Why Trump prevailed despite the cloud of sexual assault accusations over him

I thought I would put up the diatribe below as vivid evidence of how little Leftists understand and how one-eyed feminists are.  The author is Jenna Price, a long-time Australian Leftist journalist and academic.  Her publicity picture is below. 

Right from the start you can see that she is not a normal woman.  Active feminists rarely are.  What normal woman would allow a publicity shot of herself to go forward showing her with such messy hair?  She has no pride in her appearance at all, most unusual in normal women.  If she wants to represent women generally, she has certainly chosen a strange way to go about it.



But her hair is only a most incidental matter. It just enables her to refer to me as a patriarchal, sexist, xenophobic, racist, pedophilic member of the Ku Kux Klan -- and other such hate-speech.  The important thing is what she says.

And what she says is a classic exhibit of how Leftists never care about the full picture.  They have simplistic, narrow-focused explanations of everything. To read her, you would have to think -- and many Leftists do think it -- that Trump's attitude to women was important to the voters.  In fact, Trump voters  were quite clearly uninfluenced by it.  What does that mean?  Does it mean that Americans as a whole are unenlightened sexist pigs who delight in female suffering and inequality?  That is what Ms Price would have you think.

In fact, as many interviews with Trump voters show, most of them thought his attitude to women was bad but of incidental importance.  Astounding though it is to feminists, many Americans, including female ones, don't see feminist issues as all that important.  They have -- surprise, surprise! -- other political issues in mind that they think are far more important.  But reading Ms Price you would get no inkling of that. 

You would never know that most Americans, including Bill, are quite uninterested in what Hillary has betwen her legs.  Her ascent to to the presidency or not would prove nothing about glass ceilings.  They have been shattered long ago on the world scene.  Note the following female heads of government in recent decades:  Indira Gandhi, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Sheikh Hasina, Benazir Bhutto, Yulia Tymoshenko, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Cristina Kirchner, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Helen Clark, Julia Gillard, Ameenah Gurib, Park Geun-hye, Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May. And stodgy old Britain has had TWO female heads of government. Capable women CAN rise to the very top. Hatshepsut, Sobekneferu and Boadicea proved that long ago but you can't expect feminists to know any history.

So let me tell Ms Price and her ilk why feminist concerns were ignored by Trump voters.  Leftists claim that they voted for Mr Trump because they were ignorant snaggle-toothed, mouth breathing hillbillies who just hated everybody, including women.  But all the analyses of Trump support show the opposite -- that his vote was up among Hispanics and blacks compared with previous elections, that his vote among women was down only a little from the usual rough 50/50 split and that all social classes were well represented among his supporters.

So if demographics cannot explain the Trump vote, what can?  It's extremely simple.  Trump was the only one who offered liberation from Leftist oppression.  Those wonderful "progressive" changes that Obama and Hillary were offering could only be achieved by making most Americans do things that they were strongly disinclined to do -- make mainstream Americans love rampant homosexuals, Muslim Jihadis, black criminals and low-IQ Hispanic illegal immigrants -- etc.

Leftists are tyrants.  They think it is all in a good cause but it is still tyranny and those tyrannized don't like it. 

Had Leftists been less one-eyed in their policies towards minorities, they could still have accomplished much without antagonizing the majority. They could for instance have improved rights and services for homosexuals without pushing it all the way to a demand for homosexual marriage. Homosexual marriage did virtually nothing for homosexuals that they did not have already -- through civil partnerships, for instance.  But it did greatly antagonize believing Christians who know perfectly well what their Bible says about homosexuals.

So THAT is why so many voted for Trump. They see him as their liberator.  All other concerns faded into insignificance compared with the chance to throw off tyranny


There are still different rules for men and women.

Rules which make it possible for men to win and for women to lose. Rules which make it possible for a man to become president but not a woman.

Here are the rules for men. If you seek higher office, your history can include incitement of violence and abuse towards women. Your history can include the kind of racism and bigotry which echoes Hitler's rise to power. Your history will include running businesses which are still refusing to pay those who worked for you.

You can be as post-fact and as post-truth as you like because the population will not judge you. Your history can include a rejection of equal rights for the LGBTQI community. You can even intersect a couple of those, by demeaning Ghazala Khan, the mother whose son died fighting for the US.

Yet no one has put it better than Amelia Paxman, a 27-year-old documentary film maker in Queensland, who tweeted yesterday: "Tell me again how rape and sexual assault accusations will ruin a man's career".

Because, much more terrifying than electing Trump as president, more serious than that, is the permission this gives to treat women in a particular way, as s**** and w*****, as Miss Piggy and Miss Housekeeping, as commodities.

This was not the traditional political confrontation, of right versus left, or even of Right versus Left. This was about a decent flawed woman versus an indecent highly flawed man, a man who could tap into all the anxieties felt by those whose lives are changing around them.

We knew that Clinton's mistakes were made in the course of her career as a public servant, political transactions taking place in a political arena. Trump, on the other hand, hates people who are not like him. Women, blacks, Hispanics, gays and lesbians. And when he dismantles America's fledgling attempt at universal healthcare, he will target the sick, the elderly and those living with a disability.

But right now, Trump's target is women. They are the majority, and they are also deeply divided. For weeks we heard that evangelical and conservative women would vote for Clinton yet the figures tell us that many of those women voted for Trump. Maybe they thought violence and abuse was better than a woman who supported Roe v Wade.

Clinton's womanhood has always been considered fair game for public commentary, considered either unwomanly or not a good enough woman. Her steely ambition to reach the top job is in stark contrast to the expectation that women are compliant and accommodating. At the same she has been reviled for being too accommodating, too Stand By Your Man, shamed for not leaving her philandering husband.

Clinton shows us that women can never get it right. If women want to succeed we are coldly ambitious. You have trouble warming to us. We aren't authentic. Sometimes, we are shameless s**** and w*****, sometimes we asked for it. Sometimes we didn't say no loudly enough, often enough.

And yesterday for men, some men, many men, the defeat of Hillary Clinton was their dream come true, the ever-lasting buck's night, the moment in time when big swinging d**** proudly emerged to celebrate the death of another ambitious woman's dreams.

Powerful men are p****-grabbers yet powerful women p****-whip their men. This is still the world in which we live. There are different rules and different ways in which women are held accountable. Men have excuses, women are constructed as evil.

When Clinton won the nomination – as my women friends told me it would be all right, that I was over thinking things, that times had changed – I did what I always do: I worried. Worried that the US was not ready for a woman to lead; and that entrenched sexism and misogyny would destroy Hillary Clinton in the same way it had destroyed women before her.

Hillary parties? I wrote about them but I didn't go to any (was that it? Should I have gone? Please excuse my magical thinking).

And now it's done and so is she, the most qualified person ever to have stood for president.

When Amelia Paxman asks, "Tell me again how rape and sexual assault accusations will ruin a man's career" I can only reply that it won't. And it may not ever.

I read this from Clinton this morning: "To the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable & powerful & deserving of every chance to achieve your dreams."

And those of you sitting on the sidelines, lips pursed, commenting about how this isn't about sexism and misogyny, race or class, please f*** off.

Or get off your behinds and join with people who want change; women's groups, human rights groups, environmental groups, anti-racism groups, unions. Yes, unions. Join with people who want your daughters and your sons to live in a world where even the poor, the black, the disenfranchised, hell yes, even the women, have a chance to shape a better world. Stop being divided and defeated. Build unbreakable coalitions for the good of the many. Please, please, as so many have said before me, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

And in the meantime, never tell me to be grateful – and to appreciate – how far women have come. We have not.

SOURCE





Another 180 degree turn

Now Waleed Aly PRAISES Trump! The Project host says The Donald's victory in US election was not just due to 'an alliance of racist and sexist people' - but because he LISTENED

Television personality Waleed Aly has praised Donald Trump after the US businessman and former reality TV star won the presidential election.

Speaking from New York City on Thursday night, The Project's host claimed Mr Trump won the election because he 'listened' to people.

The 38-year-old, who has been in the US covering the election, interviewed rallygoers in the days leading up to the shock result.

'We went to the Trump rally. And yeah, I heard a lot of really crazy things at that rally but I also heard a lot of really normal things,' Aly revealed.

'I spoke to people who lost their businesses and couldn't find a way out. I spoke to people who didn't particularly like Trump but thought he was the only one listening.

'These are white working class states and they think no-one is listening.'

During the segment on Channel 10, Aly admitted he had questioned 'how can someone overtly sexist and racist' receive the most votes.  'That's pretty much the question I had before I got here,' Aly said.

'But the thing is, it's different once you are here. The Trump phenomenon isn't easy to understand but it's really easy to misunderstand.

'I think the easiest mistake to make would be to think that this is just an alliance between racist and sexist people. 'But that's not why he won the election.'

