Winston Peters and NZ's deportations row with Australia

It is something of a wonder that the NZ government is so furious at getting its own criminals back. We hear no such fury from other countries. Why does it think they are Australia's responsibility? They could have become Australian citizens but did not.

They say it is unjust because the criminals have often been here  for some years (attempting to exploit us, presumably). But Australia and NZ are very similar countries so it is absurd to say that the criminals will have difficulty fitting in back home.  And why should we care if they do?

I am afraid there is only one thing that makes sense of it all: Racism.  Most of the offenders are at least partly Maori and there is no doubt of the high level of criminality among the Maori.  New Zealand has one of the highest incarceration rates in the Western world, and more than half of the prison population is Maori, while Maori are only 16% of the overall population

I have had business dealings with some Maori myself and I repeatedly got the impression that their ethical system is very rudimentary.  It was not a happy experience.  I would much rather have had them in NZ than here

So Ms Ardern makes sense if you look at what is unsaid but she has no reasonable argument for lumbering us with her unwanted criminals

Mr Peters claims virtue by saying that NZ sends back far fewer people the other way. It is rare to deport Australians from NZ back to Australia.  If I may venture an obvious suggestion: That may be because it is much rarer for Australians to be criminal.  Australia's large ethnic minority is Chinese -- who are famously law-abiding.  So Mr Peters would  seem to be claiming a virtue he does not possess


Winston Peters has invoked the tragedy of the Christchurch massacre in blasting Australia’s policy of forced deportations of non-citizens, saying an Australian was charged with “the worst tragedy we’ve ever had”, and nobody “sought to abuse Australia about that”.

New Zealand’s deputy prime minister on Tuesday escalated Jacinda Ardern’s recent evisceration of Australia’s policy, telling the ABC the home affairs minister Peter Dutton had implemented deportations for political reasons and for personal ambition, and Australia should be “better than that”.

Peters told ABC radio that the man on trial for mass murder over the massacre had “come to this country from Australia”.

“Did we make a song and dance about Australia about that?”

“It was the worst tragedy we’ve ever had – 51 people lost their lives and scores and scores were damaged forever. It was far worse than Port Arthur, and no one in my country sought to abuse Australia about that.”

Forced deportations has been a point of friction in the bilateral relationship for several years, but has flared as New Zealand heads for the polls later this year. New Zealand police have said Australia’s policy is a significant factor behind a rise in domestic criminal gang activity.

Dutton said on Monday Ardern was accelerating criticism of the policy because of the looming election, and that was “regrettable”.

“New Zealand obviously is in an electoral cycle at the moment,” he told Sky News on Monday. “It is, I think, regrettable that she made the comments but that would have played well domestically for her.”

Peters rejected the commentary. He said the complaint from New Zealand was not about the election. “He’s wrong,” he said. Local police had raised the negative consequences of deportations of violent criminals because there was evidence of a growing problem. “We wouldn’t be saying it unless we had evidence.”

Peters argued Australia’s policy was fundamentally unfair: “You’ve sent thousands back to New Zealand and we’ve sent a handful back to you.”

During a visit to Australia last week, Ardern took her strongest stance yet opposing Australia’s policy of deporting New Zealand citizens, no matter how long they had spent in Australia, if they had committed a crime.

Morrison said Australia had no plans to abandon the policy. “The Australian government’s policy is very clear,” he said. “We deport non-citizens who have committed crimes in Australia against our community.

“This policy is applied not specific to one country, but to any country whose citizens are here. You commit a crime here, if convicted, once you have done your time, we send you home.”

SOURCE  





Green ‘lawfare’ a $65bn deal hit to projects

Green activists are using a back door on environmental laws to delay an estimated $65bn in projects­ ranging from dams to a salmon farm, with “lawfare” forcing companies into court for more than 10,000 days in total since 2000.

Conservation and green groups have used 11 new legal claims in the past four years to tie up seven projects in regional areas, including the $16.5bn Adani coalmine in Queensland, a new $140m port on Melville Island­ in the Northern Territory, Victorian government forestry and the $30m Tassal salmon farm in Tasmania.

The 11 new cases of environmental groups using secondary legislation since 2016 have resulte­d in seven major projects being delayed in court for a total of 2600 days, as business investment in Australia drops to its lowest level since the 1990s.

According to analysis from the free-market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, legal activism using the federal environmental protection act has put $65bn of investment at risk, with delays totalling more than 28 years in court.



The tactics of activist groups have delayed 28 projects between 2000 and 2019, with an estim­ated value of over $65bn.

The projects include six coal and iron ore mine projects, two dam construction projects, two dredging projects, forest and pest management, a tourism development, multiple road construction projects, the construction of a pulp mill, a desalination plant and a marine supply base.

After the election of the Morrison Coalition government, the Queensland Labor government fast-tracked final approval for the Adani coal project in the Galilee Basin, after a nine-year approval process and an extra 341 days in court after an Australian Conservation Foundation appeal started in 2016.

In 2017, a Bob Brown Found­ation challenge against a salmon farm in Tasmania, to protect the southern right whale, was dismissed after 237 days in court but an appeal meant another 349 days in court.

According to IPA research fellow Kurt Wallace: “A small group of green activists are using a special legal privilege to delay and disrupt $65bn of investment, which is disproportionately damaging regional Australia.”

He said the disruptive liti­gation from environmental groups using a section of the act allowing conservationists to take companies to court was not leading to substantial changes in ­environmental controls on the projects. “Disruptive lawfare has not led to environmental improvements,’’ Mr Wallace said.

“Of the cases under section 487, 94 per cent have failed to bring about a substantial change to the original project which had been approved by the commonwealth Environment Minister.

“Section 487 has allowed the courts to be used as a strategic tool for environmental activism.

“Green groups, such as the Australian Conservation Found­ation and Wilderness Society, are using legal challenges to delay and disrupt major projects with the goal of restricting investment in the resources sector by raising costs and uncertainty.

“Repealing section 487 would be a massive shot in the arm for investment in regional Australia and create an enduring stimulus for the Australian economy. (It) will not diminish the legal avenues available to farmers and private land owners who wish to take legal action against a mining project that could adversely affect their interests.’’

Disappointing news today. Equinor has announced that it won't be drilling for oil in the Bight. We desperately need to improve our oil security.

Former resources minister Matt Canavan said activists were exploiting environmental laws merely to delay projects.

“Every day that major projects are held up is another day that a desperate Australian family doesn’t have a job,’’ Senator Canavan said.

“Our environmental laws act as a big yellow light slowing everybody and everything down.

“We need laws that focus on protecting major environmental issues, not being an alternative avenue­ for radical green activists to pursue a political agenda.”

SOURCE  






Progressive warfare on economics

There’s a concerted effort to shift the focus of economics away from financial data towards social. Specifically, it’s argued that economic welfare would be better measured by our individual and collective ‘wellbeing’ than by the GDP (the value of goods and services produced in the economy).

Would-be Treasurer under a Labor government, Jim Chalmers, has thrown his support behind this idea, praising New Zealand’s ‘wellbeing budget’. He promises a two-pronged assault: first, to supplant GDP’s primacy with a more holistic measure of wellbeing; second, to weigh up budget decisions in terms of social objectives — rather than economic merits.

Chalmers argues that alternatives to GDP would instead “measure what matters” and “redefine what success means in terms of economic outcomes.”

To better measure a country’s progress, the Kiwis now monitor levels of (among others) loneliness, belonging, mental resilience, and digital inclusiveness — all supposedly more important than money. The marker of success for NZ, then, is moving the needle on these indicators, irrespective of the economics — implying that a happier society is better off than a more prosperous one.

Where this comes from is a pessimistic view that, despite nearly 30 years of economic growth, Australia supposedly hasn’t enjoyed social progress —we’re apparently all living miserably.

It’s important to understand this isn’t supported by the economic data or social indicators. First, as the Productivity Commission argued, income inequality has not significantly worsened in Australia.

Second, according to the OECD’s Better Life Index, Australia scores the second highest of any country in the world. And we are sixth on the UN’s Human Development Index — which includes both economic and other factors — and on an upward trend.

Not to forget that economic factors are themselves important indicators of the health of a society.

Indeed, focussing on social indicators rather than economic growth leads to policymakers treating the symptoms rather than the cause of social problems — many of which stem from, or are exacerbated by, adverse economic outcomes.

In short, healthy economies breed healthy societies — and the progressives are wrong about the direction of this causation.

Social progress and cohesion are important policy goals, but prioritising these over broader economic goals would be counterproductive. It also distorts fiscal policy decisions by evaluating spending proposals on the basis of their direct social impact; not financial prudence, or in context of the macroeconomic stability lever that has been the convention.

