Killing the economy, one industry at a time

Everything is wrong, according to the Green/Left

Like many Melbourne workers, my productivity was diminished yesterday as I couldn’t get past vegan militants making sure Flinders Street had no animal products to hand.

Elsewhere in the country, even wackier Green criminals, as Scott Morrison calls them, were invading the properties of innocent ­cattle farmers, people who actually live close to the land and care deeply for animals.

It all provoked this sombre ­reflection: the provisional wing of the Green-Left army is on the rise in Australian politics and increasingly influencing real-world outcomes. Here’s the rub: if we followed their self-righteous diktats and banned all the industries they have declared immoral, unethical, polluting, carbon-emitting, gender-offensive, identity unsatisfactory or whatever, how on earth would we earn a living?

The Greens, only slightly less militant than the vegan nuts chaining themselves to vehicles in Melbourne or cutting cattle fences in rural Australia, have declared that coal is losing its “social licence” and is on the way out.

But coal is this nation’s biggest export. We have earned nearly $70 billion in export income from coal this year. Our No 2 export, iron ore, can only be used with coal, so it’s apparently on the nose too.

And, of course, according to the Greens, and significant parts of the ALP, we shouldn’t export uranium. Bauxite is no good, as well, because it needs a lot of coal power to turn it into aluminium.

It is perfectly insane that the Morrison government is still dilly dallying over approvals for the Adani coalmine in Queensland. If it is too cowardly even to approve this mine it will surrender to the green madness, but just a little more slowly than the other side of politics.

Now we not only can’t have live cattle exports, apparently the whole of the cattle industry is to be demonised. Just as this same movement destroyed so much good, perfectly sustainable timber industry all over Australia, so now it is going after agricultural industries one by one.

Very often, when the broad front of the Green/vegan/Labor-Left anti-development coalition kills a mine or a rural industry, it tells the locals they can make a living in tourism. But then the same forces turn around and oppose every proposed tourism development.

And let’s not even talk about gas. In much of Australia you can’t even explore for conventional gas, much less coal-seam gas or anything involving fracking. Yet the US has reduced its carbon emissions by moving from coal-fired power stations to gas-fired power stations. So one of our cleanest, greenest and most profitable sources of energy has to stay in the ground because our politics is nuts.

Everyone serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions understands nuclear energy will take a big share of energy generation in the future. But in Australia we can’t do anything nuclear at all.

Adam Smith remarked that there is a lot of ruin in a nation.

But every amenity which Australians like, and which even the progressives approve of, from Medicare to education to disability insurance schemes to affirmative action for indigenous Australians to computers to hospitals and all the rest, ultimately costs money.

Just where on earth are we going to earn this money if every profitable thing that we do is first attacked, then demonised, then outlawed?

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Outrage as primary school bans students from handing out birthday invitations because it could hurt the feelings of those who miss out

Are kids supposed to think that everyone likes them? A strange life lesson

A bizarre new ban on birthday party invitations being handed out in the playground at a primary school on Sydney's north shore has sparked outrage.

Parents at Mosman Public School now have to send party invitations to their children's classmates via email to avoid anyone not invited from getting upset or offended.

They were also advised by the school via email to discourage their children from discussing planned festivities while at school, The Daily Telegraph reported.

It's understood the school implemented the new ban after a child became upset when they weren't invited to a classmate's party.

'It's going too far, we have to build resilient kids,' one outraged parent told the publication.

'You can't give birthday invitations by paper (at the school), only by email and you must tell your children not to talk about the party.'

Mosman isn't the first school in NSW to impose a bizarre birthday-related ban.

Birthday candles are banned at Seven Hills West Public School in western Sydney, where only small individual cakes are allowed to brought to school to celebrate.

'We welcome small individual cakes or the like if your child wishes to share his/her birthday with the class. Candles ARE NOT permitted and teachers are UNABLE to cut cakes,' a school newsletter from February this year states.

Bardia Public School in Sydney south-west has also banned teachers from cutting cakes.

Birthday cakes have been banned at Wamberal Public School on the Central Coast since 2017.

St Thomas More Catholic Primary School near Campbelltown in Sydney's south-west followed suit earlier this year.

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Forget A Woman Scorned, There's No Fury Like Vegan Fury

Is this rise in militant veganism actually counterproductive to the cause?

The recent terrorism, by what Prime Minister Scott Morrison has dubbed, “green collar criminals,” has set the noble cause of veganism, backwards and only exacerbated its image problem.

Vegan activists have a decent story to tell, but they need a better, less confrontational, way to sell it. Victimising farmers off the back of the worst drought in a century is a dud move, as is, I don’t know, frustrating thousands of Australians by making their Monday morning worse than it needed to be.

As Dr Tyler Paytas, a research fellow in moral philosophy at ACU’s Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry told IMPACT, “Given how pervasive meat-eating is in the culture, and given the strong anti-vegan sentiment that I’ve found both in the United States and here in Australia, I think it's very easy for people to dismiss vegans as crazy, self-righteous social justice warriors that don’t need to be taken seriously.

