Islamic immigration—a very costly exercise for Australia

The threat of Muslim terrorism attacks increases while our leaders continue to throw money at Islam.

I wonder how many of us have stopped to count the cost of Islamic immigration into Australia, or even know where to find the information? I wonder how many of us realise just what that largesse from both governments is financing and what we are getting for our money?

The associated cost of Muslim immigration into Australia is absolutely staggering and can be expressed in tens of billions of dollars that are thrown at this growing problem we don’t need or want to have.

Disappointingly, our Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, who seems blind to the problems faced in Europe and the UK, now talks about increasing the intake of Islamic refugees while the government continues to finance the unacceptable security risk it poses for the Australian community, now and the future.

NSW Premier, Mike Baird, who is a regular at the Lakemba Mosque and fasts with the Muslims, has decided that the way to fix the problem of radicalisation of Muslim youths is to scour the schools trying to ferret out those that show signs of radicalisation and send them off to de-radicalisation counselling.

He is so convinced that Muslim parents are prepared to dob-in their kids that he is going to throw a lazy $40 million at this hair-brained scheme. That is in addition to the many millions of dollars already wasted on failed de-radicalisation schemes and the $4 million demanded by the Parramatta mosque to clean up their own mess after the Curtis Cheng terrorist murder.

Almost $67 million have been handed over to various Islamic organisations. As an example, in 2013 the Malek Fahd Islamic School was gifted approximately $17.5 million. Now Government leaders, both state and federal, of which the NSW Premier is one, tell us that they need to raise the GST and apply it to everything to finance education and health. Isn’t it marvellous that while governments, state and federal, are having difficulty financing health and education, Premier Baird can still manage to rake up $44 million to finance a Baird/ASIO extravaganza?

The common thread with a number of little known Islamic organisations is that they not only shared in $1.62 million of your money for God only knows what real purpose, but they blamed Australia and Australians for the disruption and security risk caused by the 7th century ideology that they brought with them to this country.

Approximately $2.6 million has been provided to the Lebanese Muslim Association. That is in addition to a grant of $66,000 from the Australian Federal Police. The funding was used to run mosque open days that were supposed to teach the non-Islamic community about the ’Religion of Peace’ and thereby stop violence.

The Australian reported in March 2015 that more than $5 million had been wasted on such programs, including a $100,000 educational program run by the Lebanese Muslim Association that attracted a grand total of 12 people. That’s $8,333 per person for no result. Never mind, it’s only money—your money.

The extent of the ongoing drain on our welfare system is mind-numbing and almost incalculable. Reports say that after five years since their arrival in Australia up to 85% of immigrants are still unemployed and exist on welfare. The welfare bill is on target to cost the Australian taxpayers $190 billion per annum of which a large proportion is directed to Islamic immigrants who have access to up to 22 various welfare benefits.

There are only around 100 Muslims in our armed services but the ADF chiefs, in their collective wisdom, decided that there needed to be an Islamic Imam on the Religious Advisory Committee. This Imam is paid $717 per day plus travel allowances. To add insult to injury, it was this same Imam who called for Sharia law to be introduced in 2012 and defended the conduct of the terrorist sympathising group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

It doesn’t stop there with the ADF. Our Navy Chief decided that because the Navy is absolutely overrun with Muslims—good grief, there are perhaps 20 of them. Given such numbers there is an urgent need to appoint, in addition to the Imam, not one but two Islamic advisors. One of the advisors, Captain Mona Shindy, wasted no telling us that Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism and that we are the problem because we expect Muslims to act in accordance with our Western values, laws and culture.

Then there is the matter of the Navy Chief, Admiral Barrett, funding a dinner for Islamic leaders at the Australian War Memorial. He intends to make this offensive insult to our war dead and veterans an annual event. At your expense—of course. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the same consideration to be shown to Buddhists, Hindus or even Christians. It ain’t going to happen.

While Islamic leaders are happy to accept the millions of dollars thrown at them by our governments, the Australian National Imam’s Council opposed the proposed new anti-terror laws that prohibit the advocating of terrorism because it ‘impinged on the Islamic community’s religious freedom’.

Two other Islamic organisations claim that ‘right-wing extremism is a bigger problem than Islamic terrorism.’ Really? Can’t say I have heard of any right-wing extremists in Australia shooting a Muslim in the back of the head as he left work to go home to his family. Nor have I heard of right-wing extremists threatening to behead a Muslim during Anzac Day commemorations.

Add to the overall cost the operation of detention centres, air transport, court challenges by Muslims, formation and training of security personnel, Muslim criminals in maximum security jails, housing school security measures, etc. The total sum is frightening to contemplate. Shame!

