Drumgold: The rise and fall of the boy from Mt Druitt

Shane Drumgold was born into welfare housing in Mt Druitt, a poor and often violent suburb of Sydney. Unlike most Senior Counsel, he never we went to private school but slowly made his way upwards via a a range of less prestigious paths. And I think his downfall can be attributed to that background

One thing that a private school background instils in its pupils is self confidence and that is an important trait if you are going to go against the flow. And that is what Drumgold failed to do. There was tremendous media pressure to believe Brittany Higgins and discredit Bruce Lehrmann. You had to go along with that to be on the side of the angels. Drumgold didn't have the mental fortitude to resist that. He was so desperate to be among the good guys that he lied in an effort to support the mob belief. He had none of the confidence that would have enabled him to go against the flow

His gaunt visage never did look right under a barrister's wig and he was in the end unfit for that distinction




ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold has resigned in the wake of the damning findings of the Sofronoff Inquiry and is expected to retire.

On Sunday ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury confirmed that he had spoken to Mr Drumgold last Thursday and “in light of the commentary in the report” the pair had “agreed that his position as Director of Public Prosecutions was no longer tenable”.

“On Friday, Mr Drumgold sent a letter advising me that he would be vacating his position as ACT Director of Public Prosecutions,” Mr Rattenbury said.

The Sofronoff Inquiry found Mr Drumgold knowingly lied to the Supreme Court, engaged in serious malpractice and grossly unethical conduct, “preyed on a junior lawyer’s inexperience”, betrayed that junior lawyer who trusted him, and treated criminal litigation as “a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards”.

In the report, Mr Sofronoff found that Mr Drumgold had lost objectivity during the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins and “did not act with fairness and detachment as was required by his role”.

Those findings were considered by legal experts as certain to end Mr Drumgold’s career as DPP and may lead to criminal prosecution against him for perverting the course of justice.

Inquiry head Walter Sofronoff KC ruled that every one of the allegations made by Mr Drumgold that sparked the inquiry was baseless.

The ACT government had earlier said it would not release the report until the end of August but back-flipped last week following publication of the findings in The Australian.

Mr Rattenbury said on Sunday the government would make a detailed statement in response to the Sofronoff Report early in the coming week.

The government is under growing pressure to conduct an inquiry into previous criminal cases prosecuted by Mr Drumgold.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/dpp-shane-drumgold-to-resign-in-wake-of-misconduct-findings/news-story/01171c1c5ba23c95b80ec2efb0d2fa59

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Albanese still issuing Covid permits to facilitate immigration

Almost 66,000 international students and temporary workers are having their stays in Australia extended under a special Covid-era permit, fuelling claims that the surge in visa approvals is creating a “Big Australia” by stealth.

The Australian can reveal new figures showing Labor has granted more pandemic event visas in its first 10 months than were given when international borders were shut.

The Albanese government has processed more Covid-19 special work visas than the ­Coalition granted over the 20 months before international borders began reopening in Nov­ember 2021.

Visa processing data provided by the Department of Home Affairs to Liberal senator James Paterson shows a surge in Labor’s use of the pandemic event visa to the end of March.

Despite calls from the international education industry to end the pandemic permit, the government issued 65,859 special Covid-19 visas between June and March – including almost 27,000 in the first three months of 2023.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the jump in arrivals was “worsening housing shortages, driving record rent increases, adding to congestion, putting upward pressure on interest rates and impacting the environment”.

“The Covid-19 pandemic event visa is still open despite the fact the pandemic is over,” Mr Tehan told The Australian.

“Labor claim they don’t want a big Australia but judge them by their actions, not their words. Labor is bringing 1.5 million ­people to Australia over five years and they have no answers for where they will live, what this will do to congestion or how it will impact the environment and quality of life.”

About 23,900 Covid work visas were granted to international students by the government, eclipsing the 11,885 permits approved by the ­Coalition during the pandemic.

In February and March this year, more than 10,700 pandemic event visas for international students were processed. Since the special Covid working permit was established in April 2020, almost 160,000 pandemic event visas have been approved.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said Labor had inherited a migration system “with backlog after backlog, delays and waitlists” and the government “hadn’t wasted a day in cleaning up the mess left by the former Liberal government”.

