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
30 November, 2023
What's the latest on COVID antiviral drugs, and who is eligible in Australia?
Australia is experiencing a fresh wave of COVID, seeing increasing cases, more hospitalisations and a greater number of prescriptions for COVID antivirals dispensed over recent months.
In the early days of the pandemic, the only medicines available were those that treated the symptoms of the virus. These included steroids and analgesics such as paracetamol and ibuprofen to treat pain and fever.
We now have two drugs called Paxlovid and Lagevrio that treat the virus itself.
But are these drugs effective against current variants? And who is eligible to receive them? Here's what to know about COVID antivirals as we navigate this eighth COVID wave.
What antivirals are available?
Paxlovid is a combination of two different drug molecules, nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. The nirmatrelvir works by blocking an enzyme called a protease that the virus needs to replicate. The ritonavir is included in the medicine to protect the nirmatrelvir, stopping the body from breaking it down.
Molnupiravir, marketed as Lagevrio, works by forcing errors into the RNA of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) as it replicates. As these errors build up, the virus becomes less effective.
This year in Australia, the XBB COVID strains have dominated, and acquired a couple of key mutations. When COVID mutates into new variants, it doesn't affect the ability of either Paxlovid or Lagevrio to work because the parts of the virus that change from the mutations aren't those targeted by these two drugs.
This is different to the monoclonal antibody-based medicines that were developed against specific strains of the virus. These drugs are not thought to be effective for any variant of the virus from omicron XBB.1.5 onwards, which includes the current wave. This is because these drugs recognise certain proteins expressed on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, which have changed over time.
What does the evidence say?
As Lagevrio and Paxlovid are relatively new medicines, we're still learning how well they work and which patients should use them.
The latest evidence suggests Paxlovid decreases the risk of hospitalisation if taken early by those at highest risk of severe disease.
Results from a previous trial suggested Lagevrio might reduce COVID deaths. But a more recent, larger trial indicated Lagevrio doesn't significantly reduce hospitalisations or deaths from the virus.
Australia is riding another COVID wave and the most vulnerable are the least vaccinated
As a new wave of COVID-19 hits Australia, why are so few aged care residents up-to-date with their COVID-19 vaccinations?
However, few people at highest risk from COVID were included in this trial. So it could offer some benefit for patients in this group.
In Australia, Lagevrio is not routinely recommended and Paxlovid is preferred. However, not all patients can take Paxlovid. For example, people with medical conditions such as severe kidney or liver impairment shouldn't take it because these issues can affect how well the body metabolises the medication, which increases the risk of side effects.
Paxlovid also can't be taken alongside some other medications such as those for certain heart conditions, mental health conditions and cancers. For high-risk patients in these cases, Lagevrio can be considered.
Some people who take COVID antivirals will experience side effects. Mostly these are not serious and will go away with time.
Both Paxlovid and Lagevrio can cause diarrhoea, nausea and dizziness. Paxlovid can also cause side effects including muscle aches and weakness, changes in taste, loss of appetite and abdominal pain. If you experience any of these, you should contact your doctor.
More serious side effects of both medicines are allergic reactions, such as shortness of breath, swelling of the face, lips or tongue and a severe rash, itching or hives. If you experience any of these, call 000 immediately or go straight to the nearest emergency department.
Be prepared
Most people will be able to manage COVID safely at home without needing antivirals. However, those at higher risk of severe COVID and therefore eligible for antivirals should seek them. This includes people aged 70 or older, people aged 50 or older or Aboriginal people aged 30 or older with one additional risk factor for severe illness, and people 18 or older who are immunocompromised.
A COVID infection now could spell trouble in three decades
Genes, environment and lifestyle are some of the risk factors for serious diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. This is why scientists believe COVID-19 infection should be added to the list.
If you are in any of these groups, it's important you plan ahead. Speak to your health-care team now so you know what to do if you get COVID symptoms.
If needed, this will ensure you can start treatment as soon as possible. It's important antivirals are started within five days of symptom onset.
If you're a high-risk patient and you test positive, contact your doctor straight away. If you are eligible for antivirals, your doctor will organise a prescription (either an electronic or paper script).
These medicines are available under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and subsidised for people with a Medicare card. The cost for each course is the standard PBS co-payment amount: $30 for general patients and $7.30 for people with a concession card.
So you can rest and reduce the risk of spreading the virus to others, ask your pharmacy to deliver the medication to your home, or ask someone to collect it for you.
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Former Labor cabinet minister lashes government over green litigant funding
Former Labor cabinet minister Joel Fitzgibbon has lashed the Albanese government over its decision to hand millions of dollars to help green litigants, accusing Labor of financing job destroying legal challenges.
In a speech to forestry industry leaders, the former Hunter MP said Labor had handed taxpayers money to activists.
The attacks come after Labor fulfilled its election promise to reverse funding cuts to the Environmental Defenders Office, providing $10m in funding to the community legal centre over the forward estimates.
The EDO is an legal organisation well known for its environmental advocacy, running high-profile cases against coal and gas developments.
Mr Fitzgibbon, the chair of the Australian Forest Products Association, said it made no sense for the government to fund activists to take legal action against the very government that gave them the money.
Activists funded by rich donors - and indeed governments through the Environmental Defenders Office - are challenging value-creating projects in the law courts, Mr Fitzgibbon said, in a speech delivered earlier this month that has been obtained by The Australian.
In a wealthy, liberal democracy it makes sense to use taxpayers money to ensure all Australians have legal representation when they face a criminal conviction. But it makes no sense to hand taxpayers money to activists so they can take legal action against the very government that gave them the money.
To challenge in the courts approvals processes the government rightly argues are as robust as any in the world.
Labor pledged to reinstate funding for the EDO ahead of the last election in order to enable Australians to have access to the law.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek told The Australian Labor was proud to be restoring funding to the Environmental Defenders Office, reversing cuts made by the Abbott government.
Every section of our community deserves legal advocacy. As does our previous environment. Unlike the Liberals and Nationals, we are not afraid of scrutiny and accountability, Ms Plibersek said.
Government officials pointed out that the EDO was also funded under the Rudd and Gillard governments of which Mr Fitzgibbon was a Cabinet minister.
The Abbott government cut funding to the organisation following allegations of activist lawfare.
The EDO, first established in NSW in 1985, has used the courts to delay or squash major projects including the Adani coalmine in central Queensland, Santos Barossa gas proposad and forestry developments in Tasmania.
The body has received grants from groups including the Myer Foundation.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Fitzgibbon also attacked extreme environmental activists who he said would destroy our sovereign capability in this country and destroy the jobs of the people who provide it.
AFPA provides me with an opportunity to do another thing I did for many years in politics to take on the extreme environmental activists who, given the chance, would destroy our sovereign capability in this country and destroy the jobs of the people who provide it, he said.
The EDO was contacted for comment.
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Mandate madness: What will it take to allow Victorias firefighters back to work?
The 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season was one of the worst in recorded history with fires burning across Australia for over six months. No state or territory was left unscathed with an estimated 24.3 million hectares burned, including 34 deaths, 3,000 buildings, and decimation of wildlife and habitat.
During such times we rely on our first responders to bravely step into the breech, and our firefighters are first to respond to the call. The courage of Australias firefighters is well-known and with the approaching fire season we once again turn to these everyday heroes knowing that for them, this personal risk is something they shoulder with pride.
It seems, therefore, unthinkable that almost 4 years since Covid arrived on our shores we would still have up to 50 Victorian firefighters sidelined by vaccine mandates.
Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) has been the stalwart of mandates, continuing with these ridiculous measures despite all other states and territories removing them and no one seems to know why.
Some of this confusion is apparent as recently highlighted in state estimates when Victorias newly appointed Emergency Management Commissioner, Rick Nugent, confirmed the only vaccine mandate still in place is with Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV). When asked why these mandates were remaining, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Justice, Ryan Phillips answered, Thats ultimately an operational matter for FRV [and] something that organisation has decided. But when Bev McArthur MLC asked if the Department ultimately had responsibility for the organisation, she was told they were not responsible for internal policies in relation to vaccines.
This begs the question, who is responsible for the ongoing mandates at FRV?
The Victorian state government revoked the Pandemic Order on October 12, 2022. In June 2023, the former Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy admitted there was little justification for ongoing mandates, and on October 20, 2023, Australias Chief Medical Officer announced the official end of the Covid emergency response, declaring Covid was no longer a Communicable Disease Incidence of National Significance.
With the pandemic officially over and mandates no longer justified (if they ever were), what exactly is Fire Rescue Victoria holding out for?
This question is also being asked by The Australian Firefighters Alliance (AFA). Formed in 2021, under threat of the mandates, this organisation is committed to protecting the freedoms and democratic rights of firefighters and workers throughout the nation. They are staunchly pro-choice, not anti-vaccination. Co-founder, Josh Hawkes, has been relentless in seeking answers from FRV regarding their continued stance on preventing unvaccinated firefighters from returning to work. The situation has become incomprehensible as he and around 30 AFA colleagues with an estimated further 20 outside of the organisation are kept on the sidelines purely due to their vaccination status.
Hawkes contends the lawfulness of the continuing policy which seems to be continuing under a workplace policy. Literally, at 5 pm on the day they rescinded the pandemic orders, Fire Rescue Victoria came up with an interim measure under the Commissioners directions, he tells me. The union comes out immediately after and says theres no lawfulness to this. Its not pinned to anything. The commissioner doesnt have the statutory authority to enforce it because it references all the pandemic orders. So essentially, theyre continuing a Minister or Chief Health Officer order under a workplace policy, but the Commissioner doesnt have the power to do that and not neither does FRV.
So, are the mandates continuing under a workplace policy? It would seem so. But wait, theres more.
Hawkes and his colleagues are prevented from entering their workplace in a professional capacity however they could enter the same station and work as a volunteer. This seems completely illogical and somewhat hypocritical. As if the same workplace is only safe for an unvaccinated firefighter if they are a volunteer.
But wait, theres more.
FRV produced a Covid-19 Controls Risk Assessment. This document was obtained by Hawkes under freedom of information. The risk assessment identifies potential serious side effects from the jab including myocarditis, pericarditis, blood clots, and even death!
I ask, does Fire Rescue Commissioner Gavin Freeman know about this risk assessment? And if so, what is the justification for continuing to mandate an experimental jab, that doesnt stop infection or transmission and has very real and significant risks of injury no matter how rare? Just ask those vaccine-injured firefighters who are now unable to work and on Work Cover.
But wait, theres more.
There are reports of serious shortages of firefighting crews on multiple occasions, involving multiple stations in Victoria. According to Hawkes, FRV may have instances that slip under minimum staffing numbers, citing emails that call for the backfilling of shifts. FRV are failing to fill the gaps while up to 50 firefighters remain sidelined, he tells me. On Grand Final day this year, there were thirteen vehicles in the Metropolitan Fire Districts that were each running one firefighter down. Thats a tremendous shortage.
But wait, there is even more.
According to Hawkes, the last known mandated dose at FRV was in March 2022. They havent forced anyone in the workplace to have a jab a second booster since then. This would technically mean that all employees who had not received their second booster and beyond would officially be considered not up to date according to official ATAGI guidelines. It appears, on paper, FRV are still mandating the jab and preventing those who are unvaccinated from returning to work, while not enforcing the policy in the workplace.
This mandate madness hasnt gone unnoticed by elected members including federal MP Russell Broadbent. The long-standing member for Monash has held his seat continuously for almost 20 years, and recently lost pre-selection by the Liberal Party. Broadbent has been outspoken against mandates since 2021, at that time urging the government not to proceed and acknowledges his stance over the Covid years may have contributed to the lost pre-selection bid. Despite platform censorship and push-back, Broadbent has continued to advocate for those injured by the vaccine or continuing to be mandated, including Victorias firefighters. The (FRV) risk assessment 100 per cent vindicates the firies still being threatened and punished for speaking out against the mandates, says Broadbent. But its also a chilling admission for the colleagues who took the vaccine especially those who are now on WorkCover after suffering severe injuries following the jab. This is a blight on our nation. Its unjust and an absolute disgrace.
I couldnt agree more.
As we head into another long hot summer, and the third Christmas for these sidelined firefighters, lets hope and pray common sense prevails before its too late.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/mandate-madness
***************************************************The Right wing of the Labor party came to the rescue on detaineee releases
Last weeks immigration omnishambles has panned out to be a masterclass in what not to do for the Albanese government so much so that this time it was actually a good thing the PM was out of the country.
In fact, Albos absence turned out to be critical to the crisis being resolved, but we will come back to that intriguing little titbit later.
First lets get to the heart of the issue. As we all know, 93 foreign detainees, including some with appalling criminal backgrounds, have been released from indefinite detention by the High Court.
That decision is the fault of the court, which is obliged to uphold the letter of the law if not, as it would seem in this case, the spirit.
Home Affairs Minister Clare ONeil made this point in noting that the decision was unexpected and overturned 20 years of legal precedent. She was also correct in observing that the government is obliged to follow the law.
Fair enough.
But we are all obliged to follow the law. The difference between the government and the rest of us is that the government has the power to change the law.
Indeed, that is ultimately the governments only purpose. If laws are never going to change, why have governments? If there is no need to produce new legislation, why have legislators? If the system simply exists in perpetuity, why have elections?
These fundamental questions seem to have eluded the otherwise intelligent ONeil as she seemed to fight a scrappy defensive day-to-day war against the obvious.
As for Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, one has to wonder what the point of his role is at all if not to prevent outcomes such as this.
Thus the vibe of the governments response to a clearly ballooning debacle was the standard kneejerk and utterly wrong response of the besieged that it wasnt so bad, that it wasnt their fault, that there isnt anything they can do and that everything will be OK.
The first two defences are a form of gaslighting telling the electorate that their concerns are imaginary and thus by implication that they are foolish to have them.
The second two simply render the defendant impotent like the sort of thing youd say to the person sitting next to you as a plane went down.
Again, if there is nothing the government can do, then what is the point of it?
And indeed every time a government or organisation attempts this type of defence against an obvious problem, it always ends up in disaster. Think Qantas. Think Optus.
A week ago chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was untroubled enough by the Optus outage that she was doing a photoshoot one of the few cameras she faced on the day.
Literally in the middle of writing this, I was interrupted by a news alert that she had resigned.
Instead, governments should heed the advice of the godfather of the Labor right Graham Richardson, who says that at the first sign of an error at least the first public one ministers should immediately own it, apologise for it and fix it.
Thus it was telling that after days of the government swinging in the breeze on this issue, it was Acting PM Richard Marles, the senior figure of the resurgent Victorian Right, who swept in and cleaned up the mess by hurriedly doing a deal with Peter Dutton and pushing through a raft of security measures.
Even more tellingly, he pointedly brushed aside all the tangled and tokenistic semantics and legalese that had crippled the response until that point and said that it was clear the government needed to address community concerns.
Well yes, quite. That is effectively the governments entire job definition.
After the listing directionlessness of the Voice campaign and deer-in-headlights haplessness of the immigration fiasco, this was a sharp relief example of the Right of the Labor Party at its best.
Whereas the Left is typically obsessed by pet issues that transcend all rules and boundaries while being crippled by systemic inertia in all other areas, the Right, when its working as it should, lives in the real world, responds to mainstream concerns and has a default position of just getting things done.
Indeed, it was jarring to contrast the initial government response that there was nothing it could do but wait for the High Court reasons with the incandescent comments of Treasurer Jim Chalmers another leading Right figure and prime ministerial heir apparent published in the Good Weekend on Saturday: Even if you are here for a relatively long time, you still dont have any time to waste. I am petrified of that. Im petrified of getting to the end of the day and not having made the most of it.
Or indeed the bombshell report on the front page of the News Corp Sunday papers that Bill Shorten once the king of the Right was going to wholly overhaul the NDIS, one of the most vital and fraught reforms facing the country.
For all of these reasons, it was probably good for everyone that Albo was out of the country, including Albo himself.
To the nominally Left PMs credit, he has already been acting in the tradition of Labor Right leaders before him. He has now received a masterclass in how to act like those alongside him.
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29 November, 2023
Maryanne Demasi: Popular ABC TV science show presenter claims she was discredited and fired after pharmaceutical companies complained
She was absolutely right. There are big doubts about statins. See for instance below:
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-grave-statin-side-effects-lower.html
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/2007/05/dangerous-scare-about-cholesterol-i.html
A former ABC presenter has slammed the national broadcaster and TV medic Dr Norman Swan after claiming she was axed, censored and silenced by her bosses.
Maryanne Demasi was one of the hosts of popular ABC prime time science program Catalyst when it was pulled off the air in 2016 after her reporting sparked a furious backlash.
Her two-part expose in 2013 on an alleged over-use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs was a ratings success - but was later banned from ever being shown again.
It claimed some people were taking the heart medication without need, but the ABC's Dr Swan warned people risked a heart attack if they stopped taking their prescribed drugs.
Three years later, a further report on the alleged health risks of wifi and 5G sparked so much outrage the show was axed completely in its then-current format in 2016.
Now Dr Demasi has compared the furore over her stories with the mainstream backlash against anti-vaxxers during the Covid pandemic.
In a speech to an 'Australians for Science and Freedom' conference at Sydney's University of New South Wales earlier this month, she blasted her former TV bosses.
Dr Demasi said health industry critics had hit back after the statins show aired and said 'the ideas in the program were 'dangerous' [and] expressed by 'fringe experts'. '[They] assured the public that statin drugs were 'safe and effective'.'
'Do those phrases sound familiar?' she asked the conference audience. 'The phrases became a fixture of the pandemic.
'One commentator at the ABC went on national radio and claimed that people would die if they watched the program,' she told the audience.
'Australians will recognise this character - Dr Norman Swan. He rose to prominence during the pandemic.'
She said the outrage against that show had been led by the pharmaceutical industry.
'Within days, all three of the major statin manufacturers complained to the network,' she said.
'So did the Heart Foundation, which was criticised in the program for its outdated dietary advice on heart disease, and of course Medicines Australia, the body that represents the Australian pharmaceutical industry. '
She said the media had jumped on the bandwagon attacking her after Dr Swan spoke out against the show.
'His comments about my programs sparked a slew of national stories,' she said.
'[They] accused the programs of killing people, claiming that ABC had blood on its hands, and asking people to sue the ABC if they'd had a heart attack after stopping their statins because of the programs.
'To enforce the narrative, the School of Pharmacy at Sydney University came out with a study claiming that the programs would be responsible for up to 2900 deaths because around 60,000 people would quit taking statins.
'Basically, they were accusing us of mass murder.'
A six-month internal review found the show had been factually accurate but the second part of the report had slanted unfairly against the statins industry.
'I gave more weight to the view of experts (such as Harvard's Prof John Abramson and UCSF's Prof Rita Redberg), that statins were over-prescribed,' she said.
'Which was rather ludicrous since the point of the program was to highlight the problem that statins were over-prescribed.'
She claimed TV bosses told her they'd been ordered to make the problem go away and took the episodes offline, apologised and vowed never to air them again.
Dr Demasi claimed TV bosses were deliberately silencing her from defending herself in a bid to stem the controversy
'This gave the false impression that we were admitting the programs were misleading,' she said. 'Consequently, I was attacked in the media, I was characterised as 'pseudoscientific' and any attempt to defend me was censored. 'I became the target of an orchestrated campaign to discredit me.'
She said TV bosses were deliberately silencing her from defending herself in a bid to stem the controversy.
'I was unable to challenge the criticisms against me,' she said. 'I was effectively silenced by my network and they were cancelling film shoots.
'They'd send me emails saying that I was not allowed to comment publicly or privately about these issues, or else they would consider it a breach of my employment conditions.
'I was told to stop emailing my concerns because my emails could be FOI'd and become part of the public record, so if I had anything to say, I had to do it by phone or face-to-face.'
She said the pressure was huge and she regularly faced internal investigations into her work before it went to air.
'Often it would take longer to defend a program than it would to make it,' she revealed. 'Because we were on tight budgets, this was simply unsustainable.'
'And finally, I learnt that the ABC was willing to silence its own journalists in order to appease industry. This had a chilling effect on other mainstream journalists.
'The message was that it would be career suicide if you tried anything similar.
'And it seems to be a very effective strategy because I don't think I ever saw another story challenging statins in the Australian media again.'
She added: 'I think the standards at the ABC have continued to slip. 'It's a shame, because the ABC was once considered a great institution.'
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Some better ways to net zero
Australias ALP/Green government and their media mates are using subsidies, taxes, and propaganda in a lemming-style attempt to move the whole country to 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and Net Zero Emissions by 2050. Canny Aussies are buying diesel generators.
If they persist in their rush to Net Zero, we have a few Net Zero suggestions for them.
Net Zero Immigration
Every migrant adds to Australias emissions by consuming food, electricity, transport fuels, and housing. Thus, to reach Net Zero emissions, the rest of us must be rationed further to cope with these additional emitters.
Net Zero Tourists
Every tourist adds to our emissions for transport, food, electricity, and accommodation. To achieve Net Zero emissions in the face of millions of immigrants, tourists, and foreign students will need slick carbon accounting, or penury for the rest of us. Victorias Dan Andrews was accidentally right for once he cancelled the Commonwealth Games.
Net Zero growth of welfare and the bureaucracy
Net Zero will not allow us to import hundreds of foreign workers for our mines, factories, and farms while we maintain battalions of bureaucrats shuffling files in air-conditioned ivory towers in the capital cities. Nor can we accept growing armies of able-bodied idlers sipping green smoothies at the beach.
We must get all healthy Aussies into real jobs.
Net Zero growth in locked-up land
Wind and solar energy are sterilising huge and growing areas of land to produce their intermittent electricity. This greatly reduces the land available to grazing, forestry, fishing, exploration, and mining.
Its time to call a halt.
There must be a net zero increase in land devoted to national parks, marine parks, world heritage playgrounds, locked-up Native Title area, or carbon credit and green energy wastelands.
Net Zero lies about electric vehicles
They have a fanciful plan to replace our petrol and diesel cars, trucks, dozers, and tractors with fleets of yet-to-be-built battery or hydrogen powered vehicles. Where are the fast-refuelling stations for them all? And who has counted the extra emissions to mine and refine the metals for batteries, electric motors, turbines, and power lines? And where will we get the extra electricity for overnight re-charging of battery-powered vehicles as coal generators close, the sun sets, and the wind drops? (They have discovered the answer in ever-green California electric powered trucks are being recharged with diesel generators.)
No Subsidies for Hydrogen
In this unplanned rush to all-green energy some extol the coming of hydrogen powered vehicles. To produce green hydrogen requires large amounts of electricity plus nine tonnes of water for every tonne of hydrogen produced by electrolysis. Some even think that it makes sense to use large amounts of electricity to desalinate sea water to make green hydrogen. Such a process is not even net zero. It is hugely energy negative. Obviously the main goal is to harvest green subsidies or votes.
No Subsidies for Pumped Hydro
Greens think taxpayers should fund giant dams and turbines to generate electricity when green energy is on strike at night, on cloudy days, and during wind droughts.
Does that mean that Greens believe we can steal water from every river system for green energy stabilisation while reducing the water stored for towns, farms, and orchards?
Lets have the first dam on the Franklyn River in Tasmania (they want to be the battery of the nation).
Full Accounting of all Emissions
Who is counting all the emissions being generated to manufacture, transport, and erect an ugly intrusive spider-web of roads and power lines to collect intermittent solar and wind energy from mountains, flats, seas, and roof-tops? Where is the carbon and dollar accounting for the metals, concrete, and hydrocarbon fuels that are needed?
We must also count the emissions to manufacture and erect all their planned green energy stabilisation schemes involving pumped hydro and giant batteries. All of this is a dash into the unknown without a coherent plan of how it will all work, or its full cost.
We need a Climate-Exit Referendum
We are locked into never-ending climate conferences and all the costs and eco-babble generated by Paris Climate Agreement.
They want us locked into 15 minute cities with bicycles, walking shoes, oat-milk coffee, and fake meat burgers while they jet off to a new well-fed tourist destination every year. We have copped these annual climate-fests for 26 years now. The last one catered for about 40,000 delegates and hangers-on for 2 weeks of talk-fest that achieved nothing useful (as usual).
Lets have a Clexit (Climate Exit) Referendum and abandon all liabilities under the Kyoto and Paris Climate Agreements.
The Net Zero Prize
Our reward for reaching our 2030 Net Zero Emissions targets will be a precarious population with industry operating on the whims of the weather and an angry, urbanised, locked-down population faced with food, fuel, and electricity rationing.
There is no global warming crisis, but Blackouts Bowen (Australias Minister for Climate Panics and Zero Energy) is determined to create an electricity crisis. Power grid failure will be followed quickly by failure of food and water supplies to cities. Hopefully Canberra, (Australias Green Capital) will be the first to suffer.
The rest of Australia must vote no to this dangerous Net Zero delusion.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/the-net-zero-lemmings-rush
**************************************************How Australia's world-first crackdown on smoking - introducing plain packets and hiking them beyond $50 - has backfired
As a libertarian, I could say "I told you so". Banning things is usually destructive
Australia's world-first crackdown on smoking has had a series of unintended consequences as illegal tobacco sales reach epidemic proportions and Chinese-made disposable vapes flood the market.
And the proliferation of illegal products easily available in suburban shops across the nation has seen a disastrous rise in teenage smoking and nicotine vaping not seen in other countries around the world.
When the laws were introduced in 2012 by the Labor government, they were hailed as a historic win against Big Tobacco.
The laws saw plain packaging introduced and huge increases in taxes that will see the average packet pass the $50 mark in 2026.
The measures were supposed to be a victory in health policy intended to stamp out nicotine addiction in future generations of Australian children.
The plain packaging now includes pictures of extreme disease caused by smoking, such as gangrenous toes and rotting gums.
The most disturbing pack features Bryan Curtis, a 34-year-old American who smoked two packets of Marlboro Reds a day for 20 years, close to death from lung cancer.
The federal government also removed any point-of-sale advertising and cigarettes must be hidden from view at all times.
But as the legal sale of tobacco has been squashed under draconian laws and taxation, the sale of illegal tobacco and vapes has flourished.
Smoking and nicotine-based vaping among 14-17 year olds in Australia has multiplied six-fold and 15-fold in the last five years.
And according to a leading academic and researcher in smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction, it's due to the availability of black market nicotine products from suburban shops.
The rise in nicotine consumption among Australian teens has coincided with a fall in smoking in the 15-18 years age group in the US, the UK and New Zealand.
Dr Colin Mendelsohn, who founded the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, cited alarming data from the Roy Morgan Institute and the Cancer Council of Victoria.
The statistics say that in 2018 just 2.1 per cent of Australians aged 14-17 smoked, and 0.8 per cent used vapes - mostly nicotine vaping.
By 2022, 6.7 per cent in this age group were smoking and 11.8 per cent were vaping.
In the first quarter of 2023, the number of teenage smokers had risen to 12.8 per cent and vapers were at 14.5 per cent, which Dr Mendelsohn said included a significant number using high nicotine concentrated vapes.
He told Daily Mail Australia the rise was due to the proliferation of black market tobacco/nicotine products.
From the sweet smell of vapes outside offices, to empty packets of 'branded' illegal tobacco on the streets, the evidence of black market smoking is everywhere.
And despite Australia 'declaring war' on vapes and cigarettes with tougher smoking bans for pubs, clubs, more young people are lighting up.
The statistics show a staggering 30 per cent of Aussies between 14 and 30 have used a vape.
While there's no data on how many smokers are turning to illegal tobacco, the proof they are is everywhere: from the shops selling them to the people smoking them.
One Sydney smoker, Tom, regularly buys a packet of black-market cigarettes for $12 - or splashes out and pays $20 for an illegal packet of Marlboros.
He says they are sold in every suburb - and blames the federal government's policy for their rise.
'I know hardly anyone who buys legitimate cigarettes; and I don't blame the little stores from selling them.
'Go to any pub and have a look around at the cigarette packets on the table - few are the legal, plain-package variety.'
Tom said the illegal cigarettes tasted the same as the legal ones because 'they all come out of the same factory'.
'Marlboro are Marlboro, they are just packaged according to the rules of the country. A $1 a packet in Cambodia is the same as a $40 a packet in Australia.'
With rising living costs, the temptation to do so is increasingly mainstream.
Daily Mail Australia has obtained catalogues with price lists supplied to prospective suburban retailers of cigarettes sold with brand names such as Marlboro, Benson & Hedges, Winston and Camel.
A catalogue of cigarettes from a company in Shenzhen, China which manufactures counterfeit cigarettes in Cambodia, is offering the smokes for $260 a carton, or ten packets of 20 cigarettes.
The packaging, which carries the brand name and emblem, and doesn't have the health warnings Australian laws mandate, indicate the cigarettes are sold without excise and are part of a criminal enterprise.
The price compares with legitimate Marlboros being sold for between $339 and $446.50 for a carton of ten packets each of 20 Marlboro Gold cigarettes.
To put the prices into context, a pack-a-day smoker (20 pack) would currently spend $14,600 on cigarettes per year, compared with $9,490 for the Cambodian smokes.
The Australian Federal Police, the Australia Tax Office and Australian Border Force spend considerable resources to combat the brazen tactics of Australia's illicit tobacco racket.
The racket means billions of dollars of potential tobacco excise will never reach government coffers.
But as the price of food, electricity and fuel soar, the illegal tobacco industry will continue to make a mockery of government policy of plain packaging and steep tobacco excise.
The health.gov.au website states that 'The Australian Government taxes tobacco products to make them less affordable through excise on tobacco products' and cites its Illicit Tobacco Taskforce set up in 2018.
The ITTF says it does this 'by proactively targeting, disrupting and dismantling serious actors and organised crime syndicates that deal in illicit tobacco'.
But, meanwhile, the trade goes on.
Illegal operators in South Australia have been identified as particularly shameless marketers of illegal cigarettes and vapes.
The SA government went on an enforcement blitz on illegal vapes in June, announcing stringent new licence conditions over nicotine e-cigarettes.
These require retailers to show proof vaping products being sold are nicotine-free, and to provide information about their e-cigarette suppliers, importers or manufacturers.
Enforcement blitzes over the previous financial year resulted in the seizure of about 15,000 illegal nicotine vapes.
In September, the NSW government announced it would spend $6.8million in cracking down on illegal vapes.
From January 1 to June 30 this year, NSW Health seized 187,000 products, up from 61,000 in the same period in 2022.
The health body has also conducted more than 5,000 inspections and seized about 369,000 nicotine vapes and e-liquids with an estimated street value of more than $11.8million.
According to a tobacco industry source, illegal products now account for about 25 per cent of all tobacco consumed, and the percentage is rising.
Just days ago, a top health official blasted e-cigarette makers as 'vendors of death' as Victoria mulls over introducing a tobacco licensing scheme that could make buying the items a lot harder.
Tom said despite the will of the Federal Government to crack down on the illegal trade, he did not believe they had the resources.
An Australian Post Office contact told him that 'tonnes and tonnes' of illegal tobacco and cigarettes are mailed into the country each year, but that 'like illicit drugs' plenty of tobacco still 'made it through'.
Dr Mendelsohn criticised new legislation proposed by the Health Minister Mark Butler - to ban disposable single-use vapes, and make personal importation of vapes or e-liquids from overseas - as likely to drive up the black market.
'History has repeatedly demonstrated that blanket bans and punitive measures simply dont work,' he said.
'Butlers approach will only fuel the black market and drive it underground. The losers are adult smokers seeking safe and effective alternatives and young people who will continue to have access to illegal products.
'The winners are organised crime and Big Tobacco.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12797989/Australia-smoking-vaping-crackdown-backfired.html
**********************************************Former Labor cabinet minister lashes government over green litigant funding
Former Labor cabinet minister Joel Fitzgibbon has lashed the Albanese government over its decision to hand millions of dollars to help green litigants, accusing Labor of financing job destroying legal challenges.
In a speech to forestry industry leaders, the former Hunter MP said Labor had handed taxpayers money to activists.
The attacks come after Labor fulfilled its election promise to reverse funding cuts to the Environmental Defenders Office, providing $10m in funding to the community legal centre over the forward estimates.
The EDO is an legal organisation well known for its environmental advocacy, running high-profile cases against coal and gas developments.
Mr Fitzgibbon, the chair of the Australian Forest Products Association, said it made no sense for the government to fund activists to take legal action against the very government that gave them the money.
Activists funded by rich donors - and indeed governments through the Environmental Defenders Office - are challenging value-creating projects in the law courts, Mr Fitzgibbon said, in a speech delivered earlier this month that has been obtained by The Australian.
In a wealthy, liberal democracy it makes sense to use taxpayers money to ensure all Australians have legal representation when they face a criminal conviction. But it makes no sense to hand taxpayers money to activists so they can take legal action against the very government that gave them the money.
To challenge in the courts approvals processes the government rightly argues are as robust as any in the world.
Labor pledged to reinstate funding for the EDO ahead of the last election in order to enable Australians to have access to the law.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek told The Australian Labor was proud to be restoring funding to the Environmental Defenders Office, reversing cuts made by the Abbott government.
Every section of our community deserves legal advocacy. As does our previous environment. Unlike the Liberals and Nationals, we are not afraid of scrutiny and accountability, Ms Plibersek said.
Government officials pointed out that the EDO was also funded under the Rudd and Gillard governments of which Mr Fitzgibbon was a Cabinet minister.
The Abbott government cut funding to the organisation following allegations of activist lawfare.
The EDO, first established in NSW in 1985, has used the courts to delay or squash major projects including the Adani coalmine in central Queensland, Santos Barossa gas proposad and forestry developments in Tasmania.
The body has received grants from groups including the Myer Foundation.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Fitzgibbon also attacked extreme environmental activists who he said would destroy our sovereign capability in this country and destroy the jobs of the people who provide it.
AFPA provides me with an opportunity to do another thing I did for many years in politics to take on the extreme environmental activists who, given the chance, would destroy our sovereign capability in this country and destroy the jobs of the people who provide it, he said.
The EDO was contacted for comment.
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28 November, 2023
Can you be Muslim and vegan? What about Jewish or Christian?
From a Christian view point it is crystal clear that being vegetarian and non-vegetarian are both completely OK. The apostle Paul addressed the matter specifically in Romans 14:1-23
"Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him"
Muslims respect the Bible so that ruling should be influential to them too
When Lujayn Hawari decided to become a vegan, she knew her parents would not take it well.
The 27-year-old Palestinian journalist grew up in Brisbane in a "moderately conservative Muslim household".
That meant praying five times a day, observing Islamic holidays and traditions, and eating what her mother cooked including meat.
Lujayn's parents were initially very unhappy with her veganism, and saw it as an affront to their religion.(Supplied)
So when Lujayn made the decision to stop eating animal products in 2016, her parents were unimpressed.
"It was an argument [at] breakfast, lunch and dinner," she says.
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Australian government throws more cash at renewables, but we foot the bill
The idea that Australia can become an energy superpower is impossible to square with taxpayers stumping up billions of dollars to subsidise renewable energy. If renewable energy is really so cheap the cheapest form of generating electricity, according to embattled Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen why would the operators need a guaranteed flow of funds from taxpayers? Thats not how markets work.
To be blunt, Australians have been sold a pup when it comes to the energy transition and the benefits that would flow from it. The notion it would be good for the economy, the climate and consumers is disingenuous and thats the best you can say. What has been obvious for some time but has dawned on Bowen only recently is that Labors grand plan to have 82 per cent of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2030 had become unachievable.
The commissioning of new large-scale renewable energy projects has slowed to a crawl and the rollout of the required new transmission lines is mired in local resistance, escalating costs and delay. The hope of the side offshore wind turbines also is looking forlorn.
Shadow Climate Change and Energy Minister Ted OBrien has clashed with Chris Bowen after the Labor MP refused to reveal the true cost of the expanded Capacity Investment Scheme. The Climate Change and Energy Minister announced the scheme last Thursday which will underwrite 32 gigawatts of new electricity, which More
The real tragedy of this story is the failure to appreciate the complicated features of the electricity grid and how government intervention generally worsens rather than improves outcomes.
In particular, the downside of large proportions of intermittent generation has been vastly underestimated. There is also a wilful ignorance of the vital role played by dispatchable 24/7 generation.
What has emerged is essentially two markets: a day market and a night market. During the day, its common for electricity prices to be negative, mainly as a result of the widespread and somewhat unexpected expansion of domestic rooftop solar panels. At night, prices are much higher and its when dispatchable power comes to the fore, particularly if the wind is not blowing.
Another important change has been to interest rates. When interest rates were extremely low, the cost of capital to investors was extremely low as well. Now that interest rates have returned to more normal levels, the cost of capital has increased markedly, particularly for renewable energy installations carrying a lot of debt. Add the escalation in the cost of hardware and the shortage of workers, and the result has been an uncongenial backdrop to large-scale renewable energy investment.
This combined with the fact several coal-fired stations are heading towards closure has led to a degree of panic by state energy ministers as well as Bowen. It is surely ironic that the Victorian Labor government, which frequently proclaims its green credentials, is financially supporting the continuation of two brown-coal-fired electricity plants at unknown expense to the taxpayer.
(Note here that coal-fired plants are not a good fit with intermittent energy as they work on the basis of constant spinning. The cost curves of these plants resemble a bath tub: they decline in their early years and rise sharply towards the end of their lives. For instance, it has been estimated that the annual maintenance bill for the Yallourn power station in Victoria is close to $200 million.)
The mistakes made in managing and attempting to transform the east coast grid are too many to list. Mainly driven by politics rather than engineering and economics, the result has been a fiasco.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers during the ASIC annual forum at the Sofitel in Melbourne. Aaron Francis / The Australian
Treasurer Jim Chalmers during the ASIC annual forum at the Sofitel in Melbourne. Aaron Francis / The Australian
One example is the planned Marinus Link connecting Tasmania and Victoria. Because of huge cost overruns, the link has been halved and wont be completed until the next decade. The federal government has agreed to take on a larger share of the cost, relieving the Tasmania government from some of the burden.
We are told six wind farms in Tasmania wont be viable with this smaller link. But heres the thing: what made sense was for Tasmania to supply dispatchable power to Victoria to underwrite its renewable energy folly, not to incentivise more renewable energy on the Apple Isle. Its just one example of woolly, flawed thinking.
So, having come to a clear fork in the road, Bowen has decided the government must direct even more money at renewable energy.
The capacity mechanism known as the Capacity Investment Scheme will be used to spur more investment in renewable energy.
Its worth describing here what the normal role of capacity mechanisms is. They are used in several places overseas to provide dispatchable power to grids when intermittent sources of power are unavailable. They are small relative to the size of the grid but involve gas and coal-fired plants being kept on standby.
The owners of these plants are paid to do so as well as for the power they generate if called on. There are several coal-fired plants in Britain, for instance, that are used in case of power shortages.
In what can be described only as an irrational decision, driven particularly by Victoria, our capacity mechanism includes only renewable energy and batteries, specifically barring coal and gas. It makes no sense at all and was driven entirely by ideology.
Bowen is proposing to lift the CIS from 6 gigawatts to 32GW using reverse auctions to underwrite the returns of renewable energy operators, with taxpayers picking up the tab. Where prices are below the strike price, operators will be compensated, but if the prices rise above that level, refunds are payable. The contracts may last for up to 15 years. Its just another form of government subsidy following on from the Renewable Energy Target.
The key here is that Bowen wants taxpayers to bear the cost year in, year out total dollar outlays unknown of this intervention and thereby shield electricity consumers from even higher prices. Its essentially smoke and mirrors because the costs still have to be borne one way or another. Its astonishing that Jim Chalmers is going along with this proposal given the pressures the Treasurer faces to manage the budget better lest ongoing inflationary pressures persist.
There is a fair chance that Bowens plan B wont work even though the higher subsidies should induce some additional renewable energy investment. The growing local resistance in the regions and the rapidly rising costs of renewable energy projects are counter forces. Its why the minister has an equivocal position in respect of gas because open-cycle gas peaking plants are the obvious complement with renewable energy to firm the system.
It also opens the door to the Coalition to make the case for nuclear. Its a centralised system that can use existing sites and transmission lines. It also provides prized 24/7 power. Other countries are accelerating their investments in nuclear power. We need to take note.
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From the ski lodge to the sea: our kids will never be free
Kevin Donnelly
As to why so many students wagged school last week protesting about the supposed man-made climate catastrophe and why so many will protest this week against Israels right to defend itself against the evil and barbaric invasion by Hamas there are numerous reasons.
In 2006, Al Gores misleading video (in that it contains known errors) An Inconvenient Truth became routine viewing in schools across Australia spreading climate alarmism. One of the three cross-curricula priorities in the national curriculum is sustainability, mandating a deep green environmental perspective on all subjects.
Based on a revisionist view of history involving feminist, Marxist, and post-colonial theories students are taught, Western Civilisation is guilty of imperialism and white supremacy and that there is nothing unique or worth defending about liberal democracies like Australia or Israel.
Israel is seen as an artificial state created by white imperialists that has no right to exist. Hamas terrorists, instead of being evil and inhumane, are lauded as freedom fighters dedicated to liberating Palestinians from years of subjugation.
Students chanting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free have no idea of where the Jordan River is or appreciate the land of Israel is the ancestral home of the Jews. Its no wonder they are so easily duped.
Schools have long since stopped teaching students to think rationally and logically. Clear thinking has been replaced by emotion and cant. Emotion is the deciding factor determining how young people respond to argument and debate about contemporary issues.
I think, therefore I am has been replaced by I feel, therefore I am right and any who believe otherwise are condemned as politically incorrect and cancelled for committing thought crime. The prevalence of cognitive dissonance adds to the heady mix of irrationality and ignorance.
To be human is to search for meaning and a sense of belonging as well as a commitment to something that gives purpose and direction. While the search for wisdom and truth as well as religious belief once provided that need, we now live in a world where subjectivism, ennui, and uncertainty prevail.
For many students climate alarmism is a religious faith where Greta Thunberg is the messiah and whatever the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dictates reads as holy script. That the world is about to end is taken as beyond doubt leading to young girls terrified they can never be mothers.
Students marching in solidarity with banners declaring free Palestine, Israel is a terrorist state, and the river to the sea, Palestine will be free find purpose and meaning that gives their vacuous lives direction.
As argued by GK Chesterton, When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.
It is also vital to realise climate change alarmism and antisemitism are just two examples highlighting how schools have been turned into re-education camps where students are indoctrinated with mind control and group think.
Kindergarten children are taught gender and sexuality are fluid and dynamic and not God-given and biologically determined. Boys are taught men are inherently violent and misogynist and the curriculum, instead of patriotism and nation-building, teaches guilt, and self-loathing.
Why this has happened is clear. Drawing on Antonio Gramscis concept of cultural hegemony, over the last 40 years the cultural-left has taken control of the school curriculum and infected vulnerable students with neo-Marxist critical theory and Woke ideology.
After the second world war, Marxist academics argued to win the West, the focus had to be on infiltrating and capturing capitalist societys ideological state apparatus (ISA). As argued by Louis Althusser:
But now for what is essential. What distinguishes the ISAs from the (Repressive) State Apparatus is the following basic difference: the Repressive State Apparatus functions by violence, whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function by ideology.
Althusser argues cultural-Marxists must take control of key institutions, including family, church, political and trade union organisations, the media, schools and universities. Turbocharged by the late 1960s Cultural Revolution, the lefts long march has succeeded beyond expectations.
Given schools have become neo-Marxist-inspired indoctrination camps, its understandable why thousands of parents across Australia are either home-schooling their children or establishing their own community schools.
Such an education is often religious in character where students are taught to be culturally literate, intellectually robust and morally and spiritually grounded. Instead of vague and ephemeral values, schools are committed to teaching virtues including love, courage, moderation, wisdom, and justice.
Instead of promoting language control, group think and mob hysteria, such an education is also based on rationality, reason and common sense. Much-needed attributes in this time of intellectual dishonesty and conformity and where intolerance is re-badged as tolerance.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/from-the-ski-lodge-to-the-sea-our-kids-will-never-be-free/
*****************************************************Moira Deemings fight to clear her name continues
The Victorian Liberals are unbelievably "wet"
Moira Deemings announcement that she intends to engage in legal action and lodge a defamation case against John Pesutto, Leader of the Victorian Liberal Party, is extremely disappointing. Not because of the road Ms Deeming has been forced to walk, but rather that the party leadership in Victoria cannot bring itself to apologise and retract the disgraceful comments made following the Let Women Speak rally.
Today we have politicians in state and federal Parliament in the Upper and Lower Houses brushing shoulders with terrorist sympathisers and crowds that routinely refer to themselves as the New Nazis. These are individuals who shout thinly-veiled threats of genocide against the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, and who hold signs that make the handful of cosplaying neo-Nazis at the womens rally look like toddlers.
Let us not forget that those MPs standing with these pro-Palestinian protesters (who are undeniably also pro-Hamas a globally designated Islamic terror group), are aware of what is being chanted in the streets of Australia, including Gas the Jews! shouted on the steps of the Opera House for the whole world to hear.
