Interracial dating: The Aussies marrying ‘outside their lanes’

This article seems to be largely anecdotal so it is a pity that statistics are not given. If the rate of interracial marriage is low, that would in part be explained by many migrant groups marrying within their ethnicity.

There are some statistics showing a lot of intermarriage between people of different national origin but most of those would be between Australian-born people and people from Britain and other Anglospheric countries.

The most striking type of interracial relationship I see about the place is between Chinese girls and tall Caucasian men, I do see a lot of Chinese young women as a part of couples and the partners concerned are rarely all Chinese. Chinese ladies overwhelmingly favour Caucasian men --- probably because they --like most women -- like their man to be tall

And the prevalence of those relationships is clear testimony to the low level of racism in Australia.

Australia’s leaders often say it is the most multicultural society on Earth, but when it comes to mixing those cultures in marriage, it seems Aussies stay in their lanes.

Sociologist Dr Zuleyka Zevallos says it’s “still the norm that most marry within their race”, despite more than 200 years of migration since colonisation.

“When you look at the out-marriage rates, very few second-generation migrants will marry outside their race.” If they do, she adds, people are more likely to marry a person from a similar ethnic or racial group.

“It’s not about exposure or education, but because of social forces and this sense of difference,” she says.

Of course, interracial relationships in Australia are not new, dating back to colonisation when racial intermixing was a way of ensuring whiteness prevailed. Migration, too, means that Australia’s demographic make-up is becoming increasingly diverse.

So, what about those who do couple up with someone outside their race?

‘We didn’t see interracial couples like us growing up’
Sue Kang, 28, and her boyfriend Midy Tiaga, 29, met in high school and have been best friends for 10 years. They became a couple three years ago. “We were both ready to settle down,” Kang says. Kang, who is Korean-Australian, and Tiaga, a Sri Lankan-Australian, say they didn’t see interracial couples like themselves growing up.

When Kang began modelling full-time during COVID, her agent asked her to bring along her partner to be in the shoot. From there, they continued to model together and Tiaga was eventually signed to her agency. The pair have modelled together for campaigns that include Tourism Australia and Commonwealth Bank.

Kang says it’s been great to see “authentic real couples” like themselves “rather than it being left up to the casting director”.

Both being from culturally diverse backgrounds, they say they share a common understanding. “There’s a cultural shorthand in the relationship where things don’t need to be explained,” says Tiaga. “We’re able to understand each other as we share similar intersections.”

Nigerian-American Valerie Weyland moved to Australia from the United States in her 20s. She settled in Perth, where she met her now husband Robert on Tinder. The couple has been together for more than eight years, and have a nine-month-old baby. She describes their relationship as “open and loving”.

She says that her experience of dating as a black woman in California was different to her experience in Perth, where it’s rare to see couples that look like them. “When I was dating [in California], of course there were racial tensions, but it was not the same as in Australia,” she says. ”I dated whoever I connected with in conversations and through passion, there was a whole rainbow of people.“

Valerie and Robert Weyland live in Perth and are expecting their first child. She is a very good-looking African lady, obviously with substantial white ancestry

She notes that while Perth is becoming more diverse with pockets of migrants, she doesn’t always feel accepted in the community. The couple often encounters people who stare or openly voice their disapproval. “People don’t really have a healthy filter when they see a couple like us,” she says.

“Australians love to banter and crack jokes, but they don’t always have an understanding of what is appropriate or inappropriate.”

For Robert, being with Valerie has made him more aware of the discrimination many non-white people experience. “If you’ve never gone through it, it’s hard to understand,” Valerie sympathises, who says that it’s about “being patient with people’s process of understanding things”.

And she says Robert is always the first to defend her. “When I’ve been in situations where I’m being attacked for my race, he steps up. He will be the first to say something.”

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/his-extended-family-don-t-know-about-me-interracial-dating-in-australia-20230124-p5cf0y.html

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Private schools are poaching teachers from the public sector with better salaries, principals say

The unmentioned fact below is that education already takes up around two thirds of State government budgets. Giving many thousands of State school teachers a rise would simply be beyond the budgets concerned

Making better use of resources is the answer to the problems: Using phonics to teach literacy; abandoning useless B.Ed. degrees as a teacher qualification and allowing larger class sizes

Public school principals say they are losing teachers to private schools who can offer tens of thousands more in pay.

They say government budgets are not big enough to compete amidst a national teacher shortage.

Many private schools are able to pay salaries that outstrip those in the public system.

In the past 12 months, jobs advertised in inner-city private schools have offered base salaries up to $160,000, and rural principals have reported high offers in the regions too.

Those salaries are tens of thousands of dollars higher than what the state system can offer most teachers.

In New South Wales, a state school classroom teacher's base salary tops out at $113,000, and in Victorian schools it is $112,000.

Some teachers will be able to top up their salaries through bonus and retention mechanisms but, with Australia facing an "unprecedented" teacher shortage, public school principals have told the ABC they still cannot compete on pay and conditions.

Regional schools losing teachers

John Freyne, the principal at Traralgon Secondary College in Victoria's Gippsland region, said several teachers had come to him asking for more money, having been offered higher salaries to work at local private schools.

He said he could not match the offers. "We're certainly not as free as private sector schools would be … [to] offer higher salaries," he said.

Mr Freyne said his school was between four and six teaching positions short at the end of 2022.

While shortages at Traralgon have been filled by relief teachers lured via state government-funded bonus payments, other principals are turning to teaching students to fill the gaps.

Fellow regional principal, Wodonga Middle Years College's Maree Cribbes, said she had recently lost a staff member to a private school, making her 13 positions short ahead of the school new year.

"Actually finding qualified teachers is not possible at the moment," she said.

Ms Cribbes said at the end of last year the Victorian school employed eight teaching students in the final year of their qualification, to fill the gaps.

"More senior staff are becoming burnt out because they're having to mentor and support the youngest staff in the school, who often have had very little or no experience in schools," she said.

"We've had to combine classes to make bigger classes, with students having different teachers, students having inexperienced teachers."

Principals have 'never seen anything like this'

Mr Freyne said the fact private schools get significant government funding, on top of their student fees, enabled them to pay higher wages to attract teachers.

"What they receive from the government would be 60-70 per cent of my total budget, so the federal funding provides them with a greater capacity to pay staff," he said.

And while the Victorian public schools' enterprise agreement does allow teachers to earn an extra $10,000 as a "retention incentive", Mr Freyne said it was not a realistic solution because paying the bonus to every teacher would make school budgets unworkable.

Mr Freyne said he had "never seen anything like this" in his 34 years in the profession.

Federal government acknowledges 'real issue'

A Victorian Education Department spokesperson said it was already doing all it could to retain teachers and to entice retired teachers back to the profession.

The department has offered thousands of dollars in bonuses for 150 roles in hard-to-staff and regional schools around the state, like Traralgon Secondary College.

It has also offered cash for 100 teachers to relocate from overseas into hard-to-staff schools, while the Commonwealth has prioritised qualified teachers as part of its expanded skilled migration program.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-05/public-schools-losing-teachers-to-private-education-jobs/101748966

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Conservatives on campus hit the wall of censor sensibility

Virtually every academic working in an Australian university is today being force-fed a steady diet of views that are widely accepted by those on the political left and yet widely rejected by those on the political right.

For instance, their university administrations will tell them how wonderful “diversity, equity and inclusion” goals are.

Indeed, most will have to sit through some sort of online indoctrination modules, answering trite little multiple-choice answers at the end where the “correct” answer is the left-wing progressive’s preferred answer (and where any schoolchild of average IQ could guess the expected choice).

Now conservatives like me would say the whole diversity bureaucracy – and you would be stunned to learn how much is spent on this in our universities – should be dismantled immediately. I believe in merit. Hire the best person regardless. But under the guise of “diversity, equity and inclusion”, university administrations bring to bear factors other than merit.

Most often what happens is that they take some favoured academic position or student course opening and they begin by looking at the percentage of some favoured group in the wider population. Then they aim to recreate that same level or percentage for the favoured group in these job positions or student places.

This, of course, is the essence of identity politics. You define individuals in group terms by characteristics they share with others in the wider population. And notice that the key characteristics are such things as one’s type of reproductive organs or of skin pigmentation, never political viewpoints.

Notice as well that if simply hiring on merit achieved these identitarian outcomes (as is sometimes implicitly suggested), there would be no need for the huge diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy in the first place.

While we’re at it, readers can notice as well that these sort of implicit identitarian quotas are not just restricted to favoured groups, they are also used only for desirable jobs and places.

For instance, on some reckonings men hold about 95 per cent of the jobs that lead to deaths on the job. Highly dangerous jobs, in other words.

You won’t hear identitarian quota-pushers say “hey, not enough women are dying at work so we need to equalise things and get more women into these jobs”. Not just because that’s a stupid attitude but because these quota-pushers only focus on corporate board positions, top-end professorships, MP preselections and the like.

Of course I could make the same sort of point about how left-leaning our universities are across a host of topics and values.

Who thinks any Australian university administration is not wholly behind the voice? Or wasn’t against former prime minister Tony Abbott’s turning back the boats? Or didn’t go all-in supporting lockdowns? The list goes on and on and lines up just about perfectly with the views of left-wing political parties, not right-wing ones.