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Mother, midwife and sheikh guilty in Australia's first genital mutilation trial

About time

When the little girl appeared on the courtroom television screen, Justice Peter Johnson removed his horsehair wig.

The NSW Supreme Court judge asked the three barristers acting in Australia's first female genital mutilation trial to do the same, to make the nine-year-old witness, known as C2, feel at ease.

"I don't think it will have a magical effect, but I hope it will make us look a little more human," Justice Johnson told the jury.

It was a poignant act that symbolised the youth of C2 and her sister C1, the victims of the mutilation, and the extremely sensitive nature of the things they were to talk about, via video link from another room.

On Thursday, a jury found the girls' mother, who can only be known as A2, and a former midwife, guilty of mutilating the clitorises of the sisters during ceremonies in Wollongong and Sydney between October 2009 and August 2012.

A sheikh, Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri, was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact. All three were members of the Dawoodi Bohra Shia Muslim community

The sisters, who were given pseudonyms by the court to protect their identities, were interviewed by a social worker at their school in August 2012, after police received reports of female genital mutilation within the religious sect.

C1 said that when she was about seven she went with her mother to a house in Wollongong, where the midwife laid her on a bed and carried out a procedure known as "khatna", which involved a "little cut down there".

When the social worker asked her why it happened, C1 replied: "It's a part of our culture and it has happened to every girl."

C2, the younger sister, told police similar details, saying she was hurt on "the bottom". C1, who is now 11, later gave evidence that she saw the midwife holding a tool that looked like scissors.

The defence argued the ceremony was "secret women's business", involving a symbolic touching of the girls' genitals with forceps, and there was no physical evidence of injury.

The midwife's barrister Stuart Bouveng asked C1 what kind of pain she experienced during the procedure. "It was short, it didn't last long. It was like a pinching or a cutting, I'm not sure," C1 said.

The jury heard hours of telephone intercepts, including a call A2 made to an aunt in which she said: "Honourable maternal aunt, we had [C1], [C2] circumcised hadn't we?"

There were also several calls in which the girls' parents spoke about whether they could tell police it happened in India or Africa.

Dr Sonia Grover, a paediatric gynaecologist, told the court it was possible the tips of the girls' clitorises had been removed, but there were other more likely medical explanations.

"If you were going to remove tissue, it would hurt and bleed," she said. "The information I was given was that the girls did not complain of pain or problems in the days after. So it means whatever was done was a minor procedure."

After the verdict, Crown Prosecutor Nanette Williams asked that bail be revoked for all three offenders, arguing that there was a risk they would flee the jurisdiction and that they now faced jail.

The police officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Sergeant Eugene Stek, told the court he was concerned that the offenders would be protected by their close-knit community and possibly assisted to leave the country now that they had been convicted.

Sergeant Stek said that, on the day Vaziri was arrested, he had been about to leave the country for India.

He also said he was worried that some or all of the offenders would encourage fellow members of their community to hide other instances of female genital mutilation if allowed back into the community.

But Justice Johnson refused the detention application, allowing the trio to remain on bail subject to strict conditions, including the surrendering of their passports and other travel documents.

They will return to court on February 5 for sentencing. 

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More applicants failing Australia's citizenship test following increase of passing mark

A growing number of applicants are failing Australia's citizenship test in the wake of changes which increased the mark needed to pass.

The percentage of people failing the test has increased steadily since 2010-11, following the Department of Immigration and Border Protection's move to increase the passing mark from 60 per cent to 73 per cent in 2009.

It remains a relatively small number at less than 2,200 people, or 1.9 per cent, in the previous financial year, according to the Department's annual report.

A spokesperson for the Department told the ABC that applicants from approximately 80 different countries failed the citizenship test through 2014-15.

Birth countries that most commonly failed the citizenship test were:  Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan, Vietnam

Concerns have also been raised for refugees attempting the citizenship test, citing lower success rates and insufficient English levels.

A report released by the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) stated that the passing rate for refugee and humanitarian applicants was 6.3 per cent lower than the overall success rate.

RCOA interviewed 188 people of refugee background who were eligible for citizenship — people who had been in Australia for four years on a permanent humanitarian visa — and heard multiple applicants were never asked to resit the test after initially failing.

RCOA also said it had spoken with psychiatrists representing patients who had a significant mental incapacity and were not capable of successfully completing the test.

"While these people would generally be exempt from the test, RCOA has been informed that since late last year a number of these psychologist's reports have been rejected," they stated.

