Australian Politics
Friday, June 05, 2020
Australia will 'continue to welcome' Hong Kong residents as calls mount to match UK's offer of safe haven
The Australian government has declared it will “continue to welcome” Hong Kong residents, but it won’t be drawn on calls for it to match the UK’s offer of safe haven for people fearing China’s planned security laws.
Australian parliamentarians from across the political spectrum are urging the government to help the people of Hong Kong, amid growing international concern about the impact of Beijing’s decision on the city’s rights and freedoms and on the stability of the international finance hub.
The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, revealed he had asked Australia and other partners to consider “burden-sharing if we see a mass exodus from Hong Kong”.
The UK is holding open the prospect of offering residency and work rights to as many as 3 million people, while the US is considering letting people who no longer “feel comfortable” in Hong Kong to move there. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, indicated he was also talking to allies, including Australia, about further responses.
On Wednesday Beijing lodged “stern representations” in response to the UK’s offer, warning it to “pull back before it’s too late, abandon its Cold War and colonialist mentality”.
Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, joined her counterparts from Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US for a teleconference to discuss the situation in Hong Kong earlier this week.
The group “reiterated their concerns about Hong Kong in light of the Chinese government’s proposed national security law”, according to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
When asked about the possibility of Australia offering to resettle Hong Kong residents, the department’s spokesperson pointed to existing avenues: “Outside the current Covid-19 restrictions, Hong Kong people can apply for a range of relevant visa categories to work and live in Australia.
“Our people-to-people links include close family connections, business ties and shared values. These and the considerable talent in Hong Kong underscore why we continue to welcome Hongkongers to Australia.”
The leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, called on the government to follow the lead of the UK and offer safe haven for those “who are concerned about the growing risk of authoritarianism in Hong Kong”.
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, a hawkish Liberal party backbench senator, said Australia needed to “join with our allies to take strong and decisive action against Beijing’s skulduggery”.
The Labor MP Peter Khalil said if China did not meet its commitment to guarantee Hong Kong’s rights, or diminished the city’s unique status, it could lead to a potential exodus. The Australian government would have to respond to the “emerging and fast-moving situation”.
Khalil said he had met with many Hong Kong students in Australia who had told him “of the violent threats being made to them and their families because of their support for the protests back in Hong Kong”.
Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, said the UK had a special responsibility to lead on this issue, should the need emerge, but the Australian government “could consider how existing visa arrangements can be used to respond to any emerging need, and we would expect it to act with compassion”.
The Liberal MP Dave Sharma, a former ambassador to Israel, said Australia’s highest priority for now should be ensuring Hong Kong’s Basic Law was respected and the handover agreement honoured. “Planning for other contingencies is not something we should be discussing publicly right now.”
The Liberal senator David Fawcett, who chairs the joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade, joined counterparts from the UK, Canada and New Zealand in calling on the UN to appoint a new special envoy to monitor the impact of the law on Hong Kong.
In a letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, they raised alarm over “the erosion of the rule of law and the increasingly serious and urgent human rights situation in Hong Kong”.
“Our concerns are heightened at this time in the light of the Chinese Communist Party’s record of abuses when faced with dissent from its rule, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre which occurred 31 years ago this week,” wrote the group.
The imposition of sweeping national security laws on the semi-autonomous region, bypassing its legislature, has been labelled the “end of Hong Kong” and a breach of China’s international obligations.
Under the 1997 Sino-British declaration, when Hong Kong was returned to China by Britain, the region was guaranteed 50 years of a high degree of autonomy under the “one country two systems” principle.
Its mini-constitution, the Basic Law, obliges Hong Kong to enact national security laws and the failure to do so for 23 years has been used to justify Beijing’s move. But other obligations, including universal suffrage for the people of Hong Kong, have also been left unmet.
Since mass protests erupted in Hong Kong a year ago – sparked by a bill which would allow for extradition to China – Beijing has made increasing encroachments on Hong Kong’s autonomy, including declarations by its offices in Hong Kong that Basic Law provisions did not apply to them.
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Israel seeks quarantine-free travel with Australia by December as gateway to Europe
Israel wants to introduce direct flights to Australia and waive quarantine requirements for travellers by December, as countries that have so far successfully contained Covid-19 jostle to be the next destination added to the Australia-New Zealand tourism bubble.
Israel, seeking to make permanent the roughly 17-hour direct flight from Tel Aviv to Melbourne or Sydney, is also working with other nations to position itself as a gateway hub for Australian travellers to transit quarantine-free on their way to European countries considered safe, such as Greece, Norway, Denmark and the Czech Republic.
Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Mark Sofer, said the plan would be “a win-win-win” for Australians and Israelis, noting both countries were working on plans to rescue their tourism-reliant economies and provide their airlines with commercially viable routes that would not require quarantine.
“This is the time to sit down and make the crisis into an opportunity,” Sofer said.
The feasibility of such a bubble would depend on the containment and avoidance of any second wave in either country, and would hinge on the successful removal of the 14-day quarantine period between Australia and New Zealand, Sofer said.
Costa Rica’s government is also exploring direct flights to Australia’s east coast and inclusion in a bubble agreement with New Zealand, with officials in the central American country – where 12% of GDP comes from tourism – working to have arrangements in place to welcome Australians quarantine-free by the beginning of 2021 “at the latest”.
The plans are emerging as a result of video meetings between leaders of the “first movers” group of countries that have contained the virus to the extent they are reopening their economies.
The group, led by Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, includes Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Costa Rica, Norway, Denmark, Greece and the Czech Republic. Leaders first met at the end of April to begin sharing notes on reopening different sectors of society such as schools and medical facilities.
The first movers met most recently on Wednesday night Australian time, with Scott Morrison tweeting about the discussions for protocols to “reopen our borders”. The Australian government has been contacted for comment on the Israel and Costa Rica proposals.
Israel, which has recorded just under 16,800 coronavirus cases and 281 deaths, contained initial clusters, notably among its ultraorthodox population. It was one of the first countries to enforce gathering limits, strict hotel quarantine and phone tracing of close contacts.
At the height of lockdowns, residents were not allowed to move more than 100m from their home. The country of just under nine million citizens now records between 10 and 20 cases a day.
Since coronavirus shut down Israel in March – with its unemployment rate peaking at 27% in late April – Sofer has been discussing the practicalities of direct flights with the national airline, El Al. He said the carrier, which had trial flights to Melbourne planned before the pandemic, had always considered Australian destinations potentially profitable, but less so than European and American routes. But with nowhere else to fly, Australia now made economic sense.
“[Officials in Israel] are now looking at giving a permit to those from better performing countries that they won’t need to isolate in Israel ... This is definitely the direction we’re talking about,” Sofer said.
He said it was “not a pipe dream” for the arrangement to be in place by December, and noted Australia would make “a very attractive destination at that time for Israelis as we go into our winter and you go into your summer. They’ll come and spend.”
Sofer said he hoped the arrangement would also lead to an overhaul of the visa regime for Israelis entering Australia, which is more onerous than for Australians making the return trip.
He said that as Israel was “about the distance limit” that most planes could fly from Australia towards Europe, there was potential for it to act as a Dubai or Doha-type hub between Australia and European first-mover countries.
“You can’t fly from Australia to Denmark in one flight. But an Australian can get on a direct flight to Tel Aviv, then on to Denmark, or other first movers countries, and not have to isolate anywhere ... It will take a long time before you can do that with a country like the UK,” he said.
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Rents fall as landlords struggle to fill vacant properties during Australia's coronavirus crisis
Tenants are in a better position to demand lower rents than they have been for years as the devastating impact of the coronavirus crisis leaves landlords desperate to fill vacant properties for “whatever they can get”.
Figures released on Wednesday showed that rents for houses in Sydney have fallen to their lowest point since 2013 thanks to the Covid-19 triple whammy of economic standstill, lower migration and a flood of former Airbnb lettings left empty by the wipeout in the travel industry.
It now costs on average $646 to rent a house in Australia’s biggest city, according to the latest figures from SQM Research, the cheapest level since 2013 and a 6.5% drop from a year ago. An average unit is $480 a week, the lowest since since May 2015.
Scott, a tenant who was looking to upgrade from his one-bedroom apartment in Rhodes in Sydney, managed to secure a 15% reduction in his rent from $540 to $460 a week after noticing that the asking price was falling in many apartments in his area.
“I was upfront with the real estate agent about the situation,” said Scott, an IT manager. “I linked them to various apartments within the same complex in the $450-480 range before reaching an agreement of $460 on a 12-month lease. It took about four rounds of negotiation to get to that point – the owner was in denial for a few weeks about the state of the rental market in Rhodes.
“There have been a few ridiculously cheap listings on three month leases – as low as $300 – just to get a tenant in.”
Rents have not fallen so quickly in Melbourne in the SQM data series. But tenants in Victoria who have struck agreements with their landlords to drop their rent amid the effects of coronavirus are paying 31% less on average, according to consumers affairs data revealed to a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday by attorney-general Jill Hennessy.
Jade Costello, co-founder of the agency Melbourne Rental Search, said she was seeing something “we’ve never seen before” with landlords willing to negotiate on the price upfront.
“You might see somewhere for $500 but the landlord will be willing to drop it because they just don’t want places to be vacant,” she said. “It’s a tenant’s market for sure. For the time we’re seeing tenants having the power of negotiation. They are going in with the rent they want to pay and landlords and agents, who used to have so many potential tenants to choose from, are saying whatever we can get we will take it.”
A couple were moving to Melbourne from interstate and were offered a place for $800 a week, she said. But they asked for a $20 reduction per week and it was granted straight away despite the listing having been up only a few days.
The potential for the weakness in the rental market to spread into the housing market remains significant. In the latest sign that prices are under pressure, the research firm CoreLogic said on Wednesday that it was suspending the daily online publication of its closely watched index of house values due to the Covid-19 crisis.
CoreLogic blamed “material reductions” in transactions which had in turn created “additional volatility in the daily reading”.
“A robust volume of timely sales evidence is a critical component of accurately estimating the value of residential properties,” it said. “The monthly results of the index will continue to be reported, but should be interpreted with some caution until transactional activity returns to more normal levels.”
Louis Christopher, founder of SQM, said the economic uncertainty, rising unemployment and closure of the international border due to the pandemic would continue to put pressure on the housing market.
Some investors might come back into the market despite falling rents, but there was a lot of doubt about how soon the normality could be restored after the current shock.
“Its hard to see it coming back to normal and hard to see a full V-shaped recovery in the economy,” he said.
“When is that international border opening again? You’re looking at zero net migration and with 170,000 dwellings being completed in Australia this year, the domestic demand is only 70-80,000 so without migration there’s a 100,000 surplus. That’s a reality for builders
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Peter Ridd’s Fight For Academic Freedom In Climate Science
This week the Federal Court appeal hearing took place for the case of Peter Ridd, Australian scientist, who was fired by his university after he had criticized Great Barrier Reef science.
Australian scientist and journalist Jennifer Marohasy is following the case closely and reports about the latest chapter in this sad saga:
To be truly curious we must confess our ignorance. The person who knows everything would have no reason to question, no need to experiment.
If they went in search of evidence, it could only be to confirm what they already knew to be true. Knowledge then would be something that conferred prestige, rather than something to be built upon.