“I am not someone who endorses this anti-vegan view, but because it’s so prevalent, I think we should be very careful about doing things like occupying restaurants and vandalising butcher shops, things that will make the anti-vegan sentiment even stronger.”

These extreme methods, like harassment, vandalising and intimidation, can’t progress the cause, but only harm it. Yet, when this story gets posted to social media undoubtedly it will be the subject of militant vegan trolling.

I know this from spending years working on a health magazine, where the most vitriol we received was for labelling a recipe vegan, when it in fact, used honey. We copped the kind of outrage typically reserved for murderers and kiddy abusers. Let me remind you, this was for a muffin recipe.

And it’s not just me. My husband who works in corporate social responsibility has been slammed for wearing leather shoes to his office job, by a self-righteous judgey vegan colleague. If you were to label us, we’re flexitarian, only eating meat once a week, yet rather than congratulating us on seeing the plant-based light, the vegan moral hypocrites would rather us choke on our mung bean burger.

But just like the hashtag, #NotAllMen, it’s in moments like these we must remember #NotAllVegans.

As with everything else, there is undeniably a very small minority of holier-than-thou vegans, but the vast majority just want to be left alone to eat their tofu in peace. Vegans are just people. Like carnivores, some suck and some don’t.

In my work reporting on health, I’ve found a lot of good reasons to argue for plant-based eating, including serious data about preventing chronic diseases and slowing the melting of the world. In good news for our health and the planet, Australia has the third-fastest growing vegan population worldwide.

In fact, it’s estimated that more than two million Australians now avoid eating meat, and the figure appears to be rising. While not everyone will join the crusade, create commuter chaos, or storm a farm, surely something is better than nothing? Vegan, carnivore, vegetarian, whatever, can’t we all just eat – and live – in peace?

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Federal government gives green light to new coalmine

The federal environment minister has given the green light to the controversial Adani Carmichael mine’s groundwater plan, taking it a step closer to construction.

But left leaning lobby group GetUp’s climate campaigner Sam Regester is already warning the decision will cost the Government seats.

“Make no mistake, they will feel the backlash,” he said. “This will cost them seats. The Coalition can expect to lose a swath of seats around Australia for their capitulation to a single coal company at the expense of the community.

“We’re talking about a company who has shown a complete inability to follow the law and Scott Morrison has rushed through a dangerous approval maybe just hours before his Government goes into caretaker mode.”

He said GetUp now plans to make an extra 100,000 calls into Health Minister Greg Hunt’s electorate of Flinders and 80,000 calls into Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg’s electorate of Kooyong.

Environment Minister Melissa Price confirmed today she had signed off on the final plan that Adani needs from the Federal Government for its Carmichael mine. Further approvals are needed from the Queensland Government.

She said science agencies CSIRO and Geoscience Australia had confirmed the company’s revised plans met strict scientific requirements.

“Following this independent assessment and the Department of Environment and Energy’s recommendation for approval, I have accepted the scientific advice and therefore approved the groundwater management plans for the Carmichael coal mine and rail Infrastructure project under Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999,” she said in a statement.

The mine still needs approval from the Queensland Government for its groundwaters plans and its black-throated finch management plan.

“To date, only 16 of 25 environmental plans have been finalised or approved by the commonwealth and Queensland governments with a further nine to be finalised,” Ms Price said. “It must meet further stringent conditions of approval from the commonwealth before it can begin producing coal.”

She said the company had accepted a number of actions including better monitoring of the Doongmabulla Springs, tighter corrective action triggers if there are any groundwater impacts and more scientific modelling within two years of the start of mining.

The federal government is not providing any financial support to the mine or to its rail project, she said.

Ms Price’s approval comes as environmental groups warned of legal challenges if the minister was pushed into signing off on the project.

Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Christian Slattery said Australians were right to be deeply sceptical about the process that led to this decision.

Queensland coalition MPs have been agitating for the minister to make her decision before Prime Minister Scott Morrison goes to the polls, expected on May 18.

Mr Morrison told reporters on Tuesday the decision would be made by “ministers listening to scientists, not senators listening to themselves”.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan earlier attended a shed meeting in central Queensland on Tuesday with Dawson MP George Christensen to reiterate the government’s support for coal mining.

“This isn’t just about one project or one mine — the Labor party wants to get rid of all coal mines and all coal mining jobs,” Senator Canavan said in a statement afterwards.

“The Liberal-Nationals coalition government backs Queensland resources workers and Queensland’s coal mining communities.”

Adani’s proposed Carmichael coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin is a contentious project that has sparked mass protests around Australia.

In contrast to Queensland electorates — where many are keen for the jobs the mine is hoped to create — many residents in city areas oppose the mine because of potential impacts to climate change and the Great Barrier Reef, as well as concerns over groundwater use and threatened species.

The Coalition is not the only party split over Adani’s plan, with reports Labor is also divided over the coal mine.

Labor leader Bill Shorten is reportedly sceptical about the mine but has not said he would block it from going ahead.

Environmental groups have previously slammed the mine’s plan, which they say is not properly assessed and puts water resources at risk.

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