Dating show contestant gets rejected TWICE due to 'no dating Asians' policy – despite the girls being the same ethnicity as him

This is common and reasonable. The Australian population is about 5% Han Chinese so intermarriage is easily possible.  And if I see an Asian young woman on the arm of a man, the man is almost invariably Caucasian. With a bit of luck the woman's children with a Caucasian man will be able to pass as Caucasian.  As one instance of such a mix see below a picture of a recent "Miss Australia" winner, Francesca Hung.  She is half Chinese but that is not at all obvious



And "not standing out" is a very common wish for many people.  It tends to be safer

Caucasian men also tend to have a height advantage.  Sadly for shorties, most women prefer a tall man


A dating show contestant has been rejected by two women of the same ethnicity as him who cited a 'no dating Asians' policy.

When George Silvino, from Sydney, walked on stage for the dating show Take Me Out, two women of Asian descent instantly decided they were not interested him.

Host Joel Creasey asked the women why they weren't interested in the man to which the first woman replied: 'I kind of have a "no dating Asians" policy.'

Dating show contestant Gianna said she didn't want to date George Silvino because she has a 'not dating Asians' policy

In the show men try to impress a panel of thirty women in the hope of landing a date. If the women are interested in the men they leave their light on, if they aren't interested they switch their light off.

Mr Creasey then asked the second woman why she switched her light off for Mr Silvino. 'I'm sorry, I have a no dating Asian policy as well,' she said. 'I don't want to get mistaken for brother and sister, it could get awkward. 'Because I'm Asian I'm allowed to say that.'

After the show aired last week people had a mixed reaction to the women's dating policy.

'Attractive women: he's hot. Unattractive self-hating Asian women: he's ugly because he looks like my brother,' one person commented on the YouTube video.

'I don't get why almost all the Asians weren't open to him? I'm Asian but I think that guy is pretty good looking and I like his confidence, I'd give him a fair chance at least,' another person said.

But not everyone was upset by the women's choices. 'I have a no dating Asians policy too what's so wrong? ' one person said.

'Actually I don't see the problem. I'm Asian myself, and I like white girls more, but that doesn't mean I hate yellow girls,' another person said.

'Preference is not necessarily racist ..... and yeah, I've heard black white etc. Saying they wouldn't date their own race,' a person said.

Mr Silvino posted a response to the show on his YouTube channel said he did not think there was any malice behind the women's comments.

'Were these comments racist? Yes they absolutely f***ing were,' he said. 'In that context on a game-show there was no bad intentions. It's probably safe to say those comments were not said in a spiteful or hateful sense towards myself or other Asian men.'

However, later in the video he said based on comments he had seen on social media, it seemed like it was all too common that Asian women had these opinions of Asian men.

'Yes, of course these types of Asian b****** do exist. They think they're too good for Asian guys. They discriminate solely based on race.' 

SOURCE 






Teachers’ union stance wrong on reading

I have been a member of teachers’ unions since I began teaching 30 years ago. The role of unions is to protect the pay and conditions of their members. However, as a practicing teacher, I am becoming increasingly concerned with their present stance on the teaching of reading that seems to undermine the very thing they claim to protect — teacher workload — as well as doing a disservice to the children they educate.

The NSW Teachers Federation commissioned a paper titled “Exploding some of the myths about learning to read” by Professor Robyn Ewing, who participated in the recent phonics debate. Professor Ewing will be given a further platform to present the ideas in her paper at a Federation-endorsed professional development session in October.

Professor Ewing’s report misrepresents the case for effective phonics instruction — including the adoption of a straw man argument that a systematic and explicit approach teaching phonics precludes other aspects of literacy such as vocabulary development. Professor Pam Snow has summarised the shortcomings of Ewing’s report by stating, “Nothing was exploded in Professor Ewing’s union commissioned paper. Rather, a number of tired though conveniently protean myths have simply been perpetuated; unhelpfully and uncritically so.”

In contrast, Professor Snow’s research documents the consequences of failure to develop essential literacy skills, and she draws our attention to the overly high rates of illiteracy amongst incarcerated youth who disengaged from society and the education system, as evidenced in the 2015 Young People in Custody Report.

As a learning and support teacher I see students every day who have difficulty with reading and spelling. Engaging these students in the classroom becomes increasingly difficult as students become older and the gap becomes wider. This adds to teacher workload and stress through having to manage disruptions and robs all students of valuable instructional time.

The gap need not become wider if teachers engage with the findings of reading research and trials. The South Australian phonics check trial showed that the check was not stressful for students and teachers and school leaders were overwhelmingly positive about it. More teachers are beginning to understand the importance of this check and the Queensland Catholic Education Commission will now trial the check in 2019.

Many teachers were surprised that the Phonics Check detected a deficiency in students’ decoding abilities that was not evident in the more cumbersome and time-consuming ‘running records’ mandated by many education departments throughout Australia.

Teacher unions should be arguing for teaching strategies that reflect a strong evidence base, and for assessment tools such as the Phonics Check that reduce teacher workload.

SOURCE 







Bill Shorten downplays class war

Bill Shorten’s political pivot has begun. Having spent the past five years engaged in class-war economics, the Labor leader has made his first pitch to middle Australia. This reflects a significant tactical shift underpinned by a fundamental political reality.

Labor is worried about Scott Morrison. Shorten plans to deliver five key policy speeches between now and Christmas. These will set the policy and values framework of a Shorten government.

In other words, Shorten intends to start articulating what he is going to do with the $160 billion in taxes he plans to raise over the next decade.

Who will be the beneficiaries of this tax raid on the well-off and ­almost well-off?

Class envy is crude politics. And while it clearly works, it has its ­limitations. It fails to speak to aspiration.

Shorten knows he must start steering Labor back to a more electable centrist model to counter the potential rise of Morrison.

He now believes he has the authority to do that. It is notable that he has chosen early education as his first pillar. It is an inter­generational issue.

Parents vote for their children and grandparents vote for both. It has universal appeal.

Shorten has pitched it as an education reform and a cost-of-living measure with long-term productivity dividends.

The government was right to attack the spending and the tax burden to pay for it, rather than the policy itself.

Labor’s tax policy represents the most radical redistribution of wealth proposed by the ALP in more than 50 years. It is a naked ideological manifesto that will have as many unknown social impacts as it will economic.

This is the big policy gamble that Shorten believes will win him government — a notion of aspiration that relies on the benevolence of the state.

In deciding to push the button on a major policy rollout over the next two months, the Opposition Leader has also taken the ultimate political gamble.

Some of Shorten’s senior colleagues have cautioned him against it and urged him to wait.

The polls continue to point to a thumping Labor victory. And Morrison is still dealing with the aftermath of the leadership spill that delivered him the prime ­ministership.

The argument that an opposition shouldn’t get in the way of a good government meltdown is a valid one.

But Shorten is shrewd enough to recognise an equally shrewd rival, who is already preferred as prime minister.

Morrison offers a cure for the policy crisis of the Turnbull regime and the promise of a restoration of sound political management.

He will not be shy of spending either.

Shorten believes his best shot at addressing his poor personal ­approval ratings and shifting gear from negativity, pessimism and envy to a positive campaign footing is to start spending the party’s war chest before Morrison starts to gain ­momentum.

Getting out early and announcing key policy so far out from an election may be unorthodox for an opposition, but it was exactly this strategy that almost won Shorten the 2016 election.

SOURCE 






'The impact will be huge': Experts warn power prices are set to skyrocket over summer

Ordinary people will be paying heavily for the Greenie-motivated closures of big coal-fired generators such as Hazelwood. Losing 1,600 MW from Hazelwood alone leaves a big gap that can only be filled by expensive gas generators

Experts have warned electricity prices will skyrocket over summer, claiming 'the impact will be huge' on domestic households.

The average annual bill for Australian households is $1500, but Victoria and South Australia were closer to $2000 - a 63 per cent jump for all states in the past decade. 

According to a report released by the ACCC, gas prices will go up another 40 per cent. 

The cost is predicted to peak at around $15 a gigajoule over the warmer months and won't go lower than $10.70, the Australian reported. 

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) released a report this week which detailed the expected power prices.

Australian Power Project chief executive Nathan Vass said the prices will be four times higher than the historical prices which rested at $3.

Referencing the report, Mr Vass warned 'the impact on electricity prices will be huge'.

The chief executive explained for every $1 rise in gas prices, the wholesale price of electricity will go up to $11 per megawatt-hour.

'So if gas jumps to $15/GJ you could see the average wholesale price hit $140/MWh,' he told the publication.

'The closure of cheap and ­reliable coal-fired generators and the shift to gas-peaking plants has left South Australia more vulnerable to gas price shocks than any other state.' 

In 2015/16 the average annual Australian electricity stood at $1,524, with network costs making up 48 per cent of the bill, followed by wholesale costs (22 per cent), environmental costs (7 per cent), retail costs (16 per cent) and retail margins (8 per cent).