It was because of Peter Ridd that I had to know if all the coral reefs off Bowen were dead, or not. I went looking for mudflats with a Gloucester Island backdrop after the first judgment was handed down, which was back last April 2019.
Of course, Peter was cleared by Judge Vasta in the Federal Court of all the misconduct charges that had resulted in his sacking. Yet the University appealed, and that appeal was heard this last week.
The university appealed because the modern Australian university can’t let a comprehensive win by a dissident professor go unchallenged.
The modern university is all about prestige, and they probably thought that eventually, Peter would run out of money, the money needed to defend himself in the courts. But they don’t know Peter, or the team backing him.
Yesterday Peter thanked both the Union and also the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) for their support.
Peter also wrote:
The Federal Court appeal hearing is over, and the lawyers have done their work. We now wait, possibly for some months, for the three judges to make the decision. In essence the appeal was about defining the limits of academic freedom, and what a university scientist can say, and how he or she might be allowed to say it.
For example, was I allowed to say that due to systemic lack of quality assurance, scientific results from Great Barrier Reef science institutions was untrustworthy?
JCU said I was not, [not] even if I believed it to be true.
I am certainly not ashamed of anything I said, how I said it, or of my motivation.
Irrespective of the outcome of the appeal, I can now focus on other matters.
First, I will work tirelessly to raise the problem of hopeless quality assurance of the science of the GBR, including the effect of climate change on the reef. I am hoping that the Senate Inquiry will come out of Covid hibernation soon. I will also be pushing AIMS to release their missing 15 years of coral growth data, and JCU to release its buried report on possible fraud at its coral reef centre. It is shameful the contempt with which these institutions treat the people of the region.
Second, I will work with those agricultural organisations that show a determination to fight, which is sadly far from all of them, to demonstrate that the recent unfair regulations on Queensland farmers are based on shoddy science.
Third: I will work to encourage governments at both state and federal level to force universities to behave like genuine universities and not the glossy public relations companies that they have become. Governments must mandate the introduction of genuine and enforceable guidelines on academic freedom such as those outlined in the Commonwealth governments (unimplemented) review by ex-High Court judge, Robert French.
My IPA colleague Gideon Rozner has an important article in The Australian newspaper that provides much more context. The piece includes comment that:
The Ridd case has resonated around Australia — and has attracted significant attention worldwide — for good reason. It confirms what many people have suspected for a long time: Australia’s universities are no longer institutions encouraging the rigorous exercise of intellectual freedom and the scientific method in pursuit of truth. Instead, they are now corporatist bureaucracies that rigidly enforce an unquestioning orthodoxy and are capable of hounding out anyone who strays outside their rigid groupthink.
JCU is attempting to severely limit the intellectual freedom of a professor working at the university to question the quality of scientific research conducted by other academics at the institution. In other words, JCU is trying to curtail a critical function that goes to the core mission of universities: to engage in free intellectual inquiry via free and open, if often robust, debate. It is an absurd but inevitable consequence of universities seeking taxpayer-funded research grants, not truth.
Worse still, it is taxpayers who are funding JCU’s court case. Following a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Public Affairs, the university was forced to reveal that up until July last year, it had already spent $630,000 in legal fees. It would be safe to assume that university’s legal costs would have at least doubled since that time. The barrister who JCU employed in the Federal Court this week was Bret Walker SC, one of Australia’s most eminent lawyers. Barristers of his standing can command fees of $20,000 to $30,000 a day. And all of this is happening at the same time as the vice-chancellor of the university, Sandra Harding — who earns at least $975,000 a year — complains about the impact of government funding cuts.
While Australian taxpayers are funding the university’s efforts to shut down freedom of speech, Ridd’s legal costs are paid for by him, his wife and voluntary donations from the public. As yet, neither the federal nor the Queensland Education Minister has publicly commented on whether JCU is appropriately spending taxpayers’ money and, so far, both have refused to intervene in the case.
Gideon Rozner is tireless and has also put together a fascinating 3-part podcast providing background into Peter Ridd’s fight for academic freedom. He interviewed me for this series.
The saga will continue for the next few years, whatever the judges decide. As will my interest in all things to do with the Great Barrier Reef.
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
Thursday, June 04, 2020
Race to shore up La Trobe University as cash crisis bites
La Trobe University has over 30,000 students
La Trobe University is at risk of going broke in a matter of weeks unless it secures a financial lifeline from the banks and an agreement from staff to cut wages.
La Trobe's cash reserves have been reduced to the minimum required to meet a single month's operating expenses as it grapples with the loss of overseas students because of the coronavirus crisis, which has wiped $16 billion from Australia's university sector.
Vice-chancellor John Dewar, in a briefing to staff on Tuesday, said the university had “no money tucked down the back of the sofa’’ and that unless they agreed to a 10 per cent salary reduction, La Trobe would resort to forced redundancies.
La Trobe sources told The Age that ANZ bank had declined to extend by $100 million an unsecured credit facility it holds with the university and that the university had already sold $29 million in shares to find more cash.
Professor Dewar denied the university had been unsuccessful in securing credit and said negotiations were continuing with the banks. As part of these negotiations, “the banks are interested to see actions around balancing our books over time'', he said.
Asked whether the university was at risk of insolvency, Professor Dewar said: “The actions we are taking are about setting up the ongoing financial sustainability of the university.’’
The university’s chief financial officer, Mike Smith, told staff in a 90-minute webinar that La Trobe was facing a revenue slump of $400 million to $520 million between now and the end of 2021. To date, only $207 million in savings had been found to fill the anticipated funding hole, he said.
Mr Smith said that in the absence of the proposed wage reduction, 450 positions would be made redundant.
La Trobe’s 2019 calendar accounts tabled in Parliament on Tuesday showed that before the pandemic interrupted the international student market, the university’s finances were already deteriorating.
Last year’s trading surplus of $19.4 million was down from $30 million recorded the previous year, and $75 million in borrowings for new student accommodation had trebled the debt-to-equity ratio.
A quarter of the university’s 2019 revenue came from overseas students.
Hannah Robert, a law lecturer who helped organise a Monday-night meeting of staff to discuss the university’s financial predicament, said the situation was difficult.
“The picture the CFO paints is dire. "I have been on boards before and if there is uncertainty over whether you will have cash reserves for a month's operational expenditure that is really scary.
“But I don't think it is fair to ask ordinary staff to carry so much of the losses through pay cuts.
"The fact that the federal government is hanging universities out to dry like this when we are the biggest service export industry in the country, it is just unbelievable. You have got a serious prospect of universities going under.”
Ms Robert said there was anger in Tuesday’s meeting at the refusal of university management to entertain larger salary cuts for executives. Professor Dewar has accepted a 20 per cent cut. He was last year paid between $970,000 and $980,000.
La Trobe staff have already rejected one offer under the Australian University Jobs Protection Framework, a variation to the university’s enterprise bargaining agreement negotiated with the National Tertiary Education Union.
Under a revised offer, staff would receive a sliding pay cut, depending on their classification, reduce annual leave to 10 days and receive no pay increases until 2022. There would be involuntary redundancies in “very limited circumstances.’’
NTEU members will vote on the proposal this week and non-union members next week, with the result to be known on June 17, subject to Fair Work approval.
Universities have received no federal government financial assistance to weather the COVID-19 fallout and cannot access the JobKeeper scheme. The umbrella group Universities Australia said new four-year modelling showed that universities were facing a combined revenue loss of up to $4.8 billion in 2020 and, at worst, a $16 billion hit by 2023.
In his address to staff, Professor Dewar quoted from a Melbourne University research paper showing that of all Australian universities, La Trobe and the University of Canberra were at greatest risk from the drop-off in international students.
“La Trobe is one of the two most financially vulnerable universities in this group,’’ said Centre for the Study of Higher Education honorary fellows Ian Marshman and Frank Larkins. “Its available reserves are not sufficient to cover any of the predicted loss situations.’’
Higher education expert Andrew Norton, of the Australian National University, said La Trobe was in a “wobbly situation’’ before the pandemic because it was struggling to attract domestic students and had lost prospective students to free TAFE courses.
Professor Norton raised the possibility of a federal government bailout, saying there was provision in the Higher Education Funding Act for the Commonwealth to advance money to universities against future years' grants. He also suggested the Victorian government could become a guarantor on the university’s loans, to ease the concerns of banks.
Professor Dewar said the university’s problems would not be fixed by the banks alone. “The banks are willing to lend to us and we are pursuing additional debt. However, this would be a short-term loan; borrowing in the longer term is not the solution to the financial situation we face.”
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Paper bags are back
Woolworths shoppers across the country will now be able to carry out their groceries in paper bags for the first time in four decades.
From today, all Woolies stores will offer customers the option of a paper bag option alongside reusable carry bags.
The old-school bags are being rolled out after a successful trial in 20 stores late last year and to meet increased demand from customers for easily recyclable bag options.
In decades gone by, paper bags were a common sight in Australian supermarkets, but they haven’t been widely available in most stores for around 40 years.
The new bags are made from 70 per cent recycled paper and will be sold for 20 cents each, while Woolies’ existing reusable plastic bags, foldable bags and Bag for Good options will also still be available at the checkout.
They will be able to hold up to 6kg of grocery items per bag, and are made from responsibly sourced paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
There are plans to offer the paper bags to online customers for home delivery and pick-up in the future.
Woolworths Supermarkets managing director Claire Peters said the bags were already proving to be a hit with shoppers. “While the vast majority of our customers bring their own bags, we know customers sometimes drop by a store unplanned or can forget their bags when they’re on the run,” Ms Peters said.
“For some time, customers have told us they’d like the option of a strong paper bag option, so we’re pleased to now offer that choice at our checkouts, alongside our existing reusable plastic bags.
“These paper bags resonated really well with customers when we trialled them in 20 stores last year and we expect to see a positive response from the customers who’ve been asking for this option nationwide.”
Meanwhile, each Bag for Good costs 99 cents but can be replaced free of charge if it is damaged, no matter when it was purchased.
The proceeds from those bag sales go to the Woolworths Junior Landcare Grants program.
Woolies’ reusable bags cost 15 cents each, are made from at least 80 per cent recycled plastics and can be returned to the store, along with other soft plastics, for recycling in REDcycle bins.
And in another major bag shake-up, shoppers will have an eco-friendly alternative for holding their fruit and veg, with reusable nylon plastic bags launching today.
They will cost $4 for a three-pack, are compatible with Woolies checkout scales and can be found in the fresh produce section at all Woolworths Metros and selected Woolies stores.
Woolworths began phasing out single-use plastic shopping bags in 2018, and the company claims since then, more than six billion of them have been removed from circulation, with just 15 per cent of customers now purchasing new bags when doing their grocery shop.
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Quad bikes now effectively banned by onerous safety regulations
A blow to the farming sector
Honda announced it would stop selling quad bikes in Australia from October next year because of the Federal Government standards, which require all quad bikes to be fitted with rollover protection at point of sale by October 2021.
Earlier this year, Polaris and Yamaha said they would also stop selling quad bikes in Australia if the regulation did not change.
The Government introduced the new regulations last year in response to an ACCC report outlining the risk of quad bikes rolling over and crushing riders.
Under the rules, by October this year quad bikes will also have to come with a warning sticker about the degree of slope at which they overturn.