We can’t afford for economic priorities and progress to be derailed by progressive social policy — especially with the vulnerabilities of today’s economy.

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High drama and even higher stakes: it’s the moment of truth for George Pell

His Eminence was given no benefit of the doubt at all.  He was convicted for the sins of his church, not for anything he personally did

It is a measure of George Pell’s lot that he finds himself in notionally better surrounds but not necessarily better company.

The cardinal, still Australia’s most senior Catholic, will monitor next week’s High Court developments while in isolation in his ­relatively new home at Victoria’s maximum-security Barwon Prison, near Geelong.

Barwon is a hole that swallowed gangland murderer Carl Williams but it’s not quite as deep as Pell’s former holding cell in the centre of Melbourne.

Pell, 78, now has more room to move, with a more modern but still austere toilet, shower and general living facilities. He is served shoddy food and his main human contact is with the prison guards who bring him his medication for twin heart conditions.

It remains a life of deprivation.

Given his convictions, most people will be happy with Pell’s plight. For others who have followed the facts of the case closely, including the brightest minds in the law, next week’s High Court appeal will be a significant moment in Australian legal history.

There are deep divisions about whether Pell should even be in jail.

“If you look at all of the case law about unreasonable verdicts, it’s (the Pell convictions) right on the borderline of what’s reasonable and what isn’t,’’ Sydney University academic Andrew Dyer told ­Inquirer.

Dyer, who has co-authored a paper on the Pell case with the university’s Professor David Hamer, is not predicting in any way how the High Court will act. Nor is anyone else with any certainty.

But the paper, published in the Sydney Law Review, makes clear what many independent voices suspect: Pell’s convictions may be flawed.

Dyer and Hamer write that it appears open to the High Court to overturn the Pell verdicts on the basis of the cumulative effect of the evidence, but they doubt the court will make this finding.

They express concern about the impact that rejection of the Pell decision would have on the standing of juries.

Dyer and Hamer’s views are not black and white. They also make clear that the law allows for convictions based largely or solely on the complainant’s evidence and a different tack would “undermine the prohibition against child ­sexual assault’’.

This is a tick to the prosecution’s heavy reliance on the surviving choirboy, whose evidence was central to the Pell convictions.

In the paper, however, Dyer and Hamer note that key aspects of the evidence regarding Pell pointed to no opportunity to ­offend against A, the surviving ­victim, and B, another choirboy who died of a drug overdose.

“Once we also consider the ­inconsistencies in A’s account ­(however understandable), the unlikelihood that Pell would take such risks and B’s and Pell’s denials, it becomes apparent that a reasonable jury might not have convicted,’’ they write.

“Indeed, the case seems close to the borderline between one where the jury was entitled to return a guilty verdict, and one where it should have had a doubt.’’

On Wednesday, five or seven members of the High Court will gather in Canberra to decide Pell’s fate. Dyer thinks there will be seven but we probably won’t know until Tuesday afternoon.

The High Court will determine whether the Victorian Court of Appeal erred when it decided, 2:1 last year, that the County Court jury was within its rights to convict Pell of five sexual assault charges that occurred in the priests’ sacristy at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996 and in a corridor in 1997.

Or whether there should have been a reasonable doubt.

Central to deliberations is whether belief in the complainant, now a family man in early middle age, could be used as a basis for eliminating doubt raised by other witnesses, several of whom were highly credible.

Pell’s submissions asked: “Was it open to the jury to find the ­offending proven beyond reasonable doubt?’’

As one well-informed observer noted this week, of all the charges that were filed against Pell, the ­cathedral claims were among the most difficult and even unlikely to have progressed to any court.

Those with deep understanding of the cathedral, Catholic rituals and Pell’s practices are incredulous that the archbishop could ever have been left alone for the five or six minutes upon which he was convicted of forced oral sex and other abuses.

It was not uncommon in that period for literally hundreds of people to gather after Solemn Mass, the numbers bolstered by busloads of Taiwanese tourists who swarmed into the cathedral.

Justice Mark Weinberg, the former Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, was the dissenting voice at the Court of Appeal, arguing that aspects of A’s evidence lacked the necessary weight. But on A’s side were ­Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Chris Maxwell, as were the County Court jury, Victoria Police and the prosecution.

Jeremy Gans, a professor of law at Melbourne University, said it would be most unlikely if any decision were to be made next week, with the court sitting on Wednesday and possibly Thursday.

There are four options for how the court hearings may unfold.

The court could decide not to hear the appeal and end Pell’s chances of being freed early. Special leave could be granted to hear the appeal and the appeal is rejected. And special leave could be granted and the appeal is allowed.

The fourth option is that special leave is granted and the case is sent back to the Court of Appeal with three different judges.

The latter would be awkward for all, but mostly Pell, who would have to wait months more to know whether freedom was a genuine prospect for him.

One technicality is over whether the Court of Appeal appropriately used video evidence to come to its conclusion. Gans believes the only way Pell would walk next week would be if the court ruled on the spot. Even so: “I still reckon they’d wait.’’

Mirko Bagaric, dean of law at Swinburne University, notes the difficulty in predictions but says the High Court may opt for a ­narrow, contained judgment.

“The court ultimately will have to grapple with the issue about whether or not the jury verdict was reasonable,’’ he said. “It’s impossible to anticipate.’’

The prosecution’s submissions are firm in their view that the jury decision should not be overturned. The first County Court jury failed to reach a verdict; the second convicted. In a submission lodged by Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd, the prosecution argues: “It (the jury) is best placed to decide matters of credibility and reliability. The jury has the benefit of being able to deliberate as a group in private throughout the trial. And its decisions are subject to the discipline generated by the requirement of unanimity or a very high majority.’’

The prosecution also argues that Team Pell glosses over the quality of the evidence provided by A, who correctly identified the ­location of the first offending and correctly described the layout of the priests’ sacristy.

It calls into question the so-called “alibi’’ evidence provided by key witnesses. But overshadowing this is the fact that Weinberg, the legal expert on the Court of Appeal, effectively raised the spectre in his dissenting judgment of an innocent man having been wrongly convicted. Weinberg observed: “These convictions were based upon the jury’s assessment of the complainant as a witness and nothing more.’’

Further, he was damning of the conviction of Pell on the final charge, which was that in 1997 the then archbishop assaulted A in front of others, grabbing him on the testicles in front of dozens.

“I would have thought any prosecutor would be wary of bringing a charge of this gravity against anyone based upon the ­implausible notion that a sexual ­assault of this kind would take place in public and in the presence of numerous potential witnesses,’’ Weinberg ruled.

The final element of the High Court deliberations is expected to relate to the way the Court of ­Appeal assessed A’s evidence, which was videotaped.

The court, The Australian reported last month, was weighing the importance of viewing A’s testimony compared with reading the transcript.

A technical point is being considered by the High Court over what the Court of Appeal should have viewed by way of video evidence and whether, chiefly, the Court of Appeal should have strayed from the trial transcript.

Team Pell had argued that no matter how favourable the view was of A, it was not open to the jury to conclude the prosecution had eliminated all reasonable doubt. This is in the context of the combined effect of the unchallenged evidence of other witnesses.

While apparently a technical point, it could become significant if the High Court believes that the majority Court of Appeal judges went too far in their use of the video evidence.

Pell himself, meanwhile, will have no idea what is happening on Wednesday.

The proceedings will not be livestreamed outside the court and he will have to wait, probably until each night, when he may have the opportunity to telephone someone who was at the High Court for a briefing.

Maybe even his lead silk, Bret Walker, SC, depending on whether he is on the cardinal’s limited telephone list.

Regardless of the outcome, the assessment of Pell’s guilt or innocence will resonate for years.

His supporters and a fair slab of the legal community are questioning whether the jury and the ­majority on the Court of Appeal got it right.

Within sections of the Catholic Church there is a strong view that the maths don’t add up.

How could one of the busier parts of Melbourne on a Sunday morning be the site for such depraved acts? More broadly, if Pell is acquitted, it will provoke one of the ­fiercest debates in the history of Australian law and order, and ­religion.

The best hope is that the facts are allowed to tell the full story.

As we’ve been told repeatedly, it doesn’t matter what you might think of the man. But it matters if an innocent man has been jailed.

The Pell critics will get another chance to dance on his reputational grave after the High Court has finished.

That will come when the redacted sections of the sex abuse royal commission are finally released by the Morrison government.

Like so many pronouncements about Pell in recent years, they are unlikely to be kind.

