Australian Politics
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Mum-of-two exposes Australia's dire housing crisis as she details her horrific plight couch-surfing with a newborn for TWO years
She became pregnant during that time so it would appear that the man was useless. She should clearly have been more careful about getting her legs up. Her problem is clearly bad decisions, not housing
A young mother with a four-week-old baby and a seven-year-old daughter has been forced to couch surf for nearly two years amid Queensland's social housing crisis.
Amie Rabinski said her older daughter was finding it hard to adapt to their new living situation and that it was stressful not having her own home.
'She misses everything. She misses her toys, she misses her clothes, she misses her own room. We haven't had that for nearly two years,' she told the Today Show.
The Logan mother said she had been deprived of enjoying her second pregnancy because the process of finding permanent accommodation had been so draining.
'Throughout the whole pregnancy I definitely felt deprived. You know, I didn't have much time to really enjoy it,' the mother-of-two said. 'There was a lot to the pregnancy that I didn't really like.'
Host Ally Langdon asked Amie if she felt okay.
'Yeah, I'm fine, mentally, but it is very draining and explaining it to a seven-year-old child is not easy. They don't understand much at that age.'
Aimee McVeigh, the CEO of Queensland's Council of Social Service, said the housing crisis affecting tens of thousands of Queenslanders was an 'unacceptable situation'.
'It is a wet day in Brisbane and we are expecting a really wet weekend and yet tens of thousands of families are waking up in tents, in cars, and in hotel rooms getting ready for work, getting ready to go to school, and you're right Amie, it is impossible to explain this to children,' she said.
The number of Queenslanders on the state's social housing register has ballooned to 46,000 - a rise of 78 per cent in the last four years.
The state government this week announced an additional $1billion would be invested in the state's social housing fund.
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New economic research has finally demolished the popular notion that the 23.3 per cent gender pay gap is primarily driven by employers paying women less for doing the same job as men
While sexism still impacts some private-sector professional salaries, the real issue is that men dominate highly paid sectors such as mining, while women take most of the low-paid jobs, such as in aged and child care.
And the research argues the pay gap could be cut by one third to 15.6 per cent if we could shift to a 40:40:20 gender concentration of workers – 40 per cent women, 40 per cent men and 20 per cent any gender – across all industries and occupations.
The Gender Equity Insights 2022 report from Curtin University’s specialist unit, the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, offers detailed evidence of how the composition of the workforce generates pay gaps.
Centre director Alan Duncan said it was the first time the centre was able to use postcodes of workplaces to get more accurate state and territory comparisons.
“This is quite a clear articulation of the different contributors to overall numbers that we often see discussed in debates around gender pay gaps,” Professor Duncan said.
“The debate is often dominated by the extent of what are commonly termed like-for-like pay gaps, and by that we mean that men and women are paid differently for performing the same role in the same organisation.”
Salary differences for the same occupations still existed, he said, but the bigger problem was that wages in some industries were much lower than in others and that women were concentrated in relatively low-paying sectors.
He said that even with a 40:40:20 split “there’s another two-thirds of the pay gap that remains to be explained”. Some was attributable to like-for-like salary differences, and some because the journey to a 50:50 split had some way to go.
“I think it’s important to understand all sides of the issue,” he said. “This shouldn’t come as a surprise – it’s something that’s been discussed for some time. But we’ve sought to really get some clarity and precision on it.”
Professor Duncan said it was important to question why some sectors were poorly paid and whether women’s contributions were adequately remunerated.
“It is important, I think, to reflect on whether or not we are rewarding the value of an aged care or a childcare worker or somebody in our health system in the manner that we should,” he said.
His team used the new WGEA location data to compare pay metrics, gender pay gaps and organisational practices across Australia. It found that in most states and territories, the main driver of the gap was the gender imbalance in industries, and this was especially so in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Resource-rich WA was the worst in the nation at 32.1 per cent, but the gap would halve to 16.5 per cent under the 40:40:20 rule. Under that ratio, the gap in the NT would reduce by two thirds, from 25.3 per cent to 8.3 per cent; NSW and Victoria would see gender pay gaps fall by 7.4 and 6.5 percentage points; and Queensland by a larger margin of 8.8 percentage points, from 22.5 per cent down to 13.7 per cent.