ACCC deputy chair Mick Keogh said the decision by the three major manufacturers was unfortunate.
"We had to look at the safety of these vehicles, the continuing deaths that are occurring, and the injuries and take whatever steps that were practically useful in reducing those," Mr Keogh said.
The ACCC said nine people had died in quad bike and side-by-side related accidents in Australia so far this year, including two deaths in Central Victoria last month.
In a statement, Honda said the Australian Government standards could not be met by any quad bike in the market today.
"It's unlikely to be met by anything in the future and forces Honda to exit the ATV [all-terrain vehicle] category," Honda said.
But Mr Keogh said that did not accord with conversations the ACCC has had with the market.
"We've been advised by a number of manufacturers that they do not have any perceived difficulties associated with meeting the requirements of the standard, so what manufacturers do is up to them," Mr Keogh said.
Honda has been critical of the standards since they were announced last year arguing mandatory helmets, rider training, and banning children under 16 from riding adult bikes would be more effective.
Mr Keogh said that although helmets and training were important, the ACCC report found good evidence that rollover protection saved lives.
"We conducted a very detailed examination, including using expert advice from engineers … and looking in great detail at the statistics associated with fatalities on quad bikes," Mr Keogh said.
"By far the biggest issue from our observation was the fact that these vehicles were inherently unstable, and even very experienced riders that just happened to have that one unfortunate situation seemed to be over-represented in fatalities."
Mr Keogh said there had been no fatalities associated with bikes fitted with rollover protection.
In a statement made earlier this year, Polaris said it would be transitioning to the side-by-side market due to a decreasing demand for quad bikes.
Mr Keogh said that while there was some evidence that side-by-side bikes were less likely to tip over they were still dangerous.
A side-by-side farm vehicle can carry two people
The Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC) has raised concerns that motorbike dealers in regional areas would not be adequately compensated for losing one of their biggest-selling items.
"A lot of their business revolves around the sale of [quad bikes]," VACC motorcycle industry division manager Michael McKenna said.
"At the moment we are seeing really good sales in those products. But … we know it to be farmers and dealers stocking up on these products because they will become more and more scarce as we move forward."
Mr McKenna said dealership owners had bought or built businesses based on quad bikes adding significantly to their business model.
However, he said they were concerned side-by-side vehicles, touted as the replacement product for quad bikes, would not bring in the same amount of income.
Mr McKenna predicted they would sell fewer units as side-by-side vehicles were more expensive than quad bikes.
"We may see a bit of an upsurge initially because farmers have had a good season. But again, [dealers] are only one bad season away from the breadline. And they've been there for quite a while."
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Australia's great recession escapes
Australia has escaped a technical recession three times during a 29-year run of growth and avoided it 20 times since GDP figures were first tracked in 1960.
A technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, is being forecast by all the big four bank economists, who have factored in a negative June quarter from the COVID-19 restrictions.
However, there are some who expect Australia can replicate the luck – or good economic management – it had in December 2000, during the dotcom crash; December 2008, during the global financial crisis; and March 2011, as a result of the Queensland floods.
Deutsche Bank chief economist Philip O'donaghoe is expecting a 0.1 per cent growth figure in the March quarter, which would bring up Australia's 21st escape from technical recession.
"I don't think the 20 times we escaped recession is just luck," he said. "It's good economic management and governments and banks being in a good financial position."
The last negative quarter in 2011 was due to the weather, but avoiding a recession during the financial crisis was purely down to economic management.
"The stimulus package in the first quarter of 2009 after a negative quarter in December 2008 was entirely designed to ensure a positive March quarter," Mr O'donaghoe said.
He said the Morrison government has had less time to respond to the shock of COVID-19 than the Rudd government had for the GFC.
In 2000, the shock of the dotcom crash and the introduction of the GST sent economic growth in the September quarter slumping to just 0.2 per cent, before the December quarter registered -0.4 per cent.
But before that there hadn't been a negative quarter of growth since the country's last recession of 1991, where the June and September quarters took a -1.3 per cent and -0.1 per cent hit respectively.
During the 1980s, there was a smattering of negative quarters - in 1989 there was a one-off -0.3 per cent hit in the December quarter, while in 1985 the December quarter took a -0.3 per cent hit, and in June 1986 a -0.2 per cent hit. But none of them ended up in recession.
In March 1974 - widely regarded as the end of the oil embargo, which led to oil prices rising 400 per cent - Australia's March quarter flatlined at 0.0 per cent, and was followed up with a 0.2 per cent decline in the June quarter. But at 0.0 per cent economists do not consider that part of a technical recession.
"If we get a zero in the March quarter this time, we will be saying we have avoided a technical recession," Mr O'donoghoe said.
Bank of America is another of the five economists - out of 24 - forecasting a positive number in March.
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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
La Trobe University has over 30,000 students
La Trobe University is at risk of going broke in a matter of weeks unless it secures a financial lifeline from the banks and an agreement from staff to cut wages.
La Trobe's cash reserves have been reduced to the minimum required to meet a single month's operating expenses as it grapples with the loss of overseas students because of the coronavirus crisis, which has wiped $16 billion from Australia's university sector.
Vice-chancellor John Dewar, in a briefing to staff on Tuesday, said the university had “no money tucked down the back of the sofa’’ and that unless they agreed to a 10 per cent salary reduction, La Trobe would resort to forced redundancies.
La Trobe sources told The Age that ANZ bank had declined to extend by $100 million an unsecured credit facility it holds with the university and that the university had already sold $29 million in shares to find more cash.
Professor Dewar denied the university had been unsuccessful in securing credit and said negotiations were continuing with the banks. As part of these negotiations, “the banks are interested to see actions around balancing our books over time'', he said.
Asked whether the university was at risk of insolvency, Professor Dewar said: “The actions we are taking are about setting up the ongoing financial sustainability of the university.’’
The university’s chief financial officer, Mike Smith, told staff in a 90-minute webinar that La Trobe was facing a revenue slump of $400 million to $520 million between now and the end of 2021. To date, only $207 million in savings had been found to fill the anticipated funding hole, he said.
Mr Smith said that in the absence of the proposed wage reduction, 450 positions would be made redundant.
La Trobe’s 2019 calendar accounts tabled in Parliament on Tuesday showed that before the pandemic interrupted the international student market, the university’s finances were already deteriorating.
Last year’s trading surplus of $19.4 million was down from $30 million recorded the previous year, and $75 million in borrowings for new student accommodation had trebled the debt-to-equity ratio.
A quarter of the university’s 2019 revenue came from overseas students.
Hannah Robert, a law lecturer who helped organise a Monday-night meeting of staff to discuss the university’s financial predicament, said the situation was difficult.
“The picture the CFO paints is dire. "I have been on boards before and if there is uncertainty over whether you will have cash reserves for a month's operational expenditure that is really scary.
“But I don't think it is fair to ask ordinary staff to carry so much of the losses through pay cuts.
"The fact that the federal government is hanging universities out to dry like this when we are the biggest service export industry in the country, it is just unbelievable. You have got a serious prospect of universities going under.”
Ms Robert said there was anger in Tuesday’s meeting at the refusal of university management to entertain larger salary cuts for executives. Professor Dewar has accepted a 20 per cent cut. He was last year paid between $970,000 and $980,000.
La Trobe staff have already rejected one offer under the Australian University Jobs Protection Framework, a variation to the university’s enterprise bargaining agreement negotiated with the National Tertiary Education Union.
Under a revised offer, staff would receive a sliding pay cut, depending on their classification, reduce annual leave to 10 days and receive no pay increases until 2022. There would be involuntary redundancies in “very limited circumstances.’’
NTEU members will vote on the proposal this week and non-union members next week, with the result to be known on June 17, subject to Fair Work approval.
Universities have received no federal government financial assistance to weather the COVID-19 fallout and cannot access the JobKeeper scheme. The umbrella group Universities Australia said new four-year modelling showed that universities were facing a combined revenue loss of up to $4.8 billion in 2020 and, at worst, a $16 billion hit by 2023.
In his address to staff, Professor Dewar quoted from a Melbourne University research paper showing that of all Australian universities, La Trobe and the University of Canberra were at greatest risk from the drop-off in international students.
“La Trobe is one of the two most financially vulnerable universities in this group,’’ said Centre for the Study of Higher Education honorary fellows Ian Marshman and Frank Larkins. “Its available reserves are not sufficient to cover any of the predicted loss situations.’’
Higher education expert Andrew Norton, of the Australian National University, said La Trobe was in a “wobbly situation’’ before the pandemic because it was struggling to attract domestic students and had lost prospective students to free TAFE courses.
Professor Norton raised the possibility of a federal government bailout, saying there was provision in the Higher Education Funding Act for the Commonwealth to advance money to universities against future years' grants. He also suggested the Victorian government could become a guarantor on the university’s loans, to ease the concerns of banks.
Professor Dewar said the university’s problems would not be fixed by the banks alone. “The banks are willing to lend to us and we are pursuing additional debt. However, this would be a short-term loan; borrowing in the longer term is not the solution to the financial situation we face.”
SOURCE
Paper bags are back
Woolworths shoppers across the country will now be able to carry out their groceries in paper bags for the first time in four decades.
From today, all Woolies stores will offer customers the option of a paper bag option alongside reusable carry bags.
The old-school bags are being rolled out after a successful trial in 20 stores late last year and to meet increased demand from customers for easily recyclable bag options.
In decades gone by, paper bags were a common sight in Australian supermarkets, but they haven’t been widely available in most stores for around 40 years.
The new bags are made from 70 per cent recycled paper and will be sold for 20 cents each, while Woolies’ existing reusable plastic bags, foldable bags and Bag for Good options will also still be available at the checkout.
They will be able to hold up to 6kg of grocery items per bag, and are made from responsibly sourced paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
There are plans to offer the paper bags to online customers for home delivery and pick-up in the future.
Woolworths Supermarkets managing director Claire Peters said the bags were already proving to be a hit with shoppers. “While the vast majority of our customers bring their own bags, we know customers sometimes drop by a store unplanned or can forget their bags when they’re on the run,” Ms Peters said.
“For some time, customers have told us they’d like the option of a strong paper bag option, so we’re pleased to now offer that choice at our checkouts, alongside our existing reusable plastic bags.
“These paper bags resonated really well with customers when we trialled them in 20 stores last year and we expect to see a positive response from the customers who’ve been asking for this option nationwide.”
Meanwhile, each Bag for Good costs 99 cents but can be replaced free of charge if it is damaged, no matter when it was purchased.
The proceeds from those bag sales go to the Woolworths Junior Landcare Grants program.
Woolies’ reusable bags cost 15 cents each, are made from at least 80 per cent recycled plastics and can be returned to the store, along with other soft plastics, for recycling in REDcycle bins.
And in another major bag shake-up, shoppers will have an eco-friendly alternative for holding their fruit and veg, with reusable nylon plastic bags launching today.
They will cost $4 for a three-pack, are compatible with Woolies checkout scales and can be found in the fresh produce section at all Woolworths Metros and selected Woolies stores.
Woolworths began phasing out single-use plastic shopping bags in 2018, and the company claims since then, more than six billion of them have been removed from circulation, with just 15 per cent of customers now purchasing new bags when doing their grocery shop.
