and delivery of up to 1GW per year” and serve multiple windfarm developments.
But Plibersek said the plan was likely to cause “irreversible damage to the habitat of waterbirds and migratory birds and marine invertebrates and fish” that were critical to the wetland.
The wetlands were one of Victoria’s three most important sites for wading birds, and regularly supported 20,000 or more waterbirds, the minister wrote, and the impacts of dredging and reclaiming large areas could not be mitigated or offset.
Plibersek’s department had advised the wetlands supported at least 1% of the global population of the eastern curlew and the curlew sandpiper – both critically endangered.
Eastern curlews migrate about 11,000km from Siberia and north-eastern China for the Australian summer.
Western Port was listed under the Ramsar convention for internationally important wetlands in 1982.
Sean Dooley, of BirdLife Australia, said: “Ramsar sites are not declared on a whim. This is a hugely important area for Victoria, for Australia and internationally. On principle, to destroy that amount of Ramsar wetland is not on.”
The federal opposition environment spokesperson, Senator Jonathon Duniam, said: “Victorian and federal Labor’s net-zero targets are a mess.
“They are clearly rushing this transition which will set Australia back and push power prices further up. Labor needs to be careful that they don’t wreck the environment in their renewables-only pursuit of net zero targets.”
Victoria has ambitions to deliver Australia’s first offshore windfarm developments and had described the project as “critical, nation-leading, enabling infrastructure” that would receive, assemble and install offshore windfarm foundations, towers and turbines.
The Australian government has proposed six "high priority" offshore wind areas. Two - in Gippsland, in Victoria, and the Hunter, in NSW - have been declared. Another four are proposed for the Illawarra coast off Wollongong, north of Tasmania in Bass Strait, in southwest Victoria and in southern Western Australia following consultation periods.
Most zones are at least 10km from the coast. The government says creating an offshore wind industry will help the country replace ageing coal-fired power plants and reach net zero emissions by 2050.
There has been local opposition in NSW, and the South Australian government asked for the southwest Victorian zone not to cross its border.
The creation of an offshore wind zone does not guarantee development would go ahead. It is the first of five regulatory stages. Others include project-specific feasibility and commercial licences and an environmental assessment under national conservation laws. If successful, the first offshore wind farms could be built this decade.
There are different views on the role offshore wind could play. It can be a powerful source of renewable energy due to the placement and size of the turbines - at times, more than 300 metres in height - but the technology is significantly more expensive to build than onshore renewable energy.
The offshore wind industry has struggled overseas this year, with several projects cancelled and delayed, mainly due to rising construction costs.
The Victorian environment minister, Steve Dimopoulos, said the government was “undeterred” and would “digest the decision” before deciding what to do next.
“These processes exist for a reason because we have to balance biodiversity impacts.”
He said offshore wind was “critically important” for energy security in Victoria and Australia.
A Victorian government spokesperson said: “Victoria is proud to be developing Australia’s first offshore wind industry, which will be crucial for delivering national energy security and create thousands of jobs right here in Victoria. The Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal is key to achieving this.
“We are assessing the Commonwealth’s feedback to determine the next steps.”
Plibersek will have to make a decision later this year on a $1.3bn proposal for homes, restaurants and a marina at Toondah Harbour in Brisbane’s Moreton Bay that critics say will cause unacceptable damage to the Ramsar-listed wetlands there.
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‘Who’ matters in immigration
Perhaps the only positive to come from the Israel-Hamas war and its upheavals is that it has opened up space for an honest conversation about immigration. As these events have made clear, there are sizable numbers of people in Western societies who thoroughly despise us.
In Australia, this is the result of an immigration regime that’s been run on a near carte blanche basis. To take the figures first, we’ve had ‘historic highs’ in immigration with net overseas migration of half a million in the year to September and an international student intake that’s now over 600,000.
Regarding the sources of our migrants, our permanent migrants stem overwhelmingly from East Asia and the Subcontinent and not from our Anglo-European origins: three of our top five source countries, for instance, are India, China, and Nepal.
This is not an error, but deliberate policy. As Immigration Minister Andrew Giles boasted on social media, the Albanese government swiftly processed a million or so visas as they came into office. Giles and Co were, to quote: ‘Cleaning up the visa system and clearing the backlog after almost a decade of Liberal neglect.’
Yet the simple but taboo fact is that not all immigration is equal.
The most obvious example of this is in the recent rise of anti-Semitism. In contrast to historical Western anti-Semitism, the current wave overwhelmingly emanates from Australia’s Islamic communities where we have seen a disturbing rise in hate preachers and violence visited upon the Jewish community.
This trend is seen across Europe as well. Take the Kosher supermarket killings in Paris in 2015, or the record number of Jews leaving Europe, or that there are security guards outside Jewish schools. Indeed, there’s a very real prospect that there’ll be no Jewish communities left in Europe at all by the end of the century.
The failures of the West’s immigration programs are not restricted to the Jewish community. Here, for instance, is ex-Downing Street advisor Nick Timothy on some of the effects of immigration in the UK.
‘Seventy-two per cent of Somalis here live in social housing. Fifty-seven per cent of Bangladeshi and Pakistani women are economically inactive. Forty-six per cent of Pakistani-heritage babies born in Bradford have parents who are cousins. Proportionately, Albanians are 10 times more likely than the public as a whole to be in prison. The number of people unable to speak English well or at all has increased in the past 10 years by more than 20 per cent to more than a million.’
In Europe, things are much the same. In the Netherlands, a recent report revealed that migration from rich countries was a net benefit while that from poor countries was not. In Denmark, a 2018 study showed strikingly similar results: it noted that in contrast to Western migrants, non-Western migrants from areas such as North Africa and the Middle East were a net fiscal negative.
And as it is in the UK and Europe, so it is here as well, especially now that around one in three Australians are foreign born as are 45 per cent of residents in Sydney and Melbourne.
Here are some assorted statistics, you can make of them what you will. Sudanese-born Australians have the highest imprisonment figures of any immigrant group, with rates around three times the national average. The number of foreign-born Australians with no or poor English proficiency is over 800,000. Around three-quarters of recent migrants are low-skilled.
People born in North Africa and the Middle East have unemployment rates some three times higher than those born in North-West Europe and the Americas. Migrants from non-English speaking countries have higher crime rates than those from the UK or North America. Migrant and refugee women have poorer health outcomes than the native-born and are much less likely to be employed.
In Victoria, the Sudanese-born make up ‘7 per cent of individuals charged in home invasions, 6 per cent of those in car theft offenses and 14 per cent of individuals charged with aggravated robbery’ despite being just 0.16 per cent of the population. In New South Wales, Muslims make up about 3 per cent of the population but around 9 per cent of the prisoners.
These are not good outcomes for a society in which the official dogma is that ‘we’re the most successful multicultural nation in the world’ while generating these statistics. Indeed, even to mention this is to cast yourself as a heretic and to exclude yourself from polite society.
What is needed, however, is for Australia to embrace reality again and to acknowledge that there are meaningful differences between groups and their capacity to successfully integrate and contribute to our society.
This is a view that still prevails in places like East Asia and Hungary and that’s been prevalent through almost all of human history. Indeed, it’s a notion that European nations have returned to as they’ve seen indiscriminate immigration dissolve their societies before their very eyes. That poster child of post-war liberalism, Sweden, for instance, is now on track to be 20-30 per cent Muslim by 2050.
It’s no surprise, then, that the Europeans are winding back their experiments in mass immigration. As Christopher Caldwell has noted, [highly-restrictive] ‘Denmark is the country on which virtually all European governments have announced they wish to pattern their policies.’
Australia, too, should heed this advice. As is becoming clearer by the day, our experiments with mass immigration have not improved our country.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/who-matters/
*********************************************Time for a new generation of Indigenous leaders to step up
The last thing we should do in the new year is continue with Indigenous policies that the past year proved to be hopeless and divisive failures.
Yet the last day of 2023 was full of the same old complaints by the same old people. Noel Pearson was reported as complaining that Indigenous affairs were in a worse state than before the October 14 referendum vote. Liberals for Yes leader Sean Gordon complained that neither side of politics had offered a viable alternative to a voice to parliament.
Pearson’s admission in the last throes of the failed campaign that there was no plan B should be seen as an opportunity to make a fresh start in 2024. An opportunity to break from the policies and philosophies that brought us the desperate failure of the voice.
And if that means breaking with some of the people wedded to those policies and philosophies, so be it. The voice was the high-water mark of a philosophy of grievance and separatism fostered by leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers. Its comprehensive rejection gives us the chance to start again with a positive and empowering approach to Indigenous affairs. But to do so, the leaders who won’t shift from that philosophy will need to stand aside for new blood so their failed ideas can be relegated to history.
Pearson was responsible for groundbreaking, important work in Indigenous communities many years ago.
His most recent work on the voice has not been his finest. With apologies to Gough Whitlam, it’s time for him and others such as Marcia Langton, Megan Davis, Gordon and Thomas Mayo to hand over to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.
They bet the house on red and lost. It’s time for them to promote their successors. Pearson promised as much when he told the ABC’s 7.30 report on February 20, 2023, that if the voice referendum fails he “Will fall silent. That will be the end of it”.
Even more pointedly he told 7.30 that “if the advocacy of that pathway fails well then a whole generation of leadership will have failed … It will be up to a new generation to chart a new course”.
But Pearson and company must not just hand over to successors with the same failed approaches, but a new generation with new ideas.
Foremost among these, of course, is Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Price not only has – to borrow a dreaded term – lived experience of the challenge Indigenous people face but a coherent and considered philosophy for change.
Her emphasis on individual rights, freedoms and responsibilities is not merely liberal to the core but empowering. Seeing Indigenous policy through the prism of victimhood, grievance and separatism disempowers individuals and justifies the collectivist approaches that have failed everywhere they have been tried.
Price is not the only one we should turn to. Nyunggai Warren Mundine, Anthony Dillon and Kerrynne Liddle are Indigenous leaders of a new and promising stamp. They offer a sense of hope – a sense the failed policies of the past don’t need to determine the future.
This is not to underestimate the difficulties of ensuring Indigenous Australians get the equality of opportunities we expect for non-Indigenous Australians. Nor is it to substitute one new magic bullet for a magic bullet that has manifestly failed. Shared work, determination and investment are required.
However, Australians are manifestly happy to support that effort. What they are not prepared to do is to continue the divisive and failed policies embodied by the voice. No more separatism, no more separate categories of Australians with permanently entrenched special rights.
Practical solutions rather than rights-based agendas will be the way forward. So, universities that genuinely care about Indigenous advancement should disband those corners of our law schools that continue to promulgate an Australian equivalent of the radical critical race theories seen in some US universities.
Australia is a single sovereign state and suffers no crisis of legitimacy. The deluded extremists in the halls of academe should find some other windmill to tilt at.
Similarly, we will need symbols and rituals of unity, not division. It is nonsense for Australians to be welcomed to their own country – as if it belongs to someone else – and claims of ownership or custody of land made in order to ground reparations are equally nonsensical.
Indeed, since the key elements of any treaty – acknowledgment of sovereignty, grants of self-government and reparations – are anathema to ordinary Australians, we need to stop talking about treaty and find a path to individual empowerment for individual Indigenous people.
The ABC, Qantas and the like should stop telling us that parts of Australia belong to certain collective subgroups of Australians.
While we can’t stop Lidia Thorpe claiming Australia belongs to her and her kin, not to those of us who do actually appear on the certificate of title, our great institutions should not contribute to this divisiveness.
Last year also taught us that Australians don’t appreciate being told they are racist simply for disagreeing with an agenda, especially by people seeking race-based preferences. In 2024 we should treat use of that word the same way we treat the use of the word Nazi – use of the word is immediate acknowledgment that the user has lost whatever argument they were trying to make.
This year should be the year of celebrating individual merit, not membership of a collective. To borrow from Martin Luther King, success or failure, the grant of privileges or the administration of punishments, should all depend on the content of one’s character, not on skin colour or indeed membership of any other collective.
Aiming for positive, uplifting and unifying symbols, not finding division or victimhood wherever one can, would make 2024 radically different from, and better than, 2023. That is why those who led us to the disasters of 2023 should stand aside and let the next generation try a brand-new way.
That may sound radical in these days of identity politics, critical race theory and gender or race-based policy. However, it isn’t really. It is no more than a return to classic liberal beliefs about the rights and freedoms, obligations and responsibilities, of individuals.
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8 January, 2024
Insect apocalypse: Call to restrict pesticide ‘more toxic than DDT’
For a start, the toxicity of DDT has been greatly exaggerated. In large concentrations it causes adverse effects such as eggshell thinning in some birds but it is completely NON-toxic to people. Populations of many birds allegedly affected by DDT continue to decline depite the banning of DDT so that suggests that the "guilt" of DDT has been exaggerated
And the harm caused to birds has to be balanced by the benefits it has conferred on people. By destroying moquitoes, for instance, it has saved many lives that would have otherwise been lost to malaria.
In September 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared its support for the indoor use of DDT in African countries where malaria remains a major health problem, citing that benefits of the pesticide outweigh the health and environmental risks.
And DDT remains the one really effective eradicator of bedbugs
The studies below which find a diminution in some insect populations completely ignore two causes of the decline which are NOT attributable to agricultural pesticides:
1). Habitat loss. As more and more land is taken over for farming and urban use there is inevitably a loss of habitat for species previously present on that land.