“Under the Liberals, our migration system wasn’t working for anyone,” Mr Giles said.

“We had a pile of almost one million visa applications left in the in tray and no plan to deal with workforce shortages when the borders reopened.

“We’ve brought wait times down, and we’re working to make sure our migration system is working again for all Aus­tralians after a decade of mess and mismanagement under the Liberals.”

Amid severe labour shortages and employers struggling to find workers, the Covid-19 pandemic event visa (subclass 408) allows people to work if employed or if they have an offer of employment in any sector of the economy.

The Home Affairs website says temporary graduate visa holders can “apply for and be granted a pandemic event visa with a two-year period of stay”.

The pandemic event visa allows holders to remain in Australia for 12 months and include “members of the family unit in your application”.

In March, The Australian revealed that the international education industry was urging the government to end special pandemic work visas over fears it was being rorted by people who were in Australia to find a job rather than study.

International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood said the temporary visa must be abolished as it was being exploited as a backroom way for international students to get full work rights.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/covidera-visa-sparks-student-worker-boom/news-story/b8eb8abfd7e06f04bcb803b6761f89b1

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Australia's woke-ready students: Affirmative action dressed up as higher education reform

Education Minister Jason Clare began well earlier this year when he made it compulsory for universities when training teachers to teach reading, writing and mathematics using evidence-based practices.

However, his foray into the teaching wars has, unsurprisingly, culminated in a series of policies focused on improving equity while seriously compromising academic standards. Worse still, the federal government has turned its back on racial equality by implementing recommendations designed to usher in a new age of identity politics at our universities.

As part of the higher education shake-up, all academically qualified indigenous students will be guaranteed a Commonwealth-funded place at university and the 50 per cent pass rule for students to continue to receive funding will be abolished.

The Minister for Education claims this is ‘not about lowering standards’. However, continuing to fund students who fail more than half their courses will, by definition, do exactly that. Needless to say, the Minister provided no evidence to back up his statement. While nine Australian universities are among the top 100 globally, the Productivity Commission’s five-year inquiry found highly variable and poor-quality teaching was failing students who entered the workplace unequipped to meet real world demands.

Academic standards in Australian universities are already in crisis. Students finish their degrees woke-ready rather than work-ready. Yet the federal government’s response to the interim review into higher education does nothing to arrest this decline. In fact, the removal of the 50 per cent pass rule will further exacerbate falling standards by transferring responsibility for student performance from the student to the university.

The Minister for Education stated, ‘Instead of forcing them to quit, we should be helping them to pass,’ adding that universities will be required ‘to improve support to students who need it and to report on the outcomes for the student following that intervention’. This effectively relieves the student of any obligation to take personal responsibility for their performance.

Under the guise of helping disadvantaged students, the government is now throwing money at universities. While such largesse may benefit minority groups, it ultimately betrays the interests of hardworking Australians who must fund the exercise but derive no benefit from it.

The core purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and to hone the mind through the development, consideration and the contest of ideas. A tertiary education means nothing if universities discourage debate and intellectual challenge. And suppressing freedom of thought has a knock-on effect; the contest of ideas is not only the essence of university life, but the essence of a flourishing liberal democracy.

Instead of pursuing academic excellence and free speech, the federal government seems committed to making our universities a further arm of Australia’s already extensive social welfare program.

While there is merit in implementing policies to help disadvantaged groups and reduce poverty, this should not be done at the expense of tertiary education standards. Perhaps there are far greater returns for governments to be found in funding programs that encourage school attendance rather than boosting university enrolments. Without a secondary education, disadvantaged students will never attain a university qualification.

Embracing affirmative action in university admissions undermines the principle of equality of opportunity. This was the finding of the US Supreme Court which declared in June that race-based preferencing in admissions violated the constitution. US Chief Justice John Roberts said universities had ‘concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.’

Australia is running in the opposite direction, moving to permanently embed identity politics in our university admissions processes.

There is already a widespread and growing tendency for Australian universities to adopt formal ideological positions, contributing to a culture of censorship on campus. Every Australian university has signed up to one or more policies or strategic commitments which pledge their institution to woke ideologies. These generally fall into three categories: indigenous issues, gender inequality, and sustainability. The rise of the ‘social justice university’ signals a new focus on activism over education.