"As one psychologist has informed us: 'until September/October 2014, these applications were successful, the clinical report accepted and citizenship granted. "However, since that time, of 22 applications that I have supported, there have been 4 responses, all rejecting the applications. "For the other 18 people, who are all holders of 866 visas, there has been no decision made in any of their applications. "Some of these claims have been lodged some 11 to 12 months ago'."

The citizenship test has been in place since October 2007, with a review undertaken in 2008.

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GREENIE ROUNDUP

Three current articles below

Australia urged to choke off financing for new coal mines

Pressure is mounting on the Australian government to toe the line on fossil fuel subsidy reform, as reports emerge that support is mounting for a robust deal to phase out incentives for new coal plant development.

The deal, brokered between the US and Japan, would rein in export credit agency financing for coal, a leading source of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.

The credit agency proposal – which has been years in the making – will be debated at a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in in Paris next week, which represents 34 mainly rich countries, including Australia.

But the OECD will also look at overall fossil fuel subsidies, which amount to more than $70 billion a year in the OECD alone. A new report due tomorrow will put Australia’s share of those subsidies at more than $US5 billion, although the Australian government denies that this exists.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that European Union negotiators at the talks were expected to push hard for the deal which, according to another source, could make the “vast majority” of about 1,000 planned coal plants ineligible for export credit agency backing.

But this may be easier said that done, with Australia named as one of the plan’s key opponents, after it joined forces with South Korea to produce an alternative plan that would not go as far as the US-Japan deal.

The Australia-South Korea effort has been slammed by environment campaigners in Australia and abroad, who say it could scuttle negotiations hosted by the OECD, and cast a shadow over Paris.

“Behind window-dressing rhetoric, they clearly want to sabotage the OECD deal,” said Sebastien Godinot, an economist at WWF.

Jake Schmidt from US green group Natural Resources Defense Council described the Canberra/Seoul proposal as “a terrible sign” from countries that claim they want to deal with climate change.

“They are trying to stop the simplest way to deal with this problem, which is to minimise the public finance going to coal power plants,” he said.

And as Reuters puts it, “the difficulty of agreeing that rich nations should stop allowing governments to fund coal is seen as a foretaste of the challenge of negotiating a new global pact on climate change.”

Locally, the focus is on Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, and whether or not he will pass what many consider to be his first big test on climate.

“This is where the rubber hits the road on (the climate change) debate,” said Julien Vincent, lead campaigner at Market Forces. “We have a modest, proposal that would cut off finance to the dirtiest proposed coal power plants.”

Even the federal opposition has weighed in, taking the opportunity to sink the boot, despite the fact that – as we have reported before – Labor appears to be no more enlightened on the subject of digging up and burning coal than the Coalition.

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Who’s Killing Our Climate Scientists?

Tony Thomas

Well nobody, actually, unless you count a smattering of sometimes rude emails as representing credible threats to warmists' lives and safety. As with climate change itself, our purportedly un-settled scientists refuse to share their evidence of bloodthirsty sceptics on the warpath

cyber skullWhy is the Australian Academy of Science going off the deep end claiming “reprehensible vilification” of warmist scientists? It’s now saying they’re being so threatened and harassed that their ability to do science is in jeopardy. Academy President Andrew Holmes, addressing a greenhouse conference in Hobart on October 27, claimed

The costs to individuals can be high. It is therefore critical that as scientists and experts we stand together. The ability of scientists to conduct their work, free of fear or hindrance, is vital to the future wellbeing of our community, and the Academy will continue to advocate for academic freedom… 

“As the International Council for Science proclaims, the free and responsible practice of science is fundamental to scientific advancement and human and environmental well-being.

I thought at first he was chastising the academics at University of Western Australia over their successful witchhunt against non-sceptic Bjorn Lomborg, or that he was chastising academics at University of Melbourne for wanting punitive fines to drive sceptics out of the media. Or maybe rebuking US academic peers who wanted sceptic corporations to be prosecuted under the Racketeering and Corrupting Influences Act (that exercise backfired spectacularly). But I erred, Holmes’ victimology includes only orthodox climate scientists as its purported casualties.

Those climateers make unlikely victims. There were hordes of them at the Hobart greenhouse conference. My estimate: I’d say 95% are on government or academic payrolls, plus expenses. The evening after Holmes spoke, they went tooling across the harbor “by luxury catamaran” for dinner “at the world-renowned Peppermint Bay, where’ll we’ll enjoy a delicious three-course meal set against a backdrop of the lush rolling hills of the Huon region, with commanding views across the d’Entrecasteaux Channel and north to Mt Wellington.” Saving the planet is not work for the faint-hearted, n’est ce pas?