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

Leftism is largely inborn.  Is bureaucracy too?

All the twin studies how strong heritability for Left/Right political orientation.  Leftists are born dissatisfied and conservatives are born contented.  And Leftists love bureaucracy.  They can hardly get enough of it.  As V.I. Lenin remarked: "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything".  So is there also an inherited bureaucratic instinct?  Something I encountered recently inclined me towards that belief.

A little background:  I have a pinup on my bedroom wall.  It is a picture of the Queen.  No doubt many would say that I must be a poor thing to have the Queen as my pinup but it is a large and beautifully done portrait so I think it could be called a pinup.



And I am an unapologetic monarchist.  I believe that a constitutional monarchy is the best form of government,  Americans have to wait 4 years before they can get rid of an unpopular  President but, in a monarchy on Westminster lines, parliament can boot out at will any Prime Minister who has lost popularity --which the Australian parliament has done rather a lot of in recent years. So it suits my views that I have a picture of Her Majesty and Prince Philip on my wall.

But I have acquired that picture only recently.  There is an Australian tradition that Federal politicians can give out free pictures of Her Majesty to their constituents.  So I wrote to my local Federal MP, Terri Butler, member for Griffith, and requested one.  She represents the Labor Party so I was slightly surprised that she wrote back to me and agreed.  I had to pick the picture up from her electorate office but that was not far away from me so off I went.

When I arrived and rang the bell a large sandy-hired young man appeared. When I made my request he said; "We haven't received any correspondence about this".  I said, "I wrote to Parliament house".  He said "Did you get a letter from Terri Butler about this?"  I said I had.  "Have you got it with you" -- "No". "Where is it?" -- "At home".  And he went on generally in a rather circular way about having authorization to give me the picture.  I inherit a rather short temper from my father however so I very soon started to shout and bang on the counter.  That dislodged him and he gave me the picture.

As the  pictures are freely given out, there was absolutely no need for any bureaucracy but this employee of the Labor party dreamed some up anyway.  He appears to have a bureaucratic temperament.  I suspect it was inherited -- JR







Bill Shorten proposes new plan to tackle immigration policy with Scott Morrison

Bill is desperate.  He is trying to get the Liberal party to rescue him from his own Left-wing.  They want to open the illegal immigrant floodgates again but he knows that he would lose the election if he stood on that policy.  So he wants to kick the can into the long grass of an "enquiry", a classic political dodge

BILL Shorten wants to tackle Australia’s population issues in a joint-party plan tackling the country’s growth.

The Labor leader has written a letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison asking that he consider creating a population taskforce that would outline recommendations both parties could accept.

That taskforce would look at temporary work visas, infrastructure development, service delivery such as health and education and settlement policy.

In his letter seen by The Weekend Australian, Mr Shorten has placed population growth among the great policy challenges facing the nation.

He indicated he could support a new settlement policy that would redistribute people away from the congested capitals of Sydney and Melbourne.

Mr Morrison is yet to comment on the letter but is in Tasmania today.

The Coalition is expected to deliver a major policy on the issue before the end of the year.

Australia’s population passed 25 million in July, two decades earlier than was forecast.

“Population policy runs the risk of being politicised by those seeking to divide Australia, and (who) see political opportunity in polarising opinion in the community,” Mr Shorten wrote in the letter.

“The best way to ensure enduring policy settings is for a bipartisan approach — one that sets overarching principles to guide policy development, regardless of the party in government.

“This would give the community and business comfort that the national interest is driving government policy.

“I am therefore asking you to join Labor in the establishment of an independent and expert population taskforce that would provide recommendations that both parties could accept and use to underpin population policy development.”

Under Mr Shorten’s plan, the taskforce could be established under Treasury with six members agreed upon by the government and opposition.

Both parties would then need to agree to a set of recommendations.

In his letter to Mr Morrison, Mr Shorten wrote: “As you would be aware, there is no single policy lever — a multifaceted approach is needed that ensures we maintain our standard of living.

“More important is a consistent approach that will last well beyond the political cycle and that requires the support of both major political parties.”

In August it was revealed the Morrison Government was considering a plan that would require new migrants to settle outside of Sydney and Melbourne for up to five years.

Between 2006 and 2016, the majority of arrivals have settled in Sydney or Melbourne, at 27.6 per cent and 26.3 per cent of total arrivals respectively.

By comparison, only 3.2 per cent moved to regional NSW, and 1.9 per cent to regional Victoria.

But last month Mr Morrison took aim at Australia’s obsession with population growth, saying it is a “fairly irrelevant statistic” and immigration policy is far more nuanced than many of us realise.

He said temporary migration and natural population growth, caused by the people who already live here having children, were far more significant factors than immigration.

“I’ve never bought this idea that the permanent immigration intake is the thing fuelling population growth. Because it’s not borne out in the actual maths,” Mr Morrison said in an exclusive interview with news.com.au.

“When it comes to population growth at the moment, there are 10 extra people that have got on the bus. Just over four of them are temporary migrants. Just under four of them were born here, a natural increase. And only two of them are permanent migrants.”

SOURCE 






'The one last remaining bastion of free speech': Milo Yiannopoulos praises Australia for being a liberal country - but warns it may not be for much longer

Right-wing commentator and controversial political figure Milo Yiannopoulos has cited Australia as the last remaining bastion of free speech.

The comments came as Mr Yiannopoulos was promoting his upcoming book in an interview with Sky News on Friday, aptly named 'Australia, You're My Only Hope'.

Mr Yiannopoulos outlined what he perceives to be the 'cancers' affecting Australian society; namely feminism and political correctness.

During the interview, he urged Australians to stand up to these 'cancers' of public life which he claimed have already 'utterly ruined' the public square in Europe and America.

'Australia is the one last remaining bastion of free speech where people can actually crack a joke and not get fired,' Yiannopoulos stated.

The British alt-righter claimed his new book is a 'last ditch attempt' to urge the Australian public to stand up to what he perceives to be the 'toxins' of left-wing society.

Yiannopoulos has announced a tour of seven shows down under at the end of November, in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

His tour will take place despite owing a reported $50,000 to the Victorian government for unpaid police expenses.

He will be joined by US right-winger Ann Coulter. The pair have promoted their tour as 'saving Australia from a full-frontal assault by politically-correct left-wing loonies.'

SOURCE 






University chiefs unite to defend free speech

Good if it happens

University of Western Sydney chancellor Peter Shergold has warned that attacks on free speech are a relatively recent development.

Leading university heads have warned of the urgent need to take a stand against encroaching threats to free speech across Australia’s tertiary institutions, including US-inspired boycotts of speakers and classroom “trigger warnings” about details that might upset students — with one high-profile chancellor dis­avowing the notion that campuses should be “safe spaces”.

University of Western Sydney chancellor Peter Shergold has warned that attacks on free speech are a relatively recent development in Australia and university governing bodies should be prepared to make tough decisions to defend the integrity of their institutions.

Speaking to The Australian following a robust panel discussion on the topic at the University Chancellors Council annual conference in Adelaide yesterday, Dr Shergold said his personal view was that universities should default to a position of enabling “as much freedom as possible — not to constrain, not to control”.

“Universities need safe spaces for students, be they LGBTI or Muslim … where they can go and talk to each other,” said Dr Shergold, the council’s chairman. “But university campuses cannot be safe spaces in terms of ideas.  “People should be challenged by ideas, see a diversity of ideas. That’s the heart of the institutional ethos of a university.”

Dr Shergold’s comments — which come amid mounting concerns that universities are increasingly becoming closed intellectual shops, prone to groupthink and the censoring of diverse ideas — were echoed by Australian ­National University chancellor ­Gareth Evans.

While Mr Evans has recently been forced to defend the univer­sity’s decision to withdraw from plans for a new degree in Western civilisation — which was to have been funded by the John Howard-chaired Ramsay Centre — he too slammed the emerging phenomenon of staff and students seeking to shut down debate under the premise that people should not be exposed to ideas with which they disagreed.

“We are hearing about ‘no-platforming’ — disinviting or shouting down visiting speakers espousing various heresies; about the need for ‘trigger warnings’ — alerting students to potentially upsetting racially, politically or ­gender-sensitive themes,” Mr Evans said.

“Most disconcerting of all, the need for ‘safe spaces’, where students can be completely insulated from anything that may assault their sense of what is moral and appropriate.”

Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Matthew Lesh cited recent publicised threats to free speech such as opposition to the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, which ANU staff and students accused of pushing a “racist” and “radically conservative agenda”, as well as the violent protest over psychologist Bettina Arndt’s appearance at the University of Sydney. These were just “the tip of the iceberg”, Mr Lesh said.

He told the conference that the proliferation of social justice policies around cultural inclusion, global citizenship and sustainability were to blame for restraining free speech. “I speak to academics and students at your institutions ­almost every day … (they) tell me about a worrying culture of censorship,” he said.