The University Accord reforms as they stand will entrench these woke priorities while exacerbating the fundamental failure of our academic institutions to be places of open learning and intellectual freedom.

Worryingly, the interim review will do nothing to address the erosion of free speech on campus. Forthcoming IPA research shows 90 per cent of Australian universities have policies that are hostile to free speech. The total hostility score across all institutions, as measured by the number and severity of university policies which are hostile to free speech, increased by 117 per cent between 2016 and 2023.

Previous IPA research has shown that the culture of censorship on campus has already been advanced by university policies that purport to protect free speech on campus. In 2020, the federal government introduced a new requirement forcing universities to develop free speech policies based on the French Model Code – a template written by former Australian chief justice Robert French. However, analysis shows only a third adopted the six essential pro-free speech criteria.

A case in point is Newcastle University’s Code for the Protection of Freedom and Academic Freedom, which states, ‘The principles outlined in this Code do not have overriding legal status nor overriding status to the University’s institutional values or strategic commitments.’ Newcastle University’s Strategic Plan 2020-2025 outlines ‘equity’ and ‘sustainability’ as key values, meaning the university could arguably prohibit speech in opposition to the proposed Voice to parliament or views not aligned with the zeitgeist on climate change.

According to Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at New York University, a social justice institution cannot also protect free speech. By promoting one side of an issue, universities attach a value judgment to it and suggest it is the superior position to hold. This closes debate and crushes viewpoint diversity.

Affirmative action is antithetical to the principles of individual liberty, equal opportunity and the pursuit of academic excellence – all cornerstones of strong democracies. Excellence in education and equity-based policies are mutually exclusive goals. Pursuing one will always come at the expense of the other.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/clares-woke-ready-students/ ?

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NSW gay conversion opponents may have to be careful what they say under new anti-discrimination law

Opponents of gay conversion practices may need to be careful about criticising its promoters under new anti-discrimination laws passed in New South Wales parliament on Thursday, legal experts have said.

The Minns government’s religious vilification bill, which with backing from the opposition, amended the existing Anti-Discrimination Act to make it unlawful to vilify people or organisations on the grounds of their religion.

Alistair Lawrie, an expert in anti-discrimination law at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, said he supported, in principle, reforms that protected people from vilification for their religious expression or affiliation.

But he said ahead of the bill being passed changes were broader than religious vilification laws enacted in other state and territories, leaving the door open to restrictions to freedom of speech.

“It would be disappointing if this bill passes in its current form,” he said.

Lawrie said this could see people or organisations who engage in gay conversion practices bring forward complaints of vilification if criticised for engaging in the activity.

The Minns government, with backing from the opposition, has vowed to ban gay conversion practices.

But Lawrie said religious people or groups who continued to engage in the activity after it was banned would still be protected from vilification under the laws, given it protects criticisms against unlawful religious practices.

Prof Simon Rice, a University of Sydney expert in anti-discrimination law, said the bill would not restrict people from advocating against the practice, but it draws the line at anything said or done that risks “engendering hatred towards promoters of gay therapy”.

“They’d have to be careful about what they said so that they didn’t incite hatred against that religious view, but they’re certainly still free to attack the [practice],” he said.

Labor promised to introduce the religious vilification bill in the lead-up to the election. But given the government recently referred the act for review under the NSW Law Reform Commission, Rice said the government should have waited to introduce the religious vilification laws until that review was complete.

“We’ve got an [anti-discrimination] act which is almost unworkable. It’s so old and dated and cobbled together,” he said. “And then we go and add another little bit to it at the same time that we’re acknowledging that it’s a problem and we’re going to review it, I just think that’s bad policy.”

Dr Haroon Kasim, of the Coalition Against Caste Discrimination, had also written to the NSW attorney general, Michael Daley, ahead of the bill passing calling for more protections for people who experience discrimination on the basis of their caste.

As migration from south Asia rises, Kasim said the communities were experiencing escalating discrimination on the basis of their caste – a hierarchical system assigned at birth that determines occupations and social status.

“It affects every part of a person’s life,” he said. “People of the so-called ‘lower caste’ are refused houses and jobs because of that status.”