He insisted the nation had a different take on voting - and not because they were 'desperately looking for a misogynist racist to lead them'.

After interviewing locals, Aly said the Republican won simply because he promised to make changes after listening - and made their voices heard.

'He won on class, not because he is a racist or misogynist,' he said.

'They [voters] decided the system was screwing them and they voted for Trump to destroy it. Personally, I think it might all end in tears.'

But despite the shock election result, Aly called on Australians to take the newly elected US president 'seriously'.

'I think the real thing we need to take home is equality really matters, like it's serious but we hardly ever talk about it in Australian politics but we need to.

'I mean, Trump at least looked like he was listening and in the end, turns out, that counted for everything.

'Here in America, they have this saying about Trump voters that they don't take him literally, but they do take him seriously. I think we need to, too.'

SOURCE






US hints at Nauru refugee resettlement deal

This will probably die on the vine now

The US has strongly hinted that it has been in discussions with Australia about the possible resettlement of refugees from Nauru to the US.

The Australian last week revealed that refugees on Manus Island and Nauru will be offered permanent new homes in a handful of third countries, which could include northern hemisphere countries such as the US and Canada, as part of a multilateral resettlement deal the Turnbull government hopes to announce by the end of the year.

The resettlement deal would enable it to drastically downsize the processing centres on Manus and Nauru by offering permanent settlement to most of the 1800-odd recognised refugees on Manus and Nauru.

Sources told The Australian the government was in the final ­stages of negotiating the deals, of which several are understood to be in the northern hemisphere, suggesting the US or Canada may be being considered.

In response to questions about whether Australia and the US had held discussions over the issue of refugees on Nauru, the US State Department’s East Asian and ­Pacific Affairs Bureau spokeswoman Connie Paik appeared to confirm that talks had taken place.

In a carefully worded statement, Ms Paik said: “We are in regular contact with Australia and other countries that support ­humanitarian organisations and accept refugees for resettlement on a number of refugee-related ­issues. We encourage all countries to help create brighter futures for some of the world’s most vulnerable people by offering resettlement programs and alternative legal pathways for admission.

“The US has been a leader both in providing resettlement opportunities for refugees and in galvanising others to do so. For its part, the US has ­increased the number of refugees resettled in the US from 70,000 in FY 2015 to 85,000 in FY 2016 and to 110,000 in FY 2017, a more than 50 per cent increase over two years.”

Last Saturday, Malcolm Turnbull revealed that the Coalition government would introduce legislation to permanently bar refugees pro­cessed on Nauru and Manus Island from ever obtaining an Australian visa unless they first gained the immigration minister’s explicit permission.

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Excessive force systemic at Ballarat: IBAC

Ballarat police who stripped a drunk, off-duty officer half naked while she was in custody and kicked and stomped on the vulnerable woman could be charged over the incident.

The January 2015 matter was been directed to the Director of Public Prosecutions after Victoria's anti-corruption watchdog found it was just one example of excessive force at the Ballarat station outlined in a report tabled in state parliament on Thursday.

IBAC commissioner Stephen O'Bryan QC made four recommendations, including human rights training for officers.

He also suggested the government should consider decriminalising public drunkenness, bringing it into line with every state but Queensland.

Both the government and Victoria Police have baulked at the prospect of decriminalising public drunkenness, saying the laws are there to protect the community and the drunk person themselves.

But acting deputy commissioner Luke Cornelius said Victoria Police would accept the four recommendations and were waiting on the DPP to decide whether charges should be laid.

"It is clear to us that our high standards and expectations in treating citizens with dignity and respect certainly fell short," Mr Cornelius told reporters.

The inquiry was launched after IBAC received CCTV footage from Victoria Police showing the 51-year-old woman being kicked, dragged, stripped and stomped on in police cells.

The officers involved did not know at the time that the woman, who had been arrested for public drunkenness, was a serving police officer on leave for medical reasons.

The woman at the centre of an investigation into shocking police brutality allegations is planning to sue the force. © Ten News The woman at the centre of an investigation into shocking police brutality allegations is planning to sue the force. At IBAC hearings in Ballarat in May, one of the officers involved denied kicking the drunk woman and insisted she only "touched" her with her foot to calm her down and another said the struggle ensued when the woman tried to escape the cell.

All officers involved have returned to work on reduced workloads.

The inquiry also investigated three other complaints of excessive use of force at Ballarat by one officer who later received a promotion to the rank of sergeant.

The officer dragged a woman into an interview room in 2010 and held two women in a choke hold when they refused to leave the station in 2009 - actions which he later admitted to IBAC were "entirely inappropriate".

The public hearings were told Ballarat station attracted more than three times the average number of assault complaints against officers.

Police Minister Lisa Neville said a line had definitely been crossed at Ballarat.

"There is no room in Victoria Police for these sorts of behaviours," she said.

SOURCE

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

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull calls to congratulate US President-elect Donald Trump

I think the election of Trump is likely to put some spine into Turnbull.  He has already started to move Rightwards and the Trump victory legitimates that.  It shows that Rightist positions can be popular

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has described US President-elect Donald Trump as a deal maker and pragmatist, welcoming early discussions on the Asia-Pacific region, trade and the fight against Islamic State.

Mr Turnbull phoned the Republican businessman from Parliament House on Thursday morning, with the 15-minute discussion coming amid calls from a number of world leaders congratulating Mr Trump after his shock victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The two discussed close historic ties between Australia and the US, agreeing to continue to build on the key alliance after Mr Trump takes office on January 20.

"It was a very warm discussion," Mr Turnbull said. "I suppose as both being businessmen who found our way into politics, somewhat later in life, we come to the problems of our own nations and indeed world problems with a pragmatic approach.

"Mr Trump is a deal maker. He is a businessman, a deal maker and he will, I have no doubt, view the world in a very practical and pragmatic way."

Mr Turnbull said the phone call was constructive, with the service of Australian men and women alongside the US in overseas conflicts discussed and with Mr Trump acknowledging the enormous importance of Australia fighting in every major conflict since World War I.

Security and trade in the Asia-Pacific region was also discussed. The pair agreed that a continued US presence in the region was important to international security, and spoke about the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

The TPP deal is probably dead, despite support from President Barack Obama and the Australian government.

"Most importantly, we absolutely agreed on the vital importance of our strong alliance," Mr Turnbull said.

"Mr Trump recognises the solidarity that Australia has shown the United States and the United States has shown Australia over 98 years, during which we have fought side-by-side with the United States in every major conflict."

Mr Turnbull and Mr Trump noted the shared role of Australia and the US in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and Mr Trump said he would welcome more talks about the fight against international terrorism and other issues in the relationship.

SOURCE






Donald Trump's victory is proof people have had enough of the "chardonnay set", Pauline Hanson says

The One Nation leader, who rode her own populist wave back to Canberra in the July federal election, says disenchanted voters want their voices to be heard.

"People around the world are saying 'we've had enough with the major political parties, with the establishment, with the elites, with the chardonnay set'," she told Sky News.

Conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi was also gleeful after Mr Trump's elevation to president elect. "What a wonderful morning," he tweeted.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said he respected the outcome of the US election but didn't agree with it. He told ABC Radio he doesn't regret calling Mr Trump a "repulsive creep".

Labor defence spokesman Richard Marles said the federal government needed to use every avenue in its diplomatic arsenal to talk to the presidential transition team about Australia's issues in the region. "(A US) presence in east Asia is important," he told Sky News.

Senator Bernardi, who is on a parliamentary secondment to the United Nations in New York, is expecting big things from a new president who will have Republican control of congress.

"I think the best days of the United States are ahead of it if the Trump campaign is allowed to keep its promises," he said.

Senator Hanson said Australian politicians needed to heed the message of Trump's victory and Brexit, that people want their own backyards looked after first.

"I think a lot of them have lost touch with the grassroots Australians and the rural areas," Senator Hanson told the Seven Network.

SOURCE






Government Facebook ads tell migrant Australians to deter family members from arriving illegally

What a lot of whining!  The government does its best to target its messages to the right people but no targeting is perfect

Second and third-generation Australians say they are shocked to have been targeted by Federal Government Facebook advertisements encouraging them to tell their relatives not to come to Australia illegally.

"Obviously they're targeting me for some particular reason even though I live in Australia, I've been born in Australia, I don't know anyone who's looking to arrive in Australia by boat," said Johnny Lieu, whose parents migrated from Vietnam decades ago.

"So I'm not really sure what the point is of these advertisements except to make me feel uneasy."

Mr Lieu said he was surprised when he saw the taxpayer-funded, Australian Border Force advertisement in Vietnamese which translates to 'Never, no way — Australia will not loosen its tough border rules'.