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

Joe Hildebrand: The extraordinary scandal that nobody saw

Joe is right.  The BIG source of domestic violence in Australia is violence against Aboriginal women by Aboriginal men.  I have seen it myself.  It seems to be utterly instinctive.  There are always disagreements between men and women but among Aboriginals the disagreement is normally terminated by the man hitting the woman. And in drunken rages the men will often chase the women around.

There is no cure. To cure it you would have to impose white behaviour patterns on blacks and that is not going to happen.

But there is one thing that governments can do. Most black townships already have a police presence but it is not nearly enough.  To save black women from assault you have to provide a police post they can run to when in danger.  And that post has to have accommodation for them.  It's far from a perfect solution but it would save some lives

Joe is right in that no politicians have a remote clue about how to tackle the problem.  They will do anything rather than embrace the one thing that would help


This week, an incredible event that should have made us all pay attention took place in the nation’s capital – but no one noticed.

It happened in the middle of the national capital, in the middle of Parliament House, and still nobody noticed.

It was an event so bizarre and unprecedented that even that morning it would have been utterly unimaginable.

Indeed, 20 years ago it would have been front page news across the country.

And yet here it was happening right under the nose of our national leaders and the national press gallery and nobody noticed.

So for the benefit of history, what happened was this: A dozen Aboriginal women from rural Australia made the long and torturous journey to Canberra – many for the first time – in a desperate effort to tell our national leaders of the violence and dysfunction that was crippling their communities.

And to do so they reached out to the one politician they thought might actually listen to them: Pauline Hanson.

I have often said that there is a counterintuitive commonality between the far left and the far right. It now seems the same applies to the far black and the far white.

The phenomenon is the same. People who feel unheard by their community leaders will start looking in the opposite direction until they eventually meet up with another mob coming the other way.

Then, like with any other love-hate relationship, they either f**k or fight. Such is the angry and turbulent mood of the modern political age.

At any rate, this grassroots delegation was cobbled together by Josephine Cashman, a firebrand Indigenous lawyer who has become so frustrated and enraged by tokenistic platitudes and political cowardice in tackling Indigenous disadvantage that she has, for want of a better term, gone rogue.

Her message was basically this: Forget the endless debates about changing the date or the flag or the anthem; forget the limitless accusations of racism on all sides: Can we please just stop people dying in our communities?

These brave Aboriginal women came to Australia’s most progressive city and its most powerful institution in a month when politicians and pundits were bending over themselves to declare how dedicated they were to closing the gap, after yet another Closing the Gap report showed they were doing anything but.

They also came in a week when the whole nation was traumatised by the sickening murder of a mother and her three children at the hands of a monster and commentators vowed to do everything in their power to stop violence against women and children.

And here they were, survivors and witnesses of such violence from the places where it happened the most, and still nobody noticed.

And, in the irony to end all ironies, the one politician who met and stayed with them more than any other was the one being excoriated on that very day for her latest clumsy comments on this very issue.

A lot of people will ask, given Pauline Hanson’s long and infamous history of false and outrageous claims about Aboriginal people, how on earth a group of Aboriginal women could stand in the same room with her.

To that, I would offer a more telling question: How much must mainstream politicians have abandoned and condemned these women with their silence for them to see a maverick redneck senator as their only hope?

I am certainly no fan of Pauline Hanson. In my last column I detailed just some of her racist absurdities, including the disgraceful and discredited allegations of Aboriginal cannibalism in her first book.

Some might say she has softened since then, although even just this month she was singularly unsympathetic to the plight of our First Peoples, which she blamed almost entirely on themselves.

I vehemently disagree with that view. I have no doubt that much of the endemic disadvantage that seems to strangle Indigenous communities is an overhang of the disease, the grog, the killings and the kidnappings that we brought with us.

But I also vehemently disbelieve that any such attitudes and actions are the driving force behind Indigenous policy today. Any honest person working in this area knows that there is an abundance of goodwill on all sides of politics. The problem is there is an equally abundant amount of argument and confusion over what the way forward should be.

Clearly I am too pale and too bruised to offer my own solutions but it strikes me as a national outrage that women who are living through the worst of this disadvantage were almost entirely ignored when they tried to rise their voice.

Credit to the Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt who did meet with them – even if it was apparently a bit underwhelming – and Senator Jim Molan who took them all to lunch – which was apparently a bit of a hit.

And yet Pauline, incredibly enough, was the biggest hit of all.

“They really liked her because she’s not a snob,” Cashman told me. “She’s open to listening.” Unfortunately the only press about Hanson that day was over her excruciatingly contorted comments on poor Hannah Clarke and her family, which are impossible to comprehend let alone defend.

But you have to wonder if we are all equally contorted by a modern political and media culture that is more outraged by words than deeds.

While the nation was rightly united in grief for the Clarke family, the same deadly epidemic continues to sweep through our most vulnerable communities every day yet is strangely invisible.

According to Cashman, in the small and mostly Indigenous town of Wilcannia, which is home to only 550 people, 10 people have died in just the last eight weeks. Some by suicide, some by violence, all bound by poverty.

I have no die in the ditch objection to changing the date of Australia Day, nor the national anthem, nor even the flag – all relatively recent constructions. But it’s hard to feel passionate about parlour room debates when the people we pretend we’re trying to defend are dying at our grandstanding feet.

So anyway, all of this happened this week.

It happened in our national capital, it happened at Parliament House and it’s happening all over the country.

And nobody told you about it, so I’m telling you now. What happens next is up to all of us.

SOURCE  






CSIRO omits a key finding which doesn't link bushfires to climate change

Senator Matt Canavan reveals during Senate Estimates that the CSIRO failed to include a finding that “there are no studies linking climate change to fire weather” in a bushfire ‘explainer document’.

During Senate estimates a CSIRO official failed to explain why a previous CSIRO finding which said there was no evidence to suggest a link between climate change and bushsfires was not found in the recent document explaining the “climate change and science about bushfires”.

Mr Canavan told Sky News host Paul Murray omitting such a finding is like “writing a report for a newspaper about a football match and not including the final score”.

Speaking about Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s net-zero emissions target by 2050, Mr Canavan said Mr Albanese “doesn’t understand what he’s signed up to will devastate Australian farming”.

This is unbelievable that a government or any opposition that’s going for election every three years would get away with making a promise that’s going to be at least ten elections away,” he said.

SOURCE  





Hit job on Bettina's qualifications fails

Bettina Arndt advises

Good news. Nina Funnell has failed in her malicious campaign alleging I am faking my qualifications. AHPRA, the organisation regulating psychologists, has announced they are taking no action against me despite Funnell’s efforts to have me punished for allegedly misrepresenting my clinical psychology qualifications.

Funnell, one of the activists responsible for bullying universities into setting up kangaroo courts, launched the first attacks on me after the announcement of my Honour award on Australia Day.

That weekend, writing in New Matilda, Funnell and her editor & co-writer, Chris Graham, revealed their results of a two-year investigation into my qualifications. I refuted their misleading allegations here.

Now AHPRA has determined Funnell’s hit job has no substance. Their letter to me suggests some minor changes in the language I use to refer to my clinical psychology background. So instead of speaking about my “training in clinical psychology” I will now just refer to the fact that I completed a Master of Clinical Psychology degree at UNSW. After AHPRA decided not to take action after the previous complaint about me late last year, I wrote to the organisation  explaining that I planned to use that reference to my training and asked them to clarify whether that was appropriate. I had no response. Clearly the organisation now feels the need to be more specific – which is fine by me.

They acknowledge the problem of controlling how the media labels me – amusingly, New Matilda referred to me as a “clinical psychologist” in the captions to their hit piece. But AHPRA advises every effort should be made to get that right and where possible to clarify descriptions in interviews shown on video and online, including descriptions on overseas editions of my books.  I am in the process of doing that now – not such an easy task. Currently google has over 2.3 million hits listed under my name.

Recently we saw the perfect illustration of my central argument that professional backgrounds are often included in descriptions well-known people use to describe themselves. This is common practice for doctors like Bob Brown, despite them no longer being in practice or registered.

At the first public hearing of the Family Law Inquiry at Canberra, Megan Mitchell, the National Children‘s Commissioner  introduced herself stating; “I’m a psychologist by trade”. She is not a registered psychologist. I don’t suppose Funnell will do a hit job on Mitchell.

SOURCE  






Only ‘limited’ evidence for trans kids’ medicine but inquiry too ‘dangerous’?

The evidence for life-altering medical intervention in youth gender clinics suffers from “gaps” and “limitations” but a national inquiry would be “dangerous”, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has been told.