Kasim said people deemed to be from “lower” castes who speak out about caste discrimination were often harassed by others deemed part of the “higher” caste groups. He was concerned the new laws would give licence to religious groups to accuse those who speak up about caste discrimination of religious vilification.

“We just want to be seen and heard,” he said.

An amendment to the bill proposed by the Greens spokesperson for anti-discrimination, Jenny Leong, that would have excluded protections for unlawful activity and organisations was rejected by the lower house on Thursday.

Leong said the government should prioritise holistic reforms to the bill rather than “putting protections first”.

“At a time when there has been a disturbing increase in anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+ aggression online and on the streets, what message does this send to the LGBTQIA+ community?,” she said.

The president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Josh Pallas, said the group also opposed the new laws. .

“We want an Anti-Discrimination Act that does not discriminate,” he said. “To move on one part without moving on other glaring deficiencies sends a bad message to the community about whose rights and interests are privileged over others.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/04/nsw-gay-conversion-opponents-may-have-to-be-careful-what-they-say-under-new-anti-discrimination-law

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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 sales of investor-owned property are ballooning as interest rates rise and landlords flee

The interest rate bills that landlords have to pay on their mortgages are shooting up so rents have to go up too in order to make landlording affordable. So what is the government response to that? Forbidding landlords to put up their rents! Only a government would think it was a good idea to chase landlords out of the business during a shortage of rental accomodation

Property investors in one state are 'over it' as they bow out of the market in droves amid rising interest rates and higher land taxes.

Sales of Queensland investor-owned property increased to almost a third of all homes sold in June, according to PropTrack research.

It comes as owners across Australia face skyrocketing property taxes and rental price cap speculation - adding pressure to their high mortgage repayments.

Sales of owner-investor properties in Queensland grew by eight per cent in just one month - up to 29.5 per cent of all house sales, higher than other state.

PropTrack statistics also revealed more than 21 per cent of landlords have been exiting the market after the introduction of land tax legislation in the state.

Jett Jones of Ray White Marsden in Logan told News Corp three clients have called her this week wanting to offload their investment properties saying, 'I quote unquote; "We're over it, interest rates are too high".'

She added that within the last month landlords have been asking about listing their properties - with many of them being long-term investors.

PropTrack senior economist Paul Ryan said statistics showed investors are responding to the current market.

'It's starting to suggest, perhaps, now with interest rates increasing significantly... that financial pressures on investors, or even expected cash flow over the coming period, is pushing them to exit their investments,' Mr Ryan said.

'What's concerning is investor sentiment is very poor. Investors are a big pathway to building homes, and the long-term solution to the rental crisis. We need a really strong investor component in the market to facilitate new supply to come in.'

But he said the amount of new stock on the market could be good opportunities for other wanna-be investors to buy up.

'Because investors and owner-occupiers often compete for the same properties, that could be a positive for buyers over the coming period,' Mr Ryan said.

There are other factors blindsiding landlords like concerns over the rental crisis and land tax hikes.

The Queensland government put in new legislation forbidding landlords to increase rent by more than once a year.

It also brought in new land legislation in June 2022 that taxed landlords based on their entire Australian property portfolio rather than what they owned in Queensland.

But the government abandoned the proposals in September after strong backlash.

MCG Quantity Surveyors managing director Mike Mortlock said the government's actions have been forcing investors to get rid of their stock.

He said the government should focus more on the value of investors who provide housing for renters.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12374941/Queensland-sales-investor-owned-property-growing-rates-continue-rise.html

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Farmer advised of $100,000 cost for cultural heritage survey

Shane Kelliher knows first-hand the confusion caused by Western Australia’s new cultural heritage laws and says there must be a “better way forward” to preserve Indigenous sites.

Mr Kelliher, 58, has received preliminary written advice organised through his legal firm saying that, under the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, which took effect on July 1, he could be forced to pay between $30,000 and $100,000 for a cultural heritage assessment.

He told The Australian he wanted to extract high-quality building sand from his 85ha property in North Dandalup about an hour south of Perth. But this plan was thrown into doubt when the site was found to be close to possible historic camping areas for ­Indigenous Australians.

While he supported protecting Aboriginal cultural heritage, Mr Kelliher argued that “it should not be at the cost of the individual landowner”.