Which might explain for readers a couple of depressing bits of recent information. Start with last year’s Harvard University poll undertaken by student newspaper The Crimson. It polled Harvard professors in arts and engineering about their political orientation. The results were astounding.

The poll found just 1.4 per cent of Harvard academics, total, said they were politically conservative or very conservative. And remember, in the recent midterm election over half of voters for the House of Representatives voted Republican.

And note, too, that this was an anonymous survey and that it polled engineering professors who are more likely to be conservative than most any other part of the university. That tells you just how incredibly monolithically orthodox anglosphere universities have become, remembering that left-wing progressive views are today’s campus orthodoxy.

Consider the abovementioned voice proposal here in Australia. I’m a law professor who has published widely on Australian and anglosphere constitutional law matters. I’m against the voice. My best guess is that across the whole of Australia’s dozens and dozens of law schools there might be at most four other law professors teaching public law who share my view. So is the idea so self-evidently terrific or is there just almost zero viewpoint diversity on our campuses?

Here’s more bad news. A survey out this month in Britain, by the Legatum Institute, found 35 per cent of British academics self-censor but for conservative academics that figure jumps up to 75 per cent who self-censor.

As for students at university, the Legatum survey found 25 per cent said they self-censor but that jumped up to 59 per cent for conservative students. And it found only one in 10 academics anonymously identifies as right-of-centre.

When former High Court of Australia judge Robert French did his report for the former Coalition government and concluded there was no free speech problem at Australia’s universities, he was right. But only in a technical sense.

When there is so little viewpoint diversity and so few conservatives on campus, and many of those few feel the need to self-censor, of course anyone looking at university policies and free speech legal cases won’t find a problem.

What would a left-leaning academic ever want to say that would incline a probably just as left-leaning university vice-chancellor to want to bring the university’s code of conduct down on him or her?

It’s hard to think of anything at all that could cause those with left-of-centre views any problems. But if you were a junior academic who thought the daily genuflections about acknowledgements of Country were patronising and condescending, would you feel you could say so or refuse to perform them?

Or if you thought lockdowns were thuggish and despotic and counter-productive? Or if you thought vaccine mandates were wholly illiberal? Or if you thought being asked to trumpet support for climate change was against the latest scientific data? Or if you favoured stopping the boats or questioned the new trans orthodoxy? Or if you agreed with former James Cook University professor Peter Ridd (who questioned the scientific research by institutions including the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence)? Or maybe if you believe the voice is a terrible idea that will divide Australians by race and trigger a high chance of judicial activism?

Could you say that without hurting your promotion prospects? Or would you just self-censor? Or maybe leave academic life and contribute to the collapsing viewpoint diversity at our universities? I think we all know the answers to those questions.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/conservatives-on-campus-hit-the-wall-of-censor-sensibility/news-story/47a9e0e8b388dcc38090de3ed3a266d5 ?

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Australian universities split on decision to adopt controversial definition of antisemitism

There is no doubt that speech about Jews and Israel is heavily constrained -- too constrained in my view

Australian universities are split on whether to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism following a push from parliamentary MPs that has been criticised as an “outright attack on academic freedom”.

On 25 January the University of Melbourne became the first institution to publicly announce it would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as part of its broader “anti-racism commitment”, leading to backlash from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network who said it had been denied repeated requests for consultation.

The University of Melbourne’s move came after the Parliamentary Friends of IHRA sent an open letter to vice-chancellors in November, urging them to formally adopt the IHRA definition and requesting a response by the end of January.

The IHRA has faced global backlash among Palestinian and Arab scholars who argue its definition of antisemitism, which includes “targeting the state of Israel”, could be used to shut down legitimate criticism of Israel and stifle freedom of expression, citing the banning of events supporting Palestinian rights on campuses after the definition was adopted by universities in the UK.

The Parliamentary Friends of IHRA is headed by the MPs Josh Burns, Allegra Spender and Julian Leeser, and members include the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, and former ministers Alan Tudge and Paul Fletcher.

The group’s letter said universities weren’t being asked “to restrict academic freedom of speech” but rather “make it clear, in word and deed, that antisemitism and Holocaust denial are false and pernicious ideologies and are not acceptable to your university”.

But the president of the National Tertiary Education Union Sydney branch, Nick Riemer, said the Parliamentary Friends of the IHRA had launched an “outright attack on academic freedom”.

“[The IHRA] will prevent universities doing what they’re meant to do … critically analyse the contemporary world without concern for lobbies,” he said. “A powerful political lobby is trying to stifle the course of free debate in universities.

Guardian Australia can reveal Macquarie University and the University of Wollongong had already changed their policies to include the IHRA statement before the letter.

A source who wished to remain anonymous told Guardian Australia there had been no consultation with academics at Macquarie University before the definition was included into its Equity, Diversity and Inclusion policy over the summer of 2021. Macquarie University was approached for comment.

The University of Wollongong said it adopted the definition in April and said it would have no impact on “academic freedom and freedom of speech”. “Instead, it is a reference for our community members to help understand what may constitute antisemitism,” the university said.

The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network said it was “disturbed” by the lack of transparency.

“Universities that have adopted the definition have not consulted with community groups or stakeholders,” said its president, Nasser Mashni. “Some universities have engaged with us on this issue, but others have either refused to acknowledge our correspondence, or misled us.”

Other universities were split on their response, with some considering the definition and others appearing to rule out a change.

The University of Sydney said it was “carefully considering” the definition and had not made any decisions.

A spokesperson for the Australian National University said it was “aware” of the IHRA definition and was “giving it due consideration”, while the University of Adelaide said “discussion on this matter will continue”.

A University of New South Wales spokesperson said it recognised the definition raised “complex legal and other issues”.

A spokesperson for Griffith University said it recognised antisemitism as a serious form of discrimination but wouldn’t be adopting the definition.

A spokesperson for James Cook University said it already had policies in place and that suitably addressed “the balance between free speech and vilification”, while the University of Queensland said its overarching policy “clearly states” the expectations of the community to prevent discrimination.

Parliamentary Friends of IHRA has also been critiqued by Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Australia for potentially violating rules which specify Parliamentary friends groups must be “apolitical”.

In a letter of complaint on 22 November, BDSA said of 11 examples in the IHRA working definition illustrating antisemitism in practice, seven related to Israel and political debate around it.

The Zionist Federation of Australia said the group was a “reflection of the importance both sides of politics places on the fight against rising antisemitism”.

“We look forward to working hand-in-hand … as we continue to advocate the adoption of the IHRA by businesses and institutions across Australia,” it said.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/feb/06/australian-universities-split-on-decision-to-adopt-controversial-definition-of-antisemitism

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Push to have disgraced former governor-general Peter Hollingworth defrocked to be heard by Anglican Church panel

I have followed this matter from its inception. And the treatment of Peter Hollingworth has been monstrous. A genuinely holy man has been given great anguish only because he was not politically correct. I did not know him well but I have spoken with him, shaken his hand and observed his joyous leadership of a eucharistic procession. And I have no doubt that he is a genuine Christian, a rarity in the Anglican episcopate.

His offence was to adopt a proper judicial attitude towards a serious accusation against one of of his priests. That was a great secular sin. Accusations of sexual abuse are expected by the Leftist press to be believed without question. In such matters the presumption of innocence is thrown out the window

He was a proper servant of his God in acting as he did. As it says in Deuteronomy 1:17: "Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s"

It would have been easy for Hollingworth to hunt with the hounds and condemn a potentially innocent man but he did not. He refused to act on an unsubstantiated accusation. That was his sin. His integrity became his undoing. His only fault was insisting on proper evidence rather than immediately believing a sex abuse complaint

It sealed his downfall when John Howard made him governor general. That was intolerable to the Left and all sorts of exaggerated stories about him have been dredged up in additional to the original complaint


Five years ago, an Anglican church investigator said there was enough evidence on the public record to defrock the disgraced former Archbishop for his failure to act on evidence of sexual abuse in the church.

Yet, Dr Hollingworth remains a bishop and the 87-year-old draws a vice-regal pension worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Victim-survivors of Anglican abuse hope that will change after this week — when the church's special independent investigator, Kooyoora, finally hears the case against Dr Hollingworth.

In 2018, the ABC revealed that Dr Hollingworth was the subject of multiple complaints from survivors of abuse at the hands of Anglican clergy and teaching staff in the Brisbane diocese, where Dr Hollingworth served as archbishop in the 1990s.

Those complaints were investigated by Kooyoora but are still yet to be finalised, with the long-overdue hearing slated to begin on Monday.

"I'm not joking, this is probably the longest-running case of child abuse in the world,'' says Chris Goddard, an abuse expert and veteran advocate for survivors.

Victim blaming, the obfuscation of the church and constant delays reinforce the trauma for survivors, experts say.

Five years ago, the ABC revealed that a former Kooyoora director of professional standards told a sexual abuse survivor there was "…more than enough justification to prove [Dr Hollingworth's] unfitness to hold Holy Orders".

This fuelled the anger of survivors who have been waiting years for justice.

Despite survivors and their legal teams preparing for the upcoming hearings, the executive director of Kooyoora, Fiona Boyle, would not confirm if any hearing was taking place this week, nor if it involved Dr Hollingworth.

She says it is "terrible" if any matter takes five years to be dealt with, but has declined to comment on why this case has been delayed for so long.