Why do these MPs escape public shame? Why are they allowed to hide behind the meaningless banner of its complicated while Ms Deeming remains unable to clear her name from a gate-crashing incident that had nothing to do with her, the Let Women Speak rally, or any of the women attending?
What happened to the left-wing mob that marched on the street in support of women in Canberra why arent they marching for Ms Deeming?
Those left-wing feminists are too busy standing in solidarity with those whose heroes engaged in the mass rape, torture, and murder of Israeli women whose lives dont count.
We expect the feminists and the left-wing mobs to lack moral integrity but shame on the Victorian Liberals, and Mr Pesutto personally, for carrying on with this piece of political theatre against Ms Deeming.
This is a Liberal Party that desperately needs rescuing from its sopping wet LINO agenda that has left it as little more than Labors doormat where they clean their shoes on the way to the halls of power.
If Mr Pesutto was not unelectable before, he will now enter a new era of ridicule and infamy fighting for what, exactly? What does the Liberal Party have to gain from this? Even if they were to win? A victory against Ms Deeming would be a victory for Labor. No conservative would vote for a party that strings up its conservative women for no reason at all.
Its astonishing that such a tragic script could be taking place in the post-#MeToo world where Labor spent an entire election cycle arguing that the Liberals had a women problem. Mr Pesuttos Victorian Liberals have a women problem. They also have a sanity problem.
Missing the point, Mr Pesutto said: The issue has always been whether Ms Deeming called out or distanced herself from neo-Nazi protesters and references when asked to do so by senior Liberals. I will vigorously defend the Liberal Party and myself in any proceedings and will not be asking the party to cover any legal fees.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/moira-deemings-fight-to-clear-her-name-continues/
************************************27 November, 2023
Widespread costs of living shocks
I am one of the older generation who are not much affected by the crisis. We usually own our own homes so have no rent to pay and have built up savings through a lifetime of work.
But the reports below do bother me and I wonder what I could do to help. I already provide ultra-cheap rental accomodation to four people but I will have to think of doing more
Just about everywhere you look, there are worsening signs that Australia is no longer the lucky country for just about all of us.
Just about everywhere you look, there are worsening signs that Australia is no longer the lucky country.
From record-high rents to skyrocketing mortgages, a cost-of-living crisis to the alarming emergence of a working poor population, the country faces an unprecedented storm of factors putting pressure on millions of people.
And very few Aussies are immune.
Were seeing a new demographic of people turning to charities for support over the past 18 months, a spokesperson for St Vincent de Paul Society in New South Wales said.
It has been very concerning to see a growing number of people in employment and families on dual incomes reaching out in a time of desperation because of the cost of living.
Whether paying a mortgage or renting, working for someone or running a business, earning a little or making a lot, this is a startling look at just how tough things are right now.
Skipping meals or not eating at all
An estimated 3.7 million households are battling serious levels of food insecurity, not-for-profit Food Bank revealed in its 2023 Hunger Report.
Food insecurity describes the need to make unenviable choices about what and when they eat such as skipping meals or going whole days without eating.
Foodbanks research shows an extra 383,000 households are grappling with food insecurity than a year ago.
More than a third of the population more than the total number of households in Melbourne and Sydney combine are having to compromise their meal choices, the organisation said.
The proportion of Aussies who are experiencing some level of distress in meeting the most basic needs when it comes to putting food on the table is racing towards 50 per cent.
Food insecurity is waking early and sending your child off to school with a rumbling tummy and empty lunch box because youve been forced into an impossible choice between paying the rent or buying food that week, Foodbank chief executive Brianna Casey said.
Food insecurity is living at home alone as a pensioner, convincing yourself that three meals a day is a luxury, and that two or even one will suffice.
Food insecurity is rushing to the fruit platter at a working lunch in the office because fresh fruit and vegetables have become a treat, rather than a dietary staple.
Food insecurity is now having a mortgage, a full-time job and a side hustle, yet food is a discretionary spend in the household budget.
Cutting dangerous corners
As the country brazes for a particularly hot summer, the Australian Council of Social Services warns vulnerable households will go without cooling as a result of cost pressures.
An ACOSS survey released in October shows 74 per cent of people on income supports are slashing spending on cooling, while 62 per cent are cutting back on the use of lighting.
As we head into a summer of extreme heat, the federal government needs to deliver a substantial package to urgently address energy affordability for people on low incomes, ACOSS program director of climate and energy, Kellie Caught, said.
Energy is an essential service, one which has serious implications for peoples health and wellbeing.
Meanwhile, a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data release shows seven per cent of people who needed to see a doctor in the 12 months to June delayed the visit or didnt go at all because of cost-of-living pressures.
This was double the number compared to 2021-22, when 3.5 per cent of people put off or did not see a GP when they needed because of the cost, Robert Long, head of health statistics at the ABS, said.
One-in-five people delayed or avoided seeking mental health treatment because of the cost, while 10.5 per cent of patients needing to see a specialist didnt due to price pressures.
There was also an increase in people who delayed or didnt get prescription medication when needed due to cost, from 5.6 per cent in 2021-22 to 7.6 per cent in 2022-23, Mr Long said.
Crushed by mortgage repayments
Since the Reserve Bank began hiking interest rates back in May last year, the cost of meeting repayments on the average size mortgage has soared.
Those with a home loan balance of $590,000 the national average are forking out $1345 more per month, or an extra $16,140 per year.
Thats a huge amount of extra money to be spending on your mortgage, especially when the cost of almost everything else is also going up, Graham Cooke, head of consumer research at finance comparison website finder.com.au said.
Even if those huge increases were happening in isolation, rates of distress would be high, but with a cost-of-living crisis on top, countless Aussies are now up against the wall.
Martin North is the principal of economic research firm Digital Finance Analytics and tracks household cash flows, with data indicating more than half of mortgage holders are in cash-flow deficit each month.
That is, half of all mortgage households are now spending more than they earn every month.
Looking in detail, we find that recent purchasers, especially young growing families, are most exposed, Mr North said.
Many bought when mortgage rates were sitting around two per cent, and when then-RBA Governor Philip Lowe assured people the official cash rate would likely remain on hold until 2024.
It didnt. Home loan rates are now sitting at about six per cent.
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Aussie homeowners warned perfect storm to hit as insurance is cut from budgets
This is a real problem. Recent natural disasters have cost insurace companies big so they have to allow for such big costs in the future. And increased premiums are the only way to do that. My home insurance has trebled in recent times. I can afford that but many can't. So they risk losing everything
Homeowners are crossing their fingers as the cost of living crisis has more Aussies cutting insurance from their budgets.
The increased frequency of extreme climate events, inflation, and Australians love for urbanisation in places most likely to be hit by weather have created a perfect storm in insurance markets.
Insurance Council of Australia chief Andrew Hall painted the grim picture during an address to the National Press Club on Thursday.
He said the difficult choice to forgo insurance or to be underinsured was creating a protection gap the extent to which potential economic losses are not covered by private insurance.
Its the difference between what should or needs to be insured and what isnt insured, he said.
Many Australians have tried to maintain cover but Mr Hall said the risk was greatest in areas where the threat of high natural peril risk is driving the biggest increases in premiums.
As the protection gap widens there will be serious implications. The first is the additional vulnerability that households and families, particularly middle and lower-income earners, will face if the worst happens.
It means that when disasters and accidents occur, they disproportionately up-end the lives of people particularly in vulnerable lower socio-economic groups.
As a result, he warned, taxpayers will be carrying more additional risk to clean up after a disaster and more pressure on the governments coffers.
Banks will also be increasingly exposed.
A recent report by the Actuaries Institute suggested nearly one in eight Australian households is facing home insurance affordability stress.
Since the Black Summer bushfires in 2019, Australia has experienced 18, as Mr Hall described, insurance catastrophes.
Last year alone, the insurance industry in Australia paid 302,000 disaster related claims, which caused more than $7.25bn in insured losses, Mr Hall said.
The ICA boss said proper mitigation was key and pointed to an example of premiums dropping by on average 34 per cent in Roma, Queensland after the construction of a flood levee.
He also urged for a further strengthening of the National Construction Code to make homes more durable for the environment where theyre built.
Mr Hall welcomed the call from national cabinet to stop putting homes on flood plains.
All too often, we have built our homes in places where we can touch and feel and absorb nature in bushland, on river frontages, and backing on to beaches, he said.
But in so doing, we have put ourselves on flood plains, in fire-prone bushland, or coastal areas in direct paths of cyclones.
We have ignored the red flags of nature.
He also urged state governments to wipe the 10 per cent stamp duties on insurance customers.
If insurance policies for houses or cars did not exist, or were priced out of reach, then the population would demand it of the government.
For the sake of our future protection and productivity, Australian governments at the state and Federal level must have an eye on reform of insurance taxes.
There is a clear opportunity here to think about how to incentivise states to lower their insurance taxes to ensure more people have the private cover that will protect.
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Stunning far-right victory as smug elites crowed too soon
Hollands hard-right new leader Geert Wilders victory has exposed an issue that Australia needs to learn from
Joe Hildebrand
The shock victory of Geert Wilders' far-right eurosceptic party in Dutch elections sent a political tremor through Brussels, seven months ahead of crucial EU elections.
It is an inherent characteristic of social and political elites that they treat populists with either fear or scorn: Scorn when they are considered unthreatening and fear when the threat inevitably becomes real.
But what is most remarkable about this cycle indeed the very reason it is a cycle is that our supposed intellectual betters keep making this same mistake over and over again.
They dismiss the fears of ordinary people as ignorant or prejudicial and then are stunned when those fears manifest in the form of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, Brazils Jair Bolsonaro or Argentinas Javier Milei, Italys Georgia Meloni or Hollands Geert Wilders.
The list could go on forever.
While the cure-alls typically prescribed by such leaders are often simplistic and sometimes downright silly, the problems they highlight and the anxieties they tap into are both visceral and real.
Yet there is a lazy and self-defeating habit among the political establishment to think that once they have dispatched such leaders they have eliminated those problems and anxieties along with them.
Of course they havent and so of course such leaders rise again or a newcomer rides in on a similar wave of discontent.
No lesson could be starker than the resurgence of Donald Trump. Despite almost every single political and institutional force being applied against him including a resounding election loss, complicity in an insurrection, the prospect of imprisonment and almost unanimous mainstream media opposition Trump is currently probably odds-on to beat Biden even if he ends up beating him from a jail cell.
How is this possible? An obvious factor is Bidens fumbling incoherence but the true genesis goes back to before Biden was even sworn in.
How many smug elites political operatives, academic experts, media commentators and social media activists shamelessly crowed after the 2020 election that Biden had won the highest ever Presidential vote in US history. The nightmare was over, they said.
Less mentioned was that the second highest ever Presidential vote in US history went to Donald J Trump millions above his shock 2016 result.
And while all the anti-Trump votes were an unprecedented coalition that stretched uncomfortably from Romney Republicans to Sanders socialists, all the pro-Trump votes were just for him.
Anyone with half a brain or a grain of understanding would instantly realise the gravity of that political mass, the latent potential energy primed to be unleashed. Instead the champagne socialists were popping their corks, thinking the beast had been slain.
They could not have been more wrong. To paraphrase a prayer once recited about another messiah, Trump has died, Trump has risen, Trump will come again.
So what does this mean for Australia?
Aside from the likely uncertainty, possible carnage and definite entertainment that will result from Trump retaking control of our greatest ally there is a threat to our own internal stability.
Australians are at breaking point. We have absorbed a steady tsunami of rate rises over the past year or so but the latest Cup Day hike and the threat of more to come after a pause in which we dared to hope the worst was over is a significant blow to the nations psyche, let alone its hip pocket.
Citizens have thus far given goodwill to a genuine government in tough times but there is a palpable sense at servos and supermarkets that the mood has gone from stoic to stressed.
Charities like Foodbank, Salvos, Vinnies increasingly and repeatedly report mainstream middle-class families with one or even two full-time workers reaching out for the first time just to put food on the table.
Worse still, it is an invisible epidemic, cloaked by pride. The lawns might be immaculate but there is nothing in the fridge.
Faced with such crisis and anxiety people will turn anywhere and to anyone who offers them salvation, be it real or imagined.
This might be cutting fuel tax or cutting immigration, which the government has so far been reluctant to do for legitimate long-term reasons.
But long-term is a luxury that few Australians can now afford. Many are at a precipice and many more have the clifftop accelerating into sight.
The increasingly comical attempts to blame Peter Dutton for all the nations woes do nothing to alleviate this.
Instead the government needs to face the facts and fix them. And if it cant fix them as may be the cold hard economic reality it needs to at least look like its fixing them in order to give punters some temporary respite and a much-needed dose of hope. Sometimes simple solutions are needed even when they dont fully solve the problem.
To this end it is time for the government to cut the petrol tax. Howard did it, Morrison did it, Albanese can do it. It will not only provide some short term relief to battlers but also send a message that the Labor government listens to and cares about working Australians.
And in turbulent times that message is more important than ever.
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The kids broken by lockdown: How Australia's gruelling stay-at-home orders during Covid have left an entire generation of schoolchildren 'too anxious' to go outside
The implications of Australia's harsh Covid lockdowns during the pandemic are now threatening 'end the lives' of students left too anxious and afraid to go to school.
Melbourne had the longest pandemic lockdowns in the world and the city has become the epicentre of a new condition known as 'school refusal'.
Year 10 student Sarah Turner, 16, is one of those deeply affected by the Covid lockdowns in Melbourne, missing 50 per cent of school in the past two years.
'It wasn't until the lockdowns where we were at home a lot that I started not wanting to go out and find, getting really anxious about going out,' she told 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Gabby, a 13-year-old boy who also lives in Melbourne, is another child affected by this and often he just can't face the idea of going to school.
Mental health social worker John Chellew's clinic treating children with a dread fear of going to school, and their families, has never been busier. 'I'm dealing with children who have pretty much shut down and gone on strike and who are locked in their bedrooms and there's massive conflict in the home,' he said.
The situation can sometimes lead to horrifying, desperate thoughts. 'Children have lost the will to live and are really threatening to end their lives,' Mr Chellew said.
It's not that the children have lost the desire to be educated, it's that the overwhelming anxiety they feel has led to them refusing to go to school.
Sarah used to love school. 'I was very outgoing and did a lot of things before the lockdowns,' she said. But things changed. 'It felt like it was kind of impossible to go to school. It wasn't like a choice kind of thing. It was like, I just felt like I physically couldn't go for this fear,' she said. 'I feel faint and sick and weak and I get heart racing and shaking and stuff like that.
'Some of my hardest days I'd just be having panic attacks all morning and I couldn't, like, move or I'd get, even if I'd get to school in the car, I couldn't get out or I'd get out and I just felt like frozen.'
There is no one type of child affected by the condition. 'It's an issue that affects kids aged five through to 17 school age from all walks of life and from neurodiverse and neurotypical backgrounds,' Mr Chellew said.
Gabby's parents, Christel and Gabor try to keep to their cool on days when he can't face school.
His dad explained what the worst scenario is for them. 'I'll drive him (to school) but he goes into like a really bad case of anxiety, I guess. 'He bangs his head against the seat and it's, yeah, it's not a good experience.'
Though Gabby tries his best to do his schoolwork from home, it has affected his grades.
Sarah understands what Gabby goes through - sometimes she just finds the idea of going to school unbearable. 'A lot of people just telling me to push through and just do it, or a lot of accusations that it's just because I don't wanna go,' she said.
'I would say that they don't know actually what it's like, and it's a lot more physical than you think. 'It's very isolating and it stops you from actually doing things you want and it's not like you don't want to do it.'
The number of students so ridden with anxiety they can't go to school has grown substantially in recent years.
By some estimates, one in three families with school aged children are affected by it.
Sarah's mum, Kirsty, is happy that school refusal is now being openly discussed and is no longer being treated as a made-up issue with straightforward treatment.
But it has changed the Turner family's life. 'It's been a full time job sort of over and above normal parenting,' she said.
'I haven't been able to go back to work. I was pretty much a 24/7 carer besides just being her normal mum and you know, became a bit of a mind coach for her as well at times.'
She said people who tell her to just drop Sarah at the school gate and drive away simply don't understand.
'I think we're talking about a whole generation of young people here that have fallen behind, and I think the impacts will stay with them unless we do something about this quickly,' she said.
Slowly, but surely, though, things are getting better for both Sarah and Gabby.
'I'm making a lot of progress,' Sarah said. She has been going to school more lately, which she said has made her 'very proud'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12792247/Covid-lockdowns-schoolchildren-anxious.html
*************************************************Labor takes on Greens over gas with deal to add supply, lower price
Australians will be promised a boost to gas supply in a Labor move to ease pressure on energy prices, setting up a test for the Coalition and the Greens to back the federal changes or be blamed for deepening the nations cost-of-living crisis.
The federal government will reveal two energy deals to fix a looming gas shortage under an industry regime the Greens are seeking to block, raising the stakes in a Senate vote on Monday on the countrys reliance on fossil fuels.
In a spate of domestic policy moves, the government is also poised to announce a deal to increase environmental flows in the Murray-Darling river system, claim a $250 million consumer saving from its changes to medicine prescriptions and unveil draft law to reform the Reserve Bank.
Parliament meets on Monday for the final sitting fortnight of the year with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seeking a focus on domestic policy after arguments with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton over China, the release of detainees from indefinite detention and the response to conflict in the Middle East.
With retail energy prices rising, the government has been under pressure to boost gas supplies using the code it introduced this year to fix prices at $12 per gigajoule and force producers to meet local demand, in tandem with separate restrictions on coal.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has struck deals with gas exporters Senex and Australia Pacific LNG to divert 300 petajoules to the domestic market over the next six years, with both commitments starting this month.
The gas will be supplied under enforceable undertakings that exempt Senex and APLNG from the price cap but expose them to action by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission if they do not meet their pledges.
With about 140 petajoules promised by the end of 2027 under the new deals, the outcome initially adds 35 petajoules to the domestic market on average every year. The ACCC estimates household, commercial and industrial demand adds up to 447 petajoules each year.
The Greens are seeking to halt the gas code by moving a motion in the Senate to disallow the regulations Bowen put in place in July, which will force Labor to rely on the Coalition to keep the code in place. The Coalition voted against the legislation to set up the regime last December, making the disallowance motion on the code another test of its stance.
Greens treasury spokesperson Nick McKim has welcomed measures to cut prices but accused the government of encouraging new gas fields to be developed under the code.
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Make masculinity great again
By Australian libertarian Senator Ralph Babet
Sunday was International Mens Day but blink and you would have missed it. International Womens Day (March 8) is always marked by widespread celebrations of female achievement. LGBTQ people get a whole month in June to promote Pride, as well as half of February and March which is given over to coverage of events related to Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Men, however, who are, after all, half the human race, get one day.
The International Mens Day website says the day celebrates worldwide the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities, highlights positive role models, and raises awareness of mens well-being.
Sunday (November 19) was International Mens Day but there was precious little positivity. In part, that was because the theme for 2023 was Zero Male Suicide. There is no doubt that male suicide is an extremely serious problem. Over three-quarters of all Australians who take their lives are male and while the female suicide rate decreased in 2022 by 2 per cent compared with 2021, for men it increased by 3 per cent. Unfortunately, the main media coverage was an interview on the ABC which which didnt celebrate mens achievements or the positive contribution they make to humanity. Rather, it put the spotlight on the high rate of male suicide.
The failure to celebrate male achievement is perhaps one reason why too many men feel down but its not the only problem. There is a relentless attack on so-called toxic masculinity. Yet heres the thing. While there is no doubt some male behaviour is toxic, so too is some female behaviour, and, for that matter, some LGBTQ behaviour. No sex or gender has a monopoly on behaving badly but it is masculinity that is under constant attack.
Indeed, the Albanese federal Labor government recently announced $3.5 million in funding for what it calls the healthy masculinities project. The goal of the project is supposedly to help combat harmful gender stereotypes perpetuated online. A government media release claims that 25 per cent of teenage boys in Australia look up to social media stars who perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and condone violence against women.
But you wont find the government admitting that some cultures have more toxic masculinity than others. Labor, the Greens, and the left-leaning independents refused to have a Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Indigenous communities because they cant bring themselves to face the reality that there is a higher rate of sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. So its not surprising that there was no mention in the media release on healthy masculinities that Indigenous communities suffer higher rates of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Theres another problem men face. When it comes to sexual allegations, the #MeToo movement has reversed the onus of proof. Men are assumed to be guilty until they prove themselves to be innocent. In the US, Brett Kavanaugh, who is now serving as a Justice of the Supreme Court, was dragged through the mud in the court of public opinion about uncorroborated, decades-old sexual allegations.
In reality, the governments healthy masculinities program is unlikely to address real instances of toxic behaviour and instead, waste taxpayer money emasculating and gaslighting healthy young men and promoting the idea that you have to be a woke left soy boy and apologise if you happen to be white or straight.
Teenage boys should be mentored by their parents and the government should do everything they can to support the family including tax arrangements that permit income-splitting to allow mums to stay home when children are small and to work part-time as children grow up.
If Labor is serious about helping families it has to address the cost-of-living crisis that is putting far too many of them under financial stress. One way to do that is to abandon its crazy climate change policies that are pointlessly driving up the cost of energy and driving Australian jobs offshore to places like China that are building new coal-fired power plants every week.
If the Labor Party is genuinely worried about teenage boys following poor gender stereotypes online then it should seriously address the elephant in the room which is the number of teenage boys that grow up without a father in their home. There is a mountain of evidence showing that too many of these boys are more likely to commit crimes.
This is not so surprising. Its only in recent times that we have been crazy enough to imagine that we can raise a fatherless generation and outsource parenting to the nanny state with teenage boys mentored by far-left activists.
There are no easy answers for single parents, just a role for extended families, and church and youth groups to provide healthy male role models and create opportunities for teenage boys to meet together for face-to-face sport and recreation rather than spending their lives glued to screens playing video games.
Unfortunately, Labors healthy masculinities project is unlikely to help. It is more likely to create gender confused, non-binary they/thems than happy, healthy, strong, confident young men.
It is undeniable that weak men create hard times and we are seeing this play out in Canberra as the Albanese government flounders its way through its first term. It is too weak to solve the cost-of-living crisis. It is too weak to address the crisis created by criminals gaming the refugee system. It is too weak to set a sensible immigration level that wont put homeownership out of the reach of young Australians.
Perhaps thats why Labor has funded a project that will make young men weak. Perhaps it wants men who wont stand up for themselves when the state overreaches as it did during the pandemic, men who wont fight for their rights and push back against authoritarianism, men who wont defend their families, their faith, their culture, their nation.
We need boys to be proud of their masculinity just like we need Australians to be proud of their country. The good news is that while weak men like Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese create hard times, it is just as true that hard times create strong men, and strong men create good times. Thats what we aim to do at the United Australia party. So, sound the starting gun because with your help at the next election, were going to make masculinity and Australia great again.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/make-masculinity-great-again/
****************************************************26 November, 2023
Heretic grandmother banned by Tasmanian Anglican bishop
There is no doubt that the woman is heretical: She defies the absurd Trinity doctrine. But her rebellion is against the hierarchy, not the Bible. The Bible is thoroughly on her side. Jesus said "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28) and he prayed to God (Matthew 26:39). If he was God, who was he praying to?
I can only hope that she manages to form a study group of others who respect what the Bible says
A 72-year-old grandmother and devoted Christian has been labelled a dangerous heretic and banned from Anglican churches upon pain of police action, after a disagreement over theology with Tasmanias bishop.
Former nurse Sue Carlyons exclusion confirmed in writing was ordered by Bishop Richard Condie over differences in interpretation of scripture that Christians have been debating for millennia.
Dr Condie has expelled the churchgoer over her view that God did not die on the cross, only Jesus as a man and son of God.
Ms Carlyon, who voluntarily cleaned at her parish church, believes firmly in her interpretation, arguing it helps her and others aspire to be more like Jesus.
She has published a short book explaining her interpretation.
The grandmother of five sent a copy to Dr Condie, seeking his views, and was later invited by the bishop to meet him to discuss it.
At this meeting on November 2, Dr Condie informed her she would be banned from her parish church, in Kingston, south of Hobart, and all Anglican churches in Tasmania.
Dr Condie confirmed the ban in writing on November 7, telling Ms Carlyon her book contains significant dangerous heresy and she would be allowed to return only if she retrieved and destroyed every available copy and publicly repented.
To claim Jesus was not God when he died on the cross does not accord with orthodox teaching in any Christian tradition, undermines the doctrine of the Trinity and the efficacy of Jesus death for sin, Dr Condie wrote.
He said her position undermines peoples confidence in Christ and she had continued to ignore directives not to distribute the book. I am left with no other option that to forbid you from attending any Anglican church in Tasmania, he said. This includes Sunday services or visiting the church through the week.
Ms Carlyon was told by Dr Condie: If you do attend (any church), I will be instructing the ministers to have you removed from the property by the police.
A survivor of domestic violence and family abuse, Ms Carlyon said she was truly devastated by the ban. I thought I was settled in this church, I had made some nice connections and its a very active church with a lot of functions, she said. I find it exhausting to be contending with this at my age.
To expect me to make a public declaration of repentance is just ridiculous its from the dark ages.
She would have preferred the bishop hold a group discussion. There would have been others who would have fully supported what Im saying, she said.
The bishop had bullied her, Ms Carlyon said. He was using bullyboy tactics he was like a dog with a bone.
He wanted me to cave in and apologise and be submissive and repentive. But it wouldnt be true if I had given in. As one of my sons said, Its just as well they cant burn you at the stake.
Ms Carlyon said she was considering seeking legal advice or appealing to the Anglican Primate.
Dr Condie said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on a matter of private discipline.
Ms Carlyons book argues: If God had died on the cross at Calvary, the world would have ended because of the fact that God is the ultimate source of life, and life is only sustained because of God. It is understood that Jesus died once He surrendered His spirit to God, His Father.
However, others argue God died on the cross in the human form he had assumed in Jesus, and that his divine form did not and cannot die.
Ms Carlyon believed seeing Jesus as God when he died, rather than a man and son of God, distorts peoples understanding of who God is, who Jesus is, what lifes about.
If were true to the scriptures in the New Testament, theres nothing in it that says Jesus was God, so its an interpretation by church elders that, as Richard Condie said, took them 300 years to work out, she said.
They have over-intellectualised and theorised it and come out with a dogma that doesnt align with the scriptures.
Dr Condie said Ms Carylons views were an extremely serious matter as they undermined the good news that people could turn to Jesus for forgiveness for their sins.
The Bible teaches that Jesus died to take the full punishment for the sins of humanity so that anyone who turns to him can be forgiven, Dr Condie said.
To satisfy Gods own just requirement, it is necessary that he be the one to provide the sacrifice for sin, which he did in the person of the divine Jesus Christ.
In 2017, Ms Carlyons parish priest, Peter Adlem, gave her a reference expressing no concerns about Sues Christian faith and praising her bold witness and obvious love and concern for others.
Dr Condie is no stranger to controversy, with some Anglicans concerned about his key role in the anti-gay marriage Anglican breakaway Southern Cross, his sale of churches, and what some see as the spread of evangelism at the expense of high Anglicanism.
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Excess mortality and Covid vaccination: is there a correlation?
Since the introduction of Covid vaccines, the official narrative in Australia (and other parts of the world) is that these vaccines are safe, efficacious, and working well. However, this claim is considered to be untrue, as demonstrated by both the science and the statistics.
There is compelling evidence that the official narrative promoted by politicians and health bureaucracies, and enforced by politicised police forces, is misleading and even irresponsible in the light of the demonstrable side-effects of mRNA vaccines.
The Australian government effectively treated any reasonable concern about the safety of Covid vaccines as a form of domestic terrorism. From 2017 to 2022, the Department of Home Affairs petitioned social media sites to censor information about these matters no less than 13,646 times. This included suppressed Covid posts from doctors who disagreed with, or even questioned, official public health and vaccine information.
Especially egregious was the admonishment and de-registration of Australian medical doctors who attempted to provide vaccine exemptions or prescribe alternative medicine to alleviate or prevent Covid. The conclusion taken from the collective authoritarian decisions is that medical choice is no longer a prerogative of the doctor-patient relationship in Australia, said Robert Clancy AM, a clinical immunologist and emeritus professor of medicine.
We now know that mRNA vaccines prevent neither infection nor transmission of the Covid virus. For example, a recent study by Cleveland clinic researchers concluded that people who received two or more doses of the vaccine were more likely to get infected with Covid. They found that, among 48,344 working-aged clinic employees, those not up-to-date on vaccination had a lower risk of Covid than those up-to-date.
If a vaccine fails to stop disease transmission, then the idea that you need to vaccinate other people so that Im protected is just false, said Dr Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine and health research and policy at Stanford University.
To make it worse, a comprehensive comparative research analysis has found that Covid vaccines are directly associated with the disturbing rise in the mortality rate among countries of the Southern Hemisphere.
Denis Rancourt is a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. Maurine Baudin has a PhD in microbiology from the Universit Paris Sud (Paris XI). Joseph Hickey is a data research scientist with a PhD in Physics. Jrmie Mercier is a chemist and health educator with a PhD in environmental research. Together these researchers have recently produced an empirical research paper entitled Covid vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere.
17 countries were studied by these researchers: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, and Uruguay). Together these countries comprise 9.10 per cent of worldwide population and 10.3 per cent of worldwide Covid vaccinations (vaccination rate of 1.91 injections per persons, all ages) through virtually every vaccine type and manufacturer.
According to these researchers, All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable date for detecting and epidemiologically characterising events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause. In these 17 countries, they found no evidence of any beneficial effect of Covid vaccination on all-cause mortality, nor any proportional reduction in the mortality rate. On the contrary, the opposite is true.
In that research paper, the authors also showed that every country with sufficient mortality data (Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, and Uruguay) invariably exhibited an unprecedented and relatively sharp peak or surge in all-ages deaths during or after January-February 2022, which was synchronous with or immediately preceded by a rapid rollout of a Covid vaccine booster, dose 3 or 4, depending on the country.
Regarding the evidence provided in support of causality and toxicity, the authors of this research paper include examples where no detectable excess mortality occurred until the vaccines were rolled out, thus concluding that it is well-established that Covid vaccine injections have caused and are likely to cause the deaths of individuals. These researchers, in their own words:
have found no evidence in [their] extensive research on ACM [All-deaths Cause Mortality] that Covid vaccines had any beneficial effect. If vaccines prevented transmission, infection or serious illness, then there should have been decreases in mortality following vaccine rollouts, not increases which were observed in every elderly group subject to rapid booster rollouts. And, mortality would not have increased solely when vaccines were rolled out, where no excess mortality occurred prior to vaccine rollouts, as we have documented in 9 countries across 3 continents.
These researchers previously reported several instances in which anomalous peaks in all-cause mortality appear to be associated with rapid Covid vaccine-dose rollouts, as well as instances where the start of the vaccination campaign coincided with a new period of sustained elevated mortality. These are countries in which, for approximately one year after the WHOs 11 March 2020 declaration of a pandemic, there were no net extra deaths that could be attributed to a pandemic or to pandemic-response medical or government measures.
Since the excess mortality in these countries occurred only after vaccine rollouts, the authors conclude that these vaccines certainly did not reduce serious illness (as claimed by manufacturers) enough to reduce any risk of death. On the contrary, according to them, there is strong evidence for a causal correlation between rapid first-doses and booster rollouts and immediate peaks in all-cause mortality, including peaks of mortality in seasonal cycles when peaks never occur. These findings appear to be conclusive and indicate that such vaccines lead to the deaths of individuals, which the researchers then remind us has already been demonstrated by:
Many detailed autopsy studies (reference provided)
Adverse effect monitoring (reference provided)
Studies of vaccine-induced pathologies (reference provided)
An established causal link to vaccine-induced pathology, by histopathology and immunohistochemical staining of skin biopsy specimens (reference provided)
Secondary analysis of serious adverse events reported in placebo-controlled, industry phase III randomised clinical trials (reference provided)
More than 1,250 peer-reviewed publications about Covid vaccine adverse effects (reference provided)
The known vaccine injury compensation programs of states worldwide, which include death resulting from the Covid vaccines (reference provided)
All 17 countries in their comparative research analysis had transition regimes of high all-cause mortality after the vaccines were deployed and administered. Accordingly, unprecedented peaks occurred precisely in January-February of 2022, which are synchronous with rapid booster-dose rollouts of Covid vaccination. The clearest example provided is the sharp all-cause mortality peak occurring in January-February 2022 in Australia, which is concomitant with the rapid rollout of dose 3 of the vaccine in the country.
Like Australia, countries such as Chile and Peru had a sharp all-cause death peak occurring over that same period, which is concomitant with the rapid rollout of Chiles dose 4 and Perus dose 3 of the vaccine. In fact, the authors found the same phenomenon everywhere that data was available, thus making these findings rather conclusive. There can be little doubt that the mass Covid vaccination campaigns caused the temporally associated excess mortality in the 17 countries of the present study, and in other countries studied to date. Accordingly, There occurs an onset or increase of a large excess ACM on rolling out the Covid vaccines, in every country and state or province, studied to date, on virtually all continents, including for initial rollouts
Rancourt et al are therefore satisfied that the information available extensively demonstrates that Covid vaccines can cause death and that they did not save lives. On the contrary, these vaccines appear to be lethal toxic agents with a high degree of certainty. This leads the authors to state that adverse-effect monitoring, clinical trial reports, and death-certificate statistics have greatly underestimated the fatal toxicity of Covid vaccines.
These concerns are too serious to ignore. The suspicion that some people have been misled about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines has been further strengthened by the empirical data. The potential for severe injury by these vaccines is a matter that deserves more serious reflection. None were more instrumental in causing this tragedy than the Australian government and their loyal mouthpieces in the media. According to Professor Clancy,
The media has a concerning role in the propagation of misinformation, preferring to support an ideologic narrative, rather than to engage in responsible journalism. Misinformation driven by pharmaceutical companies to protect their vaccines, and strongly reinforced by academic, government and health authorities, leads to many unnecessary hospital admissions and deaths.
So, the question is: Have the Australian governments and the mainstream media colluded in order to ensure an increase in Big Pharmas corporate profits, which however, does not prioritise the protection of public health?
Be that as it may, it is increasingly difficult to hide the fact that people have died from these vaccines. The tragic consequences of mandatory vaccination are now all too visible in our society.
Above all, we are convinced that it is important to open up this type of conversation, lift the media suppression, and eliminate the muzzling and penalties imposed on those with alternate views or with a desire to promote further discussion. Then society will have to work out the issues of blame and penalties.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/excess-mortality-and-covid-vaccination-is-there-a-correlation
***************************************************Labors asylum-seeker headache lands in WA as arrivals sent to Nauru
The 12 asylum-seekers apprehended by Australian Border Force officials in Western Australia on Wednesday have been flown to Nauru.
After initial processing in Darwin, the 12 individuals have been confirmed as unauthorised maritime arrivals.
The Australian understands they will remain in Nauru awaiting regional processing, which is consistent with Operation Sovereign Borders protocols that have been in place for more than a decade.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says Anthony Albanese has given people smugglers a green light to resume operations, warning the governments dismantling of Operation Sovereign Borders could see people drown at sea and kids end up back in detention.
Mr Dutton, a former immigration and home affairs minister who oversaw Operation Sovereign Borders, on Friday accused the Prime Minister of a catastrophic failure after a vessel made landfall in Western Australia.
Attacking the government for not providing details about the group who arrived by boat on an isolated and rugged stretch of the Kimberley coastline, Mr Dutton said this is the tenth venture (since Labor won the election) and the public is not hearing a lot about it at the moment.
The Albanese government dismantles Operation Sovereign Borders and the boats restart. Under this Prime Minister, he stops the economy but he starts the boats, Mr Dutton told Ray Hadley on 2GB.
The people smugglers have worked out theres a Prime Minister whos weak and doesnt have the ability to stand up to people smuggling and the human tragedy if it starts again. People drown at sea and kids end up back in detention. Its exactly what Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd did.
After the government abolished Coalition-era temporary protection visas and watered-down other immigration enforcement powers, which Mr Dutton says creates a pull-factor for people smugglers, the Liberal leader warned theres a greater likelihood that these people now stay.
If you come from Afghanistan or Iran or other countries where the Albanese government determines you cant be returned to, then the people smugglers are going to market that, he said.
(The people smugglers will) say jump on the boat because look at whats happened with the High Court, you can get an outcome in Australia which means you might be in immigration detention for a few months, or even a couple of years, but eventually youll get back out into the community and youll be given a permanent visa.
Thats exactly what the government has created. Its a huge mess and its a pull factor for these people smugglers who are selling their wares again. Tragically, people drown at sea as a result, you dont know who is coming into our country and the Prime Minister has sent all of the wrong messages and signals from the first day he was elected.
After the Albanese government was last week forced by the Coalition into rushing through emergency powers legislation in response to a High Court ruling on indefinite detention, Mr Dutton said Australians were shaking their heads at this government at the moment.
Its just not the action of a competent government and I think the training wheels (are) well and truly falling off this Prime Minister and I think a lot of people are really shaking their heads as to how the Prime Minister could put Australians at risk the way that he is currently.
There are now 340 more people it seems that can get out into the community and the government has no answers.
Mr Dutton said the government had since June to deal with this matter and they came into the parliament saying you cant pass legislation, were just bound by the High Court decision.
Then as it turns out you can pass legislation but they wrote the legislation overnight in a very hasty fashion and if that is the way they conduct themselves then they leave themselves open to greater legal risk.
If youve got a competent minister and a competent Prime Minister they take the lead, they have a national security committee discussion to iron out all these problems. The government just hasnt done that because people like Andrew Giles and Clare ONeil and other people from the hard left of the Labor Party dont believe that these people should be in immigration detention.
So, theyre happy to hide behind the outcome of the court and say we tried, we couldnt do anything weve got to release these people, thats in accordance to their human rights needs.
And they completely and utterly forget about the victims and future victims of some of these individuals.
Hitting back at Mr Dutton, Home Affairs Minister Clare ONeil told The Australian that national security is the first priority of our government.
Ms ONeil accused Mr Dutton of being a reckless politician who will do and say anything to score political points even if it puts the national security of Australians at risk.
As security agencies have repeatedly warned, inflammatory language has a direct link to increased risk of violence. Everyone in our parliament needs to consider the impact that their language will have, Ms ONeil said.
Our government is careful and deliberate about how we discuss national security issues and especially operational matters. No political objective should ever come before the security of our country and the integrity of the operations and agencies that protect us every day.
Whether its the conflict in the Middle East, tensions at home, Operation Sovereign Borders or even the highly sensitive security operations involved in individuals returning from conflict, theres nothing Peter Dutton wont use for his own political ends.
Education Minister Jason Clare on Friday said an investigation into the boat arrival was underway.
We dont comment on Operation Sovereign Borders matters. I just make the general point that if people seek to come to Australia by boat, the boat is either turned back, or people are returned to their country of origin, or theyre settled in a third country, Mr Clare said.
That was the position under the former government, its the same position under this government.
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Australias regulatory environment killing $91bn LNG industry, says Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher
Australias $91bn LNG export industry is being killed by regulatory ambiguity that has been used by opponents to hinder work on several gas developments and deterring much-needed inward investment, the chief executive of energy giant Santos has warned.
Environmental advocates have in recent months won a spate of legal victories to suspend work on new gas developments a tactic that has badly affected Santos especially.
The companys $5.3bn Barossa development has been hampered by two legal challenges that threaten the production timetables for a project that Santos has earmarked to fuel future growth.
Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher said the legal challenges have been permitted by regulatory ambiguity around who a company must consult and consider when developing environment plans, and that threatens Australias broader LNG market.
Nothing will drive investment away faster than this regulatory environment, Mr Gallagher said. The uncertainty is killing us.
The warning to Australias $91bn LNG export industry is the latest in a string of alarms raised by Australias gas industry, which has claimed legal-induced delays to projects will threaten local and regional energy security and inflame diplomatic tensions.
Nations in Asia that are energy resource poor notably Japan, Korea and China are major buyers of Australian LNG shipments and have moved to lock in supplies with co-investments in new projects.
But Australias perceived willingness to allow legal blocks to new developments had potentially dire consequences for the region. Japans former ambassador, Shingo Yamagami, said Australia in March was quiet quitting LNG.
Anthony Albanese insists his government understands the vital role of gas to the countrys $2.5tr economy but critics said its lack of urgency in limiting legal avenues to slow LNG developments indicates its commitment to the fuel source.
The federal government insists it will move on the issue, and earlier this month The Australian exclusively earlier revealed that Labor was considering narrowing the criteria about who must be consulted prior to works beginning, but any regulatory changes will not occur before late 2024.
The changes, however, will come too late to ease the legal burden on the Barossa project.
Drilling work at the Santos gas project in the Timor Sea has been suspended since 2022 after the Federal Court found the oil giant failed to consult local Indigenous people adequately on the development.
Adding to its woes, a second Federal Court ruled Santos could not complete works on an undersea pipeline until January 2024 at the earliest, following claims by a Tiwi Islands traditional owner Simon Munkara that the 262KM pipeline would cause irreparable harm to traditional owners connection to sea.
To resume drilling, Santos must receive approval from regulator NOPSEMA for its amended environment plan. Mr Gallagher said that if the company can resume operations by the end of the year then it can meet its timetable, but conceded delays and potential cost blowouts could occur if the company continues to await regulatory approval.
Further issues could also occur should the Federal Court rule in favour of Mr Munkara and Santos is forced to submit a new environmental plan.
The previous version of the plan, developed after Santos was barred from drilling, took more than a year to establish.
Mr Gallagher said Santos will vigorously defend itself at a hearing scheduled next month, but warned the company has little wriggle room left.
We had some contingency in the project, but that has largely all gone now, Mr Gallagher told investors.
The regulatory environment, Mr Gallagher said, will not only define the Barossa project but potential other investments that Santos could make in Australia.
It will be very difficult for us to take [final investment decision] on projects in Australia.
Mr Gallagher said the regulatory environment in Alaska and Papua New Guinea, where it is developing two other LNG projects, is far more amenable to further investment.
Santos has the option to progress its Dorado project in WA, but Mr Gallagher said the companys appetite for that investment would be limited without legislative changes.
Santos is under pressure to spur future growth, with a group of investors in October urging the company to split the business to create a single LNG entity to unlock share growth.
Mr Gallagher told investors he was frustrated with a stagnant share price, and the board would consider all proposals.
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Aussie with autism rips apart new driving fitness rules
An Aussie woman has delivered a hilarious reality check in response to changes to driving standards that leave her, and thousands of other drivers like her, in legal limbo.
For the first time, the 2022 Assessing Fitness to Drive standards have listed autism as a condition that should be assessed individually.
The guidelines are updated every few years by Austroads in conjunction with other groups and cover a range of medical conditions including diabetes, epilepsy and vision impairments.
They are written for health professionals who treat people with conditions that may impact their driving.
According to the guidelines, drivers with autism do not have to report their diagnosis automatically, however the overarching requirement is that a person with a condition that may impair safe driving will need to report and be assessed.
But, trouble is, each state and territory interprets the guidelines differently, making for a lot of confusion and some truly eye-watering fines and costs to stay within the new rules.
As a driver with autism, Melbourne mum-of-two Emily Geraghty was left dumbfounded by the changes.
The 27-year-old has amassed more than 99,000 followers on TikTok for her candid videos that share her experience with a neurodivergent family and her own late-in-life autism spectrum diagnosis.
Replying to one of her followers, asking whether she had seen the new legislations with driving and being neurospicy, the mum-of-two ripped into the new changes and some of her favourite attempts at justifying the changes.
I think my favourite reason that they gave for this (change) was autistic people not being able to pick up on the facial cues of other drivers. What?! she began.
What?! Whos facial cues are we picking up when were driving? What? John at the lights next to me having a good dig at his nose?
Or, perhaps a driver she dubbed neurotypical Nathan driving behind her and getting aggro because she is driving the speed limit.
Because, news flash, guess what? Autism comes with this little thing, its called cognitive rigidity, so were really black and white about following rules. Including road rules, she said.
Ms Geraghty said she felt sorry for the other drivers who are apparently supposed to be reading my facial cues in the car.
Another reason, which she said she could understand more than the facial cues, was because of meltdowns people with autism may have.
But, like, lets be f***ing realistic here, she said. It's a disability where weve got, you know, things with repetitive behaviours.
Im telling you, thered be most of us including me we take the same route to places all day everyday. Doesnt matter if theres going to be traffic and theres a short cut, were not doing it. Were taking the same route because thats the route we flipping know.
She said even if she was going somewhere and had no idea about the parking situation, she would not go.
And, perhaps, the clincher for Ms Geraghty was that she, and many people diagnosed with autism late has always had it. Before she could drive. The only difference is that now she knows she has autism.
Like, does the government not realise that for late diagnosed people, we were autistic when we sat the original test, she said.