He said he had listed Vietnamese as a language he speaks on Facebook.

"It was definitely a bit shocking and surprising to say the least, I guess I know who those advertisements are targeted to and to see them targeted at me, I was a little taken aback," he said.

"I'm surprised that the Australian Government would see me in their sights."

Aitak Salempour and her family arrived from Iran when she was one-year-old, and she is an Australian citizen.

She was targeted by the advertisements in Farsi.  "Maybe because I've put [on Facebook] my place of birth which is in Iran ... I have no idea why they would have chosen me who is already an Australian citizen living here," she said.  "I was confused and it was confronting, they've missed their target completely.

"I would not send that message on, I'm not the right kind of person."

Facebook allows users to target advertisements based on a number of factors including interests, behaviours, connections, and languages.

The Government advertisements are a part of an Operation Sovereign Borders campaign that appears in a number of languages including Bengali, Burmese, Hindi, and Tamil.

"The campaign is targeted at source and transit countries for people smuggling activity, as well as diaspora communities in Australia," an Immigration and Border Protection Department spokesman said.

The department said the ads were designed to ensure different ethnic communities were informed about Australia's border protection policies which aim to stop illegal maritime arrivals, and to encourage them to share the information with people offshore.

"Evaluation research consistently shows that family and friends are the primary information source for people in Australia and overseas,"the spokesman said.

But Ms Salempour said she was the wrong audience.   "If my relatives were to come here they wouldn't be applying as a refugee, they'd be applying as a skilled migrant or something," Ms Salempour said.

The Federal Government is due to introduce legislation this week that bans refugees and asylum seekers who have tried to reach Australia by boat from mid-July 2013 from ever coming here.

SOURCE






Queensland police officer who pulled gun on couple in outback awaits magistrate's ruling

A Brisbane magistrate has reserved his decision in the case of a police officer who pulled a gun on a couple for speeding along an outback Queensland highway in May last year.

Senior Constable Stephen Flanagan was charged with assault and deprivation of liberty after the couple lodged a complaint over the ordeal.

Flanagan's own dash-cam recorded most of the incident, where he is seen honking at the driver, before getting out of the car and pointing his pistol while swearing at the couple.

He is then filmed handcuffing the driver on the side of the highway, before issuing him with a speeding ticket.

The summary trial began yesterday and heard from three witnesses including Flanagan, driver Lee Povey and his partner Anna Lisa Cruse.

'Put you ******* hands in the air'

Mr Povey told the court he was confused at why a police car was following him without any lights and sirens.

He said when he eventually pulled over, he saw the police officer walking towards his vehicle window pointing a pistol and swearing.

"First up, he said, 'Put your ******* hands up in the air,'" Mr Povey said.

Mr Povey said he could feel the gun being pushed into his back while he was being handcuffed outside the car, a claim Flanagan told the court was unlikely.

Several videos of the incident were tendered to the court, including Flanagan's dash-cam and a recording Ms Cruse made on her smartphone.

Officer not a rogue lunatic: defence

In his final submissions, Flanagan's defence lawyer Stephen Zillman said the officer thought the car was stolen and the driver may have had a firearm, so he acted quickly.

"From what we've seen and heard on video, it's clear, he was very, very, highly stressed," he said. "It's not the case of some rogue lunatic police officer simply pulling pistols out, pulling them at someone who's been speeding."

The matter has been adjourned until December 7 and Flanagan's bail has been extended.

SOURCE

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

They really love the Donald! Three Australians travel all the way to NEW YORK to show their support for him

Said 'horror, repulsion and disgust' at Clinton swayed their decision

It may be the American election - but it seems the whole world has an opinion on who should become the next President.

And three Australians even went so far as to travel to New York in order to make their feelings known.  Sporting 'Make America Great Again' caps and Donald Trump badges, the trio were spotted in Times Square stumping for the Republican candidate.

Interviewed by 9 News' Tom Steinfort, the group said they had traveled to be part in a 'once in a lifetime event'.

Asked why he is backing Trump, one man responded: 'Horror, repulsion, disgust - there's a lot more I could throw in there as well. '"Make America great again", absolutely. The ripples will make their way out to Australia.'

Another man added: 'It is a once in a lifetime event. We are never going to see another Donald Trump again.'

SOURCE





QUT students to pursue defamation suit against Gillian Triggs

About time for someone to call the old bag to account. She'sw just a Leftist bigot who doesn't care what damage she does

Gillian Triggs is under renewed fire and facing a defamation ­action from Queensland University of Technology students who accused her yesterday of making false and damaging statements implying they and their Facebook posts were racist.

The Human Rights Commission president was asked by the students’ barrister Tony Morris QC yesterday to publish a retraction and apology, make no further “defamatory” comments about the students, and pay damages and costs. The warning to Professor Triggs that she faces being sued comes after she told Fairfax Media and the ABC’s 7.30 that the human rights body had acted in “good faith” and in consultation with the students during a 14-month investigation into Facebook posts from May 2013.

QUT staffer Cindy Prior had named seven students in May 2014 in her complaint to the ­commission of racial hatred under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act over posts they wrote after being told they could not use an indigenous-only computer lab at QUT. In one post, Alex Wood said: “QUT stopping segregation with segregation?”

The claims by Professor Triggs are contradicted by the commission’s internal documents and its acknowledgment in legal letters that it did not tell the students at any stage that they were the ­subject of a complaint for the 14 months from its lodgement by Ms Prior to soon before it was finalised by the rights body.

Internal documents obtained under Freedom of Information show the commission never advised the students or engaged them in any way, despite official guidelines requiring such disclosures to people accused of racial vilification. That was left to QUT and meant the students were not made aware until late July last year, three business day before the commission ran a conciliation conference with Ms Prior.

The students accuse the commission of breaching their human rights by not telling them of the complaint until it was too late to prepare, obtain legal advice and potentially prevent it being escalated to the Federal Circuit Court as a $250,000 damages claim. The claim was thrown out last week, 3½ years after the Facebook posts.

“Much of what you said was knowingly and demonstrably false,” Mr Morris wrote yesterday in a defamation “concerns notice” to Professor Triggs about her ­interview on the ABC’s 7.30 with Leigh Sales.

“You said ‘what we did was do what we normally do which is ­investigate the facts, get a sense of what each of the parties is saying, and then attempt to conciliate the matter’. There was no investigation. There was no attempt to ‘get a sense of what each of the parties is saying’. The truth is that the (commission) sat on the complaint for 14 months, without contacting any of the students or even telling them that a complaint had been made against them.

Only two of the seven students were present at the purported ‘conciliation conference’, and those two students had no more than three business days’ notice to attend.

“You said ‘for 14 months or at least for 12 of those months we ­believed that in good faith we were going to get a conciliation’. It is impossible that the (AHRC) held any such belief — let alone that it held such a belief in ‘good faith’ — when it had not even made contact with (the ­students).”

Mr Morris said Professor Triggs defamed the students when she said on 7.30 that while some cases were vexatious or frivolous, “this was one that had a level of substance”. “The complaints were ones that attracted a certain measure of concern about the nature of the comments that were made,” she said. “I won’t repeat the language but it was worrying and troubling.”

He said her statement meant the students wrote Facebook posts that were “so abhorrently racist that it could not with propriety or dignity be repeated on a mid-­evening television program run by the national broadcaster”. Mr Morris said the claim was “palpably false” and that there was no basis for the accusation his clients used language of such a racist character that she felt it unseemly to repeat on air.

The letter asks Professor Triggs to pay compensation and costs “given that you explicitly claimed on two occasions to be speaking ‘in good faith’, even though you either knew that what you were saying was untrue, or spoke with reckless indifference to the truth or falsity of your remarks”.

One of the students, Calum Thwaites, told The Australian: “I never received one piece of correspondence from the commission. There is absolutely no truth in what she said about that (on Monday night) on 7.30 and to Fairfax Media. She was claiming the students were being consulted from the start by the commission and that there was this ‘good faith’ dialogue but that is completely false.”

The documents include a contemporaneous diary note by a commission officer managing the complaint, showing that less than a week before the conciliation conference she told QUT’s solicitor “it would not be possible to postpone” it; that QUT should have contacted the students; and that “if a student is notified and wants to attend next week, they will have to make time”.

Professor Triggs did not ­respond to a request for comment.

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Turnbull moving Right

He has gone back to the Liberals’ good old days of being tough on asylum seekers, tough on attempts to limit free speech, tough on bids to change the social order through same-sex-marriage.

In the process, Mr Turnbull has consciously diluted personal positions that had set him apart from predecessor Tony Abbott and elevated his standing as the leader the Liberals needed.

The Prime Minister has done little to disguise the crunching noise as he slams policy into reverse gear.

His salvation is the political dividends have been quick to appear.