SOURCE
Quad bikes now effectively banned by onerous safety regulations
A blow to the farming sector
Honda announced it would stop selling quad bikes in Australia from October next year because of the Federal Government standards, which require all quad bikes to be fitted with rollover protection at point of sale by October 2021.
Earlier this year, Polaris and Yamaha said they would also stop selling quad bikes in Australia if the regulation did not change.
The Government introduced the new regulations last year in response to an ACCC report outlining the risk of quad bikes rolling over and crushing riders.
Under the rules, by October this year quad bikes will also have to come with a warning sticker about the degree of slope at which they overturn.
ACCC deputy chair Mick Keogh said the decision by the three major manufacturers was unfortunate.
"We had to look at the safety of these vehicles, the continuing deaths that are occurring, and the injuries and take whatever steps that were practically useful in reducing those," Mr Keogh said.
The ACCC said nine people had died in quad bike and side-by-side related accidents in Australia so far this year, including two deaths in Central Victoria last month.
In a statement, Honda said the Australian Government standards could not be met by any quad bike in the market today.
"It's unlikely to be met by anything in the future and forces Honda to exit the ATV [all-terrain vehicle] category," Honda said.
But Mr Keogh said that did not accord with conversations the ACCC has had with the market.
"We've been advised by a number of manufacturers that they do not have any perceived difficulties associated with meeting the requirements of the standard, so what manufacturers do is up to them," Mr Keogh said.
Honda has been critical of the standards since they were announced last year arguing mandatory helmets, rider training, and banning children under 16 from riding adult bikes would be more effective.
Mr Keogh said that although helmets and training were important, the ACCC report found good evidence that rollover protection saved lives.
"We conducted a very detailed examination, including using expert advice from engineers … and looking in great detail at the statistics associated with fatalities on quad bikes," Mr Keogh said.
"By far the biggest issue from our observation was the fact that these vehicles were inherently unstable, and even very experienced riders that just happened to have that one unfortunate situation seemed to be over-represented in fatalities."
Mr Keogh said there had been no fatalities associated with bikes fitted with rollover protection.
In a statement made earlier this year, Polaris said it would be transitioning to the side-by-side market due to a decreasing demand for quad bikes.
Mr Keogh said that while there was some evidence that side-by-side bikes were less likely to tip over they were still dangerous.
A side-by-side farm vehicle can carry two people
The Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC) has raised concerns that motorbike dealers in regional areas would not be adequately compensated for losing one of their biggest-selling items.
"A lot of their business revolves around the sale of [quad bikes]," VACC motorcycle industry division manager Michael McKenna said.
"At the moment we are seeing really good sales in those products. But … we know it to be farmers and dealers stocking up on these products because they will become more and more scarce as we move forward."
Mr McKenna said dealership owners had bought or built businesses based on quad bikes adding significantly to their business model.
However, he said they were concerned side-by-side vehicles, touted as the replacement product for quad bikes, would not bring in the same amount of income.
Mr McKenna predicted they would sell fewer units as side-by-side vehicles were more expensive than quad bikes.
"We may see a bit of an upsurge initially because farmers have had a good season. But again, [dealers] are only one bad season away from the breadline. And they've been there for quite a while."
SOURCE
Australia's great recession escapes
Australia has escaped a technical recession three times during a 29-year run of growth and avoided it 20 times since GDP figures were first tracked in 1960.
A technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, is being forecast by all the big four bank economists, who have factored in a negative June quarter from the COVID-19 restrictions.
However, there are some who expect Australia can replicate the luck – or good economic management – it had in December 2000, during the dotcom crash; December 2008, during the global financial crisis; and March 2011, as a result of the Queensland floods.
Deutsche Bank chief economist Philip O'donaghoe is expecting a 0.1 per cent growth figure in the March quarter, which would bring up Australia's 21st escape from technical recession.
"I don't think the 20 times we escaped recession is just luck," he said. "It's good economic management and governments and banks being in a good financial position."
The last negative quarter in 2011 was due to the weather, but avoiding a recession during the financial crisis was purely down to economic management.
"The stimulus package in the first quarter of 2009 after a negative quarter in December 2008 was entirely designed to ensure a positive March quarter," Mr O'donaghoe said.
He said the Morrison government has had less time to respond to the shock of COVID-19 than the Rudd government had for the GFC.
In 2000, the shock of the dotcom crash and the introduction of the GST sent economic growth in the September quarter slumping to just 0.2 per cent, before the December quarter registered -0.4 per cent.
But before that there hadn't been a negative quarter of growth since the country's last recession of 1991, where the June and September quarters took a -1.3 per cent and -0.1 per cent hit respectively.
During the 1980s, there was a smattering of negative quarters - in 1989 there was a one-off -0.3 per cent hit in the December quarter, while in 1985 the December quarter took a -0.3 per cent hit, and in June 1986 a -0.2 per cent hit. But none of them ended up in recession.
In March 1974 - widely regarded as the end of the oil embargo, which led to oil prices rising 400 per cent - Australia's March quarter flatlined at 0.0 per cent, and was followed up with a 0.2 per cent decline in the June quarter. But at 0.0 per cent economists do not consider that part of a technical recession.
"If we get a zero in the March quarter this time, we will be saying we have avoided a technical recession," Mr O'donoghoe said.
Bank of America is another of the five economists - out of 24 - forecasting a positive number in March.
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
Wednesday, June 03, 2020
People hear what they want to hear
They hear what she said as about police violence in Australia. But she was not talking about that. She was saying that Australians don't know much about the situation IN AMERICA
A clip from The Today Show has gone viral after an Australian reporter claimed that Aussies don't have the same understanding of a "history of police violence" as Americans do.
The comment came as the reporter thanked a black man for speaking to her during the protests — saying: "I really appreciate you giving your perspective mate, because people in Australia don’t have the understanding of the history of police killings and things here."
But Australians were quick to point out that, in reality, we have a long, tragic and ongoing history of police violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.
SOURCE
Youngest coronavirus vitim did NOT in fact have the virus
The family of Nathan Turner are demanding an apology from the government after the coal miner was declared 'Australia's youngest COVID-19 victim' only for an autopsy to reveal he didn't have the virus.
The 30-year-old was found dead at his home in Blackwater, in regional Queensland, by his fiancee Simone Devon last Tuesday.
Queensland Health said Mr Turner died from coronavirus in a case that puzzled doctors given he had not left his small town since February.
Health authorities had been investigating whether a nurse from Rockhampton was the source of his infection. She had bizarrely driven in a 400km round trip to Blackwater to 'watch the sunset'.
But on Monday, in a shocking twist, an autopsy found Mr Turner did not have the deadly virus.
Mr Turner's friends have created a Change.org petition calling on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and chief health officer Jeannette Young to apologise to his family and the community for creating 'chaos and panic'.
SOURCE
Listen to Adam Smith, not the ABC
Freedom is something you either believe in or you do not
James Allan
There’s a common misunderstanding by many of those on the left side of politics about many on the right side when it comes to big business. The mistaken idea is that conservatives are largely in lock-step with the big end of town; what big business wants conservatives want. Wrong! Go back to Adam Smith, he of the invisible hand and the power of the specialisation of labour. Adam Smith said, and I paraphrase, that if you put a group of businessmen (virtually all were men back then, so no PC quibbles please) in a room together by themselves, you will soon have a conspiracy against the public. Big business dislikes competition as much as the political Left dislikes it. The big business end of town does best with high entry costs and loads of regulation, the gamut of things that gives you crony capitalism. But that’s precisely what most of us on the right don’t want. We want lots of competition. We want creative destruction and businesses that don’t adapt going bust. Basically, we don’t have much time for the big end of town. For us the key is competition and flexibility.
And boy does recent experience in Australia bear out that view of the uselessness of much of big business. We’ve gone from the cheapest electricity in the democratic world when I got here in 2005 to the most expensive and most of big business rabbits on stupidly about the worth of renewables. They parrot every idiocy going, the main competition for them these days being about which big business can better virtue-signal to the woke brigades on social media. Meanwhile, many HR departments appear to have become far too internally powerful – imposing hiring based on the worst sort of identity politics; shunning unvarnished merit as the only criterion (and even some big law firms have taken to masking from which university law graduates are applying, on the moronic premise that all unis are equal, even while senior partners brag on business cards about their masters of law degrees from Harvard, not Arkansas et al.); and buying into the whole identity politics agenda. Or look at how pathetically big business in Australia supported the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation while the unions ran smear campaigns on TV against it. Totally useless they were, and still are for that matter. This might surprise you until you realise that big business, more than small and medium competitors, can cope better with a super-regulated labour market (Australia is ranked at about the world’s 93rd least-flexible labour market, so pretty much more sclerotic than any competitor’s).
And don’t get me started on these Business Council-type groups supposedly representing the big end of town. You can predict their druthers before you hear them. Raise GST. (No, it never goes down and government just gets bigger.) Pile in on renewables. (Why? In a world where China is building a new coal-fired power station every week and the US has pulled out of the Paris Agreement nothing we do does anything at all, other than impoverish us. Oh, and make life tougher on smaller competitors.) Virtue-signal and cave in as corporate sponsors. Okay, maybe, just maybe, they’ll suggest some trifling little tangential tweak to weekend labour costs, as though that means anything in the big picture.
Adam Smith had it right over two centuries ago.
Want to know someone’s present-day attitude to issues related to freedom of the individual? Then look at their attitudes in the past. This lockdown has imposed an unprecedented level of infringements on personal liberty. As I argued last week, and have for some time now, I think it’s been a public policy disaster. The politicians panicked based on bad models and a fear-mongering press. But leave the merits of that debate aside. Ask yourself what sort of politicians might have stood up for individual freedom, the way the governor of Florida did (who has massively outperformed the governor of New York, though you’ll never hear that on the ABC). Or that the governor of Georgia did (ditto). A month and a half ago both ended the lockdowns in their states and stood up to a press that went crazy and claimed they were sacrificing the old, deaths would move out of control and that only lockdowns worked. Wrong, wrong and wrong (as a matter of fact, not modelling). My point, though, is that that takes deep personal conviction and core beliefs that individuals should make these choices and that freedom matters.
Compare Mr Morrison, our prime minister. Remember back when some on the right side of politics were trying to repeal our s.18C hate speech laws? ScoMo back then said this was a third-order issue. Fighting for free speech ‘won’t create one job’, he said, nor reduce unemployment. (Not like lockdowns, one is tempted to reply.) But my point is that if you are not a person with a deep conviction about freedom your chances of being over-swayed by models, doctors, a fear porn press and the rest are going to be higher. Principles matter. If you want to see someone’s commitment to liberty, look to see what it was in the past. For our Coalition government, or at least for a preponderance of its MPs, that commitment is pathetically weak. We’re seeing that right now with the disgraceful lockdown over-reaction.
Back to the press and especially our ABC. I don’t trust whole swathes of what it reports. How many readers would have learned from the ABC, or the mainstream US media for that matter, that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has probably mishandled the corona virus worse than any politician in the world? Cuomo, panicked about hospital bed shortages, ordered all sorts of old people who had tested positive for the virus to be sent back to nursing homes. Thousands of them. This saw deaths in the nursing homes explode. It’s why near on half of New York’s corona deaths (these being not that far off half of US corona deaths) were in nursing homes.