2). People exert considerable effort to eradicate pest insects such as mosquitoes and flies. Other species could get caught up in that. And people are NOT going to become suddenly tolerant of mosquito bites etc
So the alleged link to neonic use is simply not established by the frequency studies set out below
Noticed fewer moths fluttering around outside lights in the evening or that butterflies seem less frequent visitors? Or that your car’s windscreen remains clearer of the haze of dead flies after a long journey than it used to? Part of the problem appears to point towards the use of a range of pesticides called neonicotinoids which Australian authorities are accused of being slow to regulate.
Ecologist Francisco Sanchez-Bayo from environmental sciences at Sydney University pulled together 100 long-term studies of the global fortunes of insects. He concluded that worldwide an average 37 per cent of species were declining, while populations of 18 per cent were increasing – those were agricultural herbivores and nuisance pests. Aquatic insect communities like mayflies, midges and sedges were even worse off: 42 per cent of species were declining and 29 per cent increasing.
The review threw up some interesting highlights. In northern NSW (Murwillumbah, north of Byron Bay), sampled for butterflies over 23 years, the overall abundance of 21 species declined by 57 per cent due to human disturbance.
Changes among 46 butterfly species in a peripheral urban landscape near Melbourne studied since 1941 found 36 to 48 per cent of species declined since 1981.
In Denmark, a small farmland area was sampled using the “windscreen splash” method between 1997 and 2017. Overall abundance of flying insects that crashed car windscreens declined 97 per cent along a 25 -kilometre road.
Sanchez-Bayo said: “In the 1990s, when I used to go to the Macquarie Marshes [north of Dubbo] to do research, as anyone who drove for a few hours to the countryside at that time would know, you had to stop to clean the windscreen. You don’t have to do that any more.
“In the case of Melbourne, the number of butterflies declined due to urbanisation, they were common years ago, but now they are just disappearing. We are talking about global declines, in Finland, Indonesia and the Amazon, everywhere. There is massive abuse with pesticides and other chemicals, fertilisers and so on which have contaminated the environment affecting mainly aquatic insects.”
One particular branch of pesticides, the neonicotinoids (also known as neonics) are used to treat seeds before planting and are claimed to increase crop yields. Scientists are now comparing neonicotinoids with DDT, of which the devastating effects on wildlife were revealed in the 1960s.
Roger Kitching, on the conservation committee of the Australian Entomological Society, says DDT affected vertebrates, particularly birds, but now, equally, insects deserve to be a major cause for concern due to their part in the food chain.
“The substitution of the range of earlier pesticides for the current generation of neonics and others is particularly bad for insect fauna,” he said. “These pesticides are systemic, that is they act from within plants, they are persistent, water-soluble and are very general in the species they target.
“When insects decline in ecosystems there are knock-on effects because of their roles as bird food, pollination vectors, plant munchers and so on – even though neonics do not impact vertebrates directly they have measurable impacts through these food-chain effects.”
In June, US ecologist Mike Miller, who works for Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources, told a fly-fishing podcast that he had found neonics in randomly selected waterways throughout the state. He said a lethal dose of neonics the size of a sugar grain was enough to kill 125,000 honey bees.
“One of those little paper sachets holds between 3 -4 grams of sugar and the comparable amount of neonics is enough to kill 600 million honey bees,” he said. “Neonics are thought to be 7000 times more toxic than DDT.”
The podcast host, fly-fishing guru Tom Rosenbauer, said: “It seems like in the past 10 years or so you hear so many fly-fishers complaining that the hatches [of insects] aren’t what they used to be. There seems to have been a dramatic decline in insects since neonics became popular.”
Miller’s comments were based on a scientific paper by ecologist Dave Goulson published a decade ago, called An overview of the environmental risks posed by neonicotinoid insecticide. Goulson, now at Sussex University, said 5 grams was enough to kill half of 1.25 billion bees and leave the other half just alive [known as an LD50 dose].
“While that figure is accurate, the levels of neonics found in the environment are pretty low and a bee would have to consume several CCs [cubic centimetres] of nectar to get a lethal dose, which it might do in its lifetime, but not in a morning,” he said. “The evidence we have is that bees are probably consuming less than a lethal dose, but that doesn’t mean that we can all breathe a sigh of relief that all is well.
“There is evidence that sub-lethal doses can seriously mess up the bees in a whole bunch of different ways – reduce their fertility, their ability to navigate and their resistance to disease. If their disease-resistance is knocked out by exposure to a pesticide, and then they are exposed to a virus transmitted by the Varroa mite, then there are many people who believe it does explain why bee colonies are collapsing.
“For an aquatic insect, you are not drinking the pesticide, you are bathing in it. The evidence is that anything over about 1 part per billion in a stream, which is the level which is commonly exceeded, it is enough to be impacting on aquatic insects when they are exposed to it 24/7.”
Asked if he felt Australia was behind other countries in regulating neonics, he added: “That would seem to be the case, the European regulators are pretty slow to act, but they thought the evidence was sufficiently compelling five years ago to act, and lots of other countries have followed suit in various ways. Within the developed world, Australia would appear to be at the tail end of the queue to do something about neonics. To ignore the evidence, I think, is probably foolish.
“There is a perception that we banned the really nasty pesticides years ago, we got rid of DDT and modern pesticides are better, but in some senses modern pesticides are much more dangerous because we have invented compounds that are far, far more poisonous to insect life, it means less of them has to go astray, into rivers or whatever, to do harm.
Australian scientists have also found imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid) in the catchment area of the Great Barrier Reef and the reef lagoon. Professor Michael Warne at the School of the Environment, University of Queensland in a research study of 6500 samples from 14 Great Barrier Reef catchment areas found the average concentration of imidacloprid was 0.051 µg/L (micrograms/litre) between July 2009 and June 2017. That concentration is 2.5 times higher than that found in a study of Dutch rivers, which led to an annual decrease in insectivorous bird populations of 3.5 per cent.
In a paper published a year ago, Warne wrote that within the Great Barrier Reef catchment area that imidacloprid was used to control canegrubs in sugarcane and the banana weevil borer in banana crops. He said that in a not yet published work by UQ and Department of Environment and Science suggests the risks from imidacloprid since 2017 may have stabilised or decreased, in part through education programs conducted in collaboration with some industry groups.
But he said: “There are many water samples where the concentration exceeds the proposed Australian and New Zealand water quality guideline for ecosystem protection from imidacloprid.”
Imidacloprids were restricted by the EU in 2018. In June last year, New York State moved to pass the Birds and Bees Protection Act, a first-in-the-nation bill to rein in the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. The Natural Resources Defence Council said in a statement: “Neonics are linked to massive bee and bird losses that impact food production, contaminate New York water and soil, and create human health concerns, especially with recent testing showing rising levels of neonics in 95+ per cent of pregnant women from New York and four other states.”
Pesticides use here is governed by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA). It updated its website page on neonicotinoids in May and lists six neonics approved for agricultural use in Australia. It published a report in 2014 and then announced a review in 2019. It states three of the six neonic pesticides used here were restricted in April 2018 in the European Union to greenhouse use only.
A spokesperson for the APVMA said in a statement: “The APVMA commenced its review of neonicotinoids in 2019 to allow for the consideration of new scientific information about risks to the environment, and to ensure safety instructions on products meet contemporary standards.
“Based on the statutory timeframes, the review is due to be completed in August 2023. The APVMA anticipates publication of proposed regulatory decisions during 2024 and has assigned additional resources to chemical review activities, including the use of external scientific reviewers to progress reviews as rapidly as possible.” However, there has been no update to the statement last May.
The authority was subject of a damning independent report in July which said it was “concerning that a number of chemical reviews have been ongoing for over 20 years”. It said the APVMA appeared reluctant to take compliance and enforcement action against industry.
Recent changes to the APVMA’s staff profile following the relocation of its offices from Canberra to Armidale in 2019, “has most likely impacted corporate knowledge, workload, and work capacity. Only a small proportion of previous APVMA staff relocated”.
Sanchez-Bayo said the APVMA was way behind schedule. “We are behind in many ways and how long it will take them to come up with a final decision we don’t know,” he said. “It is under-resourced and behind the times.
“My understanding is that the APVMA does not have enough staff, they are not properly trained in these issues, there has been a lot of turnover in the last few years. They are not producing the results they are expected to produce.”
Eddie Tsyrlin, a freshwater ecologist and waterbug taxonomist, estimates that as many as to 2000 species of freshwater invertebrates could have already been lost.
“The Ecological Safety section of Safety Data Sheet [for neonics] states that ‘these chemicals are very toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause long-term adverse effects to the aquatic environment’.
“For the adequate protection of Australian fish and invertebrates, testing needs to be done on pollution-sensitive and common species of freshwater invertebrates occurring in streams as well as in still waters. These could be mayfly and stonefly nymphs and sensitive species of midges.”
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‘It’s hot in summer’: Councils laughable excuse for cancelling Australia Day tradition
More than 80 councils have cancelled traditional Australia Day citizenship ceremonies out of respect for Indigenous people.
A decision by some of the 81 councils to move the dates of citizenship ceremonies away from January 26 due to “heat” has come under fire, being labelled a “cop-out”.
On Wednesday, City of Sydney councillor and president of the Australian Local Government Association, Linda Scott, said the decision was brought on by heat for some councils.
“I’ve heard from councils who said that sometimes they don’t have citizens to be made on Australia Day, sometimes the heat is a problem,” she told 2GB on Wednesday.
However, many are moving the ceremonies just days either side of Australia Day – a national celebration becoming increasingly contentious.
“For many different reasons, councils have outlined their challenges in holding citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, but there’s 537 councils; they’re all very different,” Cr Scott added.
“And many of them, of course, still take great pride in holding their citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.”
Cr Scott’s response to the move has drawn backlash from those looking to preserve the national January 26 celebration.
2GB’s Mark Levy, standing in for Ben Fordham, immediately labelled the assertion that some councils were moving ceremonies due to heat “rubbish” and “wokeism”.
“Last year it was four councils; this year it’s 81 councils, all because Anthony Albanese and his government got rid of the rule that was put in place by the Morison government for councils to have their citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day,” Levy said.
“Why are they trying to divide the nation when we are trying to unite Australia? It’s a cop-out.”
Levy raised the issue and Ms Scott’s heat “excuse” again on Thursday morning’s program while talking to Indigenous No campaigner Warren Mundine, who also laughed off the assertion.
“That’s hilarious … Welcome to Australia, it’s hot in summer,” he laughed. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
“It’s supposed to be a day to bring us all together, but these councils and other people – they don’t care.”
In 2022, only four councils across Australia chose not to hold Australia Day citizenship ceremonies — three in Melbourne and the City of Sydney.
But a year later, it was revealed that 81 councils will not hold citizenship ceremonies on January 26.
The change follows a decision by the Albanese government in December 2022 to revoke a rule that would effectively force local councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.
Prime Minister Albanese had said even though the government had given councils a choice, they should continue to conduct them, pledging: “I support Australia Day.”
He rejected charges from the opposition that his government was determined to kill Australia Day, firmly saying: “There are no changes here”.
Sydney Mayor Clover Moore has led the charge against celebrating Australia Day at a local government level, describing the day as “painful” for many.
Cr Moore said the City of Sydney will be holding ceremonies on January 29 instead, in line with the new government code, just as they did this year.
She said ceremonies formerly held on January 26 in the City of Sydney had low turnouts of only 10-15 people, while their new January 29 date is expected to see 160 people become Australian citizens.
According to TheDaily Telegraph, the surge in council’s choosing not to mark the country’s national day prompted accusations from opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan that the Albanese government “is laying the groundwork” for its abolition.
Ms Moore also put her full support behind changing the date of Australia Day, claiming that “the date of a national celebration should not be on Invasion Day”.
However, some councils are reported blowback.
Bundaberg councillor Greg Barnes told The Courier Mail the revelation the region had moved the date prompted fury among locals, with residents voicing their opposition to the move at a public appearance on Saturday morning.
Mr Barnes said he got “absolutely hammered” by residents about the issue, and insisted the ceremony will be held the day before January 26 to allow all councillors to attend the event.
He said he was supportive of the national celebration, declaring: “Australia Day to me is Australia Day”.
Rockhampton Mayor Tony Williams said his council also planned to hold the ceremony the evening before to avoid severe heat at outdoor events, citing an instance at last year’s Australia Day where an attendee suffered heat stroke.
He also insisted the decision was unrelated to Indigenous concerns, saying “that wasn’t part of the thinking”.
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How the ABC welcomed the New Year
The defining event of 2023 was the defeat of Labor’s Voice to Parliament. While this was a source of great satisfaction to the 61 per cent of the population that voted ‘no’ that resounding majority almost certainly didn’t include anyone at the national broadcaster.
Still in high dudgeon at being forced to submit to the indignity of abiding by the democratically expressed will of the people, the ABC and the City of Sydney council seemed to have decided to turn New Year’s Eve into a dirge for the dead Voice.
The evening started on a sombre note with a smoking ceremony on a boat appropriately named Tribal Warrior and of course there was a ‘Welcome to Country’. (It might be a new year but it’s the same old ABC.)