“Australia’s universities are lacking in viewpoint diversity — a range of perspectives challenging each other in the pursuit of reason, truth and progress. This leads to groupthink, self-censorship, and sometimes active shouting down.”

He said universities had a choice between either encouraging free inquiry or treading a social justice path and seeking to “change the world” — but choosing the latter would “not only undermine academic scholarship and student learning, it could be seriously damaging to the reputation and viability of the institutions”.

Mr Evans said it wasn’t only universities that were at risk, referring to the decision by the Brisbane Writers Festival this year to disinvite former NSW premier Bob Carr and feminist Germaine Greer as “absurd to the point of indefensibility”.

Joking that he was perhaps an “unreconstructed child of the 1960s”, the former Labor senator and foreign affairs minister said principles of “timeless significance” were at stake and university administrators and governing bodies “simply must take a stand”.

“Lines have to be drawn, and administrators’ spines stiffened, against manifestly un­conscionable demands for protection against ideas and arguments claimed to be offensive,” Mr Evans said. “Keeping alive the great tradition of our universities — untrammelled autonomy and untrammelled freedom of speech — is a cause to which university chancellors … should be prepared to go to the barricades.”

Concern about the impacts of growing campus activism has been on the political radar for some months.

Education Minister Dan Tehan recently proposed to the Group of Eight universities that measures to protect freedom of thought and expression should be considered, such as requiring student activists who sought to disrupt an event to pay for additional security costs. He expressed concerns that in the case of Sydney University, event organisers were being levied with the bill.

Steven Schwartz, a former vice-chancellor at three universities in Australia and Britain, said: “Today’s university students will grow up to be tomorrow’s lawyers, politicians, and judges. For the sake of our democracy, we cannot allow a generation of graduates to grow up believing that there are issues that are too dangerous to discuss.

“Expanding the meaning of words such as ‘violence’, ‘aggression’ and ‘traumatic’ to describe speech provides universities with a spurious excuse for censorship.”

Professor Schwartz said if universities failed to defend free speech, governments might intervene: “I am sure they will not like the result.”

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

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks that the Russians are coming

Infrastructure as a legacy

Leftists are notoriously interested only in the distribution of goods and services. They virtually ignore the process of producing goods and services.  They seem to think that goods and services drop down upon us like manna from heaven.  It is precisely that insouciance that makes socialist countries poor.  They just don't know how to arrange wealth creation efficiently so hamper it rather than fostering it.

And they seem to think the same about infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and schools  They give no thought to how those things come to be so and are very poor at providing them.  People who need the latest medical procedures don't go to Russia.  They go to the USA.

I think however that it is highly relevant to think about the origins of our infrastructure.  It didn't get there by accident and its distribution is not random.  Some countries have better infrastructure than others. So who provided that infrastructure and who owns it? 

A very large part of our infrastructure was put there by our ancestors.  They built the roads and buildings which we use today.  And the ownership varies.  Some is in private hands and some in government hands. But in an important sense it is a legacy to all of us today bequeathed to us by our ancestors.  Some of it is best in private and and some is regarded as best in government hands but we all benefit from it enormously.  Our entire modern life depends heavily on what we have collectively inherited from the past.  We didn't build the road we drive on or the hospitals and schools that we use.  We come into the world with most of what we use already laid out for us by our ancestors

Not all that we use will be inherited of course. But it will be the development of an inheritance. It might be a new road we drive on and a new school we attend.  But the building of that road and that school will have depended on all sorts of things from the past -- tools, techniques, machinery and the product of blast furnaces -- that have steadily evolved first in the hands of our ancestors and then in our hands.

So it seems to me that the physical facilities of our country that we use are just as much a legacy as is money left to us in a relative's will.  They were not produced by accident but were the product of work and ingenuity -- and we ourselves continue to build on those foundations.  We too enable the provision of infrastructure -- mainly through our taxes in the modern world but sometimes directly

I for instance have had a considerable presence in the real estate industry. I often took on semi-derelict buildings and organized their renovation.  Since I live in a capitalist country I did it entirely for my own private profit and did indeed earn significant income from my activities.  I have long ago sold the properties concerned and have money in the bank instead.  But the important point is that the properties I took on are now upgraded and will  be in that upgraded state when I die. I took existing things from the past and built on them to make them into better things.  That will be a legacy I leave when I die.  I will have left the infrastructure better than I found it and others will benefit from that.

I am aware that what I have just been saying sounds very much  like Obama's famous claim, "You didn't build that", so I think I had better do a little bit of differentiation.  He was of course right in pointing out that all we do depends in many ways on the work, past and present, that others do or have done. But what significance he saw in that is a bit mysterious. The most I can make of it was that he thought businesses should be thankful to the government and be humbled by its wise provisions.  By contrast, I would argue that the government is just another tool we have set up for achieving desired results. And I would argue that it is largely our ancestors we should thank for the infrastructure we daily rely on.

But what about immigrants?  Do they have any right to what is in fact our legacy?  They have not inherited anything  from our country or brought much, if anything, to it.  I think it is clear that they do to an extent steal our legacy. 

That is particularly clear in the case of Australia.  Recent governments have allowed a large "refugee" influx and that does harm us.  Our roads are now more congested, our public hospitals can barely cope and our schools are overcrowded and short of good teachers.  Such is the demand for teachers created by the active wombs of refugees that teacher standards have had to be lowered to near oblivion. Students with almost any High School pass are being accepted into teachers' colleges.  And on top of that we have to feed the "refugees".  Only a minority find employment and become self supporting.

But for various reasons good and bad our governments keep letting the refugees in and in so doing dilute that assets we all have to work with. With not a care in the world our governments have given away a significant part of our inheritance.  I think it should stop.  I don't think our government should give away what is the right of those of us who were born here.

So what do I propose?  A just policy would be to allow into our country only those who have paid for the privilege.  Citizenship could be bought.  And the proceeds would go to the construction of new infrastructure that would cope with the expanded population.

That's not going to happen, of course, but greater selectivity of some sort would certainly be fairer than the present system.  The less our inherited assets are handed to others the better.  I personally would be selective by allowing in only outsiders who are similar to the majority population  -- essentially other people of European origin.  They at least had ancestors who worked hard and effectively to improve their given environment so could help continue our work of ongoing development -- JR





Dozens of cyclists take up a whole lane as they slow down drivers trying to get by - but can you see what's REALLY infuriating motorists?

In my opinion, someone needs to drive at high speed right through a group of them so they all get the idea that it is best not to be obstructive.  Not much else seems to work

Dozens of cyclists have been caught fueling their war with motorists by disobeying road rules.

An image shared to Facebook shows numerous cyclists dominate the left lane of traffic, despite there being an empty designated bicycle lane next to the road in Perth.

The move by the cyclists left vehicles backed up in the right lane as drivers wait to overtake the riders.

The picture was posted to the Perth - Have A Whinge Facebook page where frustrated social media users reacted to the incident.

'Yell at them! Hit the horn! Don't stand for that s**t !' one person commented.

'Don't even get me started ! This really p***es me off,' commented another.

Others were quick to connect the incident to the long-standing battle between cyclists and motorists about who owns the road.  

'And they wonder why drivers have issues with them... How does the 1 mtr rule work when they are riding like that....' one social media user wrote

'They do it just to p*** off the motorist, because they know there's nothing you can do about it!!!' another person commented.

While most social media users were disapproving of the cyclists, one woman argued the bicycle path was not always the safest option.

'Cyclists are also car and truck drivers. We pay our licence fees. The cycle path is not safe because cars/trucks often drive over it,' one woman argued. 'The safest place to be is smack in the middle of the road. Get used to it. What's the damn hurry.'

A Ford Australia ‘Road Safety Survey’ released in September revealed that almost half (49 per cent) of the 2,000 participants did not feel confident driving along cyclists.

One in five participants (18 per cent) admitted they experienced road rage or were actively aggressive towards towards cyclists, highlighting significant tensions between the road users. 

SOURCE 






Campaign to replace Labour Day with an Aboriginal celebration - after Scott Morrison called for new Indigenous Day

A Liberal Party powerbroker is leading a campaign to replace Labour Day with a new public holiday celebrating indigenous achievements [Which ones?]

A week after Prime Minister Scott Morrison proposed a new Indigenous Day to settle the debate about Australia Day, New South Wales minister David Elliott has suggested replacing state Labour Day with a new 'Corroboree Day'.

Mr Elliott, a leader of the Liberal Party's centre-right faction which was instrumental in making Mr Morrison PM in August, said his public holiday idea was 'about celebrating success and achievement for indigenous Australians who in the past have had to face adversity'.

'Instead of focusing on the negative over indigenous affairs over the last 200 years, it would be a day we'd focus on the positives,' he told Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Steve Price on Monday.

Mr Elliott, who holds the Veterans Affairs and Corrections portfolios, insisted his proposal was 'about trying to bring people together' and claimed Labour Day on October 1 had lost relevance.  'I don't think there's anything on today at all which says to the Australian community this is a day for commemoration,' he said.