Florida’s governor, by the way, resisted doing this. And the shortage of hospital beds never eventuated. It never came close. The Navy hospital ship that President Trump sent up sat empty, as did many, many hospital beds.
But the ABC, wrongly, labels Trump’s corona performance as bad. On any comparative criterion with most any European country that’s blatantly false. Take out New York, and Cuomo’s decisions, and the US performance was very good. When it comes to Trump, or Tony Abbott, or anything that goes against the in-house ABC worldview, you simply cannot trust this billion-dollar-a-year broadcasting behemoth that all of us are forced to finance.
SOURCE
Push to bring back Australia's lost oyster reefs
This is one environmental progran that makes sense -- if the costs can be curtailed
Australia's southern states had their own version of a Great Barrier Reef until it was erased almost entirely by the middle of last century.
Before European settlement, the flat oyster reef ecosystem that dominated southern waters lay like a wreath around the coastline in bays, inlets and harbours. But with the oyster beds harvested for food or broken up to be used in cement, these reefs were made functionally extinct.
Now scientists, recreational fishers, conservationists and local governments are calling for government funding to bring the reefs back. They say previous public investment in reef restoration has exceeded expectations and expanding it will be a cheap, quick and effective regional jobs stimulus.
What's more, bringing back an ecosystem from extinction to the point where it could regrow itself would be a world-first, James Cook University marine biologist Ian McLeod said.
"The reefs act as a catalyst for a new food chain … [they] support lots of fish and all sorts of marine life, seagrass, worms and crabs," Dr McLeod said.
"It's surprising how well things have been going" with the handful of installations already established, he said. Reefs have been rebuilt over recent years in places such as Victoria's Port Phillip Bay, South Australia's Gulf St Vincent, Western Australia's Oyster Harbour and Port Stephens in NSW.
Oysters, and the mussels that proliferate among them, cannot naturally recolonise without help. Since their natural habitat was removed, bays have silted over and they need a bedrock to cling on. However, it's an easy fix.
The only requirement is some quarried limestone, concrete or compressed old shells harvested from restaurants to serve as a bedrock, seeded with oyster sprat and dropped overboard.
The Nature Conservancy is leading the campaign for funding. With $100 million, 60 reefs – about a third of the natural range of shellfish reefs – could be brought back, generating 850 jobs in construction, fisheries and service industries, it said.
"The reefs come back like a miracle ecosystem and provide a huge environmental benefit," said Nature Conservancy Australia director Rich Gilmore.
"There's huge water quality benefits. Each oyster filters about 150 litres of water a day. And then there's the fish benefits too. One hectare of oyster reef can create 375 kilograms of fish a year."
Mr Gilmore said the pilot reef installations had met with "no community opposition, but have overwhelming community support".
Recreational Fishing Alliance of NSW president Stan Konstantaras said restoring oyster reefs was a "no-brainer".
"More habitat equals more fish," Mr Konstantaras said. "Places like Botany Bay have suffered huge amounts of habitat degradation … everywhere has been modified by development. Every estuary on the coast would benefit from having an oyster reef."
Dr McLeod said the world was at "peak oyster industry" when Australia was settled, with vast oyster industries in New York and London quickly harvesting all their native shellfish beds for food.
The same thing happened to Australia's flat oyster, which once flourished from Sydney to Tasmania and Perth, and the Sydney Rock oyster, which lives from around Noosa to Sydney. Limestone oyster reefs in bays and estuaries were also busted up and hauled ashore once Australia had exhausted its land-based limestone resources to make mortar and cement.
By the time the Second World War rolled around, the flat oyster reefs were gone.
SOURCE
Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
They hear what she said as about police violence in Australia. But she was not talking about that. She was saying that Australians don't know much about the situation IN AMERICA
A clip from The Today Show has gone viral after an Australian reporter claimed that Aussies don't have the same understanding of a "history of police violence" as Americans do.
The comment came as the reporter thanked a black man for speaking to her during the protests — saying: "I really appreciate you giving your perspective mate, because people in Australia don’t have the understanding of the history of police killings and things here."
But Australians were quick to point out that, in reality, we have a long, tragic and ongoing history of police violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.
SOURCE
Youngest coronavirus vitim did NOT in fact have the virus
The family of Nathan Turner are demanding an apology from the government after the coal miner was declared 'Australia's youngest COVID-19 victim' only for an autopsy to reveal he didn't have the virus.
The 30-year-old was found dead at his home in Blackwater, in regional Queensland, by his fiancee Simone Devon last Tuesday.
Queensland Health said Mr Turner died from coronavirus in a case that puzzled doctors given he had not left his small town since February.
Health authorities had been investigating whether a nurse from Rockhampton was the source of his infection. She had bizarrely driven in a 400km round trip to Blackwater to 'watch the sunset'.
But on Monday, in a shocking twist, an autopsy found Mr Turner did not have the deadly virus.
Mr Turner's friends have created a Change.org petition calling on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and chief health officer Jeannette Young to apologise to his family and the community for creating 'chaos and panic'.
SOURCE
Listen to Adam Smith, not the ABC
Freedom is something you either believe in or you do not
James Allan
There’s a common misunderstanding by many of those on the left side of politics about many on the right side when it comes to big business. The mistaken idea is that conservatives are largely in lock-step with the big end of town; what big business wants conservatives want. Wrong! Go back to Adam Smith, he of the invisible hand and the power of the specialisation of labour. Adam Smith said, and I paraphrase, that if you put a group of businessmen (virtually all were men back then, so no PC quibbles please) in a room together by themselves, you will soon have a conspiracy against the public. Big business dislikes competition as much as the political Left dislikes it. The big business end of town does best with high entry costs and loads of regulation, the gamut of things that gives you crony capitalism. But that’s precisely what most of us on the right don’t want. We want lots of competition. We want creative destruction and businesses that don’t adapt going bust. Basically, we don’t have much time for the big end of town. For us the key is competition and flexibility.
And boy does recent experience in Australia bear out that view of the uselessness of much of big business. We’ve gone from the cheapest electricity in the democratic world when I got here in 2005 to the most expensive and most of big business rabbits on stupidly about the worth of renewables. They parrot every idiocy going, the main competition for them these days being about which big business can better virtue-signal to the woke brigades on social media. Meanwhile, many HR departments appear to have become far too internally powerful – imposing hiring based on the worst sort of identity politics; shunning unvarnished merit as the only criterion (and even some big law firms have taken to masking from which university law graduates are applying, on the moronic premise that all unis are equal, even while senior partners brag on business cards about their masters of law degrees from Harvard, not Arkansas et al.); and buying into the whole identity politics agenda. Or look at how pathetically big business in Australia supported the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation while the unions ran smear campaigns on TV against it. Totally useless they were, and still are for that matter. This might surprise you until you realise that big business, more than small and medium competitors, can cope better with a super-regulated labour market (Australia is ranked at about the world’s 93rd least-flexible labour market, so pretty much more sclerotic than any competitor’s).
And don’t get me started on these Business Council-type groups supposedly representing the big end of town. You can predict their druthers before you hear them. Raise GST. (No, it never goes down and government just gets bigger.) Pile in on renewables. (Why? In a world where China is building a new coal-fired power station every week and the US has pulled out of the Paris Agreement nothing we do does anything at all, other than impoverish us. Oh, and make life tougher on smaller competitors.) Virtue-signal and cave in as corporate sponsors. Okay, maybe, just maybe, they’ll suggest some trifling little tangential tweak to weekend labour costs, as though that means anything in the big picture.
Adam Smith had it right over two centuries ago.
Want to know someone’s present-day attitude to issues related to freedom of the individual? Then look at their attitudes in the past. This lockdown has imposed an unprecedented level of infringements on personal liberty. As I argued last week, and have for some time now, I think it’s been a public policy disaster. The politicians panicked based on bad models and a fear-mongering press. But leave the merits of that debate aside. Ask yourself what sort of politicians might have stood up for individual freedom, the way the governor of Florida did (who has massively outperformed the governor of New York, though you’ll never hear that on the ABC). Or that the governor of Georgia did (ditto). A month and a half ago both ended the lockdowns in their states and stood up to a press that went crazy and claimed they were sacrificing the old, deaths would move out of control and that only lockdowns worked. Wrong, wrong and wrong (as a matter of fact, not modelling). My point, though, is that that takes deep personal conviction and core beliefs that individuals should make these choices and that freedom matters.
Compare Mr Morrison, our prime minister. Remember back when some on the right side of politics were trying to repeal our s.18C hate speech laws? ScoMo back then said this was a third-order issue. Fighting for free speech ‘won’t create one job’, he said, nor reduce unemployment. (Not like lockdowns, one is tempted to reply.) But my point is that if you are not a person with a deep conviction about freedom your chances of being over-swayed by models, doctors, a fear porn press and the rest are going to be higher. Principles matter. If you want to see someone’s commitment to liberty, look to see what it was in the past. For our Coalition government, or at least for a preponderance of its MPs, that commitment is pathetically weak. We’re seeing that right now with the disgraceful lockdown over-reaction.
Back to the press and especially our ABC. I don’t trust whole swathes of what it reports. How many readers would have learned from the ABC, or the mainstream US media for that matter, that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has probably mishandled the corona virus worse than any politician in the world? Cuomo, panicked about hospital bed shortages, ordered all sorts of old people who had tested positive for the virus to be sent back to nursing homes. Thousands of them. This saw deaths in the nursing homes explode. It’s why near on half of New York’s corona deaths (these being not that far off half of US corona deaths) were in nursing homes.
Florida’s governor, by the way, resisted doing this. And the shortage of hospital beds never eventuated. It never came close. The Navy hospital ship that President Trump sent up sat empty, as did many, many hospital beds.
But the ABC, wrongly, labels Trump’s corona performance as bad. On any comparative criterion with most any European country that’s blatantly false. Take out New York, and Cuomo’s decisions, and the US performance was very good. When it comes to Trump, or Tony Abbott, or anything that goes against the in-house ABC worldview, you simply cannot trust this billion-dollar-a-year broadcasting behemoth that all of us are forced to finance.
SOURCE
Push to bring back Australia's lost oyster reefs
This is one environmental progran that makes sense -- if the costs can be curtailed
Australia's southern states had their own version of a Great Barrier Reef until it was erased almost entirely by the middle of last century.
Before European settlement, the flat oyster reef ecosystem that dominated southern waters lay like a wreath around the coastline in bays, inlets and harbours. But with the oyster beds harvested for food or broken up to be used in cement, these reefs were made functionally extinct.
Now scientists, recreational fishers, conservationists and local governments are calling for government funding to bring the reefs back. They say previous public investment in reef restoration has exceeded expectations and expanding it will be a cheap, quick and effective regional jobs stimulus.
What's more, bringing back an ecosystem from extinction to the point where it could regrow itself would be a world-first, James Cook University marine biologist Ian McLeod said.
"The reefs act as a catalyst for a new food chain … [they] support lots of fish and all sorts of marine life, seagrass, worms and crabs," Dr McLeod said.
"It's surprising how well things have been going" with the handful of installations already established, he said. Reefs have been rebuilt over recent years in places such as Victoria's Port Phillip Bay, South Australia's Gulf St Vincent, Western Australia's Oyster Harbour and Port Stephens in NSW.