The inquiry urged by more than 200 doctors and clinicians “would further harm vulnerable patients and their families through increased media and public attention,” the Royal Australasian College of Physicians said in a letter to Mr Hunt on Friday.

In August, after this newspaper began reporting concerns about the safety and ethics of “transgender” medical treatments for vulnerable minors, Mr Hunt sought “urgent” advice from the college, which covers paediatricians.

It has since emerged the college had lobbied with paediatrician Michelle Telfer — whose Royal Children’s Hospital gender clinic in Melbourne spearheads the pro-trans “affirmative” treatment model in Australia — for easier and quicker underage access to hormones and less oversight by the Family Court.

On Friday, Mr Hunt’s spokesman said the minister would review the college’s advice and consider what might need to be done.

There is intensifying global debate about the reasons for an exponential rise in often already troubled teenagers, mostly girls, diagnosed with gender dysphoria (distress at being “born in the wrong body”) and asking for puberty blocker drugs, opposite-sex hormones and surgery such as mastectomy.

On Thursday, the former British minister for mental health and suicide prevention, Jackie Doyle-Price, called for “more control over gender treatment for children”, citing litigation involving a regretful “detransitioner”, Keira Bell, 23, who said the NHS Tavistock gender clinic in London “should have challenged me more” over medical transition.

“Puberty is not the time for anyone to consent to life-changing treatment,” Ms Doyle-Price said in a tweet.

This week brought the launch of a new global body, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, which argues that the low quality of the evidence for the affirmative model has been obscured by dramatic but unsupported claims that young people are likely to kill themselves if denied hormones and surgery.

“Given the lack of evidence of benefits of these treatments on long-term mental health, and the evidence of alarmingly high rates of post-treatment suicide, the use of affirmative care outside of rigorously designed clinical trial settings is inconsistent with ethical medical practice,” the SEGM spokesman, US-based endocrinologist William Malone, said on Friday.

Before the rise of the affirmative model and teenage-onset dysphoria, the condition typically occurred in a small, stable percentage of pre-school boys, with the vast majority coming to accept their bodies as they matured and many emerging as gay or bisexual.

Philip Morris, president of the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists, which supports a national inquiry, said he found it “very surprising” for a medical college to claim it would be “dangerous” to hold “a balanced, comprehensive inquiry into the most effective and safe treatments for gender dysphoria”.

“An inquiry that comes up with consensus on the best treatments would give confidence and support to parents and children.”

Dr Morris said the health minister would be “very disappointed” with the college, having asked it for a verdict on what was “clinical best practice”.

“(The letter) gives him no advice about the competing merits of the affirmative approach versus supportive, more conservative treatments of children with gender dysphoria; it provides him with no information on the safety and effectiveness of puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones in children and adolescents.”

Treatment side-effects include infertility, loss of sexual desire, cardiovascular problems, and possible cognitive impairment.

‘Validation’ for Dr Telfer

Friday’s letter from the college warning Mr Hunt not to hold a national inquiry was welcomed by the gender clinicians’ lobby AusPATH, and RCH chairman Rob Knowles and chief executive John Stanway.

RCH said the letter had “validated” Dr Telfer’s work, and backed the college’s appeal for more public funding to spread gender clinic services, especially in rural and regional areas.

In the letter, RACP president Mark Lane said young people with gender dysphoria suffered “extremely high” rates of self-harm and attempted suicide. The college did not supply any evidence when asked.

Canadian psychologist Ken Zucker, a world authority on gender dysphoria and editor of the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, has dismissed as “pure dogma” the affirmative model line to parents hesitating on the brink of treatment for their child, “Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?”.

“If you are depressed, your suicidality risk is going to be elevated, but you see that in kids who are depressed but don’t have gender dysphoria,” Dr Zucker told The Australian last year.

“The idea that adolescents with gender dysphoria are at a higher risk of suicide per se is dogma — and I think it’s wrong.”

In his letter, Dr Lane said youth gender dysphoria was “an emerging area of healthcare”, and the evidence on treatment outcomes was “limited”, and this was similar to the state of affairs with conditions, such as rare cancers, affecting a small number of patients.

He suggested federal funding for long-term research; a new “national framework” for consistent, high quality care across the country; and new “evidence-based fact sheets” on treatment.

“To facilitate a high level of informed consent, patients and families must be provided with information about the limitations of available evidence regarding gender dysphoria,” he said. “For example, there should be an informed discussion of the burdens and benefits of treatment options in a way each child or adolescent can understand.”

‘No merit or courage’

Sydney clinical psychologist Dianna Kenny, a critic of the affirmative model, said the college’s statement was “so politically correct as to lack any scientific merit or moral courage”.

Professor of paediatrics John Whitehall, another critic, said it was odd for the college to not want “public attention” for the issue of medical transition of under-18s.

“I would have thought there is already a great deal of attention, though all one way (in favour of the affirmative model),” he said.

“The RACP boasts of interest in public health and that usually involves full and frank discussion of all side-effects as part of preventing harm. Here, it is essentially (saying), ‘Be quiet and accept the experimentation’.”

In a 2018 submission to the National Children’s Commissioner, which was reporting on progress under the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, the college said taxpayers should subsidise puberty blocker drugs (which cost $5000 a year for each trans youth) as well as trans surgery, while “gender identity” should be taught in schools and medical courses at university.

The college did not answer a question about whether its advice to Mr Hunt was affected by any conflict of interest.

SEGM’s Dr Malone said there were rare circumstances in which untested treatments might be used as a last resort but challenged the college’s comparison between gender dysphoria and cancer.

“Gender dysphoria is not a fatal disease: no single, quality study has demonstrated that gender dysphoria causes suicides in young people,” he said.

“Treatment with hormones and surgeries to halt puberty deny young people a chance for natural resolution of gender dysphoria.”

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

Study shows climate change link to devastating 2019/20 Australian bushfire season

There is no way these attribution studies can prove anything.  To make judgments of cause and effect you need the same events to be repeated several times but this never happen with climate.  It is always changing

One comment below is admirably frank:  "We found that climate models struggle to reproduce these extreme events and their trends realistically"

Need I say more?


This bushfire season has been the worst on record, but what elements of it are fact and what has been distorted by myth.
Climate change did play a part in Australia’s devastating 2019 bushfire season as it has increased the chances of extreme temperatures by at least 30 per cent, a new study shows.

The eight-week study from World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international collaboration that analyses the effect of climate change on extreme weather events, found a strong link between climate change and hotter-than-normal conditions in Australia during the time of the 2019/20 fires.

Last year was the warmest and driest year in Australia since temperature and rainfall records began in 1910 and 1900, and it follows two other dry years in large parts of the country.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology’s Annual Climate Statement 2019, these conditions contributed to a more widespread and intense fire season that started earlier in the season than usual. Other factors included a strong Indian Ocean Dipole and the Southern Annual Mode.

The WWA study looked at what caused the high temperatures and prolonged dry conditions between September to February, to see if they could be linked to climate change.

While they couldn’t link climate change to the drought, it did find a 30 per cent increase in the likelihood of high temperatures.

As climate-heating emissions continue to increase, “We will be facing these extreme conditions more often than in the past,” said Maarten van Aalst, a climate scientist and director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. “Should we be worried about this? Yes, very,” he told journalists.

The study also suggested that scientific models may be vastly underestimating the impacts of rising temperatures.

“We found that climate models struggle to reproduce these extreme events and their trends realistically,” Professor Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said.

“However, they always underestimate the increase in chances for extreme fire risks such as Australia saw in the last few months.

“This means we know the effect is likely larger than 30 per cent increase lower bound, which is already a significant influence of global warming.”

The high temperatures and prolonged dry conditions resulted in unprecedented bushfire activity across the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and in the Australian Capital Territory.

The 2019/20 bushfires burned more than 11 million hectares – an area larger than Ireland or South Korea – destroyed nearly 6000 buildings and killed at least 34 people and an estimated 1.5 billion animals.

The economic costs of the fires could reach $100 billion, according to separate analyses.

“Climate change is now part of Australia’s landscape,” Dr Sophie Lewis of the University of New South Wales said.

“Extreme heat is clearly influenced by human-caused climate change, which can influence fire conditions. There is evidence that Australian fire seasons have lengthened and become more intense, and extreme temperatures have played a role in this.

“Climate change contributed to the fires and extreme heat we lived through in southeastern Australia.”

A week of hot temperatures, like that experienced in southeast Australia in December 2019, was 10 times less likely in 1900 than it is now, while heatwaves like the one in Australia in 2019/20 are already hotter by 1-2°C than they were around 1900.