Price shot back, asking why Mr Elliott and the Prime Minister were seeking to 'divide the country rather than join it?'.

The minister suggested remembering greats from tennis to indigenous leaders who interacted with the first British settlers during the late 18th century. 'We would focus on the Evonne Goolagongs and the Bennelongs and the Pemulwuys,' he said.

The 2GB presenter was unconvinced, with Price pointing out Australia already had Sorry Day and NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week, which aren't public holidays. 'But David, we're all Australians. We don't need more than one day,' he said.

Mr Morrison last week suggested creating a new day to celebrate 60,000 years of Australia's indigenous heritage as a way of keeping Australia Day on January 26, the day in 1788 when the British First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove.

Left-wing activists, indigenous rights protesters and local councils in Melbourne and Byron Bay in northern New South Wales are campaigning to change the date of Australia Day.

With only nine per cent of private sector workers belonging to a trade union in Australia, Mr Elliott said Labour Day was less relevant than it was in previous generations, when people like his grandfather went on picnics to commemorate the eight-hour working day.

He clashed with Price's suggestion that not everyone who took a day off during Easter and Christmas were necessarily Christians.  'That's ridiculous,' Mr Elliott said.

The conservative minister also pointed out that indigenous first and second World War veterans were denied the right to drink in a pub with their army comrades.

Labour Day is held on the first Monday of October in NSW, the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia.

SOURCE 





A shower of cold facts may counter coal phobia

Better to understand just what climate alarmists and anti-coal activists are demanding, a closer look at Australia’s economic reliance on coal is useful.

Apart from the contention that renewable energy is necessary to lower carbon-dioxide emissions, climate alarmists often speak of the boost to the economy that renewable energy will bring. According to the Clean Energy Council, the number of jobs from 39 renewable energy projects under construction or being completed this year is 4,400.

These projects have begun as a result of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money being appropriated by government to subsidise renewable energy. Conversely, the Minerals Council of Australia claims that 51,500 direct jobs and 120,000 indirect jobs are created through the coal industry. In 2017, this led to $57 billion of export revenue (a new record), $6 billion in wages and $5 billion in royalties.

Coal still provides 75 per cent of the energy generated in the national electricity market. No other large-scale source of base-load energy is as low cost. After iron ore, coal generated the largest export revenue, eclipsing agriculture, manufacturing, other services, base metals and gold. The total value of coal exports has nearly tripled in the last decade.

Despite renewable-energy spruikers claiming that Japan is getting out of coal, Japan remains our biggest export market for thermal coal (coal burnt in coal-fired power stations), earning Australia nearly $8.5 billion in 2016–17. South Korea, China and Taiwan are the next largest buyers of Australian thermal coal.

When it comes to metallurgical coal (used to make steel), India, China and Japan are our biggest export markets.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast shows coal consumption in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries declining in the period till 2040, while in non-OECD countries coal consumption will increase, with projected coal-fired electricity generation being four times greater than in OECD countries in 2040.

Affluent nations’ governments would close down a low-cost, reliable form of electricity generation because of climate alarmism while at the same time exporting coal to developing nations so they can literally power ahead in building their economies.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement won’t “make any difference” to electricity prices and that Australia’s national security would be compromised by doing so because climate change is a concern of Pacific nations. This is false.

The federal renewable energy target (RET) of 23.5 per cent renewable-energy generation by 2020 aims to comply with the Paris Agreement of a 26–28 per cent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2030. That has resulted in the $3.6 billion of taxpayer subsidies this year that have been funnelled into creating otherwise unviable renewable energy projects. And electricity consumers are still paying higher power bills.

Abandon the Paris Agreement and the RET trying to achieve it and you remove the legislative compulsion for electricity retailers to purchase costly renewable-energy certificates, which will bring down power prices and allow low-cost base-load power to flourish once again.

A Bill Shorten ALP government would legislate a 50 per cent RET by 2030, which would see power prices skyrocket and reliability in the electricity grid plummet. Industry and business would shut down or go offshore in search of lower costs of doing business.

The ALP is pursuing an energy policy that prioritises emissions targets without any regard to affordability and reliability. In the process, it has abandoned any semblance of protecting workers’ livelihoods and economic security.

The only political parties in Australia that seem to be advocating for the most low-cost form of energy (coal) are minor parties such as Labour DLP, One Nation and Australian Conservatives. This is one of the reasons that the major parties are haemorrhaging votes to these minor parties.

Coal is the lifeblood of Australia’s economy. It saved us from disaster during the global financial crisis and is largely responsible for saving us from ongoing levels of calamitous government debt. If governments capitulate to anti-coal campaigners and climate alarmists, Australia’s economy will be irrevocably destroyed.

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

September was the second driest month in more than 100 YEARS – and Summer is set to be even worse

Notice the dog that didn't bark?  For once there is no tie to global warming given.  But EVERYTHING is due to global warming!  How come this bout of difficult weather is not attributed to global warming?  I have repeatedly noted that with Leftists, what the leave out is as significant as what they say -- and this is an example of it

What they are not facing up to is that drought is a sign of COOLING!  If the weather really had been hot, more water would have evaporated off the oceans and come down as rain, giving FLOODS, if anything.  It has not not happened.  Their cockeyed theory doesn't fit the present observed facts.  The globe is NOT warming.  A big drought shows that


Drought-stricken farmers are expected to get a much-needed break from September's record dry spell over the next few weeks.

But Aussies shouldn't breath a sigh of relief too soon - weather experts believe that the dip in temperature won't last long.

Bureau of Meteorology expert Tom Hough warned that the months leading up to summer will see above-average heat and summer is set to be a scorcher.

Above-average temperatures will grace the country in the months leading up to summer, Mr Hough said.

Temperatures will soar above the norm for the month of October across the country, with the exception of far-east and north Queensland and northeast NSW.

Sydney's average temperatures for October usually sit between 24-27 degrees.

November temperatures will also be above average with the exception of Western Australia's southeast coast. 

Similarly December will see scorching temperatures above the norm in most of the country.   

However there is no need to crack out the sunscreen just yet. Temperatures are expected to cool towards the end of the week and much-needed rain will sweep the country.

A BOM expert told Daily Mail Australia that rain will be widespread across the southern half of the nation over the next two weeks.

At least 25-50mm of rain is expected to fall in Sydney alone, following the country's record dry September. An average of just 5.2mm of rainfall was recorded last month. 

SOURCE 






What's this all about?



It's the cover for the latest issue of News Weekly a broadly conservative Australian news magazine. It should be available at your local Newsagents. It's been around for 50 years now.  You can find the story behind the cover here.  You can subscribe here. Artwork above by Zeg.






Pauline Hanson demands massive pay cut for the ABC's next managing director after the sacking of $890k-a-year Michelle Guthrie – and says her successor must be paid less than the PM

Pauline Hanson is demanding the next ABC managing director be given a massive 45 per cent pay cut so Michelle Guthrie's successor is paid considerably less than the Prime Minister.

The One Nation leader has suggested the head of the national broadcaster be paid the same as any other senior executive public servant, a week after Ms Guthrie was sacked from her $891,000-a-year post.

Senator Hanson nominated the principal executive office band E salary, starting at $488,310, as an appropriate remuneration for an ABC managing director, in her opinion piece published in The Australian.

Were this salary cut to be implemented, the ABC managing director would be paid less than Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is on a $538,000-a-year package.

Making her case, Senator Hanson said it was wrong that the ABC paid its most senior executive more than the BBC's director-general Tony Hall, who is on $810,000.

'Like many Australians, I don't understand how we can pay the managing director of the ABC more than the director-general of the BBC when the head of the BBC must manage licence fees and the sale of programs to fund a significantly larger and more complex organisation than our own national broadcaster,' she said.

Senator Hanson also suggested the ABC's seven remaining board members be replaced with directors who take seriously accusations of left-wing bias at the organisation, which received $1.1 billion for the 2018/19 financial year in the May federal budget.

'The next task is to find board members committed to culling producers and presenters who cannot separate their own left-leaning political opinions from accurate and impartial news and information,' she said.

David Anderson, the ABC's former head of television, took over as acting managing director on September 24 following the sacking of Michelle Guthrie, halfway through her five-year appointment.

In a week of turmoil, Justin Milne resigned as chairman three days later, after it was alleged he had sought the sackings of chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici and political editor Andrew Probyn to appease former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

One Nation has two senators and shares the balance of power in the Senate with 17 other cross-bench lawmakers who aren't from the major parties.

SOURCE 





Five ways universities can advance free expression

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear, George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm.

At a 1943 symposium, Univer­sity of Sydney professor of philosophy John Anderson spoke out against religion in the school curriculum. “Religious doctrines are a direct attack and assault on a child’s common sense,” he said. “If a child is forced to swallow doctrines of a religious nature, it will undermine his understanding of things in general.”