“If it incurs cost to the individual landowner, then they should be compensated,” he said. “I’ve got a significant connection to the land myself. It’s been in the family for three generations.”

Federal Nationals leader David Littleproud told The Australian most people already ­respected cultural heritage sites, but warned the WA laws could backfire and “see that respect taken away”.

“And instead of people coming forward in a co-operative and proactive way, we see people on freehold land hiding and destroying things they previously wouldn’t,” Mr Littleproud said.

He argued the destruction by Rio Tinto in May 2020 of the caves at Juukan Gorge containing evidence of human life dating back 46,000 years was an “abhorrent act”, but warned that the WA laws were a case study in government overreach.

The warning comes ahead of a protest at WA parliament next Tuesday, with farmers from across the state planning to ­present a series of demands to the government, including their push for freehold property rights to ­extinguish any cultural heritage claim.

Mr Kelliher said the land where he proposed to develop the sandpit had been in the family since 1935. His plan was to cart the sand to a second property about 15km away where it could be used to provide “house pads” for ­buildings.

He said the second property was about 3km long and 200m wide which had been rezoned for the purpose of being subdivided into blocks of between 1ha and 1.ha. But he said the second property was also found to be close to Indigenous sites of cultural ­significance.

“With all the talk about cultural heritage I had my lawyers just have a look at what was proposed. My legal team made ­inquiries,” he said.

Mr Kelliher organised to ­receive this preliminary advice through Cornerstone Legal and was informed the property containing the sand was home to four potential Aboriginal sites “where there could be suggested artefacts or possibly even bones”.

“They are suggesting there could have been possible camping areas for Aboriginal people at some stage in the past,” he said. “I am confused about what my obligations are. I am confused about what the cost is going to be … It’s all up in the air.

“My legal firm that’s handling the subdivision and the sand ­extracting licence engaged a consultant who specialises in site management plans for these particular types of activities. And his view … is that I would need to complete an ethnographic and ­archaeological survey to put in with the application. And that could cost from $30,000 up to $100,000.

“And then what I’ve been told is that … it is quite possible that I would need a cultural representative to be there with every shovel-load of sand that went out, just in case artefacts or some bones or whatever else are found.”

The new WA laws apply to properties of more than 1100sq m and introduce a three-tiered system imposing obligations on landholders. Cultural assessments can be required for ground excavation of up to a depth of 0.5m (a tier one activity), but ­permits and land management plans are required for ground ­excavation of up a depth of 1m, which covers tier two and three activities.

A spokesman for the West Australian Minister for Aboriginal ­Affairs, Tony Buti, urged Mr Kelliher to contact the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage for help identify where the specific sites containing ­Aboriginal cultural heritage were located.

“If sites can be avoided, then no approval is required,” the spokesman said. “The minister is listening and working with all stakeholders.”

Speaking last week in Port Hedland, WA Premier Roger Cook suggested the government was prepared “to make changes where (Aboriginal heritage laws) need to change” in a sign the legislation could be reworked.

The backlash to the laws from farmers comes as the federal government mulls an options paper for a legislated federal framework for cultural heritage protections. One option includes the creation of another national body which would “appoint and empower local First Nations groups to make decisions about their cultural heritage”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/farmer-advised-of-100000-cost-for-cultural-heritage-survey/news-story/937cc9b2672276caacd1f085edf494a1

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West Australia government to scrap controversial ‘botched’ Aboriginal cultural heritage laws within days

The controversial Aboriginal cultural heritage laws that prompted an army of outraged farmers to rally in an outback hall last month are set to be scrapped, according to new reports.

Western Australian Premier Roger Cook and the state’s Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Tony Buti are expected to make an announcement on the divisive Aboriginal cultural heritage laws early next week, the ABC reports.

The backflip comes after months of confusion and controversy over the new laws, which took effect on July 1 and imposed harsh penalties for damaging sites of traditional significance.

Opposition was led by farmers groups, including WA Farmers and the Pastoralists and Graziers Association, as well as WA’s opposition Coalition, and federal Nationals leader David Littleproud.

It is understood, the ABC reports, that WA will revert to operating under the former 1972 Aboriginal Heritage Act.

The new laws were introduced after “extensive consultation” and to heighten protection of cultural sites following the destruction of the ancient Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto in May 2020.