The council renamed the 9 pm children’s fireworks ‘Calling Country’. To get into the spirit, the ABC featured a First Nations hip hop ‘supergroup’ called 3% because Aboriginals represent 3 per cent of the population. Three per cent also seemed to represent the level of positive feedback the group received after singing a song about the Voice that castigated Australians for voting ‘no’, called them ‘sick’, and said the country was going ‘backward’. It also included family-friendly lyrics such as ‘You can suck my Moby D**k’ which, at the last minute was changed to ‘You can sink this Moby ship’.
No wonder the audience was confused. ‘What on earth was that’ asked one puzzled viewer who concluded that the ABC had ‘managed to make their coverage even worse this year’.
‘Who at ABC Australia thought it was a good idea to put an awful rap group on before the early kids fireworks and then spend a large chunk of the fireworks just showing projections on the Bridge,’ wondered another viewer. The projections featured ‘referendum-type messages’ wrote an angry parent. The lyrics included, ‘They stole the land in the name of their kings’ and ‘They locked us up and they threw away the key’.
‘The illegal fireworks in my suburb are more entertaining’ wrote an exasperated viewer.
The performance by the electro-pop band Confidence Man also fell short of audience expectations. According to Triple J, Confidence Man set up a club in their backyard called ‘The F*ck Bunker’ and recorded a ‘J Lo slut jam’ called ‘Toy Boy’. The key lyrics were, ‘Rub you down in butter and I serve you on a plate / They say there are seven wonders but my toy boy makes it eight.’ The ABC thought this an appropriate choice for an audience that included a large number of under-12-year-olds. The viewers were not impressed.
‘What is this sh*te…’ asked one. ‘Why are these dopes even bothering, if they are straight out lip-synching horribly,’ said a second. ‘Is this a Rock Eisteddfod secondary school national comp?’ chimed in a third.’Is that Sacha Baron Cohen punking us’ wondered a fourth.‘It’s like a year six talent quest performance,’ said a fifth. The definitive judgment was: ‘This techno, synth, prancing, fake, lip syncing, narcissistic, vacuous crap is f*k*n dreadful!!! Throw them in the harbour!’
And so the evening plodded on.
Singer Angie McMahon told the families that ‘Palestinians should be free’ but viewers were more interested in being free of Angie.
‘Get Angie McMahon, the wannabe activist, OFF!!! ’, wrote one. ‘What a disgrace!! Political activism everywhere,’ commented another. ‘Whatever happened to a fun night out for all without a painful political statements,’ lamented a third.
‘It’s nothing but government propaganda and full of the woke agenda. No thanks. The greatest waste of taxpayer money. #Defund ABC,’ demanded a fourth.
The sneaking suspicion that the ABC was deliberately ruining the evening occurred to more than one person. ‘Is ABC trying to put us to sleep?!? I’ve heard better music at a funeral’ wrote a despairing viewer. ‘At the rate we are going, I think everyone is going to fall asleep and miss the fireworks this year,’ said another. ‘Worst NYE broadcast ever, turned that crap off. ABC what a joke and whoever organised the whole NYE fireworks it’s the worst I’ve ever witnessed. Turned it off immediately once I realised it was just another woke st*tshow,’ fumed a third. ‘Seriously, what is going on,’ asked MicStaman. ‘I found a button on my remote that makes this concert bearable. It’s called the mute button.’
If this wasn’t enough to put a dampener on your evening, the fun-loving clerics in western Sydney slammed New Year’s Eve as a ‘celebration of foreskin’. Yes, you read that right. Abu Ousayd gave a sermon at Bankstown’s Al Madina Dawah Centre on Friday, in which he claimed that New Year’s Day was a ‘day of circumcision’.
‘I’m sorry to say this but you are celebrating a piece of foreskin’ he explained fastidiously. ‘How low can the Muslim community stoop that we are celebrating a piece of flesh that is cut and thrown away,’ he asked. ‘Flocking to watch the fireworks, staying up until midnight in the city. The infidels on New Year’s Eve turn and kiss each other at midnight… keep away from them!’ he warned.
Footage also emerged of another Sydney cleric, sheikh Ahmed Zoud, who delivered a 35-minute anti-Semitic tirade at Lakemba’s As-Sunnah mosque on December 22, on ‘the truth of the Jews’. ‘The most important characteristic of the Jews,’ he said ‘is that they are thirsty for bloodshed… Another characteristic of Jews is betrayal and treachery, an inherent trait… The Jews (will always) remain the Jews, the days nor years change them’.
With sermons like these being delivered on a regular basis in Australian mosques, no one should be surprised that two Australian brothers who were killed by Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon turned out to be Hezbollah jihadists. The ABC, of course, was the last station to twig that the brothers were not tourists but terrorists.
We should also not be surprised intelligence agencies fear that more Australians will follow in the brothers’ footsteps and that they fear there are plans for violent attacks in Australia inspired by the war in Gaza.
So, while the government pursues its agenda of censoring its political opponents and anyone else that challenges its narrative, and the woke cancel anyone of whom they disapprove, no one cares or dares to silence the anti-Semitic, anti-Western vitriol that is spouted with impunity in Australian mosques by terrorist sympathisers.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/unhappy-woke-new-year
*************************************************Time you’re told the truth about the economy
You cannot suddenly print a heap of new money without devaluing all money. That is inflation, that is high prices and that is the doing of governments
The Prime Minister held his first media conference for the year on Wednesday, flagging cost-of-living relief for Australians doing it tough. They are doing it tough because of unnecessarily high inflation, which isn’t coming down nearly quickly enough.
Failures of fiscal and monetary policy settings sit alongside economic reform neglect. Unfortunately, the PM’s solution to their woes will elongate the high inflationary times we’re living through, reducing the chances of interest rate cuts this year.
While Anthony Albanese deployed rhetoric to stipulate that he didn’t want to stoke inflation when providing cost-of-living relief, anyone with the most basic understanding of economics knows that’s all but impossible. The PM said people are “feeling pressure as a result of global inflation”. Global inflation? Actually, inflation is back under control in most like-for-like nations around the world. Here, however, it is too high, at 5.4 per cent. That’s because of domestic policy settings, which we will return to shortly.
If the government spent as much time working to solve national problems as it does spinning falsities, voters might have more respect for the job they currently aren’t doing.
Choose your country of comparison: Canada’s inflation rate is 3.1 per cent; in the United States it is also 3.1 per cent. The UK is 3.9 per cent, Germany 3.2 per cent, France 3.5 per cent.
Across Europe, inflation averages just 2.4 per cent. With my Dutch heritage, I’ll throw in The Netherlands too, at 1.6 per cent.
Closer to home it’s 2.6 per cent in Indonesia, 2.8 per cent in Japan, 3.2 per cent in South Korea and 3.6 per cent in Singapore.
Having read all these figures, that are within or close to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s target range of 2-3 per cent, where does the Prime Minister get off claiming Australia’s 5.4 per cent inflation rate is part of a “global inflation” problem? It was a problem overseas, but not anymore.
Remember when unions, the Greens and even some Labor MPs lampooned former Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe for putting interest rates up too quickly in a bid to get inflation under control? There were calls for him to resign and be replaced (which he ultimately was) – and even for government intervention.
The economic ignoramuses were enjoying their full moon, at the urging behind the scenes of some ministers who really should know better.
The false rhetoric the PM deployed in his first media conference for 2024 is all about deflecting blame for the economic pain Australians are going through, as the nation battles stubbornly high inflation which is in fact primarily a result of domestic factors. The (mis)use of spin is also a portent of what’s to come this year. While Albanese ruled out an election in 2024 that doesn’t mean we won’t endure a year-long election campaign ahead of an early election next year, turning this year’s May budget into an election budget.
Australia’s high inflation problems are being fuelled by wages growth (in some sectors), budget profligacy (which is only going to get worse in an election year) and industrial relations laws, which won’t be fit for purpose when the economy eventually slows. They will instead contribute to higher unemployment.
Back-slapping about a balanced budget also ignores the structural deficit and baked-in spending from the pandemic years. Neither side of politics was prepared to slice into pathological overspending, which has been a key factor stoking inflation.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers even gloated about somewhat anaemic economic growth figures in the back half of last year, calling them “steady and sturdy”. The nation may not be in a technical recession right now, but that’s only because half a million new migrants arrived in a single calendar year. On a per capita basis, we’re already in recession, making it a high inflation per capital recession. Not the sort of combination any politician should be proud of, nor an easy sell at an election. No wonder voters are beginning to question the government’s economic management credentials.
Perhaps the PM wasn’t being deliberately misleading and deceptive with his global inflation furphy. He might not realise what the inflation rates abroad really are now. Or he might have simply been comparing us to, say, Argentina and Turkey, both of which are caught in hyper-inflation cycles. Our inflation rate looks good in such company. But I suspect no one in the government wants to compare us with Turkey, much less Argentina: basket case economies to be sure.
False rhetoric has always been a feature of politics, but it needs to be called out. Our problems are home grown and therefore are capable of being corrected with domestic policy decision making. If only the political class of today had the reforming courage of generations past.
For that to happen, substance will need to trump the superficial, which means the cabinet must lift its game. By supporting wage rises only hand in glove with productivity improvements. Otherwise, inflation will be entrenched, eroding any wages rises and then some.
Stage three income tax cuts have already been legislated, but when they take effect halfway into this year, they will certainly be inflationary. Addressing the stifling impact of bracket creep is the greater evil needing treatment, because sky high taxes on human capital reduce labour market productivity. Luckily, there are plenty of ways for a reforming government to concurrently ameliorate the inflationary impact of stage three: via GST reform, rent and wealth taxes, and fixing the tax and transfer failures within the federation. Unluckily, this government won’t do that.
The problems don’t end there. Growing the size of government doesn’t sustain a modern economy in and of itself; private sector growth does that. Big government is possible only if it supports a vibrant private sector economy that pays for it. Via policy settings that reflect our social liberal capitalist construct rather than run counter to it. Profits aren’t evil, as long as taxation settings are appropriately structured and enforced. That requires heady reform, which happens only when politicians do more than plod. Unfortunately, there are more plodders than performers in parliament these days.
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7 January, 2024
Government considers poaching defence talent from overseas in major shift
I can see no reason why we should reject applicants from culturally similar nations such as Britain, New Zealand and Canada. British army people in particular would be very likely to come here. ADF procedures are based on British ones so adaptation to Australia would take no time at all
The idea of enlisting people from Pacific nations such as Tonga and Samoa is a little less obvious but it might be noted that the British army has a large contingent of such people
Foreign citizens could be allowed to serve in the Australian military under options being explored by the federal government as it seeks to fix a recruitment and retention crisis.
The government has set an ambitious goal of adding 18,500 uniformed personnel by 2040, a 30 per cent increase on the current level of about 60,000, but the Defence Force is struggling to maintain its current staffing numbers.
Longstanding defence policy states that only Australian citizens can serve in the military, with exemptions granted only in “very rare and exceptional circumstances”.
Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh said on Friday that “we are certainly looking at all options that we need to look at in terms of how we can grow our Defence Force and that includes looking at how we might be able to grow it from friendly forces”.
Keogh, who is serving as acting defence minister, told ABC radio the government was looking at “opportunities for people to come to Australia, or who are already in Australia, from other countries to join our Defence Force”.
Asked which foreign nationals could be allowed to serve in the Australian military, Keogh said the government was “looking at the Pacific, but we’re also looking more broadly than that because we recognise the importance of growing our Defence Force”.
A critical shortage of skilled workers has seen the Defence Force offering junior and middle ranks cash bonuses of $50,000 to sign on for another three years.
The idea is a sensitive one, with some senior military figures opposed to foreigners serving in the Defence Force because they believe there should be a direct link between citizenship and military service.
This masthead reported last year that the federal opposition and leading military experts were calling on the Albanese government to consider allowing foreigners to fight under the Australian flag to boost the number of uniformed personnel.
Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said at the time that “with immigration about to increase, we should consider opening service in the ADF as an accelerated pathway to citizenship”.
‘This will make us weaker’: Army restructure faces backlash
“If someone is willing to fight and die for our country, we should take them over a $5 million golden visa any day of the week,” he said.
Other nations allow non-citizens to serve in their militaries, most famously the French Foreign Legion and the British Army’s brigade of Nepalese Gurkhas.
Defence experts have said a shortage of navy personnel is probably one of the reasons why Australia last month declined to send a warship to join an international coalition protecting shipping routes through the Red Sea.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not go into detail on Friday when asked about the proposal to allow foreign fighters, but said the government was seeking to boost interoperability with other nations such as New Zealand.
Retired major-general Mick Ryan said the government should consider creating a Pacific Islands regiment and allowing non-citizens from friendly nations to serve in the Defence Force.
“Why shouldn’t a Japanese citizen be able to join the Australian military if they want to make a contribution to the nation?” Ryan asked.
Peter Jennings, a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department, said the ADF faced a massive problem with recruitment and bold solutions were needed.
“Just doing another advertising campaign during the cricket is not going to cut it,” he said.
The radical proposal to recruit foreigners to fight for Australia
Keogh said there would be complexities involved in implementing the proposal, and any non-citizens would need to be subject to careful security vetting and consultation with other nations.
With the need for skilled workers widely acknowledged as a significant challenge for the AUKUS security pact, the Royal Australian Navy has launched a major recruitment drive to find hundreds of personnel to support the shift to nuclear-powered submarines and make more staff available to train with the United States and Britain.