It also found that for people working in major cities, the gender pay gap in base remuneration is about 19 per cent. However, the gender pay gap rises steadily to 28.2 per cent for those working in remote areas, and to 29.3 per cent for workers in very remote parts of the country,
The report said Australia needed more men in healthcare and social assistance, and education and training, and more women in construction, mining, manufacturing, information services, transport and wholesale.
“There also needs to be an increase in the share of women in leadership positions, technicians and trades workers and operators and drivers,” it said.
WGEA director Mary Wooldridge said Australia had one of the most highly gender-segregated industrial structures in the developed world.
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The truth about Australia's Covid lockdowns is FINALLY exposed: Damning report slams school closures and politically-driven decisions - 'it was WRONG'
An independent review into Australia's Covid response has slammed politically driven health orders and the excessive use of lockdowns - finding they ultimately failed to protect the nation's most vulnerable people,.
The 97-page review, led by former secretary to the prime minister's office Peter Shergold, urged federal and state governments to learn from their mistakes and overhaul their processes in order to restore trust.
The report, funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, John and Myriam Wylie Foundation and Andrew Forrest's Minderoo Foundation, found the country's school closures were also a failure.
'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments,' the review said.
'For children and parents [particularly women], we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.
'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'
The review carried out over a six month period involved more than 350 confidential submissions and consultations from health experts, economists, public servants, business and community groups.
It consisted of more than 160 submissions, 3,000 hours of research and policy and data analysis.
The review concluded various lockdowns and shutting of borders should have been used as a 'last resort'.
'Too many of Australia's lockdowns and border closures were the result of policy failures in quarantine, contact tracing, testing, disease surveillance and communicating effectively the need for preventive measures like mask wearing and social distancing,' the review stated.
'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.
'As with lockdowns, border closures – particularly between states and territories – should be used sparingly and only in extreme situations. They should be applied with greater empathy and flexibility.'
The review noted despite the pandemic affecting everyone, 'its burden was not shared equally'.
DAMNING QUOTES FROM COVID REPORT
'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments.'
'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'
'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.
It stated that the failure to plan adequately for the 'differing impact of Covid' meant the disease 'spread faster and more widely'.
The review also noted while Australia had early success in limiting infection rates and deaths, in comparison to other countries, this success 'started to falter in 2021'.
'Cases and deaths have risen even further during 2022, dramatically reversing our early competitive advantage,' the review notes.
'As of September 30, 2022, Australia has recorded 378,617 cases per million people in 2022. 'The latest available official data shows that by May 2022 excess deaths in Australia had spiked to almost 359 per million people in 2022.'
The document also said the 'absence of transparency' in the expert health advice 'helped mask political calculations'.
'Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions,' the review stated.
'It is neither realistic nor desirable to remove politics from decision-making in an accountable democracy. 'But the absence of transparency in the expert advice going to leaders helped mask political calculations.
'It was difficult to gauge the trade-offs that were being considered between health and economic outcomes. It made it easier for leaders to be selective in the 'expert advice' they followed.'
The paper went on to explain the damning effect overreach had on the confidence of Australian citizens.
'Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response,' it read.
'Many Australians came to feel that they were being protected by being policed. These actions could have been avoided if we had built fairness into our planning decisions and introduced compassion into their implementation.'
The review recommended six measures to be implemented in order to avoid the same mistakes being repeated in another health crisis.
These included; establishing an independent, data-driven Australian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, clearly defining national cabinet roles and responsibilities in a crisis, publicly releasing modelling used in government decision-making, regular pandemic scenario testing and the sharing and linking of data between jurisdictions.
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Mining is the key to getting Australia's cost of living down
Through taxes on it, it gives the government real money to spend -- instead of having to print it
With Australia in desperate need of economic golden eggs as we struggle with a massive debt burden and face a possible world recession, they’re trying harder than ever to kill the goose that is laying them. The huge $50 billion slash in the 2021-22 budget deficit, cutting it by two-thirds from $80 billion to $32 billion, largely resulted from record company tax collections of $126 billion.
These were driven up by our highest-ever resources and energy exports of $421 billion, led by the condemned-to-death fossil fuels of coal, oil and LNG which together made up almost half the total. And in the current 2022-23 financial year, the golden eggs will be even richer as resources and energy exports are officially forecast to reach even higher to $450 billion as coal export revenues surge to $120 billion to exceed iron ore.