The updated laws required some landholders to undertake detailed and expensive assessments through a new Local Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Service (LACHS) to determine whether a project will cause “harm” to cultural heritage.

Under a complex three-tiered system, any maintenance or demolition that involves removing more than four kilograms of material, disturbing more than 10 square metres of ground or excavating to a depth of more than 50 centimetres may require a permit from the LACHS.

An exemption would apply for all residential properties under 1100 square metres and for maintenance and “like-for-like” activities – such as planting crops, running livestock or replacing a fence.

The landowner would be required to pay the LACHS to assess their application – which requires specific consultants that can charge hundreds of dollars per hour.

Penalties for damaging a cultural heritage site range from $25,000 to $1 million for individuals and $250,000 to $10 million for corporations, as well as jail time.

But despite insisting there were exemptions, WA farmers were quick to criticise the laws, saying the new system was too confusing, too time consuming, too expensive, and possibly open to abuse.

Weeks after the laws came into effect, hundreds of farmers and landowners packed a hall in Katanning, about 277 kilometres southeast of Perth, to voice these concerns at the meeting attended by high-profile politicians and industry representatives including federal Nationals leader David Littleproud.

Mr Littleproud told news.com.au after the meeting that the “anxiety in the west is palpable” and criticised laws for creating a “point of tension and division [farmers and local Indigenous people] haven’t had before”.

He described the laws as a “government overreach” by the WA leadership, and warned of a potential copycat laws to be introduced at a federal level.

WA Labor MP Darren West was the only representative of his party to attend the Katanning meeting, and conceded to the farmers the government had “botched” the messaging about the laws.

Despite the laws passed in 2021 with support from WA’s Nationals and Liberal parties, the opposition parties say it is a move they have come to regret.

WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam said the state Labor government’s potential backflip on the divisive laws was a “great win for landowners”, calling them “shambolic from the start”.

“We understand the Labor government will backflip on the Aboriginal cultural heritage act laws that they introduced earlier in the year,” Ms Mettam told the ABC.

“We‘ve always committed to scrapping the cultural heritage act and going back to the drawing board.

“They were quite clearly an overreach on private property rights. They went way too far.”

https://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/west-australia-government-to-scrap-controversial-botched-aboriginal-cultural-heritage-laws-within-days/news-story/6c5d547616bdc677a4e81b6df8b78329

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Smell of gas blowing in the wind: Even the luvvies say NSW wind farms don’t add up

How long does it take for a wind farm to become carbon neutral in some of the best wind conditions in Queensland? If you guessed never, you are right.

State modelling purports to show that Mount Emerald, near the World Heritage rainforests of Far North Queensland, gets some of the strongest wind. If that’s the strongest, wind power in the Sunshine State it’s a dud.

The Mount Emerald wind farm has 53 turbines that are meant to be able to generate up to 180.5 megawatts (MW) of power.

Wildlife photographer Steven Nowakowski of Rainforest Reserves Australia crunched the National Energy Market (NEM) data for the Mount Emerald wind farm for 2022 and sent it to state and federal politicians.

It shows that on 63 days, more than two months of the year, the turbines generated no energy at all. On 107 days, they generated 10 MW or less. So, for almost a third of the year at one of the best-located wind farms in Queensland, power was about half of one per cent of the maximum so-called nameplate capacity.

On 36 days the capacity factor (actual power as a percentage of maximum capacity) was a piddling 12 per cent or less. On another 32 days, the capacity factor was 17 per cent or less. That accounts for almost six months of the year.

The maximum achieved at any time was 100 to 110MW, less than 62 per cent of the nameplate capacity, and that was only achieved on a paltry 12 days of the year. The average capacity factor was 27 per cent and the median, the most accurate measure in a skewed data set, was only 18 per cent.

Mount Emerald is meant to generate 63 MW per year (an implied capacity factor of 35 per cent) but for six months each year it generates less than 16 MW, and on average less than 49 MW a year.

This is not surprising. The further south you travel in Australia the better the wind. The best wind is in the south and offshore, coming from the Roaring Forties.

Given these facts, why are 15 onshore wind farms being considered or under construction in Queensland? Perhaps because wind farms receive generous subsidies. How much are the subsidies? There is zero transparency. One whistleblower claims it is as much as $600,000 to $900,000 per year. Who knows?