The learned members of the NSW Legislative Assembly condemned Anderson’s comments for undermining “the principles of the Constitution of the Christian state”. Not one member of the assembly spoke in Anderson’s support. The Legislative Council (parliament’s other house) passed its own motion asking the governing body of Sydney University to “define the limits” universities should place on the discussion of controversial matters. The world still awaits its response.

Anderson was unrepentant. His call for campus speakers to be “as blasphemous, obscene and seditious as they like” was strongly supported by students, sympathetic colleagues and a few univer­sity leaders.

Fast-forward to the present. The right to speak on campus remains as contentious as ever but the protagonists have reversed roles. Politicians now lament campus censorship while students — and even academics — are becoming increasingly intolerant. Convinced of their own fragility, today’s students believe exposure to challenging ideas can be harmful, even traumatic. Students demand to be “protected” from controversial speakers.

A poll of 3000 students in the US conducted by the Knight Foundation last year found 37 per cent believed it was acceptable to shout down speakers and 10 per cent thought using violence against speakers was sometimes acceptable. The Brookings Institution reports even larger numbers: 50 per cent of university students consider it acceptable to disrupt speakers by shouting, and 19 per cent condone the use of violence to silence those whose views they find objectionable.

One victim of student intolerance is sex therapist and columnist Bettina Arndt. Her heresy is to disagree with the conclusions of a report produced by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which claimed that 21 per cent of Australian university students were “sexually harassed” in a university setting.

Arndt pointed out that the commission’s definition of harassment included unwanted compliments, leering, staring and bad jokes. The number of respondents who reported being assaulted was 1.6 per cent (and some of those incidents took place on public transport, not at the university). The incidence of sexual assault on campus is lower than the rate of sexual assault in the general ­community.

Students at Melbourne’s La Trobe University invited Arndt to speak. At first, university administrators refused permission, claiming Arndt’s views did not “align with the values of the university and its campaign … against sexual violence on campus”. It seems that La Trobe has an “official position” on sexual assault. As a consequence, the university would rather have students, and the public, believe its campus was unsafe than let Arndt speak.

La Trobe relented when Arndt took her story to the press, but no one heard her speak. Protesters sil­enced her by shouting her down.

Her next talk, at Sydney University, simil­arly was shouted down and required mobilising police to protect her and the audience from aggressive protesters.

In the 1940s, Anderson urged his students to fight hard for free speech “without restrictions”. Today’s student activists are intent on achieving the exact opposite.

Expressing alarm at the censorious environment on our campuses, Human Rights Commis­sioner Ed Santow is encouraging universities to develop codes of conduct that protect robust debate.

Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan agrees, expressing support for the University of Chicago statement on principles of free expression, which commits universities to unfettered “debate and deliberation” even when “the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offen­sive, unwise, immoral or wrongheaded”. The statement also forbids anyone from interfering with the freedom of others to “express views they reject or even loathe”. (That is, no shouting down speakers.) The Chicago statement has been adopted by dozens of American universities, but none in Australia.

Echoing Orwell, former High Court chief justice Robert French said this week that “offensive or hurtful” speech was the price we paid for liberty. He says universities erode their public standing and perhaps even face legislative intervention if they fail to defend free speech. French’s prediction is not just hypothetical. The US states of Arizona and North Carolina already have legislated speech codes for their universities and so has the University of Wisconsin board of regents.

Australian universities would avoid the erosion of their public standing and advance liberty by adopting five rules.

* Affirm the value of free speech.

* Forbid administrators from disinviting speakers.

* Discipline students or staff who try to silence speakers.

* Remain institutionally neutral on matters of public policy.

* Levy security charges on all speakers, not just those on one side of an issue.

It is fitting to end where we began. After being condemned by parliament, Anderson addressed students. His words are worth repeating: “There is no absolute right of free speech. It exists only so far as people are prepared to maintain it and fight for it.”

Universities owe it to the public to join the fray.

SOURCE 






Hospitals target relatives of the sick -- raking in $45MILLION a year in parking fees

Public hospital patients tend to be poor so their relatives probably are too.  Ripping off the poor: Way to go!

The government is calling for hospitals to offer parking discounts after it was revealed they rake in millions of dollars each year.

Top hospitals in Melbourne are raking in up to $45.5million combined per year in parking fees.

The Alfred, St Vincent's and the Royal Melbourne have increased the price of parking by 25 per cent over three years, the Herald Sun reported.

Another hospital, Austin Health, said they take in $8.6million profit from parking.

They recorded a revenue of $11.5 million last year and spent $2.9 million on costs.

The government have asked hospitals across the nation to at least offer discounts for frequent visitors. 

A spokesman for Health Minister Jill Hennessy said they forced hospitals to publish their parking rates in a push for cheaper fares.

'We know that going to the hospital can be extremely distressing and the last thing we want is for patients and their family and friends forced to pay exorbitant carparking fees,' the spokesman told the publication.

In Victoria alone, several hospitals were found to be paying off long-term loans owed to the government with the car park revenue. 

Last month, Lady Cilento Children's Hospital came under fire for rising their parking prices. From October 2, prices at the Queensland hospital will sky-rocket from $30 to $35 for a full day of parking.

The cost of parking for two to three hours will also rise one dollar to $24.

In a letter to the families and visitors of frequent hospital patients, the hospital detailed the price increase and offered financial support for those eligible. 'Families experiencing financial hardship may be eligible for parking assistance, such as concessional parking or free public transport.

'We have a policy in place for concessional parking at a rate of $12 per day for parents, carers and families, where there is evident financial or social need.'    

In 2017,  The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne raked in $10.3 million in car park revenue. The 2018 review won't be released until November.

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

The Tilt Train has been nobbled

The Tilt Train doesn't tilt any more. That's one of the most glaring proofs of how the super cautious bureaucrats at Queensland Rail have totally misused one of the few trains  that they could have been proud of.  It is one of the few bits of "modern" (it is 20 years old) technology that could have given passengers a  modern journey time. 

It chugs along at a speed averaging about 80 kmh versus the 160 kmh it is routinely capable of. It goes a little  faster than the old "Sunlander" but the "Sunlander" was REALLY slow.  You could have walked faster at some points on it.

Do the sums yourself:  The Tilt Train does the 615 km from Brisbane to Rockhampton in 7.5 hours -- which averages out at 82 kmh -- or 51 mph in the old money. Highway traffic goes faster than that. Allowing half an hour for stops still brings the average speed up to only 87 kmh

And that slow speed is why the train doesn't tilt any more.  The whole point of Tilting technology is so it can go faster.  The train does not have to slow down so much as it goes around curves.  It leans into curves the way a motorbike would.  But the Tilt Train goes so slowly around curves that it has no need to tilt. It handles  curves in the track the same way the old "Sunlander" did -- by slowing to a crawl.

On my recent trip from Brisbane to Rockhampton, there were a few spots when the train showed something of what it can do and that was rather exciting but they never lasted for long.

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of excess bureaucratic caution was the way the train slowed to a crawl for an urban  level crossing.  With red lights flashing and a boom gate down, Queensland motorists can still cross rail tracks at will.  In most of the world you risk your life by ignoring crossing warnings but not so in urban Queensland.  The train goes so slowly that the driver could probably stop in time rather than run into you. The bureaucrats  ensure that NOTHING will generate negative publicity for their train.

On my trip the train even came to a full stop for 15 minutes to deal with an ill passenger.  I have no idea how that helped.  I suspect regulations again.

So why are Queenslanders in the grip of bureaucrats who completely misuse their best asset?  I suspect it goes back to the time when the Tilt Train did tilt.  But it can only tilt so far.  And in 2004 BOTH drivers were too busy noshing to slow the train down when it entered a curve.  So they sent the train through a curve at twice the recommended speed.  It of course crashed. 

So what was clearly needed were computerized speed limiters.  Queensland Rail in fact did install such a system but to be super cautious they just slowed the whole train down forever.  A very bureaucratic and unintelligent response.  They can now enjoy their coffee breaks without a care in the world.

I must however give credit where it is due.  The food aboard is remarkably good for railway food. Their chef clearly knows what he is doing. The hot food came around hot and the cold food around came cold.  And the prices are very reasonable, though the portions are rather small. And the food carts come around with great frequency, perhaps to take the minds of passengers off the painful progress of their train.  I am guessing that the food supply is the only thing outsourced to private enterprise. What might upset international visitors, however, is that they only take cash.  Remember that stuff?  Credit cards are not accepted.






ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is appalled over the treatment of judge Kavanaugh






Tas priests to be forced to report abuse

The Tasmanian government will make it mandatory for religious leaders to report child sex abuse, including when it's revealed during confession.

What idiocy.  The church has long outlasted such attempts.  Priests obey a higher law. Are they really going to put parish priests in prison?

Religious leaders in Tasmania will be forced to report child sexual abuse, including when it's revealed during confession.

Draft legislation, released by the state government on Tuesday, aims to break the seal of confession that has allowed Catholic priests an exemption from reporting allegations of abuse.