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Australian gays hostile to Israel
Supreme idiocy
Veteran gay rights campaigners Kerryn Phelps and Jackie Stricker-Phelps have joined a chorus of members of the LGBTIQA+ Jewish community expressing dismay at an open letter on the Israel-Hamas war issued by the chief executive of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
The couple, who led the marriage equality movement in Australia, say the conduct of Mardi Gras leadership has made them feel marginalised, after Dayenu – a key body representing Sydney’s gay Jewish community on Thursday warned that it was reconsidering participating in this year’s famous event due to concerns over the safety of its members.
Dr Phelps, a GP and former AMA president and independent federal MP, said she had contacted Mardi Gras organisers after chief executive Gil Beckwith last month released an open letter to Anthony Albanese calling for “an immediate and enduring ceasefire in Gaza.”
“I was really not satisfied with the response,” said Dr Phelps, who converted to Reform Judaism more than 20 years ago after committing to her relationship with now wife Ms Stricker-Phelps, who was born Jewish and had many family members killed in the Holocaust.
“The statement was silent on the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, and its impact on Israel, and on the Australian Jewish community. They only spoke of violence in Gaza.
“There was no statement about Hamas, or the treatment of the LGBT+ community in Gaza, or in Palestinian culture.
“I have yet to see a statement from Sydney Mardi Gras about life for LGBTIQ people in Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or Yemen or Afghanistan.
“Where are the statements about other conflicts, and where are the statements about countries where the LGBT+ community risks the death penalty, persecution, and violence?
“The best that can be said about this statement is that it is well-meaning but highly selective. As a humanitarian, I understand the distress about all people affected by the October 7 attacks and its aftermath. Realistically, there can be no lasting ceasefire unless all hostages are safely returned, and Hamas is disarmed.”
Ms Stricker-Phelps said the letter mentioned violence only in Gaza, making no mention of the October 7 attack on Israel.
“They are advocating for a culture where they would not last five minutes as an out and proud gay or lesbian person. The Israeli gay and lesbian community, by contrast, has the support of their government and culture, so it is a false equivalence,” she said.
“I have fought hard for equality for the LGBT+ community for over 20 years, and am shocked at the statement by Mardi Gras, which further marginalises the Jewish gay and lesbian community. It is at best misguided, and at worst reckless.”
Mardi Gras organisers did not respond to a request for comment.
Queer Israeli woman Ofra Ronen, who has lived in Australia since 2003, founded new national group “Jewish-Israeli Pride Australia” late last year, “out of the need to counter the threats and exclusions that LGBTQI Jews face in online and offline spaces, especially from those who deny Israel’s right to exist”.
“It is in my opinion a much bigger issue than do we feel safe to go to Mardi Gras,” Ms Ronen said. “We haven’t felt safe since October.”
Ms Ronen, of Sydney, said she had been working with the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies on ways to ensure the safety and wellbeing of queer Jews during Mardi Gras celebrations in February and March, as well as in the LGBTIQA+ community more broadly.
She said a Melbourne cell of JIPA was working with Victoria’s Pride Centre to discuss concerns over the safety of Jewish community members at the upcoming Midsumma festival.
Fellow Jewish gay man Joshua Roth lives across from Sydney’s Hyde Park, which has become home to anti-Israel protests since October.
“For almost three months, at least once a week, I have had to sit in my apartment and hear genocidal calls for the end of Israel and the Jewish people,” he said.
“I will not be boycotting Mardi Gras this year just because I am deeply ashamed of the organisation. I will be boycotting it because I am scared. The hatred for Jews and Israel has trickled into every corner of society, and organisations like Mardi Gras are to blame by endorsing this behaviour.
“Instead, as this year’s parade proceeds below my apartment, I will fly my Israeli flags and sadly not my rainbow flag. The Mardi Gras organisers have forced me to choose between two sides of my identity – how is that in line with what they claim to represent?”
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Republic on ice after Indigenous voice referendum failure
Labor has junked plans to hold a republic referendum in the next term of parliament, with the Albanese government vowing to keep its focus on the cost of living after losing public support during the voice debate.
Assistant Minister for the Republic Matt Thistlethwaite said the failure of the voice had made it “a lot harder” to hold a referendum on the republic if the government won a second term, as was initially planned.
“It’s not a priority at the moment,” Mr Thistlethwaite told The Weekend Australian. “The priority for the government at the moment is obviously dealing with cost-of-living pressure and assisting households and businesses to get through this difficult time.”
But Mr Thistlethwaite said an Australian republic remained Labor policy “for the longer term” and it was something that should be discussed with the public “at some stage”.
The government’s delay on pursuing a republic comes as Anthony Albanese this week confirmed King Charles would visit Australia this year.
Monarchists have accused Mr Thistlethwaite of showing disrespect to Queen Elizabeth, after documents obtained under freedom of information showed he met senior bureaucrats to discuss referendums just six days after the former monarch died.
Mr Thistlethwaite said the meeting with senior officials from the Attorney-General’s Department on September 14, 2022, had been planned before the queen died and they decided during discussions it was the wrong time to pursue a republic referendum.
“This was a longstanding meeting that had been organised, prior to the queen’s passing, with departmental representatives,” he said. “It was the first meeting I’d organised with the secretary of the department and other representatives, and it was mainly to discuss resources (and the role) I would play in the voice referendum.
“In terms of the republic, given that the queen had just passed, we agreed that it wasn’t the appropriate time to discuss the republic and that the priority for the government was the voice referendum.”
A briefing paper prepared ahead of Mr Thistlethwaite’s meeting, obtained via a FOI request by former Liberal MP Nicolle Flint, showed he discussions were supposed to focus on the “process, authorities, timing and other matters of relevance to referendums and plebiscites”.
The briefing note – cleared by Attorney-General’s Department secretary Katherine Jones, who also attended the meeting – said progressing a republic would “require strong support from the government, particularly the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General”.
The department also prepared advice on holding plebiscites, which Mr Thistlethwaite had considered using to choose a republican model that could be put to a referendum.
Ms Flint said it sounded “fanciful” that the timing of the meeting was coincidental.
“I find it astounding that a new minister in a new government would wait 3½ months – from 1 June, 2022, until 14 September, 2022 – to receive preliminary briefing on their portfolio,” she said. “If this was in fact a coincidence … why didn’t the assistant minister postpone the meeting out of respect?”
Australian Monarchist League chairman Eric Abetz said he did not believe Mr Thistlethwaite used the meeting to talk about the voice referendum rather than the republic. “That explanation seems completely and utterly implausible,” he said.
Mr Thistlethwaite conceded he held “general” discussions with officials about the rules of plebiscites, despite this never being proposed as part of the voice referendum process.
The assistant minister said he was entitled to speak to department officials about the voice, given his formal title was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney-General.
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Hateful Clementine Ford
Leftism mainlines on hate so Clemmie makes a good thing out of her extreme misanthropy
In a brilliant column recently published in The Australian, Henry Ergas summed up 2023 as “the year of living angrily.” Describing the successive waves of outrage and hatred dominating the year’s public discourse, he made the point that the Greeks believed rage differed fundamentally from ordinary anger: “anger had a defined focus; rage, a sign of fury at the world, was labile, readily shifting from one object to another.”
“Characteristic of personal immaturity, it was by its nature opportunistic, rushing to the target of the moment, like a child rushing to a new toy,” he explained.
One of Australia’s greatest haters has a new toy. For nearly two decades, feminist Clementine Ford has been spewing out her hatred of men. Now she has revealed herself to be also a zealous anti-Zionist who is stirring up her quarter of a million followers to attack Jewish women on social media.
She started her man-hating campaign in media appearances back in 2007 but attracted widespread public attention in 2015 due to this infamous tweet:
From then on, she was regularly promoting outrage with her anti-male views. In 2017, she signed a fan’s book with the words, “Have you killed any men today? And if not, why not?”
In 2020, complaints were made about a funding grant she was receiving from the Melbourne City Council after she posted the following tweet:
The Melbourne City Council continued to fund her.
During a public address made when her only child was a newborn, she introduced the following comment with loud gagging noises: “Euch. I have a male baby and it’s just, all the time: Feed me! Pay attention to me! Engage me!” she said, before gagging again. “Euch. So boring.”
In a review of Ford’s new book, “I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage,” Antonella Gambotto-Burke sums up this whole history by concluding that Ford “displays a deep, sustained, and ugly rage against men, which she justifies as an appropriate reaction to misogyny.”
Gambotto-Burke skewers Ford’s claim that her writings are based on rigorous, fair-minded scholarship by quoting this typical statement from her recent book: “How dare any modern man compare the long-overdue and still-not-far-enough uprising of women against the rapists, abusers and misogynists who have terrorised us for millennia as a witch-hunt. F —k them all to hell.”
“The degree of disgust she expresses for men is more than disturbing: it should be illegal,” concludes Gambotto-Burke.
Of course, Ford is a provocateur, deliberately posting outrageous comments to attract more followers. But the real worry is that Ford already attracts a massive audience, with her vile attacks on men clearly appealing to the young women indoctrinated in our anti-male school and university systems. She’s been offered a steady stream of media jobs, regular public appearances, all manner of prestigious and lucrative gigs.
There has been the odd set-back, with periodic suspensions of her social media accounts. In 2018 we managed to get nearly 15,000 people to sign a petition objecting to her appearance at a Lifeline event to raise money for suicide awareness. In the end, Lifeline wimped out – instead of ditching Ford they cancelled the whole event.
But now that Ford has stirred up a real hornet’s nest with her foul attacks on Jewish women, let’s hope this time she has bitten off more than she can chew.
Like many prominent feminists across the world, Ford was utterly silent about the October 7 attacks by Hamas, despite plenty of evidence of rape, including mass rape so brutal that they broke the pelvises of their victims - including elderly women and children.
This week the New York Times published the results of an intensive investigation of the pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality of women in the attack on Israel – containing truly horrifying revelations.
As Janice Fiamengo pointed out in her October 27 Substack article, most prominent feminists failed to respond to the immediate evidence of rape shown in the blood stained trousers of young women being paraded through the streets by Hamas.
Fiamengo: “After 50 years of feminist theorizing in which the rape of women has been the single most definitive target of pity and rage, suddenly the insistence on holding rapists accountable, naming the violence, and believing victims has been replaced by circumspection and attention to moral complexity.”
Having posted not one word about the October 7 rapes, Ford’s unique “moral complexity” was revealed when she started posting anti-Israel rants, including a bizarre missive to “Zionist women” where she attacked them for being upset that their “bloodlust” against Hamas wasn’t being supported. “I don’t care that you felt betrayed or let down, and I especially don’t care that you want to have a big crybaby rant ... You’re pathetic, you disgust me, and I pity you for being so basic and gross that you think others should cheer on the murder of thousands just to make you feel better”.
She calls them “enthusiastic supporters of a murderous regime that has been killing children for over 70 years because YOU want to believe YOUR colonising is somehow different.”
The fact that Ford spent much of her childhood in Oman may have something to do with her biased view of Middle Eastern history, but her ignorant attacks are most bizarre. Like accusing Jewish women of being white: “Honestly you actually can’t get f..king whiter than that. You are not the victims, especially not when you live in Australia and are globbing on to some kind of bizarre pretence that you are being harmed here,” she said.
Ford’s very public attacks on Australian Jewish women come at a time when the world has been stunned by the pro-Palestinian crowd chanting “Gas the Jews” at the Opera House, and Israel has issued travel warnings for Israeli citizens visiting Australia due to rising levels of antisemitism.
But Ford has simply doubled down. After a petition calling on Ford’s publisher to sever ties with the author attracted over 3,000 signatures, Ford responded by publishing the names of some of the signatories on her social media which meant they came under ferocious attack from Ford’s fans - their businesses were targeted, they received worrying personal attacks, including threats to their children.
Yet the publisher, Allen and Unwin, continues to support Ford, despite claiming that “as publishers, we refuse to publish material that is hate-based, antisemitic or in breach of Australia’s racial discrimination laws.” Huh, both Jew and male hatred somehow slips through the cracks here.
There’s been one recent win – Nova Radio has just cancelled Ford’s Dear Clementine podcast after two years with the network, so that’s something.
Yet last week she announced she’d received funding from the government-funded ScreenNSW for her new TV project, 'Smile B**ch' – a “dark comedy about one woman executing her revenge against the men who have wronged her.” Just what we need to promote harmony between the sexes in 2024.
I hope I can inspire many of you to start the New Year by helping to rein in this woman’s divisive bile. Send a brief note to ScreenNSW objecting to the use of tax-payers money for her latest male-bashing exercise. Anyone attacked by her on social media needs to report her to the platform and then follow up with a complaint to the eSafety Commission, which is required to tackle online hate relating to race, religion or gender – both her antisemitic and male-hating posts should fall into their bailiwick.
Finally, two welcome items of good news to usher in the New Year. Amazingly, Erin Pizzey has been awarded an honour by the UK government. After setting up Britain’s first women’s refuge, the 84-year-old spent the last half century denouncing feminist lies which deny women’s role in family violence. She’s an absolute hero.
Secondly, the Coalition has just announced they will repeal the Albanese’s changes to the family law act, which remove children’s right to care from both parents after divorce. Wow! Now, that’s a real vote winner – but they’ll need to do a lot more to convince former supporters that if they are returned to power, they won’t follow in the wimpish Morrison’s footsteps by pandering to female activists controlling social media.