Archbishop Philip Freier is on leave, but an Anglican spokesman says: "Dr Hollingworth has a limited permission to officiate in the diocese. If a finding is made against him, that will be revisited accordingly."

"The complaint process regarding Bishop Hollingworth is, properly, entirely independent of the Diocese of Melbourne. The diocese has had no influence on the investigation, and the Archbishop cannot comment on the process."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-05/disgraced-former-governor-general-peter-hollingworth-panel/101926976

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Fascism reinvented in Australia

Business being "guided" by government was Mussolini's invention: Fascism. It's an old temptation on the Left

Like Kevin Rudd before him, Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers used the first summer after winning government to write an essay about how he is going to save capitalism. Chalmers begins by quoting Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus saying, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.’ Reading Chalmers one is more inclined to think of that great baseball philosopher Yogi Berra who said, ‘It’s like déjà vu all over again.’

Chalmers didn’t go to the World Economic Forum (WEF) jamboree in Davos but Rudd did and just as the phantom of Rudd hangs over Chalmers essay, there’s also more than a whiff of the WEF. Chalmers wants Klaus Schwab to know he’s a fan. He chides the previous federal Liberal government for giving no thought to ‘the potential of the fourth industrial revolution’, the title of Schwab’s 2016 book on the topic.

Chalmers tells us that we are in a ‘polycrisis’, a term cooked up by Simon Torkington for the WEF. A polycrisis, says Torkington, is a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects so that the impact is greater than the sum of its parts. He says the cost-of-living crisis is the most immediate but that climate-related risks are the biggest future threat facing the world. The WEF helpfully provides a list of the ten most serious risks over the next two and ten years.

But if that’s not scary enough, Chalmers quotes Nouriel Roubini, aka Dr Doom, who forecasts ten ‘megathreats’ in his latest book, talking about a nuclear bomb being dropped on New York, Florida under water, drought from Colorado to California, wildfires all over the American West, the military annexation of Canada, and job-stealing robots. ‘This won’t end well,’ writes Roubini. You don’t say.

Of course, nothing excites the imagination of WEF-fies more than a crisis. Unless it’s ten crises. As Rahm Emanuel, adviser to President Bill Clinton and chief-of-staff to Barack Obama said, ‘You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.’

Chalmers certainly isn’t going to let his crises go to waste. He claims, like Rudd, that the Global Financial Crisis ‘exposed the illegitimacy’ of neoliberalism, which Rudd was going to fix with his own summer essay, a task left undone when he was turfed out of office creating what Chalmers calls the ‘lost decade’ which ended with the pandemic crisis, the energy crisis and the cost-of-living crisis, driven by the climate crisis.

According to Chalmers the ‘common thread’ in these crises is ‘vulnerability’. In reality, the common thread is that each of these crises was caused by politicians in their most dangerous guise, that of grinning do-gooders cracking the whip.

The GFC was created by do-gooding US governments forcing banks to lend to people that couldn’t afford to service their loans when interest rates rose, and regulators who gave triple-A credit ratings to subprime mortgages so that their clients in investment banks could make mega-profits selling them for far more than they were worth. When the inevitable crash came, the Big Banks were bailed out by their mates in government, to whom they had generously donated, and taxpayers and consumers footed the bill.

The so-called climate crisis has taken place while global lower-tropospheric temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.1 degree per decade since 1979, even with the massive increase in CO2 emissions from China over the last 20 years. According to the 2021 IPCC report, Earth’s average temperature in the last decade was 1.09 degrees warmer than the pre-industrial baseline, which means that if warming increases at the current rate, the planet will still be below 1.5 degrees hotter in 2050, meant to be the safe upper threshold, Yet, oblivious to this, governments force consumers and taxpayers to subsidise the most inefficient and unreliable forms of energy production while turning green investors from millionaires into billionaires.

The escalating cost of energy has driven inflation and fuelled rising interest rates and the cost-of-living crisis. This has been amplified by the government’s response to the pandemic, shovelling billions of dollars out to keep people alive while it destroyed their jobs and businesses while coercing people to take a vaccine which has coincided with an unprecedented 16 per cent increase in excess deaths.

Each of these crises has been created by government, the product of bad policies and regulatory capture. This isn’t a polycrisis, it’s a polly crisis. Only the pollies don’t want a cracker. They are crackers.

Chalmers’ modest proposal is to ‘build a better capitalism’ by redesigning markets, saying, amazingly, the ‘clean energy sector is a perfect example’ of what he plans to do to the whole economy, showing how ‘greater levels of private investment are achieved when the government ensures the flow of first-class information’. What Chalmers means by the first-class flow of information is the first-class flow of propaganda and the censorship of any other points of view, using his government’s misinformation legislation that will give the media regulator the power to crack down on online ‘misinformation’ as defined by faceless bureaucrats.

In the clean energy sector, state and federal governments have used a combination of subsidies, taxes, regulations, price caps and outright bans to railroad investors into building the most expensive and unreliable sources of energy that will inevitably pauperise consumers and drive any activity that requires significant energy offshore.

Chalmers proposes to start with climate finance but expand into aged care, disability, education, ‘partnering with the private sector’ in these ‘shared goals’ because, as he admits, ‘the federal budget is deep in debt’.

What Chalmers is really proposing is not some new kinder version of ‘capitalism with values’, it’s corporatism, or just plain old-fashioned crony capitalism, in which power is exercised by the government in concert with the trade unions, industry superannuation funds and favoured businesses for their benefit at the expense of ordinary people. Chalmers claims the last decade was wasted. But there can be little doubt that it will look like a golden age compared to what’s ahead.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/polly-wants-a-crisis/

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Anthony Albanese’s radical agenda that no one voted for

Imagine if Anthony Albanese had told us, pre-election, that a Labor government would create an Indigenous Voice as the fourth branch of government after the parliament, the executive and the courts, and that one of its first jobs would be to negotiate hundreds of treaties between various aboriginal groupings and the rest of us?

Imagine if he admitted his plans to soften us up to change the date of Australia Day, take the monarch off the $5 note in readiness for the “inevitable” republic, put the unions back in charge by allowing industry-wide bargaining and strikes, and effectively ban all new fossil fuel developments via planning rules, despite the fact we still rely on coal and gas not just to keep the lights on but also to prop up our debt-laden budget?

How do you think voters would have reacted? Not too well would be my guess, even allowing for the fact that Scott Morrison was a massive drag on the Coalition’s vote.

No one should forget that Anthony Albanese is PM despite fewer than a third of Australians voting for Labor.

And Anthony Albanese should never forget that he doesn’t have a mandate for this radical remaking of Australia that he and his government now seems hellbent on pursuing.

Make no mistake: this is a government set on the cultural and economic reordering of our country.

Last week’s leftist manifesto, a 6000-word essay in The Monthly from Treasurer Jim Chalmers, is terrible economics but a good guide to where the government wants to take the country.

His call for markets to respond to “values”, rather than to price signals set by supply and demand, inevitably means more government interference in our economic freedom — on top of the taxes, regulations and subsidies that are already making it harder and harder for people to get ahead.

It shows the government’s determination to wage the class struggle as well as the culture wars that, pre-election, the PM was at pains to reassure us he’d left behind.

Paul Keating’s statement “when you change the government, you change the country” wasn’t just the self-evident point that governments make a difference and that different governments make different decisions. Rather, he was pointing to what Labor governments see as their mission: not to make the country work better but to reshape it in order to better reflect Labor’s values, not necessarily the values of our country.

Most Labor ministers, for example, are not just fixing policy problems in their portfolio, but instead determinedly stripping out any programs and laws from former governments as far back as Howard.

It’s ideology over good sense, as the decision to end the grog-bans in remote Indigenous communities (from Howard) and the cashless welfare card (from Abbott) show.

Last week, as well, we saw the Albanese government release plans to radically reshape the laws around shared parenting in the event of separation and divorce.

Under the draft laws, the decade-long position that both Mum and Dad are important to the life of a child is up for grabs, and experts fear it’s a stealth move back to the days when divorced fathers saw their children on the weekends, if at all.

As a respected aboriginal man told me last weekend in Alice, a big part of their problem with young boys was the absence of strong male role models.

But here we are, contemplating the same madness on a national scale, when it’s the right of the child to know both parents that should be front and centre.

While Coalition governments are usually concerned about addressing practical problems like school standards, hospital waiting lists, and the red tape drowning small business (as examples), Labor governments tend to focus on social engineering, and increasingly identity politics.

Once you could oppose Labor policy on the grounds of cost or lack of effectiveness, but now opponents are made out to be moral pariahs — not just wrong, but bad.

Listen to how often the Prime Minister says that supporting Labor’s Indigenous Voice is just “good manners”, that it’s about “being on the right side of history”, even that the world will judge us harshly if it fails. Despite the fact that he is refusing to give voters any details, everything he says on this topic drips with moral judgment.

But that’s the modus operandi for the modern green-left; make others feel unworthy so they’re more inclined to give in, or to meet the left halfway as we’ve seen on issues of climate and energy policy as well as social change.

It’s why too many moderate Liberals end up quibbling about the detail rather than rejecting what’s wrong in principle because they aren’t brave enough to counter criticism at the next dinner party or on social media.