If I can sit and do a test with a woman literally perceiving me for 35, 40 minutes while Im taking a test and not have a meltdown, babe well (autistic people will) be right. We will be right.
As a Victorian driver, under the new guidelines, Ms Geraghty would be required to self-report any long-term health condition or disability that has an impact on their ability to drive safely. But, at least according to her video, her disability has no impact on her driving.
Most jurisdictions require drivers with a long-term condition to report it in some capacity less they face a hefty fine which can cost up to $9288 and cancellation of licence.
GPs can often request an on-road assessment from an occupational therapy driver assessor, which costs around $1500.
If the test is failed, subsequent driving rehab lessons cost between $130-$150 a pop.
Although the standards state drivers with autism may struggle with a number of factors on the roads, studies reflecting the actual experiences of such drivers are few and far between. They typically have small sample sizes and centre around young or learner drivers.
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23 November, 2023
Driving with autism: Big change for some Australian licences
The term autism covers a very wide range of behaviours so this regulation seems likely to capture some people who are not likely to be problem drivers. I am a high-functioning autistic and I drove for 60 years without once hurting myself or anyone else.
The legal basis of this would also appear to be shaky. What evidence do they have implicating autism in bad driving? None, I am sure. To produce such evidence they would need to have a very precise definition of the problem behaviours and that is precisely what is not possible with autism
The prime manifestation of autism is social insensitivity of various sorts so it is difficult to see how that could be a driving problem. So this is a very silly piece of regulation. Courts should assess the actual behaviour rather than some speculative claim about its origin.
A quiet change to the national standards that govern driving fitness has left autistic Australians in legal limbo, potentially facing fines of more than $9000.
The 2022 Assessing Fitness to Drive standards were the first to list autism as a condition that should be assessed individually, but there is huge variability about how the new rule applies across states and territories.
That puts many autistic Australians, particularly those who were diagnosed later in life, years or decades after they earned their full licences, in a confusing place of legal limbo.
The Assessing Fitness to Drive guidelines are updated every few years and cover a range of medical conditions, including diabetes, epilepsy and vision. They are written for health professionals who treat people with conditions that may impact their driving.
According to Austroads, which develops the guidelines in conjunction with other groups, autistic drivers arent required to automatically report their diagnosis, but the overarching requirement is that a person with a condition that may impair safe driving will need to report and be assessed.
Each state and territory interprets the guidelines differently, making for a lot of confusion as well as some eye-watering fines and costs.
Tests of driving fitness also vary across jurisdictions. GPs often request an on-road assessment from an occupational therapy driver assessor, which costs around $1500. If the test is failed, subsequent driving rehab lessons cost between $130-$150 a pop.
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Tactics professional scammers use to fleece landlords exposed
Landlords and real estate agents are calling out the appalling behaviour of so-called professional tenants renters who know how to manipulate tenancy laws to live rent-free.
Rachel, 37, had a horror experience with a professional renter in the central western NSW town of Orange, where she lives with her husband and three young children.
After buying a new home in need of renovation, the family opted to rent it out for a short period while they waited for the plans to be finalised and council building permits to be issued.
They decided to handle the leasing themselves, and advertised for a tenant looking for a three month fixed-term lease.
Rachel said that her tenant claimed to be a single mother with two children and she contacted her employer reference but didnt look into her rental history, before both parties signed a formal tenancy agreement. I took her a bit on face value and felt a bit sorry for her, I guess.
Rachel said that initially, her tenants communication was amazing adding that she paid two weeks rent upfront and was often seen mowing the front grass.
But a few weeks later, her dream tenant became a nightmare.
Rachel said it turned out that her tenant didnt have custody of her kids, so they never moved into the house, but another seven to eight people did move in, along with several dogs, despite the tenancy agreement prohibiting this.
This is what they do. Somebody gets a house and they all come and live in it.
She said no more rent was ever paid and attempts to inspect the house failed with the tenant refusing them entry on several occasions despite them providing adequate notice via mail and email of upcoming inspections.
She alleges the people living in her house were dealing Ice out of the back shed and spray painted and graffitied the back fences, adding that she fielded several calls from her angry neighbours.
Frustrated, Rachel contacted the police about the tenant, who she said didnt want to know anything about it and advised her to pursue the matter through the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT).
She did just that, citing the unpaid rent and prohibited pets as cause to terminate the tenancy but despite the fact that her tenant didnt actually show up to the hearing, the tribunal found in the renters favour. They didnt care about us at all, Rachel said.
In a twist, the tenant then took Rachel and her husband to the tribunal, citing that they were harassing her by driving past the property. That was the route for me to take my children to daycare, Rachel said.
The tenant again failed to turn up to the hearing and as she had brought the case, it didnt go ahead. What it did do however was buy her tenant more time in the property.
Finally, at the end of the lease agreement with the tenant refusing to leave their property, the couple went back to the tribunal who this time found in their favour. The only way that we got her out was that it was the end of the fixed-term lease, Rachel said.
The tribunal also ruled that the tenant had to repay the couple the rent she had failed to pay, but Rachel said that after she vacated the property, their tenant disappeared. Because we didnt have her physical address we couldnt chase her for the money.
In the end it took four months to get her out and cost $8,000 in lost rent, she said. She knew how the system worked and she played me.
Rachel said one lesson she learned from the ordeal was to never try to rent out a property privately, without the assistance of a real estate agent or property manager.
She said she also learned how stacked tenancy laws are against landlords. I know landlords get a bad rap but theres nothing to help us.
Hayden Groves, president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia told news.com.au that in some parts of Australia, tenancy laws have evolved too far in favour of tenants.
Were hearing of rulings in local jurisdictions that actually disallow an owner of the property to re-take occupancy despite the fixed tenancy ending.
He added that sadly some tenancy advocates will encourage and coach tenants on how to exploit tenancy laws to their own advantage and effectively avoid their obligations under a lease agreement.
For example, a tenant that is seeking to prematurely end a fixed term lease, may be advised to simply stop paying rent and move out at their convenience knowing that the owner is unlikely to pursue them for unpaid rent due to the cost and risk of doing so, particularly when a replacement tenant can be quickly found.
Mr Groves agreed that the renter-friendly tenancy laws were forcing some landlords to sell up.
As a result of the recent shifts in tenancy laws favouring tenants, property investors are selling up and moving their funds to alternate investment vehicles which is damaging supply and pushing up rents.
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Billionaire Gina Rinehart gives grim warning: Says climate costs cripple food production
Gina Rinehart has issued a grim warning that Aussies face huge price hikes and fresh food shortages unless the burden of climate change policies are lifted from farmers.
During an address in Bali on Tuesday, the mining magnate made the ominous forecast to mark National Agriculture & Related Industries Day, of which Ms Rinehart is the founding patron.
Australia's richest person, who owns millions of farming hectares, said governments need to cap what agriculturalists spend on achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions to $200,000 - or the entire nation faces dire consequences.
'Otherwise, farmers will have to leave agriculture, and as a consequence, Aussies will see huge food price increases and fresh food shortages,' Ms Rinehart said.
Ms Rinehart, who is the executive chairman iron ore exporting giant Hancock Prospecting, said Australia's agriculture is the 'envy of much of the world' but is 'haunted' by the cost of climate change policies.
'Don't blame the farmer for needing to try to pass on to Australian householders the multi-millions of costs they'll each face, for installing solar power, batteries and multi millions for electric vehicles, and fines,' she said.
The mining billionaire claimed the burden government over-reach and interference fell most heavily on the 'essential' primary industries of agriculture and mining.
She also expressed fury at not being able to clear land, normally for environmental reasons, in a way that might curb bushfires, due to government red tape.
'Government tape drowns us, won't even let us keep our families, staff, pets, homes and investment safe through adequate fire breaks, my blood boils over on this one,' she said.
'Fines and even jail if we try the bureaucracy blocks us or hinders us at every opportunity. Projects succeed not because of government but in spite of it.'
Ms Rinehart said governments continuing to focus on the wrong things were hurting Australia.
'Pandering to minority group activism, the Left and the Greens abetted by virtue signalling, effects political decisions and policy, instead of costs, common sense and economics,' she said.
'Unfortunately, politicians too often forego common sense and real leadership, for noisy public activism.'
She painted a picture of Australia being the 'cusp of greatness' in the late 1960s to early 1970s.
'Government was wary of taking on debt, our nation was developing well, migrants were arriving from Italy and Greece especially, and settling in well, working and contributing, in numbers that worked, bringing with them a desire to succeed in their new country, not wanting Aussie taxpayers' welfare,' she said.
'Our population was educated, skilled and industrious. Government was far, far less intrusive and the welfare state as we know it today did not exist.'
However, she argued that all changed with the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972.
'Trade unions impatient to claim an even greater share of what they saw as this prosperous future, helped to elect a socialist government led by Gough,' she said.
'Policies were put in place that favoured trade unions and popular agendas rather than common sense.'
In the speech, she also called for an end of 'discriminatory limit on work hours' to let pensioners, uni students, veterans, disabled and nonviolent non-dangerous prisoners help fill labour shortages'.
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ICC bans transgender women from elite cricket to protect integrity and safety
Australian-born Canadian trans cricketer Danielle McGahey has expressed disappointment but vowed to continue to fight for equality over the International Cricket Councils decision to ban transgender women from playing international womens cricket.
The international career of McGahey appears over after the ICC ruled players who have been through testosterone-fuelled puberty will not be able to compete in international womens cricket.
The change in regulations appears to have been prompted by the case of McGahey, who became the first transgender cricketer to take part in an official international match when she featured in a Womens Twenty20 fixture for Canada against Brazil.
The Brisbane-born 29-year-old, who played grade cricket in the mens competition in Melbourne, moved to Canada in 2020. After her transition, she began playing womens cricket in Canada and was called into the national team in October 2022.
The opening batter went on to play all six of Canadas matches during the Womens T20 World Cup Americas region qualifiers event in Los Angeles, to add to national team appearances previously in fixtures which did not hold official ICC status.
Canada came second in the four-team event, failing to qualify, with McGahey making 118 runs at 19.67 with a top score of 48 against Brazil.
Transgender athletes have been banned from taking part in elite womens competitions in other sports such as swimming, cycling, athletics, rugby league and rugby union.
Following the ICCs decision this morning, it is with a very heavy heart that I must say that my international cricketing career is over. As quickly as it begun, it must now end, McGahey wrote on social media.
Thank you so much to everybody who has supported me in my journey, from my all of my teammates, all of the opposition, the cricketing community and my sponsor
While I hold my opinions on the ICCs decision, they are irrelevant. What matters is the message being sent to millions of trans women today, a messaging say that we dont belong.
I promise I will not stop fighting for equality for us in our sport, we deserve the right to play cricket at the highest level, we are not a threat to the integrity or safety of the sport. Never stop fighting!
Brazil womens captain Roberta Moretti Avery said on Wednesday the timing of the ICCs decision had been unfortunate.
Its a decision that appears to have been made by the ICC in good faith with the benefit of the most recent scientific advice. That said, the timing of the decision is really unfortunate, Avery told ESPNCricinfo.
Danielle McGahey was allowed to play in the recent World Cup qualifier on the basis of the rules that applied at the time. As a result, she was subjected to a lot of abuse from people who have never met her and who do not understand the difficult journey she has been on.
She and her teammates also had a reasonable expectation that she would be allowed to play in future matches. So its unfortunate that this decision has been made after the event, once Danielles hopes had been raised and after she has already been exposed to a huge amount of scrutiny and abuse. That cant be good for anyones mental health. The ICC lifted the hopes of a whole community and it feels like those hopes have now been dashed.
Under the ICCs previous regulations, which were effective from October 2018 and amended in April 2021, McGahey had satisfied all of the eligibility criteria.
However, following an ICC board meeting, new gender regulations have been announced, which follow a nine-month consultation process with the sports stakeholders.
The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and are founded in science, aligning with the core principles developed during the review, ICC chief executive Geoff Allardice said.
Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international womens game and the safety of players.
The review, led by the ICC medical advisory committee and chaired by Peter Harcourt, relates solely to gender eligibility for international womens cricket. Gender eligibility at domestic level is a matter for each individual member board.
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22 November, 2023
Fears tough new hate speech powers for NSW police could have chilling effect on public debate
I suspect that these "fears" are just pandering to Muslims. What is wrong with the police putting a matter before the courts? You don't have to be a genius to notice "threats and incitement to violence based on race and religion". Such events are now common and public among pro Palestinian protesters
New South Wales police will be handed the power to lay charges for threats and incitement to violence based on race and religion in a reform introduced to state parliament amid rising tensions over the conflict in Gaza.
The premier, Chris Minns, said the laws governing hate speech needed to have teeth when he announced the change, after a swift review of the legislation.
Leading legal minds have spoken out against the change, insisting safeguards are important and the changes would risk opening the floodgates for controversial speech to be investigated.
As it stands, police need to seek approval to use the laws from the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge anyone for making threats or inciting violence. Under the proposed change, the DPP would be sidestepped and the power would rest with police.
The 2018 law was reviewed after weeks of pro-Palestine protests and a string of alleged antisemitic incidents across Sydney.
The attorney general, Michael Daley, said he was making the change because recent dynamic events had shown him the law was no longer fit for NSW.
Some of the alleged behaviour that was seen on the streets has caused us within government to have a look at this provision and then to come to the conclusion that it could be better improved, he said.
Despite the law having been available to police and the DPP for five years, just 12 changes have been laid using the legislation as it stands. Of those, 10 were withdrawn and two convictions were being appealed in the high court, Daley said.
According to the attorney general, the administrative burden added by the referral of possible cases to the DPP meant police had been less likely to opt for the provision and he hoped to remove it would see it used more.
An individual found guilty under the laws would face a fine of up to $11,000 or up to three years in jail, or both.
Daley has said the change would bring the process in line with that available to police charging someone for displaying a Nazi symbol, but legal groups have said the two offences should not be compared due to the complex difference between the charges.
Greg Barns, criminal justice spokesperson at the Australian Lawyers Alliance, said the law, which was only introduced in 2018, needed to be applied carefully and as such needed DPP oversight.
It requires careful consideration before charging anyone with this offence because it is broad and it applies in the context of it being a curtailment of freedom of speech, he said.
It is important to have DPP oversight in those circumstances.
Lydia Shelly, the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, said the changes risked unintended consequences.
These may include the politicisation of police investigations and prosecutions, the misuse of police resources as well as a chilling effect on issues that should be debated in public, she said.
Shelly said the alleged abhorrent chants at the Opera House should already be captured under the legislation and any controversial speech that falls short of the current legal threshold should not be criminalised.
Removing the DPP as a safeguard risk opening the floodgates for controversial speech to be investigated, risks further deteriorating social cohesion, she said.
The NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong said the changes would not make the state a safer place.
Rushing through changes that give police more powers without oversight on complex issues at the intersection between freedom of speech and vilification will not make our community any safer.
As much as NSW Labor might want a quick and easy solution, you cant police your way out of this complex issue.
The opposition is expected to support the bill and it will be considered when the shadow cabinet meets this week
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Government rejects call to ban offshore gas projects
Environment groups have condemned the state government for its refusal to support legislation to make projects like the controversial PEP11 gas exploration project illegal in NSW waters.
A report from the parliamentary inquiry set up to examine the Opposition's Offshore Drilling and Associated Infrastructure Prohibition bill acknowledged significant community concerns about the environmental impacts of projects such as PEP11.
But it found that key aspects of the bill may be constitutionally invalid or have unintended consequences.
"The focus of this inquiry has been to examine the environmental impacts of offshore drilling and also identify risks with passing the legislation. The inquiry has revealed that the legal framework regulating offshore activities in the state is complex and there are serious risks that could result in negative consequences for the State," committee chairman Clayton Barr said.
"Amendments to the Bill were also considered. However, the majority of the Committee is of the view that amendments would undermine a core purpose of the Bill. Therefore, the Committee has recommended that the Bill not pass."
Rather than ban new projects, it recommended that existing environmental assessments standards be reviewed.
Shadow energy and climate change minister James Griffin said the Liberal's bill was designed to ensure offshore drilling would be banned for good in NSW.
"But once again, NSW Labor under Chris Minns has put the environment last. We call on the Albanese Government to step in and protect NSW coastal waters," Mr Griffin said on Tuesday night.
The Surfers for Climate group, which gave evidence to the inquiry, said the report's key recommendation was disappointing and surprising given the community support to ban all new offshore oil and gas projects in NSW waters.
"We have yet to read in full the report's findings released earlier today. However it is clear this recommendation goes against everything the people of NSW want. The Government needs to tell us: Why isn't it stopping PEP11?," Surfers for Climate co-founder Belinda Baggs said.
"Sea temperatures are rising, pollution levels are increasing and low lying coastal towns are under threat from erosion and flooding because of climate change."
Marque Lawyers partner Hannah Marshall disagreed with the report's findings that the bill may be constitutionally invalid.
"We disagree that the Bill carries any significant Constitutional risk. It does not create any new inconsistency with Commonwealth laws," she said.
"NSW already controls activity in NSW coastal waters. Activity in the offshore areas falls under federal authority. NSW can already 'impair' offshore exploration and drilling activity by denying licences for infrastructure in NSW coastal waters. It is already the NSW policy position not to support new offshore drilling activity. If the idea was that the Commonwealth retain control over infrastructure in state coastal waters, the law could say that. But it doesn't."
A recent Surfers for Climate survey by of more than 1,700 people across Australia, found 98 per cent of respondents "strongly supported" the proposed bill.
According to the survey, the top three reasons respondents gave for supporting the Bill were to conserve the oceans and marine life for future generations, protect beaches from pollution and to create more clean energy jobs.
"Given the Government is serious about climate change, we look forward to it banning offshore oil and gas. We urge Premier Chris Minns, the Climate Change Minister and Resources Minister to draw a line on all new offshore oil and gas projects for good," Ms Baggs said.
The Wilderness Society said many of the risks identified in the report were either hypotheticals that were unlikely to occur, or could be remedied with minor amendments. "We are disappointed by the recommendation, and urge the NSW government to find a way forward and secure a gas-free coastline in step with what coastal NSW communities have been calling for," a spokeswoman said.
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Universities caned over woke degrees for trainee teachers
Universities are indoctrinating trainee teachers in wokeness and political activism, with only 10 weeks of a four-year degree dedicated to teaching children literacy and numeracy, the first national audit of education degrees reveals.
The Institute of Public Affairs has analysed 3713 teaching subjects in education degrees offered by 37 Australian universities. One-third of all subjects relate to what the IPA describes as woke theories of identity politics, decolonisation and social justice.
Just one in 10 subjects relate to teaching children how to read, write and learn mathematics.
Bella dAbrera, the director of IPAs Foundations of Western Civilisation Program, said only 218 subjects covered the teaching of mathematics, 43 subjects involved phonics-based reading instruction, and 37 subjects covered grammar skills.
She blamed the woke training of teachers for the failure of one in three Australian students to meet basic standards of literacy and numeracy in this years NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy) test.
Instead of being taught how to master core academic curriculum such as reading, writing, mathematics, history and science, prospective teachers are being trained by university experts to be experts in critical social justice, identity politics, and sustainability, she said. We are setting Australian students up for failure by spending so little time teaching our teachers core literacy and numeracy skills, while university courses focus on woke issues and activism.
The system is clearly failing both trainee teachers, as well as the students they go on to teach, and it is in urgent need of reform.
The IPA audit found that university teaching degrees included 1169 subjects in critical social justice, compared to 371 subjects that instructed how to teach literacy and numeracy skills.
The University of Canberra offers a unit in Indigenous education that criticises the way anthropocentrism promotes economic prosperity.
It is well evidenced that social and ecological wellness in Australia has been in accelerating decline since contact where colonial processes and Western perspectives have elevated rational, analytical ways of knowing and robust anthropocentrism, most recently to prioritise individualism, economic prosperity and global competitiveness, the unit description states.
Monash University offers a study unit on rethinking Indigenous education that introduces trainee teachers to radical thinking and alternative models of education Student will engage with Indigenous and black scholarship that envisions the abolition and replacement of existing models and practices of settler colonial education, it states.
Monash Universitys bachelor of education instructs trainee teachers to theorise social justice The unit aims to develop in you a strong grasp of the concept of cognitive justice, and the associated notions of epistemic and epistemological justice, it states.
Student teachers at Monash also learn to teach mathematics through a social justice lens.
At Victoria University, students who want to learn how to teach children of different backgrounds are required to use a critical pedagogy framework to challenge dominant discourses that perpetuate notions of privilege, power and oppression.
Federal, state and territory education ministers have ordered universities to change their education degrees by mandating that new teachers are trained to teach children English and mathematics, and to manage classroom behaviour but universities will not be required to teach the core content until the end of 2025.
Dr dAbrera said Australian teaching degrees had replaced core skills and knowledge with woke ideology and political activism. As a result, teacher training is woke and notoriously lacking in evidence-based preparation for the realities of the classroom.
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Police charge more than 20 as pro-Palestine protest blocks Port Botany
Police have arrested and charged more than 20 people after a pro-Palestinian protest at Sydneys Port Botany blocked a road leading to the shipping facility on Tuesday night.
In chaotic scenes, police from the riot squad and officers on horseback tried to break up the protest, which included children. Officers dragged protesters from the road after they failed to comply with an order to move on. At one point, protesters lifted a child in a pram over the top of the crowd.
There was dragging, pushing, shoving. There were elderly women and girls, and kids in the protest, and they didnt respect that, organiser Ahmed Abadla, from Palestine Justice Movement Sydney, said.
We aim not to have any violence incorporated into our rallies. Police started the whole thing and the crowd got angry.
NSW Premier Chris Minns defended the police actions, saying he had been briefed on the situation and he completely rejected any suggestion they had acted inappropriately.
There was a lawful police order given to the protesters to move on, and it was only after ample time was given to the protesters to leave the roadway and allow commerce to transact in that port were arrests effected.
We cannot have a situation where our ports are blocked for commerce because one group or another has a political disagreement with another country. That would be hugely damaging to our economy.
The protest, which began at 6pm, was directed at Israeli shipping company ZIM, which has offered support to the Israeli government in its fight with Hamas and had a ship at the port on Tuesday.
Police said protesters moved towards the intersection of Sirius and Foreshore roads and occupied Foreshore Road, blocking vehicle movement. Officers issued move-on directions to a number of people but they did not comply and 23 were arrested. Foreshore Road was cleared about 9pm.
Those arrested were taken to several police stations, where they were charged with failing to comply with a move-on direction, obstructing a driver or pedestrian, and damaging or disrupting a major facility.
One person, a 29-year-old woman, was also charged with assaulting a police officer without causing actual bodily harm. She was released to appear at Sutherland Local Court on November 28.
Those arrested were aged between 20 and 50. Police released all on bail, except for two, a 24-year-old man and another 29-year-old woman, who were remanded in custody to appear before the Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday.
The woman, Lara Smal, faced court charged with offences including a refusal or failure to comply with a direction. She was granted bail on the condition she does not attend any unlawful protests and stays one kilometre away from Port Botany.
Abadla said the police had been violent towards the protesters, who he said had blocked Sirius Road a smaller access road to Port Botany and not Foreshore Road.
He said the mood at the protest changed suddenly when protesters tried to pack up food they had brought to give to Port Botany workers. The child in the pram, who he believed was aged about four, had been seated near the food at the side of the protest.
We feared that something would happen and we started moving very quickly, but the police were not helpful in waiting for us, Abadla said. We wanted to move the pram from harms way. [The police] saw it, they saw the child in the pram, but unfortunately, they didnt pay any regards to that.
We were peacefully protesting the violence that was happening in Gaza, that was point of the whole of the rally really to send a strong message to ZIM, to boycott ZIM, and to send a message to government.
The Sydney branch of the Maritime Union of Australia supported the protest.
Minns said police had helped facilitate 73 largely peaceful protests since the Israel-Hamas conflict began six weeks ago, and the government would defend the right for people to protest lawfully.
Federal Home Affairs Minister Clare ONeil told Channel Nines Today that the protest activity was utterly despicable and she hated to see violence against the police.
Weve got a bunch of people in our country who are feeling incredibly deeply about whats going on in the Middle East ... lets respect each other, understand the strong views and feelings in the community, but just calm down a bit, ONeil said.
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21 November, 2023
Labors electric dreams running on empty as new car sales tank
Australia must be running out of elitists with money to burn
Chris Bowens electric vehicle strategy is on track to fail after government department officials predicted fewer than a third of new car sales would be battery-operated by 2030, casting doubt on Labors modelling underpinning its green agenda.
The latest estimates from the federal transport department are that electric cars will make up 27 per cent of new car sales by 2030, well below the 89 per cent forecast in Labors pre-election modelling that helped boost its 43 per cent emissions reduction target.
The 89 per cent prediction in Labors modelling conducted by RepuTex was based on Anthony Albaneses pre-election policies that have been implemented since the government was elected, including exempting electric cars from import tariffs and fringe benefit taxes.
The department also estimates electric cars will account for 5 per cent of nations small vehicle fleet by 2030, a third below Labors pre-election modelling of 15 per cent.
Mr Bowen, the Climate Change and Energy Minister, waited until after the election to unveil plans to implement vehicle efficiency standards but this was not part of the modelling that formed the basis of Labors targets that are now Australias international commitments.
The RepuTex modelling predicted Labors policies would lead to 82 per cent of Australias electricity being powered by renewables by the end of the decade and a $275 reduction in household energy bills by 2025, with analysts arguing Australia is not on track to meet these forecasts halfway through the governments term.
Energy experts cast doubt over Labors electric car projections before the election but Mr Bowen refused to release the detailed modelling that underpinned the assumption.
RepuTex head of research Bret Harper told The Australian that the governments electric car sales forecast seems about right, despite being less than half predicted by his company ahead of the election.
Mr Harper said his modelling included plug-in hybrid sales in its figures but federal Labor agreed to end tax breaks for all hybrid cars by 2025 under a deal struck with the Greens.
A few years ago plug-in hybrids would have been considered a green vehicle but since then it has been ruled out because it has a combustion engine and runs on fossil fuels, Mr Harper said.
The department figures sound perfectly plausible, anything in between the 20 to 30 per cent range seems about right.
Ahead of the election, the Prime Minister said Labor did not make a political decision about landing on an emissions reduction target of 43 per cent by 2030, despite it being marginally below the uncosted 45 per cent target that hurt the party in regional areas in the 2019 election. Instead, Mr Albanese said RepuTex modelled the partys policies announced in opposition and that figure came out as 43 per cent.
What we didnt do was adopt a target and then work back, Mr Albanese said after announcing Labors 43 per cent target in 2021. What we did was work through what are the good policy mechanisms and then see where that came up through the modelling.
Mr Harper revealed Labor workshopped its policies with the modelling agency and settled on a suite of measures that would lead to an emissions target the party was confident of taking to an election.
He said the ALP were interested in the outcome of each of the models individually with some having a larger impact on emissions reductions than others.
They gave us the policies and we gave them the outcomes, there were lots of different iterations and then we settled on one, Mr Harper said.
Lots of different policies were considered and they were making decisions about which ones would be worth it for them.
In an election campaign they wanted to keep their policies focused and wanted to get good bang for their buck in terms of what they committed.
In a Senate estimates hearing last month, officials from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts revealed their latest forecasts found electric vehicles were on track to make up 27 per cent of new vehicle sales by 2030.
In 2030, its forecast that electric vehicles will make up (5 per cent) of the total vehicles on roads and 27 per cent of new car sales, Surface Transport Emissions and Policy first assistant secretary Paula Stagg told estimates.
When Greens senator Janet Rice noted this was way short of 89, Ms Stagg said: Yes it is.
A spokesman for Mr Bowen said Labors electric vehicle strategy was off to a flying start with EVs jumping from 2 per cent of new car sales in May last year to almost 9 per cent.
The spokesman said the departments forecasts did not take into account all policies under the National Electric Vehicle Strategy, including the governments decision to introduce fuel-efficiency standards to improve Australians access to cleaner, cheaper-to-run cars.
The ALP is expected to introduce fuel efficiency standards which set obligations for car suppliers to lower the total emissions of their stock to meet a national goal by the end of the year.
Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted OBrien seized on the modelling discrepancies between RepuTex and the government, saying Labor had failed to deliver against its own targets and promises.
This is what happens when you pluck arbitrary political targets out of thin air and then refuse to have Treasury or the Department assess them, Mr OBrien said.
Its 43 per cent emissions reduction target, 82 per cent renewable energy target, 89 per cent electric vehicle target and the all-important $275 reduction in power bills are all set to fail.
The opposition last year raised concern a key plank of Labors plan to wave import tariffs on electric cars was redundant, with more than 70 per cent of car imports being exempt from tariffs under free trade deals.
Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood warned Labor would be unable to meet its target without stronger policy levers including fuel efficiency standards.
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Solutions for the hard tasks in migration, energy and housing
ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN
The first step in solving any crisis is to recognise that there is a deep problem and then isolate the causes.
Yesterday John Dahlsen and I tried to isolate the deep causes of the cost of living/inflation crisis.
Today we canvass a much harder task the solutions. Given the mess we have created by isolating our inflationary blows to 30 per cent of the population using the blunt interest rate weapon, todays non-interest rate solutions will foster a community focus. But there will be wide disagreement.
What makes non-interest rate solutions tough is that too many of our decision makers, influencers and commentators are remote from those in distress and so interest rates become just a number or pawn on the chess board.
The reality is that the federal, state and local governments are causing a significant proportion of Australias inflation and their failure to recognise the impact of their actions is causing huge damage to our low-income earners and mortgagees in distress.
Government expenditure as a percentage of GDP is increasing and GDP per capita is falling. It is the private sector that drives the economy, yet governments are allocating more and more GDP to non-productive activity beyond what is needed in a fair and just society.
We will canvas solutions via housing, energy, migration, the combination of small enterprise and productivity and the community disasters in the industrial relations bill.
Housing
If we are going to solve housing shortage problem we cannot afford to have state and local governments adding 40 per cent to the cost of dwellings.
And if the federal government cant enforce solutions then we have to debate the current structure of state and local governments.
To reduce dwelling costs by say 20 per cent we start with the taxes and then set up simple and fast mechanisms for determining zoning rules and building permits.
Currently two-year waits are the norm and that explodes costs and deters capital. There are plenty of models overseas to fix it.
Ironically in his final months in office former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews headed down this track and Victoria needs to accelerate his scheme albeit it is already under attack. Andrews isolated areas for clear zoning and vowed that permits would be fast if basic rules were followed.
Any reduction in housing taxes can be partly funded by massive retrenchments in the bureaucracies dedicated to boosting housing costs.
An intricate plan setting up which taxes are best reduced is for others to devise. While cost reduction will help another source of state revenue will be required. The money needs to be raised by the federal government and only handed to states that dismantle their structures are boosting housing costs, including those in regional areas.
Higher GST will come to mind as will abandoning the July tax cuts. The 2019 Bill Shorten-led opposition proposed a franking credits change that was complete lunacy because it protected the mates of the ALP and almost randomly attacked others.
At the time I commented that if Bill Shorten and his then franking credit minister Chris Bowen wanted to raise money from franking credits then everyone must be treated equally. Perhaps only a certain percentage of a companys profits could be to be paid in fully franked dividends.
To lift our productivity, Australian companies need to invest more in their business and for a variety of reasons, including dividend demands from shareholders, they are not investing.
An adjusted franking credit system would help productivity as well as funding the reduction in the cost of dwellings.
Another tax to fund housing tex reduction is to limit the value of a residence to those receiving age pension benefits. None of those moves will be popular which is why its easier to keep pulverising the 30 per cent minority.
A clear danger in any move to help housing costs is that banks will increase their lending and the price of dwellings will rise to absorb the concession.
Accordingly banks will need to be curbed probably by via changing the risk-reward ratios to encourage lending to business.
When Paul Keating introduced his magnificent superannuation scheme it was possible for most people on ordinary wages to buy a house so the Keating plan was provide retirement money in addition to the dwelling.
Now people on ordinary incomes simply cant buy a house and although the price reduction will help there is anger boiling among young people that the savings in superannuation cant be used for what is clearly the best retirement asset a dwelling.
In time that anger will be turned on superannuation and the movement will be greatly damaged.
Once superannuation savings can be used to fund the first dwelling the current generation of young people will embrace superannuation in the way of their parents and grandparents.
Such a move will be extremely unpopular among the Keating generation trustees.
We also need to tackle the building costs of apartment towers but thats a huge subject.
When it comes to the rent crisis, states must be required to remove all special taxes on rental properties and adjust the tenancy laws to retain fairness for renters but not be onerous for families renting houses.
Negative gearing for genuine rental properties must be locked in so investors can be assured of the benefit.
If we reduce the cost of land via proper permit and zoning then overseas institutions are ready and willing to build complexes for rent in Australia. NSW is our biggest problem.
Energy
We are embarking on an incredibly high cost process to reduce carbon emissions because we have not taken into account the limited life of solar and wind installations and the enormous costs of erecting cables to deliver their power to populations plus the need for backup when solar and wind dont produce power .
The new, low-cost, smaller and safe nuclear installations are transforming the rest of the world to add to wind and solar and we have to embrace them. But new power generating technologies are now also coming forward particularly in China.
We can achieve quick carbon reductions via gas power stations close to power lines and replacing coal. But later they will be replaced by the new technologies. Rising power costs are in part a result of bad government.
Migration
Flooding the country with a vast number of migrants when we have nowhere to house them is a disaster. Apart from students the only migrants allowed in large numbers should be those with skills ready to be used particularly in building and health.
Small enterprises and productivity:
Australias rapidly declining productivity contributes to enterprises passing cost rises in the prices.
In his submission to the Productivity Commission former share broker Bill Ranken points out that small and medium business employ 7.4 million Australians or two thirds of the private sector workforce but we rank 32nd for global financing of small and medium business.
Bank financing of small and medium enterprises has been slashed in favour of housing and, as discussed earlier, that needs to be reversed.
Unlike other countries we have we have few institutions that make equity capital available to these enterprises.
We need at least one political party to concentrate on policies for small and medium business.
The industrial relations bill
This bill attacks casual employment, contracting, the gig economy and has an plans to slash the powers of the ACCC so there can be a cartel between unions and big transport companies to lift prices. This should be at the top of our list but its at the bottom because I have covered it widely.
It will send the 30 per cent of sufferers much deeper into poverty and may in fact trigger the community revolution likely stem from the inflationary reduction burden being increasingly borne by a minority of the population.
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Brickworks boss says we must prioritise bringing in tradies to address Australias worsening housing crisis
The boss of the nations largest brickmaker and leading housing materials supplier has warned any review of the countrys migration intake needed to prioritise bringing in tradies such as fitters, turners and electricians to work on home construction sites and address Australias worsening housing crisis.
Brickworks chief executive Lindsay Partridge told The Australian on Tuesday his company was predicting a pull back and slowdown in housing construction volumes through 2024 as current projects were completed, but then a building boom into 2025 as a fast-growing population desperately demanded new homes.
In recent days a national debate has blown up around migration levels with 600,000 people expected to settle in Australia this calendar year, which many economists believe is fuelling inflation, higher rents and also exacerbating the housing crisis.
In September AMP chief economist Shane Oliver called for annual net migration levels to be more than halved to 200,000 people against a likely outcome of 500,000 people in the year to June for the country to be able to tackle the acute housing shortage which was driving up home prices and rents.
Speaking to The Australian before the Brickworks annual general meeting on Tuesday, where he told shareholders short-term challenges across its industrial property portfolio would see a 10 per cent property valuation decline, Mr Partridge said Australia needed to bring in tradies and skilled workers as a priority.
There is no use bringing in anybody if they are not a building tradie, you are wasting your time, because where are they going to live?, Mr Partridge told The Australian.
That has been my argument with governments, they need to be focusing on having immigrants that have building trades like we have done in the past so we can build the homes for everybody.
I understand why the government let the immigration (levels) catch up and part of that was the students returning and there has been enormous labour shortages but we need trades, we need skilled people, we dont need tertiary qualified people, we need people who are fitters and turners, electricians, these sorts of people to build these homes.
He said the huge pipeline of federal and state government building works, such as infrastructure projects like roads, airports and ports, was also pushing up the price of building supplies and making it almost impossible to get a hold of key building materials when trying to build a new home.
It has been made worse by all the public works, shortage of raw materials because the government is sucking it all in for their own projects. You cant get concrete during the day sometime, you have to get it at night-time.
At a trading update provided at the Brickworks AGM Mr Partridge said sales across its Australian and US building products business remained resilient while improved margins had resulted in first quarter earnings being ahead of the prior corresponding period in both Australia and North America. For the first quarter, sales revenue was flat in Australia and slightly higher in North America.
However, he continued to see a decline in new housing approvals, with the housing market to slow in Australia in 2024.
Despite this positive start to the year, order intake is softening and we expect conditions to become more challenging for the remainder of fiscal 2024, as the existing pipeline of work is progressively built out.
Looking beyond the short-term weakness, Australia appears to be on the cusp of a significant building boom, with record immigration levels exacerbating an already chronic housing under-supply issue.
Mr Partridge said the slowdown in coming months would give Brickworks an opportunity to sequentially take plants offline to complete maintenance work and manage stock levels, but Bowral operations, where it currently has an order backlog of around 16 weeks, would continue.
Turning to Brickworkss $2,2bn industrial property portfolio, which includes prime industrial land in western Sydney, Mr Partridge said the company expected a 10 per cent property valuation decline due to significant dislocation in response to economic volatility, rising interest rates and tighter credit conditions driving a change in external valuation methods.
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Federal government to overhaul secrecy laws in win for media
The federal government will overhaul secrecy laws to better protect media outlets in sweeping reforms that would see journalists only prosecuted for certain breaches on the intervention of the Attorney-General.
As part of the reforms, criminal liability would be stripped from more than 100 Commonwealth secrecy offences and in the wake of the PwC scandal a new law would also be introduced to hold public servants to account if they breached their obligations.
Announced by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus KC on Tuesday, the federal government was set to reduce the number of secrecy offences currently on the books, to both strengthen those set to remain but also improve press protections.
Secrecy offences play an important role in preventing the unauthorised disclosure of information, which can undermine national security and harm the public interest, Mr Dreyfus said.
However, there have long been concerns about the number, inconsistency, appropriateness and complexity of Commonwealth secrecy offences.
As part of the reform, criminal liability would be removed from almost 170 secrecy offences, out of the 875 total secrecy offences, and protections for press freedom and individuals providing information to Royal Commissions would be strengthened.
Under the reforms, ministerial consent would be required for the prosecution of journalists for certain secrecy offences.
The Albanese government believes a strong and independent media is vital to democracy and holding governments to account, Mr Dreyfus said,
Journalists should never face the prospect of being charged, or even jailed, just for doing their jobs.
The new safeguard, supported by the Australian Press Council, would further enhance protections for public interest journalism, the Attorney-General said.
Mr Dreyfus said further reductions in the number of offences would come through the enactment of a new general secrecy offence in the Criminal Code Act, that would ensure Commonwealth officers and others with confidentiality obligations would be held to account for harm caused by breaching those obligations.
This new offence will also address the issues raised by the alleged PwC breach of confidentiality, the Attorney-General said.
The reforms come after the Attorney-General instructed his department to conduct a comprehensive review in Commonwealth secrecy provisions and laws, instigated in December 2022, after a 2018 committee recommended the existing legislation be rethought.
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20 November, 2023
Queensland government doubles first home owner grant to $30k for new builds, including granny flats
That it is for new builds makes sense but given the shortage of tradesmen the effect may be small, if any
The Queensland government has doubled the first home owner grant to $30,000 for new builds until mid-2025.
The new grant only applies to buying or building a new home valued under $750,000, and comes into effect on Monday.
Announcing the boost on Sunday morning, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk described it as a "pre-Christmas bonus".
The grant can also be used for a granny flat or modular home.
Property prices in the state are at an all-time high, while rental vacancies have dropped to a record low.
"You can also use it for money towards a new home, a unit, a townhouse or even if your parents want to put a granny flat out the back, so it covers the whole range of the spectrum," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"This our big Christmas bonus for our first home owners and we understand that our families are hurting with big cost living pressures out there, and our government is making this small step to help people get into the market."
Ethan Hughes, 22, said he hoped to make use of the grant.
"The housing market is consistently going up so the earlier I can get in the better," Mr Hughes said. "This is a more than welcome increase, it's a very welcome handout."
Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon said coal royalties had bankrolled the grant boost. "With signs that capacity constraints are now easing in the residential housing construction market, now is the time to act," Ms Scanlon said.
"And the reason we can do this is because of the strength of our budget. It allows us to take advantage of those changing conditions and to make the most of that emerging capacity."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-19/qld-queensland-doubles-first-home-owner-s-grant/103123290
**************************************************Popular ABC Host Quits Live on Air, Says There Are 'Penalties for Speaking Bluntly'
A popular radio host in Sydney has quit live on air while making a thinly veiled critique of the national broadcaster's management and its listeners around uncomfortable conversations.
Having truly rational, bull-[expletive] free conversations about controversial issues is risky these days, Josh Szeps, host of ABC Radio Sydney, said just before the 3 p.m. news on Nov. 15.
The penalties for speaking bluntly, the penalties for trying to coax people out of their thought silos and their echo chambers are very high.
The radio host, who appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience show and famously entered into a heated debate with the American commentator on the COVID jab, said the fact that controversial topics are risky makes it more important to me.
The fact I have found a way of doing it independently that is financially viable leads me to the question that I have been mulling over ever since chatter about the 2024 [ABC] line-up beganwhich is, where am I at most use to the national conversation? he said.
Mr. Szeps added that regular listeners know him for thriving on controversial discussions.
You know I am the kid who gets invited to Christmas lunch and then starts talking to people Im advised not to talk to, he said.
Like Uncle Herbie who might have voted for Pauline Hansonas that old codger farts his way through the potato salad I will have an uncomfortable conversation with him.
Maybe all I do is make the prim and proper partygoers uncomfortable, but that is not my intention. My hope is that by understanding Uncle Herbies point of view I might better understand my own. Everyone might better understand their own.
He explained that his conversations have become somewhat of a misfit at the ABC.
Im a child of refugees, but I'm a white Australian. I'm a gay guy, but I hate Mardi Gras, he added. I have Holocaust-surviving grandparents but I'm conflicted about Zionism. I'm an ABC presenter but I don't like kale.
Mr. Szeps urged journalists to be contrarians rather than team players.
The way to expand the conversation is to expand the people having the conversation, not just in ways that prioritise superficial diversity but in ways that reward true idiosyncrasy, he said.
Mr. Szeps also plugged his podcast titled Uncomfortable Conversations, and said he would launch a YouTube show after he finished up with the public broadcaster.
Steve Ahern, acting head of ABC Capital City Networks, said: Joshs mixture of playfulness, intellect and fearlessness is one of a kind. We wish him all the best and hope he can contribute his significant talents to the ABC again in the future.
Mr. Szeps said he will continue with his role at ABC Radio Sydney Afternoons until Dec. 22.
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I hope you die: ABC refuses review into kids program after slew of complaints
The ABC Ombudsman is refusing to review episodes of the childrens news program Behind The News, despite receiving close to 100 complaints over its coverage of the conflict in Gaza.
Diary was alerted by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which had observed the disquiet building in Jewish circles among parents of school-aged children, who began writing letters.
The issues all relate to segments broadcast in October following the terrorist attack in Israel. Parents of Jewish children have written to the ABC, some even directly to managing director David Anderson claiming the series included bias and harmful information regarding the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
There have been three BTN segments broadcast about the conflict one specifically about the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, one explaining the rules of war and one about international aid and whats being done to help civilians.
Parents are up in arms but the kicker, and most tragic part, is that a number of students have also put their concerns in writing, including a year 3 student, whose father wrote to the ABC on her behalf asking for BTN to show all sides. The letter was then signed by the entire class.
They did not receive a response.
Another complaint was from the father of a nine-year-old public school girl in Sydney who said she was confronted after BTN was shown in class recently.
A boy came up to me. I didnt know who he was. He asked: Are you for Israel or for this other place I didnt quite get it. I told him Israel, and he said to me I hope you die, the letter from a concerned parent said, calling the show Palestinian propaganda made PG.
Diary understands the ABC has not replied or responded to that or any of the complaints.
Ombudsman Fiona Cameron on Thursday rejected a written request from Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim to have the show reviewed.
The ABCs editorial standards for impartiality do not require that every facet of every argument is presented within a single discussion or piece of content. Rather, the ABC aims to present, over time, content that addresses a broad range of subjects from a diversity of perspectives reflecting a diversity of experiences, presented in a diversity of ways from a diversity of sources, Ms Cameron wrote.
Mr Wertheim told Diary that following the ABC sidestepping the issues put forward, he now believed the TV show was feeding children intellectual poison.