Still, these glad tidings bring a glimmer of hope that 2024 might just see some slippage in the icy grip of feminism on Western society. There’s the growing sense that ordinary folk have realised what’s going on here and have had enough.
Let’s work together for real change. Wishing you all the best for real gender equity in this New Year.
https://bettinaarndt.substack.com/p/hateful-clementine-ford
************************************4 January, 2024
Liberal Pledges to ‘Protect’ Australia Day
The Liberal Party has pledged to “protect Australia Day” by setting new rules for councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Jan. 26 if it gains power at the next election.
Over 80 councils across Australia have decided to abolish citizenship ceremonies on Jan. 26, after the Albanese government scrapped the former Morrison government’s rule in December 2022 that forced councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.
In Victoria alone, more than a quarter of councils have decided not to mark Australia Day with a citizenship ceremony.
Dan Tehan, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, criticised Labor for trying to change the National Day.
Labor is undermining the significance of Australia Day and is laying the groundwork to abolish January 26 as Australia Day,” he wrote in a statement titled “Labor undermining Australia Day.”
“Australia Day is a proud day for the many thousands of people who will join our multicultural family and become Australian citizens, it should be respected.
“If the Prime Minister wants to change Australia Day he should be upfront with the Australian people instead of working in the shadows to change the date.”
Jan. 26 marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet in Sydney by Captain Arthur Phillip in Sydney Cove (now known as Circular Quay) and the proclamation of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia.
The day has been a source of contention, with those in support of Australia Day viewing Jan. 26 as a celebratory occasion to commemorate the birth of their liberal democracy, while others, such as indigenous rights activists, dubbing the day “Invasion Day” while proposing an alternative date, such as Jan. 29.
The criticism comes as Stephen Smith, Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK, drew criticism for cancelling an Australia Day event due to supposed “sensitivities” around the national celebration.
The Australia Day Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation and the organiser of the annual Australia Day gala dinner, decided not to hold the popular fundraising event in January, which has been held for 20 years in London and normally attracts famous names, as instructed by the top Australian diplomat.
Mr. Tehan promised a future Coalition government will ensure that new citizens “have the choice right around our nation of having their citizenship ceremony on our national day.”
“The Coalition believes that new citizens should have the opportunity to become Australians on our national day,” Mr. Tehan said. “If the Coalition wins the next election, we will do everything we can to unite Australians on Australia Day.”
Leaders of councils that have abolished the Jan. 26 citizenship ceremony cited public support for doing so.
Sydney Mayor Clover Moore, for instance, said “the date of a national celebration should not be on Invasion Day,” and that her council would hold ceremonies on Jan. 29 instead, as it did last year. “The City of Sydney strongly supports changing the date of Australia’s national day to one that can be fully embraced and celebrated by all Australians,” Ms. Moore said.
“Advocating for a change of date won’t resolve the devastating and far-reaching impacts of colonisation, but it does provide a platform for an ongoing and honest conversation.”
On the contrary, Peter Gangemi, Mayor of The Hills Shire in northwest Sydney, whose council was mistakenly listed by the Department of Home Affairs as having no ceremony on Australia Day, said there was “no better way to mark the occasion than with a citizenship ceremony.”
Australia is “the greatest nation on Earth and we have so much to celebrate as a community on the 26th of January,” he said.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/liberal-pledges-to-protect-australia-day-5557272
******************************************************Wealthy baby boomers could pay more for aged care in major industry shake-up
There are already severe means tests so new rules might not change much
A huge shake-up is on its way for one of Australia’s biggest industries with wealthy baby boomers set to foot the bill.
Baby boomers who can afford to should be required to pay more for aged care, a federal government taskforce has advised the government.
The taskforce has advised Aged Care Minister Anika Wells to change means-testing for aged care services to require wealthier Australians to pay more out of their own pocket, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Currently, taxpayers foot a bill of more than $30bn to support elderly Australians with the cost of aged care.
This is estimated to rise by an eye-watering $29bn over the next decade, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office.
A report will be published by the taskforce before the end of January and is expected to recommend consumers increase their contributions to alleviate the pressure on taxpayers while maintaining the high quality of services.
The federal government is expected to respond to its recommendations later in the year, most likely during the May budget.
Daily living fees for those in residential care, currently set at $61 a day, could also be lifted for those with greater wealth.
Taxpayers currently cover 96 per cent of the total cost of residential aged care, leaving just 4 per cent paid in consumer contributions.
This is largely because existing means tests cap payments at $33,000 a year or $78,500 over a lifetime.
Another significant change is the way the family home contributes to means tests, with the current system requiring the maximum value of the home to sit below $198,000.
The recommendation is not a major shock after Ms Wells indicated during a National Press Club speech in June that the government expected aged care contributions would need to increase to keep up with quality improvements.
“You have to say that if we’re not prepared to accept that cinder-block, linoleum-floor, four-bed room any more, then we need to work out how we’re going to pay for it,” she said.
“Plenty of people have said: ‘I am prepared to pay for an innovative, excellent model of care – I just can’t find it’.”
Ms Wells is expected to formally respond to the taskforce report when it is published in a matter of weeks.
Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston told The Australian last year that the Coalition would consider “any sensible policy solutions put forward by the Aged Care Taskforce and the government in good faith”.
“Ensuring the sustainability of Australia’s aged-care sector is absolutely critical to ensuring future generations have access to the care they need and the care they deserve as they age,” she said.
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‘Bureaucrat state’ of Victoria caught in public sector debt grip
The number of Victorian government employees has jumped by 60 per cent over the past 15 years and at double the pace of population growth, prompting experts to warn the bloated public service will make it harder to repair the state’s shattered budget and pay down the highest debt levels in the country.
The rate of growth in Victorian state workers far outstrips the experience of NSW, where consecutive Liberal governments helped contain the increase in headcount to 28 per cent between 2008 and 2023, not far above a 20 per cent rise in population over the period, an analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures shows.
Growth in the public sector workforce has also been large in Queensland and Western Australia, the data shows, although the roughly 40 per cent increase since 2008 in both states (against population growth of about 30 per cent) still falls far short of the Victorian figures.
Boosted spending on Victoria’s public service has produced higher staffing per capita in key services such as education and policing, but the additional funding has produced a mixed report card on whether Victorians experience better services or living standards than other states.
S&P Global Ratings analyst Anthony Walker said Victoria’s wages bill as measured in budget cash flows has risen steadily since the Labor government came to power in 2014, jumping by 65 per cent between 2015 and 2023.
Mr Walker said the global credit ratings agency had been warning Victoria’s government since 2016 that “we were concerned about the overall growth in the wages bill, which was being masked by very strong migration and that was driving revenue growth”.
“Our concern was that if revenues did slow down, the wages bill would be very difficult for the government to address,” he said.
Mr Walker said that “baking in” much higher spending on public servant salaries had undermined the state’s fiscal resilience, which was exposed when the pandemic hit.
“At that stage we were not predicting Covid, but this was why we had a two-notch downgrade in Victoria (in December 2020 against a smaller downgrade in NSW) – because of the persistent increase in employee expense in Victoria compared to other states,” he said.
Mr Walker said Victoria was in a weaker fiscal position than other states, and that “the fiscal recovery does require a lot of savings measures, including headcount reductions”.
The annual average rise of 7.2 per cent a year in state employees’ total wages contrasted sharply with Victoria’s most recent budget projections that the wages bill would only climb by 3 per cent per annum in the forward estimates.
“They have for a number of years said they would get on top of the wage bill and they have really struggled to do that. Notably, Victoria’s May budget included plans to cut as many as 4000 staff from a Victorian public service of about 55,000 people,” Mr Walker said.
“These are back-office staff, not teachers. But a reduction of about 10 per cent is a very large number. It’s not the first time they have forecast (a much slower rate of growth in wages) and failed to achieve it.”
Independent economist Saul Eslake said the political persuasions of the governments in the country’s two most populous states over the past 15 years explained the wide gap between growth in state employees in NSW and Victoria. “The most obvious explanation is you’ve had a long period of Labor rule in Victoria, and 12 years of Liberal rule in NSW,” he said.
Mr Eslake said that almost all of the growth in government sector workers in Victoria happened under former Labor premier Daniel Andrews, who took power in 2014 before stepping down last September.
“The most charitable interpretation is they (the Victorian government) have prioritised the delivery of public services in education and health and the police, and these are all employee-intensive activities,” Mr Eslake said.
“A less charitable interpretation might put it down to the significant influence public sector unions wield in the Victorian Labor Party.”
With a richer and older population, demand for services such as education, health and aged care are rising, putting more pressure on states and territories.
Mr Eslake said there was “no hard and fast rule” about the “right” number of state workers.
“Economically there is no right or wrong – Scandinavian countries collect more than 50 per cent in GDP in taxes, and they certainly haven’t performed economically worse than countries that collect a lot less in taxes,” he said.
Mr Eslake added: “If you really believe that the people want more public services, then the fiscally responsible thing to do is raise taxes.
“Employing a lot of public servants and paying them with money from taxation is, fiscally, not a bad thing. Employing a lot of public servants and paying them with borrowed money, however, is an unequivocally bad thing.”
The effectiveness of increased spending on high state government headcounts is hard to measure, but a review of the Productivity Commission’s rolling reports on government services suggests the additional spending has not created clearly superior outcomes for Victorian residents, compared with other states.
As at June 2022, there were 313 “operational staff” per 100,000 people in Victoria’s police force, well above the rate of 239 in NSW. In Queensland and Western Australian there were 285 and 282 operational police, respectively, per 100,000 people.
But the rate of physical assaults per 100,000 residents in Victoria was 1840 in 2021-22, according to best estimates quoted by the commission, higher than the 1540 assaults per 100,000 in NSW, although better than the roughly 2300 rate in Queensland and Western Australia.
In health, the availability of public hospital beds was also worse in Victoria than in the other states, at 2.2 beds per 1000 Victorians, versus an equivalent rate of 2.6 in NSW, 2.5 in Queensland, and 2.3 in Western Australia.
Ambulance wait times are not directly comparable between all states, but the proportion of public hospital emergency patients seen on time in Victoria is the lowest among the three big east coast states – at 63 per cent of patients, against 68 per cent in Queensland and 77 per cent of patients in NSW.
Victoria’s public schools had a notably lower student-to-teacher ratio than the other states, at 12.7 students per teacher in 2022, versus 14.2 students in NSW, 14.1 in Western Australia, and 13.2 in Queensland.
The higher teacher staffing ratios in Victoria against NSW, however, have not translated into better NAPLAN results, with 95.5 per cent of year seven students in both states scoring at or above the national minimum standards for reading in 2022. On the same metric for numeracy, 91.9 per cent of Victorian students achieved at least the minimum standard, only slightly above the 91.6 per cent of NSW year sevens.
Centre for Independent Studies senior fellow Robert Carling said the ABS numbers, while distorted by a change in methodology in the most recent financial year, confirmed his own research showing runaway spending and hiring on state employees in Victoria under Mr Andrews.
“Maybe in part it was an adjustment to the more standard levels of employment in police and public hospitals, but it goes beyond that,” Mr Carling said.
Moody’s analyst John Manning said the significant disruptions from the pandemic married with Victoria’s decision to quadruple its annual infrastructure spending to about $20bn through the pandemic had left the state in the weakest fiscal position of its peers. Mr Manning said the challenge was for Victoria to move “to a sustained operating surplus, and to manage the capital spending program such that the debt burden can stabilise in the immediate term, and then revert to more sustainable levels going forward”.
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World Heritage has split leaders
A UNESCO World Heritage listing for Cape York has been a long-term ambition for Labor federally and in Queensland but it is one that has not been shared by all of the area’s Indigenous groups, who first must give their free and informed consent. With a Queensland election looming, it is no surprise that former federal environment minister, rock singer Peter Garrett, and veteran environmentalist Don Henry have been pushed into service in another attempt to get things over the line.
World Heritage listings play well for inner-city green groups who want to frustrate mining projects and other economic developments in remote locations. But the green tape that comes with UNESCO oversight is not necessarily as attractive for the people who work and live there. Repeated attempts to list parts of Cape York have proved difficult for successive governments because of a lack of Indigenous agreement.
Former environment minister Tony Burke spent a lot of time trying to secure agreement before the idea was scuttled in 2014 by the Abbott government and Campbell Newman in Queensland. Ironically, free and informed consent is a condition of the World Heritage listing process that was introduced after the Hawke government failed to consult the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people over a World Heritage listing of the Daintree.
The resurfaced Cape York ambition is an opportunity for the Albanese government to deliver on its promise to give Indigenous leaders a voice on decisions that will affect them. The evidence is, however, that there is not a unified view among Cape York Indigenous leaders. Gerhard Pearson, executive director of the Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation, said the listing proposal was a cynical exercise linked to the expansion of exploration permits and leading up to the October state election.
Labor is reluctant to outline what it hopes to include in a proposal to UNESCO for a “tentative listing”. But a World Heritage listing would give the federal government automatic standing in development decisions in the area under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act. For this reason, even a tentative listing would act as an insurance policy for green groups in the event of a future LNP state government.
As things stand, the Cape York proposal has all the hallmarks of being a vanity project by Labor calculated to win the support of inner-city environmentalists who are unlikely to ever visit Cape York, let alone live there.