"It is important that all members of the community take responsibility for heinous crimes committed in the past ... and to make sure these serious crimes never happen again," Attorney-General Elise Archer said.

The proposed changes are in line with recommendations from the Royal Commission Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

Religious ministers who don't report child abuse could be jailed for life, Ms Archer said.

The law would broaden the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act to include religious ministers as mandatory reporters.

It would also exclude the sacrament of confession's privilege as a defence for not reporting abuse.

South Australia has passed laws requiring priests to report child abuse, while Victoria's Labor government has pledged to the same if re-elected in November.

SOURCE 






Shorten defies Left on national security and Home Affairs

Bill Shorten will stare down a push from Labor Left colleagues and key unions wanting to dismantle the Department of Home Affairs and will go to the election with a commitment to keep the national security super-agency intact.

The Australian understands the Labor leader will resist calls from within his ranks to break up the department created last year under the Turnbull government in a major move to shore up his national security credentials.

While no official policy has been taken to his frontbench, the Opposition Leader has privately canvassed the issue and is understood to be insisting Labor in government would not break up the department, as has been called for within sections of the party’s Left.

This would ensure that under a Labor government, immigration and border protection functions, as well as ASIO, would remain under the administrative umbrella of the intelligence and sec­urity super-agency, along with the Australian Federal Police and multiple smaller policing and sec­urity agencies or divisions.

The Shorten move will potentially close off a key line of attack from the government, which has used Labor’s political vulnerability on asylum-seeker policy to portray the opposition as “soft” on borders and national security.

A senior Labor source close to Mr Shorten confirmed there was “no appetite” to change the newly created national security apparatus or structures and acknowledged the potential for disruption to intelligence and ­security if the structures were changed again.

“Continuity on national security is paramount for us, and for the country,” the source said.

A draft ALP nat­ional conference platform circulated in April, ahead of the postponed conference now due to be held in December, contained a binding policy for Labor in government to “review” the Department of Home Affairs. This is believed to have been watered down from a Left-sponsored ­motion calling for the dismantling of the department, which not only oversees nat­ional security agencies, criminal justice, transport security, cyber security and Customs, but also immigration and border protection management, including the handling of asylum-seekers.

It is also consistent with the government’s policy of a departmental review to gauge its ­success. Scott Morrison, on becoming Prime Minister, made changes to the ministerial structure of the Home Affairs portfolio, reinstating a stand-alone immigration ministry and transferring this function from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to Immigration Minister David Coleman.

The only difference under consideration and backed by Labor’s Right would be to elevate the ­immigration minister to cabinet.

The decision by Mr Shorten to maintain Labor’s bipartisan position on national security is likely to trigger protest from some members of his caucus and unions affected by the creation of the ­department last year.

The Labor source said there was an overwhelming view in caucus that the national security architecture, and Labor’s bipartisan approach, should remain ­unchanged.

“Why would we change it if it’s working?” the source said.

In a Newspoll conducted for The Australian in December, Mr Shorten trailed Malcolm Turnbull on the question of which leader was more capable of handling national security 25 to 53 per cent, and asylum-seekers arriving in Australia 28 to 52 per cent.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus is said to have privately argued that ASIO’s operational functions should be returned to the ­Attorney-General’s Department, which still has legal oversight of the premier spy agency, including the issuing of warrants.

The opposition’s immigration spokesman, Shayne Neumann, is also believed to be pushing for the removal of immigration from the functions of the super-­department, which would incur a sig­nificant cost in unravelling newly integrated intelligence units, IT systems and personnel.

This could be done by an administrative change under a new prime minister, but any move to transfer operational oversight of ASIO would require legislation.

Mr Dreyfus has raised concerns about the Home Affairs ­Department concentrating too much power in a single minister.

The Transport Workers Union and the former Maritime Union of Australia, now absorbed into the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union, are believed to have been applying pressure to Labor MPs to support a break-up of the ­department.

The unions were opposed to the Office of Transport Security being taken from the Department of Transport and absorbed into Home Affairs as the Aviation and Maritime Security Division.

The Australian understands the unions were concerned not only about the impact on the workforce from biometric scanning equipment but the changes in issuing of identity cards for workers. Some agencies were sceptical about the creation of the department, which was ­announced after a working group led by Mr Turnbull, Mr Dutton and former attorney-­general ­George Brandis.

One critical move was to shift ASIO’s operational oversight from the Attorney-General’s ­Department to the new agency.

It is understood Mr Turnbull ­described the old model as a relic of the past and said that the modern threat environment required a security minister to connect what ASIO did with the other intelligence and security agencies.

Oversight and accountability was maintained, with the ­attorney-general retaining legal oversight and power over the issuing of ASIO warrants, with the home affairs minister having operational oversight.

SOURCE 






Pauline Hanson demands a ‘please explain’ on Paris Agreement

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has called on Scott Morrison to withdraw Australia from the Paris Agreement on climate change or “please explain” why the government would not pull out.

Conservative Coalition MPs led by Tony Abbott, who signed Australia up to the deal when he was prime minister, and Craig Kelly, chair of the government’s backbench energy committee, have been pushing for an exit from the agreement but the Prime Minister has refused to bow to pressure.

Under the agreement, Australia has pledged to reduce emissions to 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.

“Often people will speak of the voluntary or supposedly non-binding nature of this deal,” Senator Hanson writes in a letter to Mr Morrison.

“Personally, I am not familiar with too many non-binding agreements that come with international debt collectors and a $400 million dollar price tag, a price tag that only looks set to grow. I don’t recall any government telling the Australian people that signing the Paris Climate Agreement would eventually lead to organisations like the Global Climate Fund acting like standover men, knocking at our door, telling us to pay up, or else.”

Senator Hanson was referring to the Green Climate Fund, which was a critical part of the Paris Agreement and received $200m from Australia between 2015 and 2018.

Josh Frydenberg confirmed to The Weekend Australian the government would not increase its commitment to the fund.

Mr Morrison has argued the Paris Agreement will not “change electricity prices one jot” but withdrawing from it could jeopardise key relationships with neighbouring countries in the Pacific and undermine Australia’s national security.

“This is the number one issue of our Pacific neighbours, our strategic partners, our strategic security partners,” he told Sky News last month.

“There are a lot of influences in the southwest Pacific and I’m not going to compromise Australia’s national security by walking away from a commitment that was made a number of years ago to that target. It’s been there for the last four years or three years, just over three years.”

Senator Hanson wrote: “I am writing today to ask you explicitly, please withdraw Australia from the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement. I am also asking you to commit to ending the large contributions of Australian taxpayers’ money to international organisations like Global Climate Fund.

“If you cannot agree to support One Nation in these endeavours then I and many other concerned Australians, would appreciate it if you could please explain why.”

Emissions for the year to March 2018 increased 1.3 per cent, driven largely by LNG production for export, according to the latest national greenhouse gas inventory.

They were 1.9 per cent below emissions in 2000 and 11.2 per cent below emissions in 2005.

Mr Morrison has insisted Australia will reach its target under the Paris Agreement “in a canter”.

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

Queensland pushes for new laws that would force homeowners to allow tenants to keep animals

So who is going to pay for the carpet you have to throw out when tenants have ruined it by their pets pissing and shitting on it?  The government? As a former landlord I can vouch that it is not uncommonwith for pet owners to leave their accommodation in a  stinking and unfixable state. And tenants are generally poor so you can't sue them.  There are of course good and bad tenants but a big lot of them are low lifes.  Landlords should be given medals for accommodating them

Every homeowner in one Australian state could be forced to allow tenants to have pets in an overhaul of renting laws.

Landlords in Queensland would still need to give consent to their tenants owning a pet under a state review called Open Doors to Renting Reform, but could only refuse in certain circumstances.

The review, which was announced by the state government on Sunday, would come after legislation in Victoria passed in September giving renters the same right.
to have pets in an overhaul of renting laws (stock image)

Housing minister Mick de Brenni said the new laws, which will also allow tenants in the state to hang photos on the wall freely, could 'make renting fairer for everybody'.

'Pets are part of our families,' the minister said according to ABC News. 'In other jurisdictions across the country, they have established a regime where we can make easier arrangements on having a pet.'

RSPCA Queensland announced last year that people moving home was one of the top three reasons why pets were turned into them. Over the past two years, the RSPCA said 15 per cent of the dogs and cats surrendered nationally were given to them because owners could not take their pets to their new home.

A consultation of renters, estate agents and homeowners will launch this week to begin the review process - described as long overdue by Deputy Premier Jackie Trad.

Tenants will receive an e-mail on Sunday asking how they think renting could be improved in the state, with submissions open until November 30.

She told reporters South Brisbane alone had seen a 123 per cent rise in the number of rental properties on the market and the appropriate laws in the state needed to be modernised.

State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the proposed tenancy law review would replace legislation which had not been changed in 40 years.