It’s why the Liberal Party base is peeling off to other players on the centre-right and won’t come back until the MPs they’ve elected grow a spine to reflect the values of those who put them there.

Meanwhile, as the Liberals try to sort out who they are and what they stand for, Labor and its allies are simply relentless.

To soften us up for the Voice, the Indigenous flag is flown everywhere alongside our one and only national flag, and no minister or bureaucrat opens their mouth without an acknowledgment that the country doesn’t belong to all of us, just to some of us.

To soften us up for a republic, axing the King from our bank notes is just the start.

You can be certain that if the Voice referendum fails, Labor will then try to do by legislation what the people have rejected as a way of letting us know that — under Labor — the government always gets its way.

Labor is masterly at bludgeoning Australians into changing what doesn’t need to change, fixing what isn’t broken, and running roughshod over what Australians have a right to decide, not politicians, whether we like it or not.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/peta-credlin-anthony-albaneses-radical-agenda-that-no-one-voted-for/news-story/b2480003dae655e4ba959697205b77ed

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Women must defend their single-sex spaces

A woman who works for the Australian Defence Force (ADF), has been asked by the Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response Office (SeMPRO) to find an alternate bathroom to the female toilet if she finds the presence of a male in the facility unsafe. The only other bathroom in her office is for males.

SeMPRO was set up in response to the recommendation of a review into the treatment of women in the ADF and provides advisory services around sexual misconduct in the workplace to staff and service personnel. The review found that sexual harassment and assault existed in the ADF and that there was ‘significant under-reporting of sexually based incidents from victims because of fear of victimisation; concerns about negative impact on career progression; and personal trauma’.

SeMPRO is meant to ‘coordinate timely responses, victim support, education, policy, practice and reporting for any misconduct of a sexual nature’. SeMPRO considers the violence ‘gender based’, but evidence strongly suggests sexual violence is based largely in sex. The key error in government bodies and structures that considers gender to be behaviourally significantly dominant to sex, is causing a cascading list of problems for progressive and conservative politicians alike.

Nicola Sturgeon this week was so tongue tied over the previously simple question of whether ‘trans women are women’, she looked as if she might overheat in the midst of a bitter Scottish winter. Sturgeon had been forced by public outcry to intervene and place a trans identifying man into the male prison. To me, it felt like press were rebelling from draconian editorial guidelines by reporting the man had allegedly raped women with ‘her penis’, echoing Ricky Gervais’ latest controversial Netflix special.

When the ADF employee, (I’ll call her Jane) contacted SeMPRO to seek assistance, she told them that a male was utilising the female toilet facility she had been provided and he was making her feel unsafe in her work environment. SeMPRO allegedly replied with a warning to Jane, that if the male person identifies as a ‘transgender woman’ it would be ‘discrimination’ to deny them access to the female facility. The social worker from SeMPRO, with she\her pronouns, apparently went on to suggest that Jane ‘utilise a different bathroom’.

‘Female’ is now an identity category throughout the Australian government. All males who identify into the category of female, which they can do with a simple declaration, are given the assumption that they are free of male pattern violence.

According to the Australian Bureau of statistics, 97 per cent of all sex offenders are male. Under the doctrine adopted by all our government departments, it is theologically impossible for a male with a ‘trans’ declaration to exhibit male pattern sexual behaviour. Women, however, are doomed to inhabit the mortal world where physical bodies still matter a great deal in interactions.

The ADF is a ‘principal partner’ of ACON’s Pride Inclusion Program, gaining a ranking of ‘bronze’ in their latest Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) publication, having fallen from the dizzy heights of ‘silver’ in previous years. According to ACON the Pride programs:

‘Help make the places where our community members live, work, study and play more inclusive of LGBTQ people, improving the mental health and wellbeing of our community through the reduction of stigma, discrimination and social exclusion.’

The higher your employer is in the AWEI ranking, the less likely they will be to have any accommodations at all for the special needs of female bodies, and certainly not with the security, privacy, and dignity of a facility that is separate from males. The AWEI has a 43 question ‘scoring guide’ for employers to gain ranking toward equity greatness. Item 15 in the ‘advanced’ section of the guide is the question: ‘We have (or are working towards) having “gender neutral” or “all gender” bathrooms.’

The AWEI will not give equity points to a Unisex facility because it ‘reinforces a binary’. Disability facilities are not to gain points for being ‘gender neutral’ because people with disabilities have specific bodily needs. Catering to the needs of female bodies is also without any points benefits in the AWEI, only feminine gender stereotypes are respected, the stereotypes feminist have long been critiquing.

When told to use another facility, Jane asked the social worker from SeMPRO if she should use the male facility or go home to use her own bathroom, to which she was given no response. Jane further inquired as to how serving female soldiers and officers will fare in the field when they are expected to shower and undress in a common facility. Will women be expected to shower naked in front of males? She was allegedly not given a response, although it is a fair question given the history of the ADF in failing to safeguard women from sexual assault and harassment.

A woman like Jane has no way to make her concerns heard about a trans identified male without the accusation of transphobia. Given that SeMPRO already know that under-reporting occurs because of ‘fear of victimisation; concerns about negative impact on career progression; and personal trauma’, it’s a wonder that they appear to continue the same patterns of silencing and shaming women for speaking up.

Sexual coercion, intimidation, and assault of women by trans identified males is impossible in gender identity theology, in the same way that it once was for a sexual predator to be in the priesthood. This is a religious belief, not a factual one. Not all priests were sex offenders, but the assumption that none of them could be, led to more harm than our society was ultimately able to bear.

The logical extension of trans activism and indeed the constant demand on women and their facilities, is that we should normalise the sight of the penis in a female-assigned public space where one might typically expect female nudity. Women and their children must become comfortable with the presence of males in facilities where they attend to personal bodily needs, of which they have many.

Last year, the Wi Spa controversy, saw a man in the women’s section of a Korean Spa, sport a semi erect penis in front of a naked female child. In response, prominent British trans activist Laurie Penny replied to a mother on Twitter asking what a she might tell a girl child to in such a situation by saying she should tell her daughter, to ‘not to stare at other people’s genitals without their permission, because it’s rude’. This advice aims at shaming the girl child for being uncomfortable around a grown man’s semi-erect genitalia.

The trans identified man in the Wi Spa incident was later confirmed to be a registered sex offender and was charged for indecent exposure, even though he had every legal right under California law to be in the facility. The woman who brought the story to the public’s attention, by confronting the staff on video, was vilified in the press and roundly accused of lying and transphobia.

Women are being forcefully recruited into a project of cultural re-engineering that requires women and girls to bury natural instincts and natural trauma responses in the presence of adult males, even if the men are exposing their genitalia.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that 1 in 6 women have been sexually assaulted as adults and more than twice that as children. So, if any given female facility is being used by more than five or so people we can safely assume it is being accessed by a survivor of male pattern violence and specifically sexual assault.

Women have a disproportionate need for facilities in the workplace, not just because of the complexities of the female protective instincts and trauma responses, but because of menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the kind of problems that can be caused by birth injuries.

Not many women want to talk to their boss about sexual trauma, incontinence, or heavy bleeding. The dignity of attending to our issues in a single sex environment is a luxury we are being forced to abandon along with our knowledge that humans don’t change sex.

The mental health comfort and ongoing safety of women and girls is never a consideration in any modern equity bench-marking or progressive policy. The policies that now dominate the management of women’s facilities, stand in stark contrast to the reality of sex that women face in workplaces every day. Sexual abuse survivors are given no consideration as to their feelings about having males in female spaces, and no impact studies are being done on the mental health of women who are self-excluding from facilities, services and events that now include males.

What we are being asked for, instead, is to present evidence that Self ID is negatively impacting the lives of women and girls with rising cases of sexual assault. What they want to see is the bodies of raped women and children, and that in vast number, and that peer reviewed, before they will even consider reversing harmful loss of sex-based rights and protections for women and girls.

Girls between 10 and 14 are the most vulnerable individuals in our society to sexual assault, and that is just on conviction statistics. These girls are being told by ‘progressive’ government funded sexuality education that their instincts are discriminatory, and that they have no natural or legal right to seek a space that excludes males. Girls are being told that they must trust the word of a male if they tell you they are a female ‘inside’, and to trust self-declared ‘women’ in the same way they trust a woman.

Government funded groups like ACON, who dominate workplace bathroom policy, should be legally held to account, in my opinion, for the experience of women at work and the lies they teach our daughters. Women need to make political trouble for these organisations. Ask your union if they guarantee single sex facilities, and remember, any shame they place on you for asking for a boundary between you and a male is rape culture and the shame belongs to them.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/women-must-defend-their-single-sex-spaces/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Queensland protesters face court charged with disrupting state parliament

More than a dozen people charged over a protest staged in Queensland parliament last year, including the wife of the man who headed the state government's integrity probe, have faced court.

It is alleged a group of climate activists caused parliamentary proceedings to be paused for several minutes in November, after they stood up in the public gallery and began chanting.

Some of the men and women, aged between their 20s and 80s, were holding banners with messages opposing new resource projects in the state.

Fourteen people were charged with disrupting the legislature, including Lee Coaldrake, the wife of Peter Coaldrake, who led an independent review into culture and accountability in the public sector.

