Australian Politics
One of Australia's most prestigious universities to crack down on students who claim to be Aboriginal without ANY proof
About time. Malcolm Smith has a graphic commentary on the matter. I put up a similar gallery in 2020
One of Australia's most prestigious universities has been praised for a crackdown on students 'rorting the system' by falsely claiming they are Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander.
The University of Sydney has drafted a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status Policy which means undergraduates can no longer simply sign a statutory declaration to prove they have a First Nations background.
Instead, the university may force students to supply a 'letter of identity' from a local Aboriginal Land Council and complete the Commonwealth Government's three-part identity test.
Radio 2GB host Ben Fordham praised the university for introducing the measures and called on others to follow suit.
'Other organisations should introduce stronger checks too, because what we're seeing is wrong and it's fraudulent,' he said.
The changes come after lobbying from Aboriginal land councils which allege there has been a significant increase in people applying for the benefits.
The latest Census results released in June 2021 found a 25 per cent increase in Australians identifying as Indigenous.
Indigenous groups said the way the current system is being abused is 'embarrassing'. 'It's open fraud. We say to academic students: can they pass a paper without citing a verified source?' Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Michael Mansell, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman, said poor white people were falsely identifying as Indigenous in a move he called 'identity seeking'. "They don't attribute any value to their identity as a poor white person in Tasmania, so they are searching to attach themselves to something that has greater value and I think many of those people believe that's in being Aboriginal,' he said following the release of the Census results.
Fordham said students abusing the system for places in courses or more affordable degrees was 'wrong and fraudulent'. 'They are attending schools, they're getting jobs and taking away opportunities from people who grew up Indigenous,' the 2GB host said.
'People are falsely identifying as Indigenous when they're not - there are Indigenous voices calling out a fraud, and we should be listening to them.
'Sydney Uni should be congratulated and other organisations should be following suit. Because it's wrong and it's fraudulent. Some of the so-called First Nations people receiving benefits are as genuine as a three dollar note.'
A spokesperson for Sydney University said its review was not motivated by fraudulently claimed scholarships, but the institution wanted to ensure its program was 'in line with current community expectations'.
'[The review] was initiated in response to multiple expressions of community concern, particularly in relation to the use of statutory declarations, rather than any specific concerns about fraud,' they said.
'We are seeking feedback and further input from members of our own and the broader community, representative organisations and other universities on this culturally significant matter.'
The university has an enrolment of 0.9 per cent Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander students, which is below the national sector average of 1.72 per cent.
Students however believe the change in policy could result in at-need Indigenous people missing out on places because of the red tape around new enrolment.
'This new policy is likely to disproportionately affect Indigenous people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds,' a group of Indigenous students opposing the change said in a statement.
'In some circumstances students may come from abusive families, have been in foster care or for other reasons not be able to get family documentation to undergo the process that has been proposed.'
**********************************************
Britain’s ‘strictest headmistress’ gets a nod in Australia
At the Michaela Community School near Wembley, in north-west London, there are no mobile phones, detentions are given for the slightest misdemeanour and a disused car park is the no-frills playground.
The high school is famed for being Britain’s strictest, and its headmistress, Katharine Birbalsingh, pulls no punches.“We have the same issues that you have in Australia: poor behaviour and poor learning outcomes, in particular for disadvantaged children,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Birbalsingh espouses traditional teaching and believes in military-style discipline: students walk the corridors in silence and get detentions for forgetting a pencil case, ruler or not turning in their homework. Times tables are taught by rote. Progressive education methods are shunned. Gratitude is practised and expectations are high.
“I’m not wandering up and down the corridors with whips and chains, obviously,” she says. “People say [discipline] is mean. I’d say what is mean is keeping a child illiterate and innumerate.”
Birbalsingh, who was recently appointed chair of the UK’s social mobility commission, was thrust into the spotlight after giving a speech at the 2010 Conservative Party conference where she warned the education system was “broken because it keeps poor children poor”. Four years later, after battling a barrage of detractors and critics, she opened the Michaela school in a dreary converted office block based in the disadvantaged borough of Brent.
The school’s explicit teaching methods, no-excuses behaviour policy and direct instruction style divide opinion. Tough-love behaviour systems (slouching in class is off-limits, toilet breaks are timed) has attracted controversy and critics.