Oysters, and the mussels that proliferate among them, cannot naturally recolonise without help. Since their natural habitat was removed, bays have silted over and they need a bedrock to cling on. However, it's an easy fix.
The only requirement is some quarried limestone, concrete or compressed old shells harvested from restaurants to serve as a bedrock, seeded with oyster sprat and dropped overboard.
The Nature Conservancy is leading the campaign for funding. With $100 million, 60 reefs – about a third of the natural range of shellfish reefs – could be brought back, generating 850 jobs in construction, fisheries and service industries, it said.
"The reefs come back like a miracle ecosystem and provide a huge environmental benefit," said Nature Conservancy Australia director Rich Gilmore.
"There's huge water quality benefits. Each oyster filters about 150 litres of water a day. And then there's the fish benefits too. One hectare of oyster reef can create 375 kilograms of fish a year."
Mr Gilmore said the pilot reef installations had met with "no community opposition, but have overwhelming community support".
Recreational Fishing Alliance of NSW president Stan Konstantaras said restoring oyster reefs was a "no-brainer".
"More habitat equals more fish," Mr Konstantaras said. "Places like Botany Bay have suffered huge amounts of habitat degradation … everywhere has been modified by development. Every estuary on the coast would benefit from having an oyster reef."
Dr McLeod said the world was at "peak oyster industry" when Australia was settled, with vast oyster industries in New York and London quickly harvesting all their native shellfish beds for food.
The same thing happened to Australia's flat oyster, which once flourished from Sydney to Tasmania and Perth, and the Sydney Rock oyster, which lives from around Noosa to Sydney. Limestone oyster reefs in bays and estuaries were also busted up and hauled ashore once Australia had exhausted its land-based limestone resources to make mortar and cement.
By the time the Second World War rolled around, the flat oyster reefs were gone.
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
Tuesday, June 02, 2020
Australia set to be part of Trump's G7 expansion
Australia is poised to join the world's most exclusive political organisation after US President Donald Trump called for an expansion of the Group of 7 nations without China in an attempt to build greater cooperation over restoring the global economy following the coronavirus pandemic.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has discussed the prospect of joining the G7 with a senior Trump administration official, senior government sources say, and is expecting a formal invitation in the coming days that could further test Australian relations with China.
The offer to Australia will come at a politically fraught moment with the US President facing a domestic crisis at home as violent riots rage across the country sparked by the death of handcuffed African-American man George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. At least 25 cities in the United States were under curfew on Saturday night as police cars were set ablaze, windows were smashed and stores were ransacked in the riots.
Mr Trump is also facing criticism on the global stage after he announced over the weekend he was severing all ties with the World Health Organisation over its handling of the coronavirus despite Australia and the European Union successfully establishing an independent review into the UN body's performance.
The move to expand the G7 but exclude China will also be seen as an attempt to sideline Beijing at a time when countries want it to fully co-operate with the review, which was established by a World Health Assembly motion in May.
After German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated she was hesitant to travel to the US in June for a physical G7 meeting, the US President revealed he would postpone the event until September and push for an expansion of the group. He singled out Australia, Russia, South Korea and India as possible additions. Mr Trump said the G7 - which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States - was a "very outdated group of countries".
A spokesman for the government confirmed Mr Morrison had been in contact with the Trump administration about a G7 invitation.
"The G7 has been a topic of recent high-level exchanges. Australia would welcome an official invitation," the spokesman said. "Strengthening international cooperation among like-minded countries is valued at a time of unprecedented global challenges. The Prime Minister attended the 2019 G7 summit as a guest of President Macron.”
The invitation to Australia is another example of Mr Morrison looking to play a larger role on the world stage, after the Australian PM was invited by French president Emmanuel Macron a G7 meeting last year. Mr Morrison and Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne have also been looking to use Australia's suppression of the coronavirus to push its diplomatic weight, including in its calls for the independent inquiry.
US Health And Human Services secretary Alex Azar told federal government officials last week "everyone wants to be Australia" when discussing its approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to senior government sources.
Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove said Australia should pursue the opportunity to join the G7, saying it was outdated and needed reform. But he cautioned it did come at a sensitive moment with Mr Trump attempting to exclude China and sideline the world health body.
"There's a coherent argument to be made to include Australia because we have the 13th or 14th largest economy in the world and we plug a gap in the G7 membership because it is so Europe focused," Mr Fullilove said.
"It is in Australia's interests to pursue this opening, because as an organisation the 'G7-plus' would have more heft than the G20 and enables us to pursue our case and interests at the very top table.
"But Australia's interests would be better served if China were included and Russia excluded. We don't want it to be a 'China containment club'. Russia was excluded from the G8 for a reason - that being its annexation of Crimea."
A DFAT spokesman said Australia shared some of the US government's concerns about the WHO's response to the global pandemic, but its funding for the world health body would continue.
"Australia deeply values our longstanding cooperation with the US on international public health issues," the DFAT spokesman said.
"We note that, while the US has announced it will cut WHO funding, it has committed to redirect it to other international health initiatives."
Mr Morrison also announced on Sunday he would be holding a virtual meeting this week with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
SOURCE
Extreme feminist Clementine Ford shouldn’t be censored
Leave political censorship to the Left
Joe Hildebrand
There is an old fable of various forms, known most famously as “The Frog and the Scorpion”.
The scorpion, who cannot swim, asks the frog to carry him across a river. The frog politely declines because, well, it’s a scorpion.
But the scorpion reasons with the frog. “If I sting you we both die,” he says. “So why on earth would I do that?”
The logic is inarguable and so the frog agrees. Then, when they are halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog and they both sink to their deaths.
“Why did you do that?” asks the frog with his dying breath.
The scorpion shrugs. “It’s in my nature.”
The same might be said of Clementine Ford, a firebrand feminist who seems programmed to self-destruct at every opportunity – usually in an attempt to destroy someone else in the process.
Strangely, perhaps even refreshingly, she does not present as a martyr. Indeed she often seems surprised when her fury implodes. She is like an out-of-control heat-seeking missile that lands upon a target only to realise too late that it is the end of them both.
I have been targeted by Clementine on more than one occasion and it is both a derailing and damaging experience.
The first time was several years ago when she generated a Twitter storm around her enthusiastic use of the C-bomb, a word I – like her – have never had a problem with.
The bizarre part was that while she was flying thick and fast with it in the public exchanges she was privately messaging me joking about how silly the whole thing was.
Much like the frog, I mistakenly thought we were friends.
This was underscored by the fact that we had a friend in common, someone very dear to me. We even bumped into each other at his wedding a year or two ago and exchanged cheery hellos.
I was therefore a little surprised but not particularly concerned when Clementine pitched a column to Ten Daily, my own network’s news website, to rebut some comments I’d made on Studio 10. She would not, she assured the editor, be disrespectful.
Indeed, the same editor ran the pitch by me as a matter of courtesy and of course I did not object – censorship is hardly in my nature – however that doesn’t mean I was happy with what was to follow.
By way of background, there had been a horrible killing in Melbourne and the Victoria Police response had been to say that this was “absolutely about men’s behaviour”. I described the comment as “nonsensical”. It quickly emerged there were far more salient factors in the case, including homelessness and mental illness. Maleness seemed the least of the accused’s problems.
But let us leave that to one side.
Clementine’s opening line was “Joe Hildebrand is trending again” and every part of it was directed specifically towards me. To be fair, the piece was not disrespectful – at least not by Clementine’s colourful standards – but it was certainly personal.
And the vitriol, abuse and threats it provoked from her followers was both limitless and acute.
Last week it was Clementine Ford who was trending and, as she well knows, this is rarely a good thing. She had tweeted the words “Honestly, the coronavirus isn’t killing men fast enough” and the response was everything you might expect.
Of course, medically speaking, she could not have been more wrong. In fact the coronavirus kills far more men than women and kills them quickly – as has been repeatedly reported.
Perhaps Clementine was aware of this and joking about it. Let us hope not.
And of course it is a pretty dumb thing to say, but the whole “kill all men” routine is a pretty staple part of Clementine’s act. I’d be less surprised if I’d found out the guy who ate the bat in Wuhan was Ozzy Osbourne.
And of course it is tempting to say that karma is a bi**h, another word which Clementine has become familiar within the sewer of social media, where she is both violator and victim.
But if you believe in freedom of expression you either support it or you don’t. You either believe in the right to be provocative and profane no matter how much it offends or up-ends you or you believe in censorship and sanitisation.
Here in Australia we have no explicit document or law to uphold that right – it exists only in the hearts of those who believe in it. And holding on to that belief is often tough and ugly and agonisingly frustrating.
There is nothing more hypocritical than screaming thought police trying to deplatform free discourse while defending the most appalling abuse. And there is nothing more nauseating than people who claim to be on the side of tolerance and compassion spitting out the most violent language imaginable – including threats of violence itself.
But calling for Clementine Ford to be shut down or sacked is hardly the answer. If Melbourne City Council wishes to be associated with her, that is their right and voters can deliver their verdict on it at the next election.
More importantly, if Clementine herself wants to be associated with the extreme and often ridiculous views she puts on social media that should be up to her, not the government or the Twitter mob.
Deplatforming people isn’t just a pastime of the new authoritarian left, it is their very ideology – a backwards and bone-chilling belief that only certain views should be permitted.
Cancel culture for them is not just a weapon, it is a world view, and it is a view that must be utterly rejected by anyone who values diversity and liberty.
So when the moderate left or libertarians or conservatives seek to censor the censors they are not using the woke left’s weapons against them, they are becoming them. Idiotic and even evil opinions need to be exposed, not expunged.
There is a big difference between shutting down debate and winning the debate and it is those of us in the rational world who are supposed to understand that.
Yes, it is frustrating, but frustration is the price of freedom. We fight for those we love but we must still protect those we hate.
And that means taking the scorpion on our back even though we know we might get stung.
SOURCE
Morrison government announces return to mutual obligation for jobseekers
The federal government has announced a “limited capacity” return to mutual obligation requirements for Australia’s welfare recipients from next week.
The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, announced mid-May that mutual obligations for jobseekers, which had been put on pause at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, would be further suspended until 1 June, after which a three-phase reintroduction would commence.
After declining to put a timeframe on the restart of the system, which forces unemployed people receiving benefits to show proof of jobseeking efforts to continue receiving their payments, Cash, along with the social services minister, Anne Ruston, announced stage one, through a press release, on Sunday afternoon.
“Mutual obligation requirements remain suspended until Monday 8 June 2020 to ensure job seekers and employment service providers are given time to prepare for the new arrangements,” the release said.
“From Tuesday 9 June 2020, job seekers will be required to undertake at least one appointment with their employment services provider, which can be done online or over the phone. During the initial period following the reintroduction of mutual obligations, suspensions and financial penalties will not apply to job seekers who do not meet this requirement.
“The government strongly encourages job seekers to maintain contact with their employment services provider at this time to ensure they are aware of opportunities available for training, upskilling or employment.”
Exemptions can be applied for, for those judged to have “special circumstances”.
In an analysis, ANZ found Australian job ads fell by more than 50% over April as the official unemployment rate rose to 6.2%, after 600,000 Australians reported losing their jobs as the nation was locked down.