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3 January, 2024
Unions warn the government not to allow religious schools to hire based on faith
A clear attack on freedom of religion. Wars were once fought to achieve it. This amounts to a call to abandon religious teaching -- precisely what many parents enroll their kids for. One wonders what Muslim parents will make of it
Union leaders have raised concern over signals from Labor that it will introduce religious discrimination laws in the first half of this year, arguing the focus should be on cost of living and not on rules that could allow bosses to hire staff based on their faith.
Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has told faith leaders he is working on a draft bill that will be ready before July as part of the government’s promise to deliver on legislating against religious discrimination, which the Coalition failed to do before the 2022 election.
Health Services Union national secretary Lloyd Williams said his union’s membership – nearly 50,000 people – would stand against any legislation that allowed an employer to preference hiring someone of faith.
“The Coalition’s bill would have allowed discrimination towards workers of a particular faith, and certainly people of a different sexual orientation,” he told The Australian.
“We would hope that this government, when it goes forward with any bill, will put protections in there for workers so they can’t be discriminated against based on what religion they do or do not follow.”
CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith also declared his union stood for the clear principle that “no one should be discriminated against at work”.
Mr Smith cautioned Labor not to lose focus on addressing the cost of living and housing crisis in 2024, declaring his union would push the government hard on a more ambitious housing plan.
“Alongside delivering on its promises from the last election, the federal government must use 2024 to tackle the two biggest issues facing working people today,” he said.
Electrical Trades Union secretary Michael Wright said he was “confident” the government could address both the cost-of-living crisis and legislate the religious discrimination laws at the same time.
The debate over faith protections came as the Coalition accused Labor of “mounting an attack” on religious charities and non-government schools after a draft Productivity Commission report recommended changes to the tax treatment of charity donations. The report called for deductible gift recipient status to be scrapped for non-government primary, secondary, childcare, aged care and other religious organisations.
Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the PC’s recommendation to scrap the “basic religious charity status” would also increase red tape and reporting requirements for almost one in five charities.
“This proposed school building tax is a direct, ideological attack on independent and faith-based schools and must immediately be ruled out by the Albanese government,” she said.
Assistant Minister for Charities Andrew Leigh said the Coalition knew the Productivity Commission was independent and its recommendations were “not government policy”.
“When we ask an independent body like the Productivity Commission to conduct an inquiry, it’s important that we respect their independence and let them complete the process,” Mr Leigh said.
“The Productivity Commission has not made any final recommendations as it is midway through its work.”
After winning government, Labor tasked the Australian Law Reform Commission with providing advice on designing religious discrimination legislation.
However, an alliance of faith leaders raised alarm with a draft proposal from the ALRC released early last year, which recommended the government allow religious preference only where “the teaching, observance or practice of religion is a genuine occupational requirement”.
In response to the criticism, the government extended the ALRC’s reporting deadline to December 2023, with Mr Dreyfus confirming he had received the ALRC’s report.
When asked if the legislation would allow institutions to take staff’s faith into account when hiring, a spokesman for Mr Dreyfus said: “The government is now considering the ALRC review of anti-discrimination law.”
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Farmers grow tired of Pacific Islander worker visa scheme
A growing number of Pacific Islanders are abandoning a key agricultural worker scheme and seeking asylum in Australia, as farmers warn the program addressing workforce shortages was being undermined by Labor’s pro-union rule changes.
The peak farmers body warned employers were being short-changed when workers left the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme and sought asylum, while agricultural businesses were considering leaving the program because they were now required to pay each worker at least 30 hours a week even if there was a downturn in production.
In the past six months, more than 1050 Pacific Islanders defected from the PALM scheme and applied for permanent protection visas. This is on track to overtake 1698 permanent visa applications from Pacific Island workers in 2022-23 – the first full year PALM was operating after the consolidation of the Pacific Labour Scheme and the Seasonal Worker Program.
Under PALM, regional and rural businesses can hire workers from nine Pacific Island countries and East Timor for up to four years when there are local workforce shortages.
Obtaining a protection visa would give the Pacific Islanders unrestricted work rights and some social security benefits.
There were 1002 Pacific Island farm workers who applied for asylum in 2021-22 and just 171 in 2019-20, according to figures from the Department of Home Affairs.
National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar said PALM workers leaving farm employers was “one of the biggest challenges” facing the program.
He said each defection left farmers in the lurch as they were “left to bear thousands in upfront recruitment costs and without the workforce needed to complete their season”.
“More needs to be done by government to ensure both workers and non-approved employers understand the rules around job switching for Pacific workers,” he said. “We need to see penalties enforced against non-approved employers who illegally lure Pacific workers away from their workplaces.
“As the number of workers under the PALM scheme increases, we’re also seeing an increase in applications for protection visas.
“Given only a small number of these applications are approved, the government may need to consider proactive measures to inform workers of the requirements for seeking asylum.”
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the government’s $160m package to expedite asylum claims would “break the business model of unscrupulous actors who seek to exploit the system”.
“The mess Peter Dutton made of our protection system will take time to fix,” he said.
“But as a result of these investments, those in need of Australia’s protection will be provided certainty about their future sooner and those who are seeking to exploit the system and are applying simply to extend their stay in Australia will be swiftly refused.
“The PALM scheme remains integral to Australia’s migration system, helping to fill workforce shortages in regional Australia, and strengthening our connections with the Pacific.”
While workers are abandoning the PALM scheme, farmers are also considering leaving the program due to a new rule requiring workers under the scheme to be employed for at least 30 hours a week.
Smart Berries manager and agronomist Sally Jolly said the blueberry farm – which is based in Mundubbera more than two hours drive inland from Bundaberg and employed 350 PALM workers last year – was considering pulling out of the scheme due to the expense of meeting the 30-hour requirement. Ms Jolly said the changes meant farmers would lose out because prices had been agreed with the supermarkets.
“We’ve got weather that affects our working week and if we can’t work in the field, which most of our work is done in the field, especially for the PALM workers, it just can’t be done,” she said.
“The way it was where we had that 30 hours over six or eight weeks so it could average over that period was OK, but a flat minimum of 30 hours (every week) is quite difficult.”
Nationals leader David Littleproud said the 30 hours requirement would force farmers to “pay people to lie on the couch and do nothing” when the weather was too poor to work.
He said it would ultimately reduce the agricultural workforce and increase the price of food.
“Economics tells them they probably won’t plant the crop because they can’t afford to do that,” he said. “There were sensible provisions around averaging that allowed for the weather and for these workers to catch up when it stopped raining and things have dried out – that’s common sense.
“These changes have been driven by Labor and the unions … by ideology and not understanding the practical reality of what this will do.
“If you reduce supply, then ultimately what’s going to happen is everyone’s prices go up.”
Quebec Citrus Australia director Ainsley Emmerton said she was growing increasingly frustrated with the highly bureaucratic scheme and was weighing up if she should walk away.
“My husband just said to me this morning, ‘it’s just so hard’ because of having to deal with the elements like rain, it’s been a very wet week,” she said. “But when this 30-hour week comes in we’ve got to pay all the PALM workers 30 hours for no work, and that’s not our fault, because it’s raining we’re not going to send them out in the wet, so we’re going to get no economic benefit.”
Farmers were required to offer PALM workers at least 30 hours a week averaged over four weeks from New Year’s Day and 30 hours each week from July 1.
Former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration Abul Rizvi said he didn’t believe the visa design had been “well thought through” and it had been marred by issues affecting many farm visa schemes, including allegations of exploitation.
Dr Rizvi said there was also a broader uptick in Pacific Islanders applying for asylum in Australia with more than 9000 people applying for protection visas since 2019, with most of the claims being rejected.
“People are just being stuck basically in what is best described as immigration limbo because they don’t want to go home and they can’t find a pathway to remain here permanently,” he said.
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Low wages and poor conditions are making thousands of UK doctors move to Australia
Thousands of British doctors have applied to move to Australia after being left “stunned” by the UK health system.
When Prajwol Dhungana, himself a doctor, was told he had the flu after waiting three weeks for a virtual appointment to see his GP, he ended up taking drastic steps.
Sick and exasperated, the 35-year-old visited a hospital emergency department, where he finally received care from colleagues who should otherwise have been diagnosing and treating life-threatening pneumonia caused by Covid.
Dr Dhungana is from Nepal, where the health system is considered poor and inadequate.
But he said he was left “stunned” by the UK’s own faltering National Health Service (NHS).
“How can it be that in my country where the health system is really basic, you can walk into an emergency department and see a doctor within an hour, yet in England, you must wait three weeks and then not even be seen in person?” he asked.
“I was shocked, literally stunned … it crystallised in my mind that after only two years in the UK, I had to leave,” he said.
“I was seriously sick, overworked and underpaid.
“At the end of a year I lose 47 per cent of my salary on tax, National Insurance and a state pension. That leaves me with just £20,000 ($37,848) to exist.
“There is no work-life balance in the UK and the doctors are striking. We’re not greedy, we just can’t afford to be treated like this,” he said.
Dr Dhungana earns a basic £40,275 salary ($76,200) at the University Hospitals of Bristol and Weston, in South West England. But he’s packing his bags for an equivalent job paying $193,240 (£102,103) at Brisbane’s Redcliffe Hospital in the New Year, banking a salary hike of 153 per cent.
He is one of an incredible 9000 UK doctors who have applied to transfer to Australia in the past five years, according to the General Medical Council.
Fresh statistics released by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) reveal more than 27,000 internationally trained practitioners have been registered to work in Australia, including 15,812 nurses and midwives, 5918 medical practitioners and 5398 allied health professionals since January 2022.
In the 12 months leading up to July 2023, around 5270 new practitioners were being registered to work in the nation’s health system every month.
The exodus to Australia prompted Britain’s UK’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting to recently fly 16,000km Down Under (and to Singapore) to discover what makes our health system work better.
Britain has been plagued by a year of crippling strikes by junior doctors demanding better pay, with more action planned for January 3 and 9.
“Stop stealing our doctors,” Mr Streeting told medical executives during his trip.
Mr Streeting visited Maroubra Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Sydney, one of 38 opened by the Labor government since May last year, designed to reduce pressures on emergency departments.
He swapped notes with Australian Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler and met health officials in Melbourne.
“It was really striking talking to Mark Butler at this stage in the life of the Labor government in Australia,” Mr Streeting said afterwards.
“He’s got the scars on his back from taking on vested interests and taking on opponents of reform,” he said, aware the British Medical Association has long rejected proposed “super surgeries”.
“What I want to do is turn the NHS on its head,” he told senior officials and GPs at the urgent care clinic.
“To move it from a system that is overly focused on hospital care, with so much late-stage diagnosis, basically a sickness service, to a neighbourhood health service, that gets to people faster, diagnosing and treating faster, and crucially joins up care, so patients no longer feel like they are being pushed from pillar to post.”
He also vowed to increase GP pay and slash bureaucracy so patients can be seen quicker.
NHS Digital revealed in May that as many as one in eight GP appointments are now taking place between two and four weeks after they’re made.
International league tables rate Australia’s health services over the UK’s for life expectancy, mortality from cancer, heart attacks and strokes, thanks largely to more scanners and hospital beds, as well as doctors and nurses per 1000 population.
Yet Australia spends significantly less on health, at 9.6 per cent of GDP compared with the UK’s 11.3 per cent, according to statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The NHS devours 44 per cent of government departmental spending.
“In terms of OECD countries, we are lagging behind. Australia is … spending less on health care and getting better outcomes,” Mr Streeting said during his visit.
NHS England has 7.8 million people currently on waiting lists.
In the UK more than two million people waited longer than the statutory 18 weeks for NHS hospital treatment last year, and six million patients are still waiting for consultant-led hospital treatment – the highest figure since records began in August 2007, says the Royal College of Surgeons.
The number of patients waiting longer than two years for hospital treatment has risen to a record 18,585, an increase of 14.5 per cent in just one month.
The longest waits are for trauma and orthopaedic treatment such as hip and knee replacements (3967), followed by general surgery, including gallbladder removals and hernia operations (2326).
Conversely, 50 per cent of Australians admitted to hospital from public hospital elective surgery waiting lists waited for 40 days or less, and 90 per cent waited for 323 days or less.
Streeting emphasised that an NHS under Labour would never be “sold off” but he stops short of detailing how the private sector could be used to reform the NHS.
AMA federal president Steve Robson credits Australia’s parallel specialty training system for the UK brain drain.
“We make it easy for them, we speak the same language, there’s minimal adjustment; a UK trained doctor can work in Australia – why wouldn’t you come when conditions are so horrific and so many British doctors are poorly remunerated and disinvested?” he said.
“The weather is great in Australia, there’s sun, sea and surf and mountains and, crucially, hospital equipment that works and a better work-life balance.”
“I’m looking forward to my wife and I having a family in Australia and being able to save for our future,” he said.
“You become a doctor because you care – and in England, you’re too tired, working until 10pm most nights, to remember that.”
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Broken power system still fuelled by calls for subsidy
A plea by energy retailers for higher prices to compensate for the rising use of household rooftop solar is an inevitable and predictable confirmation of the dysfunction that now characterises Australia’s electricity system. It represents another chapter in a tale of cascading subsidies that have become necessary as a system rooted in baseload generation from coal is forcibly switched over to one dependent on variable sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar.