Dr Friederike Otto of Oxford University said the study was not an ultimate answer to the question of how climate change was impacting things like fire but did confirm it was an important driver locally.

“We need to continue to test our models in the real world to improve them so we can provide higher confidence risk information at the scales where people live and make decisions.”

Researchers from Australia, Europe and the United States carried out the analysis under the World Weather Attribution project, which provides rapid scientific evidence on how much climate change is fuelling extreme weather events.

The group has so far conducted more than 230 such studies, linking last year’s record-breaking heatwave in France and extreme rainfall during Tropical Storm Imelda in Texas, for instance, to climate change.

Not all the events analysed show a connection to global warming.

But the researchers said devastating fire seasons will be at least four times more common in Australia than they were in 1900 if global average temperatures rise 2C above pre-industrial times.

Temperatures have already heated up by a little over 1C, and the world is on track for at least 3C of warming even if all countries meet their commitments to cut emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

SOURCE  






Ballarat Christian College settles case with former teacher Rachel Colvin over same-sex beliefs

Ballarat Christian College has settled with a former teacher who claimed its teachings against same-sex marriage discriminated against her, with principal Ken Nuridin saying the case has taken an enormous toll on his small school.

Rachel Colvin’s case against the school has been held up by faith-based communities as a key example of the need for a religious discrimination act following the 2017 same-sex marriage post survey.

As a result of the settlement, Ballarat Christian College in Victoria will not have to change its Statement of Faith defining marriage as a union between a man and woman and it has made no concessions on those teachings.

The Australian understands Ms Colvin will receive an undisclosed amount for loss of income and damages and will receive a positive employment reference from Ballarat Christian College.

Scott Morrison’s religious discrimination bill is still to be tabled in parliament after drafts have come under sustained attacks from both faith-based and LGBTI groups.

Mr Nuridin told The Australian that the school would continue to stand by its teachings on marriage. Ballarat Christian College principal Ken Nuridin.
“Our College provides a high quality Christian education in accordance with our beliefs,” he said.

“The claim has taken an enormous cost in time and resources already – detracting from the ability of a small school like ours to focus on what is important, the education of our students”

Christian Schools Australia director of public policy Mark Spencer said the government needed to bring on its religious discrimination bill to protect schools like Ballarat Christian College.

“We are calling on the Commonwealth Government to ensure that the proposed Religious Discrimination Bill clearly protects Christian schools from these sort of claims,” he said.

“Christian and other faith-based schools must be able to engage staff who share their beliefs and are equipped to teach those beliefs” he said.

The Australian Christian Lobby said the case showed the need for increased protections for faith-based schools and ACL chief political officer Dan Flynn called on the government to bring forward its final bill.

“The sad reality for this school is that it took steadfast determination not to buckle under the pressure of a well-resourced legal attack,” he said.

“To the school’s credit, under great duress, they stood by their principles.”

“This case underlines how the religious freedom debate must make faith-based schools’ legal rights crystal clear.

“The ACL calls upon the government to ensure a case like Ballarat Christian College never happens again.”

Following same sex marriage being legalised in December 2017, the school amended its Statement of Faith through its constitution outlining its position on marriage.

The teacher formally notified the school of her objections to the statement in a letter on August 14, and was directed to meet with the chaplain and a female member of the school leadership to discuss her views.

The college indicated she was free to hold her views personally but was required to support and teach in accordance with the beliefs of the school, which Ms Colvin was allegedly unwilling to do.

As well as the positive reference for Mrs Colvin, the payout, and the school’s secured right to keep teaching against same-sex marriage; the parties will issue a statement of ‘mutual regret’. The Australian has contacted Ms Colvin’s lawyers Clayton Utz and LGBTI rights group Equality Australia, which backed the former teacher’s case.

SOURCE  






Olympic hero Tamsyn Lewis questions the fairness of transgender athletes competing in women's sports - and says many don't speak out because of political correctness

Three-time Australian Olympian Tamsyn Lewis has questioned the fairness of transgender athletes being allowed to compete in women's sport.

The 41-year-old said there are too many unknowns regarding transgender and transitioning athletes to create a level playing field in women's competition.

The three-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist told 2GB radio it was a politically charged and sensitive topic that many did not want to address. 'There's been a lot of people who are scared to come out and say anything because of political correctness,' she said.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic games will see a number of transgender competitors, with the IOC rules forcing female competitors to remain below testosterone guidelines to compete as women.

Lewis believes the guidelines don't factor in the physical advantage of growing up and going through puberty as a male.

'If you've grown up a male and had testosterone your bone structure is different to the female, your upper body strength is going to remain, you've got greater lung capacity a larger heart size, there's too many unknowns about how much going through puberty and being born a male is going to effect your result,' she said.

New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard will compete at the Tokyo Olympics and was born a male named Gavin    +4
New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard will compete at the Tokyo Olympics and was born a male named Gavin

New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard and Brazilian volleyball player Tiffany Abreu will be among the transgender athletes to compete at Tokyo.

2GB host Ben Fordham argued Hubbard had an obvious physical advantage compared to the rest of her field, prompting Lewis to question whether the female category would remain fair with increasing transgender participants.

'If we don't take a stand, what's going to happen to the female category of sport?,' she said.

'You don't want to get to the point where we haven't tackled this issue head on and in a respectful manner, that in 20 years time we're seeing our kids grow up and compete in sports that they just actually can't win.'

SOURCE  






Senate overstepped its position with attack on Bettina Arndt

To describe Bettina Arndt’s comments about the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children as abhorrent would be a grievous understatement. But it is hard not to feel uncomfortable about the Senate motion that called for the removal of her Order of Australia.

It is true that senator Jonathon Duniam, supporting the motion on behalf of the government senators, stressed the independence of the Council for the Order of Australia, and underlined that “it’s important that this motion is not seen as directing the council of the Order of Australia, whose independent deliberations must be ­respected”.

But it is undeniable that the motion’s purpose was precisely to urge the council to strip Arndt of the Order of Australia.

And it is equally undeniable that losing the Order of Australia is a severe and humiliating form of punishment that is typically inflicted by the council only when a member of the order has been found by a court to have committed a serious offence.

To that extent, the motion came perilously close, in spirit if not in legal effect, to a bill of attainder, seeking to impose, by legislative means, a punishment on a specified individual for an action committed in the past.

Bills of attainder are prohibited by the US constitution as an indefensible attack on individual liberties; and while the Australian Constitution lacks similar protections, the High Court found in Polyukhovich v Commonwealth (1991) that such a bill would contravene Chapter III of the Constitution, which requires judicial powers to be exercised by courts, and not by the legislature.

Arndt was not represented in the Senate when it debated and passed the motion; she was not given a reasonable opportunity to argue against the punishment with which she was being threatened. Nor did the Senate carefully consider the motion’s possible ­implications, instead falling into a troubling near-unanimity.

Proposed and accepted in the heat of the moment, the Senate process was far removed from any notion of prudent and responsible deliberation. The result is that the Senate has placed the Council for the Order of Australia in an extraordinarily difficult position: whatever decision it comes to will inevitably be tainted by the pressure that motion puts on it.

To make matters worse, Arndt’s offence was plainly that she expressed views that are widely (and rightly) considered to be appalling.

Now, there may be occasions on which it is appropriate for the Senate to condemn particular opinions; but very few decisions should be regarded with greater suspicion than those that use the machinery of parliament to brand individual citizens as heretics. Pushed, as they so readily are, to the point of making conformity with the opinions of the majority both a duty and a necessity, those decisions risk destroying that margin of freedom that gives democratic life its substance and its endless possibility for advance.

At a time when the true believers are everywhere on the march, demanding that any opposing ­voices be suppressed, one might have hoped a party that calls itself Liberal would, before setting so dangerous a precedent, remember the biblical admonition that the sword of power, once it is unleashed, “devours sometimes one way and sometimes another”.

That none of that seems to have troubled the overwhelming majority of senators merely highlights the deeply illiberal spirit of the age.

It was, after all, the great achievement of the Renaissance humanists, and of their successors in the Enlightenment, to take opinion, however despicable it may be, out of authority’s stifling clutches.

From Plato’s Republic, which distinguished mere belief from ortho doxa — correct opinion, elevated into an orthodoxy by the wise — to St Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, which concluded that opinion not sanctioned by the church was inherently corrupt, it had invariably been held that the only legitimate beliefs were those authority had endorsed, or at least not condemned.