An Essential poll released late yesterday showed news of the Government’s plan to ban from Australia for life anyone in Manus and Nauru detention sites had been absorbed by voters.

Essential found 56 per cent of voters backed the move, including a thumping 76 per cent of Coalition voters and a significant 52 per cent of Labor supporters.

The base was back, and a few Labor folk had come with them.

Then there was the creation of a parliamentary inquiry into the Racial Discrimination Act and its notorious and often misinterpreted sections 18c and 18d, combined with what some Coalition MPs would see as an opportunity to tame the Human Rights Commission.

It was billed by Attorney-General George Brandis as “an inquiry into

free speech” — which it isn’t. Quite specifically it is about Part 11A of the Racial Discrimination Act , which includes 18c and 18d, and the Human Rights Commission processing of RDA actions.

The sub-topic of whether these elements “impose unreasonable restrictions on freedom of speech” was added for show. And it paid off.

Former Liberal minister and current conservative grump Eric Abetz was most satisfied.

“Very good result,” Senator Abetz, whose stewardship of the Tasmanian Liberal Party saw it lose all House of Representatives seats on July 2, told 2GB yesterday. “I think it’s something that the Australian people want to see.

“One of the precious elements of our democratic fabric is freedom of speech.”

In fact, the RDA had barely rated as a topic outside a clutch of commentators, sources in all parties report.

And the Prime Minister himself as recently as August 31 said the Government had no plans to change 18c, and “we have other more pressing, much more pressing priorities to address”.

But to Mr Turnbull the critical topic is not what he once said, but what a former Labor leader once said.

“Over the last few days, we have heard disturbing echoes of the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. We’ve obviously heard him on Twitter and on the OpEd pages,” he said, attempting to pummel Bill Shorten with the asylum seeker policies a man who had not been in Parliament since 2013.

The current Opposition is refusing to back the new policy.

What tickled Labor was while Mr Turnbull accused Mr Shorten of “giving in to the left” on the life ban, the Prime Minister was accommodating his right wing at a rate of knots.

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Government puts off the two bills which triggered the double dissolution election

THEY were pieces of legislation so important to the nation Malcolm Turnbull called a double dissolution election to fight for their passage.

But suddenly they have disappeared.

When the Senate returns next week, the bills to revive the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and the registered organisations bill — both linked to workplace laws — will not be on the agenda.

They might appear for a vote during the two following weeks, the final sittings for the year, but chances are they will be put off until next year.

“I can tell you two things,” manager of government business in the Senate Mitch Fifield told ABC radio today in an attempt to not say much at all.

“One is, we are absolutely committed to the ABCC legislation and absolutely committed to the registered organisations legislation.

“We took these bills to a double dissolution election. These are core elements of our agenda.

“And the second thing is, we take our legislative program one week at a time. We have three sitting weeks left.”

The bills’ disappearance is one of the more obvious signs of confusion and apprehension in the Senate over the status of two men m — former senator Bob Day and One Nation‘s Rod Culleton.

The crossbench numbers have been reduced from 11 to nine and no one is certain how this remainder will vote on the big pieces of legislation.

When the Senate resumes on Monday, the first bit of business will be a Government motion to refer doubts over their eligibility to have been elected to Parliament sent to the High Court for a decision.

Labor will support the motion but will take its time giving the Government some thoughts on how it is managing the Upper House.

There will be a break to move to the House of Representatives where Indonesian President Joko Widodo will address a joint sitting.

The rest of the week will be taken up by non-controversial legislation, and by the proposal for a February 11 same-sex marriage plebiscite, which is likely to be defeated.

In the House of Representatives, the Government will introduce legislation to put a lifetime ban on asylum seekers who arrive by boat ever getting to Australia, even as tourists from third countries.

Labor sees this legislation as a bid to divide it on the asylum seeker debate and not a genuine attempt to prevent more boat arrivals.

That debate in the Lower House is expected to be protracted and the legislation might not make it into the Senate in three sitting weeks.

SOURCE




Margaret Court calls fault: ABC maligned my beliefs

Tennis great Margaret Court says she felt maligned by the ABC for her religious beliefs and opposition to gay marriage in interviews to promote her book.

Court, a Perth-based Christian pastor, said the broadcaster was one-sided, barely touching on her church charity work.

She did 22 media appearances to promote her autobiography, including eight with the ABC, but said the national broadcaster was the only outlet that seemed to have an agenda.

“They weren’t really interested in my tennis much; all they were interested in was hitting my beliefs for standing for marriage between a man and a woman,” Court said. “I think we have to look at the fact this is happening, because it was not very nice in there — it was horrible, it was below-the-belt stuff.

“What has gone wrong? It used to be full of good religious programs ... There was nothing about Christianity in my interviews, it was all on gay marriage.”

This morning a delegation of religious leaders will meet ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie to argue against planned cuts to religious programming. The delegation will include the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge and priest Frank Brennan, former South Australian Premier and Anglican priest Lynn Arnold and World Vision chief executive Tim Costello.

Court, a grand slam champion with 24 major titles, has stirred controversy with her hard­line views, including saying she did not want Martina Navratilova to win Wimbledon because she was gay.

Court said the interviews were particularly confronting on prerecorded shows One Plus One with Jane Hutcheon, Radio National Drive with Patricia Karvelas and on ABC Goulburn Murray with Gaye Pattison.

An ABC spokesman said several programs had agreed to ­interview Court while she promoted her book, which mentioned gay marriage. “In this context ABC presenters asked her a broad range of questions relating to her sporting career, life after tennis and her Christian beliefs,” he said.

Court acknowledged she deserved scrutiny, but said most ABC interviewers did not seek to understand her point of view: “It would have been nice if they had come from: why do you have such strong beliefs in this area?”

SOURCE

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

Another big Australian power station closes  -- with a big impact on costs and another threat to system reliability

Even after watching what South Australia did to itself – pushing for renewable energy, increasing electricity prices, shutting down coal-fired power stations, reducing energy security, and triggering a statewide blackout – the Big V is rushing headlong down the same path.

Confirmation the Hazelwood coal-fired power station will close early next year guarantees power prices will increase by at least 8 per cent in Victoria next year.

Given SA imports huge amounts of power from that state, the increases will flow across the border.

The La Trobe Valley plant has 1600 megawatts of baseload capacity and has supplied up to 25 per cent of Victoria’s power.

Victoria has been an exporter of electricity, sending power to SA, Tasmania and even NSW at times but now will need to import power at peak times – mainly coal-fired electricity from NSW.

Instead of cheap reliable coal-fired power, Victoria is following SA with increased reliance on subsidised, unreliable wind and solar energy. Good luck.

Just like SA, Victoria has seen car manufacturers and other companies close, with jobs shed in the steel and aluminium sectors. Power prices have been a major factor.

More job losses will come – this is deliberate policy leading to inevitable deindustrialisation.

It is bad news for SA because, as industry shrinks across the border, local suppliers will be hit.

And, as Victoria’s electricity becomes more expensive and less reliable, it will increase SA’s exposure, given the state’s dangerous reliance on the Victoria’s Heywood interconnector – as everyone discovered on September 28.

SA’s biggest user of electricity is the Olympic Dam mine – one of the world’s largest uranium and copper operations.

BHP-Billiton shelved its huge open-cut expansion a few years ago but now plans to massively expand its underground mining, more than doubling copper output from 200,000 tonnes a year to 500,000 tonnes over the next decade.

This is vital for a struggling state economy – Olympic Dam has helped to keep SA above water since the State Bank disaster.

Yet the mismanagement of the power situation could kill the plans, as the head of BHP-Billiton’s Australian operations, Mike Henry, told me on television last week.

Olympic Dam refines copper on site, requiring vast amounts of “stable, affordable energy” and the company is deeply worried about a repeat of September’s blackout (that shut it down for two weeks) and ongoing price spikes.

“Left unresolved, that sort of thing will start to put at risk some of the investments we have planned for Olympic Dam,” Henry said.

That is a stark warning. It should create shockwaves in SA and have the Weatherill government urgently looking at ways to increase baseload power.

Instead, the situation is getting worse because of what the Victorians are doing.

It is difficult to overstate the madness that is afoot – we must be approaching peak lunacy.

In the name of climate change policies, the two states most reliant on manufacturing have deliberately chosen policies to increase power prices and make energy less reliable; and then have mourned the loss of manufacturing jobs.

And to assuage their deep concerns about climate change both states have also spent billions of dollars building desalination plants that are mothballed.

Labor politicians in both states and federally are now publicly expressing concern about workers who have lost their jobs in coal-fired power stations when the policies they have implemented are deliberately designed to shut down these very generators.

Remember, every time these politicians mourn a job loss in the energy or manufacturing sectors, this is exactly what those same politicians have tried to achieve through their climate policies.