But governmental net-zero targets, investment bans by woke climate-catastrophe-obsessed boards of directors and super funds, a court system happy to be the plaything of climate-activist lawfare that has made Australia the world’s most litigious developed nation for mining projects, have all combined to bring the campaign against fossil fuels – and thereby against Australia’s historic dependence on reliable cheap energy and status as an exporter – to a serious tipping point.
Unless there is a truce in this war against fossil fuels, the current financial year will be the last time they will be capable of coming so significantly to our economic rescue. Already, next year’s official forecasts of an expected decline in the Ukraine war’s high commodity prices, of a Western world economic slowdown and for its rush to renewables (as self-destructive emissions targets are imposed), are together likely to result in a cut in our fossil fuel export revenue by almost a quarter in 2023-24. This, along with Australia’s deliberate official obstructionism to fossil fuel investment, particularly in coal, will all combine to kill off this economic lifeline whose current significance has been deliberately downplayed by those seeking environmental purity.
So while this year’s forecast iron ore exports at $119 billion takes the headlines, the fossil fuels of metallurgical coal at $58 billion, thermal coal at $62 billion, natural gas at $90 billion and oil at $15 billion are together officially forecast to be almost twice as big as iron ore’s export earnings this financial year and to make up, at $225 billion, half of Australia’s total minerals and resources export revenue. While, on their own, coal exports are earning more than iron ore, so effective has the campaign been against coal that not even the organisation that is supposed to represent it, the Minerals Council of Australia, was prepared to acknowledge coal’s primary role when it issued a press release last week welcoming the latest official resources and energy forecasts by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, ‘as a strong reminder of the of the economic benefits delivered by the mining industry’.
In noting the forecast that Australia’s resource and energy export earnings will reach a record $450 billion in the current financial year , the MCA correctly asserted that, ‘Australia is only in a position to take advantage of these [high international] prices due to increased production across a range of commodities. In the last decade, over $250 billion of investment in new mines, processing equipment and infrastructure has resulted in Australia’s bauxite mining increasing 41 per cent, iron ore production increasing 84 per cent and lithium output rising nearly 400 per cent’.
Not a word about the biggest single revenue earner, coal, which became the mineral that MCA pretends does not exist ever since an emissions-obsessed BHP threatened to quit the MCA if it continued to lobby for coal; note the absence of coal in MCA press releases in recent years.
But when MCA campaigns against pressure for rises in mining taxes and royalties, as it has this month, by boasting of mining’s record $43 billion contribution made to the Australian economy in 2020-21 (with 2021-22 sure to be even considerably larger), coal’s existence is re-discovered and its multi-billion-dollar share is included – without acknowledgement. And by asserting that the effective tax rate on Australian mining investment is already high relative to many jurisdictions in other mining countries, it reminds governments that while Australia needs to attract more investment in mining (but you must not mention coal!) in order to benefit from growing international demand, there is strong competition for investment from other mining countries.
However, at least coal has proselytisers on a state basis. As Stephen Galilee, CEO of the NSW Minerals Council pointedly told me, ‘Some people want to ignore the fact that our coal sector even exists This is despite coal continuing to be NSW’s most valuable export commodity, worth around $22.6 billion in exports, and delivering a record $4 billion in royalties to the NSW government this year alone’.
But what of the future, given the high demand for NSW coal that Galilee claims is some of the highest quality available anywhere in the world, producing more energy with less emissions than coal from elsewhere? ‘There are currently 17 potential coal-mining proposals in the planning and development pipeline in NSW representing a further $4.6 billion investment.’ But nearly all are proposals to expand or extend operational lives of NSW’s forty existing coal mines; greenfield projects face too many hurdles.
The same goes for Queensland, where my old parliamentary colleague Ian Macfarlane who runs the Queensland Resources Council, said the latest official forecasts ‘reinforce the significance of the resources industry to the budget bottom line. Coal exports underpin both the Australian and Queensland governments’ budgets’. But Macfarlane warned that governments, particularly Queensland’s, ‘can’t take future investment and future returns from coal exports for granted’ and that the Queensland government’s decision to hike up coal royalty taxes to the highest rates in the world has resulted in ‘large mining investors already rethinking their investments in Queensland’.
Is it time someone brought another lump of coal into parliament to remind MPs of its economic significance?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/business-robbery-etc-102/ ?
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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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Evelyn Rae, a 
Sahara Ray is undoubtedly a good-looking woman. Since she is Australian-born there is even a possibility that we may be distantly related
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