It was therefore truly revolutionary when that logic was turned completely on its head. Immanuel Kant, in articulating his “principle of publicity”, expressed the change with considerable force: it was not authority, he argued, that determined which opinions had merit; on the contrary, it was the free play of opinions, expressed without fear or favour in the public sphere, that alone could determine whether particular ideas deserved being deemed authoritative.

As he put it in the Critique of Pure Reason: “The sole touchstone whereby we can decide whether our holding a thing to be true is conviction or mere persuasion is the possibility of communicating it to others and of finding it to be valid for all human reason.”

As a result, regardless of whether opinions are commendable or detestable, “the public use and expression of one’s reason must always be untrammelled, as it alone can bring about enlightenment among men”.

To instead allow authority to determine which opinions were acceptable, and which were not, forced society into a form of self-imposed immaturity, from which it could never grow up.

That immaturity might well be more tolerable than was the arbitrary rule of the ancient tyrants, but it was no less pernicious; by making it unnecessary for individuals to develop the courage to trust their own judgment — rather than relying on that of the state, their neighbours, or the crowd in the street — it was the means by which “despotism perpetuates ignorance and ignorance perpetuates despotism”.

To say that is not to imply that the Senate has opened the gates to a descent into despotism. But watching the mobs on the internet baying for Arndt’s blood, it was hard not to be reminded of Norbert Elias, the great scholar of late medieval civilisation, who wrote on the basis of his experience of inter-war Europe that while going from barbarism to civility takes centuries, it took only minutes to go the other way.

We expect the Senate to calm those passions, setting bounds on conflict and preventing the furies from getting out of hand. Today, however, our politics all too often does the opposite, transforming every issue into a morality play that invites posturing and rewards intransigence.

By descending into what amounts to public shaming and extrajudicial punishment, the ­Senate has exacerbated that trend, compromising both the Australian honours system and its own ­reputation.

Australia’s Senate is now among the world’s oldest. As public trust in our democratic institutions plummets, it would be a pity if Australians had to celebrate the Senate’s 120th anniversary by hurling at it the reproach Shakespeare’s fool hurls at King Lear: “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”

Unfortunately, after this week’s vote, they may have good reason to do exactly that.

SOURCE  







The great toilet paper crisis

Message from Woolworths -- email

I’d like to update you on the shortages we’re seeing in toilet paper and other essential items.

As you may have read, or seen for yourself, these are unusual and challenging times. We know it can be frustrating when we don’t have the products you need, or when delivery or Pick up windows are filled more than usual.

We’re working very closely with our suppliers to get products onto shelves as quickly as we can. The makers of Kleenex, Sorbent, Quilton and Woolworths own range of toilet paper have all increased their production to meet this very unusual demand.

For example, the makers of Kleenex are now manufacturing 24 hours, 7 days a week at their Millicent, SA factory, as are Sorbent in their NSW and Victorian facilities. And the makers of Quilton have tripled their normal production across their factories in Queensland, NSW and WA.

It’s worth noting that the vast majority of products aren’t affected and most stores aren’t seeing significant shortages. But to make sure everyone has access to essential items, we’ve introduced some common-sense limits to a few products. We’ve limited toilet paper to 4 packs per transaction and large packs of rice (2kg and over) to 1 per transaction. Where available, hand sanitiser is now at the Customer Service Desk and limited to 2 per transaction.

We’re constantly monitoring the situation and will do our best to keep all products freely available to everyone. However, if we see new shortages, we may introduce other limits. We’ll only do this if we think it’s absolutely necessary and to help make sure all customers can access the products they need. We’ll keep you updated in our stores and on our website as things change.

Our team members are doing the very best they can, so please support them, and each other.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through this together.

Brad Banducci, CEO Woolworths Group

 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

Keyboard warriors walking a fine line online

The comment below is in response to a court judgment vindicating a principal -- Tracey Brose -- of a small country school who had been abused online. The accusations against her implied that she was: evil, nasty and horrible; had brought pain and stress on a woman’s family; had mistreated lower-performing children; and brought stress on students who did not achieve A grades.

What lies behind the controversy is that Ms Brose is a "no nonsense" principal who pushes students for good results.  And she gets them, making her very popular with most of the parents

Some parents of slower students, however, thought she was too hard on their offspring and made online comments abusing Ms Brose.  And they were aggressive comments, not polite disagreement. The attacks were what one might expect from people with dim offspring

Ms Brose was distressed by the comments but could not get a retraction so turned to the law of defamation to put a kink in her critics. Had the accused apologized at any point, no further action would have been needed.  But rather than apologize, the small minority of critics doubled down.

The judgement against them  has not diminished their rage but it may be a lesson to others.


CHARACTER assassination on social media needs to be kept in check by courts while still allowing "breathing space for expression", the judge who presided over the Tamborine Mountain case says. District Court Judge Catherine Muir noted in her 140-page decision that people had a right to use defamation laws to sue if they believed their reputation was hurt by untruths but that should not trample on freedom of speech.

Judge Muir said courts could only use "existing defamation" law to assess comments made online in a "growing" number of Facebook and other social media defamation lawsuits.

She noted that "considerable legislative focus and solution" was needed to look at complex defamation law issues in online forums.

Speaking after yesterday's decision, Derek Wilding of the Centre for Media Transition at the University of Technology Sydney said a joint effort by the Federal Government and the states and territories was exploring proposals to update defamation law. "But even if the law does change, people will still need to ask themselves whether their online comments might harm someone's reputation," he said.

Mr Wilding said internet users needed to be cautious about what they posted online. "If it's not Facebook that's being sued for defamation in Australia — it's the people who post comments and the people or organisations who own the pages," he said.

"Part of the problem is that we don't assume we're a 'publisher' when we post a comment, but the law sees it differently."

Law academic Michael Douglas said defamation law reform was likely to appear this year, but cases like this would still be in the courts and reforms may not help regular mums and dads sued for defamation. "Keyboard warriors should take a breath and go for a walk before writing something spicy on social media," he said.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 29/2/20





Celebrities have forgotten their place

A new lifeform has emerged on the global stage. Actually, it’s more of a mutation than a new species. This organism can only survive in the rarefied atmosphere of the public spotlight, and it has been part of everyday life, first in movies and then in television, for the better part of a century. It can now be found in sport, music, politics, fashion, royalty – and social media, where it goes by the name “influencer”.

I am talking about the celebrity. In the old days – prior to the 1980s, say – celebrities knew their place; their job was to look pretty, to exude wit and/or charm, to dress glamorously and to attract fans. But today’s celebrities have extended this brief to include the opportunistic promotion of a popular cause. And with the awards industry flourishing, there are any number of platforms that enable today’s celebrities to pout, preen and pose on a red carpet just as they have always done, but with the added opportunity of offering “spontaneous” advice to the non-celebrity world about their pet subject. Climate change is a favourite.

Never mind that the celebrity lifestyle involves private jets, multiple homes and a range of egregious consumption sins committed against the environment. The unstated logic among this new breed of Celebrity Moralisers is that, while they do indeed live these apparently wasteful lifestyles, the payback is that they command vast audiences so “an earnest word about carbon emissions” delivered at precisely the right moment can have the effect of modifying the behaviour of millions. Millions!

Plus, moralising even momentarily from a public pulpit effectively rebrands the celebrity as not just a pretty face but as someone who’s a bit of a thinker, an ethicist; someone who is deeply concerned about the great moral challenges of the day. I mean, a celebrity isn’t going to shout “remember to floss” from the stage (vital though that is to dental hygiene); they’re going to promote a cause that is prominent, that contributes to their brand, and that can never be measured. It’s a win-win.

So it’s OK for Celebrity Moralisers to fly about, but not for you and me, and that’s because their carbon emissions are offset by the impact they can have in “bravely speaking out” and reining in the errant behaviour of the masses. In fact, moralising to millions is a lot like buying carbon offsets. It legitimises the celebrity lifestyle, it promotes their brand and, best of all, the impact of their courageous words can’t be quantified. How many people were persuaded to reduce carbon emissions as a consequence of moral posturing? Or does the value that celebrities bring lie with their ability to change the vibe?

In many ways, the cult of the celebrity is like a modern aristocracy in which the resources of the many are marshalled to support the lifestyle of the few. And when celebrities stuck to their core business of promoting their work, we accepted their position of privilege. But less so today.

In today’s world business leaders, politicians and others are very much held to account for espousing one standard while living another. The modern world abhors hypocrisy, or so we would like to believe.

And yet I somehow think that next year’s awards season will be littered with more causes, more symbols of solidarity, more brave words of support, because despite the callouts, the spoofs and the protest, we’ll move on and allow the Celebrity Moraliser to re-emerge stronger and poutier than ever. Hmmm… perhaps we’re more tolerant of hypocrisy than we would like to believe.