The other members of the group include Aisling Geraghty, Lisa McDermott, David and Judith Rasborsek, John and Rae Sheridan, Sasha Steindl, Dianne Tucker, Robin Keller, Miree Le Roy, Ian Hawksworth, Wendy Hawsworth and Tracey Hickey.

Mrs Sheridan and Ms Steindl were also charged with failing to comply with the direction of the speaker.

They each appeared briefly for the first time in the Brisbane Magistrates Court this morning, where their matters were adjourned to next month.

The group are all on bail and as part of their conditions were ordered by the court to stay away from the grounds of Parliament House.

Mrs Coaldrake said there was a "general overreach" across all levels of government in Australia, in relation to attempting to "silence protesters". "It's not about the court or us being punished, we are here because we are not acting appropriately or urgently enough on climate change," she said.

"What we have in common is a belief in the science and also we're terrified about what the future holds for our children and grandchildren."

Her co-accused, Ms Le Roy, said she believed there had been a "crackdown" on climate protesters and could not understand why they were being "targeted" at the same time the nation was experiencing increasing natural disaster events.

"I'm not sure why the people who are supposed to protect us are walking away and actually trying to punish people who are trying to sound the alarm," she said.

Another co-accused, Mrs Hawksworth, said "we are not criminals by any stretch of the imagination".

"We just have a moral duty," she said. "[The protests are] always non disruptive and non-violent – always peaceful."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-01/queensland-parliament-protest-lee-coaldrake-climate/101915856

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Resisting the Left’s ideological war on Australia

Lyle Shelton

We can’t go on like this. Alice Springs is burning and the radical Left is waging war on our legitimacy. Nothing will placate their demands.A treaty won’t, a ‘Voice’ won’t.

Wokeism’s insistence that we continue to ignore fatherlessness and family breakdown means the kids will stay on the streets.

A Voice to a Parliament that can’t even define a woman, let alone a family – the basic building block of society and the hope for every child of the human race – can offer no answers.

Changing the date of Australia Day won’t placate the rage of the Lidia Thorpes or the stop the passive-aggressive patronising of the Linda Burneys.

If the problem is ‘the invasion’, a new national day can’t be the solution.

But when the annual Australia Day tumult and the shouting dies down, we are still left with arguably the most desirable nation on the planet.

New citizens from Asia and Africa scratch their heads.

Waves of non-white immigrants, who love the new life our culture and political institutions, give testament to the fact that we are some of the least racist people on Earth.

Yet the left want to burn it all down.

For the first time in our history, the national government is actively undermining Australia Day.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said staff employed by the Department of Finance were free to give our national day a miss, making the Prime Minister’s assurance there were ‘no plans’ to change the date sound disingenuous at best.

Woke corporations such as Tennis Australia, Cricket Australia and the media promote ‘Pride’ and gender-affirmation to children, but eschew pride in our nation.

For example, Tennis Australia refused to acknowledge Australia Day but held a ‘Pride Day’ at the Australian Open.

Toxic identity politics is killing national cohesion.

Displaying an Australian flag on Australia Day feels like an act of rebellion. Flying the rainbow flag is safer.

Our flag has become a symbol of resistance against our Woke elite overlords.

Despite all the fuss, the reality is the Australian nation exists. It is not going away.

The starter’s gun in the race to claim what was then called New Holland was fired by governments in London and Paris in 1787.

The British fleet beat the two French frigates of La Pérouse by just four days. That was a photo finish.

That is why Governor Arthur Phillip hoisted the Union Jack in Sydney Cove as quickly as he could.

The date happened to be January 26, a day which started the trajectory, warts and all, of modern Australia.

What has been achieved here is extraordinary and is something every Australian from every racial background should take pride in.

Undermining pride in Australia is not the way to fix Alice Springs.

Indigenous leader Warren Mundine writes eloquently in the Australian Financial Review about his up-bringing by a mother and father who were determined not to be victims.

‘The problems in Alice Springs aren’t hard to understand. The world over, social breakdown, family violence and abuse, drug and alcohol abuse go hand in hand with kids not going to school, adults not in work and chronic intergenerational welfare dependency.

‘We were taught that you’re never a victim, and you’re just as good as any other person. But you have to get educated, work for a living and seize any opportunities you can to better yourself, your family, and your community. You have to take responsibility for your own future and not be pushed around by governments and bureaucrats. You also can’t look to them to rescue you.’

The social breakdown Mundine speaks of is of course family breakdown.

Fatherlessness is the curse that political correctness won’t let us name, although former deputy Prime Minister John Anderson raised ‘family structure’ on Sky News Australia this week when commenting on Alice Springs.

As Mundine writes, his father and mother certainly were not treated justly by the Aboriginal Protection Board of the day.

But despite our nation’s faults, it still gave him and his family the opportunity for a better future.

Despite the hand-wringing of the radical left, those opportunities still exist and will only be enhanced if we have the courage to strengthen our families and take pride in our nation.

Destroying family and destroying our national identity is sadly their project.

One of the best ways to resist and rebuild is to continue to celebrate Australia Day on January 26.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/resisting-the-lefts-ideological-war-on-australia/

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Unions and green groups clash on carbon offsets

The Australian Workers Union and Mining and Energy Union have attacked conservation and clean-energy groups trying to block fossil fuel companies from accessing carbon offsets under Labor’s tougher safeguard mechanism, warning that heavy industries could “collapse”.

The unions said the mechanism, which will force the nation’s 215 biggest-emitting facilities to slash pollution by nearly 5 per cent each year to 2030, must include Australian Carbon Credit Unit offsets and safeguard credits for fossil fuel industries to help their transition and avoid carbon leakage.

BP and Orica, which have facilities captured by the safeguard mechanism, along with the Business Council of Australia and Minerals Council of Australia have strongly backed access to carbon credits and trading to ­accelerate emissions reduction.

In a joint AWU-MEU submission to a Senate inquiry into Labor’s safeguard mechanism (crediting) amendment bill, the unions endorsed Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen’s draft plan but warned “it is impossible to apply a single approach to reducing emissions across many industries”. The unions, representing 90,000 blue-collar workers, said “the design of the safeguard mechanism will have a significant impact” on industrial facilities that underpin regional economies.

“Australia’s heavy industries continue to provide good pay and conditions to thousands of people across the country, and our members are keen to play a role in supporting Australia through the energy transition,” the submission said. “A successful transition of Australia’s industrial sector also has the opportunity to place Australia as a clean-energy superpower, creating new job ­opportunities for coal workers and across the broader economy.

“By contrast, a poor transition that fails to consider Australia’s international competitiveness could see our industries collapse.”

Amid calls from the private sector for a bipartisan agreement on the mechanism, the Coalition has flagged it will oppose the emissions crackdown while Greens leader Adam Bandt is ­demanding new coal and gas projects be scrapped in return for his support in the Senate.

The AWU and MEU said the mechanism, due to start in July, was the most significant energy policy imposed on heavy industry since the now-repealed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

They said higher-grade Australian thermal and metallurgical coal exports would remain essential globally for years. “Some commentary has suggested that fossil fuel projects should be excluded from the use of carbon offsets or otherwise treated differently from safeguard facilities.

“This misguided proposal fails to recognise that Australian coal and natural gas have a role to play in the world’s transition to lower emissions, and it also disregards carbon leakage risks.”

The Australian Conservation Foundation said coal and gas ­facilities should not have access to carbon credits and be excluded from a $600m fund supporting their low-emissions transition.

ACF climate and energy manager Gavan McFadzean told The Australian “fossil fuel industries have had a free ride on polluting with a toothless safeguard mechanism for the last seven years”.

“The fossil fuel sector has had plenty of time to prepare for this, but has chosen not to prepare and is now crying the sky is going to fall in,” Mr McFadzean said.

Orica, whose ammonium nitrate manufacturing sites in Newcastle and Gladstone fall under the safeguard mechanism, said it supported the “thrust” of the new regime but was “concerned with the erosion of the existing deemed surrender provision and investment uncertainty”.

“Deemed surrender enables an entity to surrender ACCUs to government to achieve an emissions reduction and to also receive payment under an ERF carbon abatement contract,” Orica said.

The chemical giant said deemed surrender had helped it “meet our voluntary corporate emissions reduction commitments and monetise our ACCUs”.

BP, whose facilities under the safeguard mechanism include the Kwinana refinery, said it supports a “market-based policy … to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

“It is BP’s view that the crediting of emissions performance below the safeguard baseline and the ability to trade those credits is essential to the reformed mechanism … ” BP said. “It encourages entities to reduce their emissions beyond what is required … if it is cost-effective to do so. This supports efficiency across safeguard entities, with the market determining the lowest cost abatement pathway for the sector.”

