Australian Politics
Australia's Olympic uniforms were unveiled on Wednesday, with big changes
A number of hopefuls took to Clovelly Beach in Sydney to pose in their new outfits - which a global audience of over one billion people will see - while morning swimmers took to the waves.
The biggest twist of them all is the colouring of the uniform.
The classic green has made way for a trendy teal for the games in France
'We're on the fashion stage and we wanted to make our athletes proud, as well as putting a contemporary feel into the uniforms,' said Elisha Hopkinson, chief executive of APG & Co, owner of official uniform supplier Sportscraft.
'We have to use the green and gold. For us, the priority is making sure that the colours sing and feel contemporary.'
'Over the years, the shades of green have changed, and in Sydney 2000 we had the ochre blazers, but I think the green is beautiful,' added Olympic gold medallist and former senator Nova Peris. 'Just as important is having Indigenous identity and culture embedded in the uniforms.'
'It helps athletes understand that when you represent this country you don't just represent 250 years, you represent 65,000 years.'
The blazers will be worn over tank tops or white T-shirts, while stone chino shorts also feature teal and gold details.
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What to do with a queer Iranian illegal immigrant?
He is right to think he would be hanged if he returned to Iran but the "refoulement" regulation says you cannot send him to any other place where he might be persecuted. That rules out the Muslim world and Africa. So where do you send him? Who else would want a queer Iranian?
And you cannot give him permission to live in Australia as both major parties have a policy that illegal arrivals will not be resettled. And any wavering on that policy would restart the flow of parasitical Muslim illegals
An Iranian asylum seeker's indefinite detention is not punitive, Australia's solicitor-general has argued, because he would be freed if he co-operated with attempts to deport him to his home country, despite his fears of the death penalty.
The detained 37-year-old man, known as ASF17, has taken his legal bid for freedom to the High Court in a case that could determine the fates of hundreds of immigrants and government policy.
Authorities have attempted to deport him to Iran every six months since 2018, when his asylum seeker visa was refused.
But as a bisexual man, ASF17 could face the death penalty upon return.
As a result, he has refused to co-operate and Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue KC says this means his detention is not punitive.
"Where a person can be removed with their co-operation, that can't be characterised as punitive, whether or not the reason for non-co-operation was a genuine fear of harm," he told the court on Wednesday.
ASF17 had previously urged the government to remove him to any country other than Iran.
"Take me back to where you picked me up in the high seas, even take me to Gaza," the asylum seeker said during a Federal Court cross-examination, his lawyers recalled on Wednesday.
"I have a better chance there of not being killed than if you take me to Iran."
Dr Donaghue argued refugee applicants can genuinely fear what may happen on return to their home countries, but this may not be "objectively well-founded".
The government had investigated the possibility of deportation to a third country, but this could inflame diplomatic tensions or lead to the risk of refoulement, Dr Donaghue said.
ASF17's barrister Lisa De Ferrari SC said without being offered other deportation options, her client remained indefinitely detained.
"They've straitjacketed themselves and now they're turning the table on my client, saying 'you've been very unreasonable by not helping us get you to Iran'.
"How can it not be punitive (when) there's never any end point?"
His case springs from a November High Court ruling, which found it was unlawful to indefinitely detain people with no prospect of deportation. About 150 immigration detainees were released as a result.
The appellant wants this expanded to cover people who refuse to co-operate with authorities on their deportation.
The Federal Circuit Court previously ruled the continued immigration detention of a Baha'i man from Iran was unlawful and he was immediately released.
"This is another case that says, whatever has been happening to people who are vulnerable and have come to Australia for protection, they cannot be indefinitely detained," his lawyer Alison Battisson told AAP.
"It creates a precedent that somebody has non-refoulement obligations owed to them."
Baha'is are a persecuted religious minority in Iran and Australia has signed international human rights treaties which include the principle of non-refoulement, meaning refugees cannot be sent back to countries where they face persecution.
ASF17, who is not Baha'i, first arrived on Australian shores by boat in 2013 and has been in detention for a decade.
There are about 200 other people in a similar situation, and Human Rights Law Centre legal director Sanmati Verma said the government was using indefinite detention as a way to "coerce people into returning to danger".
In an attempt to pre-empt ASF17's hearing, the government tried to ram through laws to prevent a release of people from immigration detention.
