Homosexual footballer reproves Folau

The first Australian NRL player to publicly come out as gay has issued an emotional message to Israel Folau as the Wallabies star fights to save his rugby career.

Speaking on Channel 9’s Sports Sunday program, ex-footy star Ian Roberts delivered a sobering message to Folau about the tragic truth of the beliefs he’s spreading.

“I feel sorry for Israel but there are consequences to your actions,” Roberts said. “I don’t say this lightly and what I’m about to say, the language I use, is hard and it’s for a point, it’s to get that message across.

“There are literally kids in the suburbs killing themselves and I say that with the greatest sense of respect and I’m not saying that Israel is responsible solely for that.

“But it’s these types of comments and these types of off-the-cuff remarks when you have young people and vulnerable people who are dealing with their sexuality, confused, not knowing how to deal with it.

There's no mystery about knowing how to deal with it.   Homosexual males usually get on well with women.  From a Biblical viewpoint they should put in the effort to create a normal relationship with one.  If they really want anal sex, there is a   small minority of women who like it.  I don't like doing it but I have had two different women request it

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Shorten's financial fantasy

Money grows on trees, don't you know?

Bill Shorten has unveiled $841 million worth of new spending promises and a 30 per cent tax cut for small businesses to a crowd of the Labor faithful — and three former leaders- in Brisbane today as he launched Labor’s campaign and promised to put “the fair go into action’’.

Mr Shorten used his speech to outline the “case for change” and to double down on his big spending agenda with promises to boost wages, tax multinationals, and put more money into hospitals.

But it was the appearance of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard together for the first time in several years — two leaders Bill Shorten helped to both crown and bring down — that was the centrepiece of his attempt to sell Labor as a united team against a divided Coalition.

“Friends, in our time in Opposition, we have united around a bold and comprehensive vision for the nation,” he says. “And the case for change, our case for change rests on the great things that we’re determined to do and achieve for our country’s future.

“Everything, from equality for women, to getting the NDIS back on track — our ambitious agenda is high. It aims high as the people of Australia aim high for themselves. We are choosing hope over fear. We are choosing the future over the past.

“So today, this is our case for change. We say, proudly, to all Australians — end the chaos, vote Labor. Vote for real change. Vote Labor. Vote for your families’ interest. Vote Labor. Vote for your future — vote Labor. And for a fair go for all Australians, wherever they live, however much they have, vote Labor.”

Flanked by his frontbench and wife Chloe, Mr Shorten announced a 30 per cent tax cut for small businesses who employ unemployed Millennials and older Australians.

Mr Shorten pitched his campaign launch at low and middle income working families and declared Labor’s policy was “fair go economics at its finest’’.

“I am proud to put youth unemployment on this election agenda because young people, youth unemployment, it’s more than double the national average, it’s much higher, in many communities, and what a waste. What a waste of hope and human potential,” he says.

“There is a battle which nearly 100,000 older Australians face when they’re longer in periods of unemployment when they’re looking for work, a battle of some older Australians have just surrendered in, been forced to give up. You know who I’m talking about — the older Australians who can’t get themselves back in the game not for lack of effort but for lack of a chance.

“I am proud to announce that Labor will create a new jobs tax cut, we’re going to make it easier for small businesses to create new jobs for people who’ve been looking for work for more than three months, companies with a turnover of under $10 million who take on a new person under the age of 25, or over the age of 55, or a parent or a carer, just trying to get their foot back into the workplace.”

He also confirmed $500 million to cut hospital waiting times, $200 million to boost youth mental health services and a plan to reap $2.3bn in tax revenue by stopping multinationals from seeking tax deductions from royalties.

Mr Shorten also backed in his “big taxes” in negative gearing reforms and scrapping franking credits.

“We will end the intergenerational unfairness in our tax system that puts property investors ahead of first homebuyers,” he said.

“We are not going to keep sending tax cheques worth $6 billion a year to people who are not paying income tax.  [This is Bill Shorten's signature lie.  They ARE paying tax -- via the companies they have shares in]

“And the days of Australia being treated as a doormat by tax avoiding multinationals ends on May 18 if we are elected.”

Mr Shorten said Labor would prevent big corporations using “dodgy royalties’’ to avoid paying tax in Australia which would return more than $2bn to the Australian balance sheet.

Mr Shorten left most of the attacks against Scott Morrison and the Liberals to his female lieutenants, deputy leader Tanya Plibersek and senate leader Penny Wong, and only mentioned the Prime Minister’s name once in his speech.

Mrs Shorten was also a key part of the launch, where she both tried to soften her husband’s image and outlined her intention to be a “woman in her own right” if she becomes a Prime Ministerial spouse.