Renewable energy targets and other prices on carbon are about driving out so-called “dirty” industries and replacing them with “green” and “clean” jobs – you’ve heard the politicians say that.

They just don’t seem to trumpet these aims so loudly when real people are actually laid off.

And, of course, the real idiocy of all this is that it is doing precisely nothing for the environment.

While we deliberately make ourselves less competitive, impose higher prices on ourselves and toss our compatriots out of work, global emissions continue to rise.

In China and India, they are building more coal-fired power stations that will burn coal mined in NSW and Queensland.

But in Victoria and SA the unemployed can huddle together in the darkness, perhaps using a desalination plant as a windbreak, and try to convince themselves they are saving the planet.

SOURCE





No body, no parole for Vic murderers

Leftist governments do sometimes get things right

Victorian murderers won't get parole unless they reveal where they hid their victims' bodies under tough new laws.

The government's "no body, no parole" laws will be introduced in 2017 and will affect at least seven convicted murderers who have not revealed where they put their victims.

"This is the right thing to do, but it needs to be done properly ... it's what we've been considering for some time," Premier Daniel Andrews told question time on Tuesday.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said the laws should be introduced immediately to give families of victims some closure. "There are murderers in our prison system who treat the parole as their right. It's not their right, it's a privilege that's afforded to people who've done the right thing," Mr Guy said.

Labor has rejected a previous opposition bid to bring the laws in and Mr Andrews says there is no immediate need to rush them through.

"There are seven individuals in custody for whom this might be relevant and none of them are eligible for parole in the next 12 months," Mr Andrews said.

SOURCE






Australia: The anti-democratic Left shows its colours

Democracy is only good if it leads to the "right" answers

The Federal Government's bid to hold a plebiscite on whether to legalise same sex marriage has been defeated in the Senate. The proposal was voted down on Monday night in the Upper House 33 votes to 29.

The Attorney-General George Brandis had warned that a defeat would result in delaying same sex marriage in Australia for years to come.

But the Federal Opposition says the plebiscite would have resulted in harmful debate against the gay and lesbian community and want a direct vote in Parliament, instead.

Labor and the Greens were joined by the Nick Xenophon Team and Derryn Hinch to defeat the bill, while the Coalition secured the support of the One Nation Party, the Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm and Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie.

Liberal Senator Dean Smith abstained from voting in Parliament late on Monday night.

It ends 14-months of debate over the fate of the plebiscite, which was first proposed by the former prime minister Tony Abbott and taken by his successor Malcolm Turnbull to the 2016 federal election.

The Federal Government said it was the quickest way to achieve same sex marriage, promising a plebiscite would be held in February 2017, with Mr Turnbull confident it would be supported by the public.

But the Federal Opposition, joined by an increasing number of gay and lesbian groups, argued it would result in divisive debate that would have hurt vulnerable members of the community.

It also attacked the proposed $170 million price tag for the plebiscite.

Attorney-General George Brandis earlier criticised Labor for opposing the plebiscite.

"Stop playing politics with gay people's lives, because that is all that you are doing," Senator Brandis told Parliament.

"A vote against this bill is a vote against marriage equality."

"And those who claim to believe in marriage equality, but nevertheless, for their own cynical, game-playing reasons, are determined to vote against it, should hang their heads in shame."

Labor Senator Louise Pratt described the plebiscite as "an utterly demeaning act."

"No child should have their family status a subject of public debate like this."

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said the gay and lesbian community had lobbied strongly for the plebiscite bill to be defeated.

"I've lost count of the number of my LGBTIQ friends who have urged and begged us not to support this plebiscite."

Chair of Australian Marriage Equality Alex Greenwich said supporters of same sex marriage should refocus efforts on a direct vote in Parliament to change the Marriage Act.

"We know that a majority of Australians, indeed a majority of parliamentarians, support this reform."

"We hope that we can all work together to finally get this through our Parliament."

SOURCE






Africa comes to Melbourne

A gang of 15 teenagers brazenly shoplifted from a Melbourne Officeworks store and left 'cheering and dancing' while holding the stolen items above their heads.

Witness Chris, who chose to keep his surname anonymous, said he went to the South Yarra store in the city's southeast to buy a computer at 4.30pm on Saturday when he noticed the youths, aged 13 to 17, taking headphones and speakers from the shelves.

He said the teenagers, believed to be members of the notorious Apex gang, were dancing down the aisles and walked out cheering a minute later, setting off the store alarms.

'They certainly weren't walking around with their heads down - they were happily ransacking the shelves,' he told 3AW on Monday.

'The staff just stood there, like myself, probably in shock at what they were witnessing'.

Chris said the teenagers, all of African descent, were all wearing hooded jumpers, but were 'confident' as they trawled the store.

He said after the gang left and police had been called, he asked a staff member whether it was the first incident they had at the store.

'She indicated it had happened a few times before and they were a soft target on the weekends with reduced staff,' he said.

Victoria police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia officers went to the store following reports a group of about 15 males were shoplifting. 

A woman who heard Chris' account, said she was driving along Nepean Highway on the same day when she saw a similar group emerging from a house and heading toward the Moorabbin Officeworks.

Witness Julia said the group were milling out the front of the store, but 'nervously legged it' down Highett Road when they heard police sirens approaching.

There was reportedly another similar incident at the Officeworks in Chadstone, 17-kilometres from the city centre, on Saturday.

An Officeworks spokesperson confirmed there were 'incidents involving theft at four of its stores in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne on Saturday'.

'No Officeworks team members or customers were harmed and all affected stores remain open today with a heightened level of security,' a statement read.

'As the incidents are currently under police investigation, we are unable to provide further comment at this time'.

SOURCE





Murky past of NSW cop Damian Goodfellow, and the criminal who went on to kill

A senior NSW police officer who played a key role in a botched drug case that resulted in a violent criminal being released to roam the streets has been convicted of assault, drink driving and has twice survived recommendations he be fired.

Despite an assault conviction for the drunken bashing of an off-duty colleague at a cricket international, then being arrested at gunpoint for fleeing a breath test and crashing a police car, Damian Goodfellow has climbed through the police ranks to become one of Sydney's most prominent crime managers.

A Fairfax Media probe has placed him at the heart of two recent significant investigations that resulted in a drug sting that left four police officers claiming they were wrongly persecuted, and the release of a criminal who was facing serious drugs charges:

    "As acting crime manager at Kings Cross local area command in 2011, Detective Inspector Goodfellow filed a report to the agency's Professional Standards Command that later resulted in a string of drug charges being inexplicably dropped against a violent criminal named Wayne Edward Jones. A year later, the Nomad Outlaw Motorcycle gang member, who was operating an illegal prostitution racket in Kings Cross, tortured and strangled to death a mother of four.

    As the current crime manager at Newtown, Inspector Goodfellow was one of three senior police from the station who, based on "strong supposition", recommended a "covert investigation" be launched against the only openly gay male officers within the command, targeting illicit drug use. After combing through their private lives for six months, the operation found no evidence of wrongdoing. The Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW has since "accepted for investigation" four individual complaints of employment-based "homosexuality discrimination" against the force"

In 1999, Inspector Goodfellow was one of two police personnel who were recommended be sacked after they repeatedly punched a third off-duty officer during a drunken brawl at a one-day cricket international at the SCG.

Magistrate Kevin Flack recorded convictions and fined each of the officers $400 plus $52 court costs.

The then police commissioner Peter Ryan gave Inspector Goodfellow a second chance.

But in 2002, he was convicted again, this time of drink driving, after an erratic attempt to skip a breath test resulted in him crashing an unmarked patrol car.

While Mr Ryan lost his patience and issued a dismissal notice, Inspector Goodfellow received another reprieve from incoming commissioner Ken Moroney who, 18 months earlier, had delivered a heart-warming speech at the detective's wedding to fellow officer Carlee Mahoney, the daughter of then assistant commissioner Reg Mahoney.

Police sources who spoke to Fairfax Media at the time expressed dismay that other officers, with no such ties, had been sacked for far less.

Mr Moroney responded by saying his confidence in any officer was relevant to them acknowledging their mistakes and their continued good behaviour.

"Leniency extended once is rarely extended twice," he said.

Inspector Goodfellow was in the headlines again 12 months later as was one of four off-duty officers who were hospitalised following a punch up inside a Kings Cross strip club.

While he was the least injured, Inspector Goodfellow had been knocked unconscious.

"There's no suggestion they made it known they were police officers," said former Kings Cross commander Dave Darcy, who added it was irrelevant they were from the force.

"It could just as well have been any group of young people who happened to be visiting a strip club."

While more than 10 years have passed since those personal indiscretions, Inspector Goodfellow is again under scrutiny after a Fairfax Media investigation published explosive revelations last week about a Kings Cross drug case, handled by him, that ended in controversy and tragedy.