Unofficially, the unemployment rate is thought to be much closer to 10% after almost 500,000 Australians dropped out of the labour force figures – meaning they stopped looking for work altogether.
As the federal government pushes to reopen the nation, and turns its focus to the economy in the face of a global depression, the stimulus measures, including a Covid-19 supplement used to double the unemployment payment, and the jobkeeper wage subsidy, are increasingly under the microscope.
Both are due to end in late September, although pressure is mounting to increase the jobseeker unemployment rate permanently, above the $40-a-day Newstart rate.
So far the government has not shifted. But the prime minister, Scott Morrison, did mention a return to mutual obligations as part of his National Press Club address on resetting the economy last week.
“We must always ensure that there is the opportunity in Australia for those who have a go, to get a go,” he said. “This is our Australian way.
“Access to essential services, incentive for effort, respect for the principles of mutual obligation. Ensuring equal opportunities for those in rural and regional communities to be the same as those in our cities and our suburbs.
“All translated into policies that seek not to punish those who have success, but devise ways for others to achieve it.”
Business groups had welcomed the suspension of mutual obligations during the pandemic lockdown, as it meant their members would not have to deal with countless job applications for positions which either did not exist, or which applicants did not meet the requirements for.
No further detail was given on when the next two stages of the mutual obligation requirement return. Phase two includes applying for work while in phase three, penalties – the suspension of payments – will recommence.
Labor has not yet finalised its position on what it believes the jobseeker payment should be beyond September other than it wants a higher rate than the previous Newstart payment offered.
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, said he did not believe $40 a day was enough to live on but he also didn’t think the unemployment payment should stay at $550 a week.
“Now, I don’t think it should be kept at the level where it is, where jobseeker is higher than the age pension,” he said on 18 May. “That’s not a reasonable proposition. But it is the case, I think, that jobseeker shouldn’t go back down to $40 a day.”
SOURCE
The decline of universities, where students are customers and academics itinerant workers
Donna Tartt’s much-loved novel A Secret History paints a classic university life. All white clapboard and ivied brickwork, it’s a world of eccentric talents, intense relationships, lunatic japes, glorious freedoms and scholarship of unparalleled autonomy.
These kids, drawn from Tartt’s own college experience in 1980s America, are the wealthy elite. Here in the antipodes, though, through the mid-century, university was a similarly immersive and life-changing few years. For some it became a lifetime, which was possible because it was free. These were teaching institutions, dedicated to cultivation of the mind. There were hurdles to be leapt, but money wasn’t one of them.
Now, bloated by a 20-year addiction to immense cash flow, glamorous buildings, corporate values, industry partnerships and a teaching model that is threadbare at best, our universities flap about like overstuffed geese on a deflating life raft. No one knows the future. Can these gross creatures even swim? Perhaps now is the moment for revolution.
Last year, UNSW responded to falling enrolments with a proposal to lower entry requirements. With an estimated 80 per cent of teaching now casualised, academics have become itinerant workers. Students have become customers. Teachers report widespread pressure to pass low-grade students but cannot speak of it, fearing reprisal. This too is indicative, since the whole point of tenure was to guarantee free speech.
Now, a leaked email shows that Cambridge University, wholly online since March, proposes to keep all lectures strictly digital for a year. That’s Cambridge, mind, the ultimate in physical branding, whose ancient colleges create their own language and mythology – the stone stairs, the double oak, the cloisters, the sacred lawns. Some “small groups” may be allowed. But imagine this place, this dreaming-spires town, all but empty of undergraduate life, of student pranks, punting on the Cam and of cycling, black-clad dons.
There’s no talk of dropping fees. Anyone who’s been alive these past four months knows that their gut-wisdom is correct: online teaching is no substitute for the real thing. Student attention wanders. Interrogation is difficult. Box-ticking becomes routine. Lectures, live-streamed but also recorded, can be watched by a student in the bath, in the pub, high. The exam is open-book, or open friend, or open adjacent expert. Key learning outcomes? Tick. Content? Pah.
As soon as the stuff goes online, meanwhile, the academics sign their content over to university ownership. Then, because the lectures can be rerun endlessly, for nothing, the creative mind itself becomes dispensable – casualised or dumped.
Casualisation means your law tutor or biomed lecturer, who’s spent perhaps 10 years earning a doctorate, is appointed for 10 or 13 weeks at a time, usually with just a few days’ notice. They get maybe $120 to deliver a lecture that could take three or four days to prepare. They receive half the super payments of proper staff, no holiday or sick pay. And if, for any reason, enrolment falls the course is summarily axed. No new shoes this semester, kiddies.
Yet the vice-chancellor must be paid. True, some of Australia’s vice-chancellors have taken special COVID pay cuts bigger than my total five-year income. Still, last year, the average Australian vice-chancellor salary hit $982,000. Sydney University vice-chancellor Michael Spence, declining the COVID cut, raked in $1.53 million last year (including non-monetary benefits worth $613,000).
Plus there are all those deputy and pro-vice chancellors to pay. And the billions to spend on campus development. No wonder universities can’t afford actual teachers. No wonder they must exert take-one-for-the-team-type pressure on the few academics who remain to accept pay cuts or job losses.
The fees, though, stand. Why might students be prepared to keep paying tens or even hundreds of thousands for an education that, like candy floss, disappears before you swallow it?
Because of the ticket. Because, explains Silicon Valley guru and New York University marketing academic Scott Galloway, content is irrelevant. It’s “not education. It’s credentialing”.
“I’ll have 170 kids in my brand-strategy class in the fall,” says Galloway. “We charge $7000 per student. That’s $1.2 million for 12 nights of me in a classroom – $100,000 a night. The gross margins on that offering are between 92 and 96 [percentage] points. There’s no other product in the world that’s been able to sustain 90-plus points of margin for this long at this high of a price point. Ferrari can’t do it. Hermes can’t do it. Apple can’t do it.”
This is possible because we’ve allowed our conception of higher education to morph from mind cultivation to a tool in the great global race to … what, exactly? I mean, what now?
The world has changed. Futurists such as Umair Haque (The Long Collapse) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb argue that the pandemic is not a blip but a portent of the new fragile. Fragile economies, fragile ecosystems, frequent “fat-tail” ruin events; it’s a world where the apparently unassailable – America, universities, airports – suddenly totter. Why? Too much globalism, too much connectivity. Too much attitude. We’ve been partying too long, too hard. And universities have been partying harder than most.
Yet never have we needed universities more. As Trump’s America shows, a system that restricts genuine education to the wealthy elite must eventually drown in its own ignorance. To think, as our governments clearly do, that education is about individual career trajectories is reductivist nonsense. Educating the educable, especially in the history of ideas, is about the culture we make. It is our best defence against world collapse. Education is survival.
Which is why hard-head countries such as Germany still offer free university education. It’s not altruism. It’s political recognition of the huge economic, cultural and wellbeing benefits from nurturing otherwise undiscovered young minds. Germany’s free universities regularly figure in the world’s top 100, so there’s no sacrifice of standards; entry is competitive, but on intellect not wealth. Still almost a third of Germans attend college, their rektors (or vice-chancellors) are paid about a quarter of our average and their institutions will survive COVID relatively unscarred.
But there’s also this. What’s wrong with a little modesty? Does anyone really need the huge status, the expensive toys, the win-at-all-costs mentality? Maybe a smaller, gentler life and smaller, more real institutions could bring back a world that’s nice to inhabit. Calling to the revolution: will you be long?
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
Monday, June 01, 2020
Pubs and clubs allowed 500 people, beauty salons open and restaurants and cafes back with a bang from Monday
Life in Australia will get considerably easier from Monday as many states including NSW, Victoria and South Australia cut their coronavirus restrictions.
Pubs across Sydney will reopen as the customer limit is raised from 10 to 50 and Victorians can have small house parties of 20 friends.
Very big venues like RSL clubs may even be able to fit 500 people in by using a loophole spreading the 50 people across multiple bars and bistros.
Bigger weddings and funerals will also be allowed and nail salons and gyms will open in some states.
Other areas like Western Australia and the Northern Territory will have the most relaxed, almost back to normal, conditions by week's end.
Victoria is the only state to record new cases of coronavirus this weekend, bringing closer the day when Australia records zero additional cases.
The 11 new cases reported in Victoria on Saturday took the national total to 7,185. Just 22 of the 475 active cases nationwide are being treated in hospital.
More than six million of an estimated 16 million people with smartphones have downloaded the federal government's COVIDSafe tracing app since it was launched on April 26, helping authorities trace contacts of any diagnosed cases.
Several states have moved to lift restrictions early as students flock to public transport to return to school and workers to their offices.
Queensland
Queensland is ahead of both NSW and Victoria in reopening, and brought forward further cuts to restrictions by almost two weeks.
From Monday, gatherings of 20 people will be allowed outside and inside, and all businesses that are open can have 20 customers.
These include playgrounds, skate parks, outdoor and indoor gyms, health clubs, yoga studios, Museums, galleries, libraries, amusement parks, zoos and arcades.
Also allowed more people are restaurants, cafes, pubs, RSL and other clubs, hotels, casinos, cinemas, theatres, auditoriums, arenas, concert venues and stadiums.
Beauty, nail and tanning salons, tattoo parlours, and spas can also 20 20 customers.
Queensland's tourism industry is pressuring the government to open a coronavirus travel bubble to support business. Pictured: a turtle at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef +14
Queensland's tourism industry is pressuring the government to open a coronavirus travel bubble to support business. Pictured: a turtle at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef
However, as with the 10-customer limit in much of Australia, many businesses may choose to stay shut as that is not enough people to stay profitable.
Open homes and auctions and places of worship will also be allowed 20 people.
The states borders will remain firmly closed despite attacks on the policy from the tourism sector and the NSW Government.
The border closures are set for review at the end of this month however Ms Palaszczuk has said it was likely they would remain closed until September.
Tourism bodies from Cairns, the Whitsundays, Mackay and Townsville have called for a North Queensland travel bubble of free movement to help the tourism industry.
SOURCE
Science and free speech under challenge from Greenie correctness
A court case this week in front of three judges of the Federal Court was a further stage in Peter Ridd’s fight for freedom of speech on climate change. The case, James Cook University v Peter Vincent Ridd, has enormous significance for the future of Australia’s universities and scientific institutions.
Ridd’s case is a dramatic illustration of the free speech crisis in Australian universities, not least around matters as politically and emotionally charged as climate change. It will determine, in effect, whether universities have the ability to censor opinions that threaten their sources of funding. It is one of the most important cases for intellectual freedom in the history of Australian jurisprudence.
The Ridd case has resonated around Australia — and has attracted significant attention worldwide — for good reason. It confirms what many people have suspected for a long time: Australia’s universities are no longer institutions encouraging the rigorous exercise of intellectual freedom and the scientific method in pursuit of truth. Instead, they are now corporatist bureaucracies that rigidly enforce an unquestioning orthodoxy, and are capable of hounding out anyone who strays outside their rigid groupthink.
JCU is attempting to severely limit the intellectual freedom of a professor working at the university to question the quality of scientific research conducted by other academics at the institution. In other words, JCU is trying to curtail a critical function that goes to the core mission of universities: to engage in free intellectual inquiry via free and open, if often robust, debate. It is an absurd but inevitable consequence of universities seeking taxpayer-funded research grants, not truth.