SOURCE 






Australia refuses to be the fall guy for the "crisis" at the global climate fund

Australia will freeze its level of funding for a Green Climate Fund that stalled after giving millions of dollars to replace cooking stoves in Bangladesh and sponsoring “gender responsive” drinking water projects in Ethiopia.

The GCF was a critical part of the Paris Agreement but was suffering a “crisis of confidence” and unable to function.

The US has already pulled $US2 billion ($2.7bn) of its promised $US3bn contribution but Australia is under pressure to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia had given the fund $200 million between 2015 and 2018. And it would “consider possible further contributions” through the course of “replenishment negotiations”.

But Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said yesterday: “Australia will not be increasing our commitment.”

A paper issued by the World Resources Institute this week said Australia should be the sixth biggest contributor to the fund based on its economy, past greenhouse gas emissions and current emissions per capita. This would amount to about $400m in second-round funding.

Environment groups have said “replenishment” funding would be “a critical indicator to developing countries about whether developed countries are serious about holding up their part of the Paris Agreement bargain”. But former GCF board member Jacob Waslander has written a scathing critique of the fund’s operation. “Rather than a dynamic global centre for climate finance, the GCF board has been mired by ineffective decision-making in an atmosphere of distrust,” Mr Waslander said. “After five years of operation, the GCF — the world’s biggest multilateral climate fund — faces a crisis of confidence … Representative from developed and developing countries, the private sector and non-governmental organisations are deeply concerned about the effectiveness and efficiency of the fund’s governance, and particularly about how its board functions.”

The last board meeting ended in stalemate with the resignation of Australian chief executive Howard Bamsley. Mr Waslander said a key problem was the board worked on the basis of unanimity, so any board member could block any decision for any reason. As a result, funding for new projects had effectively stopped.

The GCF had so far approved 76 projects worth $US3.7bn ($5bn) to help developing countries in their low-emission development. About half of the money was in loans and half in grants, much of it dedicated to promoting renewable energy. Most projects were in Africa and Asia Pacific.

SOURCE 






The controversial traffic law that doesn't even work: Road rule that forces drivers to slam on the brakes while passing emergency vehicles is causing MORE crashes

Drivers across the country are reporting more near misses than ever before, with motorists pointing the finger at one controversial road rule.

South Australian drivers are forced to slam on the brakes and get their cars below 25 kilometres per hour any time they pass an emergency vehicle with its lights on.

Motorists also need to give way to any person on foot near a parked emergency vehicle flashing its lights, according to the rule.

Failure to do so could result in a fine of $448 and three demerit points.

In theory, the rule reduces the risk of a driver hitting a paramedic or police officer, whose attention would be on a scene at the side of the road.

But drivers say that screeching to a halt is increasing the likelihood of a rear-end collision.

Latest South Australian police figures show 42 reports of near misses or collisions when motorists are forced to brake hard since the laws were introduced in late-2014. One-third of the complaints actually resulted in a collision, or the driver being forced to jerk out of the way. In some instances, they say they completely lost control of their vehicle.

Before the law was implemented, only one complaint was ever made.

South Australia's Emergency Services Minister Corey Wingard is calling for reform in the state's law, resulting in consistency across the country.

Similar laws have been put in place in every other state, though their speed limits drop to 40km/h instead of 25km/h when passing an active emergency services vehicle.

'Potentially, going to 40km/h across the board could be a smoother understanding for the public and community, so we'll have a look at whether that's do-able,' Mr Wingard says. He says he hopes to raise the issue in Cabinet, before pursuing possible legal changes to State Parliament

SOURCE 






Brother of Muslim accused of Christmas Day terror plot to blow up Melbourne 'believed Australians who refuse to comply with Sharia law should be executed or deported’

I know who should be executed or deported.  With their hate-filled religion, Muslims are just bad news


A man whose home was raided over an alleged terror plot in Melbourne two years ago believes people who don't sign a contract to live peacefully with Muslims should leave Australia or be executed.

Ibrahim Abbas is giving evidence against his younger brother Hamza Abbas, 23, cousin Abdullah Chaarani, 27, and friend Ahmed Mohamed, 25, who are on trial in the Supreme Court, accused of conspiring to prepare an attack in Melbourne's CBD on Christmas Day 2016.

Mr Abbas was arrested on December 22 that year over the plot, which prosecutors allege targeted Federation Square, St Paul's Cathedral and Flinders Street Station.

In a police interview played to jurors on Monday, Mr Abbas said 20 police came to his home and arrested him. He was quizzed about his support for Islamic State, the caliphate and Sharia Law, which he believed should be implemented in Australia for all Muslims and non-Muslims.

'They would have to sign a contract to live with, amongst Muslims in peace,' he said. 'Whoever does not sign the contract either leaves the country or is executed.'

Mr Abbas developed his views listening to scholars like Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged IS recruiter.

He also watched 'major release' Islamic State videos designed to update watchers on recent events, attacks and show beheadings.

But he gave up social media and watching political videos around the time his home was previously raided.

'After I got raided I just felt like me being on social media is of no benefit to myself and my views,' he said, noting he had been banned from Facebook five times for posting pictures of Islamic State.

He did continue to use encrypted messaging app Telegram under username ShiaSlayer, but stopped about six months before his 2016 arrest.

Mr Abbas told police he was aware of instructional bomb making videos, and Mohamed had directed him to one about a month earlier.

'He knows that I'm, ah, a fan or I follow IS and - or I agree with their ideology, so he thought that it'd be nice to tell me,' he said.

The video gave instruction on using hydrogen peroxide to make explosives, a product Mr Abbas previously testified he had gone with some of the accused to buy at a chemist.

Mr Abbas also told police a visit to Federation Square with his brother, Chaarani and Mohamed was to get ice cream and walk around.

Last week, he told the court it was then that he suggested the men 'just picture a terrorist attack over here.'  The trial is continuing.

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 Politicians again show “Real Genius”

Viv Forbes

Back in the chaotic dying days of the Whitlam-Cairns-Connor government, Canberra was buzzing with Rex Connor’s grand plans for nationalisation of the mining industry, a national energy grid and gas pipelines linking the NW Shelf to the capital cities, all to be funded by massive foreign loans arranged by a mysterious Pakistani named Khemlani. Malcolm Frazer staged a parliamentary revolt. The economy slumped.

A British observer at that time was asked who was the greater Prime Minister - Harold Wilson or Gough Whitlam. He replied:

“Any fool can bugger up Britain but it takes real genius to bugger up Australia.”

Australian politicians are again showing real genius.

Now, we have incredible tri-partisan plans to cover the continent with a spider-web of transmission lines connecting wind/solar “farms” sending piddling amounts of intermittent power to distant consumers and to expensive battery and hydro backups - all funded by electricity consumers, tax-assisted speculators and foreign debt.

We are the world’s biggest coal exporter but have not built a big coal-fired power station for 11 years. We have massive deposits of uranium but 100% of this energy is either exported, or sterilised by the Giant Rainbow Serpent, or blocked by the Green-anti’s.

Australia suffers recurrent droughts but has not built a major water supply dam for about 40 years, and the average age of our hydro-electric plants is 48 years. And when the floods do come, desperate farmers watch as years of rain water rush past to irrigate distant oceans.

Once, Australia was a world leader in exploration and drilling – it is now a world leader in legalism, red tape and environmental obstructionism.

Once, Canberra and the states encouraged oil and gas exploration with geological mapping and research - now they restrict land and sea access and limit exports.

Once, Australia was a world leader in refining metals and petroleum - now our expensive unreliable electricity and green tape are driving these industries and their jobs overseas.

Once, Australia’s CSIRO was respected for research that supported industry and for doing useful things like controlling rabbits and prickly pear and developing better crops and pastures. Now CSIRO panders to global warming hysteria and promotes the fairy story that carbon taxes and emissions targets can change the world’s climate.

Once, young Australians excelled in maths, science and engineering. Now, they are brain-washed in gender studies, green energy non-science and environmental activism.

Once, Australians were proud of our history, our ancestors and our achievements - now we are supposed to feel guilty and apologise.

Once, Australia had a big coastal fleet carrying passengers and goods and catching fish. Now our roads are clogged with cars and freight and we import seafood.

Once, the opening of a railway or the discovery of oil, coal, nickel or uranium made headlines. Today’s Aussies harass explorers and developers, and queue at the release of the latest IPad.

As Australia’s first people discovered, if today’s Australians lack the will or the knowledge to use our great natural resources, more energetic people will take them off us.

SOURCE 






Why I refused to judge the Horne prize over a restrictive rule change

David Marr

I woke up on Saturday morning to strange news in the Australian. The rules of the Horne prize – named after Donald and run by the Saturday Paper – had been changed. I’ve judged the prize a couple of times and was due to again in 2018. But not after what I saw on Saturday.

It’s a good prize: $15,000 for a 3,000-word essay on who we are and how we live in this country. It’s the brainchild of the Saturday Paper’s whizz kid editor, Erik Jensen, and it’s been doing its job well: bringing stories to light, honouring old hands in the writing trade and turning up new talent.