After the drugs case was bungled, Senior Constable Glen Roberts faced charges relating to the professional standards report filed by Inspector Goodfellow (see below).

But in court, magistrate Graeme Curran tongue-lashed police, labelling the conduct as "quite unacceptable" and "quite inexcusable".

In dismissing the case against Senior Constable Roberts and awarding him costs, Mr Curran pointed to two "critical" pieces of evidence the agency had withheld from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the defence that would have proved the officer's "truthfulness" from the start.

But equally as important, he cited the prosecution's "failure to obtain" any form of statement or evidence from Inspector Goodfellow. "It could have been of assistance to the prosecution ... it may easily have been of assistance to the defence," he said.

Fairfax Media requested an interview with Inspector Goodfellow and also forwarded him questions about the case. However, the NSW Police Force advised he was on scheduled annual leave. It provided the following statement:

"[Inspector Goodfellow] was not relieving as crime manager when the charges were recommended for withdrawal.

"The charges against Jones were properly and ethically withdrawn when the force found it could no longer rely upon the evidence upon which the [drug] charges were founded. It was alleged the original information provided by the main police witness [Roberts] was incorrect and that witness never produced a statement for use in court.

"The charges preferred against the former officer were supported by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and this matter was prosecuted by the DPP. Any questions concerning material contained within the brief are best referred to the DPP."
The botched drug bust that set free a criminal

In April 2011, Senior Constable Glen Roberts witnessed a drug exchange in Darlinghurst between a man, Wayne Jones, and one of three young women he had allegedly transported to Sydney from Newcastle and the Central Coast for prostitution.

Already on parole over a brutal bashing that left a woman disfigured, the drug charges served that night were enough to send Jones back to jail for several years. But a short time later, Inspector Goodfellow forwarded a "report" to the Professional Standards Command.

It's contents remain a mystery. However, it led to the PSC charging Senior Constable Roberts with having fabricated evidence and Jones being released from jail in October 2012.

A year later, Jones tortured, burned, bashed and strangled Central Coast mother of four Michelle Reynolds in a Coffs Harbour motel while high on ice.

When Senior Constable Roberts' own case finally came before Sydney's Downing Centre in 2013, the prosecution went all out to jail him.

Today, after being exonerated by Mr Curran, Senior Constable Roberts is no longer in the force and is haunted by "what might have been" had Jones' charges not been "wrongly withdrawn".
The secret police drug sting and the gay officers

In May last year, Inspector Goodfellow was the "resolution manager" who, with two senior colleagues at Newtown, escalated a complaint to the PSC, recommending a sting be launched against three serving gay officers and one of their long-term partners who used to work at the station, over suspicions they might be taking drugs.

The result was an eight-man strike force codenamed "Andro" that, six months later, had turned up "no evidence" of drug use or "related misconduct". The covert operation is estimated to have cost about $250,000 in wages alone.

Their lawyer has since written to police hierarchy, complaining about the "improper use of public resources" to "systematically target" the men because of their "sexual orientation".

Assistant Commissioner Mick Fuller replied, stating he was "satisfied" the investigations were "appropriate in the circumstances".

The initial response from Anti-Discrimination Board NSW suggests otherwise and it has "accepted for investigation" all four complaints of "homosexuality discrimination" against police.

Despite suppressed documents entitled "behavioural observations of subject officers", "analysis of subject officers' communications" and further material relating to bars "regularly visited", the force said on Saturday the investigation had "involved no covert surveillance as alleged".

It added the inquiry was "concluded before it was necessary" to interview any of the men who had been "exonerated of any wrongdoing." Only one of the officers remains in the force.
The life and crimes of a Sydney police officer

1995: As a probationary constable, Damian Goodfellow was forced to apologise to a motel owner after property was damaged and female guests harrassed during a police conferencing session.

1999: Bashes a fellow off-duty officer at the SCG while drunk, is convicted of common assault and fined $400. Receives notice requiring him to show cause why he should not lose his job. Then Commissioner Peter Ryan gives him a second chance.

2000: Marries the daughter of NSW Assistant Commissioner Reg Mahoney. Future Police Commissioner Ken Moroney is among the speech givers.

2002: An attempt to flee a breath test backfires when he crashes a police car while drunk and then gets arrested at gunpoint. Fined by the court. Loses his licence. Issued with a dismissal notice by Mr Ryan but gets another reprieve by incoming Commissioner Ken Moroney.

2003: Among four off-duty officers hospitalised after a violent, early hours brawl inside a Kings Cross strip club.

2007: Receives specialist promotion to senior sergeant at what was then Special Crime and Internal Affairs.

2009: Joins Kings Cross as Duty Officer.

2011: While Goodfellow stands in as acting crime manager at Kings Cross, one of the station's detectives, Glen Roberts, lays drug charges against local crime figure and Nomads bikie gang member Wayne Jones. After Goodfellow sends a report to the force's Professional Standards Command (PSC), they are dropped.

October 2012: Senior constable Roberts is charged by the force with having fabricated false evidence against Jones.

December 2012: Jones tortures, bashes and strangles to death Central Coast mother of four Michelle Reynolds.

2013: A magistrate dismisses the case against Roberts, awards him costs and slams police for failing to obtain evidence from Goodfellow and concealing, for two years, vital evidence from the DPP that verified the detective's "truthfulness".

2015: Goodfellow, now crime manager at Newtown, is one of three senior police who, based on "strong supposition", signed off on a joint decision to investigate four officers over illicit drug use. The men, who are gay, claim homophobia sparked the six month sting - which found no evidence of wrongdoing.

2016: The Sun-Herald reveals the chain of events that led to the murder of Michelle Reynolds.

SOURCE

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

Science says Australia's record hot summers will become normal (?)

Totally dishonest.  No mention that the high 2015 temps were an effect of a natural El Nino weather pattern -- nothing to do with CO2

Look at the CO2 levels from Australia's Cape Grim climate observatory over the heart of the El Nino period.



Within an accuracy of parts per billion, there was NO increase in CO2 levels at all! The warming over the El Nino period was ENTIRELY natural, with NO contribution from a CO2 rise. CO2 levels did NOT rise so they CANNOT be responsible for the higher temperatures.

Below we see where the peak of the El Nino effect was.  High temps coinciding with NO rise in CO2



So, it was during a period of no CO2 rise that temperatures peaked.  Super pesky


Australian scientists say the hottest year on record globally in 2015 could be an average year by 2025 if carbon emissions continue to rise at the same rate.

The latest study has tried to define the concept of what is a new normal when talking about climate change.

Dr Sophie Lewis of the Australian National University says human activities have already locked in higher temperatures but immediate action could prevent record extreme seasons year after year.

“If we continue with business-as-usual emissions, extreme seasons will inevitably be the norm within decades and Australia is the canary in the coal mine that will experience this change first,” says Dr Lewis.

“If we don’t reduce our rate of emissions the record hot summer of 2013 in Australia — when we saw temperatures approaching 50 degrees Celsius in some areas — could be just another average summer season by 2035.”

The recent State of the Climate report by the peak science body, the CSIRO, and the Bureau of Meteorology also says severe fire seasons fueled by increasingly hot days will continue for Australia.

Australia’s climate has warmed by around 1 degree celsius since 1910. Extreme fire weather, and a longer fire season, has increased across large parts of Australia since the 1970s.

And 2015 was the warmest year since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

However, the latest Australian research shows record-breaking temperatures can be prevented from becoming average.

“Based on a specific starting point, we determined a new normal occurred when at least half of the years following an extreme year were cooler and half warmer,” says Dr Lewis. “Only then can a new normal state be declared.”

Using the National Computational Infrastructure supercomputer at ANU to run climate models, the researchers explored when new normal states would appear.

The research team looked at temperatures from December to February across Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.

“The results revealed that while global average temperatures would inevitably enter a new normal under all emissions scenarios, this wasn’t the case at seasonal and regional levels,” says Dr Lewis.

“We found that with prompt action to reduce greenhouse gases a new normal might never occur in the 21st century at regional levels during the Southern Hemisphere summer and Northern Hemisphere winter.”

The research is published in the Bulletin of the American Meterological Society.

SOURCE





African thugs finally being deported



TWO young thugs linked to the violent Apex street gang will be deported after their visas were revoked under tough new migration laws.

The duo, aged 19 and 20, will be expelled to their countries of birth or put into immigration detention after they have finished serving out sentences in youth detention.

Police sources told the Herald Sun that both men are associated with the notorious Apex gang, believed to be responsible for a spate of violent burglaries and carjackings across Melbourne’s southeast.

The young men are just two of 173 foreign thugs living in Victoria whose visas have been cancelled in the past financial year.