The Australian Aluminium Council, whose members operate several bauxite mines, six alumina refineries and four aluminium smelters captured by the safeguard mechanism, said short-term carbon credits and offsets were crucial because low-emissions technologies were still being developed.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/unions-and-green-groups-clash-on-carbon-offsets/news-story/1b057dbea885d4a5137378f285b01520

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Look back in anger at government Covid folly

Remember this joke: a teenager kills his parents and appeals to the courts for mercy as an orphan? The Australian Medical Association backed lockdown restrictions back in the day but is now complaining about the growing backlog in elective surgery. Here’s a question. Had the vast sums thrown at Covid been redirected to the leading killer diseases, using the standard quality-adjusted life year metric, how many million deaths would have been averted around the world over the next decade? The lockdown harms are showing up in excess death counts, job losses, supply chain chaos, rising cost of living, and have locked in generational poverty and inequality in and across nations. Historical illiteracy is now a job requirement for ‘experts’. Germany has burnt 17.25 million masks past their expiry date, while stockpiling more for future emergencies. Recalling Margaret Thatcher’s comment on the trouble with socialism, politicians don’t learn from mistakes made with other people’s money. The media too lived down to their description as stenographers with amnesia. The state dictated every aspect of peoples’ lives, down to the most ridiculous, absurd and intimate details. With no known cure for blind faith in governments, people embraced compliance with draconian directives from politicians proffering iron fists as a magic bullet.

Lockdowns were a euphemism for a wholesale shutting down of social and economic activities and putting entire populations under house arrest. Neither based in science and best-practice medicine, nor commensurate with the age-stratified threat from the virus, they lasted on and off for two years with constantly shifting goalposts. As early as February-March 2020, data told us that elderly people with comorbidities were the most vulnerable. In a modern-day version of sacrificing virgins to appease the viral gods, the young have lost many more years of their life to buy a few more lonely, miserable months for the infirm old. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that lack of household exposure to kids increased Covid hospitalisation of grown-ups by 27 per cent and ICU admission by 49 per cent. They should have said: ‘Don’t be a Granny killer. Leave that to us.’

The UK Influenza Preparedness Strategy 2011 encapsulated the prevailing consensus on masks: ‘there is very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use in [the community and household] setting’. The lack of observed differences can be seen in a series of comparative charts in Ian Miller’s Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates (2022). Governments ‘nudged’ the public to exert peer pressure as a tool of social coercion, backed by sometimes brutal police action against pockets of resistance and protest. Mask mandates reflected and perpetuated the reign of fear and demonstrated broad compliance with the effort of governments to exercise population-wide social control. A highly visible symbol of collectivist compliance, masks became Mao suits for the face. The degree of coercion deployed to increase vaccine uptake would not have been possible without the ground having first been prepared with lockdowns and masks.

Japan has extraordinarily high levels of public compliance with government directives and mask wearing is all pervasive. Using Our World in Data figures, Japan hit 80 per cent full vaccination on 9 December 2021 when its Covid daily death rate was 0.01 per million. This had risen to 3.43 per million on 9 January 2023. Total deaths had increased from 18,370 to 63,777 over that period. Thus 2.5 times as many people died with Covid in the 13.5 months after full vaccination than in the 21.3 months before 80 per cent full vaccination. Yet they still refuse to entertain the notion that vaccines might be the problem, not the solution. The continued hold of the ‘safe and effective’ vaccine mantra, and face mask efficacy for controlling the coronavirus is cause for despair in official cussedness and public gullibility. The transient effectiveness of vaccines has necessitated boosters every few months. Often vaccine rollouts coincided with upsurges in infections and deaths, suggesting negative efficacy. Newer studies show successive doses are less effective and repeated doses may be driving infections by damaging immune function. When vaccines began to be administered at the end of 2020, 1.9 million people had died with Covid globally. Another 4.8 million have died since then. Added to the growing toll of vaccine injuries, this has discredited officials and experts who claimed the vaccines would prevent infection, transmission, severe illness and death. Yet all that matters to zealots is how many arms are jabbed and how often.

With help from the media, social media (thank you, Elon Musk, for the Twitter Files) and police, people were frightened, shamed and brutalised into submission to arbitrary and authoritarian diktats. Governments deployed state propaganda to instil fear of the disease and shame all effort to question edicts. Turning the debate from a scientific discourse into a moral imperative facilitated the demonisation and denigration of critical voices on the lethality of the virus, the effectiveness and ethics of lockdowns, masks and vaccine mandates, and the harms inflicted by these interventions. Calls have grown for an immediate suspension of vaccinations until the unusually strong correlation with excess deaths, heart problems and female reproduction are properly investigated. Instead, suspicions become only stronger that regulators have become vaccine-enablers first, more committed to defend vaccines from criticism than protect people from harmful vaccines. The media switched from exposing official lies to amplifying them. One dispiriting lesson of the last three years is people will ‘live happily ever after’ as long as the media ignores how governments trample our freedoms while claiming to keep us safe.

On every major point of contention in managing the pandemic, the Great Barrington Declaration was right. Fearmongers-in-chief like Neil Ferguson, Anthony Fauci (whose omniscience deserted him during deposition) and their local ‘useful idiots’ were wrong. The common sense distilled into the few words of the Declaration was an uncommon virtue. The three scientist-authors – from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford! – were taken down savagely and belittled as ‘fringe epidemiologists’. This malfeasance was compounded by the cowardice of political leaders hiding behind ‘Follow the Science’ that mistook a slogan for policy and let loose upon democratic societies previously unimaginable acts and scenes of censorship, coercion and brutality which have gradually eroded trust in authorities and institutions. Recovery and healing will be difficult without accountability, punishment and robust institutional guardrails against repeating episodes of the abuses.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/look-back-in-anger-5/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Alice Springs mayor Matt Paterson demands Ita Buttrose retract ‘white supremacy’ stories

The mayor of Alice Springs has demanded ABC chair Ita Buttrose retract multiple stories on the public broadcaster that claimed the town’s community forum on Monday was beset by sentiments of “white supremacy”.

Matt Paterson said the reports that aired nationally on the ABC following Monday’s meeting at the Alice Springs Convention Centre were a complete misrepresentation of what took place and “it could not be further from the truth”.

“Ita Buttrose should retract the stories and issue a public statement of apology to the community of Alice Springs,” he told The Australian. “I was in the meeting and I’m not a white supremacist”.

He said he would give the ABC 24 hours to do so or he would be filing a formal complaint with the organisation.

The ABC aired several reports, including a live cross to its Indigenous affairs correspondent outside the Alice Springs Convention Centre, during which she stated: “People were leaving early and streaming out of that Convention Centre in Alice Springs, we spoke to some who were quite emotional.

“One resident who was non-indigenous said the meeting was, quote, ‘a disgusting display of white supremacy’.”

Mr Paterson said the community was “already full of anxiety” and this story was only “adding fuel to the fire”.

“This story is not correct and now has national media attention and it’s why the Alice Springs community loses faith with the rest of the country, because of these stories that portray as all as racists and it’s absolutely not the case,” he said.

The suggestion that the forum was a “white supremacist fest” were also refuted by Country Liberal Party MP Josh Burgoyne who was born and raised in Alice Springs.

He told Sky News Australia host Andrew Bolt on Tuesday night the public broadcaster’s reports were “extraordinarily disappointing”.

“I was at the meeting yesterday afternoon, what I witnessed was actually a coming together of the community,” Mr Burgoyne said on Sky News on Tuesday night. “It showed that people in Alice Springs had had enough.”

Sydney’s 2GB breakfast radio host also Ben Fordham also took aim at the ABC’s coverage on Wednesday morning.

Fordham referenced some of the comments that he said the ABC had “cherrypicked” from people outside the meeting, and accused the broadcaster of only covering one side of the story.

“And there were no examples given of the so-called ‘white supremacy’.”

Issues discussed at the meeting included the rising crime rates in the town and whether class action should be taken against the Northern Territory government for its failure to address the problem.

Indigenous leader Warren Mundine said on Sky News Australia the ABC’s reporting was “disgraceful”.

“They … just spoke to a small handful of people and they made out there’s sort of like some Ku Klux Klan meeting going inside which could be no further from the truth,” he said.

“These are decent Australian citizens black and white who were there to resolve a whole lot of issues happening in that community.”

However the ABC defended its reporting of the community event.

“The ABC’s long-running reporting on the issues facing Alice Springs has included a range of perspectives and will continue to canvass people’s views and experiences as coverage continues,” a spokeswoman said.

“Many strong and conflicting views and opinions are expressed within the community, including some confronting views and the news coverage reflects that and doesn’t shy away from it.”

Despite being heavily critical of some of the ABC’s reporting, both Mr Paterson and Mr Burgoyne commended the public broadcaster’s local reporters who are stationed permanently in the area.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/alice-springs-mayor-matt-paterson-demands-ita-buttrose-retract-white-supremacy-stories/news-story/a6b2eeb79c2b13ab565321d5179d4db2&type=free_text_block&position=8&overallPos=10

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No acknowledgment of Aboriginal country for Gold Coast council. Mayor says national anthem is 'enough'

The City of Gold Coast is the largest council in Queensland that does not conduct an acknowledgement of country at its ordinary meetings, which instead begin with a prayer and the national anthem.

Other larger councils, including Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, Cairns and Townsville conduct acknowledgements of country.

According to the council's minutes, about 60 per cent of Queensland's local councils deliver an acknowledgement of country at the beginning of their ordinary meetings.

Mayor Tom Tate said he would take the matter on board but there would be no changes until the current term ends in March 2024. "Everything is going great here. [During] citizenship [ceremonies] we do acknowledgement," he said.

"Council business is council business. "We do our national anthem and I think it's good enough."

Speaking again on Thursday, Cr Tate said holding an acknowledgement before council meetings was "not efficient".

"You've got all the staff there, everyone is per hourly rate, I don't waste a minute on other things," he said. "We do our prayer, we do our national anthem and we get on with our business."