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Biomass fuel: The Great Carbon Con

I’d be very surprised — and very impressed if contradicted — if one in 100 readers of this newspaper, even intelligent and informed as they are by definition, would be able to name the biggest generator of so-called renewable energy in Europe, which is climate central for the cult of carbon dioxide fear and loathing.

I’d be even more surprised if one in 1000 of our Down Under adherents of that anti-CO2 cult, unintelligent and uninformed as they are by definition, could do so.

Even fewer, I suggest, in both groups would be able to specifically name the single biggest so-called renewable energy power station in Europe.

Surely, it’s one of all those so-called “wind farms”, sprouting like metallic weeds all over the European landscape, and increasingly offshore as well, and which collectively must be the biggest source?

Or maybe even the only real — as in reliable and functional — renewable energy we’ve ever had and still only have: hydro power? But surely not solar in, apart from the Mediterranean countries, sun-challenged Europe?

Well, there are some clues in the words I have used very advisedly: “generator” of energy and “power station”. For you see, the answer is plain and simple: burning wood.

Yes, it is dressed up — and intended to quite deliberately deceive as that’s the European Union way — with the fancy all-green sounding name “biomass”. And yes, it includes burning municipal waste and charcoal. But it is mostly burning wood and, in part, shipped across the Atlantic from the US.

Exactly just like we used to do, from the prehistoric discovery of fire to well into the 20th century, until we switched to mostly coal-fired power stations. And still do in large parts of the developing world, including in India, killing tens of thousands of people every year. And which the opponents of the Adani coal mine want to keep doing.

Sure, in “clean, green Europe” they don’t burn the wood — sorry, biomass — in the open air so it doesn’t pump out the people-killing dirty bits of grit and other unpleasantries. But it still pumps out that gas — what’s it called? — oh yes, CO2.

Except, that the EU and especially EU central in Brussels, the European Commission, has decreed that the CO2 being pumped out by the burning of wood and other materials, in “biomass power stations” is non-existent.

That is to say, it’s “carbon neutral”. The CO2 pumped into the air — just like a coal-fired station, except a biomass station pumps out about 50-100 per cent more CO2 for the same amount of electricity — is deemed by the EC as cancelled by the CO2 which will become embedded in the new growth of plants as a consequence of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

We used to think that was a good thing: who wouldn’t want to green the planet and dramatically increase the production of wheat, corn and all other food crops. Some real scientists such as the great Freeman Dyson — as opposed to the charlatans and poseurs that now infest the academy — still do.

The more specific point, of course, about this utter so typically EU “renewable” absurdity is that the CO2 coming out of a wood-burning plant is coming out now; the removal of that CO2 in new plant growth might take up to 100 years.

This also goes to the ludicrous suggestion that we could “square the circle” of our proposed CO2 cuts by buying so-called “emission permits’’ from overseas and most particularly from — where else? — Europe.

It has, of course, utterly escaped what passes for the public policy elite in this country that the only point in Australia reducing its CO2 emissions is if the entire world similarly embarks on that task.

We’ll put outside the absolutely fundamental point that the world is not.

At best, China — the biggest emitter by the length of the Flemington straight — and third-placed India have crossed their hearts and promised to start cutting after 2030. Until then, they’ll keep increasing.

Put that aside and fantasise of a world where everyone was trying to cut their emissions. What do you think would happen to the price and, even more, the availability of such emission permits — which would only be created by a country cutting its emissions by more than the world required and having the surplus to sell?

This also, by the bye, is why Bill Shorten was actually — if utterly unintentionally and even more unknowingly — telling the truth when he said the cost of Labor’s 45 per cent reduction policy was impossible to determine. It is impossible to cost infinity.

Let me finish with some detail about Europe and so-called biomass.

According to Eurostat — that’s the official EU statistical body — 65 per cent of EU renewable generation in 2016 came from biomass: wood and charcoal, biogas and biofuels, and municipal waste.

Burning wood was easily the biggest, at nearly half all so-called renewable generation in Europe.

The biggest biomass station is Drax, in the north of England. It switched from burning coal to burning wood. The CO2 it emitted as a coal station was causing climate change; the increased CO2 it now emits from burning wood is defined by the EC bureaucrats as not existing.

Under the EC rules, Drax — and all other biomass plants — only have to count the CO2 generated by the processing of the wood into pellets and its transportation; they do not count the overwhelmingly much larger CO2 emissions from the actual burning.

Even some Greens in Europe, who have not lost all touch with reality, realise this is a classic and simply insane EC con. A case was launched in March seeking to have the EU General Court rule that biomass could not be counted as a renewable.

But let’s hope they lose. Then we can convert Liddell to burning wood and all but instantly reach Labor’s renewable generation target.