In 2014, migration laws were amended to give Immigration Minister Peter Dutton the power to strip visas from non-citizens who fail to pass a character test or who have been convicted of an offence involving a jail term of more than 12 months.

Figures reveal that in Victoria in 2015-16, the visas of 23 child sex ­offenders, two convicted murderers and 23 people guilty of drug offences were cancelled, leaving them liable to ­deportation on completion of jail terms. The tough new laws were ­initially used to kick out foreign-born bikie gang members.

But in April, the Government used them to revoke the visa of an associate of the Apex gang, who was deported to New Zealand.

The Herald Sun understands Sudanese-born Isaac Gatkuoth, 19, who was on ice when he pointed a shotgun at the head of a terrified motorist during a robbery, is the latest Apex member whose visa has been revoked.

Gatkuoth — who has denied being an Apex member — could be forced to return to Africa next year after serving 14 months in a youth detention.

In May, a court heard he had endured a hellish upbringing before moving to Australia at age nine. Raised by his sister, he hasn’t seen his mother since he was about five, and recently learned his father died when he was a toddler.

The visa of the second Apex member, a New Zealand-born 20-year-old, has also been cancelled. In January, the man was sentenced to 27 months for offences including armed robbery, theft and arson.

The Herald Sun understands authorities are poised to revoke the visas of a further two Apex gang members.

Mr Dutton refused to comment on the latest cases, but reiterated his determination to revoke the visas of convicted criminals.

“Australia is a generous nation and we settle a record number of people in our country each year, but we won’t hesitate to cancel visas of people who commit crimes against Australians,” Mr Dutton said

Liberal backbencher Jason Wood, an ex-policeman whose electorate of La Trobe has experienced a recent wave of aggravated burglaries and car-jackings, welcomed the visa cancellations.

Mr Wood — whose own home was recently burgled — told the Herald Sun: “These violent criminals give up the right to stay in Australia.

“This action sends a crystal-clear message that they will be booted back to their home country.”

More than 1500 people, including more than 100 criminal bikie gang members and 25 convicted murderers, have been expelled since the laws were introduced.

SOURCE






Direct instruction works
    
Jennifer Buckingham

Education is high stakes. It's not good enough to throw ideas about teaching methods at a wall and see which one sticks. Classroom practice has to be guided by the best research, to give children the best chance of strong learning gains.

One teaching method in particular has been consistently shown to be effective on a variety of measures -- direct and explicit instruction. These terms are generally used interchangeably to refer to a set of instructional practices characterised by highly structured and carefully sequenced lessons in which it is made clear to students what they need to learn and how to go about it. Student progress is checked frequently and they are expected to master each step before moving to the next.

This teaching method has been shown to be effective not just for fundamental skills like literacy and numeracy, but also higher level conceptual understanding and creativity.

A specific form of this method is Direct Instruction -- a comprehensive teaching program that includes both direct instruction pedagogy and curriculum content. DI programs have been the subject of dozens of studies, which have been overwhelmingly positive

At a forum co-hosted by CIS and Good to Great Schools Australia this week, several outstanding school leaders explained how DI and direct instruction led to success in their schools.

The Cape York Academies use DI -- adapted to align with the Australian Curriculum -- achieving substantial gains for students in remote communities where such outcomes had previously been thought impossible. Good to Great Schools co-founder and chair Noel Pearson and community leaders Dion Creek and Phyllis Yunkaporta explained the careful process by which DI had been chosen, and spoke passionately about the changes they had seen in the children attending Cape York Academies.

Despite the fact that policies and programs put in place by schools systems still fail to embrace evidence, increasing number of schools are adopting these methods and Direct Instruction programs. Hopefully this small groundswell will turn into a tidal wave.

SOURCE





'Jewish hearts only have envy and hatred': Firebrand Sydney sheik's hateful sermon to young Muslim children during Friday prayers

A firebrand Muslim sheik has gone on a hate-filled rant instructing young children that Jewish people have 'hatred and envy' in their heart.

Sheik Youssef Hasan, the leader of prayer at Quakers Hill Mosque, in Sydney's west, described Jews as having 'hearts harder than stone' during a regular Friday surmon in front of youngsters and their parents.

Video of the lecture on the second chapter of the Koran shows sheik Hassan talking about the differences Allah sees between the 'hearts' of Jews and Muslims.

'Allah mentioned the heart of the Jewish,' sheik Hassan began.

'Many of the Israelites - the Jewish - their heart become very hard and Allah said they become like a stone, but actually harder than a stone.'

The sheik then relates his sermon to a section of the Koran, where it states that 'for indeed there are stones from which rivers burst forth'.

In what he calls a 'great warning for Muslims', sheik Hassan dismisses that good can come from Jewish hearts.

'Some of the rocks, water come out of the rocks, so the water can get away' he said.  'The rocks can be soft, so they can make a way for the water. But the Jewish heart is very hard.  'They don't have mercy. They don't have anything in the heart. They've got only envy (and) they've got hatred.'

Despite the seemingly obvious message of his lecture, sheik Hassan denied to The Australian that he was talking about the entire Jewish race.

He claims that instead he was referring to a small group named specifically in the holy text.

'I've got so many friends (who are) Jewish and I have no problem with these people at all,' he said.  

Vic Alhadeff, the CEO of the NSW Jewish board of deputies said the incident was disappointing.

'It's very unfortunate that any religious leader would make such a bigoted and gratuitous remark,' he said.

SOURCE

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

Australian Psychologists Oppose Democracy

Whatever is good for homosexuals trumps all else

The Australian Psychological Society (APS) fully supports marriage equality, but believes the process for achieving equality should not be by means of a popular vote.

APS President, Mr Anthony Cichello, says there is evidence that a plebiscite is likely to present significant risks to the psychological health and wellbeing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people as they contend with the stress of a public campaign.

Evidence from a suite of studies shows that in the process of putting marriage equality to a public vote, gender and sexual minorities suffer significantly higher levels of negative emotions than positive emotions, experience significant distress over the negative rhetoric, display increases in psychiatric illness and feel negative, depressed, lonely, disenfranchised and powerless.

Children and other family members of LGBTI couples are also affected by public displays of discrimination against same-sex marriage and homophobia more generally.

The APS also says marriage equality is a human rights and equal opportunity issue and therefore should be a matter for Australian law and our parliamentary system - not a popular vote.

It says denying people the right to marry based on their gender or sexuality is discriminatory, and places them unfairly as second class citizens.

Mr Cichello says psychologists are committed via their code of ethics to the principle that all Australians should be supported to achieve positive mental health and full social inclusion.

“The APS supports full marriage equality for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, on human rights, health and wellbeing grounds – but not by means of a popular vote,” says Mr Cichello.

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Great result from 'No Jab, No Pay'

Social Services Minister Christian Porter says the response to the government's "No Jab, No Pay" policy has been a "great result".

He said 187, 695 children have caught up with their immunisation requirements since January 1, allowing parents to continue to receive their welfare benefits.

The most significant figure is the immunisation rate for indigenous five-year-olds, which has reached 95 per cent.

The minister said this level is critical to provide what's known as herd immunity - when large numbers of individuals are immune to disease, chains of infection are disrupted, stopping or slowing the spread of disease.

"This is a great result - and a reflection of what the No Jab, No Pay policy is achieving for the health of our children," Mr Porter said in a statement on Sunday.

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Presbyterian Church sign on same-sex marriage divides regional community of Taree

Signs displayed outside a church in the New South Wales mid-north coast town of Taree are causing a stir, with some arguing they are offensive while others welcome them.

The controversy comes as politicians debate whether to hold a plebiscite on same-sex marriage or vote on the issue in the federal parliament.

Resident Lisa Blogg said the sign "Marriage is one man + one woman" outside the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia in Taree was offensive.

"My daughter is gay and her response to the sign is, 'This is one of the reasons I want to leave this town, because it is oppressive to be a person in a same-sex relationship in a town like this'," Ms Blogg said.

"The sign is on the main thoroughfare where people drive past."
Her partner Chris Thiering said other signs outside the church had also raised eyebrows.

He cited 'Do not be surprised if the world hates you' as another example of an offensive sign.

"If I was having a bad day and trying to deal with my troubles and I walked around the corner, that would have a very negative influence on me," Mr Thiering said.

Messages on signs direct quotes from Bible, pastor says

Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia pastor Greg Ball acknowledged the signs could be taken out of context, but said the signs were direct quotes from the Bible.

"I do take to the point they are not referenced, but we are limited to what we can put on the sign as we have a limited number words we can put in," he said.

Mr Ball said 'Do not be surprised if the world hates you' is a direct quote from the Bible (1 John 3:13), and was directed at Christians, telling them not to be scared to be hated because of their religious beliefs.