SOURCE 





Our leaders open to ridicule in setting silly climate targets

We might like talking about polit­ical promises but let’s be frank: they have the half-life of a prawn salad. Our politicians have broken so many pledges they’ve made cynicism more contagious than the coronavirus.

Ruling out new taxes, heralding surpluses and guaranteeing stability — breaking these undertakings is the only thing that has united our major parties over the past decade. Crossing voters is an across-the-aisle conviction.

When core promises can last less than a year, try to imagine the voter buy-in for a pledge spanning 30 budgets and at least 10 elect­ions. Anthony Albanese says Labor will deliver a zero net carbon dioxide emissions target by 2050, without saying how it will be done or what it will cost.

If it happens, it will be achieved by a prime minister who is most likely not yet in the parliament and some of the people who will get to pass judgment on the outcome­ at the ballot box won’t be born for more than a decade. When we evaluate our 2050 performance, Albanese will be 86, Greta Thunberg will be 47 and Keith Richards will most likely still be confounding medics and turning 106.

If we cast our minds back an equivalent period, it was the delivery date for an infamous promise from former prime minister Bob Hawke. “By 1990, no child will be living in poverty,” he said in 1987. Despite manifestly failing on this, Hawke was re-elected for a fourth term in March 1990. Although the Silver Bodgie is no longer with us, children living in poverty are — as we were reminded­ this week with references to the Newstart Allowance and poverty on the NSW central coast.

If you can’t remember 1990, let me remind you: it was the year that Germany officially reunited, a year after the Berlin Wall came down, and Poland became the first Eastern bloc nation to begin to embrace capitalism; Tim Berners-Lee began work on creating the world wide web; the first digital camera was sold; and mobile phones were chunky things in fancy cars. Iraq invaded Kuwait and troops, including Australian sailors, blockaded Iraq in the lead-up to the first Gulf War; while the Rio Earth summit, which first drew global attention to global warming, was still two years away.

Supporters of zero net by 2050 argue that it is pointless discussing the cost because we have no idea about technological, industrial and economic settings that far in the future. Which is exactly the point: why promote the target when there is no way of knowing where we will be placed on clim­ate knowledge, technological ­advances, emissions reduction and economic settings even two years from now?

This target is virtue-signalling, pure and simple, which is why state governments and large corpor­ates sign up; they are eager to access subsidies and projects but are not responsible for delivering. In federal politics, where the rubber will hit the road, any party adopting the target surely is obliged to provide plans and costings for achieving it.

Labor wipes its hands but a study by the New Zealand Instit­ute of Economic Research costed scenarios and found zero net would cut GDP growth by 0.2 per cent. It said the higher the target, the higher the cost to households. Former resources minister Matt Canavan wrote in The Australian this week that the same formula would mean annual economic costs of $200bn to $400bn in Australia, with between 200,000 and 400,000 fewer jobs.

That estimates the pain, yet until we know what the rest of the world does, we cannot guess at any gain. If global emissions continue to rise — as they are forecast to do for at least a decade — all our costs will be for no discernible benefit. None of our politicians want to talk about cost/benefit analysis on climate action.

The evangelical enthusiasm for this target from green/left politicians­, activists and journalists is irrational, more emotion and gesture than reason and fact.

They boast of 80 nations already­ signed up to zero net but they seldom list those countries. Here are a few: Antigua and Barbuda­, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Cape Verde, Chad, Colombia, Cook Islands, Dominican ­Republic, Ethiopia, Ghana, ­Guyana, Lebanon, Mali, Nauru, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Rwanda, Samoa, Suriname, Uganda and Zambia.

One of the few signatories with a prospective economy is Norway­, but it gets almost all of its electricity from abundant hydro-electricity while exporting lucrative gas and oil. It has its cake and exports at the same time.

To be fair, proponents point to Britain but while it has dramatic­ally reduced emissions, it has fallen short of some targets, has already switched from coal to gas for cost reasons rather than clim­ate, and it gets about 20 per cent of its electricity from nuclear.

In Australia, added emissions reduction will be costly and difficult. Already our shift to about 23 per cent renewable power has helped double electricity costs and threaten energy security.

For just over a fortnight this month, South Australia faced an accidental experiment. Cut off from the Victorian intercon­nector because of storm damage, it was left as an island, reliant on its own generation, four years and $500m of government investment after its statewide blackout in 2016.

Saved by cool weather, the state just managed to scrape through, but only by relying on gas for 70 per cent of its electricity generation. The state’s much-vaunted 50 per cent renewable energy achievements fell by the wayside — the zeitgeist wasn’t blowing when required — and without coal-fired power from across the state border, it only got through by firing up every bit of gas it could.

If targets and subsidies force out more coal and gas power in Victoria and NSW, all this will get much worse. Battery storage is too expensive and too short-lived to play much of a role.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal in August, Mark P. Mills detailed the resources needed for expansion of wind farms and battery storage.

“Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic,” he outlined.

“The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that solar goals for 2050 consistent with the Paris Accords will result in old-panel disposal constituting more than double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste.”

He points out that the manufacture of a single electric car battery­ demands the digging up and processing of 230,000kg of raw materials. For each car.

The mining growth required, especially for rare earths, would be extraordinary, expensive and energy intensive.

“Building enough wind turbines to supply half the world’s electricity would require nearly two billion tons of coal to produce concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades,” wrote Mills, confronting the reality of clean, green industries.

Our debate is dominated by unrealistic posturing rather than cold hard facts. Scott Morrison ought to stick to practical policies and dismiss the climate poseurs in his own ranks and in the state ­Liberal governments. Australia ought to either focus primarily on affordable and reliable power or, if we are serious about emissions reduction, consider solving our energy security, climate policy and submarine technology dilemmas through a pivot to nuclear technology.

Politicians must resist believing their own publicity. One of the greatest risks for the Coalition after winning last year’s election was believing that the result was all about its brilliance rather than being largely a consequence of Labor’s determination to make themselves unelectable.

With a thin reform agenda, fragile economy and underlying divisions in its ranks, it is vital that the Coalition governs compet­ently and embarks on a more ambitious program. It has been tardy on this front but, again, has been gifted a re-election strategy­ by a Labor Party addicted to radical, non-nuclear climate action as the learned helplessness of its electoral failure.

Morrison must oppose climate self-harm and fight for reliable, ­affordable electricity — coal-fired, gas-fired or nuclear. This contest will shape our economic future and crystallise his government’s reason for being.

SOURCE 




Dangerous leniency for youthful criminals

A TEENAGER accused of breaking into a woman's home and raping her yesterday morning was released on bail for sex offences allegedly committed just a month ago.

The 17-year-old was charged with various offences in Cooktown last month, including sexual assault and assault with intent to commit rape.

It is understood he was granted bail and ordered to live in Cairns and not return to Cooktown as one of the conditions of his bail.

LNP leader Deb Frecklington described yesterday's alleged incident at Edmonton as a "horrific, horrific case". She said the community was being put in danger by Labor's decision to scrap the breach of bail offence for juveniles and amendments to the Youth JuStice Act.

"Labor's 'catch and release' youth bail laws are putting the public at risk," she said. "There is a revolving door of yob  crime and the community has had enough."

A senior police officer who did not want to be named said current legislation "left a lot to be answered for". "It's absolutely outrageous and it's leaving the community at risk," he said.

The youth was also part of the bail hub program Operation Regenerate, which involves police on paid overtime taking youths on recreational outings. The operation was part of a $9.4 million statewide investment from the State Government to lower the number of children remanded in custody.

Cairns MP Michael Healy defended Labor's juvenile crime policies. "The Youth Justice Act is clear, a person can be remanded in custody to keep the community safe or to prevent them from offending," he said.. "Locking them up is not the simple solution ... the only way to address this problem is being hard and direct on the causes of crime."

The woman allegedly 'attacked by the teen is aged over 50. She called police and he was allegedly found naked soon after. The woman was treated in Cairns Hospital. It is understood the teen appeared in a closed court session late yesterday charged with, rape, assault. With intent to commit rape and enter dwelling with intent. He was remanded in custody with the case adjourned until May.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 29/2/20

 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

When a poet is a better prophet than the prophets

It would be difficult to be a worse prophet than the Greenies.  Starting from Paul Ehrlich, they repeatedly make these confident prophecies that in some number of years disasters will befall us unless we do something that they want. But it just doesn't happen.  When the prophesied year rolls around, life just goes on as usual.