If retailers get their way, energy users who have been forced to subsidise renewable energy projects, including rooftop solar, will be asked to pay more for the projects that these renewables were designed to force out of the market in the first place. The new cost would be included as part of the regulated price that retailers are allowed to charge. The power retailers also are largely the owners of the coal-fired power stations that still supply most of the nation’s electricity but are being rendered unprofitable by design and forced to close.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has upped the ante on the subsidy regime with a turbocharged Capacity Investment Scheme that will underwrite the profitability of 32 gigawatts of new renewable projects, up from 6GW previously. Like rooftop solar, the overbuild of large-scale renewables is needed to meet Labor’s target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. This target also is being revised upwards.
A large amount of wind and solar is required to deal with the fact individual projects will produce for only some of the time. But when they are all working together it is likely there will be a glut, as is the case with rooftop solar on sunny days when there is low demand. Wholesale prices are now often negative in the middle of the day.
But regardless of how many wind and solar projects are built, it’s likely there still will be periods of shortage that must be plugged when intermittent power generation is not sufficient. The experience in Britain has been that baseload generators have demanded subsidies to be available still when needed under a capacity market. Renewable generators that are producing power that is not needed have demanded to be paid as well.
Projects designed to help, such as the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro and expanded transmission network, are proving to be slower and more expensive than promised. Under Mr Bowen’s latest scheme, taxpayers will be on the hook to ensure all of the projects approved as part of the 32GW target achieve a minimum rate of return. Ironically, the subsidies will make renewable energy, the so-called cheapest option, more expensive than it otherwise would be. But a price guarantee and overbuild ensure that other options such as nuclear will struggle to find space in the market to justify their cost.
If adopted, the latest call for assistance from electricity retailers will be felt directly by energy users. Retailers want a higher price because of fierce competition from rooftop solar as well as the looming impact of batteries and offshore wind that will depress prices in the evening, after the sun has stopped shining and when wholesale prices traditionally have spiked. Retailers are urging the Australian Energy Regulator to factor the rise of solar into its considerations when determining the default market offer from July.
After two years of big increases in the default market offer price, the political pressure will be for the AER not to approve another big increase. But the laws of physics dictate that power will have to come from somewhere and private sector economics suggests absorbing sustained losses is not an option for generators.
This leaves taxpayers and users on the hook to continue Band-Aiding a system that has been broken by ideology and a lack of proper planning.
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2 January, 2024
Indigenous mastery of ecology is a historical delusion
Archaeologists have been struggling to identify the rightful owners of the United Arab Emirates for decades. Could prehistoric stone tools discovered 12 years ago at Jabel Faya have been brought by migrants from East Africa 125,000 years ago? Or were the true indigenous people the camel slaughterers from Mesopotamia who arrived in the glacial period 5000 years before the birth of Christ?
The question is more than academic in Chris Bowen’s mind. He appears convinced that indigenous people everywhere hold knowledge vital to the future of the human race. The Climate Change and Energy Minister began a speech at the UN climate change conference in Dubai in early December with a clumsy welcome-to-country performance that would’ve puzzled his hosts.
He expressed his profound respect for the people “who have cared for our respective lands for millennia”, asserting that indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices were “critical” to solving the climate crisis.
First Nations people, as Bowen fashionably calls them, possess the special knowledge that will allow us to solve the complex problems created by climate change.
It is hard to doubt his conviction. Bowen doesn’t just talk the talk, he is prepared put our money where his mouth is. In April, Bowen announced the formation of a First Nations Clean Energy and Emissions Reduction Advisory Committee as part of a $75m package to bring Aboriginal voices into the debate.
“We have to learn from the people who have had stewardship of our land for over 60,000 years,” he said. “We need to do that now, for example, with the Indigenous-led savanna burning carbon credit system. And there are many more examples where we could do better.”
What are those examples? The minister did not feel compelled to elaborate. The pseudo-science is settled as far as the climate cognoscenti are concerned. Indigenous people were diligent stewards of this land, living in perfect harmony with nature until white people arrived with the poisoned fruits of Western civilisation and trashed the joint.
Australian historian William J. Lines masterfully unpacks the intertwined narratives of ecology and indigenous exceptionalism in his recent book, Romancing the Primitive: The Myth of the Ecological Aborigine (Quadrant Books). Lines traces the strands of thought from Michel de Montaigne and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 16th and 18th centuries to Australian poets Mary Gilmore and Judith Wright, whose siren call had an uncanny influence on public policy during the Whitlam era.
The Albanese government also seems entranced with works of fiction, albeit stories that some consider history. Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth asserts that Indigenous mastery of fire turned the Australian continent into an idyllic, eco-friendly landscape, or as Lines describes it “an Edenic world of abundance resembling the cover image of a Jehovah’s Witness tract”.
Bruce Pascoe’s revelation in Dark Emu that pre-settlement Australians were not hunter-gatherers but cultivators, builders, town planners and hydrologists takes the romanticisation of primitive life to a fantastic level of absurdity.
Yet Anthony Albanese is an unabashed fan. “Bruce has unearthed the knowledge that we already had in our possession but chose to bury along the way,” the Prime Minister told parliament in February 2020. “Bruce has simply reminded us where the lights switch is … a complex mosaic of ancient nations is suddenly laid out before us.”
Penny Wong told the Senate in November 2020 that thanks to Pascoe and Gammage, “we are no longer trapped in the ignorance of our own assumptions and prejudice, premised on the underlying supremacy of the narrative that white people know best”.
Wong’s self-demeaning lapse into a race-based argument was unfortunate. The achievements of Western civilisation have nothing to do with skin colour and everything to do with the triumph of reason over superstition.
As it evolved in the West, the scientific tools of logic, deduction and probability are available to all. “Scientific knowledge is not restricted to the initiated,” says Lines. “Curiosity is the only criterion.”
The notion that Aboriginal Australians would be happier quarantined from modernity is absurd. So, too, is the fashionable idea that Western civilisation is no better than any other civilisation and probably worse.
Against this, the romancers of the primitive invest hope in a different form of knowledge – traditional or cultural knowledge that they claim is the intellectual property of Indigenous people alone.
Lines points his finger at the naked emperor. “No one can precisely define what they mean by traditional knowledge,” he writes. The methodology upon which traditional knowledge depends is not explained. “Instead,” writes Lines, “they advanced terms such as “holistic”, “relational” and “interconnectedness”, which they contrast with “reductionist” and “linear” Western science”.
The claim Indigenous Australians “managed” the land is at the core of the primitive delusion. Lines disputes it. The expression “fire-stick farming” was invented by anthropologist Reece Jones in 1968, says Lines. The theory that Aboriginals possessed an “ecological consciousness” made them prudent ecological managers is belied by the absence of the words ecology or management in the lexicon of any known Aboriginal tongue.
Lines describes the hard reality of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that runs counter to the narrative of environmental stewardship. A small population, speaking 250 languages, on a sparsely occupied continent domesticated only the dog and did not control animals stocks. “Wildlife management consisted of exhausting local prey and moving on,” he writes. “While horticulture and agriculture increase yield through human effort, hunting and gathering do not.”
This is not to deny the ingenuity and perseverance that enabled Indigenous Australians to survive on a continent that does not easily surrender its riches. Lines point is that knowledge is not exclusive and does not emanate from the received wisdom of a particular group. “Each human group faced specific challenges to which they divide specific solutions,” he writes. “Everywhere, humans draw on the same traits of adaptability, intelligence, and for Unity to adapt a local circumstance.”
Primitivism is unhelpful to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike. “Romanticising does not help the romanticised,” writes Lines. “Instead, it isolates them from rational thought and gives them an unrealistic assessment of their abilities and place in the world.
“Romantics continue to impoverish the Aboriginal world with the introduction of intellectually hollow and dubious pledges.”
For 21st-century progressives, however, romanticising the primitive was never an exercise in improving the lot of Aboriginal Australians any more than hopes of ennobling the savage inspired by Rousseau.
“Aborigines were Cyphers, carriers of a fantasy about pre-contact life and calculators of lessons about the failings of Western civilisation,” writes Lines. It is an exercise in ennobling themselves and asserting their moral and intellectual authority.
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Major backflip by Anthony Albanese's government on electric vehicles outrages environmentalists
A promise by the Albanese government to unveil mandatory pollution caps for new vehicles sold in Australia by the end of 2023 has been broken, sparking fears its landmark EV policy will be put on ice.
In April, Labor committed to introducing a new fuel efficiency standard, with a favoured model to be unveiled 'before the end of this year'.
Under the standard, automotive brands will be penalised when they sell cars with high-polluting internal combustion engines in an effort to spur the uptake of electric and other low-emissions vehicles.
Aside from Russia, Australia is the only developed nation without fuel efficiency standards.
As a result, passenger vehicles can emit as much as 50 per cent more carbon dioxide than in similar overseas markets, as less efficient cars are still imported to Australia.
At the same time, just eight per cent of new cars sold in Australia in the last 12 months were electric vehicles, while this figure was almost 17 per cent in Europe.
But despite assurances of long-awaited fuel efficiency standards by year's end, Transport Minister Catherine King is still yet to unveil the proposed legislation.
In September, modelling work undertaken by ACIL Allen for the proposed standard which was due to be completed in August was extended through to January 30 2024.
Weighing on the proposal are fears that against a backdrop of the rising cost of living, the standards - which could potentially limit the number of cars available to consumers or increase the cost for some high-polluting models - could open the government up to Coalition scare campaign in the lead up to the next election, industry sources said.
Others said Ms King had been consumed by other matters across her portfolios including her controversial decision to block Qatar Airways' bid to increase flight capacity and the independent review of Australia's $120 billion infrastructure pipeline.
In a statement, a spokesman for Transport Minister Catherine King would not provide a timeline for when the proposed standards could be released.
'Designing the best possible fuel efficiency standard (FES) to suit Australia's circumstance is complex, and the Australian Government is committed to taking the time to get it right,' the spokesman said.
But with Australians heading back to the polls by May 2025 at the latest, advocates for a more ambitious standard feared the policy could be shelved in its entirety.
Independent member for North Sydney, Kylea Tink, who has spearheaded calls for stringent fuel efficiency standards in federal parliament, said the Albanese government had demonstrably failed to meet its commitment.
'It's definitely a pretty clear case of a broken promise,' Ms Tink said.
'It's worse than frustrating that we're going to end 2023 without fuel efficiency standards ... there is no line of sight on them.'
Citing the failed commitment by two previous Labor governments to introduce a similar efficiency standard, Ms Tink said it was imperative that the government was held to account on its promise.
'Up until now, at least the government's been prepared to say: 'Yes, they're definitely coming and here's the timeline',' Ms Tink added.
'Now there's no timeline - that really concerns me.'
The Climate Council's head of advocacy, Dr Jennifer Rayner, agreed that it was critical that the government delivered on its commitment, ensuring access to cleaner and cheaper-to-run cars.
'Every day we delay putting a fuel efficiency standard in place, Aussies are missing out on the three-in-one benefits of cheaper costs, cleaner air, and greater choice,' Ms Rayner said.
However, car dealers and their industry association representatives have urged the government to take a more cautious approach to the new standards, citing the need the for strong community support for the change.
Tony Weber, chief executive of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, said despite the delay, it was paramount that time was taken to ensure the standard reflected the demands of the Australian car market.
'It's absolutely critical that the government takes time and gets this right. That's critical for environmental outcomes and for consumers,' Mr Weber said.
'There's no point in going for what others are calling for - a stringent target - which means essentially in the very near future, the only cars that will be able to be sold will be complete electric vehicles.
'There are so many segments of the market that there is not an electric vehicle capability among mainstream brands - and that's before we talk about price.'
Mr Weber also pointed to the need for a scale-up in supporting infrastructure to drive the uptake of the low-emission vehicles.
'We need to have the product supported in the marketplace ... rather than people who just purely talk about a target.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12913993/Albanese-backflip-electric-vehicles.html
*********************************************Don’t desex the language: Doctors warn of danger over gender-inclusive terms
A large group of researchers and academics is pushing back against moves to “desex” medical language to accommodate transgender and gender-diverse people, saying the terms used in the name of inclusion confuse health data and can lead to serious medical errors.
A letter signed by 120 researchers to peak funding body the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) also warns that blurring the lines between biological sex and gender identity on medical forms and in research threatens to widen what’s known as the female data gap.
“Using ‘women’ with a gendered meaning, that is grouping males and females together, when considering healthcare provision or undertaking research, has risks,” the letter says.
“Even when males and females experience the same disease, they may experience it very differently, irrespective of gender identity.”
Why do gender pronouns matter and how do you use them?
Advocates for the new approach to language say that in medical settings, transgender people are often discriminated against, misgendered – referred to by a gender they do not identify as – or required to reveal to doctors their birth sex or deadname, which is a name they no longer go by.
They say this is a “cultural safety” issue which, if not addressed, can drive gender-diverse people away from seeking medical care.
General practitioners in Victoria are being urged in a course on transgender and gender diverse health, conducted by official training provider Thorne Harbour Health, to issue new admission forms for patients that emphasise gender identity and not biological sex.
The recommended question for biological sex is, “what was listed on your first birth certificate?” and optional for the patient to answer. The gender question, which is compulsory, asks if the patient is “female, male, non-binary, different identity (specify).”