He said he welcomed the feedback, but there had been very few complaints to the church, and many "statements of appreciation".

Mr Ball also said the statement about marriage would not have been controversial until recently.

Signs are legal, law expert says

University of New South Wales Professor of Law Luke McNamara, who has researched the operation of hate speech laws for more than 20 years, believes that, while views would differ on the merits and appropriateness of the signs, they were unlikely to breach laws against homosexual vilification in NSW.

Under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 it is "unlawful for a person, by a public act, to incite hatred towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, a person or group of persons on ground of homosexuality of the person or members of the group".

"Even if these signs were regarded as falling within the definition of homosexual vilification, which is unlikely, the law does not create a criminal offence," Dr McNamara said.

"It simply allows a person from the relevant group to lodge a complaint with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board."

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Qld. child safety officers ripped to shreds in damning report into deaths of seven children

A PANEL of experts examining the suspicious deaths of seven children has accused Child Safety officers of cover-ups, ­misconduct and breaches of the law.

I have been given access to confidential reports in which the panel said it was ­“extremely concerned” about “dangerous practices” in the department leading up to the deaths of children.

The independent panel spoke of “major systems failure”, “complacency” and “lack of accountability”.

The damning report was critical of the department’s ­indecision in cases where children were known to be in danger.

The panel said assessment errors allowed children to stay in hostile families.

The report will leave the ­department’s reputation in ­tatters.

The panel found much blame lay with staff who put the rights of criminally maladjusted parents ahead of the rights of children who later died violent deaths.

The department failed to remove children from families where there was long-term criminality, intergenerational violence and “chronic lifestyle concerns” – a euphemism for drug and alcohol abuse.

Children suffered physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect at the hands of parents who were “skilled in lying and manipulating” case workers, the panel found. Staff with “greater expertise would not have made the ­errors in assessment,” it said.

Members of the Child Death Case Review Panel are drawn from a pool of experts in pediatrics, law, forensic pathology and child health. The panel’s confidential reports were released after a Right to Information search. However it is an incomplete record with dozens of paragraphs and ­entire pages blanked out.

The names of the young victims and Child Safety officers and some other identifying material were expunged.

Nevertheless, the words that are visible paint a grim picture of the terrible plight of Queensland’s most vulnerable children – and the state’s abject failure to rescue them.

Opposition Child Safety spokeswoman Ros Bates said the report confirmed the department was in crisis “from top to bottom”. She renewed her calls for Child Safety Minister Shannon ­Fentiman to be sacked. Bates said more than 1000 children were still at risk in hostile homes.

The panel also criticised Child Safety managers for a lack of oversight of inexperienced frontline workers.

The panel also found ethical standards breaches in cases now in the hands of homicide police.

And it expressed alarm that the Child Safety department had repeatedly failed to alert SCAN (Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect) teams – even after children had been taken to hospitals with severe bruising and other terrible injuries.

Tragically, no one bothered to alert the SCAN team in several ongoing cases that resulted in deaths.

One tragedy has highlighted “poor judgment and mistakes made by staff”.

There were “thinking errors, poor knowledge of domestic and family violence and a lack of understanding of the impacts of substance abuse”.

And: “The panel considered that the likelihood of significant harm or death was high.

“The panel was unclear whether the death of (name deleted) was a result of Child Safety staff or of the system as a whole but considered there were both staff and systems failings.

“The panel considers that the department should undertake urgent assessment of ­unsafe child-protection practices by staff.

“The panel expressed concerns that they did not have confidence in the workers ­involved in this case.

“The relevant staff did not show any signs of reflections or insights.”

It questioned the suitability of some workers to remain in the department. It added: “(Some) staff displayed attitudes and made decisions that were inconsistent with sound child-protection practice.”

And a proposed group training session “would not ­address dangerous practice and views”.

One of the department’s own reviews into a death was “unsatisfactory”.

“The panel found the report indicates evidence that the practice was very poor and that there was misconduct by staff.

“The panel considered that the view of staff that (words deleted) is indicative of a breach of the Child Protection Act.”

On several occasions the panel was critical of the department’s own “standards and practice reviews”.

In one case the review panel rejected the department’s assertion that its handling of a case was “reasonable”.

It said the department’s ­response was “insufficient”.

The department’s internal reviews “contained language that was ambiguous and confusing”. Some was “vague”.

Child Safety workers were sometimes complacent and remiss in “neglecting the need for stronger investigation”.

Levels of risk were not identified and cases requiring immediate intervention were downgraded.

“The department seemed to be in ‘surveillance mode’ with a lack of active intervention,” it noted.

In one case the panel criticised the “tick and flick” ­assessment process.

Some risk-assessment tools were not used because of “unsound personal judgments”.

Tucked away in the fine print the panel reveals what is perhaps a far greater problem.

Different departments handling child emergencies did not communicate to one another. “Particularly concerning was the lack of collaboration with other services,” it said.

High-risk children were not automatically referred to SCAN.

The panel said there was a critical need for a cross-agency co-ordination group to link Queensland Health, Queensland police, schools, youth justice groups and Child Safety. Each of these groups suffered from “siloed” thinking, it said.

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Crooked cops in NSW

The crooked cops always slime the honest ones, thus making it hard to tell the sheep from the goats

Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn is likely to face adverse findings when the Ombudsman's long-running and controversial police bugging inquiry, Operation Prospect, tables its report, leaked letters have revealed.

An adverse finding would seriously dent any chance Ms Burn had of replacing Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione when he retires.

The two letters sent to Acting Ombudsman John McMillan by the NSW Crime Commissioner Peter Hastings, QC, have blasted the $10 million Operation Prospect investigation as unfair.

Mr Hastings threatens to seek an injunction in the Supreme Court to block the public release of the report when it is tabled in NSW Parliament.

The Greens will separately seek to "kill off" the report, by amending a police oversight bill in NSW Parliament next week, to terminate the Operation Prospect inquiry.

"Any report that the Acting Ombudsman delivers will be so infected by gross procedural injustice that it will never be accepted as either fair or impartial," Greens MP David Shoebridge said last night.

The Ombudsman has been investigating events that took place 17 years ago, when former deputy commissioner Nick Kaldas was among about 100 police bugged during a police internal affairs unit investigation involving Deputy Commissioner Burn.

The Ombudsman's report is still being written and is due to be released before Christmas.

The heavily redacted letters, obtained by Fairfax Media, confirm for the first time that Ms Burn, Mr Kaldas and former NSW Crime Commission chief Philip Bradley face recommendations of adverse findings.

But the letter attacks the investigation, begun by former ombudsman Bruce Barbour four years ago, for allowing key witnesses to make submissions that were not disclosed to other parties.

Mr Kaldas, who has previously made serious complaints about the Ombudsman's inquiry, retired from NSW Police earlier this year, bowing out of the race for the Commissioner role.

The letter says the process used by the Ombudsman's office is "intolerable", and it was "fundamentally unfair" that Mr Bradley has been unable to see evidence given by important witnesses against him.

Mr Hastings says he has discussed the matter with Ms Burn and "I understand her lawyers have expressed similar concerns about the processes generally and specifically in relation to the failure to put matters to her [redacted] about which recommendations are now apparently being made for adverse findings", the letter says.

"It is a matter of public record that former deputy commissioner Nick Kaldas has serious complaints about the manner in which the investigation has been conducted ... It is significant that those senior personnel who have been investigated but who have different interests, have major grievances about the way in which they have been treated," the letter says.

The report will cause "substantial reputational damage suffered ... The situation is wrong and the damage will be irremediable."

It threatens that Ms Burn, Mr Kaldas and Mr Bradley may join any legal action to injunct the report in the Supreme Court.

However, Ms Burn last night distanced herself from the letter.

"I am under strict directions from the Acting Ombudsman not to disclose the matters in which I have been involved in the Operation Prospect Inquiry. Contrary to a media report today, I have not decided to join in an application to the courts complaining about the process of the inquiry,'  she said in a statement.

No details of the adverse findings have been revealed in the redacted letters.

The October 26 letter also calls for the dispute between the government authorities to be referred to Premier Mike Baird within seven days.

A spokesman for Mr Baird said a copy of the letter had been sent to Mr Baird's office late this week.                

"We look forward to receiving the Ombudsman's report and will respond in due course," he said.

A spokesman for the NSW Crime Commission declined to confirm or deny the contents of the letter.

The Ombudsman's office said the report was still being written and would be tabled in Parliament before Christmas.

Mr Shoebridge said: "From day one it was clear the Ombudsman's office was not up to the job of investigating this extremely sensitive police bugging scandal, and it has hidden its inadequacies behind a wall of secrecy and a grossly unfair process.

"Parliament created this monster and Parliament now needs to do the right thing and kill it off before it causes any more damage."

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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