Cr Tate said he had not been approached by traditional owners but that he understood the council was planning to appoint an Indigenous liaison officer.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-02/no-acknowledgment-of-country-planned-gold-coast-council/101915236

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Treasurer Chalmers’s essay is terrible economics, but a very good guide to the radical nature of the Albanese government

It’s not often I quote Paul Keating but his declaration, “when you change the government you change the country”, encapsulates the left’s mindset for government. To the left, government exists to pursue an aggressive agenda, using the organs of state to remake individuals, institutions, and society. Whereas to the right, government’s purpose is only to do what citizens can’t do for themselves, hence government should normally be smaller, not bigger.

So when Jim Chalmers talks about “reinventing capitalism”, to base markets on “values”, he’s talking about the Labor Party’s values, not yours.

Hence there’ll be even more government interference, dressed up as greater fairness, on your freedom to buy, sell, own and invest. This latest missive, from a Treasurer who hasn’t even had 12 months behind his fiscal desk, reveals a government already looking far more radical than the “safe change” platform it was elected on.

Chalmers’s essay in The Monthly is terrible economics but a very good guide to the real nature of the Albanese government that not only wants to change the way we’re governed but to make government bigger and more domineering than ever, despite the absence of any demonstrable mandate.

Before May’s election, Anthony Albanese was at pains to reassure us he’d cut electricity bills, raise real wages, and do more on climate, but only in ways that created jobs and boosted the economy. There’d be no deals with the Greens, and his role model would be Bob Hawke, the last Labor prime minister who actually delivered a budget surplus.

Exploiting Scott Morrison’s unpopularity, Albanese skilfully created the impression all he really intended to change was the identity of the prime minister. But that’s not how it’s turning out.

Pre-election, then-shadow treasurer Chalmers denied multi-employer agreements were “part of our policy” to lull business groups into a false sense of security. Post-election, the law was changed to permit industry-wide bargaining and industry-wide strikes after dragooning business into a “jobs summit” that was a pre-planned stitch-up with the unions; Hawke-Kelty in style but nothing like it in substance.

And there was more. The government pre-empted legislation to abolish the building industry watchdog by first stripping its funding. It then announced emissions-intensive industries would have to buy carbon credits at up to $75 a tonne to keep operating. Most recently, to limit the power price rises driven by attempts to prematurely retire fossil fuels, the government took the unprecedented step of imposing price controls on gas and thermal coal.

Now, the Treasurer has tried to lend a spurious intellectual rationale to this abandonment of economic responsibility via supposedly reinventing capitalism to deal with what he calls the “poly-crisis” of war, pandemic, climate change and inflation. Markets are not perfect but they’re the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources. And what Chalmers finds mysterious and attributes to the failings of markets is much more often the failure of governments: such as today’s inflation due to governments’ unfunded spending to deal with the pandemic, and supply chain bottlenecks due to government-ordered pandemic lockdowns.

Labor has form when it comes to masking economic ineptitude under a thin veneer of moralising. In a 2009 Monthly essay, Kevin Rudd claimed the global financial crisis proved the failings of capitalism. Like Chalmers, he wanted markets with a higher purpose; only in practice, his legacy was massively overpriced school halls, a multibillion-dollar failed pink batts scheme, and billions more spent on hospitals and schools without any commensurate improvement in outcomes.

In early 2012, Chalmers’s then boss, Wayne Swan, also penned a Monthly essay, but his supposedly superior insights into capitalism didn’t save him from the worst economic prediction of all: namely, his 2012 budget boast about “the four years of surpluses I announce tonight”, of which none ever arrived.

Chalmers asks: “How do we build this more inclusive and resilient economy?” His answer: “By strengthening our institutions and our capacity with a focus on the intersection of prosperity and wellbeing, on evidence, on place and community, collaboration and co-operation. By reimagining and redesigning markets – seeking value and impact, strengthening safeguards and guardrails in areas of unchecked risk. And with co-ordination and co-investment: recognising that government, business, philanthropic and investor interests and objectives are increasingly aligned and intertwined.”

This pretentious blather is worth quoting at some length because it typifies his essay, which is almost entirely devoid of any meaningful, specific content.

He seems to regard the government’s energy policy as a good example of how values-based capitalism might work. And it’s true that as long as there are consumer subsidies and government incentives for renewables, rent-seeking investors will rush to install more wind turbines and solar panels.

Unfortunately, apart from the inflated profits of the businesses restricting supply, the result of too much intermittent and not enough reliable power is much higher prices to consumers and the likely loss of all our heavy industry to jurisdictions that don’t care about how power is generated; just that it’s cheap and 24/7. The problems in our energy markets are much less from any market failure than from successive governments trying to run them to reduce emissions rather than for optimal power generation.

The Treasurer also seems to regard the nation’s compulsory superannuation balances as the perfect place for governments-that-know-best to partner with impact investors to advance a “social purpose economy”. In practice, though, this means the union-dominated super funds not investing our money to maximise returns to us but to meet the political imperatives of government.

What Chalmers fails to appreciate (and his doctorate is in political science, not economics; his thesis was “Brawler Statesman: Paul Keating and prime ministerial leadership in Australia”) is that what he refers to as “capitalism” is just ordinary human freedom in the economic sphere.

No country has taxed and regulated its way to prosperity, although plenty of governments have tried; always to their citizens’ cost. Likewise, while there are some things that only government can do, such as defending the nation and exercising physical force over citizens, there are no goods or services the public sector can provide more efficiently than the private sector, if the private sector is prepared to invest.

Chalmers is going beyond the obvious point that markets can only operate within a framework of law that government sets. His sermonising against the way markets have operated in Australia, including under the Hawke government, can only mean more regulation, higher taxes, sweetheart deals with rent-seeking big business and big unions, and government forcing money to move from more to less efficient parts of the economy.

“Reinvented capitalism” means stopping us from doing what we want, in favour of forcing us to do what government wants. If Chalmers’s essay is the government’s road map, forget the PM’s spin about emulating Bob Hawke. It’s on a Whitlam-esque path to becoming the most left-wing government in our history.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/worse-to-come-from-moralising-chalmers/news-story/b2c141ace753a9a13e2de38212d60ef3

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Immigration minister orders changes to assessments for New Zealanders facing deportation

Most of the offenders are Maori and NZ jails are full of them already

The immigration minister has ordered his department to soften its stance on deporting New Zealanders convicted of serious crimes, saying how long they have lived in Australia should now be made a top consideration.

Australia has deported hundreds of New Zealanders using laws made almost a decade ago that allowed long-term residents to be deported on character grounds, as well as those who had been sentenced to a prison term of at least 12 months.

The most common reasons for visa cancellations of any nationality were drug offences, child sex offences and domestic violence offences.

A spokesperson for Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said the government had told the department to take a "common sense" approach.

"Under these changes the Department of Home Affairs must now consider the length of time someone has lived in the Australian community as one of the primary considerations when determining whether to cancel someone’s visa," the spokesperson said.

"Where individuals pose a risk to the community, the Australian government will continue to cancel their visas and remove them."

Successive New Zealand governments have complained that the people deported to New Zealand had no meaningful links to the country or had spent most of their life in Australia.

New Zealand's recently departed prime minister Jacinda Ardern in 2019 labelled the policy "corrosive" to the country's relationship with Australia during a joint press conference with then-prime minister Scott Morrison.

Ms Ardern raised the issue again with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following his election win, where he said Australia would not change its core position on deportations, but that his government would take New Zealand's concerns into consideration "as friends".

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the decision was a welcome "first step".

"The acknowledgement on the Australian side that actually some of the people that we are talking about have had a long history in Australia – some of them have been there since they were very young children – and sending them to New Zealand when they have no connections here other than a very historic one isn’t really a fair or just outcome," Mr Hipkins said.

"I think the acknowledgement of that by the Australians is very, very welcome.

Mr Hipkins said further work with Australia around visa cancellations would continue, as well as "the general treatment of New Zealanders living in Australia".

"That's something that was discussed with Jacinda Ardern in the first meeting that was held," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in Perth.

"Some common sense needs to be applied here between Australia and New Zealand.

"But we retain, of course, our right to take action on the basis that it's appropriate action."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-01/new-zealanders-facing-deportation-new-assessments/101914758

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Youth and age

Two generations of Leftism

Monique Ryan on the Left and Sally Rugg on the right. Ryan hired Rugg to work for her but Rugg says she was worked too hard. Ryan is a "Teal" and Rugg is a very dedicated Leftist.

It's interesting to note how the young face differs from the older face -- smoother.

Yes: Several people have remarked that Ryan has had the Rugg pulled from under her

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-30/former-chief-of-staff-launches-legal-action-against-monique-ryan/101909230

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NT Police and attorney-general to argue Zachary Rolfe should be forced to front Kumanjayi Walker inquest, with protective certificate

Rolfe was found not guilty by a jury but that is not enough where Aborigines are concerned. He should never heve have been charged for his dealings with an aggressive black thug

Lawyers for the Northern Territory attorney-general and police force will urge the NT Court of Appeal to force Constable Zachary Rolfe to front the inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker, with a certificate protecting him against self-incrimination.

A jury last year found him not guilty of murder, manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death, after a five-week Supreme Court trial.