There was no mention of the well-documented cases of Hamas using Palestinian civilians as human shields, or using civilian structures such as homes, mosques, hospitals and schools for storage of weapons and munitions, or firing missiles from within densely populated locations within Gaza. These matters were omitted but were highly relevant to the episodes emphasis on the devastation and suffering in Gaza, Mr Wertheim said.
The episode was calculated to trigger emotional responses among impressionable schoolchildren through a selective presentation of the facts, instead of following the weight of the available evidence. It was like feeding children intellectual poison.
An ABC spokeswoman said the show was committed to impartiality and consulted a wide range of expert sources for these reports.
Some complainants have expressed concern that the story on international aid did not mention the Hamas terrorist attack. This is not the case. The attack was mentioned albeit briefly in the story, which focused specifically on the international aid effort, she told Diary.
BTN went into detail about the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas. It clearly showed Israel was the target of deliberate terrorism. It also conveyed Israels statement about rocket attacks. It referenced Hamas being described as a terrorist organisation and its history of violence.
Diary understands the ABC employs an education adviser to ensure the appropriateness of BTN content and it also provides resources to help young people with upsetting news. On its website, BTN suggests that teachers of younger students preview stories to make sure they are age appropriate.
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Doctors step up calls for gender care re-examination
The battle over gender-affirmative medicine in Australia has intensified with a call to arms by two experienced psychiatrists for their fellow doctors to resist the pressure of activism that has triggered the widespread subordination of clinical governance to social and political goals in the rush to affirm distressed childrens chosen gender.
The psychiatrists used an academic paper in a top psychiatry journal to urge the medical profession to heed the cautionary tale posed by the healthcare scandal that unfolded at Londons Tavistock clinic and in British compensation cases they say are directly relevant to Australia.
Monash Medical Centre child and adolescent psychiatrist George Halasz and Andrew Amos, an academic psychiatrist who has previously held a training role with Queenslands health department, went as far as to remind doctors of their obligation to observe the Hippocratic oath in questioning the evidence base of affirmative medicine.
In an article in the journal Australasian Psychiatry, They urged doctors to examine the ethics of a model in which powerful hormone drugs are prescribed despite a lack of evidence that the affirmation of a childs perceived gender identity and subsequent medical transition eases teenagers mental distress.
The natural history of gender dysphoria suggests two critical ethical questions: first, is the transition pathway social, medical or surgical in the best interest of the child? the two psychiatrists wrote. Second, is that pathway consistent with the principle first, do no harm?
But even as the explosive article was published, paediatricians and their colleagues at the Royal Childrens Hospital in Melbourne home of the nations leading experts in gender-affirmative medicine and the self-appointed setters of quasi-national guidelines adopted by most of the countrys childrens hospitals quietly published an updated version of their standards of care that endorse a radical expansion of the affirmative model.
The new guidelines endorse the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by general practitioners, outside a multidisciplinary model led by specialist childrens hospitals the model explicitly endorsed as of utmost importance by the Cass Review in the UK.
The review by pediatrician Hilary Cass of the Tavistock clinics Gender Identity Development Service began in 2022 and triggered the institutions closure. It confirmed a limited evidence base for gender-affirming care, systemic failures of clinical governance, and unjustifiable risks of harms to children and families, amid re-examination of the affirmative model in academic literature and policy in countries throughout Europe.
Despite this, the new RCH guidelines do not reference the Tavistock fallout at all, or the fact puberty blocker drugs are only able to be prescribed in the context of a clinical trial now in England. Nor do they mention the growing caution that has prompted a rollback of the medical model in countries that had previously adopted it, including Finland, amid the recent scientific discrediting of the Dutch affirmation model on which Australias approach is still based.
It is unrealistic that all trans and gender-diverse adolescents in Australia will be able to directly access comprehensive specialist paediatric services, especially with these specialist disciplines co-located within a public health service, the new guidelines state. Provision of a multidisciplinary team approach with co-ordination of care from general practitioners, private specialist practitioners and community-based clinicians can be an effective alternative in ensuring best practice and accessibility to medical intervention.
The RCH was approached for comment and declined.
Clinicians pushing for clinical accountability and transparency said they were stunned that the new guidelines fail to consider any of the newly emerging evidence or systematic reviews post-2020 that have dismantled the credibility of the original Dutch model that underpins gender-affirmative medicine and also cast doubt on the efficacy of the approach, highlighted in Australia this year by research clinicians at the The Childrens Hospital at Westmead.
In interviews with The Weekend Australian expanding upon their academic paper, Professor Halasz and Dr Amos expanded upon their concerns that there were major risks associated with gender-affirming care. Yet the new version of Australias guidelines reads as if there is simply no controversy.
Professor Halasz said it was beyond time for Australias childrens hospitals in particular in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to review their approach.
I think its wise that any hospital that has been following whats happened to the Tavistock to start to distance itself as much as possible, as urgently as possible, lest they suffer the same fate, Professor Halasz said. What I would ask is, where is the transparency? Where (are) the outcomes of the procedures, whether they are social transitioning procedures, or medical procedures of prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones?
And where is the data on the number of surgical interventions that follow after the Royal Childrens Hospital care is finished and these patients transition over to adult services? Where is the data? Or the follow-up to document detransitioners? Where is the evidence?
The psychiatrists said the rise of gender-affirmative medicine had been heavily influenced by trans activist groups whose lobbying was aggressive and intimidatory. And that culture had flowed through into medical training. As someone involved in the education of training psychiatrists, I am particularly concerned at how effective trans advocacy has been in training young doctors to reflexively reject any evidence that there might be negative consequences to gender-affirming care, Dr Amos said. Trainees appear to believe that simply acknowledging there are alternative approaches to gender dysphoria actually threatens harm to the transgender community. I would describe that as magical thinking.
I think theres been a failure of leadership across medicine. Individual practitioners have been able to have huge influence because medical colleges have not stepped in to provide guidance.
Professor Halasz, who trained in the UK and was in close contact with doctors who watched the Tavistock scandal unfold, described the rise of gender-affirming medicine as taking place within a radical form of social activism. It was a culture of intimidation, silence, and I think threat, the professor said. And I just thought this is so outside of my understanding of what medicine is about.
The psychiatrists said they were concerned by the suspension of Queensland specialist child psychiatrist Jillian Spencer, who had come into conflict with hospital bosses at the Royal Childrens Hospital in Brisbane over clinical practice in treating gender-questioning children.
Dr Spencer, a vocal critic of affirmative care, has been stood down from her role as a senior staff specialist at the hospital for months following a patient complaint a fact that concerns Dr Amos.
He said it has been very difficult to get psychiatrists to make public statements about gender dysphoria even though the majority appeared to share a more moderate, exploratory approach. Doctors were afraid for their professional reputations.
The major reason for this fear is that trans advocates appear to be both aggressive in their rhetoric, and unwilling to engage in any discussion that does not adopt their basic viewpoint, Dr Amos said. While I do not know the specific details, the protracted suspension of child psychiatrist Jillian Spencer for expressing an alternative view of the approach to gender dysphoria appears to have confirmed the real threat behind such fears.
And the overriding of parents frequent gut instinct for caution over affirmation had damaged psychiatry as a profession, according to Professor Halasz.
Our profession is entrusted by parents to do whats in the best interest of their child, he said. The trust that we have built up with families over years, I believe, actually has been absolutely shredded by this process.
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19 November, 2023
Mens welfare at the mercy of feminist ideology
One should be wary of stereotypes in matters of divorce and child custody. When my wife walked out with our 5 year-old son, I might well have had grave concerns for his welfare. I did not. I thought his loving and capable mother would look after him well and was happy to leave him in her care
br/> And my positivity was rewarded. She thought the boy needed his father and made a point of sending him to me for a day each weekend. No custody dispute whatever. With goodwill many custody disputes could be avoided and the lack of goodwill is the real problem. Not all fathers may be able to act as I did but those who try it may be surprised at how trust engenders trust
ANGELA SHANAHAN
For two days this week the lawns of Parliament House have been strewn with 2500 empty shoes, one for each of the men and boys who die in Australia each year through suicide. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare our male suicide rate is overall three to four times higher than the female rate, and mainly involves men in mid-life. These are the major predictive facts about suicide: being male; being divorced, widowed or separated; living alone; being unemployed. The suicide rate in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is twice that of the non-Indigenous population.
Meanwhile, the government is concentrating all preventive efforts on domestic violence against women, always seen as gendered violence; in other words, men being violent towards women. According to organisations such as White Ribbon, domestic violence is just a male problem. It is their fault. Whats more, according to its media releases this week for White Ribbon Day, most men just cant see it or know what to do about it. White Ribbon demands they educate themselves because violence against women is at epidemic proportions, and (our research) contrasts that with the reasons men have given us for not getting involved. We think men will see that theres no good reason to not step up this year and either make a donation or educate themselves. Because with one in three Australian women being a victim of violence, its not just a womens issue, its everyones issue.
But guess what? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics there are 47 male deaths from suicide per week. Meanwhile, there are 71 females who die from fatal domestic violence per year, that equals 1.36 per week. So male suicides, which are 35 times as numerous as deaths from DV, should also be everyones issue. But where is the advertising campaign? Where is the support? The ads that are all about gendered violence just blame men, and boys, and the support for men at risk of suicide, except for veterans of the armed forces, is almost nil.
You might say these two issues, DV and male suicide, are not comparable. But think about them in the psychosocial terms of the health and social wellbeing of the community. Most importantly, how well do we value the health and welfare of each section of the population, male and female?
Domestic violence is, as I know, real and has all sorts of serious intergenerational effects. My paternal grandfather was a violent man, who terrorised his family. But, and this is the big but, where is the nuance in the domestic violence is gendered statements like the ones White Ribbon uses? It is all the fault of men and apparently the men have to educate themselves. This is simplistic. It is ideology, plain and simple.
What of the pathologies that plague all of us, and our whole society? Why is something that involves two people presented as one-dimensional: man bad perpetrator, woman good victim? The DV lobby does not allow presentation of this problem in any other way, because allowing any nuance might question the simplistic assumptions that underlie the narrow, prismatic feminist ideology that governs all current social legislation, especially in family law.
One fact of male trauma the feminist trope will not admit is that mens mental and psychological welfare is often eroded by the constant blame and fear of being blamed. No wonder, as even White Ribbon admits, men are confused. None of the DV advocates who speak in terms of gendered violence and male toxic behaviour look at the root causes of violence.
Importantly, these overlap with the causes of male suicide: substance abuse, unemployment, isolation, intergenerational dysfunction (especially in Aboriginal men and young boys), and family breakdown, which affects all classes and groups of men, but particularly men in the highest age bracket for suicide.
Since 2008, the highest suicide rates have been observed in middle-aged males (aged 40-49). But groups such as White Ribbon are not really interested in the males welfare within a marriage or domestic partnership; furthermore, its view of female welfare is so one-dimensionally seen as victimhood that it never admits the couple dynamic.
However, male suicide, though complex, is often triggered, in the words of the AIHW research, by a recent stressful life event, especially divorce or final separation from a long-term partner. That has been cited by all research into Australian male suicide as the overwhelming reason behind the rise in middle-life suicide, especially where children are involved.
Divorce is not just a single event; it causes a cascading series of problems, and men in contested divorce cases often find themselves in a maze of legal and financial dead ends, with a mounting psychological toll of usually concealed trauma.
An inquiry into the operation of family law earlier this century was one of the longest in Australian history and found suicide among Australian men was disproportionately associated with family law disputes, especially over custody of children. What is more, the level of false accusations was outrageous. Consequently, in 2006 family law was redrafted to give fathers more say in parenting their children after divorce, with a presumption of shared parenting.
Now, due to the untoward influence of the feminist lobby, for whom all marriages are potential minefields of domestic violence, that sensible and humane principle has been abandoned. This is not reform. It is a regression to the past. It is a disastrous change, which will cause more false accusations of violence and more harm to fathers of children and, consequently, more male suicides.
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Top doctor Nick Coatsworth delivers a brutal reality check for Aussies who still wear face masks
One of Australia's top doctors has issued a brutal message to those still wearing face masks - and hit out calls from the Australian Medical Association to bring back Covid masks.
Australia reported 6,550 new Covid cases last week. This surge has led health officials, including AMA Queensland president Maria Boulton, to advocate for the reinstatement of mask mandates in high-risk settings, such as on airplanes, in large crowds, and within medical facilities.
However, former Australian deputy chief health officer Dr Nick Coatsworth said Aussies shouldn't be overly concerned about the recent spike during an interview with 2GB'S Ben Fordham.
'The Australian Medical Association has quoted 245 hospitalisations of COVID-19 with this (current) wave in Queensland, but there are over a million admissions to Queensland hospitals every year,' he said. 'The suggestion that this is a wave is probably incorrect.'
He also believes reinstating mask mandates would have little impact. 'That's not going to make any difference at the moment,' Dr Coatsworth explained.
'If you say 'Look, wear masks in some situations but not others, don't socially distance and go about your business', then all the masks are doing is polluting the environment.' 'We need to be smarter about how we manage this.
He also slammed advice from scientists recommending 100,000 concertgoers to mask up when Coldplay performs in Perth this weekend. 'That's just a crazy thing to do,' he said.
'We got to remember just how infectious Omicron is. Just sticking a mask on at a Coldplay concert is unlikely to be protective.
'And number two, the vast majority of people have had Covid, even the people who claim they've never had it. The vast majority of people are also vaccinated.
'COVID-19 is now a milder disease because of what we call herd immunity, we have all been exposed to it. 'Our need to take a chill pill with Covid is getting even greater.'
Dr Coastworth isn't overly concerned about the latest spike but conceded it puts a strain on hospitals. 'The reason why health departments have put this out is because when we do get an increase in Covid or any respiratory virus, it does puts a strain on hospitals,' he said.
'I work in an hospital and you do see the strain but not because people are getting sick from Covid. 'Very few people are actually getting sick from Covid but it creates an infection control problem where you have to isolate the patients and it created bed pressure.
'But that's going to happen for the next 5-10 years with Covid and respiratory viruses and we have to find ways to cope with that.
'Frankly I was on shift yesterday and we had not a single patient with COVID-19 in our acute medical unit.
Dr Coatsworth emphasised that despite a minor increase in hospitalisations, there has been a decline in intensive care admissions from Covid.
'There's creative, innovative ways that will allow the community to get on with its business without constant talk of bringing back things that realistically, public health officials aren't going to bring back.'
Dr Coatsworth echoed the health advice to catch up outdoors where the risk of getting Covid is 'extraordinary difficult, if not impossible.' 'It's always been the right advice, I'm not sure why we didn't give it at the start of the pandemic,' he said. 'You would really have to be on top of someone to catch Covid outdoors.'
Meanwhile, infectious diseases specialist Professor Peter Collignon has made it clear he opposes people being forced by law to wear masks. 'If at increased risk, or concerned, yes wear a mask. But no mandates.'
Professor Collignon, who is a microbiologist at Canberra Hospital, said there was 'little or likely no point' wearing a mask outside.
He added that masks will give 'some short term protection' to those who are concerned about short term exposure indoors, but eye protection is also needed. 'What lands in your eyes goes into your nose,' the professor said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12759217/Nick-Coatsworth-slams-calls-bring-masks.html
********************************************The truth that may not be spoken
First, they came for our spaces, then our sports, our language, our opportunities and our children. Now, theyre coming for our thoughts and our voices.
Im a Councillor with the Hobart City Council, arguably one of the Wokest councils in Australia. Im also a wife, mother, and firm believer in freedom of belief and expression. I know how critically important tolerance and inclusion is to our democracy. Inclusion goes far beyond race, age, sexual orientation, and other variables. True inclusion is also diversity in belief and opinion.
The fundamental rights that underpin our democratic way of Australian life are under the type of attack we never would have thought possible only a handful of years ago. For me, this attack is hitting very close to home and my hip pocket.
Ill soon be fronting the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal facing an allegation that I have incited hatred on the basis of gender identity. My supposed crime? I spoke the truth.
The pathway here began when I spoke at a Let Women Speak womens rights event outside Parliament House in Hobart in March this year. As part of my speech, I stated that transwomen are transwomen and remain biological men and that someone cannot be raped with a penis, if there is no penis present, in reference to the valid need for some female-only spaces. Clear-thinking people know these to be undeniable truths, yet Im absurdly being taken to court for saying them.
What were seeing is the pinnacle of gender ideology madness. The lunacy has gone beyond the loss of once female-only vulnerable spaces, like changerooms, toilets and shelters. Its well advanced in womens sport where men are celebrating from the top of the womens podium. We have male rapists being housed in womens prisons.
Women have lost their language, as she, her and woman, is now under the ownership of, and inclusive of, men. Its no surprise when a man is the keynote speaker for an International Womens Day event. And now the final frontiers controlling and compelling the beliefs, thoughts and speech of others.
To complete the domination, activists and their well-funded ideology-driven organisations are weaponising legislation to silence people who dont subscribe to the religion of gender ideology. The concept of gender ideology is just a set of beliefs, but more like a cult given questions are not permitted. Thankfully, in Australia at least, we would never see people being taken to Court for not believing in someone elses religion, which is essentially what is happening here.
Taxpayer money is being shamefully chewed up on punishing people for speaking the truth, and making an example of them so that other non-believers dare not even try. Defending such absurdity especially when there are Constitutional questions at hand doesnt come cheap. Ive already invested thousands personally in our fight to speak the truth and our fair and valid opinion, but backup is needed to defend this right as far and high as we need to.
Laws around stamping out real incitement of hatred and violence are undoubtedly needed, but setting the threshold so ridiculously low is a full-blown assault on our implied right to freedom of belief, freedom of expression and political communication.
Yes, I could have grovelled when the complaint that ignited this firestorm first reared its head. I could have begged for forgiveness and made promises to do better Im so sorry for hurting your feelings and, of course youre a woman, but that is lying, and I wont do that. Truth, reality, science and safety and fairness for women and girls are more important than the feelings of some men.
Im offended cannot dictate where the bar on allowable public discourse is set. We all have the capacity to be offended by something, and being offended is part of being in a society. This is even more clear-cut when the offence stems from fact. We all have facts we wish were not true, but they are, and no amount of outrage can change that. The possibility of being offended goes hand-in-hand with the right to speak its a two-way exchange. In exchange for your right to speak, you accept the prospect of offence when others do. Being offended is part and parcel of diversity, debate and democracy.
The vast majority of Australians are on the same page as me. We dont wish transwomen any harm and we want to be kind but we wont lie, and we wont compromise the fair and valid needs of women. This complaint even being accepted for investigation shows that the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner is on a different wavelength to the general population.
All sane people know that this situation is ludicrous. We know that humans cannot change sex and that males, as a collective, are bigger, stronger, and present an inherent risk to women. Statistics show that 97 per cent of sex offenders are men.
There is nothing progressive about prioritising the demands and feelings of some men over womens safety, fairness, dignity and rights. There is nothing righteous about declaring that facts are hate and only one view is allowed. There is too much at stake to not fight back on this obscene level of censorship.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/i-spoke-the-truth/
***************************************************Aussies major private school claim sparks fierce debate
Note the last paragraph below. It is the major reason I sent my son to a private school
A young business owner has caused a stir after claiming there is a huge difference between private school and public school educated Aussies.
Zane Marshall, founder of marketing agency Lux Social, recently took to TikTok to claim that a whopping 70 per cent of CEOs in Australia all attended private schools.
He claimed that, despite what people say, private school students have a big advantage when it comes to finding success after school.
While Mr Marshall noted the level of education also plays a huge part, he believes the networking opportunities provided to privately schooled students are what really sets them apart and gives them the biggest advantage those who go through the public system.
When I compare my friends that went to private schools, they all went off into really high paying job or got these amazing opportunities early on through their network from the private school, he said.
Whether it was sporting team, whether it was a friend of a friend that they went to school with, someones uncle, someones dad they all got really great opportunities through the network in the school.
But Mr Marshall believes the most important advantage of private education is the high level of confidence and self-worth instilled in them by their teachers. I didnt get that at public school, he claimed.
The young Aussies claims sparked a major debate among viewers, with the video racking up over 1500 comments.
There were many who completely disagreed with Mr Marshalls assessment, with some pointing out a lot of the families who send their kids to private school already have the connections he spoke about, along with the money to support their career aspirations.
Yeah its not the education.. its the fact that most people going to private school are ahead economically already and easy to climb the ladder, one commenter said.
Unfair advantage. Taxpayers shouldnt pay a cent to private education, another wrote.
One commenter claimed her brother went to private school and, while he is financially successful, he is suffering trauma from his school years.
I went to a public school absolutely killing it with zero connections, another said.
One person also claimed: I think its only fair that you mention the highest university drop our rate are those from private school.
However, there were still plenty of people who agreed with Mr Marshall, with many former private school kids chiming in on the debate. All my corporate jobs have come about from my private school connections so I agree, one wrote.
Spot on! I went to a private school and I walked into jobs because of the school I attended, another said.
One person believed private education was worth the money because it drills into students the importance of being well dressed and having high public standards.
Private schools hold kids to a much higher standard than public schools. Kids will naturally aim higher after school with more confidence, another said.
Others went was far as to claim that private schools dont tolerate the same behaviours as public schools, therefore students actually get the chance to learn.
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16 November, 2023
Families waiting for public housing frustrated as almost 1,400 government-owned properties sit empty in WA
When I was a landlord, I did from time to time have tenants leaving my property in a mess. I usually had the place habitable again within a week -- usually by bogging in myself to do a cleanup. When government is the landlord, however it commmonly takes months to get the property ready for new tenants. It stays vacant meanwhile. An old-old story about government inefficiency
Families experiencing homelessness in regional Western Australia say public housing is sitting empty and boarded up for months and even years at a time forcing some into overcrowded and unsafe living conditions.
Geraldton woman Dena Comeagain and her two-year-old son Boston have been relying on family members for a place to live since July, after a series of private rentals they were living in were sold.
Ms Comeagain is on the priority housing waitlist, but she could still be waiting over a year for a house.
She said the past few months moving between crowded houses and not knowing when they would have a place of their own had been unsettling.
"It's taking a toll on me now; everything is, with being homeless," Ms Comeagain said.
"I just want to get up and go, but I can't because I have nowhere else to go.
Ms Comeagain's frustration builds when she sees empty public housing boarded up around Geraldton.
As of June, there were 191 vacant public homes in the Midwest and Gascoyne, which includes the regional centres of Geraldton and Carnarvon.
There were 1,380 houses across the state sitting vacant.
In December last year, the Midwest-Gascoyne had the highest rate of vacant public housing in WA at 13.7 per cent three times the state average.
The December figures, which were provided to WA parliament earlier this year, show empty public housing has been climbing over the past three years.
Statewide, empty public housing increased from 2.5 per cent in December 2020 to 4.2 per cent in December 2022.
Ms Comeagain said she had called the Department of Communities about empty properties she thought could be suitable for her and Boston.
"I am angry when they keep telling me the same yarn over and over ... that's their job, to get the people so they can be fixed, so people can be housed."
Ms Comeagain is not alone in her frustration.
A report to a parliamentary committee on the Funding of Homelessness Services in WA, released in June, found there was a significant number of public housing properties in Western Australia that were vacant or under-utilised.
The parliamentary committee heard anecdotal evidence of properties that had been empty for many months, and even years.
Ten people under one roof
Housing advocates are also concerned that lack of public housing is a factor contributing to unsafe overcrowding.
Over the past few months, Ms Comeagain and Boston have stayed with family members, and at times there have been 10 people living under one roof.
Ms Comeagain she found the overcrowded living difficult, especially after hearing about the death of a 10-month-old baby in the Midwest in July while awaiting public housing.
"I could be in the same situation. I'm a single mother and I'm living the same way those girls were with their babies," she said. "We want to break that cycle.
"[The Department of Communities] should be able to house people so they can have a safe home for their babies."
Ms Comeagain craves stability. "Having a safe haven for my baby, putting him in daycare and getting my life back on track, getting a job again and just being stable," she said.
Potential health issues
Veteran housing advocate Betsy Buchanan said it was difficult for families in desperate need to see empty houses. "I think it's it makes them feel very powerless and very unheard," Ms Buchanan said.
She said overcrowding led to many health issues. "It means that the children get very ill ... that places huge stress on the entire family and the mothers and grandmothers often feel personally responsible, when the overcrowding is really triggering a lot of the illness," she said.
A Department of Communities spokesperson said the number of vacant public housing properties in the region had dropped by 50 since last December, with 35 properties and 12 units being refurbished.
Another 12 "untenable" properties were demolished to make way for a road reserve.
The spokesperson pointed to damage caused by tenants as a factor contributing to properties being vacant, alongside the lingering impact of Tropical Cyclone Seroja and the collapse of the department's property maintenance contractor in the region, Pindan, in 2021.
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Women pay the price for the Prime Ministers productivity problems
Despite a rapidly declining birth rate across the Western world, new research out of the United States shows many people want more children than they are having. The study published by Ohio State Universitys Institute for Population Research suggests demographic decline could be reversed if people simply had the children they claim to want.
Yet birth rates in countries like Australia continue to fall. The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the birth rate has fallen three per cent since 2021 and the total fertility rate has dropped to 1.63 children per woman.
The reasons for this are both socio-political and financial. They are proof that we live in a society that increasingly does not value motherhood, children, or family.
Last week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made this abundantly clear during a recent keynote address to The Australians Economic and Social Outlook conference.
Weve narrowed the gender pay gap to its lowest point on record and were not done yet, he said. Thats why we have made equality for women a central economic priority because it is central to our future economic success.
Increasingly the political class measure a womans success by her contribution to the national economy. This feeds into the narrative that success should be viewed through a commercial lens and that employment is empowerment.
Mr Albanese continued, Making child-care more accessible and affordable is an economic reform that boosts productivity and participation for working women in particular. He added, It has also delivered real and immediate help for around 1.2 million family budgets.
What the Prime Minister pointedly failed to admit is this policy only helps mothers who want to return to the workforce, not the stay-at-home mum. Todays policies around childcare, while pushed in the name of female empowerment, have everything to do with economic interests and very little to do with giving women a choice.
This is further exacerbated by an economic climate that is not family-friendly. According to the ABS, the average annual income for a man in Australia is about $90,000. However, with inflation at 5.4 per cent and interest rates recently increased to 4.35 per cent, the average salary does not stretch as far as it used to.
Confronted with rising rental and housing prices, many women are forced to return to work sooner than they would have liked. Cost-of-living has killed the stay-at-home mum, and for many women, the choice between returning to work or devoting more time to caring responsibilities has been made for them.
Today, womens workforce participation in Australia is at 62.2 per cent. However, according to the latest Gallup poll, 50 per cent of women with children under 18 would prefer to stay at home.
Women are being sold a lie. It suits the interests of the political class to support the perception that wealth, career, and lifestyle are the key markers of success. It certainly suits the budget bottom line. The Prime Minister acknowledges this when he says that womens productivity is essential to boosting productivity.
When you hear motherhood described as unpaid caring and a penalty, replace those words with unpaid taxes and a penalty on the national GDP. These politically opportunistic catchphrases have nothing to do with empowerment but are rather about encouraging women to make a rapid return to work.
Under the guise of supporting women, the Prime Minister in fact does a disservice to all women by making the gender pay gap a top priority for his government.
Moreover, this type of rhetoric fuels the grievance industry by promoting the idea that the patriarchy is preventing women from succeeding in the workforce.
Our elected representatives should be focusing on much more pressing issues, such as improving the national economy by cutting taxes, income splitting, and making housing more affordable, thereby enabling families to survive on a single income.
The 3 per cent fall in the birth rate since 2021 speaks to a society that has forgotten the value of family and the stay-at-home mum.
While feminism has achieved huge wins for women, we must not be deceived by anti-motherhood and anti-family rhetoric. True liberation is about choice, not employment.
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Glib advertising no substitute for classroom reform
Be that teacher is a new $10 million advertising blitz by federal, state, and territory governments that aims to elevate the status of the teaching profession, to celebrate its impact, and to inspire more individuals to consider teaching as a fulfilling career path.
The campaigns objectives, to reshape the public perception of teachers and to encourage aspiring educators, may well be necessary, but it will do nothing to address the reasons behind our drastic teacher shortage or stem the exodus of teachers from the profession.
To encourage new recruits, the campaign offers up the testimony of eight dedicated teachers. Their stories regarding the connections forged with students, emphasise the transformative power of a great teacher and the enduring satisfaction teachers can derive from their vocation. Its genuinely positive and convincing stuff.
However, the campaign runs the risk of doing more harm than good. By not seeking to address the systemic problems within the education system, Be that teacher obscures the challenges faced daily by teachers in the classroom.
Lack of teacher-heart is not the problem in the Australian education system. The problem that demands urgent attention is what awaits a teacher in the classroom, namely, a steady decline in academic standards and a workforce in crisis. It is a crisis generated by a lack of relevant training, unsustainable workloads and unnecessary paperwork keeping teachers from their actual job. On top of this, parents with often unrealistic expectations, and unruly sometimes violent students exacerbate the problem.
Any campaign to attract teachers that fails to address these issues will do little to solve the teaching crisis.
Australian classrooms are one of the most problematic in the OECD. The 2018 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment results (PISA) showed while most countries registered an improvement in classroom behaviour, Australias had deteriorated. Australian classrooms ranked among the unruliest in the world, at 70th out of the 77 countries surveyed.
It is unsurprising that students feel empowered to antagonise and disrupt when our National Curriculum is an ideologically driven document explicitly urging students, from their earliest years, to dissent and participate in acts of civil disobedience. The idea that self-restraint and discipline are outdated vestiges of a bygone era has hardly helped.
Moreover, when a student misbehaves, the subsequent administrative demands on the teacher are daunting. The investigation and detailed documentation of the incident itself is followed by a teacher-led roundtable discussion with those involved employing restorative practices and further meetings with other staff and parents. Every one of these conversations must be documented. Hours of time, taken away from actual teaching or lesson preparation, are required every time there is an incident of almost any kind.
Many parents, too, have become increasingly and unrealistically demanding. It is not uncommon for parents to reject the schools view of a matter and for a teacher to endure complaint, hostility and even abuse. And, of course, all the meetings arising from a complaint must be documented. Unsurprisingly, the school environment can quickly deteriorate, marked by a general lack of trust and respect.
The abandonment of the principle of in loco parentis has led too many parents to the belief that it is their right to intervene on their childs behalf whenever they want. This sense of parental entitlement has created a situation where 59 per cent of teachers report they spend five hours or more, every week, just dealing with parents.
Teachers are on the receiving end of a staggering and increasing rate of abuse. A study by La Trobe Universitys Paulina Billett, Rochelle Fogelgarn and Edgar Burns, found that 80 per cent of surveyed teachers had experienced bullying and harassment in the preceding 9-12 month period, and more than half reported this behaviour coming from both students and parents. No other workplace would tolerate such an incidence of bullying.
Many teachers struggle to manage disruptive behaviours and maintain a conducive learning environment. The lack of adequate support and training in behaviour management perpetuates the problem, undermining the learning experience for both students and teachers. Initial teacher training, notably Woke and notoriously lacking in evidenced-based preparation for the realities of the classroom, leaves new teachers floundering and vulnerable, which in turn contributes to burnout.
The workforce shortage has also led to high numbers of teachers taking subjects they have no training in, known as teaching out of field, which is another contributing factor to the decline of educational quality and student outcomes.
The public perception of teaching being a 9am-3.30pm job with long holidays, if it was ever true, has never been further from the truth. The profession is under extreme strain, with teachers routinely describing their workload as excessive, unrealistic, and unsustainable. A recent Monash University survey suggests almost half of the teaching workforce is considering leaving the profession.
While the Be that teacher campaign celebrates exceptional educators, the $10 million spent will in no way address the real problems underlying the teacher shortage, and will only overshadow the pressing need for sweeping system reform.
For the teaching profession to be genuinely elevated and, crucially, for workplace conditions to improve, comprehensive reform is urgently required
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/glib-advertising-will-not-enable-that-teacher/
********************************************************Australias energy system can handle extreme summer if system holds up, market operator concludes
No reserves
Australias energy system faces a once-in-a-decade spike in electricity demand this summer as well as an increased bushfire risk and extreme heat as the countrys market operator warned the system cannot afford any unexpected outages or supply shocks.
The Australian Energy Market Operator in August warned the countrys energy system could be stressed to near breaking point as soon as this summer, and Victoria and South Australia could both experience blackouts as there was a heightened threat that there would be insufficient generation to meet demand.
The warning had triggered emergency measures, which the AEMO said has eased the shortfall threat, but there is little capacity for any unexpected problems to Australias ageing coal generators.
The AEMOs executive general manager operations, Michael Gatt, said months of planning with industry has gone into preparing the nations power systems for a possible summer of extreme demand.
Our extensive planning with industry, governments and network businesses aims to have enough generation and transmission available year-round to meet consumers electricity needs, Mr Gatt said.
This years summer forecast is for hot and dry El Nino conditions, increasing the risk of bushfires and extreme heat, which could see electricity demand reach a one-in-10-year high across the eastern states and in Western Australia.
The AEMO said in September it had asked for commitments of extra generation for both SA and Victoria, and tenders from heavy users who could be paid to lower demand when the grid was strained so much that blackouts could occur.
The AEMO said it is also bolstered by additional capacity as major generators return to operations. The market operator said an extra 1500MW of scheduled generation will be online this summer compared to the previous one, and it now expects an extra 2000MW generation capacity from new wind and solar projects will be available.
In WA, the market operator said nearly 50MW of extra scheduled generation is expected to be available. The increase in generation availability and additional reserves being procured will help navigate reliability pressures, should they eventuate, Mr Gatt said.
The additional capacity will largely come from Queensland and NSW, with several major generators on course to complete repairs and maintenance.
Coal is still the dominant source of electricity, providing around two-thirds of the nations power. But many of the coal generators are approaching the end of their technical lifespan, leaving many exposed to faults.
Many of Australias largest power station operators have undertaken intensive maintenance to ready their units for the spike in demand, but industry sources said recent history showed a spate of issues.
The Callide C power station, one of Queenslands largest coal power plants, is on course to come back in January, the plants operator said earlier this year, while AGL Energys Bayswater and Origin Energys Eraring coal power stations are both set to return to full capacity after units were taken offline for required maintenance.
However, while the increased generation will ease concerns about insufficient electricity supplies, the AEMO said there remains an elevated threat as an El Nino weather system is expected to bring soaring temperatures and a significant rise in demand for electricity for cooling.
Australian authorities have warned of a heightened risk of bushfires, which could damage or destroy high-voltage transmission lines, which could create serious problems for the nations electricity grid.
Elevated demand could also cause further pain to Australian households. While AEMO said it now expects to have enough electricity generation to meet demand, increased usage will likely push up wholesale electricity prices.
Wholesale prices the cost of electricity are the biggest component in how much household and business bills rise by in 2024.
Australian households, struggling under high inflation and 13 interest rate rises in little more than a year, have endured two years of electricity and gas price increases of more than 20 per cent.
A record number of Australians are already struggling to pay their electricity bills, and further increases will prove deeply unpopular, and will not be welcomed by the federal Labor government, which has seen its polling slide substantially amid the cost-of-living squeeze.
Increases in utility bills could also fuel inflation, forcing yet more interest rate rises from the Reserve Bank of Australia, which has vowed to bring inflation back to its target by the end of 2025.
Energy market executives fear continued increases in electricity bills will also temper public support for Australias energy transition.
Labor has set the ambitious target of having renewable energy generate more than 80 per cent of the countrys electricity by the end of the decade, a key pillar in the plan to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.
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15 November, 2023
Marcia Langton slams Blak sovereigntys Palestine stance
Distinguished Indigenous leader Marcia Langton has condemned the Blak sovereignty movements proposition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians as simply untrue, saying there is very little that is comparable in the two peoples situations.
Professor Langton offered a withering assessment of the pro-Palestinian strand of the Indigenous rights movement after Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni wore a pin with both Aboriginal and Palestinian flags on his jacket during a discussion of the Israel-Hamas war on ABCs Q&A program on Monday night.
It follows a decision by independent senator Lidia Thorpe the voice of the Blak sovereignty movement in parliament to announce on social media last month: I stand with Palestine!
Jewish leaders such as Liberal MP Julian Leeser and prominent lawyer Mark Leibler were longtime and vocal supporters of the campaign for an Indigenous voice to parliament, which remote Indigenous communities mostly supported on referendum day but which the Blak sovereignty movement vocally opposed.
Professor Langton is the first Indigenous campaigner for the voice to write in the mainstream media about the Israel-Hamas war. Writing in The Australian on Wednesday, Professor Langton begins by describing the loss of thousands of lives in Gaza as unjustifiable. She condemns Hamas and says she is horrified and deeply saddened by the loss of lives in the Levant, the Israelis who were murdered and kidnapped by Hamas and the innocent Palestinians who are being used as human shields by Hamas.
As an Indigenous Australian, I can have little effect in stopping these horrors but it is necessary to be clear about a few matters, she writes.
Blak sovereignty advocates have entwined two extraordinary propositions one that is simply untrue and one that is a moral outrage.
First, they claim that Indigenous Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians. This is false; it is the view of a tiny few, if put in those words. Most of us are aware of the complexity and that there is very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity.
Second, they refuse to condemn Hamas. I am aghast and embarrassed. They do not speak for me. I fear and loathe the possibility of further loss of life in this terrible crisis.
I fear also that our multicultural society is being torn apart by people deluded about terrorism who have used their protests as a cover for anti-Semitism. Our Jewish and Palestinian communities deserve respect and compassion. I do not support the violence we have seen in Australia recently as a result of this conflict.
Professor Langton is categorical that Hamas are terrorists and that Palestinian Islamic Jihad are terrorists.
The slogan Not all Palestinians are Hamas denies the fact that innocent Palestinians are being used as human shields by these terrorists, she writes.
No legitimate Aboriginal leader will permit our movement to be associated with terrorists. I can state confidently, based on my long experience in Aboriginal communities and giving advice to Indigenous corporations, that the majority Aboriginal view is a repulsion of terrorism.
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When identity trumps merit we all lose in the end
Possibly the most important contribution Western liberalism has made to the development of civilised society is the notion that we should judge people on their individual characteristics, not on what tribe or collective they belong to.
Tragically, this foundational principle is being challenged everywhere sometimes overtly, sometimes by subterfuge. If one went in search of a sure-fire way to dumb down our society, this is it.
Cue the Queensland government and Queensland University of Technology. Both are abolishing merit-based hiring for public servants and academics, allegedly to stamp out unconscious bias.
The government and QUT are dumping the word merit from their selection policies and will instead hire staff based on suitability. Apparently, bad references or a history of disciplinary action such as being fired from a previous job will be handled differently for Indigenous applicants on cultural grounds. In other words, applicants will be judged at least partially on the colour of their skin.
A courageous woman, Rochelle Hicks, has blown the lid on the real-life impact of this sort of discrimination. Earlier this year, Transport for NSW failed to take steps to remove Aboriginal man Ian Brown from being involved in a major infrastructure project she oversaw even after he made a death threat against her. Hicks wanted to deal with the situation herself. If a white employee or a contractor had made a death threat against a woman, they would have been removed swiftly. End of story.
Not here. Imagine the diversity tangle for Transport for NSW. Senior honchos want to attract more women into its traditionally male-oriented construction and infrastructure areas. Then an Indigenous man on its payroll makes a death threat in front of a witness against one of their most respected executives.
A workplace safety report finds the threat credible. Does Transport for NSW support Hicks? Or does Transport for NSW apply a different standard to Brown? In short, in the hierarchy of diversity claims, does race and cultural sensitivity trump gender and safety at work? Transport for NSW effectively choose the former, leaving Hicks feeling unsafe and unsupported by her employer.
This debacle comes from not judging a person on their merits. And there are a million different ways to sideline merit.
A more subtle method is to redefine merit or demand it be assessed in a more holistic way. Just change the criteria applied to judge merit so that it fits whatever hiring result you want to reach.
Earlier this year I suggested, tongue in cheek, that it wouldnt be long before diversity divas in corporate Australia demanded that the criteria for picking company chief executives be broadened to allow for more heads of human resources and in-house general counsel in the top job. I said if you thought it was bad enough that HR departments controlled chief executives, wait until HR people actually ran the joint.
It was a joke. Except, right on cue, and as if to prove there is no claim so outrageous that Chief Executive Women cant make it with a straight face, the organisations new president, Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, was quoted as saying that boards should broaden the talent pool from which chief executives were selected to include people from HR.
Lloyd-Hurwitz referred to her own experience as chief executive of Mirvac, claiming 90 per cent of what I did was around people, so why would coming through a human capital and culture function not equip you very well for that?.
This is surprising coming from a woman who once said she needed to do an MBA because having done urban geography as an undergrad, I was woefully underprepared for the world of finance and commerce, and then proceeded to follow an extremely high-powered career in funds management and real estate.
Isnt there something ever so slightly revisionist about a woman who now thinks you can be a chief executive while still having your training wheels on when it comes to reading a balance sheet?
Given the gullibility with which every breathless new CEW claim is greeted by latter-day equivalents of the late, unlamented Male Champions of Change, a little hard-nosed cross examination of these claims might help avoid wholesale adoption by scared boards of this latest lunatic piece of gender activism before it dooms our public companies to financial and commercial illiteracy.
The problem is this. Women now significantly outnumber men at universities and institutions of higher learning. But, damn it, not only do they choose the wrong courses (at least if you want to be a chief executive) but they keep compounding the error by subsequent career choices.
As the Workplace Gender Equality Agency coyly puts it, Women and men continue to follow different educational paths and the pattern of female and male segregation into different industries remains.
For example, recent figures show that around 60 per cent of women tend to study education, health, society and culture, and creative arts while information technology and engineering are male-dominated.
CEW would no doubt blame the dreaded patriarchy for dragooning young women into filling out their tertiary application forms in traditionally sexist ways, and by logical extension doing the same to young men. This is rubbish.
Judging from the assertive young women I know, treating them as automatons choosing university courses and subsequent careers at the whim of some great unseen sexist god is offensive in the extreme.
At this point in their lives the time of university entrance there is a strong argument women appear to have achieved equality of opportunity with men. Their apparently superior school results give them first crack at whatever university choices and careers they wish. It is the voluntary choices that young women make then, and later, that lead to different career outcomes.
One of the biggest failures of CEW and other like organisations is the determined refusal to recognise, indeed celebrate, freedom of choice and individual responsibility. This brings us back to why merit is being defined down.
As the 2022 CEW survey revealed, while numbers of women in executive leadership teams continue to grow, they largely choose so-called functional roles (HR, legal, marketing, communications and so on) in greater numbers than the operational or line roles that lead naturally to CEO succession.
This infuriates the CEW ideologues for whom equality of opportunity is never enough. Only equality of outcome will do.
You would think CEW would recognise the lessons of centuries of business practice, the learnings of companies through business cycles, the acres of academic texts and simple common sense, all to the effect that, as a general rule, executives with line and operational experience make the best chief executives.
Not CEW. If the facts dont fit CEWs preferred hypothesis, it seeks to change the facts. If the assessment of individual merit doesnt get you the right outcomes, change the definition of merit.
CEW seems to accept it cant force more women to choose the career paths that lead to the chief executives office, so its solution is to try to redefine the CEOs role and qualifications so it fits womens preferred career paths. CEW wants to welcome you to the world of chief executives who may be financially illiterate, commercially obtuse and strategically sterile but who have empathy, are terrific at compliance and know HR backwards. No thanks.
My advice to you is that if any company you have invested in appoints an HR executive or the general counsel as CEO, do what I think a young Lloyd-Hurwitz would have done when she was a fund manager: short the stock.
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The ocean isnt rising, your island is sinking
Studies using 40 years of satellite imagery of more than 1,100 coral atolls in the Indian and Pacific Oceans have shown that most coral atolls have been growing in area, especially large atolls such as at Tuvalu. A few were static and some smaller atolls decreased in size. Some atolls had decreased in size because of compaction, extraction of coral for roads, airports, buildings and cement manufacture and groundwater extraction. Again, these satellite measurements confirm earlier theories that coral atolls grow when there is a relative sea level rise.
There is absolutely no science whatsoever to support the view that Tuvalu, or any other island nation, will be inundated by a speculated sea level rise. Only the contrary. The past shows that a relative sea level rise results in a growth of atolls. This has been known for nearly 200 years. The cash grab by the island atoll nations unctuous politicians and the UN should be called out for what it is. Maybe younger folk educated on Rugby Australia scholarships and with a Christian ethical foundation could change political thinking in the Pacific island atoll nations upon return to their homelands.
Come on Australia. Break away from your woke chains. Rather than hand out shedloads of cash to Pacific island nations for some silly hypothetical future catastrophe
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/bring-back-blackbirding
****************************************************The poisonous results of a refusal to compromise
Their enmity to Israel hurts Palestinians most of all
One month into the latest round of the Gaza war, Saturday has become Protest for Palestine Day among TikTok generation students and Islamists.