Holmes’ victimology statement comes about a month before the great climate confab in Paris, which warmists hope will raise the price of fossil-fuelled power for the Third World’s billions of abject poor, who are desperate for electricity’s benefits and not-so-worried about CO2 emissions.

The previous victimology  statement by the Academy, on June 10, 2011, coincided with key Parliamentary debates on the Gillard carbon dioxide tax and a 200-strong deputation  of semi-scientists at Parliament House to urge MPs to crush ‘disinformation’ about climate change. The 2011 Academy statement was not just by then-President Sue Cory but by the Academy’s executive committee of council, indicating its seriousness. It reads quite similarly to the current Holmes’ text, with a cry to “defend intellectual freedom”.

Academy President Professor Suzanne Cory said the Academy is deeply concerned about the threats being made to scientists.

“Today the Academy’s Executive Committee of Council issued a public statement defending the right of researchers to do their work free from abuse, acts of intimidation and threats of violence,” Professor Cory said.

“We call on leaders across the community to make the same defence of intellectual freedom.”

The statement endorsed by the Executive Committee reads: "The Australian Academy of Science is firmly of the view that the interests of the community and the advancement of knowledge is best served by an environment where researchers can put forward views and present data for discussion and scrutiny free from threats of personal or professional harm.

The more controversial the area …the more important that any researcher should feel free to argue a case based on evidence without fear of reprisal. We know of examples where prominent researchers have been personally and professionally threatened by individuals and organisations that disagree with their findings and conclusions.

We reiterate our common defence of the principles of academic freedom: any researcher has the right and duty to argue a case based on evidence, because only public discourse and experimental challenge can advance understanding."

So what’s behind this Academy angst? We’ll start with the 2011 Council statement and work up to its 2015 variant.

In May, 2010, John Coochey, a retired public servant, was chatting at a climate seminar dinner in Canberra with the ACT Environment Commissioner Maxine Cooper about the annual ACT kangarroo culls and eating game meat. He remarked that he had his cull permit, which he added are issued only to reliable marksmen, and he assured Cooper that she need have no concerns about cruelty to roos.

Someone excitable overheard some of this chat and relayed a garbled version to the ANU’s climate czar, Will Steffen. Alarmed, Steffen sent an email to his group of ANU correspondents on June 2 saying they were now under serious threat from “a sniper”. About half a year earlier, someone had visited the ANU unit’s premises twice and. according to Steffen, displayed an aggressive demeanour.  This supposedly led to security upgrades, although the only actual step was the introduction of new, broadly issued entry swipe cards.

A year or so later, on June 4, 2011, an enthusiastic environmental reporter on the Canberra Times, Rosslyn Beeby, ran with a story, “Climate of Fear”, about death threats or abuse to ANU and other climate scientists and abusive emails. This story caused an international sensation and the Academy weighed in with its statement barely six days later.

On June 20, a staffer for the science lobby group FASTS (and earlier, for Labor ministers) reported receipt of a death threat email, which turned out to be from a serial pest in Seattle who cut and pasted nasty text into emails to lots of people globally. Blogger Simon Turnill of Australianclimatemadness.com then FOI’d the ANU for the abusive/threatening emails. The ANU dug in its heels and refused for a year, until forced to come clean by the Privacy Commissioner Tim Pilgrim.

Well, well, well! There proved to be 11 emails to six climate people in the relevant six months of 2011, and the only one claiming a “death threat” was Steffen’s hyper-reaction to the garbled roo-cull conversation. The other 10 ranged from querulous complaints by citizens about waste of tax dollars on climate science (“Please be truthful in future,” one said),  to a few rich in four-letter words and insults.

Now scrabbling for credibility, the climate scientist community beat the bushes nationally for nasty emails — and it emerged that random nutters had indeed sent some sexist, abusive, threatening notes, a deplorable practice. The only actual violence cited involved someone throwing eggs at someone’s house and no-one thought of complaining to police.

To sum up, the Academy went into Full Outrage Mode over ANU claims of death threat-type emails, even though the “death threat” was rolled-gold hokum. The other ANU “abuse” emails work out at an average of two per climate academic during a six month period, of which one email, on average, involved nothing more sinister than members of the public griping about climate alarmism. After the Academy statement, details emerged of 30 or so other nasty, sexist emails nationally.

Keep in mind that un-elected alarmist climate scientists are advocating a total societal transformation to costly renewable energy involving massive government controls and big drops in living standards. Yet these brave climate warriors dissolve into puddles of jelly if a rude email hits their in-box.