However, it has also drawn praise from experts including Programme for International Student Assessment boss Andreas Schleicher who has described the school as creating “discipline created through structure, predictability and ownership. The children I met appeared happy and confident.” And its results place it well above average when compared to other similar schools, with graduates going off to universities including Oxford and the London School of Economics.
Birbalsingh, labelled Britain’s strictest headteacher, is firm that the school’s behaviour policies, including the silent corridor rule, minimise bullying and maximise teaching time.
“In schools with disadvantaged children sometimes you can find poor behaviour, and it can be constant disruption. As a disadvantaged child school is your one route out, your way of being able to be socially mobile. And if school lets you down, then that’s it.”
“We expect everyone to do their homework. If standards are lowered for certain children, who will inevitably be the disadvantaged children, then those children will never succeed.”
She rejects “progressive” teaching methods, where desks are grouped and students “lead the learning”. Teachers at Michaela have a single voice in the classroom and there is silence for reading, writing and practice.
“You have got to have lots of knowledge about something to think differently about it. When you teach children as a traditionalist you can still break up explanations and have a bit of turn to your partner work and class discussions.”
Tight rules around smartphones and social media are also critical, she says. At an education conference this year she told the audience: “If we genuinely want things to be fairer, and we want our disadvantaged children to be socially mobile, the best thing is getting them not to have a smartphone.”
Students are encouraged to hand over their mobile phones where they are put in a school safe for days, weeks or months.
Michaela, one of about 600 “free schools” in the UK, was singled out last month by NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet in a speech for the James Martin Institute as a school with a “rigorous culture of high expectations, high behavioural standards and back-to- basics teaching that [has] propelled disadvantaged students to extraordinary achievement. I want the same outcomes for our kids.”
“When students are held to reasonable standards of behaviour and respect – they perform better, and they are happier,” he said. It came after NSW announced a global recruitment search for a chief behaviour adviser, as schools across sectors battle worsening student conduct.
This month, Birbalsingh, who was a teacher for more than a decade in inner-London schools before starting Michaela, will appear at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on a discussion about building world-class schools.
She emphasises that her school, next to the jubilee and metropolitan line (the train can be heard rattling loudly in the bare-bones schoolyard), looks “quite simple”.
“We’ve not covered the walls with lots of pictures and things. People don’t realise, when I was a younger teacher, I spent all of my time decorating. I use my fire engine red paint for the border around my bulletin board and would put up lovely dark blue paper with a golden border around it and I would pay myself to create big laminated sheets with instructions.
“I should have as my time planning better lessons... I shouldn’t have been spending my time on that. And sometimes we all spend our time on things that don’t have as much impact.”
Oliver Lovell, a Melbourne-based maths teacher who visited the school last month, said while it was hard to overstate the positive impact of Michaela’s instruction on disadvantaged students, there were potential costs when a particular educational approach is passionately pursued.
“Some have argued that highly structured instructional methods reduce learner independence which has negative impacts when the structure is removed at university and beyond. I’m glad that we have a diversity of schools, including Michaela, so that we can begin to gain clearer answers to these important questions.”
Lovell said one of the most striking aspects to the school was seeing how the lack of student disruptions “frees up teacher time”.
*****************************************
Mobilise the church against Daniel Andrews!
Churches in Victoria must mobilise their congregations to vote Daniel Andrews out of office.
Sure the Liberals are hopeless, but at least they don’t hate Christians. The same cannot be said for the Andrews government.
Not only does the Victorian Labor government continually enact legislation that is an affront to Christian principles – whether on abortion, or euthanasia, or on LGBTQ+ issues – it does so with a snarkiness that conveys complete contempt for people of faith.
Contrary to lefty conspiracy theories about fundamentalist Christians conspiring to run the country, church leaders are loath to become involved in partisan politics. They fear doing so is a distraction from their core business of spreading the message of Jesus.
It’s true, Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. But he never said we should keep electing them to positions of power over us.
If Andrews’ hostility towards Christians is rewarded with re-election in November, it will only embolden his attacks on the church.
This week the Premier derided orthodox Christian teaching on human sexuality and sanctity of life as ‘appalling views’.