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Queensland’s child killers slapped with tough new sentencing laws

I heartily approve of this

Queenslanders who target the state’s most vulnerable — whether by killing them or abusing them for years, will face now face at least 20 years in prison.

A tough new law targeting killers of Queensland’s most vulnerable is expected to pass state parliament this week.

The reform would mean individuals convicted of killing a child or a disabled or elderly person by long-term physical and sexual abuse will go to prison for a minimum of 20 years.

It would expand the definition of murder to take in deaths caused by an act or omission with reckless indifference to human life, and add a new circumstance of aggravation where homicide victims are under the age of 12.

The state’s Liberal National Party MPs, in Opposition, will vote in favour of the bill.

The party has in turn put forward a private members bill to introduce a new offence of child homicide and a minimum of 15 years for child manslaughter.

But the Labor Government says it would lead to more trials and a potential increase in cases that end without a conviction.

A completed report into sentences for Queensland’s child killers was given to the Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath in October last year.

Before the October 31, 2018 deadline, the heartbroken families of slain children told the council the people convicted of killing them were getting off too lightly.

In their public submissions, parents and relatives of child victims expressed a common view that existing penalties were inadequate.

“It’s probably one of the worst types of crimes you can imagine, so they’re understandably very upset at what they perceive is lenient sentencing,” council member Dan Rogers told AAP.

“The issue of manslaughter and murder is a really vexed one. There’s a perception that manslaughter doesn’t appropriately demonstrate the seriousness of a child homicide.”

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Public education fiasco can be fixed by restoring power to parents

Public schooling has become an arena of mischief and failure, in which parents are powerless to influence what their children are taught.

The system cries out for reform. It is a policy issue of the first order, yet even on the verge of an election it receives no mention.

When children leave the classroom en masse to promote unproven views in the streets, the schools betray their educational commitment. And when those children return to their classroom, it is one of ideology (such as the notorious, Marx-inspired Safe Schools program), interrupted teaching and disorder instead of true instruction and objectivity — with pockets of excellence all too rare.

Evidence shows our public schools lag behind most of the advanced nations in promoting students’ skills and knowledge, while disruptive behaviour is common. The OECD remarks on findings from the Program for International Student Assessment that “Australia has a ‘problematic situation’ in terms of classroom discipline”.

Despite more and more money for schools, the Productivity Commission, in its National Education Evidence Base report, observes that student achievement shows “little improvement and in some areas standards have dropped”.

The loss is not just educational; it is also moral failure when the reasonable expectations of parents for their children’s education may be ignored.

Appropriate conduct under legitimate authority and discipline in the classroom have substantially disappeared, and the children’s loss is shared by their parents, who lack any serious capacity to intervene and help stem the decline.

Given that successful education of a child requires peace, discipline, commitment and respectful and responsible conduct by child and teacher, does the public schooling system provide the motivations and the management system that will achieve those ends?

If appropriate learning ought to be the supreme objective, the answer to that question must be a negative. Control and power in public schools are being directed to supporting the ideological interests and teachings of their staff, to the impotent dismay of parents. They may complain, but they lack any formal powers of intervention and control.

The public schools increasingly are concerning themselves with gender issues and political ideology, contrary to the wishes of many, if not most, parents. Public schooling has become answerable only to itself. For several generations such schooling has steadily evolved to this condition with relatively little challenge.

The most far-reaching institutional and systematic abridgement of the power of families to shape the education, moralisation and socialisation of their children followed the introduction of universal and compulsory free education in the last third of the 19th century. Before then, providing for the education of children — like the provision of the no less important essentials of food and clothing — was in the hands of parents. They were assisted by subsidies, or what amounted to subsidies, from the state and the churches.

The state helped pay for education but did not provide it itself.

But, as the state steadily took over the provision of the free education, children and their parents fell into the hands of a single supplier and escape into the private system became very costly.

The public system therefore ­neutered the power of the parents’ purse to monitor, judge and influence what was happening to the education of their children. Reform would be possible if this power could be restored to parents.

Some would argue that education should be “value free”. Nevertheless, issues of value and virtue may arise in many school situations and it is vital that parents should be well informed and enabled to exercise power in deciding what is to be done.

The only effective source of that power is control of school fin­ancing. Governments are ostensibly the agents of parents’ school interests, but in practice governments have a conflicting interest as the producer or provider of schooling. The history of public education records that this conflict has usually been resolved in favour of producer interests to which the interests of parents and children have been sacrificed.

Teacher unions are the most powerful of these interests and they are frequently inimical to the interests of children and parents.

If progress is to be made, the present unhappy state of public education as a key institution should be prominent in public debate and subsequent action. A crucial object should be to endow parents with the power to control the financing of the public education of their children.

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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