Northern Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage is presiding over a lengthy coronial inquest into the shooting, which heard three months of evidence in Alice Springs last year, and is scheduled to resume next month.

Constable Rolfe was called briefly to the stand in November last year, but refused to answer a series of questions about fourteen topics, including his text messages and the events of the night of the shooting.

The officer claimed penalty privilege, arguing police could not be forced to answer questions which could result in an internal "penalty", or disciplinary action, being taken against them at work.

Judge Armitage had earlier ruled police could be compelled to take the stand and be given an immunity certificate, that protects inquest witnesses from incriminating themselves with their evidence.

But Constable Rolfe and his lawyers appealed against the decision in the Supreme Court, where Justice Judith Kelly ultimately ruled his argument was "untenable".

Justice Kelly found penalty privilege did not exist in the context of a coronial inquest, not only ruling that Constable Rolfe could be forced to answer questions, but he was not entitled to a protective certificate at all.

The officer has since launched an appeal, claiming Justice Kelly "erred" in her judgement, and that the coroner "cannot direct or compel the appellant" to answer questions where answers "would tend to expose the appellant to a penalty".

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-01/nt-police-and-attorney-general-to-argue-zachary-rolfe-should-be-/101913898

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Urgent call from CEDA to tackle different jobs for different genders

Why on earth does this matter? As long as there are no formal barriers, both men and women should be free to take any job for which they are qualified. Are men and women not allowed to be different?

Implementing more family-friendly policies should be among the initiatives taken to address worsening gender segregation in key industries including construction, technology, health and education, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia has found.

In a submission to the federal government’s Employment White Paper, CEDA says occupational gender segregation – where a job is done by either mostly male or female workers – remains at a high level in Australia, despite the growing proportion of women in the workforce.

According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, 12 per cent of construction workers in 2018 were women compared to 14 per cent in 1998. The proportion of female workers in health care and social assistance was 79 per cent in 2018, up from 77 per cent in 1998.

CEDA chief executive Melinda Cilento said there remained a low proportion of women in traditionally male-dominated industries such as construction, mining, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and manufacturing.

“Conversely, there is a low share of men in female-dominated industries, such as health care and education, and some of these occupations have become even more segregated over time,” she said. Even in female-dominated industries, men still disproportionately held more leadership positions.

“While many social, historical and economic factors have driven this segregation, many of the remaining barriers to change are cultural – whether at the government, workplace or individual level,” Ms Cilento said. “We must tackle these entrenched cultural barriers wherever they exist.”

According to CEDA, a significant cultural barrier is access to flexible work. Rigid workplace structures and cultures that insist on fixed hours, locations and modes of attendance further entrench occupational segregation.

Since the Covid pandemic, flexible work arrangements have overtaken compensation as the highest priority for jobseekers.

CEDA says Australia has had one of the least generous and most unequal paid parental leave schemes in the OECD, with 99.5 per cent of parental leave taken by mothers.

The federal government expanded the scheme from 18 to 26 weeks in the October 2022 budget, starting in July. Changes include greater flexibility around the timing of leave taken by both parents.

Men are still 1.8 times more likely than women to be working in a STEM field five years after completing their qualification. The proportion of women studying and working in STEM has barely changed since 2015.

According to CEDA, the skilled migration system also adds to the problem, as female migrants are more likely to be secondary applicants to their partner’s visa, and to work in lower-paid occupations.

“We must break down entrenched barriers in the jobs market,” Ms Cilento said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/need-to-tackle-gender-segregation-ceda-says/news-story/dbdef5da3415d82361033380382bd577

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Carbon taxes are useless without a technological breakthrough

Raising the cost of using a particular fuel will shift consumption to another fuel, but only if all other things are equal. Unfortunately for climate change hysterics, when it comes to CO2 emissions, all other things aren’t equal.

This is a relevant issue now Australia effectively has a CO2 tax.

Under Australia’s ‘Safeguard Mechanism’, an invention of the previous Coalition government now being ‘refined’ by Labor, Australia’s 215 largest CO2 emitting facilities will face a virtual carbon tax.

They’ve been told they need to reduce their emissions on average by 4.9 per cent a year, and if they can’t manage this, they may buy carbon credits, but only if the credits cost less than an inflation-adjusted $75 a tonne.

This is effectively a tax that cuts in at the average mandated level of emissions per type of facility, and which is determined by the number of facilities that can’t meet those benchmarks and the amount of emissions they emit.

The more emissions, the higher the price, until $75 a tonne. And if the demand exceeds the supply? Well, perhaps some of those polluters will wish their industry organisations hadn’t lobbied for a price cap. They may already even be thinking that, looking at the mess a cap is making of the gas market. Those that can stay in business at those tax levels, that is.

To make this hang together in some way that keeps the Greens happy, the government needed to prove the carbon offsets market was effective. Carbon markets are susceptible to fraud, with double-dipping, poor governance, and imprecise science.

The answer to these problems, raised in an ANU critique about the Australian carbon credit market, was to appoint former Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb to do a review. Chubb gave the scheme the all-clear, subject to 16 recommendations.

Inquiries are only as good as their terms of reference and their personnel. At no stage was Chubb asked what the total carbon credit capacity of Australia is, which would determine the depth of the market and the price that should be charged. If he had, he may have discovered that Australia absorbs more than twice as much CO2 as it emits.

So, on a national basis, the cost of carbon credits ought to be zero – we are already NetZero, with surplus credits to sell to the world.

But this wouldn’t suit the narrative which is to see emissions management as a result purely of fuel-type, rather than also a function of volume. The size of the continent, which contributes to Australia’s high per capita emissions, is also the solution to them, as long as we don’t grow the population too much.

There is also another side to the use of carbon credits which points to the absurdity of carbon taxes. The fact that they need to be available at all, means the government tacitly acknowledges there are no substitutes for fossil fuels for particular uses.

Which is the whole weakness in the idea of carbon taxes. While superficially ‘efficient’ they cannot meet their aim of fuel substitution because the suitable fuels do not exist, or if they do, are banned from consideration by this government.

There are a number of results from this. One is that rather than substituting one fuel type for another they end up substituting one highly-taxed location for a lower-taxed one.

Much of Australia’s emissions under the various regimes in place under previous and current governments have merely been exported to China, South-East Asia more generally, and more recently South Asia, rather than reduced. Ditto for most of the rest of the hyperventilating carbonphobic world, like the EU and the balance of the Anglosphere.

Because only the 215 largest installations will have to adapt, this also represents a boost for smaller businesses. The 216th largest installation will be laughing all the way to the bank, at least in comparison to the 215th (which raises another issue, what happens if one of the 215 goes out of business?).

That’s why since 1990, when the IPCC at the Second World Conference called for a treaty on climate change, global emissions have risen over 53 per cent despite the expenditure of trillions trying to stop them rising.

There are no substitutes and carbon taxes are therefore, in effect, a subsidy to manufacturing in China and the developing world, not a mitigation strategy at all.

Carbon taxes do cause some substitution, such as from coal to gas. This has happened in a perverse way in Australia. As renewables continue to penetrate the power generation mix, there is an increased need for on-demand rapid deployment sources of power, like Open Cycle Gas Generators. In a state like South Australia they make up around 30 per cent of electricity supply.

Unfortunately for Australia the carbonphobics hate natural gas too and have made it difficult to prospect for new fields and bring them online, making gas more expensive than coal, unlike the US where it is generally cheaper. This results in a further ‘tax’ on consumers as gas, being the marginal producer, sets the price for the whole of the electricity network.

Yet even this substitution is to be banned as the governments of Australia declare that gas cannot be part of any ‘capacity mechanism’ (even though gas makes up a substantial part of AEMO’s Infrastructure Plan in 2050, the year we plan to be Net Zero).

Which is where the lack of substitutes will really cut in. Metal refineries need to operate 24/7 – you can’t ever let the metal cool in the pots. And some of them consume vast quantities of electricity. For example, Rio’s three smelters in Queensland consume about 17 per cent of state power generation, the Tomago smelter in NSW around 12 per cent.

The technologies don’t currently exist at all, or where they might exist, in the quantities required, to make these large installations viable using renewables (despite what management says). The tax squeeze is going to send them to the wall, but the world will still need their output, so it will come from somewhere else.

Bear in mind that the businesses we are talking about include power generators, steel and cement manufacturers, fertiliser and plastics manufacturers, oil refineries, and rail operators. The bulk of emissions from some of these has little to do with fuel supply, but is a by-product of their manufacturing process. For example, the coking coal used in steel manufacture cannot be replaced at the moment.

It turns out that carbon taxes are very efficient taxes, but only when it comes to putting industries out of business.

The tax wouldn’t be so dire if all existing technologies were on the table, but alongside gas, nuclear power has been ruled out by this government. Nuclear is the only viable 24/7 non-emitting source of electricity. If it were available the smelters might be safe even if the plastics, fertiliser, steel, and cement manufacturers still faced existential problems.

Bjorn Lomborg has long argued that we need to invest in researching and developing alternative technologies, rather than taxing existing technologies. To date, Australia has more or less avoided this trap, but under enthusiastic Labor, no longer. Their virtual carbon tax guarantees Australia will have an impoverishing collision with the physical limits of reality. And all for no return in global emissions.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/carbon-taxes-are-useless-without-a-technological-breakthrough

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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