Worse still, it is taxpayers who are funding JCU’s court case. Following a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Public Affairs, the university was forced to reveal that up until July last year, it had already spent $630,000 in legal fees. It would be safe to assume that university’s legal costs would have at least doubled since that time. The barrister who JCU employed in the Federal Court this week was Bret Walker SC, one of Australia’s most eminent lawyers. Barristers of his standing can command fees of $20,000 to $30,000 a day. And all of this is happening at the same time as the vice-chancellor of the university, Sandra Harding — who earns at least $975,000 a year — complains about the impact of government funding cuts.
While Australian taxpayers are funding the university’s efforts to shut down freedom of speech, Ridd’s legal costs are paid for by him, his wife and voluntary donations from the public. As yet, neither the federal nor the Queensland Education Minister has publicly commented on whether JCU is appropriately spending taxpayers’ money and, so far, both have refused to intervene in the case.
Ridd describes himself as a “luke-warmist”. “I think carbon dioxide will have a small effect on the Earth’s temperature,” he told an IPA podcast recently. “But it won’t be dangerous.” He has been studying the Great Barrier Reef since the early 1980s and was even, at one point, president of his local chapter of the Wildlife Preservation Society.
But Ridd is sceptical about the conventional wisdom that the Great Barrier Reef is dying because of climate change. “I don’t think the reef is in any particular trouble at all,” he says. “In fact, I think it’s probably one of the best protected ecosystems in the world and virtually pristine.”
The problems Ridd’s views cause for JCU are obvious. The university claims to be a leading institution when it comes to reef science, and has several joint ventures with taxpayer-funded bodies such as the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies.
Ridd challenged his sacking in the Federal Circuit Court on the basis that the university’s enterprise agreement (which determined his employment conditions) specifically guaranteed his right to “pursue critical and open inquiry”, “express unpopular or controversial views”, and even “express opinions about the operations of JCU and higher education policy more generally”. In September last year, Ridd won his case as the court found he had been unlawfully sacked and he was awarded $1.2m in damages and compensation for lost earnings.
The case in the Federal Court this week was an appeal by JCU against that decision. At issue was whether the intellectual freedom clauses in the enterprise agreement covering JCU staff protected his criticism of quality assurance issues in reef science at the university. The university alleges that in going public with his concerns that organisations such as the ARC Centre “cannot be trusted” on reef science, Ridd committed several breaches of the university’s staff code of conduct, with its vague, faintly Orwellian requirements to act “collegiately”, and to “uphold the integrity and good reputation of the university”.
In other words, even though the enterprise agreement specifically declared that staff had the right to intellectual freedom, it was for the university to determine the limits of what that freedom actually permitted. If it is accepted, it will be the death knell of free intellectual inquiry in Australia’s universities. As Ridd’s barrister, Stuart Wood QC, said to the Federal Court: “If you can’t say that certain science cannot be trusted because it is ‘discourteous’ and ‘not collegial’, then you cannot call out scientific misconduct and fraud. It’s not just the end of academic freedom, it’s the end of the scientific method. At that point, JCU ceases to be a university and becomes a public relations outfit.”
An academic who doesn’t have the ability to challenge the research findings of their colleagues because those questions threaten the university’s funding doesn’t have intellectual freedom. And if academics know they could get sacked, as Ridd was, for asking uncomfortable questions, they will stop asking uncomfortable questions.
Academics should of course be open to criticism — particularly for some of their more outlandish conclusions — but as a matter of public policy it is vital that universities be places where bad ideas can be expressed as well as good ones. The difference between the former and the latter should be resolved by free and open debate, not opaque “disciplinary processes”. We may not like what university professors say, but a strong university sector requires that we defend to the death their right to say it.
It is up to the Federal Court now to decide exactly how far universities can go to censor and sack their staff. But in Ridd, James Cook University has one professor who will not go quietly.
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University ignores lessons of the past
It has taken 50 years, but in their pursuit of anti-China student protester Drew Pavlou, the University of Queensland has achieved what Joh Bjelke-Petersen could not.
By HENRY ERGAS
Fifty years ago this month, 200,000 people marched through Australia’s cities in the first Vietnam moratorium. The period leading up to the demonstrations had been tumultuous on campuses across the country, including at the University of Queensland. Already by 1967, opposition to conscription had merged there with protests against the state government’s restrictions on civil liberties, unleashing an escalating tide of agitation.
Yet even when that mobilisation was at its peak, expulsions were not on the university’s agenda. And on the rare occasions when they were mooted, it was for offences involving violence and the destruction of university property rather than for demonstrating, insulting the administration or engaging in strident debate.
The university’s reticence was hardly due to lack of pressure. Infuriated by the unrest, the state government, which controlled the university’s funding, repeatedly demanded action, with premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen naming the “ringleaders” to be expelled.
But those calls fell on deaf ears. As distinguished biochemist Ed Webb, who was deputy vice-chancellor (academic), explained, when “there are real issues in society that need to be addressed”, the university had an obligation to permit “individuals in the university to see that others are made aware of them”. Yes, that might provoke a hostile reaction; but fear of that reaction could never be a “reason for prohibiting the expression of opinions on things of great importance”.
Five decades on, those lessons have plainly been forgotten. Instead, the university chose to commemorate the anniversary by initiating disciplinary proceedings against Drew Pavlou.
That Pavlou’s actions incensed the Chinese regime is entirely unsurprising. Organising protests in support of the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and against China’s repression of the Uighurs was bad enough; ridiculing the university’s cosy relationship with China by posting a “COVID-19 Biohazard” warning at its Confucius Institute can only have elevated the 20-year-old’s conduct into a hanging offence.
How many hundreds of thousands in Australian tax payer dollars has UQ's duumvirate of two Peter's burnt on their little ego trip vendetta against me?
After all, as Charlie Chaplin said on releasing The Great Dictator, with its merciless portrayal of Hitler as “Adenoid Hynkel”, “let’s laugh them to scorn”, for mockery is the little person’s most powerful weapon against the jackboots and truncheons of tyrants.
That truth has been confirmed time and again. “The surest defence against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity,” declared Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel prize-winning poet who, before being expelled from the Soviet Union, was incarcerated in its insane asylums for denouncing the Soviet regime’s madness.
One might have expected the university’s leadership to know all that. And rather than submitting Pavlou to months of uncertainty for the crime of satire, one might have expected them to focus on identifying the Chinese students who assaulted the pro-democracy activists, as well as on removing from his position as an adjunct professor China’s consul-general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, who blatantly breached the university’s code of conduct by publicly commending the assailants.
Facing expulsion over his anti-Beijing stand, student activist Drew Pavlou has launched a blistering 11th-hour attack on the University of Queensland, branding vice-chancellor Peter Hoj “a barefaced liar.”
It is too easy, and too generous, to explain their decision to instead turn on Pavlou by pointing to the university’s dependence on Chinese students. No doubt, that figured in their minds; but the reality is that their predecessors’ dependence on Bjelke-Petersen’s government was far greater.
If that earlier generation didn’t buckle, it wasn’t because their choices were without consequence: it was because those choices involved matters of principle. There is, in that comparison, a crucial point. The problem is not that the leaders of our universities, in responding to incentives created by successive governments, have let themselves become vulnerable to the Chinese regime’s blackmail. It is that their ethical moorings are so fragile, the blackmail has every chance of success.
Unfortunately, they are not alone in leaving ethical standards behind. There is, as those with long memories will know, no doubt that if the administration had acted then as it has now, the university would have ground to a halt.
To say that is not to claim that things were better, nearly golden, in more or less remote times. Nor is it to gloss over the grievous faults of the students and staff who regularly packed the “forum” at St Lucia, as the campus’ main meeting ground was called. They were, on the contrary, blind to the crimes of the North Vietnamese and ignored the horrors their victory would bring.
But while they were almost wilfully naive, their commitment to freedom of expression was beyond question. The fact many of the university’s most influential activists came from the Catholic Newman Society and the Christian social movements, with their emphasis on sincerity, witness and engagement, merely made that commitment more intense.
Faced with cases such as Pavlou’s, they would have felt compelled to act. But, all too often, today’s staff and students feel no such imperative.
In part, that reflects the withering of campus life that had occurred even before the present lockdowns came into effect. With vast numbers of students working part-time, faculty routinely address empty lecture halls, eliminating the questioning and interaction that are central to teaching and to the formation of social networks.
The ever-growing number of foreign students, who struggle with English, and so tend to associate with their colingual peers, has compounded the social fragmentation, converting once bustling campuses into spiritual wastelands.
But if the commitment to free speech has waned it is also because students and staff can espouse the fashionable causes of the day without any danger to themselves. Far from risking prison sentences and hefty fines for demonstrating, as was the case in Queensland, they can indulge in protests about racism, refugees and “carbon pollution” basking in the glow of public approval. Goethe’s warning that “Man must win his liberty every day afresh” therefore means nothing to them, no more than Mill’s admonition that the freedom that really matters is that of those with whom we passionately disagree.
To that extent, Marx was right. Once they were comfortably dominant, he predicted, the bourgeois intellectuals would jettison the liberal values they had championed when they were an exiguous minority. Like the Anglican bishops with their 39 “articles of religion”, they would, at that point, far more readily scuttle 38/39ths of their principles than 1/39th of their income.
Marx could have had the University of Queensland in mind. But if an education is worth having, it is not because of the earnings it unlocks; it is because the ability to look at the world for oneself is the greatest gift of all. By pursuing Pavlou for doing just that, the university has accomplished, 50 years later, what Bjelke-Petersen could never achieve.
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School closures are all pain and no gain
School closures have wiped valuable weeks from students’ learning, and disadvantaged students will be hardest hit.
This has happened because some state and territory governments — Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT, New South Wales, and Queensland — ignored the consistent expert medical advice to the National Cabinet that it was safe for schools to remain open, and decided instead to close schools for most students for almost a whole term.
Many children from disadvantaged backgrounds have been set even further back as a result. They tend to have less access to effective parental support, educational resources, and fast internet at home, so they were always going to be hurt disproportionately by government school closures.
According to our new research, the educational cost of school closures to disadvantaged students amounts to between 2 and 3 weeks of lost learning in numeracy, and between 1 and 2 weeks of lost learning in reading. This will exacerbate existing inequities.
It’s true parents were told students would not be turned away from school and children of essential workers could attend — albeit with mixed messages about safety. But this is still ultimately closing schools, because the small minority of children who still attend school learn in basically the same way as students learning from home, without normal face-to-face classes.
Most parents kept their children home — amid the naïve, unreasonable government expectation that parents could simultaneously work from home and supervise their children’s education — with serious economic consequences.
But is there evidence of a public health benefit, at least? A study of NSW schools by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance found the Covid-19 transmission rate in schools was “extraordinarily low” and there were no cases of students infecting staff. So it appears there was little or no public health benefit of closing schools — all pain and no gain.
The South Australia, Western Australia, and Northern Territory governments should be commended for following the Commonwealth’s lead and only closing schools for one or two weeks, meaning their disadvantaged students would be just minimally affected.
But the other five governments should reflect on the unnecessary educational and economic damage inflicted. They made a decision based on politics — influenced by teacher unions — not evidence.
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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
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