It follows the same pattern as the Friday Strikes for Climate championed by Greta Thunberg, her high school acolytes, and the Socialist Workers party members of the teachers union.
With the inevitable clash this Saturday of youthful, useful idiots and their parents generation who will be commemorating Remembrance Day, here are some Post-it notes to point out to the protesters that they wont see in their social media feeds.
November 11 is Armistice Day but not all armistices are equal. In the West, an armistice signals the end of hostilities. Not in Islam. Ever since Hamas invaded Israel on 7 October it has repeatedly called for a ceasefire yet it is Hamas that shatters each ceasefire to which it agrees. Its not an accident. What Hamas calls for, a hudna, is a fake ceasefire in todays parlance. Its a term that Mohammed used in his battle with his own tribe, the Quraysh. It allows each side to regroup and in the case of the Prophet to craftily defeat his enemy.
The war between Hamas and Israel has nothing to do with Palestinians who were assaulted in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in September 2023, mistreatment by Israeli security forces, settlements in the West Bank, or returning to the 1967 borders; indeed there is nothing Israel can do to broker lasting peace because Hamas doesnt accept the right of Israel to exist at all. As Mahmoud al-Ramahi the secretary-general of the Palestinian parliament put it, We accept that Israel as a state exists, but we will never recognise the right of Israel to exist in our land.
For the same reason, Hamas will never agree to a two-state solution. The only solution it will accept is a Palestinian caliphate in the entire area once referred to under the British as Mandate Palestine and even then this is just a stepping-stone to a global caliphate. Protesters should note that they will not be able to choose their gender or pronouns in a caliphate. As Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Zahar put it in a video published in December 2022, Israel is only the first target. The plan is that, The entire planet will be under our law. This is the goal of all Islamists. At the Mufti Mehmood conference in Pakistan on 14 October, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, emir of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl told the crowd that we are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with the mujahideen to destroy Israel, and throw its corpse into the Dead Sea and as Hamas leader Khaled Mashal said at the same conference, Hamas is working for the implementation of sharia law not just in Palestine but all over the world.
The disruption of Remembrance Day commemorations should serve as a reminder that Islamists did not side with the West in the second world war; they fought with Hitler. The Islamist ideology of Hamas and its spiritual forerunner the Muslim Brotherhood stems directly from a strand of Islamist antisemitism that fused with Nazism before and during the second world war. Unfortunately, despite the well-documented collaboration of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem with Hitler and his enthusiastic endorsement of the Final Solution he was never indicted for war crimes and after the war became a hero to Islamists continuing to propagate lies that fuelled religious intolerance, antisemitism, rejection of liberalism and of the state of Israel. His nefarious influence continues to this day. Thats why a former Guantanamo prisoner associated with Al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taleban posted a speech by Hitler on Telegram (translated by the Middle East Media and Research Institute MEMRI) inciting Muslims to kill Jews.
Islamist support for Nazism leads to genocidal gymnastics in which Islamists celebrate the Holocaust, deny the Holocaust occurred, and claim Israel is a Nazi state. Examples of each abound. Dutch Islamist soccer fans chant Hamas, Hamas, All Jews to the Gas, an Australian Islamist scholar Nassim Abdi referred to in a Facebook post on 10 October ,the so-called oppression of the Jewish people, and the so-called Holocaust (translated by MEMRI) while UK Labour councillor Hajran Bashir last week compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
Hamas is not interested in protecting Gaza civilians. Instead, it counts on the Western media to attribute every death in Gaza to Israel and to put pressure on it to let Hamas get away with its perpetual attacks and rearmament. In the messianic mission of Hamas to build an earthly caliphate, the suffering of Gazans serves a useful purpose. As Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, put it in a speech on 26 October, The blood of the women, children and elderly we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens within us resolve.
When Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of the Hamas politburo was asked on 27 October why Hamas, which has built 500 kilometres of tunnels, hasnt built a single civilian bomb shelter he said that the tunnels in Gaza were built to protect Hamas fighters from airstrikes, not civilians, and the protection of the people of Gaza was the responsibility of the United Nations and the occupation ie. Israel, even though Hamas has had full control of Gaza since its bloody coup in 2007.
Given the ruthlessly cynical way in which Hamas inflicts and exploits the suffering of Gazans, its hardly surprising that Hamas isnt popular in Gaza. In 2023, polling indicated that a majority of Gazans were opposed to breaking the ceasefire with Israel and almost three-quarters think Hamas is corrupt. Unlike Hamas, most Gazans are prepared to support peace plans and Hamas is far from popular throughout the Middle East. Egyptian TV host Ibrahim Eissa slammed Marzouk and the Hamas leadership calling them disgraceful cowards who were peddling the lives of Palestinians instead of protectng them.
Yet thanks to TikTok, young people get a constant flood of pro-Palestinian propaganda which has persuaded young Australians to sympathise with Palestinians as the victims. But if they are victims of anyone, they are victims of Hamas.
Unfortunately, thanks to migration, Australia has also imported its share of Islamist ideologues. Islamic scholar, Brother Ismail, used a Friday sermon in Sydney on 27 October to call on Muslims to wage jihad, raise the flags of Isis and Al-Qaeda, and condemn the betrayal sheiks that suppress the rage of Muslims who cannot wait to wage Jihad and die as martyrs. He told Australian Muslims that, By Allah, (Australians) dont love us and they would like to kill all of us. But, he said, whether the Australian government or the Australia Security Intelligence Organization likes it or not, or wants to deport me, jihad is the solution there is no other way to defend the Muslims and erase this humiliation from the Islamic nation, but to fight for the sake of Allah. Jihad is one of the highest pillars of our religion. Hamas freedom fighters are the most honourable men, and more honourable than you, who are labelling (them) terrorists.
With sermons like these and with TikTok propaganda brainwashing young people, Australia can expect Remembrance Day disruptions for many years to come.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/tiktok-time-bomb
************************************14 November, 2023
PMs kowtow a necessary evil of doing business
Anthony Albanese visited China, met President Xi Jinping and came home with some important advances to help rekindle trade links.
The entire charade has been on Chinas terms but that doesnt mean its not in Australias interests. The invitation was an olive branch from Beijing after a sustained period of hostility during the Morrison years, that had damaging economic consequences.
An Aussie prime minister prepared to kowtow matters to the Chinese, which is what Albanese had to do to repair the relationship. The gesture is seen as a sign of respect and submission. Albanese put a premium on the economic benefits of doing so.
While the Middle Kingdom isnt a democracy, it certainly understands what advantages it can derive from the process of democracy and capitalism elsewhere.
Australia under the Coalition ramped up its rhetoric against China on security matters and the Chinese responded with sanctions. In these frosty dealings, diplomatic channels closed down and backdoor efforts to reopen them failed. The public rhetoric coming from Scott Morrison was simply too strong unless a circuit-breaker could be found.
That circuit-breaker was Labor winning last years federal election. Had the Coalition won, only a humiliating public backdown by Team Morrison would have sufficed. The sanctions would have had to bite hard for our proud former prime minister to do that, though, especially given the internal criticism he would have received on his right flank.
But there was a change of government, so China extended the olive branch to the new Labor administration: reopening some trade (not all) while watching the rhetoric that followed. Once satisfied Albanese wasnt going to emulate the aggressive posturing of his predecessor, an invitation for the official visit soon followed.
In turn, Albanese has invited Xi to visit Australia again, but there will be no second address to the parliament for the Chinese President if he does. His first address in 2014 was hailed (incorrectly) as a long-term commitment to democratisation by China. Xi smiled politely at the misunderstanding at the time. Since then he has declared himself leader for life, not even submitting to the Communist Partys appointment processes, much less democratisation.
China understands its emerging power and acts accordingly. Its communist regime has no intention of democratisation. China takes a long-term view when it comes to international relations, unsurprising for a civilisation many millennia old and used to being the largest, most advanced society across the globe for most of that time.
Westerners often fail to understand the engrained cultural superiority within the Chinese leadership such historical dominance spawns, coupled with a belief that the past 200 years were an aberration to be learned from and corrected, given the insult. Thousands of years of Chinese dominance were briefly punctuated by a failure to explore, trade and develop firearms. Modern China has learnt from such mistakes just look at where it directs government spending.
Journalistic scribblings about Australian leaders visiting China usually overstate the importance of how such trips foster relations.
Meanwhile some commentators lay into prime ministers for spending too much time abroad, especially going to China, as though leaders should tether themselves to their country of origin instead.
Albanese will head to the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in San Francisco next week, as he should, to inevitable criticism hes away too often. Failure to attend, sending a subordinate instead, would be a sign he is rattled by criticism in the wake of inflation and interest rate woes.
We are but one of many smaller trading nations modern China deals with. The power is all one way. If in meetings we politely condemn Chinas treatment of domestic minorities, or its interactions with its nearest neighbours, its leaders will nod politely and continue to go about their business as they choose. The comments represent nothing more than a red herring in their eyes. But if we push the point too hard and too publicly, China will retaliate to dissuade future political leaders from using the same rhetorical force, knowing full well that democratic elections can quickly replace recalcitrant leaders not something Chinese officials need to worry about.
This was always Chinas strategy when it came to Team Morrison patience.
If we want an Australian citizen held in detention released, China will release them if that suits its interests. If, however, it calculates that such actions might cause domestic unrest or spark calls for further actions that risk undermining the ruling party, no outcome will be forthcoming. All Australian negotiators can do is ask politely while briefing their political leaders to avoid public condemnation likely to damage the process.
Security experts claim kowtowing on trade risks emboldening Chinas actions in areas such as cyber crimes. What rubbish. China will always do what it wants on that front unless somehow stopped by a more powerful adversary.
Australian wine and beef are pleasing to the palate but not a deal breaker when it comes to the Chinese putting security self-interest first. A failure to do that contributed to Chinas decline from the mid-1400s onwards when it scuttled its treasure fleet and turned inwards. Britains victory in the mid-1800s Opium Wars gave way to more than a centurys worth of domestic tumult, before Deng Xiaopings market reforms in the late 1970s set China on a course back to power supremacy on the international stage, taking advantage of the Cold War climate.
Australia has no influence over Chinese decision-making beyond the tone of engagement dictating the response we get. China isnt an ally and it isnt a democracy. It is an emerging superpower and we are a middle power at best. Its vision for our region includes Australia serving as a modern tributary state rather than a hostile advocate for US interests. Diplomats hope the choice never becomes a binary one. China uses its economic clout to do the same.
In centuries past the practice of kowtowing involved touching the ground with ones forehead as a show of respect and submission. The practice was most identified with meeting the Chinese emperor and was a ritual tributary state dignitaries would perform. While the formal practice is antiquated, when dealing with China the sentiment hasnt changed. For a trade-dependent nation such as Australia, it is a necessary evil when doing business.
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Aggressive Aborigine finally sacked
Fresh allegations have emerged that an Indigenous adviser to Transport for NSW who threatened to kill senior executive Rochelle Hicks had previously boasted he would smash that womans face in, as NSW Premier Chris Minns announced the man would be removed from all future government projects.
The Weekend Australian revealed how Ian Brown, who was contracted as cultural heritage manager on the $2.2bn Coffs Harbour bypass project, said at a meeting of the Coffs Harbour Local Aboriginal Land Council in June: If I see Rochelle I will kill her.
Mr Brown was allowed to stay in his $165-per-hour job because he is Aboriginal and a cultural knowledge holder, Ms Hicks was told by her bosses, who feared the massive bypass project might be shut down if he was sacked.
Now a second senior NSW public servant has told The Australian she was present at a previous meeting of the land council in October last year, when Mr Brown made threats to harm Ms Hicks. Ian Brown just got angry out of the blue, he went from zero to 100 and said: Im gonna smash that womans face in next time I see her, Im gonna smash her, referring to Rochelle, said the public servant, who has asked not to be identified for fear of retribution.
I felt really uncomfortable because I was the only woman in the room and there were five Aboriginal males and there was no attempt to pull him up by anyone in the meeting.
The public servant says she didnt report the comments because those threats arent really taken seriously by our agencies. You get a lot of fluster and bluster from stakeholders, but these were threats of physical harm. It wasnt a joke, it was said in complete seriousness and anger.
On Monday, Mr Minns said: Following these concerning allegations, Transport for NSW directed the LALC that he is not to be used for any further TFNSW projects. Everyone has a right to feel safe at work and the department is taking this very seriously.
The Premier moved to distance the NSW government from the decision to allow Mr Brown to remain in his job, pointing to Mr Browns role as a contractor employed by the LALC.
These roles are nominated by the council, not selected by the department, Mr Minns said.
However, Mr Brown is specifically named in the contract between Transport for NSW and the land council to be engaged as cultural heritage site manager at a rate of $165 per hour.
Mr Brown first denied making the threat when contacted by The Australian but then claimed: Thats just f..king words, mate its just bullshit words.
Minister for Roads Jenny Aitchison told 2GB on Monday that Transport for NSW had made numerous attempts to engage with Ms Hicks. However, Ms Hicks said those attempts were made only after she was seen near the Coffs Harbour bypass site last week in the company of a photographer from The Australian.
Theyre claiming now theyve reached out to me thats just not true, Ms Hicks said. Ive had one conversation with Performance Standards in August where they told me Im not allowed to talk about this with anybody.
Ms Hicks solicitor sent a nine-page letter to Camilla Drover, Transport for NSW deputy secretary, on September 19, detailing her complaint, and has had no substantive response since then.
On Monday, Ms Aitchison said she understands Transport will be responding to the letter shortly. The minister also claimed that Mr Brown had been terminated from the bypass project
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How the Jewish heart of Caulfield became a Mid-East battleground
The panicked messages starting bouncing through the large Jewish community in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield on Friday afternoon, hours before the violent street clash between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups that night.
Highly unprecedented and threatening, said one. Can you believe they are coming to Caulfield? said another, adding: escalating quickly.
Caulfield is the nations Jewish heartland, with Jews accounting for 41 per cent of its 20,000 people, many of whom are still grieving Israeli friends and loved ones lost in the Hamas massacre of October 7.
The notion that hundreds of pro-Palestinian supporters would choose to hold a rally in Caulfield was highly provocative and based on a dubious premise.
The stated reason for holding a rally there was the destruction by fire on Thursday night of a local burger shop in Caulfield called Burgertory, owned by a Palestinian Australian Hash Tahey who has been prominent in pro-Palestinian protests in Melbourne.
Police said before the rally they were very confident the blaze was not racially or politically motivated but pro-Palestinian supporters ignored that advice and labelled it an anti-Palestinian hate crime.
I watched from the side of the road as the demonstration at Princes Park along Hawthorn Rd adjacent to a synagogue in South Caulfield started off peacefully but soon turned angry.
The Palestinian side, numbering several hundred, quickly went beyond calls of free Palestine and Free Gaza, to more provocative chants including Israel, USA, how many kids did you kill today, and From the River to the Sea, which is a call to destroy Israel.
Several musclebound hotheads from the Palestinian side went further, abusing some Jewish women standing nearby who had wrapped the Israeli flag around their body.
One started throwing homophobic slurs at Jewish onlookers and at one point raised his arm in what from a distance looked like a Nazi salute. Cries of Allahu Akbar, meaning God is Great, rang out atvarious times.
As the noise from the protest became louder, the local synagogue was evacuated for safety.
People inside their homes having Shabbat dinner terrified hearing the chants of Allahu Akbar, said one message sent by a Jewish community member. Synagogue evacuated.
As the demonstration progressed, an ever-larger group of pro-Israel supporters began to gather directly across the road as word spread through the community.
Many of them returned the insults that were being shouted at them by the Palestinian side.
Security outside the Caulfield South Synagoge after last nights clash between Pro Palestine and Pro Jewish groups
Security outside the Caulfield South Synagoge after last nights clash between Pro Palestine and Pro Jewish groups
The police, outnumbered and poorly prepared for what was about to happen, lined up along both sides of Hawthorn Rd to try to keep the warring parties apart.
Cars carrying pro-Palestinians drove down Hawthorn Rd between the two groups, with some yelling obscenities and raising the finger to the Israeli crowd.
Eventually the rally ended with the Palestinian side conducting a mass prayer while the Israeli side sang the Israeli national anthem and other patriotic songs.
But the end of the protest only inflamed the situation more because the Palestinian protesters did not go home. Instead, they goaded the Jewish side with abuse and more slogans.
With both sides screaming at each other, several Palestinian protesters suddenly broke through the police cordon and rushed at the Israeli side.
Mayhem unfolded as punches were thrown and police fired pepper spray at the brawlers.
One pro-Palestinian protester was thrown onto the road handcuffed and led away while shouting Free Palestine motherf..kers to the pro-Israeli supporters.
Someone from the Palestinian side threw several rocks at the Israel side, hitting a man and causing a deep cut and bruising on his lower leg.
A Jewish neighbour opposite the park opened up his house and took in those Israeli supporters who had been pepper sprayed and also the man hit by the rock.
A Jewish doctor who just happened to be on site rushed in to treat people, aided by several police who instructed the injured on the best way to reduce the effects of pepper spray.
By the time it was all over the Jewish community was incensed. Theyre animals why did the police allow this. Allahu Akbar in Caulfield? one wrote.
Politicians weighed in with Liberal leader Peter Dutton slamming the Palestinian protesters for a deliberate act of incitement while Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the violence was unacceptable.
Free Palestine Melbourne eventually apologised for holding the protest near a synagogue but not for holding it in Caulfield.
Yet the damage was done. The deliberate provocation to invade the heart of Jewish Melbourne got the response that they must have expected. And Melbourne was the poorer for it.
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Aliyawar Yawari, frightening face of High Court fallout, hunts elderly women in WA
Aliyawar Yawari is a violent sex predator with a record of attacking elderly women in their own homes so chilling a judge branded him a danger to the Australian community.
One of his victims was bashed in the neck with a walking stick after being indecently assaulted.
But on Monday, as he embraced his sudden freedom, Yawari was the face of a federal government dilemma following a landmark High Court ruling that has released him and dozens of other criminals from long-term immigration detention.
Standing outside the modest Perth City Motel on the citys eastern outskirts, the 65-year-old said he was happy to be free but told reporters he had been jailed for fighting giving little hint of the gravity of his crimes that saw him spend four years in prison and another five years in immigration detention.
Yawari had looked destined to be deported, but the High Court decision overturning a 20-year precedent has now changed that.
The Albanese government has left open the option of placing electronic ankle bracelets on more than 90 detainees being freed from immigration detention, and is considering a legislative fix following the High Court ruling that indefinite detention was illegal.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles confirmed 80 people had already been released on appropriate visa conditions as of Sunday night, with expectations 93 or more individuals will eventually be allowed to live in the community.
The reasons for their detention range from breaches of traffic offences to murder, with the Coalition warning they were hardcore criminals and complex cases. Government sources said none of the individuals in the cohort were subject to an adverse security assessment or were considered a national security risk.
Since his release, Yawari and others from WAs Yongah Hill detention centre have been holed up in humble rooms inside the motel, which has a barbed wire-topped fence, flaking lime-green paint, several abandoned shopping trolleys and a long line of one-star Google reviews.
It looks set to be Yawaris home for some time to come, as both he and the authorities figure out what to do next. Speaking outside the motel, Yawari said he was upset over his treatment, and now wanted to get back to work. I just want a new job, he said.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus would not expand on the visa conditions for the released detainees as he faces calls from the opposition to expand the criminal code so control orders, continuing detention orders and extended supervision orders can apply to them and not just people who committed terrorism offences.
Labor sources said it was unclear if the government could take legislative action before the High Court provided reasons for its decision, after a majority of the bench agreed a stateless Rohingya man known as NZYQ had been detained unlawfully and his continued detention would be illegal.
I dont want to speak for the individual visa conditions that are being contemplated in response to the particular circumstances for each of these visa holders, but I can assure the Australian community that the first priority of the government is to keep our community safe, Mr Dreyfus said.
There will be appropriate visa conditions and the commonwealth government will be working with state and territory criminal justice agencies, who of course are primarily responsible for each of the people concerned.
Mr Dreyfus said the government was of course contemplating a legislative fix.
Yawari had fled his home of Afghanistan after both his father and brother were killed by the Taliban. He eventually made it to Australia in 2010 and quickly found a job at a meatworks in Bordertown, South Australia. He proudly explained that he had never received Centrelink payments.
But he was convicted of multiple serious offences related to attacks on three women between October 2013 and December 2014.
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13 November, 2023
Pauline Hanson calls for "Welcome to Country" to be banned: 'Australians are sick and tired of them'
I must admit that to me they seem simply absurd. Who is entitled to welcome whom? It's normally the person who owns or controls a place who has a right to welcome people to it. But these "welcomes" are never from such people. It's just some sort of virtue claim, some empty claim to being supportive of Aborigines
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has demanded a ban on Welcome to Country rituals in the wake of the referendum defeat for the Voice to Parliament.
She said she wanted to hold leading Voice architect Professor Marcia Langton to her vow made in April that a No vote would end her performances of the ceremony.
'We can only hope this promise is lived up to,' said senator Hanson in a post on X of a speech she was unable to give in Parliament because of a censure motion.
'Theyre recited at the beginning of every parliamentary sitting day, every council meeting, and every zoom meeting held by public servants.
'We hear them at the conclusion of every domestic flight you can hear the groans in the cabin every time. They have effectively lost all meaning for their constant repetition.
'Australians including many Indigenous people are sick and tired of them. They are sick of being told Australia is not their country.'
The Queensland senator had been silenced in Parliament after offering to drive Greens senator Mahreen Faruqi 'to the airport' if she 'didn't love Australia'. Senator Hanson later withdrew her remarks about Senator Faruqi.
Senator Hanson's planned speech was instead delivered in Parliament by One Nation colleague Malcolm Roberts and published online by senator Hanson.
'There was some controversy in the Senate that resulted in my right to speak in the chamber being temporarily revoked by the Labor Government, with the support of the Greens,' she posted on social media.
'This happened due to comments I made during a debate where I criticised the Greens for their apologist stance toward Islamic extremist terrorism.
'As a consequence, I was unable to deliver a speech I had prepared.'
In her planned speech, she railed against the Indigenous ceremonies and branded them a modern invention which had been dismissed as 'divisive' by some Aboriginal leaders.
She said the referendum result should bring an end to them all, including both Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country ceremonies.
'It was more than a rejection of the voice,' she said. 'It was a rejection of the entire Uluru Statement all 26 pages of it.
'It was a rejection of a treaty and truth-telling or more accurately, a re-write of history with an eye on financial settlements funded by non-indigenous taxpayers.
'It was a rejection of identity politics, grievance politics and the activist cult of victimhood. And primarily, it was a rejection of racial division.
'And one of the most racially divisive features of modern discourse in Australia is welcome to country ceremonies, along with acknowledgements of country.'
Senator Hanson added that the idea of Indigenous nations pre-existing before British colonisation was a fake idea imported from overseas.
'Welcomes and acknowledgements deny the citizenship and sovereignty held equally by all Australians,' she said.
'They perpetuate the falsehood that prior to 1788, nations existed on this continent.
'They didnt. This is a foreign notion, an activist device imported from Canada that does not reflect the reality of Australian history.
'Its not even an genuine pre-settlement ritual for most Aborigines. It was invented in 1976 by Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley.'
She said South Australian Narungga elder and No campaigner Kerry White said the rituals should only be for Indigenous people welcoming other Indigenous people to their land.
'She said its use by non-indigenous Australians was just virtue-signalling,' said the senator. 'She wasnt wrong about the virtue-signalling, thats for sure.
'She even said welcomes to country were an attack on Indigenous culture.
'Another indigenous leader of the no campaign, Senator Naminjimpa Price, who said recently that welcomes to country were definitely divisive.'
Professor Langton - who helped draw up the Voice to Parliament proposal - said in April that non-Indigenous Australians would be 'unable to look her in the eye' if the Voice referendum returned a No vote.
'How are they going to ever ask an Indigenous person, a Traditional Owner, for a welcome to country?' she said.
'How are they ever going to be able to ask me to come and speak at their conference?
'If they have the temerity to do it, of course the answer is going to be no.'
Sentator Hanson said last month's vote showed it was now the moment to take Professor Langton at her word and for all arms of government to stop the ceremonies.
'Its time to leave Indigenous rituals to Indigenous Australians,' she said. 'We call for an end to welcomes and acknowledgements of country.
'Stop signalling virtue you dont possess and stop dividing this country by abusing these Indigenous rituals.
'We know that for many, the promise of an end to them motivated their no vote at the referendum.
'Australians dont want them. Lets move forward together as one people, one nation under one flag.'
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New wave of anti-Semitism rolls in from the left
Nazism resurgent. The original Nazis were socialist so not much has changed
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On Friday night a pro-Palestinian mob descended on Caulfield, in the heart of Melbournes Jewish community, and incited anti-Semitic violence on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
In response to this grotesquerie, Foreign Minister Penny Wong released a social media post condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in reference to the violence in Caulfield.
While it is reasonable to warn against both forms of prejudice in the context of community tensions, only one of them was on display in Caulfield on Friday night.
Wongs tendency to draw moral equivalences seems to be increasingly habitual. This was again evident on Sunday morning when she revealed the government is pushing for a ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war, noting Israel needed to be held to higher standards.
In a recent photo posted to her official social media account, Wong stands next to Nasser Mashni, the president of the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network. Last week it was revealed Mashni has a history of demonising Jewish people and as recently as last year he called for the destruction of Israel.
The power structures that exist in the world all focus upon Zionism, Mashni said on his radio show. Israel is the domino. Israel falls over, not just the Middle East South America, the Africans, the world is a far better place once we destroy Western imperialist control of the world.
While there is no suggestion Wong knew of such rhetoric when she posed for a photograph with Mashni, the incident highlights a major blind spot when it comes to anti-Semitism on the left.
Of course, the roots of anti-Semitism stretch deep into history, and Jew hatred has attached itself to many different ideologies. Early leaders of Christianity wrote polemics against the Jews, and derogatory references can be found within Islamic texts. But, while its important to acknowledge these historical forms of prejudice, contemporary variants have also become relevant today.
One of the most influential pieces of modern anti-Semitism is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged document that emerged from Imperial Russia in 1903. This document popularised the conspiracy theory that Jews were engaged in worldwide control. Hitler referred to the Protocols in Mein Kampf and this conspiracy theory became part of the broader Nazi propaganda campaign.
Yet while the Nazis were defeated in 1945, the Protocols did not die with them. The Soviets repurposed the Protocols conspiracy theories in their own propaganda during the Cold War, which ramped up after Israels victory in the Six-Day War. In order to signal support to Egypt and Syria (who had lost the war) anti-Zionist propaganda became part of the Soviets broader Cold War strategy. This strategy aimed to push back against the US and strengthen Soviet influence in the Middle East.
Izabella Tabarovsky, a scholar of Soviet Jewry, writes that the Soviets took Nazi propaganda and simply substituted the word Zionist in place of Jew. She explains: Soviet ideologues relied for inspiration on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, on the ideas of classic religious anti-Semitism, and even Mein Kampf, but adapted them to the Marxist framework by substituting the idea of a global anti-Soviet Zionist conspiracy for a specifically Jewish one.
Such propaganda spread through multiple channels. In the 60s and 70s, newspapers such as Pravda published cartoons that were then reprinted by communist-aligned media in the West.
Tabarovsky points out that the Soviets were well aware Europeans were particularly sensitive to accusations of racism, and of anything associated with Nazi Germany so they cynically used this against Israel by equating Zionism with Nazism. Soviet cartoons of the 70s depict Jews looking into mirrors only to be greeted with reflections of Hitler, and Stars of David superimposed over swastikas.
In 1975, a UN General Assembly resolution was passed that declared Zionism is Racism. The controversial resolution was passed only with support of the Soviet bloc, Arab states and various African nations (it was overturned in 1991). Michael Heller and Aleksandr M. Nekrich, historians of the Soviet Union, argue this resolution was one of the Soviets greatest victories.
It was a victory because it successfully decoupled the demonisation of the Jewish people from associations with the far right. As Quillette editor Jamie Palmer wrote in 2016: The claims that Zionism is racism, the instrument or puppeteer of Jewish and American imperialists, a project of Western colonialism, or a template for Jewish world domination; that Zionists were co-conspirators and ideological ancestors of Nazi Germany who control markets, industry, and media, and; that Israel is a terrorist regime all such claims originated in Soviet propaganda and are widespread on todays activist left.
The Soviets targeted Israel with their propaganda because they saw the only parliamentary democracy in the Middle East as a proxy for the West. In a recent address, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his fists clench and eyes tear up over Israeli military actions in Gaza drawing parallels between the Russian military and Hamas.
The scenes in Caulfield, where pro-Palestinian groups tried to intimidate local Jews, are echoed worldwide, from Ivy League campuses in the US to the streets of London during Remembrance Day.
I asked Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, about rising anti-Semitism in Australia. He told me by email: There is a lag in reporting and chronic underreporting due to shame and embarrassment, but the incidents we have received show an increase of at least 600 per cent from the previous month.
But aside from the explosion in incidents, what alarms Ryvchin the most is the mindset of the contemporary anti-Semite. Explaining that the expulsion or destruction of Jews was always framed as a necessary, righteous act, he sees the attitude appearing on Australian streets today. The mindset of todays anti-Semites, according to Ryvchin, is what is most concerning because it means there is no shame in their deeds and instead a sense of mission and purpose that can turn an aggressive fringe movement into something truly terrifying.
Ryvchins observations reveal a disturbing normalisation of anti-Semitism. And at least some of it stems from the fact that the left has never grappled with its own history of anti-Semitism. And is ill-equipped to deal with it when it arises.
If a Coalition minister posed in a photograph with a neo-Nazi who had called for Jews to be murdered on a radio show, the Australian media and public would rightly be apoplectic. But Australias Foreign Minister can pose with the left-wing equivalent, and it barely raises a yawn.
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Coal jobs hit record levels, as China demand returns
NSW coalminers who now employ a record 25,170 workers and are set to eclipse Queensland as Australias coalmining powerhouse are cashing in on Beijings removal of export bans after shipping $3.3bn worth of coal to China in eight months.
After two years of zero coal exports, NSW miners sent 21 million tonnes of coal to China between January and August, and are projecting a bumper year after lifting exports to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India during the Chinese ban.
A new report released by the NSW Minerals Council on Monday reveals that at the end of July there were 25,172 coalmining workers in the state.
The workforce is more than double 1998 levels and surpasses the previous 2012 record of 24,972 jobs. Just under 8000 NSW workers are employed in the metals mining sector.
In the NSW Hunter region, coalmining jobs surged to more than 15,100, with workforces in Gunnedah and the states western region remaining at near record levels.
NSW miners are pushing to fast-track 15 coal projects under assessment, with the state now boasting greater job forecasts in mining and stronger investment interest than Queensland, where the Palaszczuk government has imposed crippling royalty taxes on miners.
The projects, which are mainly seeking to extend existing operations, represent almost $3.7bn in investment opportunities for the regions and would create or protect almost 10,000 jobs.
Amid calls from the Greens and climate activists to phase out coal and gas, NSW Minerals Council chief executive Stephen Galilee said these job numbers highlight the need to support mining communities.
After BHP sold its coal assets in Queensland last month and lashed the states tax grab, Mr Galilee said NSW coalmining is playing a critical role in the budget repair task being undertaken by the state government.
In Chris Minns first budget in September, the NSW government imposed a royalty hike from July next year to raise an extra $2.7bn over four years.
Although the increase in royalties will add to the cost burden for NSW coal producers, the NSW government at least consulted constructively with the industry prior to making a final decision, Mr Galilee said. By contrast, the Queensland government completely ambushed coal producers in that state with a massive royalty hike that has put jobs and investment at risk. We may now be seeing the impact.
The record number of people working in the NSW coalmining sector shows that over the last 25 years, coalmining has become increasingly critical to regional communities and the state economy.
The Department of Industry and Resources September quarterly report said thermal coal exports to China had returned to pre-ban levels of 2019-20. The report warned thermal coal exports were forecast to fall from $66bn in 2022-23 to $36bn in 2023-24 and $28bn the following year. Metallurgical coal exports are projected to fall from $62bn in 2022-23 to $41bn in 2024-25.
Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane last week released a report warning that Queensland coal producers will pay an extra $6.5bn over two years under the Palaszczuk governments royalty regime.
The state governments short-term thinking for short-term gains is killing the golden goose and doing long term damage to Queensland by deterring investment in new, greenfield projects and drying up that pipeline of future projects, he said.
The loss of investment confidence threatens new projects across all commodities, including battery minerals and renewable energy projects, so the impact is broader than the coal sector.
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The Greens are, by sins of omission, soft apologists for Hamas
It has been a wild old time in Australian politics. Just when you thought it couldnt get any more off-piste, we find ourselves in a weird kind of parallel universe in which the Australian Greens want to help run the country. The Greens, regardless of what you thought of them back in the day, once stood for something meaningful under former leader Bob Brown. More recently, though, they have morphed into this countrys most ungrateful, juvenile, destructive and mean-spirited group of underachievers. Yet somehow they think they should be in the starting line-up.
You can argue the ALP already is dancing with this particular devil, but a couple of weeks ago news broke that the Greens want Anthony Albanese to sign a public power-sharing deal with them and offer cabinet positions in the event of a minority government at the next election. Can you imagine the likes of Lidia Thorpe (yes, shes no longer a Green but she was) and Mehreen Faruqui in the federal cabinet? The idea should fill all sensible folk with a sense of impending doom.
ACT Greens leader and Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury is the partys most senior MP. He argues federal Labor will do better by welcoming the Greens with open arms, formally. And while theyre at it, they may as well throw in a few lazy cabinet roles as well.
Some of you will dismiss this as a pie-in-the-sky kind of deal. I can almost hear some of you saying, Yeah it will never happen, its just politics. Just part of the game.
Maybe some of you also thought thered never again be a time when Jewish Australians didnt feel safe in their own neighbourhoods. Life moves pretty fast, so the saying goes.
Back to the Greens. The elite of the mediocre.
Perhaps lets judge them for a moment on what theyve delivered in terms of value to the Australian people. You know, those of us who pay their wages.
Nothing. Not a thing. You see, they can afford to be absolutists; they have the luxury of being able to be as hardwired and hard left as they like. They dont have to listen to the broader community. They can say and do as they please because there is never any accountability. They dont have to be inclusive. They dont have to do anything other than preach to their own choir and bargain with the government for power.
This weeks walkout of the federal parliament in protest against the governments position on Israel is a powerful validation of this view. Like a bunch of petulant four-year-olds, the Greens stormed out of the chamber, all bluster, piss and wind, because they want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and they cant get what they want.
Apart from the fact the collective IQ of the federal parliament immediately and exponentially increased, its a shame we couldnt just lock the door behind them and be done with it.
Walking out delivers nothing. Adds nothing. Brings nothing. Proves only that those who take their metaphorical toys and leave arent capable of the debate of ideas. Not capable of holding a mature discussion. All it proves is their disdain and disrespect for the parliament and the government.
On this issue, the Greens are, by sins of omission, soft apologists for Hamas. They have nothing meaningful to say about the confirmed testimony and evidence of the massacres. Of women being raped, mutilated and shot. Parents being mutilated while still alive, in front of their children. The absolutely unthinkable, inhuman barbarism perpetrated by Hamas.
Grudgingly, they say: Well, look its wrong but occupation!
Spare me the hypocrisy. Did they walk out of parliament when thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered by the Syrian regime in 2020? Of course not. Because the Assad regime is not an easy target for the ideologically obsessed.
Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt said on social media platform X this week that he was proud of Faruqi for leading the walkout. Imagine being proud of someone for having a tantrum.
I tell you what, send the parliamentary Greens to Gaza and give them a real chance to live their truth.
The deeper issue here is, of course, the dilemma for the Albanese government. It is a friendly bedfellow with the Greens. Perhaps not yet sharing a marital bed, more like bunking in together. Shared room, shared bathroom, twin-share type situation. Labor can protest as much as it likes but in the pitched battled between perception and reality we know who the winner will be, and for the federal government thats a problem.
In issues beyond Israels sovereignty and its right to defend itself, the problem for the federal government is closer to home. The Greens stated policy positions reads like a celebration of victimhood for all, wrapped in delusion fit for a university Trotsky club. I urge you to invest the 15 minutes it takes to read it all. Its terrifying in its lack of sophistication. Everybody wins, everything, all the time!
The Greens in the ACT where Rattenbury reigns want children as young as 14 to have access to euthanasia. They boasted about quietly decriminalising drugs such as MDMA, cocaine and ice. They are, by every metric imaginable, out of step with sensible people of all backgrounds, creeds and colour.
They wrap themselves in words such as diversity yet tolerate no divergent view. They talk about ending violence against women but have nothing to say about the rape and mutilation of Jewish women in this pogrom. They embody ideological hypocrisy. They want to shut down our mining industry, get rid of the military and believe in some kind of universal income paid for with fairy dust.
There is nothing like the cowardice of those who never have to face accountability, and this is the party that fancies itself as the co-pilot of the good ship Australia.
The Prime Minister best be careful. As my Nonna Pina used to say: Gemma, you lie down with dogs, you start to bark.
This is the time for clear, strong and forthright leadership. Not the time for entertaining folly such as this. This government has a choice to make about who it aligns with. For a party thats defined by the phrase Whatever it takes this will be a telling period indeed.
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12 November, 2023
Boomers or bust: Australias great mortgage divide laid bare
There are two problems with the article below. The big one is to blame older people for the failure to cure inflation and the detail of that is condemnation of increased spending by the elderly.
I am one of the old "sinners" concerned: At age 80. After some earlier good life decisions, I have substantial assets and no debts and have increased my spending recently. But I have not done so to exploit anybody. I have done so to help with my declining health. I have recently failed the medical for my driving licence so get more food home-delivered. And that is an increased expenditure.
It is time to lay off the elderly and sheet home the blame for increased costs to where it belongs: to increased spending by governments. Albanese has hired thousands more publc servants who all have to be paid and that is where we should look for the big spending.
Michele Bullock got off the mark with a crisp drive on Tuesday, increasing the Reserve Bank of Australias cash rate at her second meeting as board chairwoman. It had to happen, given official interest rates had been on hold since the June hike, and with consumer inflation lingering at around twice the central banks target rate.
The RBA governor explained to borrowers that while inflation might have peaked a year ago, it is still too high. As more evidence rolls in, its clear prices growth is more persistent than expected when she took over from Philip Lowe a couple of months ago, as is the strength of spending.
The risk of inflation remaining higher for longer has increased, Bullock said after lifting the cash rate to 4.35 per cent. While the economy is experiencing a period of below-trend growth, it has been stronger than expected over the first half of the year.
On Friday, the RBA released its quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy, with inflation forecasts revised higher. It will be a close-run thing whether inflation falls back into the 2-3 target band by late 2025, but Bullock has one very blunt bat to knock this interloper on its head if the journey looks like being delayed.
Jim Chalmers knows the central bank must do whatever it thinks it has to do, but hes a politician who wants to stay in office.
Thus, the custodian is and has to be seen as being on the side of those in the RBAs firing line, come what may. Flush with revenue, midway through a parliamentary term, Labor is caught between providing relief to families and putting more juice into an overstretched economy.
Independent economist Chris Richardson tells Inquirer the federal Treasurer could help the RBA and families in two ways: first, by reducing the amount of spending in the economy; second, by helping offset some of the pain. Yet thats easier said than done because those two things can pull in different directions, says the Rich Insight principal.
Families rearing children in the mortgage belt decide elections in this country and Labors political stocks are on the slide in the published polls. Many living in typically well-off areas are in financial counselling and seeking social support for the first time.
Required mortgage repayments as a nationwide share of disposable income is at a record high of 10 per cent. Bill shock for petrol, electricity, insurance premiums, rents, childcare and eating out is on everyones lips.
While the consumer price index increased by 5.4 per cent in the year to the September quarter, living costs for these employee households rose by 9 per cent (that includes mortgage interest charges; the CPI does not). Living costs for self-funded retirees rose by 5.7 per cent across the year.
The other side of the big squeeze on home-loan borrowers, where an average big-city mortgage is now perhaps $20,000 a year more expensive to service than it was 18 months ago, is an economy that refuses to yield, sustained by predominantly older Australians who are footloose and mortgage-free. Savers, its your moment to shine, although many believe its about time, with real returns finally hovering around zero.
Retail spending in the September quarter was stronger than expected, helped along by the warmer weather, a new iPhone, energy subsidies and the grey dollar. Betashares chief economist David Bassanese says todays cruel irony is that the more debt-free households keep spending with abandon, the more the RBA is forced to screw down on home borrowers.
Commonwealth Bank head of Australian economics Gareth Aird says those without mortgages are certainly keeping spending higher than otherwise. Older people, on average, are spending a fair bit more in nominal terms compared to last year, Aird tells Inquirer. They are the beneficiaries of higher rates as they get a higher return on their deposits.
But retail trade is also being propped up by the savings pile built over the pandemic, the revival in home prices and our world-leading population growth.
Many economists, including Aird, had predicted a crunch in consumer spending under the weight of the RBAs first dozen rapid-fire rate hikes, which make Glenn Maxwell look gun-shy, and the roll-off from ultra-cheap fixed rate mortgages.
We are currently about halfway through the fixed-rate rollover, which means there is still a lot of organic tightening to come to home borrowers, Aird says. It has not been a problem from a financial stability perspective and arrears are low. But many households have had to tweak their consumption as they roll off fixed-rate loans. Real discretionary spending per capita has fallen.
But across the entire economy, the CBA economist says, household spending has held up better than we anticipated.
But a big part of that has been stronger than expected population growth, Aird says. At a per capita level the trend in spending has largely been what we expected to see. Further weakness will carry forward through next year.
RBA economists believe the outlook for consumer spending is only one of the significant uncertainties in play, along with Chinas prospects, the long lags in monetary policys effects, how workers and businesses will behave on wages and prices as the economy slows while the jobs market remains tight, and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Last week officials from the International Monetary Fund noted the remarkable resilience of our economy even as household disposable incomes were battered by higher inflation, mortgage costs and taxes. They observed an economy growing ahead of expectations despite the RBAs assault and Canberras fiscal consolidation meaning a stunning two-year turnaround in the budget balance as most of the revenue upgrades from stronger mining profits and personal income tax were saved.
But they added the RBA and Albanese government should ensure monetary and fiscal policies were not in conflict. The Washington-based officials also found an economy operating beyond full capacity (producing about 1 per cent more than its potential), with house prices on the rise and a 3.6 per cent unemployment rate close to a 50-year low.
In a concluding statement issued before this weeks RBA rate rise, the visitors noted the elevated level of migration, strong exports of iron ore and coal, robust private investment and public capital works were contributing to high inflation and called for further monetary policy tightening to ensure that inflation comes back to the target range by 2025 and minimise the risk of de-anchoring inflation expectations.
They also warned the federal and state governments to slow things down and co-ordinate their spending on infrastructure. Otherwise, interest rates would have to be even higher, putting the burden of adjustment disproportionately on mortgage holders, the IMF officials said.
In its World Economic Outlook last month, the IMF forecast the global economy to expand by 3 per cent this year and 2.9 per cent next year. This will be the weakest two-year period in the past two decades, outside of the global financial crisis and the pandemic, for the world and for us at home.
The RBAs forecasts suggest the same, noting on Friday that growth in our major trading partners will fall to 3 per cent next year, well below the average in the decade prior to the pandemic. Yet Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy told parliament last month advanced economies have been more resilient to higher inflation and tight monetary policy than expected.
The path for a so-called soft landing appears to have widened in many, but not all, countries, Kennedy told a Senate estimates session, nominating the US as the standout case.
Is it widening for Australia or is it narrowing? My own view is that it remains narrow but its a little wider, Kennedy said in response to the question from West Australian Liberal senator Dean Smith. Im becoming more confident about our ability in Australia to maintain low unemployment rates and see inflation fall back within the band over a reasonable period.
But its the slide in living standards that is eating away at the electorates mood. Real per capita household disposable income (that is, after tax and inflation) fell by 2.2 per cent in the year to June, although this was less than the OECD average of 3.6 per cent. Of course, averages mask big swings in different families.
Australia is being hit by shock after shock after shock, as Bullock observed recently of the spike in oil price rises and wars, complicating the story. Kennedy argues shocks cut both ways: higher oil prices, for instance, will increase headline inflation by raising petrol prices, but it may well reduce growth and see other prices fall because people have less to spend.
What can the Albanese government do in the short run many of its supply-side moves on workforce participation, skills and energy wont pay off for years, if at all to help in the inflation fight and ease the cost burden?
Voters surveyed by Newspoll a week ago believed the best thing the government could do to ease the cost of living was to subsidise energy bills (with 84 per cent support), followed by subsidising fuel prices (81 per cent), then cutting government spending to reduce inflation, tax cuts for individuals and cash payments to low-income families. Every item on the five-dish buffet got majority approval.