But, without warning the judges, Jensen decided to radically narrow the rules and issued a list of what the Horne prize was “not seeking or accepting” this year: “Essays by non-Indigenous writers about the experiences of First Nations Australians. Essays about the LGBTQI community written by people without direct experience of this community. Any other writing that purports to represent the experiences of those in any minority community of which the writer is not a member.”

I messaged Jensen at once: “I’ve been a big critic of such restrictions. Men can write about women, gays about straights, blacks about whites. You judge, as always, by quality. That’s likely to be higher when there’s direct experience. But you can’t disqualify for lack of it. And if we’re not going to accept whites writing about Indigenous experience, how can we have whites judging Indigenous writing?”

I could have made that list a lot longer: how could I write about political parties, the Catholic church, criminal syndicates or the high court? I’ve been writing about them for decades but never been a member of any of them.

We spoke. I made it clear I wouldn’t be a judge on those terms.

On Saturday Jensen emailed all the judges – me, the novelist Anna Funder, the Indigenous academic Marcia Langton and a representative of the sponsor Aesop – apologising for springing this on us and explaining: “The guidelines attempted to reduce the number of essays we received that offered chauvinistic or condescending accounts of particular groups of Australians, especially First Australians.”

I’ve judged a few prizes in my time. Someone has to do a first triage. You can’t stop writers offering rubbish. Culling is a chore that has to be done.

Langton told me: “I don’t think you should completely rubbish Erik’s attempt to get rid of the rubbish.” She views the new guidelines as: “Probably a mistake because it’s not the done thing. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for what he’s trying to achieve but it crosses the line on censorship and free speech.”

Funder has also declined to judge the prize under the new guidelines which, she told the Australian, would disqualify a lot of her own work: “I can’t really be judging a prize where my qualifications for doing so are ruled out of bounds.”

The new rules are being ditched. Jensen is working on a plan to extend entries for another month and award the $15,000 as it has been in the past: for best writing.

SOURCE 







Tear down ABC’s silos of groupthink

Whoever replaces Michelle Guthrie as ABC managing director and editor-in-chief should be capable of acting, and should be willing to act, in both roles. Without this, the ABC will remain — as it has been for decades — an organisation essentially run by staff collectives.

The essential problem with the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster is that nobody runs it, unlike successful commercial media companies. One-time ABC chairman James Spigelman, a consistent defender of the ABC, acknowledged this reality when interviewed by Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National’s RN Breakfast last Wednesday.

Spigelman told Kelly: “The trouble with the ABC is about a quarter of the staff think that they can run the show better than anyone. It’s a very special organisation, the ABC. And it’s got a lot of different units within it — some would say silos — and they look after their own sphere, and it’s very hard to make significant changes.”

Some say silos, others say staff collectives, others still say soviets. But it’s the same problem. The various parts of the ABC run themselves; they decide what programs to make, which staff to hire and so on. And the managing director fails to resolve this by acting as an editor-in-chief, which they are entitled and paid to do.

Shortly after Mark Scott was appointed managing director and editor-in-chief in May 2006, he invited himself to address the Sydney Institute. The offer was warmly accepted, especially since this was to be his first major public speech in this role. During his talk on October 16, 2006, Scott acknowledged that “some of the ABC’s harshest public critics … love the ABC”. However, he conceded that the critics had “a sense that the organisation has issues with balance and fairness, particularly through its news and current affairs content”.

Rather than condemn the critics, Scott recognised that the ABC had been “too defensive in the face of such criticism” and he declared that it needed “to address the criticism carefully and comprehensively”. He made clear that he would act in his dual roles as managing director and editor-in-chief. This proved to be a broken promise. Within a short time, Scott dropped the commitment to act as editor-in-chief. During his decade at the ABC, Scott gave numerous interviews to his employees where he dismissed the ABC’s considered critics and maintained that there was no lack of political balance at the organisation.

When Scott left the ABC in April 2016, it was a conservative-free zone. The ABC did not have one conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its prominent television, radio or online outlets. This is what Guthrie inherited when she became managing director, and this remained the situation when she was dismissed on Monday.

The tendency of the ABC to be defensive — which Scott conceded in 2006 — remains extant today. In recent times leading ABC presenters such as Julia Baird, Ellen Fanning, Richard Glover and Leigh Sales have denied the ABC is a conservative-free zone. But they have not been able to name one conservative in any prominent news and current affairs role.

Former Fairfax Media journalist and editor Tom Burton is not a conservative. Writing in public sector news website The Mandarin on Tuesday, he recounted how former ABC managing directors Geoffrey Whitehead and Jonathan Shier had been “mercilessly torn down” (in 1986 and 2001 respectively) “with the powerful Newscaff (news and current affairs) division of the ABC leading the charge”.

Burton added that, to this day, it was this “journo group that drives much of the culture of the national media group that is the ABC”. In other words, journalists — not management — run the ABC. And the like-minded appoint similar like-minded to key news and current affairs positions.

As Burton puts it, “previous ABC MD and former Fairfax editor Mark Scott came from this (journo) world and understood its brother and sisterhood”. Which helps explain why Scott soon dropped his intention to act as ABC editor-in-chief in addition to his role as managing director. It was all too hard.

Guthrie did not have the background to act as editor-in-chief. Moreover, as with Shier, she came to the job after many years working outside Australia. In short, Guthrie did not know — or even know of — most of the journo groups that set the organisation’s culture.

Spigelman was appointed by the Gillard Labor government as ABC chairman following his disappointment at not being made High Court chief justice. He was not a very active chairman.

Justin Milne gave his first interview as ABC chairman to The Australian’s Darren Davidson in March last year. Milne is from that subset of the business community that does not exhibit much political or historical knowledge. Milne told Davidson: “I don’t come to the job thinking I need to fix the perceived bias in the ABC because I don’t know that there really is bias.”

Milne ran the familiar Friends of the ABC line that the public broadcaster was criticised by both Labor and Coalition governments. He had in mind the criticism of the ABC by Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating along with Coalition prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott. What Milne overlooked was that all four had a similar complaint: namely they were criticised by the ABC from the Left.

For a while Malcolm Turnbull received favourable coverage by the ABC. However, after the 2016 election he became increasingly critical of the errors and unprofessionalism of some ABC presenters, producers and editors. Initially his attitude was that journalists as a group were on the Left and the public broadcaster reflected this reality. But his criticism of the ABC increased the longer he remained in office.

Guthrie essentially was appointed by Spigelman and Milne was appointed by Turnbull. Now both positions are vacant. This provides a rare opportunity for the board, under its new chairman, to appoint a managing director who has the knowledge and the courage to act as editor-in-chief and knock down the journo silos in the taxpayer-funded conservative-free-zone.

SOURCE 






Another angry and ungracious Leftist

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian has found herself in a bitter online feud with a Labor MP after sending the woman a handwritten letter as a kind gesture. 

Ms Berejiklian sent the letter to Jenny Aitchison, the member for Maitland, after learning the mother-of-two had both of her breasts removed and reconstructed in July after learning she had a cancer gene. 'I was so sorry to learn of your serious health issue…I hope you are recovering well and our thoughts are with you and your family during this time,' the letter read.

But Ms Aitchison took issue with the message, firing back a scathing letter of her own critiquing the government's approach to health and use of state funds.

Her lengthy response was then uploaded in full on Facebook, accusing Ms Berejiklian of 'wasting billions of dollars on stadiums'.

In her response, Ms Aitchison thanked Ms Berejiklian for her letter but accused Ms Berejiklian of prioritising stadiums over women's health.

'‪I want @GladysB to know first hand what it's like to be a woman in regional NSW struggling with cancer or other 'serious health issues'...Fix our health system...stop wasting billions of dollars on stadiums!' she wrote in a Facebook post.

'When I was diagnosed with the BRCA2 gene, I had a risk reducing bilateral saplingo oopherectomy and hysterectomy to reduce my breast cancer risk by half and to reduce ovarian cancer risk by 97%,' the letter read. 'Free MRIs once a year, interspersed with annual mammograms and ultrasounds (or when a lump seem to show) delayed my breast cancer.'

She was also unable to take the preventable medication due to menopause.

'I couldn't find a surgeon in the Hunter who could do my surgery and had to wait six months for a private specialist in Sydney,' the Member for Maitland wrote.

'After surgery I had complications where I spent 52 hours in St Vincent's Public Hospital emergency department without being fed for 18 hours. The staff were amazing and overworked but there were no beds in either private or public wards.'

She then went on to explain why she was detailing all this information to the Premier, stressing she knew 'first hand what it's like to be a woman in regional New South Wales struggling with cancer and other 'serious health issues'.'

'I didn't want ask for or want special treatment because I'm a member of Parliament. 'I want you to fix our health system. Fund more screening for all women and education campaigns, and stop wasting billions of dollars on stadiums!'

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