‘That kind of intolerance and hatred is just wrong,’ he said, joining a media pile-on to discredit Anglican Andrew Thorburn who had been appointed CEO of the Essendon Football Club.
Since when was it in the purview of a Premier to announce which existential views were acceptable, and which were not?
Who elected Daniel Andrews, god? He certainly governs like he is.
Last year, the Andrews government passed so-called conversion therapy laws which made it an offence for ministers to pray for a parishioner – even at their request – to resist homosexual urges.
Believe what you like about the morality or otherwise of homosexuality, when the state dictates what can and cannot talk to God about, it’s a sign that the state has not only invaded the church, but it is also drunk on the communion wine.
When a reporter asked this week if the resignation of Andrew Thorburn meant Christians could no longer take on public roles, Andrews snapped back:
‘No. They might want to think about whether they should be a bit more kind-hearted, a bit more inclusive.’
And then, addressing his faithful flock (by which I mean the media) he sermonised: ‘Aren’t we all God’s children?’
Oh please! Has a political leader ever invoked the name of God with less sincerity?
Okay, apart from Nancy Pelosi (the Democrat Speaker of the House once argued that it was her Christian faith that led her to support abortion).
If the media had stopped worshipping Andrews long enough to hold him to account, they would have asked if peaceful protesters shot with rubber bullets at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance were ‘God’s children’.
And what about the unvaccinated who were effectively banned from public life for two years. Were they ‘God’s children’? Or are God’s children only those with a government-issued vaccine certificate…
Essential workers were God’s children. Non-essential workers could go to hell.
After waxing lyrical about all God’s children – and having insisting he was ‘not here to be having a debate with faith leaders’ – the Pope, ahem, Premier took a moment to instruct Catholics on how to be Catholic.
‘I will just say this. I’m a Catholic. I send my kids to Catholic schools. My faith is important to me and guides me every day.’
Wait. What? Wasn’t Andrew Thorburn kicked out of AFL heaven for fear that his Christian faith would guide him as Essendon CEO?
Andrews continued: ‘Everyone should be treated equally. Everyone should be treated fairly and for me, that’s my Catholicism. That’s my faith.’
It is surely only a matter of time before Pope Francis summons Andrews to Rome to instruct clergy on the finer points of Christian doctrine.
It’s the vibe. It’s the Bible. It’s equality. It’s fairness. It’s the vibe and ah, no that’s it.
Andrews’ religion is a mile wide, and a half a millimetre deep.
So just to be clear, it wasn’t that Thorburn was wrong to be guided by religion, it’s just that Thorburn’s Christianity wasn’t the state-approved version as described by Chairman Dan and the Labor government.
We know that the Labor Party has a special fondness for China and we know that China has a special fondness for herding Christians into state-approved churches.
Christians know that Christians attend the underground ones, where there’s a bit more to their faith than the vibe coming from government headquarters.
I wonder if Andrew Thorburn feels like he was treated ‘equally’ and ‘fairly’. Daniel Andrews threw Thorburn to the lions. And now he’s trolling Christians. He needs to go before none of God’s children are free.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/mobilise-the-church-against-daniel-andrews/
************************************************The Australian War Memorial represents ALL of Australia's ethnicities, singling out none
I couldn’t agree more with the need to provide a place to acknowledge the conflicts between the original inhabitants of this continent and those who settled here from elsewhere in the late 18th Century. But the Australian War Memorial is not that place, and it is wrong to make it a political football.
When I was a child, I wanted to wear my great-great uncle’s slouch hat to a fancy dress ball at school. My grandfather was livid – how dare I disrespect the uniform! I have that same slouch hat today. It, and my own slouch hat, are succumbing to the inevitable forces of time.
Yet the sanctity of military service was not lost on four generations of my family who wore the uniform. While in recent times, that very sanctity appears to be an anachronism; a remnant of a time gone by, a lesson well-learnt through death and destruction, supported by the faith that such an atrocity, like the Great War, will never happen again.
Challenges to the idea of what it is to be Australian have somewhat turned against the work of Dr Bean, that eminent historian who is largely responsible for creating the ANZAC legend and manifesting it as that sacred place we call the Australian War Memorial.
Why sacred? Stand under the dome next to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Look at the stained glass and mosaics. Read the values inscribed therein. This space touches all those who enter in the way an old soldier explained to me:
‘All soldiers believe in God. When caught in an ambush, they all pray.’