Richardson says a temporary cut to petrol tax would help people with buying petrol. But it would also add to spending and inflation giving with one hand and taking away with the other. In fact if it adds enough to inflation, it could spook the Reserve Bank into another rate rise, meaning that a policy designed to help could actually hurt, he said.
The economist argues more cost-of-living help gets delivered than Treasury would usually like to see. The politics of helping out is rather better than the economics of helping out, he says. Remember, if governments did have a magic wand that could make your living standards higher, then theyd be waving it like mad and theyd have been doing that for decades. But they dont, which is why helping out in a cost-of-living crisis is so complicated.
The best approach would be to spend on those who need help, while avoiding the risk of a worsening in inflation and another hike in interest rates by cutting other spending and/or raising taxes, Richardson says.
So the government could, for example, boost rent assistance and the lowest welfare payments, and pay for that by trimming the stage three tax cuts. But that would mean taking money from swinging voters to give it to rusted-on voters, something the political hardheads would baulk at. Or, in other words, and as is so often the case, the right thing to do is also the politically difficult thing to do.
In which case the next best outcome is for the government to choose to do nothing (or, more likely, to announce small things and pretend theyre big things).
The federal budget is idling, in a neutral setting, for the purposes of helping to slow the economy and reduce inflation. Canberra should be more proactive than simply allowing the so-called automatic stabilisers (essentially a rising tax take) to do their thing, especially as the size of the federal government has grown this past decade and the mendicant premiers keep building in permanent spending.
New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday showed the number of public servants continues to rise, with Canberra the outlier. The states, too, are spending more on their own operations, especially the frontier states, off the back of strong mining royalties.
Delving into the table of truth in the federal budget papers, with some running adjustments since May, Richardson calculates government decisions across four years have added about $61bn to spending and $27bn to taxes. The official data says that were in surplus despite our politicians, not because of them, he says. If you want the budget to help the RBA, then government decisions have to save money. That hasnt happened. To be fair, a worsening of around $34bn over a four-year period isnt that bad. But it certainly isnt in the right direction.
In a change of language this week, Bullock said in considering whether further policy tightening was required, the RBA board would be paying close attention to trends in domestic demand, a term that goes beyond consumers to take in public spending as well.
Naturally, economists are divided on whether the RBA has done enough it must be close. Those with ties to the housing industry and retail argue it already has gone too far, while others point to the migration surge, persistent and high services inflation and ongoing strength in the labour market as reasons to expect one more hike in February for insurance. Former RBA governor Lowe argued Australia was special and didnt need rates to be as high as our peers in New Zealand, Canada, Britain and the US.
For one, wages growth has been more moderate. We have a higher proportion of variable-rate mortgages and so household cashflow is hit hard with each twist of the monetary screws. And officials here are prepared to take more time to reel in inflation so we can preserve the spectacular post-pandemic employment gains.
The CBAs Aird says Lowe is not wrong but the jury is still out.
So far the evidence indicates there is no wage-price spiral, while activity is still slowing and inflation is coming down, although it was a bit stronger in the September quarter than the RBA had anticipated. The economy will continue to slow next year, inflation will come down, the unemployment rate will gradually lift, Aird says. We dont expect the cash rate in Australia to get as high as it is in other countries.
Middle Australia, battered and bruised, is hoping hes on the money, and the nation doesnt slip off the narrow path to better days.
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Looking for the Net Zero exit sign
Lets get serious about planning an orderly exit from Net Zero. We need a plan ready to go before a government comes to power with the desire to exit, only to find they are short on time.
Any government wishing to exit Net Zero will have to mandate it during their first term of office. That means the leadership has 18 months to set things in motion before our short election cycle returns their attention to the polls.
Instead of this, commentators are talking about an orderly exit from coal while most Australian governments and AEMO prescribe an insane stampede away from reliable fossil fuels.
You might think they realise the lights will go out unless we keep the coal fires burning, but unfortunately they are still inhabiting a parallel universe governed by the Net Zero delusion. Their intention is merely to slow down the retreat from coal operating under the belief that there will soon be enough renewable energy installed to take its place.
The accelerating exit of coal in Australia, and everywhere else, is not happening for three very good reasons.
The transition to intermittent sources of energy has become functionally impossible in practice due to the combined effect of wind droughts and the lack of grid-scale storage.
Power is becoming more expensive and the price will continue to escalate as long as we spend billions, running into trillions, of dollars on assets that will be stranded in the absence of subsidies and mandates.
The unreliable energy industry leaves a trail of human, social, and environmental damage. It is a disaster from the exploration and mining of its raw materials to disposal of toxic junk at the end of the road.
The Net Zero program is not going to work, and Terry McCrann reminded us last Thursday that there is a way back to a future with cheap and reliable power from a mix of coal, gas, and nuclear. To this we can add hydro and off-grid wind and solar wherever it makes sense.
At the same time, McCrann put a damper on the prospects of nuclear power in the near future, with the story of the attempt to build a low-grade, mostly medical waste plant in the outback. Planning began in the 1980s when Hong Kong started construction on its second airport. Hong Kong finished their airport by 1998, but we still dont have the nuclear waste disposal facility.
Zealots of the wind and solar industries will contest my call to exit Net Zero because they are animated by ideological, political, and financial motives that have nothing to do with good science and engineering principles, or even concern for the planet.
Trillions of dollars are in play in what many describe as a gigantic renewable energy ponzi scheme. Billions will be made by well-placed players before it collapses.
Looking on the bright side, in a macabre kind of way, the collapse of Net Zero may not be far away as more states and nations reach the inflection (tipping) point where conventional power capacity runs down to the point where wind droughts pose a mortal threat to the power supply. See Texas in 2021.
The call to exit Net Zero will appeal to those who face fuel poverty at home or the collapse of their profit margin at work. At this point, the case to leave Net Zero will need to be explained to the public. No doubt communities left in darkness will already be applying social pressure to politicians. There is always a point at which public outrage cancels out the vested interests puppeteering politicians.
Any public education campaign will be challenging due to the existing fortress of Net Zero zealots ensconced in mainstream media, the ABC, universities, and the corporate world.
The exit will need a clear majority in favour of the community and bipartisan support from the major parties. Forget about the Greens and the Teals.
Support in the major parties will have to be based on strong support in the party rooms, in the face of the influences that are currently driving both parties.
The party that comes into office with a mandate to exit Net Zero will need to spend some years in advance of their election to power working on the plan to get over the resistance from the myriad of departments, quangos, and other government-funded agencies that are currently dedicated to Net Zero.
The reform program must minimise failures that discredit the whole enterprise, in the way that Hewson failed to sell the GST and Whitlams hasty across the board tariff reduction in the 1970s received negative press coverage which set back the push for deregulation.
In addition to the plan, prospective Cabinet ministers will have to be trained and prepared to go head-to-head with their departments and they will need alternative advisors. Gladys Berejiklian as NSW Transport Minister could serve as a role model because she spent years in opposition learning the trade and researching public transport systems around the world. She came in with a plan and she could not be easily snowed by the bureaucrats.
At the moment, talking about exiting Net Zero is just that But the first step is to start the public discussion. Much depends on the capacity of the journalistic classes to stop endorsing and spreading misinformation about firming unreliable energy with more unreliable energy and puny storage devices. The debate will be transformed when reporters start asking the usual suspects, the energy ministers and Daniel Westerman and their associates, how that is going to work.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/looking-for-the-net-zero-exit-sign/
******************************************************Migration surge cuts living standards
According to the Reserve Banks economists, Australias population has grown by about 2.5 per cent in the year to September, almost double the four-decade pre-pandemic average rate.
Thats an extra 654,000 people to house, feed and move around our cities, with migrants accounting for more than 80 per cent of the biggest jump in residents in our history.
Right now, we are importing the equivalent of the entire population of Tuvalu every seven days.
The influx of foreigners who spend, study, work and travel is pumping up our economy, with the RBA upgrading its forecasts for GDP growth this year from a miserable 0.9 per cent in August, to 1.6 per cent in its policy statement released on Friday.
Thats an economy expected to be almost $18bn larger, hence the use of the word resilience and its variant by Jim Chalmers and Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy to describe our performance while confronting global shocks and the central banks quick-fire rate rises.
But with more people to share our boundless plains, per capita incomes are shrinking.
Inflation will likely stay higher for longer, as will consumer spending, interest rates, home prices and rents.
One stunning figure from the RBAs commentary is advertised rents (for new leases) are 30 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels, although the pace of growth has slowed, particularly in regional areas.
More people are squeezing into share houses, which will help to ease supply shortages.
At the start of last month, there were almost 2.3 million people on temporary visas with work rights in Australia, or about one in six of the nations entire labour force of 14.6 million.
Employers are filling job vacancies, especially in areas such as hospitality, where spending on dining and drinking is holding up despite exorbitant costs being passed on to punters.
Surge pricing indeed!
Services inflation is the bogey in the outlook, driven largely by wages, rents and energy bills.
The RBA is careful to say the additional labour supply and consumer demand due to migration eventually cancel each other out, but there are short-term inflation pressures for sure.
Our officials have been pitifully exposed by the demand-driven migrant surge, especially due to students, who are also staying longer on graduate visas.
Authorities knew foreign students would be back on campus when restrictions eased. But they did not anticipate they would reach these volumes.
The Department of Home Affairs confirmed on Friday that there were 664,178 foreigners on student visas at the end of September; in October 2019, the pre-pandemic peak, there were 652,462 student visa holders in the country.
In a section reviewing how the economic outlook had evolved compared with its guesstimates a year ago its forecasting hits and misses the RBA said population growth has been substantially stronger than expected following the reopening of the border.
A year ago, the weight of evidence available suggested that a rebound in international student numbers was underway, the RBA said.
But a complete recovery was not imminent and there was substantial uncertainty about when China would remove its pandemic restrictions.
Treasurys budget forecasts on net overseas migration have been exposed as woefully behind the play.
Theyre not the only slow learners out there.
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Australian Medical Society Reports on Excess Deaths: Claims They Are Linked to COVID-19 Vax
An Australian medical professional society formed to protect and promote the interest of members in matters concerning their respective employment or professional engagement has been actively looking into problems with the COVID-19 government narrative, namely, the delta between the goals of the mass vaccination response to COVID-19 and the real-world data suggesting ongoing excess mortality.
The Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS) recently announced Too Many Dead 2023: An Inquiry into Australias Excess Mortality, a freely downloadable book investigating the troubling excess death rates Down Under, starting in 2021. They also held a conference late last month.
Political and medical authorities in Australia continue to evade the topicperhaps even labeling activists investigating the disturbing trends as anti-vaxxers. In fact, the Australian Senate even held a vote to not have an inquiry into the excess deaths, which seems counter intuitive given their role as representatives of the people of Australia.
Regardless, AMPS and other concerned medical professionals initiated its own independent, dedicated investigation into the matter, the results of which accumulated in the data that was used to author the book.
AMPS reports that despite the severe limitations in some cases of current governmental regulatory pharmacovigilance systems, large numbers of adverse events, disability and deaths become continuously commonplace.
The claim: This group has come outright and declared that the vaccination programs meant to protect the people of Australia from SARS-COV-2, the virus behind COVID-19 are in fact, the cause of the excess deaths. An iatrogenic driven excess mortality, meaning these deaths according to these medical professionals are directly the result of the mass COVID-19 vaccination program.
How many excess deaths? AMPS alleges that after the extensive examination of the public health data, the excess mortality surges 12-17% above baseline averages, rates never seen since wartime. The apex of excess mortality surged in early 2021 and has persisted at what they group terms unusual levels to this day.
Of course, the mass vaccination programs commencement did coincide with the start of 2021. TrialSite reported that by the end of the year, much of the Australian population was vaccinated yet in the first three-and-a-half months of 2022, twice as many people died in Australia from COVID-19 than in all of 2020 and 2021. In part, this can be explained by severe lockdowns in Australia. Inspired to some extent by Chinese zero tolerance COVID measures, Australia kept the virus at bay in much of 2020, and throughout parts of 2021.
Then, the majority of people got vaccinated, and restrictions and behaviors eased up, yet Delta and of course, the Omicron variants continued to circulate. Could it be that with waning vaccine durability and a lack of natural (preexisting infection) immunity in the population deaths then surged?
Regardless, the excess deaths are not only in Australia but observed worldwide. Back in Australia, AMPS has taken an active role to research and educate those interested in learning about this ongoing problem. In addition to the recently held conference they have held inquiries, communicated concerns with both politicians and regulators and various government agencies.
The recent conference last month featured some serious academic such as Professor Normal Fenton, a skeptical Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London (retired as of Dec. 2022) and Director of Agena, a company that specializes in artificial intelligence and Bayesian probabilistic reasoning.
With several books and over 350 peer-reviewed articles, TrialSite has from time to time during the pandemic updated readers on some of his concerning analysis in the United Kingdom. Specifically for the UK, Fenton and colleagues have spent significant time and effort to show statistically how the COVID-19 vaccines appear to be associated with excess mortality. See the link.
Other speakers at the recent conference included Dr. Jeyanthi Kunadhasan, an anesthesiologist at a major regional Victorian hospital in practice for over 12 years. Kunadhasan was recently interviewed by TrialSite concerning the output of a study her and colleagues conducted. Based on Pfizer regulatory documents made available thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent judicial order to download the documents to the public she and colleagues revealed a disturbing pattern in the Pfizer Phase 3 vaccine clinical trial.
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10 November, 2023
The silent Australians
Last Friday night, the specials on the menu at Burwoods RSL sold out fast.
Not just because they were great value for money in these penny-pinching times, but because many of the quietly-spoken early diners who rose respectfully when the Last Post sounded were there to join with others and to affirm a choice that theyd made earlier this month.
That choice was to say No to the Voice the modest proposal, as spruiked by the Prime Minister, that was neither modest nor a proposal. If passed it would have been a far-reaching mandate for unimagined change that was never specified in the run-up to October 14.
The event was not a celebration for many. It was more a feeling that a dangerous political manoeuvre had been circumvented; a few people said, not gloatingly but with a kind of thankfulness, They wont try it again for a while.
These were not folk from the affluent Teal-voting suburbs of Sydney who said Yes to the Voice. There, Yes votes meant little more than gestures of virtue-signalling.
In John Howards battler suburbs, where small businesses scrape along to survive, the Yes vote was a leap into the unknown. The people that had come along to this thank you for campaigning event including those who worked at the pre-poll booths, letter-boxing, scrutineering were from all over. One woman had come from the Central Coast and would catch the late train back to Gosford, then drive another hour home.
Others had come from the mountains, many by public transport or elderly gas-guzzlers; no BMWs in the car parks They wanted to hear from Warren Nyunggai Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (her message from London unfortunately was scrambled in transmission and had to be read, without vision, by Mundine).
Over mini quiches and spring rolls, they met again. Men and women who first met as like-minded strangers who were now, in a way, companions-in-arms a multiracial, multi-lingual multi-complexioned crowd.
In the space of ten minutes, I spoke to Australians of Greek, Hungarian, Indian, Indonesian, and Vietnamese heritage. They did not appear to be, as Indigenous Minister Linda Burney famously hinted at in that hot mic incident, unbelievably racist.
Certificates were handed out, including one to Pradeep Pathi, former endorsed Liberal candidate for Greenway, and stalwart of the Telegu Christian Fellowship. Local MPs made speeches, all mercifully short. People shook hands, exchanged addresses, and offered lifts.
Australians come together when they feel the need over sports, bushfires, floods and this, the referendum that would have divided the nation by race.
A former Canadian, now an Australian academic, speaking on the ABC where else? labelled those who voted No as racially compromised and secret assimilationists with an assimilationist agenda. Id disagree with him on all those counts.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/companions-in-arms/
*********************************************NBA great Andrew Bogut slams Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for 'telling boys they are toxic simply because of how they are born'
Andrew Bogut has hit out at Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for 'telling boys they are toxic' in a social media rant.
Bogut, 38, a former NBA championship winner with the Golden State Warriors, is a vocal critic of the government and regularly posts about 'woke' culture.
On Thursday, the Australian took to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, to hit out at Albanese's pledge to 'help young men learn to have healthy, respectful relationships' with women.
He wrote: 'Dear @AlboMP 'I'll raise my two boys to be good people, without telling them they could be toxic because of their gender.
'I'll raise them without your Gov funded lackies telling them they are toxic simply because of how they are born. 'I will however raise them to know just how toxic Governments are.'
It is not the first time the basketball legend has discussed controversial subjects. Earlier this year, he was labelled 'transphobic' after claiming a 'biological male' will be playing in women's basketball this season.
'Word is NBL1 South Women will have a biological Male playing this upcoming season. Are you ok with sacrificing the sanctity of Female Sport in the name of 'inclusion'?,' he wrote.
'#GirlDads where are you? The hashtag is trendy until action is needed.'
It quickly ignited a storm of controversy, with some labelling him 'transphobic' and misogynistic, while others shared his outrage.
AFLW and NBL1 star, author Saraid Taylor, was scathing of Bogut, sarcastically thanking him for his 'concern', and labelling him 'transphobic' for his views.
'Hey, thank you so much for your concern about the sanctity of women's sport. It seems genuine,' she said, in a brutal takedown on his social media post.
'If you wouldn't mind using your energy to highlight legitimate issues women athletes face, instead of perpetuating transphobia, that would be so appreciated!
The furious star athlete then slammed Bogut for revealing what club he believed the 'biological male' played for - which was followed by a stream of outrage directed towards the club.
'This is so wildly irresponsible. It makes me sad reading the majority of comments you receive on your tweets,' said Taylor.
'Does it make you sad? Or do you enjoy the power you have to cultivate hatred in the world?'
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War in Gaza tests free speech limits at Sydney University
The Gaza conflict is testing the limits of freedom of speech on campus after Sydney University warned that it wont tolerate support of Hamas attack and the vice chancellor moved to ban a pro-Palestinian student meeting, dividing opinion among academics.
Jewish groups have welcomed the approach and have urged other universities to follow its lead, saying its calmed tensions on campus.
Sydney University vice chancellor Mark Scott wrote to staff and students on October 26, in what was a marked shift from previous communications on the war, saying the institution will not tolerate any pro-terrorist statements or commentary, including support for Hamass recent terrorist attacks.
Last week, Scott also moved to shut down a planned student meeting titled Palestine: the case for a global intifada, saying it could be reasonably interpreted as supporting terrorism based on its promotional posters.
The action has prompted anger from some academics and students who say the university has shown an anti-Palestinian bias.
But Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim praised the universitys response and wrote to Scott to thank him. The reports were getting from staff and students is that it has actually had a calming effect on the whole situation on campus, he said. The number of academics who think they should be free to endorse a listed terrorist organisation is fractionally small compared to the overall number of academics in Australia.
But in an open letter to Scott responding to an all-staff email, politics professor John Keane said many believed the vice chancellor had an eerie pro-Israeli bias.
It is founded on silence about such ugly matters as non-stop aerial bombardment, the illegal use of white phosphorus bombs on civilians, settler violence, bulldozers wrecking the homes of fearful innocents, death by suffocation, the letter read.
While we all support intellectual freedom sane people draw the line at the advocacy of genocide.
It prompted a flurry of reply-all emails from academics who were divided in their support or rejection of Keanes sentiments.
Sociologist Salvatore Babones responded by saying Hamas was a genocidal organisation intent on the destruction of the Israeli people. While we all support intellectual freedom sane people draw the line at the advocacy of genocide, he wrote.
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Surge in foreign students puts nations best interests to the test
Existing arrangements of dubious benefit to Australia
JUDITH SLOAN
Last week I wrote about the unexpected surge in the number of migrants coming to this country and its impact on the housing market.
The largest group by far among overseas arrivals is international students who undertake a variety of courses at different levels, with 50 per cent undertaking university courses and one-third attending vocational education.
Its worth taking a look at the numbers to understand how large the recent inflows have been and note the impact of changing regulations attached to international student visas. The key figure is the number of temporary student visas on issue.
According the most recent figures there were 665,000 visas in September, the highest number ever recorded. The pre-Covid peak was 555,000 in other words, 100,000 fewer. Note here that a decade ago there were 340,000 temporary student visas on issue.
While India and China are the source countries with the largest numbers of international students, rapid growth is apparent from Bhutan, Pakistan, Nepal, Colombia, The Philippines, Brazil, Thailand and Vietnam.
The university with the highest number of international students is Monash, although Sydney has the highest proportion of international students at close to 50 per cent. It is interesting to note that the universities with the highest number of international students are in Sydney and Melbourne and include the University of NSW, RMIT, Melbourne and Deakin.
The overall story is one of runaway and uncontrolled growth in international student numbers, pumping up population growth and putting pressures on the cities to which they flock. A very large number of these students intend to stay in Australia permanently or for at least a decade.
Recent changes to the student visa conditions have made Australia an even more attractive destination given the guaranteed graduate visas and liberal work rights attached to student visas. The additional resources given to the Department of Home Affairs have sped up significantly the process of granting visas.
The federal government recently decided that bachelor degree graduates could stay for four years, up from two; masters graduates could stay for five years, up from three; and PhD graduates could stay for six years, up from four. International students no longer are required to hide their ambition to stay in the country to obtain a visa
So what should we think about the rapid growth of international students? Is this an example of a successful new export industry generating jobs and higher incomes for Australia? Should the government facilitate this industry? Alternatively, should the government consider a range of restrictions to ensure the flow of students is more manageable and the quality of the students is as high as possible? Should we expect international students largely to return home?
Just on a point of definition, it is a bit of a stretch to call international student education an export industry generating foreign currency, as is the wont of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Notwithstanding the visa conditions in relation to financial capacity, most international students have to work here to pay student fees and living expenses. There is no sense in which this is an export activity.
University administrators are fond of claiming international students generate all sorts of benefits for local students as well as the universities themselves. In point of fact there are many anecdotes to the effect that the educational experience of local students has suffered significantly.
Think here overcrowded tutorials with students who dont speak English well and assignments for groups formed by lecturers to include international students.
There is also some evidence that the English language skills of international students dont always improve during their time in Australia as they mix only with those from their own countries.
Needless to say, the additional revenue from international students has been welcomed by the universities. Their leaders make the point that the (perceived) failure of the federal government to fund their activities properly has left them with no choice but to accept more international students.
We have seen some of the results in the form of an extremely well-paid and growing cohort of university administrators and lavish new buildings and facilities.
Money also has been spent on research to lift the international rankings of Australian universities, in part to guarantee the flow of new international students. Weirdly, the percentage of international students is part of some of the ranking calculations.
We know a lot less about international vocational education there are substantial numbers of private colleges, some of dubious quality. We do know that students from China enrol disproportionately in the top universities, with students from other countries over-represented in lower-ranked (and cheaper) universities and vocational colleges.
It is much easier for international students to obtain a visa for study at a university than vocational education. There is a much higher rate of rejection for vocational education applicants.
As a result, migration agents have been advising students to apply to study at a university and then switch to the much cheaper vocational education option. In fact, some of the vocational colleges are mere ghosts set up to facilitate this manoeuvre. The government has attempted to clamp down on this trick.
When it comes to what happens to international students when they graduate, the work of Bob Birrell and Katharine Betts has demonstrated that international graduates of Australian universities who stay are much less likely to hold professional or managerial positions relative to their local counterparts.
This is an important finding because it puts paid to the notion that international students are important in filling skill gaps: most of them actually work in semi-skilled jobs.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that for many international students, obtaining a student visa is a relatively straightforward means of achieving permanent residence in Australia and easily beats being an illegal entrant to other developed economies. It may involve some upfront expense, but the scope to earn money by virtue of the liberal (and essentially unpoliced) work rights is a huge attraction. To be sure, there is scope for international students to be exploited as workers here but that may have been the case for them back at home.
What we really need is a rigorous assessment of the benefits and costs of international education for the country to assess where we go from here. Its time to apply the brakes and ensure the visa arrangements, as well as the conduct of our educational institutions, work for the national interest rather than for sectional ones.
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9 November, 2023
Strong response to anti-Semitic rallies in Australia is the only option, writes Peta Credlin
Not long after the Cronulla riots in 2005, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test to try to ensure everyone settling in this country understood what was expected of them.
Question 18 of the current official practice version of the test asks: Can you encourage violence against a person or group of people if you have been insulted? The correct answer, of three alternatives, is: No, it is against Australian values and the law.
Question 19 asks: Should people tolerate one another where they find that they disagree? The correct answer is: Yes, peaceful disagreement reflects Australian values in relation to mutual respect.
To pass the test and be eligible for citizenship, newcomers are supposed to answer correctly all five of the Australian values questions, of which these two are in the practice version. Clearly, sentiments such as gas the Jews and f--k the Jews, as thousands of people chanted in the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House shortly after the Hamas atrocity in Israel, dont conform to the values that are supposed to characterise this country.
Some of those proclaiming such race hate would have been Australian born; while others would have been mere residents and, therefore, never exposed to a values test. But many would have been recent citizens, Australians of convenience perhaps, who assented to something they didnt believe in order to gain a privilege.
While history shows there have been racial uprisings in the past (think the Irish rebels at Castle Hill in 1804), theres really no precedent for the current levels of racial and religious violence.
The fact tens of thousands of Australians now feel strongly enough to join protests, chanting From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, effectively calling for the destruction of Israel in a new holocaust, is hardly consistent with the mutual respect and tolerance that many of them have supposedly signed up to, let alone the decency and respect that previously characterised Australian society.
Thats not to give the Israeli military a leave pass to ignore civilian casualties in their drive to destroy the Hamas leadership and to neutralise its terrorist army. But these protesters, many it seems relatively new Australian citizens, are not simply urging a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza; theyre on Hamass side in its relentless bid to destroy Israel.
What have we done to our country in accepting migrants so at odds with mainstream Australian thinking?
In a powerful and prescient speech delivered a few weeks prior to October 7, British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, herself the child of Mauritian and Kenyan immigrants of Indian background, attacked multiculturalism as its practised in most Western countries. Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism she said, have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.
Multiculturalism, she said, makes no demands of the incomer to integrate.
It has failed, she said, because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society. And in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of our society.
Former PM John Howard has recently made much the same point, telling the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship conference in London that hed always had trouble with the concept of multiculturalism because it meant we try too hard to institutionalise differences rather than celebrate what we have in common. His view was if people want to emigrate to a country, then they must adopt the values and practices of that country.
But thats hardly whats happening with at least some of our recent immigrant communities. Nearly all of those found guilty of terrorist offences in Australian courts have been recent immigrants from the Middle East.
And while there are plenty of neo-Marxist academics who see the Israel-Palestine issue through the prism of white privilege or colonial oppression, many of the angry protesters now flooding Western cities have been from recent immigrant communities that plainly dont think their Australian or British citizenship means respect for a fellow democracy where the rights of women, gays and other minorities are taken seriously. Indeed, the Israeli parliament is comprised of MPs of almost every faith, including Jews, Muslim, Christians and more; as well as a solid representation of men and women, while most of Israels neighbours remain in the dark ages.
One way to limit the impact of unintegrated minorities would be to reduce immigration across the board. This would also have the advantage of alleviating the downward pressure on wages, the upward pressure on housing costs, and the massive pressure on infrastructure produced by current immigration at record levels. But whats really needed is a much stronger expectation of people that, whatever their background, to use Tony Abbotts term, theyll join Team Australia. That doesnt imply migrants should forget their homelands or abandon old values. It clearly does mean, though, a readiness to adhere to Australian law.
Another problem we must tackle head on is mosques and Islamic centres that spew violence and hate under the guise of religious preaching. In Britain and France, the failure of successive governments to take this threat seriously has enabled some Islamic institutions to become de facto radicalisation centres and we cannot allow that to become further entrenched here. Entities of concern should all be audited, sermons translated and assessed for hate speech and any government support or charitable status urgently reviewed.
We must also call out the false flag of all-but-non-existent Islamophobia trotted out by politicians of the Left whenever theyre forced to condemn demonstrable and rampant anti-Semitism. The hypersensitivity to Islamophobia, as opposed to anti-Semitism, shown by leaders from US Vice-President Kamala Harris to NSW minister Jihad Dib reflects the diffidence, verging-on-self-loathing that our New Left progressive establishments have for societies like ours that are far from perfect but, nonetheless, are the best societies that mankind has yet produced; and in which Jewish people have long been respected high achievers.
As global challenges escalate, the sooner we snap out of this cultural confusion the better it will be for almost everything. A good start would be identifying those whove taken part in the recent anti-Semitic protests, prosecuting those who are Australian citizens and deporting those who are not.
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Costing the earth: support for climate action and renewable falls
It might be tempting to look down from on high in the renewable energy transition on the protests of ordinary people worried about the cost and discomfort of change, but evidence is growing that this would be a mistake. Cost overruns and delays are making the federal governments target of achieving 82 per cent renewables by 2030 appear increasingly unlikely. Together with engineering and financial concerns, there is a public revolt by those who feel they can neither afford it nor understand the need to destroy their piece of nature to save the planet.
This is a phenomenon not confined to Australia. It has been a feature of renewable energy deployment from the start. What has changed is the scale of the ambition and the pushback. It is important that government and industry understand what is happening and where it might lead. Early signs of unravelling are snowballing through Europe where governments in Britain, Germany and France are walking back their ambitions on net-zero, which peaked in the lead up to the 2021 Glasgow climate conference.
Cambridge University academic and social commentator Rob Henderson has explored the concept of luxury beliefs, which he says are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on those less well off. Henderson is controversial for his views on a range of issues but it is possible to see the public swell of support both for renewable energy and climate-change action in terms of them being a luxury belief. Pro-climate action helped propel the Albanese government, together with a raft of climate-focused independents, most notably the Teals, into office. The danger for the political class is that once a specific luxury belief loses social value, people are eager to discard it.
Public protests at the rollout of large-scale renewable-energy projects and the transmission lines needed to support them is a reflection of social licence under strain. Rising energy costs and less-certain supplies of electricity are now firmly a mainstream concern. Henderson argues that a core feature of a luxury belief is that once a believer is no longer insulated from the consequences of his or her belief, it dissipates. So, does greater public awareness of the size and cost of the challenge involving action on climate change signal the souring of a luxury belief?
For evidence, despite publicity about extreme weather events and negative impacts of climate change, research by global analytics firm Dynata holds some uncomfortable truths. It finds that Australia has one of the largest proportions of people globally who report not being worried about global warming. More than half of Australian consumers (58 per cent) are also unwilling or slightly unwilling to adopt a more climate-friendly lifestyle if it costs more money.
Compared with 12 months ago, about the time of the election of the Albanese government, 41 per cent of those surveyed said they were less interested in buying a hybrid or electric car and 36 per cent were less interested in renewable energy. Rising cost-of-living pressures can help explain the change in sentiment. Older generations said they were less likely to make financial sacrifices to adopt a more climate-friendly lifestyle: 65 per cent of Gen X and 69 per cent of Baby Boomers were unwilling or slightly willing. When it comes to adopting climate-friendly behaviours, people said they were more willing to sacrifice time and convenience than money. This was especially the case for younger generations.
Dynatas research report draws on responses from 11,000 consumers across 11 countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, China, Japan and Australia. The results show that waning interest is not confined to Australia. In the US, 44 per cent of respondents strongly or slightly agree that they are less interested in buying a hybrid or electric car than a year ago because of inflation and rising costs. Forty two per cent strongly or slightly agree that they were less interested in renewable energy than a year ago.
In the United Kingdom, 43 per cent of respondents were less interested in buying a hybrid or electric car and just below one third (28 per cent) were less interested in renewable energy than a year ago. And if it cost more money, 57 per cent were slightly willing or not at all willing to make lifestyle changes.
The trend is also true in China where 37 per cent were less interested in buying a hybrid or electric car and 35 per cent were less interested in renewables. If it costs more money, 35 per cent of Chinese respondents were slightly willing or not at all willing to make lifestyle changes. The fall in support explains why Chinese president Xi Jinping puts energy security and coal-fired power ahead of environmental posturing and British Prime Minister Riki Sunak has applied the brakes to the UKs net-zero transition. Political leaders in Germany and France have been quick to follow Sunaks lead.
Implicit in Sunaks retreat was a recognition that elite opinion had lost touch with the average person. What I have concluded during my time so far as prime minister is that those decisions can be so caveated, so influenced by special interests, so lacking in debate and fundamental scrutiny that weve stumbled into a consensus about the future of our country, that no one seems to be happy with, he said.
Sunak said Westminsters politicians did not have the courage to look people in the eye and explain what was really involved. Plans included a ban on gas heating, mandatory home upgrades for property owners, taxes on eating meat and compulsory car sharing if you drive to work. Now I believe deeply that when you ask most people about climate change, they want to do the right thing, theyre even prepared to make sacrifices, Sunak said. But it cannot be right to impose such significant costs on working people, especially those who are already struggling to make ends meet, and to interfere so much in peoples way of life without a properly informed national debate.
Australian politicians must closely watch what is happening abroad. Many of the imposts, including gas prohibitions and mandatory building regulations, are being introduced by state governments. New building regulations in NSW that mandate higher levels of insulation and double glazing that took effect on October 1 increase the cost of building a home by up to $50,000 at a time of rising political concern about a housing shortage.
Those pushing net-zero can expect the same sort of political disruption evident in Europe. Already there are signs the issue of nuclear power has become more pressing. Public sentiment is changing. And there is reason for government to take notice. In the 2023 update to its Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said much of the momentum was in small, modular clean-energy technologies such as solar PV and batteries, but these alone were not sufficient to deliver net-zero emissions. It will also require large new, smarter and repurposed infrastructure networks; large quantities of low-emissions fuels; technologies to capture CO2 from smokestacks and the atmosphere; more nuclear power; and large land areas for renewables, the IEA said.
Globally, electricity transmission and distribution grids will need to expand by approximately two million kilometres each year to 2030. Investment will need to climb to about $US4.5 trillion a year by the early 2030s from the current $US1.8 trillion. Despite the level of investment, carbon emissions from the energy sector reached a record high of 37 billion tonnes in 2022, one per cent above their pre-pandemic level.
For Australia, a sobering statistic is that China is building enough new coal-fired electricity capacity every six months to equal Australias total coal-fired capacity. Australia is only at the beginning of its journey to net-zero. Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen is developing plans for decarbonisation across the economy. Areas include electricity and energy, industry, the built environment, agriculture and land, and transport and resources.
Bowen says the level and quality of dialogue and collaboration with industries, experts and citizens will set these plans apart from anything thats been done before.
This is a shared endeavour: we must work together to do whats both possible and practical to stop dangerous climate change and realise the economic opportunities of net zero, he says. The end result will be six net-zero sectoral plans that are robust, ambitious but achievable, and accepted by the broader community.
Evidence abounds that maintaining public support is becoming the priority challenge.
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Truth and Pronouns in the Australian Judicial System
Katherine Deves
Manifest political bias on the bench
The task of the common law system is not the pursuit of truth, but the arbitration of the adversarial disputation of the truth. In a post-modernist world where truth is personal and experienced, the common law court system is the last stronghold of dispassionate inquiry into the truth. The courts role in that system is to hold fairly the balance between the contending parties without itself taking part in their disputations.
Because language and the law are symbiotic, controlling legal language is the prize of gender ideologues, enthralled in the eradication of biological sex from law. Control the language; control the narrative.
The Australian judicial system has recently found itself captured by the ideological aversion to sex-based language. This is no doubt due to the relentless lobbying efforts of said gender ideologues who achieve their aims by decoupling sex from reality in policy and legislation by stealth.
This week, South Australia announced it would be joining Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia in endorsing preferred pronouns in the court as a matter of respect. Bench Books (handbooks for judges) and Practice Notes (guidelines governing court conduct and processes) have been quietly altered to insert preferred pronouns as normal court etiquette.
JK Rowling waded into the fray saying on X (formerly Twitter):
Asking a woman to refer to her male rapist or violent assaulter as she in court is a form of state-sanctioned abuse. Female victims of male violence are further traumatised by being forced to speak a lie Personally, I wouldnt be compelled, Id take contempt of court. Its time for mass non-compliance with this bullshit.
Her comments were rebuked by the Chief Justice of the South Australian Supreme Court as anxious social commentary.
It is not the place of lawyers to criticise the judiciary lest the profession and the administration of justice be brought into disrepute. And ay, theres the rub.
Certain norms are employed in court and legal practitioners are duty-bound to uphold them. Professional obligations not to mislead the court, to act with honesty and candour, and to be frank and fearless have percolated by precedent over millennia to maintain public confidence in the independence of the system.
Civility and professional courtesy of themselves are professional obligations. In many circumstances, a breach of these obligations will coincide with the breach of concurrent ethical obligations. The requirement of civility and professional courtesy is a requirement to be honest and courteous in all dealings in the course of legal practice. It requires practitioners not to engage in conduct, which is likely to be prejudicial to, or diminish the public confidence in the administration of justice and bring the profession into disrepute.
However, the content of civility in the context of legal practice is affected by the purpose which it serves. There can be no inherent inconsistency between the requirement for civility and the practitioners obligation to advance, within other ethical constraints, frankly and fearlessly, their clients interests in the contest for the adjudication of truth.
Abiding these principles, the common law system therefore cannot be seen to coalesce to a movement that compels people to ignore reality in the name of courtesy or civility. The system only survives by reason of the fact that its officers can maintain the independence and fearlessness necessary for the robust testing and adjudication of truth.
Viewed in this light, the claim that preferred pronouns are an important component of ensuring public confidence in the proper administration of justice is palpably erroneous.
Compelling officers of the court to participate in the rituals of an ideology predicated on subjective truth, viz. that a person is the opposite sex if they claim to be, is antithetical to the fundamental objectives of our common law judicial system. The judiciary is a quintessential arm in our democracy and must maintain the agnosticism essential to the enduring public confidence in its ability to arbitrate truth.
It is apparent to anyone paying even the most fleeting attention that the word woman is under assault. The legal meaning ascribed to woman is fast cementing the right of men to identify not only into a defined sex class, but to impugn women who have the audacity to seek to protect themselves by taking preventative measures against male-patterned violence in the form of designated female spaces. That this is a reality emerging from a society, that simultaneously mourns the deaths of 6 women murdered by men in a mere 11 days, is utterly unfathomable.
Earlier this year, the reasons for the judgment delivered by the NSW District Court attracted international attention when the decision referred to her penis in relation to a man who committed sexual offences against a child in a public male toilet.
In 2022, a male sex offender was charged with 72 counts of incest, assault, choking, sexual assault and acts of indecency against his younger minor sisters. In the hearing for the bail application, which was granted, the Local Court remarked, [t]o [her Honours] grand astonishment I am told she (sic) would be held in the male section of the AMC and that would clearly not be in the interests of a person who identifies as a woman. The accused was thereby released to civil society free to enter any female-designated space he chose.
In the UK in 2018, the sentence against a 26-year-old male who assaulted by battery a woman in her 60s was reduced because the victim did not use her male attackers preferred female pronouns.
These are but three cases. There are more. And we can be certain there will be more still.
As the ephemeral concept of trans and gender diverse is further concretised into law as a protected characteristic (despite the absence of a settled and objective definition beyond the performance of outdated stereotypes), it seems almost inevitable that participants in the legal process will be compelled by dint of their professional obligations to employ preferred pronouns. And with this, the agnosticism, fearlessness, and independence of the profession charged with the duty to protect the robust arbitration of truth will be enfeebled.
In compelling truth in the name of respect, the role of the court process as arbiter of the truth is compromised. The common law legal system must be inoculated against to the whims of populism masquerading as kindness and respect. Telling lies and compelling others to do the same is not respectful, and it is not kind. It is conduct unbecoming of a profession charged with custody of the robust and fearless contest for truth.
The Federal Court of Australia will soon hear a legal challenge, ironically argued entirely by a bar table populated exclusively by female practitioners, to determine the right of a self-evidently adult human male, emboldened by a female sex marker on his Queensland-issued birth certificate, to enter female designated spaces. In Tickle v Giggle, Sall Grover of Giggle will defend the right of all people to assert honestly, without fear or favour, the existential reality of sex when they see it. In defending this right, Sall is not being disrespectful.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/truth-and-pronouns-in-the-australian-judicial-system
*********************************************Labor must put aside its social media socialists
Socialism is a plaything of the rich. The very authors of The Communist Manifesto were the original one percenters: Marx the son of an upper-middle-class lawyer whose family owned multiple vineyards, and Engels the heir to an empire of cotton mills.
They had no genuine experience of poverty or the working class. Instead they surveyed and studied poor people, as an animal liberationist might pity the elephants in a zoo.
The tradition of angry rich theoretical leftists continues as I and others have often railed against and as any number of Extinction Rebellion rap sheets will attest however, shocking weekend poll results show that this sociopolitical identity crisis has now reached a tipping point.
Up until this point, suburban battlers and inner-city luvvies managed to co-exist within Labor for about half a century with only occasional bloodshed.
This was because Labors sensible right wing held dominance, especially during the brilliant and unmatched Hawke-Keating era.
As the running in-joke of countless party conferences went, it was a perfect arrangement in which everybody got what they wanted: the right got to win and the left got to go down fighting.
But the pendulum has now swung ever so slightly so that the left now holds a majority at National Conference and in most states and territories, the shining aberrations being NSW and South Australia who also have the handsomest premiers, just saying.
The rights only salvation, ironically enough, has been Anthony Albanese, a former factional war lord of the left who has heroically resisted the lunar demands of his erstwhile comrades to keep the party on a straight and centred course as Prime Minister.
But in politics, unlike religion, salvation is fleeting, not eternal. And Albo now faces a potential existential threat if bombshell RedBridge polling numbers are anything to go by.
The numbers are significant for both what they are and who they come from.
Redbridge was co-founded by Kos Samaras, a former senior Victorian Labor figure who has been an outspoken and often lonely voice on the need for Labor to reconnect with working-class and migrant communities.
As for the numbers themselves, they are brutal.
In August, RedBridge had Labor leading the Coalition 39 per cent to 28 per cent among voters with year 12 or equivalent and 36 to 29 among voters with a TAFE, trade or vocational education.
But by last week support for the major parties had reversed, with the Coalition leading Labor 37 per cent to 28 per cent with year 12 or equivalent voters, and even among TAFE, trade or vocationally trained voters the very definition of the educated working class the Coalition now leads 35 per cent to 33 per cent.
This is not the kind of wake-up call where someone shoves a piece of paper under a leaders nose and he raises his eyebrows. It is the kind of wake-up call where someone pours a bucket of ice water over your head and then slaps your face for good measure.
If this continues, the Labor Party wont just have to change its policies. It will have to change its name.
We saw this in the Victorian state election in which Dan Andrews picked up once-unwinnable seats in leafy Liberal electorates while losing votes in western suburbs heartlands.
That might be seen as a cunning steal, but it also leaves Labor exposed to cunning Teals. If rich progressives are Labors new base, how long before their more affluent seats start falling to preachy doctors as quickly as the inner suburbs have fallen to the Greens?
Meanwhile, the Teal incursion has not only made Peter Dutton opposition leader but forced him to focus wholly on precisely those outer suburban and regional voters who Labor desperately need to secure re-election. If only an uncannily good-looking newspaper columnist had warned of this at the time!
And so these are the questions that Labor needs to ask itself:
How do typically mainstream middle Australians of Lindsay and Longman view Labor from their heavily mortgaged McMansions of outer Sydney and Brisbane?
How do the traditional working-class and migrant voters of Labor strongholds in western Sydney and Melbourne know that this is a party that is still of them, that still shares their values and aspirations?
And how ready is the party for another Dai Le, or a hundred Dai Les in every safe seat in the country?
This is an existential threat, but the good news is there is a clear pathway to survival. The problem is hard but the solution is easy.
All it requires is todays overprivileged social media socialists to stop telling ordinary people what to think, and for Labor to instead listen to what they really do think.
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8 November, 2023
Fears merit-free hiring in universities and public service could lead to cronyism
A large part of the original rationale for using tests and exams was to give people without personal contacts an equal chance of being hired. Looks like that is being lost. Will hiring now be dependent on whom you know, not what you know? That's pretty sad in a university
Merit-based hiring has been abolished for academics and public servants in Queensland to stamp out unconscious bias, sparking concern about jobs for mates.
Both the Queensland government and Queensland University of Technology are dumping the word merit from their selection policies, and will instead hire staff based on suitability. Job applicants will have their achievement rated against opportunity.
In a proposed new hiring policy that has angered some academics, QUT will ensure that an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander employee vets any applications from Indigenous jobseekers.
The new rules would require selection panels to assess the extent to which the person has abilities, aptitude, skills, qualifications, knowledge, experience, and personal qualities relevant to the carrying out of the duties in question.
This includes consideration of achievement relative to opportunity, the draft policy states.
The panel must consider the diverse ways in which responses may be expressed or demonstrated, including with respect to applicants who are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples, people from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds, applicants who identify as LGBTIQA+, applicants for positions where it is a non-traditional area of employment for women or men, and applicants who have a disability.
The panel may consider how appointment would achieve organisational equity, diversity, respect and inclusion obligations.