I promised to fill you in on the Academy’s “evidence” for its latest victimology by President Holmes last month.  Sadly, the Academy refuses to provide any. Indeed it refuses to respond to Quadrant’s queries at all, on the ground that our article may not be flattering. Quadrant’s invitation to redact all identifying names failed to change the Academy’s stance.

All we can be sure about is that some climate scientists have complained to the Academy about hate mail, harassment and threats,   But whether those were just the 2010-12 complaints or new ones, the Academy declines to say. Other questions getting no answer were:

    To what extent are these accounts from Australian sources, as distinct from overseas sources?

    To your knowledge, did the providers of the accounts seek any police investigation of the  threats?

    What is meant by the term ‘harassment’? Does that refer to allegedly excessive volumes of FOI requests (which have been publicly complained of by people like East Anglia Climatic Research Unit’s Phil Jones)? If not, can you clarify pls.

The Academy’s non-response rather undercuts President Holmes’ nice words at Hobart:

"We can lead through small actions and words, such as…engaging in conversation with someone who lacks a scientific understanding of serious issues, instead of dismissing them."

Taking a tip from someone near the Molonglo, Quadrant decided to google “climate scientist abuse or threat 2015” . The  only thing relevant in the first few pages  was Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, self-proclaimed Nobel Prize Winner, running a “poor victim me!” line. Other stuff just referred back to the ANU 2010-12 farce, although there was also one bad person urging the children of sceptic-minded UK journalist David Rose to kill him.

Inputting “2014” instead of 2015 produced a similar result, but with the interesting addition of climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson[ii], who wrote:

"I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that life has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.

I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years."

The back story there is that Bengtsson, of Sweden, had accepted an invitation to join the academic council of the UK’s non-alarmist Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) two weeks earlier, but pulled out because of the above-described hostility of the warmist climate team.

It’s all very unsatisfactory. Climate alarmists, far from being victims and underdogs, as the Academy would have it, are in fact calling the shots on anti-CO2 investment of well over $US1b per day.  A tiny fraction of that sum could make huge inroads into here-and-now Third World issues, such as infant mortality, malaria, education, clean water and sanitation, and cheap fossil-fueled electricity. For alarmists, the high moral ground can be a bit slippery.

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Has-been politician slams a Prince of the Church over global warming

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has unleashed an excoriating attack on George Pell, accusing Australia's most senior Catholic of being a "radical climate sceptic" and saying the cardinal's "inflated rhetoric" can no longer go unchallenged on the role of the Church in the climate change debate.

In a blistering lecture called "Faith, Ethics and Climate Change," Mr Rudd said he might have called a double-dissolution election on an emissions trading scheme had he not been robbed of the Labor leadership in 2010. And he said he stood by his claim that "climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time" and predicted those words would stand the test of time. 

The former Labor prime minister said George Pell needed an "ecological conversion" and noted the cardinal's denial of climate change science matched the views of former prime minister Tony Abbott, to whom Cardinal Pell is close.

"Cardinal Pell has in the past accused me of inflated rhetoric," Mr Rudd told the Rowan Williams Lecture at Trinity College in Melbourne.  "Such rhetoric, it seems, is not the exclusive province of prime ministers. Princes of the Church are apparently not entirely immune," Mr Rudd said.

Mr Rudd said the Cardinal's view that the Church should butt out of politics and climate change policy was deeply at odds with the ethical imperative to protect the environment as well contradictory of Pope Francis' views.

"The Pope says the science on climate change is sufficiently clear. Cardinal Pell says it is not and further that the purported science is without foundation," he said.

Cardinal Pell has publicly criticised Pope Francis and told the Financial Times that the Church has "no particular expertise in science" and "no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters".

Mr Rudd said Cardinal Pell's comments were illogical. "To contend that a necessary prerequisite for engagement in these ethical debates in the public square is to be a professionally qualified climate scientist … would render his own contribution to these debates null and void, as Cardinal Pell is qualified in none," he said.

Mr Rudd said Christians should not be prevented from forming ethical views on public policy just because they don't have a science degree.

Cardinal Pell's comments were in response to a Papal encyclical Pope Francis released in June this year in which he called for humanity to save itself from the threat of climate change.

The Pope took aim at "committed and prayerful" Christians who "ridicule expressions of concern for the environment" using "realism and pragmatism" as an excuse. "What they all need is an "ecological conversion," the Pope said.

"Perhaps the Pope had Cardinal Pell in mind when this paragraph was written," Mr Rudd suggested on Tuesday.

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