Under the proposed laws, which could affect more than 4000 people, those who refuse to co-operate with the government over their deportation could spend up to five years in prison.
The legislation would also give the home affairs minister power to ban visa classes of relatives of asylum seekers who come from blacklisted countries that do not accept deportees.
But it was blocked in parliament and sent to a senate inquiry.
The High Court has adjourned and is yet to decide when it will hand down its decision.
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Australia has reached a new immigration milestone with more than 100,000 foreigners arriving in just one month for the first time ever
The landmark total is eight times the number of new homes approved and is set to further fuel the worsening housing crisis.
February's net intake of permanent and long-term arrivals was 105,460 - almost double January's 55,330 level, new Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.
This occurred as a large number of international students moved to Australia for the first semester of the university year.
Australia's capital cities also have rental vacancy rates under one per cent as construction activity fails to keep pace with booming population growth.
The 12,520 houses, apartments and government units approved in February was only one-eighth the monthly net immigration arrival figure, with capital city rents surging by double-digit percentage figures during the past year.
Institute of Public Affairs deputy executive director Daniel Wild said this was a recipe for a housing crisis. 'Australia's migration intake remains out of control, with promises to "normalise" arrivals in tatters,' he said. 'Combined with plummeting housing construction approvals, Australia is being set up for a disaster.'
Treasury's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook forecast Australia's annual net overseas migration figure would moderate to 375,000 in the 2023-24 financial year.
But that is hardly happening, with 498,270 net arrivals in the year to February, covering permanent skilled migrants and long-term arrivals like international students.
A record 548,800 migrants arrived in the year to September, with the foreign influx making up 83.2 per cent of Australia's population increase.
The population growth pace of 2.5 per cent, with births included, was the fastest since 1952.
Mr Wild said high immigration was locking Australians out of the housing market.
'The data proves that the federal government’s unplanned mass migration program is unsustainable,' he said.
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Another attack on housing
It had to happen in Victoria. With property investors already hit with a range of new land taxes from the state government, a shire council in the prosperous Mornington Peninsula region has now broken ranks with a plan for a levy on new property builds.
Awash with retirees, holiday homes and a rising population of one-time CBD workers who now operate from home – the expensive region, just 40km south of Melbourne, has little room for low-income housing.
Earlier this week the Mornington Peninsula Shire, which covers wealthy enclaves including Portseas, Sorrento and Flinders, put forward a plan to impose a social housing levy of 3.3 per cent on all new developments.
Despite recent activity, Victoria continues to have the lowest proportion of total housing stock allocated to social housing in the country.
As a new property tax, the Mornington move could become a test case – it has the potential to cover everyone from big time developers to “mums and dads” who want to build a home for themselves.
Cate Bakos, the director of the Property Investment Professionals Association, says: “This is a dangerous play, it is out of the blue and we have seen no consultation on it. Social housing needs to be funded, but not by a narrow segment of the population.
“This region became much more expensive after the pandemic – but a tax like this ignores the ‘permanents’ in the district who want to live in their home area.”
The levy proposal – which would add around $35,000 on average to new homes – is now out for community consultation.
The move will be watched closely by councils across Australia, especially in popular sea-change districts where social and low-income housing is an acute issue. The Queensland state government has already made a short-lived attempt to introduce new property taxes in 2022.
Across Victoria weak returns and high taxes have combined to offer mounting evidence that investors are already quitting the regional market.
A survey from the PIPA late last year of more than 1700 investors found the exodus was particularly pronounced in Melbourne, where a quarter of property investors who responded sold at least one rental home in the past year.
Melbourne is the weakest performing of the larger cities with price gains of just 11 per cent since 2020, against double that return in Sydney.
More broadly, the city is tracking at just one-third of the 33 per cent price increase seen nationwide since mid-2020, according to research group CoreLogic.
Just a year ago, the Victorian government put the property sector firmly on the front line when the state budget introduced taxes on property development windfalls and short-term rentals where an “Airbnb tax” was introduced at 7.5 per cent of annual revenue.
As The Australian reported at the time: “Just as the property sector was trying to digest these changes, Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas announced a few more tax moves for good measure. In October, the government announced it would widen a vacant residential land tax (that included holiday homes) from a handful of inner-city suburbs to include the entire state.”
The Mornington proposal will ultimately need to be signed off the Victorian state government.
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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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