One academic, who did not want to be named, questioned whether students should now be marked based on suitability, rather than merit?
The policy to get rid of merit is bordering on embarrassing, the academic said. Its completely disrespectful to tell students who will be charged thousands of dollars for a program that they will be taught by people chosen not on merit, but suitability.
Australian Institute for Progress executive director Graham Young said that abolishing merit-based selection at universities and in the public service will enable cronyism.
Merit is about meeting a set of criteria that is skills-based, he said. Assessing on suitability allows a move away from that.
QUT vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil the first woman to become a professor of chemistry in Australia and a former chief executive of the Australian Research Council said the university was trying to build on the culture of choosing the best possible people for each role.
Theres nothing sinister in it at all, she said. Im the anti-cronyism, jobs-for-the-mates champion of all time.
Professor Sheil said her universitys existing selection policy was sort of bureaucratic.
You had to get a score for each candidate against each selection criteria, and trying to get a merit score that was very hard to apply in any kind of serious modern contemporary recruitment, she said.
Its really about trying to move people away a little bit, as many places are, from the notion that merits something thats completely objective and in the case of academics, numerical to looking at whether this is the person whos most suitable to take the role.
Professor Sheil said I still like quirky mathematicians. But she said QUT wanted to ensure that staff with stellar academic credentials were also excellent teachers, and respectful to other staff and students as well.
The best person on merit in terms of CV might be the top researcher in all the publications and the best qualifications, but if youre not going to actually be interested in teaching students, we dont want them, she said.
The reason theyve got the best CV is theyre not interested in doing anything other than their own research. We want people who are interested in teaching students as well.
Professor Sheil also pointed out that the requirement to have an Indigenous staff member screen job applications from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander applicants, and recommend if they proceed to an interview, was designed to ease pressure on Indigenous staff.
Under the existing policy, selection panels interviewing a First Nations applicant must include an Indigenous staff member.
Professor Sheil said this requirement was placing undue pressure on Indigenous staff members to constantly take part in selection panels.
She said the requirement had been imposed before my time but suspect it was for cultural safety reasons.
Professor Sheil said the proposed new hiring rules would look at the whole person and the whole picture for the person who is applying.
The problem is if you leave people to select on merit, some sort of supposed analytical criteria, they will automatically score the person who looks like them higher, she said.
I see it all the time, thats the unconscious bias.
People talk about merit often to exclude people, not include people.
Professor Sheil said the new selection method would ask, have they got the qualifications to do the job, can they do the job, are they outstanding in whatever theyve done, and are they suitable for what we want to do?
Sometimes that will give you a more diverse field, sometimes it wont, she said.
QUT is basing its controversial policy on a new hiring rules for Queenslands public service.
The Queensland Public Service Commission yesterday said that recruitment must be fair and transparent and directed to the selection of the person best suited to the position.
The best person must be selected for a role, and this is consistent with the concept of merit in the previous directive and legislation, a spokeswoman said.
Where there is a mandatory qualification for a role, the person must have that qualification to be appointed.\
A new Queensland public service directive, issued last month, states that selection panels need to identify the person who is best suited to the position replacing the previous requirement for appointments based on merit.
Panels must consider equity and diversity and cultural considerations, as part of a holistic assessment to choose the eligible person best suited to the position.
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Victoria's Property taxes causing investors to scramble for the exits
Who needs landlords anyway? There are plenty of streets to sleep in
The Victorian government had kicked off the property tax changes in its budget last May, and then widened the tax net to include more investors when a vacant residential land tax was extended beyond the inner city to include the entire state. The tax will impact investors and holiday home owners from next January.
In recent times the Victorian government has also introduced a windfall gains tax for property developers and doubled the tax on absentee buyers from 2 per cent to 4 per cent, along with hitting the short-term rental market with a tax of 7.5 per cent on annual revenue.
According to Irina Tan of Pitcher Partners: It is no exaggeration to describe the proposed changes to Victorias land tax regime as a seismic shift in the way system currently operates that will impact anyone who
The proposed changes have also been slammed as ham-fisted and unlikely to be effective. Lawyers at Russell Kennedy describe it as an odd policy initiative which does not seem to meet the brief as to consumer protection.
READ MORE: When will the property investor exodus end? | The unnecessary costs stinging property investors
But it is the unexpected expansion of the vacant land tax that appears to have triggered widespread frustration across the property sector.
Under the terms of the plan, all owners of a second property beyond the family home in Victoria will face a tax of $975 plus 0.1 per cent with a $50,000 threshold.
The tax must be paid unless the owner ha lived in the property for a minimum of four weeks each year or leased the house for at least six months.
Sale statistics show property owners have already been quitting across Victoria. In fact, the percentage of new sales that are driven by investors is running at up to twice national levels. In the coming months holiday home owners are expected to join the wave of selling.
Victorian Real estate agents also report a lift in the number of sellers trying to add property tax liabilities to the sales price under new state vendor rules this will soon be prohibited.
The Real Institute Of Victoria reports that one in four Melbourne rental providers have sold their properties over the past 12 months.
Investors are fleeing and looking at other states or alternative investment vehicles, Quentin Kilian, the CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, told The Australian.
Each time a new tax or a new regulation is introduced it beats confidence out of one of the states most important economic contributors, he said.
While Melbourne remains the top spot for new immigrants, the city has now got a rock-bottom vacancy rate of near 1 per cent, prompting industry analysts to suggest rental prices will rise further.
The Victorian parliament resumes on November 14, when it is expected negotiations will resume around the new taxes.
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Fight over cow burps looms as farmers face forced emissions cuts
Fewer cows, dearer milk??
A fight over plans to cut farmings greenhouse footprint from methane-burping livestock looms for the Albanese government, with Agriculture Minister Murray Watt declaring the sector must reduce its emissions as the National Farmers Federation campaigns against the governments renewable plans.
Watt declared the industry cannot rely only on carbon offsets and must change practices as he launched consultation on Tuesday on the governments agriculture and land plan, which will guide cuts to emissions from agriculture in line with the national target to hit net zero by 2050.
The Albanese government has launched a controversial reform, which will result in a sector wide plan for agriculture to cut its greenhouse emissions, which are mostly generated by methane-laden burps from livestock.
The Albanese government has launched a controversial reform, which will result in a sector wide plan for agriculture to cut its greenhouse emissions, which are mostly generated by methane-laden burps from livestock. CREDIT:STEVEN SIEWERT
The government is also committed to the global pledge to cut methane by 30 per cent from 2020 by 2030.
That is a big task for graziers as sheep and cows gassy burps are loaded with the greenhouse gas a byproduct of digesting grass. Livestock methane makes around two-thirds of agricultures greenhouse emissions.
New Zealand has imposed a tax on farm methane emissions that kicks in from 2025, but in news that will be welcomed by Australian farmers, Watt has already ruled this out.
Watt said the reforms will be done without a methane tax or ag sector emissions target but government would work industry to develop a plan.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has teamed with other ministers to draw up plans for emissions reductions in six sectors of the economy. Agriculture, which generates 17 per cent of the nations greenhouse footprint, is first cab off the rank.
Its really important that agriculture does reduce its emissions, Watt said told the ABC.
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Sun sets on daylight saving in Queensland after damning new poll results
I am pleased to hear this. I don't like people messing around with my clocks either
A referendum on daylight saving held in Queensland today would more than likely fail, with exclusive new polling revealing a majority of the state dont want to turn the clock forward an hour.
Even in Brisbane less than half of respondents to The Sunday Mails exclusive YouGov poll supported daylight saving.
But the result among regional Queenslanders was as unequivocal as it was at the 1992 referendum a hard no to daylight saving.
The YouGov poll of 1013 Queenslanders, conducted between October 4 and 10, revealed 47 per cent were against daylight saving, 41 per cent for and 12 per cent did not have a view.
In Brisbane, 48 per cent of respondents wanted daylight saving while 40 per cent rejected the idea.
A whopping 60 per cent of regional Queenslanders said no to daylight saving while 25 per cent approved. 15 per cent of regional Queenslanders were undecided.
Ardent supporters of daylight saving including Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner and Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate remain undeterred with Cr Tate stridently calling for a referendum to be held in March 2024 alongside local government elections.
We now live in a borderless, global commerce world and these split time zones are costing both NSW and Queensland billions in lost productivity, Cr Tate said.
Cr Schrinner put the results down to people being far more concerned about their household budget and rising costs at this time, and affirmed trialling daylight saving would bring huge benefits to residents and local business.
Its now a matter of time before another trial finally happens and once that occurs Im confident a large majority of Queenslanders will vote to keep daylight saving, he said.
During the warmer months, Brisbane residents endure the earliest sun rises of any major city in the world.
Geoscience Australia data revealed Brisbanes earliest sunrise in 2022 was 4.45am on December 9, with the sun setting at 6.35pm that day.
That same day the sun rose in Cairns at 5.36am, in Mount Isa at 5.54am and in Townsville at 5.27am with the sun setting at 6.42pm, 7.15pm and 6.43pm respectively.
One of the recommendations made by the Daylight Saving Taskforce in 1990 was to dissect Queensland at 151 degree east longitude slicing the state vertically from about Mount Larcom near Gladstone down to Beebo just outside Texas and giving everyone east of that line daylight saving.
Under this plan the regional centres of Gladstone, down through Bundaberg and Gympie and out west to Toowoomba, Warwick and Dalby would put their clocks ahead an hour from October to April alongside Brisbane, and the Gold and Sunshine Coasts.
Tasmania was the first state to apply daylight saving time - a year later it applied to all states. Daylight saving was removed again at the end of World War I in 1918.
Explained: The real arguments for and against daylight saving
Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill, a daylight saving detractor, said dividing the state at an arbitrary line was not the solution unless a complete separate state with Townsville as its capital was established.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk again rejected the notion of a referendum saying the government wanted to unite Queensland not divide it, and recent events had made clear bipartisan support was needed for referendums to succeed.
Opposition Leader David Crisafulli, a North Queenslander with an electorate on the Gold Coast, maintained he too would not do anything that would divide the state.
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7 November, 2023
Why rule of law cant be sacrificed to secure conviction
Does anything justify putting innocent people in jail? That is the big risk when we drop standards
Why do so many cases of sexual abuse fail? Many fail because they were weak cases in the first place that were pursued only for reasons of political correctness.
A case that boils down only to she says/he says should not be prosecuted but if the allegation gets publicity few prosecutors would refuse to prosecute -- lest they be accused of covering up an injustice
The Higgins/Lehrman case was an example of that, and prosecuter Drumgold was an example of a politicaly correct prosecutor. In the end, Drumgold was the only one penalized, which was justice of a sort
Improving outcomes for sexual assault victims will not be achieved by diminishing the fundamental foundations of the rule of law.
As Walter Sofronoff KC recently observed, when it comes to addressing allegations of sexual assault, there are two separate but parallel systems operating: the victim support system and the criminal justice system.
In the former, accepting without challenge what a victim asserts, using language such as victim-survivor, her truth and believe all women often will be necessary and appropriate in that therapeutic environment to provide the best emotional, financial and other supports needed by victims of sexual violence.
However, when an allegation of sexual assault leads to a criminal investigation or prosecution, the fundamentals of the criminal justice system must be maintained.
This includes the presumption of innocence, the obligation of the prosecution to prove a criminal allegation beyond reasonable doubt and the right of an accused to remain silent.
Much recent debate in this area has ignored the significant differences and purposes of these systems and focused on raising low conviction rates, which are often quoted as being about or below 20 per cent.
These statistics generally ignore all the allegations resolved by pleas of guilty.
Proposals have included better education (and re-education) of judges and lawyers, abandoning trial by jury and standing up specialist sexual assault courts staffed with specially trained judges and advocates where (presumably) more guilty verdicts will be returned.
Such reforms, even if made with good intentions, would pave the way to a drastic erosion of the rule of law in this country.
If two convictions for every 10 trials is unacceptable, what number would be deemed acceptable? Fifty per cent? Eighty per cent?
Presumably to those who subscribe to the believe all women philosophy in the criminal justice system as well as in the victim assistance space, anything less than 100 per cent would be unacceptable.
Which, then, of those three or eight people found not guilty in this sample should have been found guilty? And why? Because it is implicit in these proposals that if we are to achieve some arbitrary acceptable metric, like a 50 per cent conviction rate, then at least two or three more not guilty verdicts shouldve been guilty verdicts.
Eighteenth-century jurist William Blackstone wrote, It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. The principle behind this statement finds voice in concepts such as the presumption of innocence, and guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Do we as a liberal democratic society still subscribe to this principle? Or are we content to allow some innocent people to suffer the consequences of a wrongful conviction (and their loved ones and dependents necessarily as well)? Do we relax or abrogate the presumption of innocence or the standard of proof only in sexual assault prosecutions or across the board?
Is this visceral (and justifiable) desire to better recognise the failures of the past, to acknowledge and address the alarming levels of sexual and domestic violence and abuse in this country, justify us essentially adopting a warlike footing where collateral damage is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of winning the war? For some advocates the answer appears to be a resounding yes. Presumably though, qualified to the extent that they, or their partner, father, brother, relative, friend, colleague etc isnt among the putative innocents to be subjected to this form of collective punishment.
Experienced criminal lawyers across this country lament that prosecutors will rarely (if ever) decline to prosecute an allegation of sexual assault. Recently the media has reported examples of sexual assault prosecutions that, on any objective assessment, were doomed to fail.
While there may be cases of juries deciding the case having relied on rape myths such as a genuine victim would say no or fight back or complain immediately, or a genuine victim would not go out in those clothes or to those places I suggest these are rare.
Modern juries give little credence to such ignorant and outdated propositions. Judges are now particularly vigilant to identify and direct juries from engaging in such reasoning.
There are certainly cases where police could and should have done more thorough investigation and where a failure to secure crucial evidence may well have led to an acquittal. But the most significant factor in explaining why we have such low conviction rates among sexual assault prosecutions is that prosecutors insist on running cases that have no reasonable prospect of succeeding.
Let the court decide is an all too familiar refrain from prosecutors around the country who are not prepared to make the difficult decision not to prosecute an allegation of sexual assault even when it is apparent there is no realistic prospect of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Whether this is because of a fear of being criticised by a vocal complainant, interest group or the media is difficult to know.
Not proceeding to prosecute a particular allegation of sexual assault should not and does not have any impact on that complainants capacity to receive support from victims of crime services. It does not mean the prosecutor does not believe the complainant. It is simply a consequence of the obligation to prosecute only cases that have a reasonable prospect of succeeding. Even assuming there is a public interest in prosecuting every allegation of sexual assault, the overriding obligation remains not to prosecute any person on a charge unless there is a reasonable prospect of obtaining a conviction.
Every jurisdiction has some variation of the reasonable prospects test. In the ACT section 2.4 of the Prosecution Policy provides: The decision to prosecute can be understood as a two-stage process. First, does the evidence offer reasonable prospects of conviction? If so, is it in the public interest to proceed with a prosecution.
In any 10 sexual assault prosecutions at least four of those 10 cases are pursued without any reasonable prospects.
Apart from imposing significant financial and emotional tolls on the accused person, the prosecution of these cases also means the complainant will go through an unnecessarily stressful and traumatic trial process.
In addition, its likely at least one of the remaining six cases might have been successful if police had undertaken a better investigation. On this analysis, three of the six cases that met the reasonable prospects test would have resulted in guilty verdicts giving a conviction rate of 50 per cent. A more than doubling of the current rate without resorting to re-education camps for lawyers and judges, specialist tribunals or abolishing juries.
Higher conviction rates in sexual assault prosecutions can be achieved without entering into a Faustian-like pact with the devil; in this case a bargain in which the soul of the rule of law is sold into damnation on the promise of higher conviction rates.
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Greens in Senate walkout over Albanese governments Israel response
The Greens have accused the Albanese government of being complicit in the massacre of innocent Palestinians and aiding and abetting Israel, after the party staged a free Palestine protest in the Senate chamber.
Attempting to ratchet up pressure on the government to show some guts over the Middle East conflict, Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi demanded Labor endorse the United Nations call for Israel and its allies to agree to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and condemn Israel for its war crimes.
In an attack the Jewish community said showed the Greens to be the enemies of peace, Senator Faruqi said: History will judge the Labor Party and the Labor government for staying silent, or even being complicit in the massacre that is happening in Palestine at the moment. History will remember them as warmongers, history will remember them as aiding and abetting Israel in the massacre of Palestinians. And the people will not take kindly to it.
What we are seeing now, we have not seen for many years, the way that thousands of innocent people are being killed indiscriminately, the way that families are being blown up to bits, whole families are being blown up to bits by the bombing of Israel. Thats what we want to stop.
Trade Minister Don Farrell, who represented Anthony Albanese in the upper house on Monday with Senate leader Penny Wong in Beijing, said innocent civilians should not pay for the horrors perpetrated by Hamas.
Of course we have all witnessed devastating loss of innocent life in the Middle East that all started with the attack by Hamas on innocent civilians in Israel. We as a government have affirmed Israels right to defend themselves after that horrific attack, Senator Farrell said.
We also said this, I saw the Foreign Minister (Senator Wong) reiterate that this weekend, that it also matters how Israel responds to this completely unjustified attack by Hamas. This means that Israel must observe international law and the rules of war.
Nobody wants to see innocent lives lost in this terrible set of circumstances. And it matters that innocent civilians should not pay for the horrors perpetrated by Hamas. And it also matters for Israels own security, which faces grave risk if this conflict spreads and I think weve already seen over the weekend the potential that its spreading in the north and in the east.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said the Greens inability to condemn the mass atrocities of October 7 without attempting to justify crimes that no decent person would ever justify, destroyed what little human rights credentials they had.
The Greens have shown themselves to be the enemies of peace and launderers for antisemites at home and murderous thugs abroad, he said.
Their continued patronage of anti-Israel rallies with their genocidal chants and incitement to violence has endangered Australian Jews and our society. They pose as pacifists but they know that a ceasefire will hand victory to Hamas and encourage more jihadism in the West.
Greens foreign affairs spokesman Jordon Steele-John said his party had repeatedly condemned the acts of terrorism perpetrated by Hamas last month because of a shared commitment to humanity.
During Senate question time, Senator Faruqi made a statement about the governments heartless, gutless, powerless response to what was happening to Palestinians before raising her fist and declaring: Today, we bring the peoples protest into parliament. Free, free Palestine.
She then left the chamber, followed by her colleagues.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said at least 9770 people, mostly civilians, had been killed in more than four weeks of war, sparked by a terrorist attack in Israel on October 7 that left more than 1400 dead.
The Prime Minister has endorsed Israels right to defend itself while also expressing concern for Gaza civilians.
Six of Australias former prime ministers - every living leader except Paul Keating - co-signed a letter last week affirming their joint stance on the war, expressing their support for Israel and condemning Hamas for the October massacres.
The letter called for an end to anti-Semitic hate speech and endorsed a two-state solution as the basis for long-term lasting peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
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Many on the Left excuse or relativise the barbaric savagery of the Hamas terrorists who run Gaza
Andrew Bolt
The war against Israel has ripped the mask off the Left. Ive never seen such naked hatred of Israel and Jews, most of it justified by lies and the Lefts perverted new ideology.
But no wonder, when Jews and Israel tick every box for the Lefts favourite villains. Most obviously, the Jews of Israel are too white for the Left, whose identity politics says white is the colour of oppression.
Theyre also too successful, because the Lefts new victim politics says the marginalised, like Palestinians, are hero victims, and never victims of their own toxic choices.
Whats more, the Jews of Israel are also too rich, since the Left still believes the Marxist lie that riches are what you steal, not create.
The Jews are even now damned as colonialists the Wests ultimate sin in the Lefts catechism.
True, Jews were indigenous to Israel for many thousands of years before Islam was invented, but history is now what the Left invents, not records.
But one more bit of ideology seals the Lefts case against the Jews. Noticed how fiercely collectivist, or tribal, the Left is now? How quick to dismiss personal responsibility?
You see it right now. Many on the Left excuse or relativise the barbaric savagery of the Hamas terrorists who run Gaza and on October 7 butchered 1400 Jews, even mutilating parents in front of their children, raping women before executing them, beheading victims and burning babies alive.
This was something so profoundly evil that it breaks historys chain of cause and effect, meaning this war with Hamas started on October 7, not in 1948. And it was started by Hamas.
But not to the tribal Left. What Hamas did didnt happen in a vacuum, blathered Antonio Guterres, the United Nations idiotic secretary-general, as if the terrorists were just impersonal dominoes tipped over by historys finger, not individuals making their own moral decisions ones we must damn.
And thats one more strike against the Jews. To many on the Left, they caused their own murder.
The Greens are the clearest example of this moral depravity of the Left. I dont mean just the most extreme Greens, such as race-baiting Senator Mehreen Faruqi, wearing her Palestinian keffiyah to parliament to rant at Israel.
Worse, even the most seemingly reasonable Greens now fall for the ludicrous spin of Hamas.
Take Senator David Shoebridge, the Greens defence spokesman, who last Thursday savaged Israel for bombing a Hamas military compound sheltered between a mosque, clinic and school in what Hamas still calls a refugee camp, although its now another concrete suburb of Gaza City.
Shoebridge accepted Hamas figures for the dead, and raged: Possibly up to 200 civilians, the majority of them women and children, were killed in order for the IDF to kill one identified target one targeted terrorist.
What an idiotic scenario. Even if Shoebridge wont believe the Israeli Defence Forces, which claims it killed not just Ibrahim Biari, commander of Hamass Central Jabaliya Battalion, but approximately 50 of his terrorists, how can he believe the Hamas version instead?
What odds that one of Hamass most senior terrorists in one of its biggest terrorist bases is surrounded in wartime by 200 civilians, mostly children and women, but not one fighter?
It stuns me that so many of the Left, particularly journalists, still believe Hamass wild claims and often inflated casualty figures. Why do they assume terrorists who gleefully burned alive families of Jews would scruple to tell a lie?
Yet even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fell for the Hamas lie that hundreds of people at one Gaza hospital were killed by an Israeli bomb, saying he condemned any targeting of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals. In fact, it was a Palestinian rocket that hit not the hospital but a car park, killing not hundreds but reportedly dozens at most.
Its now the same story, with reporters claiming Israel killed many Palestinian civilians when it hit an ambulance, with Guterres declaring himself horrified.
But Israel says Hamas used that ambulance to transport terrorists, as it often does. Even Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian West Bank, years ago claimed: The Hamas leaders fled to the Sinai (in Egypt) in ambulances, leaving their people behind to be slaughtered.
Hamas even hides a key command base inside Gazas biggest hospital, Al-Shifa.
This is why I cant rule out anti-Semitism when Leftists repeat the propaganda of these lying Hamas butchers, while sneering at the claims of Israel.
Their wilful gullibility suggests their default position is that Jews are the liars and murderers, and Hamas their truthful victims just as the Lefts new ideology decrees.
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Assault on farmers, fishers and foresters will only harm the environment
Governments across Australia are forging ahead with their attacks on farmers, fishers and foresters, with the latest blow aimed against the Murray-Darling irrigators after the federal government recently passed legislation through the lower house cutting their water allocations.
The inevitable result of such legislation will be a fall in food and fibre production. In addition, the east coast Barramundi gillnet fishery is to be phased out by 2027, and two major agricultural dams in Queensland (Hells Gate and Urannah) have been shelved as a bribe to delay UNESCO declaring the Great Barrier Reef endangered.
The Queensland mackerel fishery was cut by 70 per cent in July, the Victorian hardwood forestry industry is facing closure in the next few years, and the West Australian hardwood forestry industry will go next year. As for the future, there is also the push for low-emission agriculture as part of Australias net-zero pledge. This is targeting methane emissions from livestock and the supposed problem of nitrogen in fertiliser.
But damaging these industries perversely increases environmental harm. For example, the continuously tightening regulations on Australias fish catch resulted in Australia becoming a net importer of seafood in 2007, and we now import well over 60 per cent of our seafood. By importing fish from countries such as Thailand that have far less strict environmental guidelines, damage from overfishing is far more likely.
Similarly, restricting or banning hardwood forestry simply means we must import from countries where sustainable forestry, which has been practised in this country for decades, is merely a dream. There is also a major environmental and biosecurity risk with importing fish and timber from overseas. The 2016 outbreak of white-spot disease in prawns is a good example of this.
Sadly, the rationale for most of these assaults on agriculture is based on poor quality-assured science. For example, cuts in Murray-Darling irrigation water are intended in part to allow more freshwater to reach Lake Alexandrina at the mouth of the river in South Australia. It is claimed the lake needs more water or it will go saline like an estuary. But the lake was salty until the 1930s when the dams were built at the mouth of the Murray to stop the salt coming in from the sea. So, farmers are forced to cut water consumption partly to maintain a fiction that the lake is naturally, and should always be, freshwater.
Similarly, it was claimed that the Hells Gate and Urannah dams needed to be cancelled to help the Great Barrier Reef. But, if anything, the dams will stop sediment and nutrients reaching the sea and UNESCO and most of the science institutions have been telling us the sediment is bad for the reef. For some reason, the government and UNESCO now prefer to wash the sediment into the sea.
Equally ridiculous is the promise by federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to restrict fishing in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria, supposedly to protect the Great Barrier Reef, which is 800km away on the other side of Cape York. That is farther than the distance between Sydney and Melbourne.
Plibersek claims this is to protect fish that move between the Gulf and the Great Barrier Reef through the Torres Strait. I suppose that all creatures on Earth are interlinked in some way, but there is no evidence of any problems with the Gulf fishery or of there being a significant ecological link between the Gulf and reef.
After all, for most of the one-million-year history of the Great Barrier Reef, the Torres Strait was a land bridge, so to go from the Gulf to the reef one had to take the long way around Australia. And the reef did just fine.
At least for the Murray-Darling farmers there is one thing going in their favour rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. It is beyond dispute that most food crops and trees grow much faster in an atmosphere with double the amount of the carbon dioxide for wheat about 30 per cent faster and they need less water. And no Australian government can cut carbon dioxide concentrations because Australias emissions are negligible compared with those of China and India.
Other than that, politically harmful decisions have been based on poor advice from science organisations that have become ideological and hostile to the productive heart of the Australian economy. Not only does this harm the Australian economy but closing down agriculture, fisheries and forestry will simply export jobs and increase environmental costs in other countries. This is NIMBYism on a national scale.
We are witnessing a widening disconnect between the productive rural regions and the city nobility. We need a fresh start, beginning with a review of the science behind agricultural policy.
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6 November, 2023
Autistic problems
The article below could be misleading. Autism occurs on a spectrum -- from completely non-verbal people to high functioning autistics who can live a fairly normal life. I am one of the latter.
And although I had a rather withdrawn childhood, I was pretty happy. I just read a lot of books instead of going out socially. And seeing I am now 80, I can't complain about my lifespan.
My autistic withdrawal was largely responsible for the failure of my four marriages and other relationships but I enjoyed all four marriages plus some good relationships. And they all ended amicably. And my three university degrees came easily.
So at 80 I find myself with several girlfriends and live in material comfort. On balance, autism has been for me a privilege. So I wanted to say all that as a counter-balance to the tale of woe below. Not all autistics are the same
I was in primary school when I told my mother for the first time that I wanted to die.
At age 12, tortured by tiny noises in my head, I had my first nervous breakdown.
At 16, when my father died from a long, traumatic fight with cancer, I fell into a deep depression I couldnt escape from.
At 23, while studying overseas, I battled an unknown illness that left me dizzy, half-deaf and in constant pain. As fellow exchange students went clubbing and enjoyed German Christmas markets, I stopped eating and wandered the empty, icy streets of Berlin alone contemplating suicide.
By the time my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack and when I was 27, Id already resigned myself to a life of suffering. Despite medication and therapy, depression and anxiety had been my constant companions.
Unbearably sensitive to the world, unable to sleep, constantly sick, and achingly lonely, I also couldnt shake the feeling there was something else going on. Something was secretly, fundamentally wrong with me.
Why did I feel alone in a crowd? Why couldnt I verbalise my innermost feelings? Why was eye contact painful, and human touch sometimes electric?
Why did I feel comforted and connected lying alone listening to the same albums on repeat but feel nothing talking to the people I knew in real life?
At 28, I was finally diagnosed with autism.
Though finding out I am autistic has made my entire life made sense, my relief at the diagnosis has been short-lived. As well as looking back and reassessing every pivotal moment in my life, Ive begun to look forward, and the future is terrifying.
As well as experiencing higher rates of homelessness and being eight times more likely to be unemployed, autistic people have a life expectancy 20 to 36 years shorter than the general population.
Though the exact reason for this horrifying lifespan discrepancy is unknown, its most likely got something to do with the comorbidities autistic people often live with.
As well as facing physical and neurological comorbidities like congenital abnormalities, epilepsy, insomnia, and gastrointestinal disease, autistic people are also prone to psychological conditions like depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, and bipolar disorder.
Were also more far more likely to commit suicide.
In one Australian study of autistic people without intellectual disability, 66 per cent of respondents reported suicidal ideation, with 35 per cent reporting suicide plans or attempts about five times higher than the general population.
But why can life be so unbearable for autistic people?
The sad reality is that were just not made for the neurotypical world. In a world built by and for neurotypical people, is it any wonder that autistic people struggle to work, house ourselves, or fight constantly against our physical and mental illnesses?
In Australia, up to 75 per cent of autistic people do not complete education beyond year 12, with a federal parliamentary inquiry finding that a significant proportion of autistic people are reliant on their families and/or government funded services and benefits, such as income support payments.
What governments fail to mention, however, is that these income support payments are rarely above the poverty line, with many autistics ineligible for the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) let alone the DSP (Disability Support Pension) anyway.
Currently, the maximum basic rate DSP a single adult can receive is just $501 per week. With Australias poverty line at $489 per week and the median rent in Sydney now at $670 per week, its hardly surprising that even autistic people with access to the DSP or NDIS are struggling.
So how can we make life better for autistic people, and help change the terrifying statistics we live with?
In my opinion, it begins with our governments and communities listening to us to what we really need to not only survive, but thrive.
In October, Australias first National Autism Strategy (NAS) opened for public feedback, and Im hoping our voices will finally be heard.
Having grown up in poverty and government housing, with no idea I was autistic, Im lucky Ive made it out. Though its taken a huge toll on my mental and physical health, Ive managed to graduate university, hold good; jobs, make friends, and find secure housing (well, as secure as rentals can be). Today, even with a diagnosis and (expensive, self-funded) support, I still struggle. Mostly, however, I am doing OK.
But Im in the minority. And like my parents who died young and the quirky, sensitive friends Ive lost to suicide, autistic people deserve better.
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Australians unlikely to give up meat, become vegetarian to help environment, study shows
A La Trobe University study asked more than 700 Facebook account users who lived in Australia about their beliefs on climate change, the impact of meat consumption on the environment, and their meat intake.
The report found respondents, who were aged between 18 and 84, believed reducing and eliminating meat intake were ineffective ways to address climate change.
They reported low willingness to engage in either action, despite participants showing increased awareness of meat-eating impacts on the environment.
"Although past research has shown that animal agriculture contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, our participants believed reducing and eliminating meat intake to be some of the least effective actions against climate change," co-author and provisional psychologist from La Trobe University Ashley Rattenbury said.
Australians are among the biggest meat-eaters in the world, a trend the study highlighted.
In 2020, the World Economic Forum reported that Australia had the world's second-highest annual meat consumption per capita in 2018, behind the United States.
Two thirds of the La Trobe University study participants said having limited options when eating out was a barrier to adopting a vegetarian diet.
"[The sentiment] 'I like eating meat' was the most common barrier," co-author Matthew Ruby, from La Trobe's School of Psychology, said.
"That maps on to many other past studies that [have found] most people eat meat because they like it.
The La Trobe research was compared to a similar study conducted in 2003 by Emma Lea and Anthony Worsley, from Deakin University, which asked hundreds of Australians for their beliefs about barriers and benefits to vegetarianism.
Only one third of Lea and Worsley's participants agreed that limited options when eating out were a barrier, despite there being far fewer vegetarian options available 20 years ago.
Other 'green' actions favoured over vegetarianism
The La Trobe University study also asked participants about their perceptions of the effectiveness of stopping or reducing meat consumption, compared to how willing they would be to engage in other actions that benefited the environment.
"Participants thought that cutting back on meat and stopping eating meat were the least effective things they could do and as such were the least willing to do those, particularly to stop eating meat," Dr Ruby said.
"They are very happy to get more energy from renewable resources, to recycle things more, to buy fewer new things which all do have an impact.
"But considering the amount of meat that the average Aussie eats, cutting back on meat would have more of an impact than some of those in terms of emissions."
Researchers hoped the findings would help organisations and campaigners better understand attitudes around environmental dietary behaviours.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-06/la-trobe-univerity-meat-consumption-study/103065134
*******************************************Labors renewable investments are just blowing in the wind
The floundering offshore wind turbine industry received some welcome news from Australia last week with a strong hint from Jim Chalmers of more sugar on the table for renewable energy.
The promise of what the Treasurer euphemistically called more decisive action across all levels of government is a sign of increasing desperation as the governments emissions-reduction timetable falls hopelessly behind.
The giant boring machine crawling beneath the Snowy Mountains is an apt metaphor for the governments progress towards its 2030 target. Both projects were based on heroic assumptions, neither were adequately surveyed, and both have turned into giant sinkholes for capital that could be better spent elsewhere.
Joe Bidens dream of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind turbines by 2030 is in tatters after a string of cancelled projects. Last week, Danish wind energy company Orsted dropped two projects that would have installed more than 200 giant turbines off the New Jersey coast. Orsteds stock has fallen 60 per cent this year and The New York Times estimates it will have to write off billions of dollars in investments in the two projects. Orsted is not the only company encountering headwinds.
Britains target of 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 can only be met with substantial subsidies and revenue guarantees. The Swedish company Vattenfall abandoned a giant offshore wind project off the Norfolk coast earlier this year, blaming a 40 per cent rise in costs. The latest auction for offshore wind licences failed to attract a single bid.
Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, BPs head of low-carbon energy, told a Financial Times conference on Wednesday that the US offshore wind industry was fundamentally broken and required a fundamental reset to help the nascent market grow. Mounting problems included approval delays, long timelines and escalating interest rates that have caused financing costs to soar.Theres really not a Plan B right now, environmentalist Jeff Tittel told the New York Times. Its a political disaster.
Enter Energy Minister Chris Bowen who told the Asia Pacific Offshore Wind and Green Hydrogen Summit in August that Australia had big ambitions for offshore wind. We arent just building an industry from scratch, he said. We are building an industry in which we want to be a world leader.
Bowen has announced five offshore wind zones in the past year, with a sixth between Bunbury and Perth expected to be formally announced this month.
The numbers, sprinkled like fairy dust in the ministers press releases, are too silly to believe. The Hunter, Illawarra and Southern Ocean zones alone will provide enough electricity to power 16 million homes, according to the minister. In a country of 9.7 million households, that would be impressive if it were true, rather than a scribble on the back of an envelope.
We are told that the energy capacity of the five offshore wind zones in the eastern states will be 43GW. That means constructing 5400 turbines with a boilerplate capacity of 8MW, or one a day for the next 15 years. On a conservative installation cost assumption of $US1.3m a megawatt, that would require a capital investment of $86bn.
We need you, Bowen told the industry gathering. We need your capital. We need your investment. We need your experience.
The Australian government is deadly serious about our journey to become a renewable energy superpower.
Reducing emissions is not as easy as Labor seemed to assume when it announced its 82 per cent renewable-energy target two years ago. The construction of onshore wind, grid-scale solar and transmission lines has fallen way behind the governments timetable. Offshore wind, with its long lead time and significant capital costs, is an even larger challenge.
Yet building the extra generation capacity to meet the governments 2030 target is only the beginning. The additional power that would be needed to manufacture green hydrogen on an industrial scale has barely been discussed. Yet the amount is considerable.
Plans for the proposed renewable energy hub in Gladstone, Queensland, for example, include a facility to export 4MT of green hydrogen a year. That would require 110GW of renewable energy capacity, according to a presentation by Gladstone Ports Corporation chief executive Craig Haymes at a recent engineering conference. It means an extra 10,000 wind turbines or 2500sq km of solar panels, an area the size of Fraser and Mornington Island combined.
Some attendees thought Haymes may have been trying to can the project by putting the figures on the table. Yet in a statement, the Corporation said Haymes had merely wanted to illustrate the potential for renewable energy for Queensland and the opportunities this presents.
Green hydrogen is at a nascent stage. It is an inefficient and hazardous way of storing electricity, and there is no serious industrial demand. It comes with huge capital constraints.
Yet governments in the US, Europe and Australia are investing billions of dollars of seed capital into hydrogen produced by renewable energy without a care in the world as to where the energy will come from.
In a speech to The Australians Economic and Social Outlook Conference last week, Chalmers flagged a uniquely Australian revamp of energy policy to prize an extra $225bn in capital from the hot little hands of private investors. He promised measures in the 2024-25 budget to get private capital flowing towards our priorities effectively and efficiently.
The hubris in this statement bodes poorly for our future prosperity. Diverting the flow of such huge sums of private capital to government pet projects, however noble the intentions, is the road to economic ruin. The investors withdrawing from renewable energy projects are responding to price signals. Private investors have a keen nose for snake oil. They are trading off costs and benefits and assessing the technical feasibility of projects with rigour this government has failed to match.
Australia is, to be honest, a bit like the kid who forgot to study for an exam early in the process and is pulling all-night study sessions, Bowen told the August conference. But now we are working 24/7 to catch up.
The tragedy is that Australia was gifted the chance to learn from the mistakes of others. Bowens obstinacy comes at a price.
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Police investigate Islamic preacher Brother Ismail over Hamas, jihad comments
A southwest Sydney religious centre has refused to condemn a preacher who delivered a radical sermon that called on Muslims to wage jihad, declared Australia hypocritical for labelling Hamass massacre of innocent Israelis as terrorism and claimed Anthony Albanese had dirtied a mosque with lies.
The comments, revealed by The Australian, are now the subject of a NSW Police investigation and have been slammed by political and Jewish leaders.
Brother Ismail gave a sermon at Al Madina Dawah Centre in southwest Sydney after the October 7 massacre in Israel, taking aim at the Prime Minister, the government, and Islamic leaders who had criticised jihadi groups, as well as calling jihad the solution.
He also called Australia hypocrites for describing Hamas as terrorists but forgetting about its own dark colonial past.
There is no other way to defend Muslims they are looking forward to joining the mujahideen, said Brother Ismail, whose full name has not been disclosed.
An Al Madina Dawah Centre spokesman refused to condemn Ismails comments, saying Palestines Muslims unequivocally had every right to defend themselves.
Our centre, and the entire Muslim community, stand by anything that is authenticity quoted from the Koran and Sunnah, the spokesman said.
He said the government had marginalised Australias Muslim community by aiding Israel against innocent Palestinian people. (There are) double standards that allows dual Australian and Israeli citizens to participate in the current conflict freely, without the Jewish community ever feeling being pushed to the corner, the spokesman said. Ismail said in his sermon that those Hamas terrorists who committed the October 7 attack on Israel were not terrorists, but freedom fighters. That hypocrite Albanese came and dirtied one of the mosques putting the mouth of hypocrisy and lies to Muslims, (saying) that we love and respect Muslims, he said.
Allah exposed his lies when he (Mr Albanese) said Israel had the right to defend itself and labelled Hamas as terrorists.
Ismail said the nation was collectively hypocrites for calling Hamas terrorists while, he said, forgetting its dark history.
Did you really forget what your ancestors did to the countrys Indigenous people, he said.
How they killed them, how they chained them like dogs did you forget that you celebrate every year a massacre you did to the Indigenous people. You want to come and teach us about morals?
Ismail threatened that such moves could risk the safety of Australias security system.
When you start labelling Muslims as terrorists, you are pushing us into a corner, he said.
You are creating a test for the national security system, we will not back down
Ismail dared the government to deport him for his comments. If the government or ASIO like it or not, if they want to deport me or not jihad is the solution for the Ummah (the Islamic community) he said.
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5 November, 2023
Tracking men likely to kill: The radical proposal after five women dead in nine days
The proposal below is way over the top. It is a basic principle of natural justice that you cannot punish people for things that they have not done. That someone thinks you MIGHT do something does not alter that.
The big deficit in the article below is that it shows no real understanding of the psychology behind domestic homicide. What women need to be told is that rejection by a woman can be deeply and dangerously distressing to a man, engendering a huge sense of loss. And that can make him very angry with the perceived perpetrator of the loss. And anger very commonly results in violence.
So for a woman to save her life she may need to compromise with the rejected man in some way, difficult though that may be. At a minimum, she could offer a guarantee of continued friendship, even if cohabitation is no longer possible.
In short, to save their lives, women may need to be acutely aware of the huge pain rejection can lead to in some men. It is really important for the man not to feel completely cut off. Sorry if that is not the authoritarian solution the nitwits below were looking for. Human problems require human solutions, not ankle monitors
Men flagged as potential killers would be GPS-tracked and monitored online under a radical proposal family violence experts want governments to consider after five women were killed in nine days.
As despair mounts about the failure to curb the numbers of Australian women seriously injured or allegedly killed by men, experts are calling for more direct intervention with fixated men who stalk, harass, monitor or threaten intimate partners, but may not yet have offended.
They say a program designed in the UK to protect public figures, which is now also being trialled there for potential domestic violence perpetrators, should be introduced and trialled in Australia to de-escalate potential violence against women.
It would involve intelligence gathering by specialist police to find and observe men, possibly including GPS tracking of them and monitoring their online and social media activities, and bringing them in if their behaviour indicated they had moved into a violence-planning stage.
Experts including violence researcher Dr Hayley Boxall, formerly of the Australian Institute of Criminology and now with ANU, say rather than working with offenders to reform their behaviours after violence has commenced, more direct methods such as this could help stop violence before it happens.
National Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin said the proposal, included in Boxalls homicide research for Australias National Research Organisation for Womens Safety (ANROWS), is worth considering given the devastating deaths of women in Australia this year.
The spate of womens alleged murders around the country had distressed her deeply, and it is very clear this year weve seen rates [of violence against women] increasing, not rates decreasing.
Thats what keeps me up at night; what is it we can do that will shift the dial? said Cronin from the Northern Territory, where she will attend a landmark coronial inquest on Monday into the violent deaths of four Aboriginal women, allegedly by domestic partners.
Women including Perth family lawyer Alice McShera, 34; Bendigo mother-of-four Analyn Logee Osias, 46; and Lilie James, a 21-year-old water polo coach at a Sydney private school, all died violently between October 25 and 29.
Men have been charged in the cases of Osias and McShera and are on or awaiting trial, but the suspected killer of James was found dead by police.
In 2023, 43 women have allegedly been killed in domestic and family violence incidents, along with 11 children.
The number of women who have died in intimate partner homicide per year in Australia has hovered about 68 since 1989-90, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows, and intimate partner homicide is the countrys most common form of homicide.
This week the Australian Institute of Family Studies found one in three Australian teenagers had experienced intimate partner violence, and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics released data showing rates of domestic and family violence had not decreased in the last 12 years.
What we need to do in this country more is to really understand, and focus on, the men who kill women and use violence against women.
What we know from Australian Institute of Criminology research [the Pathways to Intimate Partner Homicide] is that there are pathways into perpetration and what we need to do in this country more is to really understand, and focus on, the men who kill women and use violence against women, she said.
Weve moved women around, removed women from their homes to safe houses, we tell women not to go walking at night; all the attention is on what women can do to keep themselves safe rather than holding men who use violence accountable.
Boxalls proposal to introduce a system of monitoring and intervening with men who had not yet committed violence, but whose actions suggested they were likely to, could be worth exploring.
One-third of perpetrators of intimate partner homicides in Australia fit the fixated threat category of men who have not previously come to the attention of the justice system, Boxall found.
Despite being jealous, controlling and abusive in their relationships, (fixated threat) offenders were relatively functional in other domains of their life, she wrote.
In many cases they were typically middle-class men who were well respected in their communities and had low levels of contact with the criminal justice system.
She found their behaviours escalated as the victim was perceived to withdraw from the relationship.
Boxall said a dedicated family violence Fixated Threat Assessment program, staffed by specialist intelligence-gathering police, would help to keep eyes on such men and allow police to gauge if and when they may pose a lethal threat.
Many men who go on to commit murder, but had not yet used violence, did show signs that could have helped prevent deaths, Boxall said. Dedicated threat assessment structures could give bystanders a way to get interventions started.
In 25 per cent of cases, the perpetrator [of intimate partner homicide] has told friends and family members he was going to murder his partner, Boxall said.
In a number of cases there was evidence this was followed up with a police report: in one case, he [the eventual perpetrator] told his golf buddies, Im going to kill her by smashing her head in with a golf club, and he did it a few months later but nobody had done anything.
We think we know that guys who will murder their partner look a certain way; but these are guys living among us.