While the ideal society eludes humanity, Australia has it pretty good. This is in no small part due to the sacrifices of our soldiers.
Last week, I was in Seoul at a seminar about the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. A Korean general said to me that he was most grateful for the sacrifice of 340 Australians who lost their lives while contributing to Korea’s freedom. He gestured to the skyline of Seoul’s magnificent development, humbly hoping that Korea’s peaceful democratic society was a worthy tribute to our digger’s sacrifice. It made me think deeply about those same sacrifices.
If you knew my paternal great-grandmother who worked in the munitions factory at St Marys (she was so happy when the Rising Sun badge was returned to the brim of the slouch hat) or sat a moment with Mrs Stewart (a second world war widow who lived nearby and once gave me a ‘shilling’ after she told me the story of her long-lost husband through her tears), you would know that war is blind.
It strikes all – regardless of social constructions – the devastation wreaks havoc on participants, victims, witnesses, and conscientious objectors alike. But you cannot always appease an aggressor. We can hope for a better world, but appeasement has never proven adequate. Sometimes you have to fight.
And fighting has its costs. The photographs of Mrs Stewart’s uniformed dead husband and brothers that adorned her mantel still haunt me to this day. I felt like Pip stumbling upon the wedding feast that never was. Mrs Stewart lost her life, back then, too.
But they were post-federation Australian soldiers. Not settlers. Not troopers. Not colonists. Australians. They were united in purpose.
When I met my maternal great-grandmother, we asked her where we’d come from. She said we were Cherokee Indian. Twenty years later, we learned that our maternal heritage is Kamilaroi. She had lived that lie to avoid being sent to the mission and carried it to her deathbed.
George, one of my grandfather’s mates who lived next door at the RSL veterans’ village in Cairns, was an Aboriginal digger and a veteran of New Guinea. He liked to paint. But he was an Australian digger through and through. (I daresay the antics he and my grandfather got up to provide sufficient empirical evidence to support that fact.)
And if you ever heard the glorious harmonies rise up when Charlie Company of 51FNQR let off steam, you’ll feel the generations of pride of the many Torres Strait Islanders like Sarpeye Josie who served to protect their home and continue to do so.
These are not stories about colonisers or the victims of colonisation. These are stories of Australians who served and continue to serve to protect their homeland. This spirit is what the Australian War Memorial commemorates.
Australians have experienced war and peace, prosperity and depression, recessions we had to have and circumstances we did not want. We have lived lies; we have faced up to truths. Or not – and there is plenty of scope for more truth-telling. But we should never forget that the Brisbane Line was a last-ditch attempt to protect these very privileges. That time is still in living memory for many among us.
We can criticise the government, we can criticise politicians, we can criticise our institutions. But such freedoms imply responsibilities to support that very liberty.
The problem stems from the habitual use of our individual freedoms to say whatever we like about politics as a safety valve, to let off steam. While doing so got us through the pandemic, in light of the changing nature of geopolitics, it has become a bad habit that we now take for granted and potentially to our own detriment.
The Australian War Memorial is a symbol of the social cohesion we so desperately need, rather than a battleground for the polarised community we appear to have become.
Our island home can only be breached if we open the gates from within.
The Australian War Memorial does not sanctify war. The lives of all Australians who served Australia make it holy. Not necessarily in a religious sense, but holy in that it honours the sacrifice given by those who believed in something more. Australians who believed in something more.
It is a mistake to allow one of the central symbols of Australia’s national identity to become embroiled in politics. I urge caution on all sides of politics should we neglect our duty by opening the gates and cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Let us learn from the past, let us embrace the good and the bad. Let us acknowledge colonial times and conflict appropriately, but somewhere else.
Let the sacrifice of the many First Nations diggers have their place in the history of this great federation where it rightfully belongs. Let the Australian War Memorial tell its stories. Let it tell the stories of my great-grandmothers, of Mrs Stewart, of George, of my old comrade-in-arms Sarpeye Josie, and all those who give up their freedoms so we may have ours.
And let all Australians hear them.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-australian-war-memorial-is-not-a-political-football/
************************************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)
***************************************
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
No comments:
Post a Comment