During Australia's recent summer bushfire season, all sorts of Greenie-influenced people screeched that the fires were the result of global warming and unless we shut down our our entire electricity generation industry the fires would get worse. They were so shrill about their claims that PM Morrison came under great pressure to "do more" about global warming.

And then came something that no Greenie had prophesied -- showing how little they understood of the events concerned.  It rained. And DID it rain!  Concerns about fire were rapidly replaced with concerns about flooding. The Greenie prophecies that the fires would go on until we did something about global warming were thoroughly falsified.  The Greenies basically did not know anything about how Australia's climate worked.

But a poet did.  In 1908 Dorothea MacKellar described Australia's climate with limpid simplicity, as being "Droughts and flooding rains".  She knew how Australia's climate went even if the Greenies did not.  It happened this year exactly how she said it always does: Drought followed by flood.  She was a good observer.

The Greenies were no observers at all.  We were constantly regaled with assurances that the recent fires were the worst ever when in fact the 1974/75 fires consumed a much bigger area.  Lies on top of ideology were all the Greenies had to offer.

And there is no doubt that the drought contributed to the buildup of fuel in the forests and made the fires worse.  Dry vegetation burns well.  But what was the cause of the drought?  Was it simply a recurrent feature of the Australian climate?  No way! said the Greenies. It was caused  by global warming.

For instance we have the opening sentence from a recent rather emptyheaded article in a prestigious medical journal (JAMA) which says:  "There is increasing scientific consensus that climate change is the underlying cause of the prolonged dry and hot conditions that have increased the risk of extreme fire weather in Australia".

But that is magical thinking. Global warming would cause MORE rain, not less.  Warmer oceans would evaporate off more water vapour which would come down as more rain.  The temperature that causes drought is cooling, not warming.  So again the global warming faith flies in the face of the facts

Most global warming activism is purely political with agitators  such Thunberg and Occasio-Cortez knowing nothing of the detailed climate statistics. And it is mostly from them that the wild predictions come. Scientists  -- such as Ezekiel -- who do know the facts are much more cautious in their predictions.






Anthony Albanese’s clean-energy pitch to win rural votes

He's pushing the old "green jobs" promise -- but such jobs are mostly mythical -- and certainly don't replace the jobs in mining towns.  The people of the bush are unlikely to fall for it

Anthony Albanese will attack the Nationals over their “lazy cynicism” on climate change and launch a pitch to win back the trust of regional voters who abandoned Labor at last year’s election.

Delivering a speech in the NSW coalmining town of Singleton, in the heart of Labor’s Hunter Valley seats, the Opposition Leader will promote the benefits of a 21st-­century “clean energy economy”.

Addressing a Country Labor conference on Saturday, Mr Albanese will push a “clean energy jobs boom” in regional Australia and talk up opportunities in the carbon farming, forestry, hydrogen and rare earths sectors

“Just as coal and iron ore ­fuelled the industrial economies of the 20th century, they will fuel the clean energy economies of the 21st,” Mr Albanese will say. “If we leave it to the Nationals, we will drift back towards the 19th century. They would rather cling to yesterday and run scare campaigns­ than embrace the opportunities­ of tomorrow. This lazy cynicism is shameful. They sell out their own communities and our full potential as a nation.”

The Labor leader will say the Nationals have “let down regional Australia” and “drifted from the people they are meant to represent”, flagging an increased effort­ by Labor to focus on regional policies ahead of the next election.

“They’ve fallen a long way. Black Jack McEwen would never have let himself be pushed around by the Liberals like this,” he will say. “The Nationals talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.

“As a party proudly born in the bush, Labor has the plans that delive­r for regional Australia. And we can win back the trust of regional­ Australia.”

Talking up his target of zero net emissions by 2050, Mr Albanese accuses the Coalition of putting politics before science and “common­ sense”.

Speaking in front of regional Labor MPs, including Joel Fitzgibbon, Meryl Swanson and Justine Elliot, Mr Albanese will say there were “huge opportunities for ­regional areas to contribute via carbon farming” and expanded industri­es in aluminium, steel, silico­n and ammonia.

“Australia has the potential to capture one billion tonnes of carbon­ dioxide a year, generating a new source of income for our farmers in the process,” he will say.

“The forestry industry has a bright future as our economy changes. “We are also the second-largest producer of rare earth elements.”

Mr Albanese, a left-faction powerbroker, will say the demand for high-quality Australian coal will continue for “decades to come”. “Coal will remain an important­ part of the picture, but the Hunter doesn’t have all its eggs in the coal basket,” he will say.

“Contrary to Nationals’ rhetoric, regional Australia is more than resources alone.”

Promoting Labor as a centrist option, Mr Albanese will accuse the Nationals of saying “nothing needs to change ever” and the Greens of saying “everything has to change tomorrow”.

Mr Albanese will say his zero net emissions by 2050 target is not “radical” and that “newer and cleaner technologies” would “help keep the grid stable”.

“Big business including Qantas, Telstra, BP, the Commonwealth Bank and Santos, along with the influential Business Council of Australia, are aiming for it.

“Just this week, Rio Tinto ­announced it will invest $1.5bn in climate-related projects over the next five years as part of its 2050 pledge,” Mr Albanese will say.

SOURCE  






Revealed: One in three Australians think immigration is too high while most blame expensive housing for ruining their dreams

The two things are related.  All those immigrants have to be housed -- putting great pressure on the existing housing stocks

A third of Australians think the nation is too overcrowded while a majority blame unaffordable housing for killing their dreams, a survey has found.

Australia's net annual immigration rate with departures factored in stood at close to 300,000 last year - which included permanent arrivals and international students.

While it was below the record-high of 353,480 reached in the year to April 2009, it was still more than triple the 20th century average of 70,000.

The national population growth pace of 1.5 per cent is also almost double the rich-world average of 0.8 per cent.

With Sydney and Melbourne each home to more than 5million people, it seems overcrowding is an issue.

Almost a third, or 32.4 per cent of respondents, called for population control when asked about their wishes for Australia in the survey commissioned by Real Insurance.

The online survey of 5,000 people, by CoreData, also showed a majority to be concerned about expensive real estate, with 53.5 per cent describing affordability as the 'greatest barrier to them achieving their dreams'.

Sydney's median house price stood at $994,300 in January, CoreLogic data showed.

The Real Wishes Report, compiled late last year, showed 61 per cent of people were concerned about the effect of global uncertainty on Australia.

A similar proportion, or 60.7 per cent, wanted better employment opportunities.

The survey was taken in September, four months before Chinese authorities declared the first outbreak of coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Almost a third, or 31 per cent of respondents, believed Australia had worsened since the May election, which saw Prime Minister Scott Morrison's Coalition win a third consecutive term.

SOURCE  






Education policy rolls dice

“Both today and 20 years from now, I want Australians to be in control of their future.” At the very least,  Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s vision for the nation is ambitious.

Two decades from now, the children starting school this year will be 25, and their future is massively dependent on how well they are educated.  But the vision for education looks scarily like a roll of the dice.

The next 10 years will be guided by the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration, the fourth in a series of road maps signed off by the Federal Education Minister and all states and territories.

Some people will be happy with the Declaration’s recycled, globalist language and experimental proposals for improving student performance.

But statements like: “As the importance of a high quality education grows, so does the complexity of being an educator” offer little evidence of building on solid foundations.

Have quality and complexity only recently become the main game?

As Australian curriculum, assessment, teaching and other standards go steadily downhill, school education is now a $60 billion a year bet that pays off only for some.

Australian policymakers are embracing a 21st century learning agenda that paints the future as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA).

This VUCA world was part of the response by the US Army War College to the fall of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The futurists love it, and various interpretations have been adopted enthusiastically by educators as they try to anticipate the needs of the children of the new millennium.

But it’s a dark and pessimistic outlook — fixated on jobs lost to artificial intelligence and other technological trends — and it permeates the work of organisations such as the OECD, whose Future of Education and Skills 2030 Project is influential.

What’s emerging is intellectually and pedagogically shallow, a wholesale shift towards a curriculum focusing on skills that — as per the Alice Springs document —  “support imagination, discovery, innovation, empathy and developing creative solutions to complex problems”… these allegedly being “central to contributing to Australia’s knowledge based economy.”

The vision does at least include the occasional reference to “development of deep knowledge within a discipline … appropriate to students’ phases of development.”

The visionaries cannot have it both ways. A sovereign nation must have an effective, efficient educational agenda.

It is time for our leaders to ensure that all Australian students will benefit from a sophisticated, rigorous education delivered by highly-trained subject experts.  That is what being in control looks like.

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