The Queensland Department of Health now invites “persons with a cervix” rather than “women” for cervical cancer screening in their health promotion materials.
Professor Hannah Dahlen, the associate dean of research at Western Sydney University and a signatory of the letter to the NHMRC, says that term is “frankly, demeaning” and confusing, particularly for people from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
Dahlen said the push to desex language was motivated by the best of intentions, but from a scientific point of view was “scary”.
“Sex plays a fundamental role in the health of females and males and to lose the ability to identify and represent the needs of females is a huge backwards step, not only for females, but for women’s rights, equity and health,” Dahlen said.
“So when we’re being inclusive, let’s not be exclusive. Half the population is female, let’s not discriminate against them. It’s lazy not to get this right, and it’s dangerous not to get it right.”
Australia’s peak health statistics body, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare notes on its website that in its reports, “male or female may refer to either sex or gender, depending on the data source ... so it can be unclear which is the focus”.
The letter to the NHRMC came in response to a consultation paper it released on the ethics of conducting medical research on pregnant women.
The draft paper used the term “pregnant woman”, then acknowledged that some would consider it controversial and asked researchers whether the language was appropriate and, “if not, with what should it be replaced?”
A footnote added that “we recognise that it is also important to avoid gendering birth, and those who give birth, as feminine”.
In response, the letter from researchers warns that physicians are under increasing pressure to “desex language in research, policy, and public health communications” and that, as a result, “sex is not being accurately recorded in health systems and elsewhere”.
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Australian Border Force crackdown nets 30 foreign fishers, destroys three boats off Kimberley coast
Thirty suspected Indonesian fishers have been placed in immigration detention following a targeted crackdown on illegal foreign fishing vessels in waters off Western Australia's Kimberley coast.
The fishers are facing prosecution and removal from Australia after a multi-agency operation, led by Australian Border Force (ABF), uncovered three illegal fishing boats, a combined haul of one tonne of trepang (sea cucumber) and fishing equipment.
The intercepted vessels have been destroyed.
The exercise included surveillance by land, air and sea, and focused on areas within the Kimberley Marine Park north of Broome.
ABF Assistant Commissioner and Operation Leedstrum commander Kylie Rendina said it was "the largest cohort of foreign fishers to be detained in over a decade".
"If you fish illegally, you will lose your vessel, your equipment and you will be placed in immigration detention to face potential prosecution," she said.
The Indonesian fishers were safely transported to shore and have since been flown to the Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre in Northam, north-east of Perth.
Australian Fisheries Management Authority fisheries operation general manager Justin Bathurst said an investigation would take place.
"As well as facing destruction of their vessel and seizure of catch and equipment, these foreign fishers will be subject to a thorough investigation and, where appropriate, prosecution for offences against Australian law," he said.
"[The operation] will continue to disrupt illegal activity along our coastline. We continue to combine our resources to prevent illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and safeguard valuable fish stocks against exploitation by illegal foreign fishing vessels."
The Kimberley Marine Park stretches for nearly 75,000 square kilometres and is home to whales, dolphins, dugongs and turtles.
Mr Bathurst said the highly protected park was an "attractive choice for illegal foreign fishers".
Surge in illegal fishers
Operation Leedstrum was set up in December amid a surge in illegal activity in Kimberley waters in recent months, with 65 vessels sighted over a 24-hour period during October 2023.
ABF says the operation will continue until illegal fishers are deterred from entering the region.
ABF records show 125 boats were intercepted during the 2022-2023 financial year.
Animal populations like sea cucumbers are in demand by illegal fishers.
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1 January, 2024
Assaults at aged care facilities in NSW rise to highest level in a decade, data shows
Government "reforms" have made staffing very expensive. So fewer staff are being employed -- leading to poor supervision
Assaults reported at aged care homes in NSW have risen to the highest level in a decade, with more than 900 incidents recorded last financial year.
The figure is almost triple the number of assaults recorded a decade earlier, Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) data reveal.
The largest jump occurred in April 2021 when the government brought in the Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS).
The scheme requires care providers to report all serious incidents to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission and those of a criminal nature to police.
"The increase does seem to be related to an increase in reporting of criminal incidents occurring in aged care facilities," BOCSAR executive director Jackie Fitzgerald said.
The dataset does not show whether the offender was a staff member or a resident, but Ms Fitzgerald said carers and family members could be ruled out as the main culprits with "reasonable certainty".
"We don't have many offender details recorded, so it's hard to know for sure," she said. "Staff don't seem to be the main offenders. I think we'd have reasonable records if that was the case."
NSW Police said the reporting rules "no doubt" affected the number of reports.
Staff under pressure
Brian Draper, a professor of psychiatry and mental health at the University of NSW, said while reporting had increased, the actual number of assaults had likely risen as well.
He said the portion of aged care residents needing a high level of care for behavioural changes had grown considerably in the past decade because people with lesser needs were increasingly managed at home.
"Within the residential aged care sector, we've got a greater concentration of those who have the highest level of needs," he said. "That in itself means that there is greater pressure upon staff to look after these residents."
Lee-Fay Low, a professor of aging and health at the University of Sydney, said inadequate training among carers can lead to residents becoming physically aggressive.
"Imagine if someone was trying to get you to go to the toilet, take your pants off, have a shower. If that's not managed well, then you're going to kick, punch, hit that person," she said.
Professor Low said a high turnover of staff in the industry meant some carers were not appropriately trained.
NSW Police would not say how often officers were called to aged care homes. But data obtained by the ABC under the Government Information Public Access (GIPA) Act show police recorded 4,654 incidents at such facilities last financial year.
That is roughly 12 incidents a day across the state.
However, there was no breakdown of the types of incidents.
At a Cooma nursing home in May, one of those incidents turned fatal. Ninety-five-year-old resident Clare Nowland died after being tasered by a police officer.
Police allege they were called to the facility when staff failed to get her to drop two knives.
The great-grandmother fell, fractured her skull, and died a week later in hospital.
Senior Constable Kristian White has been charged with manslaughter and remains before the courts.
Call for 'clinical input first'
Speaking generally, Professor Low said aged care staff should only call police as a last resort. "You should be bringing clinicians and getting clinical input first," she said. "If you can't get that input straightaway, and it's really dangerous, then perhaps you need to call the police."
Professor Draper said police were not adequately trained for dealing with aged care residents.
"In just the same way there's not adequate training for the residential aged care staff," he said.
NSW Police said they do not run training specifically for dealing with dementia patients, but they are rolling out a course covering aging and disability to all crime prevention officers.
"This training focuses on specific legislation and rights of the elderly," a NSW Police spokesperson said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-29/nsw-elderly-assaults-police-response-nursing-home/103193890
*****************************************Chinese Appetite For Australian Barley Is Back
Three years after steep Chinese tariffs halted imports of Australian barley as tensions between the two countries ratcheted higher, the grain is once again flowing freely.
Barley is not only used to brew beer but to feed pigs, and China was Australia's leading market, taking 50 percent of its barley exports.
China has imported 314,000 tonnes of Australian barley worth 139 million Australian dollars (around $94 million) since the government scrapped its 80.5 percent tariffs in August, the Australian government said in early December, citing official Chinese data.
The resumption of trade is a welcome relief for Australian farmers, who saw a nearly one billion Australian-dollar market evaporate in 2020.
"In the two months following the market's re-opening, Marketing and Trading shipped two vessels of barley to China," said the CBH Group, a cooperative of over 3,500 Western Australian grain farmers, in its annual report.
Tensions between the countries began to mount in 2018 when Australia excluded the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its 5G network.
Then in 2020, Australia called for an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19 -- an action China saw as politically motivated since it emanated from a close partner of the United States.
In response, Beijing slapped high tariffs on key Australian exports, including barley, beef and wine, while halting its coal imports.
A slowdown in China's economic growth has spurred Beijing to rekindle its relationships with its trading partners.
Meanwhile, Australia sought out and found new markets to offload its harvests -- it is the world's third-largest producer of the grassy grain.
"It caused us to pivot, so we found new markets, like Mexico. We managed to have tariffs lowered, which were previously in excess of 100 percent," Sean Cole, the acting general manager of the GrainGrowers trade association, told AFP.
"With China gone, Australia was really forced to go back to more traditional customers in the feed market, mainly the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, where we've been for over 20 years," he added.
Between June 2022 and June 2023, Saudi Arabia became the leading importer of Australian barley, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES).
Lyndon Mickel farms a 6,000-hectare plot of land near Beaumont in the southwest part of Australia. The latest harvest of his fields of various grains and peas was the 23rd of his career, but it has taken time to bounce back from the Chinese tariffs.
"We've had a reduction in price, but we've been fortunate we've had two very good years in that time crop-wise," he said, "so what we've lost in price, we've gained in tonnage anyway."
But those boom years -- producing over 14 million tonnes of barley in the last two harvests -- are over.
As El Nino -- the cyclical weather phenomenon responsible for higher global temperatures -- returns to the Pacific, ABARES predicts barley production will drop by 24 percent to 10.8 million tonnes for the 2023-24 harvest.
The reopening of the Chinese market could not have come at a better time, said Sean Cole.
"A lot of our barley is classified as feed, but it is still suitable for beer manufacturing in China," he said, "they use slightly different processes, and essentially it means we can get a premium for more of our feed barley".
On average, barley destined for China is sold for "around 38 to 40 dollars a tonne between now and since the tariffs were lifted" and that amounts to "an extra 400 million dollars value for the Australia barley crop next year, even with a smaller crop," Cole added.
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Australian Court Reverses Millions in COVID-19 Fines
More than $36 million (US$24.5 million) in COVID-19 infringements were withdrawn this year by the New South Wales (NSW) fines commissioner following a landmark Supreme Court ruling.
Thousands of fines were issued by NSW Police to members of the public who allegedly contravened health orders during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
But in a landmark ruling in November 2022, Justice Dina Yehia said the fines were not valid because they did not include a sufficiently detailed description of the offences.
Following this ruling, the NSW Commissioner of Fines Administration withdrew four types of public health order fines which were similar to the ones examined during the Supreme Court case.
These included unlawfully participating in an outdoor public gathering and failing to comply with the requirement of public health order.
According to the NSW Customer Service department’s annual report, $36.3 million in fines were reversed in 2023 following the commissioner’s decision.
A spokesperson for Revenue NSW said this amounted to about 36,600 fines being withdrawn.
“The decision to withdraw these fines does not mean the offences were not committed, but that the fine notices in question had insufficient descriptions of the offences committed,” the spokesperson said.
As of Nov. 20, around 90 per cent of the withdrawn COVID-19 fines had been refunded and the remaining were in the process of being refunded.
A total of 62,138 COVID-19 related fines were issued by police during the pandemic.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/australian-court-reverses-millions-in-covid-19-fines-5555494
**************************************************Proton Mail Says It Will Defy Australia's Impending 'Online Safety' Law
Secure email service provider Proton Mail has added its voice to a growing number of tech companies concerned that Australia's proposed "online safety" regulation will force firms to break encryption to expose user data to governments and potentially criminal syndicates.
Proton offers end-to-end encrypted email, virtual private network (VPN), and online data and password storage services. Its slogan is "privacy by default."
The Australian proposal has already been heavily criticised by the Global Encryption Coalition, which comprises the Center for Democracy & Technology, Global Partners Digital, the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Internet Society, Mozilla, Access Now, and Digital Rights Watch.
Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton, told The Epoch Times: "With the current eSafety proposals, the Internet as we know it faces a very real threat. The proposed standards would force online services—no matter whether they are end-to-end encrypted or not—to access, collect, and read their users' private conversations.
"These proposals could not only break encryption, but could put businesses and citizens at risk while doing little to protect people from the online harms they are intended to address."
Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has released the draft standard, which applies to services including "email, instant messaging, short messages services (SMS), multimedia message services (MMS) and chat, as well as services that enable people to play online games with each other and dating services."
Other "apps and websites ... as well as online file storage services" will also be covered. Everything online, provided it's accessible to Australians (even if there are no visitors) is captured.
While Ms. Inman Grant insists providers will not need to breach encryption to comply with the standard, the Global Encryption Coalition says it will be impossible to do so otherwise.
Proton is the first provider to openly say it will defy the standard if it's introduced.
"Under no circumstances would we break end-to-end encryption," Mr. Yen said. "As other jurisdictions are realising, there is no such thing as technology that can scan everyone’s online activity while also providing privacy and safety.
“There is still time to safeguard end-to-end encryption in the eSafety proposals, and we urge Commissioner Inman Grant to ensure the protection of privacy for Australian citizens. Undermining cybersecurity and encryption in the name of eSafety will only lead to the opposite result, leaving everyone but criminals more at risk."
Proton AG is based in Switzerland, and says it is therefore subject only to Swiss law.
The legal and technical hurdles to enforcing cross-border regulations on entities that have no presence in the country imposing them have yet to be really tested.
While other tech companies have so far expressed disquiet with the proposals, many are moving to tighten encryption.
Telegram, which claims a user base of 200 million people, grew its market by being the first mass-market messaging service with end-to-end encryption, which is now the basis of its brand.
Meta attempted to win back market share for WhatsApp soon after it purchased it, by adding encryption, and has also pledged to work toward encryption and secure data storage across Facebook.
The company also announced the introduction of end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger, which is used by over a billion people. Online storage services such as iCloud and Google Cloud are also offering encrypted storage.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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