The death of Lilie James highlighted that progress is needed to understand who is capable of violence against their partner, and a more sophisticated threat assessment would be a tangible way to help find out.
Professor Michael Flood, a researcher sociologist at Queensland University of Technology who has written about engaging men and boys in violence prevention, agreed with Cronin and Boxhall that earlier intervention with men at risk of murdering their partners or ex-partners is entirely warranted.
He agreed that the focus had been primarily on victims and how they could avoid victimisation, and far more effort needed to be placed on changing young mens attitudes towards women.
National Community Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women Survey data had revealed this year that, a substantial proportion, particularly of young men, think its legitimate for men to dominate women in relationships, he said.
There is still a level of social tolerance of dominance and abuse in relationships that we have to address. This would mean more education on healthy masculinity, and the way harmful forms of masculinity feed into perpetration we still need to scale the work with men and boys up much more.
On the ground, police forces in New South Wales and Victoria have made strong, one-off family-violence blitzes this year, in which hundreds of people, many with outstanding warrants, were charged with various offences including weapons, firearm and drug offences.
But existing fixated threat assessment is focused on lone-actor, grievance-fuelled violence perpetrators such as terror offenders, not family violence prevention.
Police will of course act if we identify a threat to any individual including a current or former partner, a Victoria Police spokesman said. There are no plans to create a similar centre specifically for family violence.
Any decisions around fitting trackers to family violence offenders is a matter for government, the spokesman said. Police see the devastating impact of family violence every day.
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ABC chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor warns that it does not have enough colleagues from a diverse background
Intellectual diversity in partiular is missing. At the moment the ABC is a sheltered workshop for Leftists. How about a few conservatives influencing the output?
ABC management is concerned it does not have a diverse enough workforce and said action must be taken to ensure it reflects modern Australian in our content and staff.
On Thursday, the ABCs chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor sent an email to staff and warned that action must be taken to ensure diversity and inclusion is made a priority at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster.
Mr Oliver-Taylor spoke at the ABCs Diversity and Inclusion Symposium at ABCs Ultimos headquarters alongside news director Justin Stevens on Wednesday as part of the discussion, Change takes action how do we drive change?
The discussion was moderated by the ABCs Taiwanese-Canadian-Australian presenter Beverley Wang and live-streamed to ABC staff around the country.
In his email correspondence to staff on Thursday Mr Oliver-Taylor said: Its an absolute priority for us to ensure that our workforce and content reflects modern Australia.
We have to forge a pathway and continue to create and cultivate a workplace culture that supports the talent and diversity of our people.
Diversity and inclusion are part of the fabric of the ABC, and a big part of this for us is about creating a diverse workforce.
Mr Oliver-Taylor also told staff in his email: The reality is, we dont have enough colleagues that come from a diverse background joining the ABC, and we need to deliberately make that happen.
The Drum host Dan Bourchier, an Indigenous man, has been among some past and present employees critical of the ABC about diversity, and he said in May regular invitations he received to appear on Insiders were tokenistic and done to simply tick a diversity box.
Im dismissed as your diversity pick or a box ticker, that comes from within our organisation and that sends a message that that type of language is normal. Its not, and its unacceptable, Bourchier said.
In the ABCs Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Plan 2023-26 that was published earlier this year, managing director David Anderson said the public broadcaster would focus on the following key areas over the next three years: inclusion in practice, a diverse workforce, inclusive content, products and services, connection with Indigenous and diverse communities and accountability and transparency.
We are committed to better reflecting social and cultural diversity in our workforce, he said.
Our teams help drive the national conversation on inclusion, for example through innovative content for International Day of People with Disability, Harmony Week, and mardi gras.
Among its targets include having 50 per cent of executive roles filled by women, 8 per cent of staff with a disability and 30 per cent of content makers filled by CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) employees.
Under the previous diversity and inclusion plan which finished in 2022, the ABC said it rolled out many changes including in its content areas by featuring acknowledgements of country and Indigenous location names across ABC screens and Mr Anderson also held diversity and gender discussion sessions to assist staff.
Mr Oliver-Taylor urged staff on Thursday to complete an employee diversity and inclusion data collection form to ensure the ABC is supporting its people and making our workplace as inclusive, accessible and representative as possible.
Were passionate about this country, and we must reflect the diversity of our community, he said.
This also means were bringing our audience with us as well.
In the form it asks staff what language they speak, their country of birth, cultural/ethnic background, sexual orientation, whether they have a disability and if they identify as CALD.
He also urged staff to be inspired to contribute to the ABCs vision and speak up if something is not right.
Under the ABCs Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging plan, it is also in the process of rolling out cultural guidance advisers to ensure they are the first point of contact for enquiries about diversity in content, centralising the process and ensuring that advice is consistent.
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Robert Menzies v Doc Evatt: political triumph and disaster
By TONY ABBOTT
Anne Henderson has given us a lively account of political triumph and disaster; of how one public life flourished and another collapsed into ignominy, with much to instruct anyone interested in the ingredients of political success. Both Robert Gordon Menzies and Herbert Vere (Bert) Evatt were brilliant students marked early for big futures, both were highly successful lawyers, both served in state and then in federal parliaments, and both led their respective parties. There the similarities end. Menzies grew and matured into becoming our longest-serving prime minister while Evatts self-regard and lack of judgment caused Labor to split with disastrous consequences that are felt to this day.
In a telling sign of zero self-awareness, the workers party leader was always the doc; using an academic handle that even John Hewson in different times and circumstances never insisted upon.
Apart from the election campaigns where they faced off, Menzies and Evatt fought three mighty battles: over bank nationalisation, banning the Communist Party, and the Petrov defection. The two versus one scorecard to Menzies, though, understates the magnitude of his triumph. Menzies learnt the right lessons from his defeat and Evatt manifestly didnt. For Evatt, in the end, it was all about him and nothing is more fatal to a democratic politician than narcissism. Even if propitious circumstances lead to some success, the final outcome is not just failure but a dishonourable one and the pity or contempt of fair-minded observers.
In 1947, Menzies was an ex-PM on probation from the new party hed founded, due to the widespread sentiment that you cant win with Menzies. But in a big error of political judgment, the depression-scarred then-Prime Minister Ben Chifley announced bank nationalisation. It gave Menzies the issue he needed to rally his own side, barnstorm the country, and secure a thumping win in the 1949 election. In the first of many ego-driven decisions, under the delusion that he could simultaneously be both an effective party politician and a forensic courtroom advocate, Evatt appeared personally before the High Court to argue the constitutionality of the governments plans and not for the first time or the last, bored and annoyed the judges by not knowing when to stop.
In 1951, it was Menzies turn to overreach. Having previously argued that communism should be defeated by argument not law, he sought to ban the party using the defence power. It was Evatt who successfully argued before the court that the Cold Wars internal subversion couldnt justify it and then out-campaigned Menzies to defeat the subsequent attempt to amend the constitution. But added to Evatts obvious infatuation with the UN whose initial General Assembly president hed been his insistence that even possible traitors deserved procedural justice enabled his internal and external opponents to paint him as soft on communism.
Then came the succession of paranoid mistakes that demonstrated how unfit he was to lead a party, let alone a country. First, he was convinced, without any hard evidence, that Menzies had somehow orchestrated the Petrov defection to sabotage his chances of winning the 1954 election; second, he made a fool of himself appearing before the subsequent royal commission to defend his own staff, at least one of whom was a Soviet fellow-traveller; and finally, and fatally, debating the commissions report in parliament, he thought to refute its findings by trumpeting a denial from the Soviet foreign minister.
To any but the most prejudiced reader, Henderson shows that Evatt had no evidentiary basis for his paranoid suspicions and persisted in these delusions long after any sensible person would have conceded error. Menzies might have revelled in humiliating the learned doctor in the parliament but hed quite properly handled the defection and its aftermath. Menzies was then a bemused spectator to Evatts vengeful expulsion from Labor of the anti-communist industrial groupers in another massive demonstration of his blindness to any fault in himself. This was the catalyst for the migration of Catholics from the politics of helping the underdog to the politics of upholding freedom and respecting tradition.
The wonder is that, mesmerised by his supposed intellectual brilliance, the federal Labor caucus persisted with the Doc as leader for two elections post-Petrov. And that to move him on, NSW Labor appointed him as Supreme Court Chief Justice, despite his obvious mental decline.
Two key truths shine through this masterly account of a transformative time: the human factor in history and the role of chance. But for bank nationalisation, Menzies might have missed his chance at political redemption; if Chifley had lived, Menzies might have lost the 1954 election; if Arthur Calwell, Evatts deputy, had been of different mettle, and challenged for the leadership, Labor might not have split. Six decades on, it seems were as fascinated with the brilliant and unstable failure as with the no less brilliant and much more steady success. Is this the genius of the political left to make martyrs out of losers; or some instinct that its defeat thats more instructive?
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Rare profit miss reveals Macquaries green energy indigestion
For years Macquarie was seemingly able to defy gravity, but it seems even the investment bank cant outrun the bigger forces upending green energy markets.
Indeed, the first-half profit was down 39 per cent on the year to $1.4bn, hobbled by surging staff costs, softer revenue and writebacks. The profit collapse makes Macquarie more like a sleepy big four bank rather than a global cash machine commanding a sharp share premium.
One of Macquaries core businesses - the buying and selling big infrastructure and energy assets has ground to a halt, given the slowdown in dealmaking globally as markets globally hobbled by the prospect of higher for longer interest rates. The uncertainty on global outlook and higher financing costs has kept buyers away, leading to more assets sitting on the books than what it would normally want.
And green energy, an area where Wikramanayake has staked ground as an early mover by driving big bets on offshore windfarms and solar projects around the world, is delivering a new problem for the bank.
The economics of renewables is starting to become deeply challenged and this is having a dramatic impact on the value of projects springing up around the world.
As more renewables flood the grid it is becoming clear they produce much of their electricity, usually at a time when it is not needed. This is seeing the unit pricing for green electricity projects collapse, particularly in Europe, although the cost of building remains sky high.
Headwinds
In recent weeks oil major BP has written more than $US540m from two US offshore wind projects with inflation-linked construction costs soaring but offtake pricing collapsing. The cost of wholesale pricing on offer in the UK has come down 65 per cent in a short space of time, leaving few willing buyers to commit capital for new projects.
Macquarie has some $2.1bn of green energy investments underway with two-thirds of this at development stage which also means it is exposed to construction risk. Most of the funds are allocated to offshore wind and the rest is mixed between solar and small allocation to battery.
Wikramanayake acknowledges there is some concern about the direction of the green energy book given where unit pricing is going. She says Macquarie has taken a conservative view on projects and much of its offtake agreements underpinning projects were pitched pre-Covid when prices were higher.
Macquarie is confident about demand for its green energy and other infrastructure assets in the coming six months.
Macquarie is confident about demand for its green energy and other infrastructure assets in the coming six months.
Speaking to The Weekend Australian, Wikramanayake is still a believer in green energy with the longer term thematics stronger than ever. Theres still massive demand among governments and other operators to move out of carbon producing coal into green energy. The UK government wants 50 gigawatts by 2030 and have so far only hit less than half that. In the US, the Biden administration is targeting 30 gigawatts.
This journey will not be a straight line like every other journey. But I think the important thing is a structural response needed, and the opportunity remains, Wikramanayake says.
The recent shake-up in pricing has given a bit of a wake-up call to people that are putting these off-take (agreements) in place that if theyre going to get the supply, theyre going to need to offer pricing that will attract private capital.
She is more confident about demand for Macquaries green energy and other infrastructure assets in the coming six months, adding the bank is prepared to wait out the downturn.
Plainly, we dont want to sell these assets at less than their fair value. We dont we dont feel like we need to sell them if we feel like theyre good quality assets.
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3 November, 2023
High court wokery
James Allan
Our top court is as weak as it’s ever been. You won’t hear that stated publicly by many barristers but that’s because barristers make their livings in front of the judges. Every monetary and professional incentive aligns to incline them to be sycophantic to the people who might one day be hearing one of their future cases. Think Uriah Heep, sometimes on steroids. The same sycophantic behaviour goes for top litigation partners/solicitors. That said, the same lawyers who cannot genuflect quickly enough before the altar of any judge who happens to be in the same room with them can be scathingly critical of the judges in private and off the record. Make the conversation in a bar over drinks and the criticisms of our top judges can be brutal.
Yet my point is that judges will virtually never hear any sort of public or face-to-face criticism from the lawyerly caste. Hence one danger is that our cocooned judiciary starts to believe its own publicity – all that praise they hear in public from the rest of the lawyerly caste. The temptation, then, to become a sort of ‘hero judge’ can become very hard to resist as you don Superman tights and cape to ‘do justice’ (or worse, ‘social justice’) from the bench. Of course law professors have a freedom to let rip at the judges. It’s just that most do not. Today’s legal academia has a profound distrust of democratic decision-making and that makes the preponderance of legal academics the natural allies of juristocracy and kritarchy (ie. rule by judges, variously disguised according to taste) and what one Canadian academic has dubbed ‘the Judges’ party’.
So I will say it again. Today’s High Court of Australia is a very weak bench. It may be the weakest High Court in this country’s history. And I’m willing to bet that near on all senior lawyers in this country would privately agree with me – leave aside the heads of bar councils and law societies with a vested interest in proclaiming otherwise.
Here’s an example. The current Chief Justice Susan Kiefel will very soon retire. So a fortnight or so ago they had the ceremonial sitting to mark the occasion. It was all polite compliments on steroids as the occasion demands. But let me be blunt. Kiefel may well have been the first female chief justice but she’s been ordinary, at best. She was part of the unanimous court that sold Peter Ridd down the river with some empty virtue-signalling about academic freedom before making sure his ability to speak out and keep his job lost to the university code of conduct and a bogus misdirection about confidentiality. Then there is Kiefel’s fascination with proportionality analysis. Go and read any of the implied freedom judgments she’s issued while remembering that Australia has no national bill of rights. This focus smacks of the worst sort of self-indulgence. Such proportionality analyses by the unelected judges increase uncertainty massively while concurrently increasing judicial power nearly as much. All the judicial mental gymnastics surrounding the task of deciding what is, and what is not, a reasonable, appropriate limit on rights, also known as proportionality analysis, is simply not a constrained activity. Worse, no one asked the top judges to do this. In the absence of a bill of rights the judges simply gave this job to themselves – the task of telling the elected branches what the judges think is, and is not, justifiable and reasonable as regards some statute’s limits on rights. Frankly, who cares what the judges think on that score. Yet Kiefel has revelled in that task. I agree with the British legal academic Thomas Poole who has argued that all such proportionality analyses are plastic; you can reach either conclusion, for whichever side you want, depending on the sentiments you bring to the table. You tell me the answer you want and I can write a wholly orthodox proportionality analysis giving you that answer. Because there are no mind-independent constraints on reaching the answer you happen to want when it comes to proportionality analyses.
Meanwhile, Kiefel as chief justice has pushed for more joint judgments in the name of reducing uncertainty. But call me sceptical about the overall benefits of top judges aiming to manufacture group judgments, which inevitably means trade-offs and in-house horse-trading. If that delivers a net benefit, it’s a very marginal one indeed.
And then there are the last twenty-odd years of appointments to the High Court. Make no mistake. The Libs have been worse than Labor on appointments (and not just with top judges, think ABC appointments, Human Rights Commission appointments, basically the Libs seem wholly incapable of appointing any real conservatives to anything, ever). Indeed, so torn were they by the desire to look friendly to women and identity politics concerns when it came to the High Court, yet stymied by the difficulty (you’re not supposed to say this out loud) of finding top female lawyers who are interpretively conservative, that the Coalition did a world first and appointed to our top court the wife of the retiring High Court judge she was replacing – yep, it’s so unbelievable that I still get overseas lawyers calling me to ask if this could really be true. And then a few years later, possibly to try to outdo themselves, the Libs appointed the daughter of a former High Court judge.
And how has that weird variant of nepotism worked out for them? Well, in the woeful Love case in 2020 Justice Gordon (the wife from above) wrote one of the most woke, identity politics-infused judgments ever seen. And it was on the majority side of that 4-3 decision (along with two other George Brandis appointees also in the majority, staggeringly). And in the very recent 4-3 case of Vanderstock Justice Gleeson (the daughter from above) sided with the uber-centralist Gageler and with (wait for it) Kiefel in delivering yet another nail into the coffin of any sort of working federalism arrangements in this country – to the extent that I would say we now have federalism really in name only in this country. The High Court over the last century has shown itself to be the most centralising top court in the federalist world, sometimes with laughable decisions such as WorkChoices and the Tasmanian Dam Case, thereby totally gutting the intended federalist arrangements and leaving us with all the costs and none of the benefits. Their one core job was to police the federal division of powers and they shunned that to instead deliver the feds virtually everything they ever wanted.
And don’t get me started on some of the retired judges’ and many of the lawyerly caste’s jejune legal analyses during the Voice debate. They were embarrassing. An undergraduate law student could see that what was on offer amounted to a special right, without even reading any Hohfeld. Only on criminal law cases has the High Court stood out as first-rate.
So all up a very weak top court at the moment. And given the state of our law schools don’t bet on things getting better any time soon. Still, at least you can hear such frank views about our judges in the pages of the Speccie, or late at night in any bar frequented by top lawyers.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/weakest-high-court-maybe-ever/
***************************************************Canberra’s heavy ‘helping’ hand to whip up clean-energy fervour
At midterm, the elements of Albonomics are falling into place.
Anthony Albanese’s governing mission is to build economic self-sufficiency at home, “resilience” as he puts it, while trying to set the nation up for opportunities as a “renewable energy superpower”.
In the Prime Minister’s schema, the market alone can’t be trusted to deliver the transition to clean energy and secure the net-zero emissions target by 2050, Labor’s top-shelf priority in its pitch to voters for a second term.
So, spend big, and multiply, with Canberra’s guiding hand.
Albanese’s government is laying the foundations for a green new deal, with a honey pot of subsidies for investors who meet more rigid tests and a group of chosen industries that are seemingly born ready for this almighty industry policy heave-ho.
Business is on board, for two reasons, other than the national interest: one, there will be an immense amount of public money up for grabs, and two, Joe Biden has forced the rest of the rich world to respond. The US Democrat’s game-changing and limitless green-dream Inflation Reduction Act could eventually be worth $US1 trillion.
In terms we can all understand, that’s the Australian dollar equivalent of all the goods and services we produce in eight months.
We can’t get under the IRA, we can’t go over it, but we have to do something about it.
Albanese fuses a global emissions reduction obligation with abundant natural advantages staring us in the face, but no economy-wide pricing of carbon pollution to direct investment to its best uses.
We’re in the world of “second-best” policy and yet we must stay the course.
Coming off a big personal and psychological loss on the voice, with a community cranky with the nation’s establishment powers, Albanese faces a fatigued electorate; it can only absorb so many big bets, where the outcome is not assured but the journey will involve “value destruction” as well as “value creation”, as economist Pradeep Philip described it.
The key message out of Thursday’s The Australian-Melbourne Institute outlook conference is that a public battered by rising living costs, falling real wages and housing stress must deal with even more disruption in what Jim Chalmers has branded the “defining decade”, these “turbulent ’20s”.
We need more economic dynamism, as it is called, which involves risk-taking and failing, to fashion a high-performance economy to be able to nail the energy transformation and fund the kind of welfare state that is our entitled destiny with a rapidly ageing society.
But to get rich, and hit the nirvana of full employment and low inflation, we’re going to have to get out of the comfort zone, not simply rely on governments to do the heavy lifting, as Westpac’s chief economist Lucy Ellis declared.
Labor’s new growth model is not yet settled, but the moving parts are steadily locking in, as the Treasurer acknowledges.
We’ll need to be smart, as well as lucky, and adaptable to change and, as Michele Bullock put it the other day, “shock after shock after shock”.
Albanese is playing to the conditions, hoping the times will suit him and his government long enough to at least snag a second term.
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Airservices abandons plan for ‘inclusive’ changerooms after employees express concern
Airservices Australia has halted the rollout of “inclusive” changerooms in its workplaces after a survey of employees revealed most were uncomfortable with the all-gender facilities.
The survey by Elizabeth Broderick and Co was commissioned by Airservices as a follow-up to an initial assessment of workplace culture undertaken in 2019.
A report released in 2020 revealed a toxic culture, with significant problems around trust, leadership, bullying and harassment – which Airservices vowed to address.
After implementing a strategy to address those issues, a progress review was undertaken which showed that according to respondents, there was still much work to be done.
Of the 1441 employees who responded, representing 44 per cent of staff, 27 per cent said they had experienced bullying in the past 12 months That figure was up from 23 per cent in 2020.
The proportion of workers who said they had been sexually harassed was relatively unchanged at 9 per cent compared with 11 per cent three years ago.
Less than 20 per cent of air traffic controllers, and airport fire and rescue officers felt they belonged or were valued by their employers, and about 30 per cent did not feel safe in the workplace.
“The review noted a major reduction in overall statistics relating to employees enjoying Airservices as a place to work and being able to promote it to others as a place to work,” said the air traffic controllers’ union, Civil Air.
“There was a bleak quote included in the review which said that after the release of the first Broderick report ‘there was a lot of hope for change – this was short lived’.”
Employees also delivered a blunt message about the rollout of “inclusive facilities” telling the survey they were not wanted.
“We are told that inclusive facilities will go ahead at every station, joint male and female toilets and change rooms,” one respondent told the survey.
“This is concerning to the majority of airport rescue and firefighting service crew. This is not increasing safety.”
In his response to the review, Airservices chief executive Jason Harfield said he was “concerned, disappointed and sorry to see that harmful behaviours continue to be experienced by some of our people”.
“This experience is unacceptable and as such we are renewing and extending our efforts to tackle this as an immediate priority, to ensure a safe and inclusive workplace for all our people, every single day, without exception,” Mr Harfield said.
In the first instance, Airservices had compiled a “response plan” to the progress report in an effort to address the ongoing issues.
The plan included a “pause” on inclusive changerooms and prioritising effective consultation with users of facilities.
“As a priority, separate male, female and a changing/bathroom facility that is inclusive for people of diverse genders be established across all worksites,” the plan said.
Airservices also undertook to embed “zero tolerance for harmful behaviour in leaders’ KPIs” (key performance indicators) and provide ongoing training and education to all employees about the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination.
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Australia must teach young people technology skills, says WiseTech’s Richard White
Richard White, one of Australia’s most successful tech entrepreneurs, told the Economic and Social Outlook Conference on Thursday it was “incredibly wasteful” for Australian companies to be forced to use overseas talent to fill their need for technology skills.
Mr White, founder and CEO of $20bn logistics software company WiseTech Global, said Australia needed to “break the mould” and use “non-traditional thinking” to succeed in giving more young people tech skills.
He told the conference technology companies were Australia’s economic future, and they were driven by education. But the lack of trained technology talent meant our companies were at war with each other to secure skills.
“If you haven’t got the talent in the economy, you have to fight for the last person standing … you are fighting over scraps,” Mr White said. The other option was to import talent “but as a continuous solution, particularly for the long term, it doesn’t work”.
Mr White said efforts to boost STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) education had failed. “We have talked about STEM voraciously for 10 years, and yet our engagement with mathematics, science and engineering has fallen,” he said.
“Something’s wrong, and it’s not about more money because we put a lot more money in and didn’t get better results.”
Mr White, who began his career as guitarist in a rock band, then turned to repairing electric guitars and developing computer-controlled stage lighting before entering the logistics software business, said tech jobs were “very secure and extremely well paid”.
“They’re very diverse. They’ll hire anybody that has the requisite skills. And yet, only 4.7 per cent of students undertake tertiary studies in that computing area,” he said, adding reform in education needed to start when children were young.
Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research director Abigail Payne said Australia had a higher youth unemployment rate than many comparable countries, even now, when demand for labour was high.
Professor Payne said too few young Australians were going on to tertiary education and the system was too rigid, forcing school leavers to make early career choices. “Why do we keep thinking you know at 16 what you want to do in life? Why aren’t we creating greater flexibility?” she asked.
Federal opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson told the conference that Australia’s school standards were a “national embarrassment”.
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2 November, 2023
'Utterly irrational': Abbott slams net zero plans
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has slammed the government’s plan for net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 as “not just utterly irrational but actually impossible”, in his most critical comments on climate policy since declaring climate change science was “absolute crap” in 2009.
Speaking at the launch of an Institute of Public Affairs report on Australian energy security, Mr Abbott predicted Australia would not meet any of the Albanese government’s legislative targets for renewable energy supply recently enshrined in legislation, for both scientific and political reasons.
“The climate cult will eventually be discredited, I just hope we don‘t have to endure energy catastrophe, before that happens,” he told an audience in Westminster, London on the sidelines of the inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference.
Launching a report by engineer and economist Stephen Wilson entitled Energy Security is National Security, Mr Abbott said Australian voters had and would continue to put their economic well-being ahead of demands to slash emissions in line with government plans to lift renewable energy to 82 per cent of national supply by 2030.
“The anthropogenic global warming thesis, at least in its more extreme forms, is both ahistorical and utterly implausible,” he said, arguing periods of significant climate change throughout history, including the Roman warm period and the Medieval Warm period followed by the Little Ice Age, had nothing to do with human activity.
Mr Abbott led the coalition to federal election victory in the 2013 on a promise to reverse Labor’s emissions trading scheme, which has not be reintroduced since.
The former Liberal party leader and prime minster until 2015 also decried how Australia exported large quantities of coal, gas and uranium, but was reluctant to use them for its own domestic energy needs.
“My country should be an energy superpower, not a green energy superpower, but an energy superpower,” he told the supportive audience, including senator Matthew Canavan.
Last year the government legislated to reduce Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, without recourse to nuclear power, including a reduction in emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, in line with internationally agreed plans.
Over 150 countries have committed to net zero by 2050, including almost all major economies and the majority of Australia’s trading partners, the government said in May, as it legislated to create a National Net Zero Authority to coordinate the shift to majority renewable power.
Mr Abbott said the infrastructure requirements to meet Labor’s 2030 targets were unrealistic, requiring “in the words of the incoming energy minister, the construction of 22,000 solar panels every day, and the erection of 14 large wind turbines every month for eight years, plus the construction of up to 10,000 kilometers of new transmission lines”.
The ARC conference featured speakers who similarly criticized the likelihood and desirability of moving towards net zero emissions by 2050, including from President Obama’s former undersecretary for science professor Steven Koonin, who denied there was a “climate emergency”.
“There is scant support for the notion of a climate catastrophe, climate emergency… we need to cancel the climate crisis,” he said.
“The notion of an emerging energy revolution is just an oxymoron if you try and push things too fast,” he added, warning governments not to repeat the mistakes of Germany, which has spent trillions of euros in its quest to shift to renewable energy without obvious success.
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Toward a new totalitarianism
Kevin Donnelly
There’s no doubt cultural-Marxist-inspired Woke ideology is destroying the best parts of Western Civilisation. Rationality, truth, and a spiritual or even transcendent sense of life have been critiqued and undermined as a result of the long march through the institutions.
As to why this cultural amnesia has occurred look, no further than Augusto Del Noce’s The Crisis Of Modernity, in particular, the chapter titled, Toward a New Totalitarianism.
Del Noce is one of Europe’s most prescient and insightful philosophers and cultural critics who argues that after the end of the second world war it was no longer valid to define totalitarianism in terms of communism and fascism or left and right.
In their place, Del Noce refers to a ‘new, more dangerous, and more radical form of totalitarianism’ involving ‘an unbreakable unity of scientism, eroticism, and secularisation theology’. Del Noce sees this as a new totalitarianism that negates the past in favour of revolutionary change.
Whereas science is based on rationality and reason remains open to disputation, scientism is rigid and doctrinaire. Del Noce argues that scientism represents a totalitarian view of science; one that sees itself as the ‘only true form of knowledge’ where ‘every other type of knowledge – metaphysical or religious – expresses only subjective reactions’.
Illustrated by the way pharmaceutical companies, health experts, and public officials like America’s Anthony Fauci responded to the Covid pandemic by enforcing draconian and illiberal policies, scientism is all pervasive.
In addition to experimental and untrialled vaccines being forced on citizens with dire results, citizens’ freedoms and liberties were curtailed, unwarranted lockdowns enforced and, in Victoria, police acted more like East Germany’s Stasi instead of upholding individual rights and protecting the common good.
In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews (aka Dictator Dan) justified trashing Westminster parliamentary customs and traditions by referring to ‘the science’ that supposedly sits beyond criticism.
Illustrated by Wilhelm Reich’s The Sexual Revolution, where capitalist society, the church, and the monogamous family are condemned as enforcing a repressive morality that denies sexual freedom, Del Noce argues eroticism also represents a totalitarian threat.
Reich argues classical Marxism’s emphasis on the modes and means of production failed to recognise that equally as necessary for the revolution to succeed was to sexually liberate citizens. Del Noce argues Reich ‘replaced the categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with those of the advocates of repressive morality’.
Such is the pervasive influence of eroticism Del Noce writes: ‘Today the average man, i.e., the normal man (meaning neither nostalgic nor neurotic) accepts without any moral reaction displays of sexuality that a few years ago were inconceivable’.
Modesty and restraint based on agreed morality and virtues have given way to a libertine culture where sexual freedom and liberation are paramount. In addition to Reich, Del Noce argues the cultural revolution of the late 60s and early 70s also contributed to the West’s descent into a Dionysian world of physical self-fulfilment and narcissistic pleasure.
Graphic pornography is available on the internet 24/7, marriage no longer is defined as involving a man and a women, and school students are taught gender and sexuality – instead of being God-given and a biological reality – are fluid and dynamic social constructs imposed by a heteronormative, capitalist society.
Along with scientism and eroticism, Del Noce identifies secularisation theology as another factor contributing to the West’s decline. Unlike what Cardinal Ratzinger terms ‘aggressive secularism’ (where advocates argue religion is a private affair and Christians are banished from the public square), secularisation theology sublimates traditional aspects of religious teaching.
In his preface to The Age of Secularization Del Noce refers to ‘people in progressive circles (who) were talking about adopting to mankind that has ‘come of ‘age’’. An example of what Del Noce describes as secularisation theology is compromising the concept of original sin and the fall of man, leading to a ‘theology without God’.
By attempting to become more worldly and failing to acknowledge what the American academic David Lyon describes as ‘the transcendent God of traditional religion’, secularisation theology compromises essential elements of Christianity in an attempt to accommodate itself to modernity.
Del Noce warns, ‘By going down this road, religious thought can only absorb the ideas that used to be the secularised version of itself and, ultimately, its own negation.’ While not mentioned by Del Noce, examples of secularisation theology include ordaining women as priests and blessing same-sex unions.
While much of Del Noce’s writings were published over 50 years ago, what he warned about has come to pass. The impact of scientism and the rise of the technological society has resulted in a world bereft of a transcendent and spiritual sense of the world.
Society is characterised by the incessant search for material fulfilment and wellness that, while offering temporary release, fails to assuage the primal need for a deeper and more lasting sense of meaning.
Del Noce, years before others announced the death of Europe, also foretold Europe’s demise given the impact of a technocratic, soulless totalitarinism where instead of family, community and religion, people’s allegiance would be to a new world order.
Long before the rise of the cultural-Marxist-inspired LGBTQ+ movement infected schools and universities, Del Noce also warned about a world where eroticism, pornography and radical gender and sexuality ideology prevail.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/toward-a-new-totalitarianism/
*************************************************Anthony Albanese can’t spend his way out of trouble
Anthony Albanese has rightly identified spending restraint as a key feature of what should be the government’s response to the acute cost-of-living pressures now facing many Australians. His resolve on this will be tested as electoral anger builds.
Yet the Prime Minister has at least signalled that having delivered on Labor’s election commitments, the tap has been turned off for the meantime.
“Spraying money around in search of a headline, as our predecessors so often did, would make the problem of inflation worse not better,” Albanese says in his speech to The Australian’s economic and social outlook conference.
Albanese’s address is the first significant commentary on cost of living since the failure of the voice referendum. He talks of the long term over short-term fixes and putting Australia’s economy on a sustainable path.
He sees the government’s mission as one that shields the country from the worst of it without resorting to protectionism. The policy prescriptions for the future response are yet to come.
So far, it is a narrative built around the existing Labor agenda. Conflicting with this is the government’s industrial relations reform, which business argues will have an inflationary impact. At the same time, Jim Chalmers also warns of a failure of the energy transition without more government intervention.
The Treasurer says this, and a new industry policy approach are now a major focus of reform around the cabinet table.
But it is the productivity challenge and the decline in living standards that must remain central themes to Chalmers’ thinking.
Albanese has come under increasingly acute pressure to address the broader economic problem, both the short-term pain it is delivering through inflation as well as the longer-term agenda, having been accused of being distracted by the politics of the voice.
It’s a problem that is getting worse rather than better, with the likelihood that the central bank will begin a new cycle of rate rises next week.
The bureau of statistics on Wednesday proved the point that mortgage holders were copping the biggest hit in living standards in decades. They are about to get hit again.
At a time when households are struggling, the temptation for the government to spend its way out of the political problem would be significant. If only it were that easy. Albanese is right to say that the best thing the federal government can do is not add to the problem by leaning on the budget.
The test for Albanese is whether he can match the rhetoric with action. Nothing would be more economically irresponsible than to start throwing money around, as he himself has acknowledged. If that discipline is maintained, none of what the government can actually do will deliver short term electoral benefit.
The restraints that Chalmers needs to put on the government make the retail politics of the economy even more tricky for Albanese.
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Law reform puts ACT teens ‘at mercy of crime groups’
What this is all about is excusing crime committed by young Aboriginals
The ACT has become the first jurisdiction in the nation to increase the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14, igniting concerns that young teenagers could be “manipulated by adult offenders or serious organised crime syndicates”.
ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said the shake-up in the nation’s capital was aimed at preventing young people from “ending up in the criminal justice system”.
The ACT legislative assembly passed the bill on Wednesday afternoon, with the Liberals unsuccessfully trying to limit the increase to 12 years of age to ensure any consequences could be carefully considered before taking further steps to lift the minimum age to 14 years.
Under the new regime, the minimum age of criminal responsibility will be lifted to 12 years before increasing to 14 years on July 1, 2025, with Mr Rattenbury saying the reform was aimed at “changing the trajectory for young people and improving the safety of our whole community”.
While Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana said he accepted increasing the criminal age of responsibility in the ACT to 12 years of age, he flagged major concerns at the “automatic movement to the age of 14 in two years’ time”.
“The AFPA’s preference would have been to review and interrogate the data obtained before the move to 14 years of age to determine if that movement was required,” he said.
“We do have some concerns with young people aged between 12 and 14 committing serious offences … and not being held criminally responsible.”
He suggested that young children in Canberra would now be at greater risk of being used by organised crime groups to commit burglaries and other crimes.
“We also have concerns that 12 to 14-year-olds may be manipulated by adult offenders or serious organised crime syndicates for the purpose of committing criminal offences on behalf of the adult or syndicate,” he said. “These adults and crime syndicates will know that the young person can’t be charged or held criminally responsible.”
The increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility came as the head of the ACT Australian Medical Association, Walter Abhayaratna, expressed concern over the proposed voluntary assisted dying regime for the nation’s capital which would allow patients to access assisted suicide without having a predicted time of death of 12 months or less. Professor Abhayaratna said: “I am very wary of losing the safeguard of a six or 12 months timeline in terms of the duration of the illness before end of life.
“I am very concerned that this makes decision making more difficult. It has been a safeguard in other states and I would have thought that our first implementation of voluntary assisted dying should have included that.” He said the introduction of assisted dying should not come at the expense of investment into “palliative care services which are there to ensure that patients who have debilitating conditions – which are often terminal conditions – have access to comfort care.”
However, Professor Abhayaratna said he supported the aspect of the legislation which allowed nurse practitioners with expertise in the field of terminal care management to become part of a “multidisciplinary team making assessments for suitable participants in the VAD program”.
“I think that is quite a reasonable approach,” he said.
Defending the increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility, Mr Rattenbury said young people got themselves into “harmful situations” and that “they need support to address that behaviour”.
“What we want to make sure is that young people are not ending up in the criminal justice system, but rather that they are being delivered therapeutic supports (and) that their lives are on a different track,” he said.
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1 November, 2023
Astonishing moment feminist author Clementine Ford leaves Project hosts stunned by claiming marriage is 'built on the oppression of women'
Clemmie is a very typical feminist in her devotion to broad generalizations. The fact of the matter is that there are as many variations of male/female relationhips as there are men and women.
And it can as easily be the man as the woman who gets the short end. Men often feel that a full-time wife and mother has got a pretty good deal but accept that out of appreciation of the woman -- particularly in view of the great attention she can give to the chidren.
Even where both partners work, mutually agreed divisions of labour are often entered in to. That's not always so and it is those situations that Clemmie presumably has in mind in her rant She does have a partner herself so should probably acknowledge that good male/female arrangements can happen
Controversial feminist figure Clementine Ford has described marriage as being 'built on the oppression of women' and compared wives to slaves in a new book.
The best-selling author appeared on The Project to outline an alternative view on marriage in her latest book I Don't, describing how she wants women to question what they've been told about it.
'My biggest issue with marriage is that I think that it's a fundamentally flawed institution that is built on the oppression of women,' she said on the program.
'...But also that it's presented to people now as something that it never has been, which is something that we need in order to have happiness and love.
'Love marriage is only about 200 years old, so the idea that somehow marriage is an essential thing that will elevate our life to something better is historically wrong and I think that we would be much better as people focusing on how to make ourselves happy.'
She went on to say that marriage was largely 'great for men', while women were left with a large burden inside of the relationship.
'One of the chief complaints a lot of women have about their husbands is that they don't really feel like their husbands see them, all they are is kind of like a glorified all-in-one appliance for them,' she said.
Ms Ford said she was 'not at all against people falling in love and forming families', but urged people to consider whether they needed to get married in order to have significant relationships.
'If you have essentially all the same legal rights in a de facto relationship as you would in a marriage, what is the marriage and the piece of government paper giving you that a relationship doesn't?' she asked.
Host Waleed Aly then pointed out to Ms Ford that the dynamics of de facto relationships are often similar to marriages, posing the question to her that marriage may not be the issue after all.
'It's a good question Waleed, well maybe the plan is to go for de facto relationships next,' she said. 'My goal is to really get women to see something bigger and better for themselves than just being someone's partner or wife.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12692785/Feminist-Clementine-Ford-Project-marriage.html
******************************************Melbourne Greek restaurant abused for pro-Israeli post
Haters from the Leftist elite in action, not Middle-Easterners
A Melbourne restaurant lost 90 per cent of its bookings overnight after posting a message of support for the Jewish community in a local Facebook group.
Mediterranean Greek Tavern co-owner Perry Le Greco told news.com.au that he was “blown away” by the reaction to his post in support of the business’ Jewish customers.
The restaurant is in the Melbourne inner south eastern suburb of Elsternwick, which has a large Jewish population.
Mr Le Greco said that he couldn’t sleep after seeing footage of the conflict and wanted the restaurant’s Jewish customers to know he was thinking of them.
The post, which was accompanied by a Jewish flag, read: “To all our Jewish customers, we are thinking of you in these difficult times. We hope that your family and friends are safe back home in Israel. The events of the past few days have been hard to watch and our thoughts and prayers are for the safety of all. The Jewish community have been fantastic friends over the last 22 years to our humble Mediterranean Greek Tavern.”
Mr Le Greco said it was met by a flood of comments, some positive but many negative, while the business also received abusive phone calls.
“I was showing some compassion and humanity, nothing else and I had people calling me a ‘f***ing dog’ and saying ‘You’ve chosen a side you f***ing bastard’ and calling me a ‘f***ing Jew lover’.”
He added that the calls were not from Palestinians or members of the Lebanese community but rather from “very well spoken Australian people”. “That was the most frightening part of it,” he said.
The fallout saw a 90 per cent cancellation rate for the following week, with people also making bookings that turned out to be fake, he said. “On the Saturday night, no one showed up.”
Mr Le Greco said the following week bookings were down 80 per cent. “When I opened the book yesterday we had no one booked for the week. That never happens.”
But the situation has now reversed after local MP, David Southwick, mentioned the plight of the business on a Melbourne radio program yesterday.
Mr Le Greco said that the response has been “overwhelming” with more than 200 messages and phone calls of support, adding that he didn’t have enough staff last night to cope with the influx of customers. “I thank the community because what they’ve done has blown me away.”
But while the restaurant is back on track, Mr Le Greco warned that there was a dangerous undercurrent brewing in his local community. “There’s an anti-semitic feeling that is festering at the moment,” he said. “The Prime Minister needs to be speaking about this.
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Old man allegedly injured by black beggar woman in callous CBD attack
Being 80 myself, I am aware of how easily someone in their 80s can be hurt. A fall can be particularly damaging. I have twice broken bones in recent falls
Wherever there is a significant Aboriginal population, black beggars are a common blight. And their approach can be intimidatory. I once saw a black beggar walk into a restaurant and take food off the plate of an Asian man dining there. I have myself been approached by black beggars on a number of occasions
A woman has been charged following the shocking alleged assault of an 82-year-old man in the Cairns CBD. On Monday it’s alleged the elderly man was approached by 37-year-old Jasmine Jane Lenoy who asked for money. The man denied the request.
Police allege the assailant crossed the road behind the 82-year-old victim before yelling at him and attempting to block his path. She then allegedly pushed him to the ground outside the Commonwealth Bank.
Paramedics were called and treated the man on the ground for facial injuries and shock before taking him in a stable condition to Cairns Hospital.
Bystanders reported the woman had previously been involved in a separate scuffle with another woman who was leaving the Lake St bank.
During her arrest police allege Ms Lenoy repeatedly failed to comply with officer instructions and was yelling profanities.
Ms Lenoy was originally charged with serious assault of a person over 60, obstruct police and commit public nuisance, however during a brief court appearance before Magistrate Cathy McLennan, the charge of assault was upgraded to grievous bodily harm by the prosecution.
Ms Lenoy did not apply for bail.
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Farmers’ lobby swings behind Dutton on campaign against wind farms
The powerful national farm lobby is siding with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as he backs locals fighting renewable energy projects crucial to the Albanese government’s clean energy election commitments.
The National Farmers Federation created waves in 2020 when it outflanked the federal Coalition government on climate policy to set an industry-leading target to reach net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050 for the nation’s agriculture sector.
But the peak agriculture lobby last week launched a “Keep Farmers Farming” campaign, warning that renewables projects coupled with a vast array of transmission lines to link them to the cities are damaging primary production.
Dutton has been travelling the east coast to visit local campaigns against offshore wind projects, which are crucial to Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s plans to create new, clean blue-collar jobs in Australia’s old industrial heartland in the Latrobe Valley, Wollongong, Newcastle and Central Queensland.
The slowdown of the rollout puts at risk the government’s pledge to ramp up clean energy in the electricity grid to bring power bills down by $275 by 2025.
Government-commissioned modelling shows the share of renewables in the grid needs to dramatically rise to 82 per cent by 2030. It is currently comprised of 57 per cent coal power, 5 per cent gas, 7 per cent hydro, 18 per cent solar and 13 per cent wind.
David Jochinke last week replaced Fiona Simson as National Farmers’ Federation president. In Simson’s tenure the traditionally conservative lobby group broke ranks with the rural Nationals party with its net-zero commitment, prompting former Agriculture Minister David Littleproud to accuse the federation of “blindly setting a course” on emissions reduction.
Both Jochinke and Dutton stress they support renewable energy to cut emissions and tackle global warming, but they are championing campaigns that threaten the government’s goals.
Jochinke is calling for governments to improve consultation between landholders and project proponents over issues such as power line routes, and for prime farmland to be protected from harmful development.
“We’re seeing more and more communities reach breaking point because they’re being stepped over in the energy transition,” Jochinke said.
“We just want them to regulate how energy companies are engaging with landholders and communities so they’re treated fairly. It’s clear the current system of trying to bulldoze through communities is putting everything in the slow lane.”
The federal government has created five offshore wind zones where developers can make a development application: Wollongong and Newcastle in NSW, the Southern Ocean between the Victoria and South Australian border, Bass Strait and the Gipplsand coast near the Latrobe Valley.
Dutton, who promotes uncommercial but emerging nuclear energy technology to supplement renewable energy, visited the Newcastle region twice in the past few weeks and claimed the push for an offshore wind industry could become a national scandal.
“I think the rising level of anger here is something that Australians really should take note of,” he said at a press conference in Nelson Bay last week.
“The consultation needs to be redone so that the local concerns can be properly understood. I think if the local concerns are properly understood and acted on, I’d be very surprised if this project goes ahead.”
Industry advocates say offshore wind can supply baseload-like power to revitalise manufacturing in former regional industrial hubs.
Beyond Zero Emissions found that offshore wind precincts at old industrial centres could generate 45,000 new and ongoing jobs by 2032 and generate $13 billion in annual revenue, with growth in green steel, hydrogen and cement manufacturing.
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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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