The six offshore wind zones announced by federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen late last year mostly take advantage of southern exposure but they will also be subsidised. They are located on the Gippsland coast, in Victoria’s southeast, the Hunter Valley and Illawarra in New South Wales, Portland in Victoria, Northern Tasmania, and Perth and Bunbury in Western Australia.

‘We know Australia’s the world’s largest island, but we have no offshore wind,’ Bowen said at a press conference in the Port of Newcastle in NSW on July 12.

‘That is craziness, and we’re fixing it,’ he continued, declaring the Hunter Australia’s second offshore wind zone.

The area that the Minister declared an offshore wind zone is intended to generate more than five gigawatts of power.

‘Five gigawatts, for those of you who don’t work in energy, is a lot of gigawatts. That’s a lot of power that will come from offshore wind.’

But is it sensible to declare an offshore wind zone anywhere off the coast of NSW?

By accident or design, on the same day that Bowen announced the Hunter as Australia’s second offshore wind zone, Net Zero Australia (NZAu), a partnership between the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, Princeton University, and international management consultancy Nous Group launched its ‘Mobilisation report: How to make net zero happen’.

The NZAu report modelled six scenarios with differing energy mixes, costs, and other constraints using a method developed by Princeton University and Evolved Energy Research for its 2020 Net-Zero America study. The report specifically asks which net- zero options Australia should accelerate.

The critical point is that in no scenario did it make sense to develop offshore wind projects off the coast of NSW.

They write: ‘Offshore wind faces the highest barriers due to the need for large subsidies and long lead times to develop initial projects, establish supply chains, and provide grid access. No NZAu scenarios chose NSW projects because of the high cost of floating platform technologies and moderate winds, an additional risk to pipeline realisation.’

When they say ‘large subsidies’ they mean larger than for onshore wind. Despite these barriers, they note that about half of the announced NEM pipeline is off the coast of NSW.

No one could accuse the authors of the NZAu report of being anything but true believers in renewable energy and yet even for them NSW offshore wind farms made no sense.

And if this is true for offshore wind in NSW, it is all the more true for onshore wind in Queensland, so much farther removed from the unobstructed Roaring Forties.

As for how long it takes for a wind farm to become carbon neutral, the NZAu report also has an answer.

Carbon neutrality is achieved when all the carbon dioxide released to clear the forests and build the roads, turbines, new transmission lines and lithium batteries has been paid off by carbon dioxide-free energy. In addition, it has to cover massive duplication of resources because the actual capacity is so much lower than the deceptive nameplate capacity.

But apart from all that, the NZAu report states that all its scenarios require a new large fleet of gas-fired peaking power plants to back up wind and solar plants, with at least 6 gigawatts added each year between 2035 and 2040, compared with the current pipeline of 3.5 gigawatts, and with carbon capture and storage used to reduce emissions.

In other words, as far as we can see into the future wind will have not just its own carbon footprint and that of all the associated duplication, transmission, and batteries, but that of the gas on which it relies.

So why are we threatening our precious World Heritage Rainforests in Far North Queensland with heavily subsidised, low-level wind farms that have to be backed up by gas?

Perhaps the answer is blowing in the wind. It isn’t apparent anywhere else.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/smell-of-gas-blowing-in-the-wind/

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Penny Wong announces major win for Aussie farmers as China lifts punitive tariffs on Australian barley exports

China will lift punitive tariffs on Australian barley exports from Saturday.

The Chinese government imposed the tariffs on barley imports in May 2020, over what it claims were concerns over the dumping of cheap grain.

'The Ministry of Commerce ruled that, in view of the changes in the market situation of barley in China, it is no longer necessary to continue to impose anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties on the imported barley originating in Australia,' the Chinese government said.

Australia said it would suspend a World Trade Organisation dispute against China in exchange for Beijing agreeing to review its tariffs.

The decision comes before the August 11 deadline for Canberra to reinstate the dispute.

Trade Minister Don Farrell, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said in a joint statement the decision would benefit Australian producers and Chinese consumers.

'It affirms the calm and consistent approach that the Albanese government has taken,' the ministers said.

Since May 2020, China's duties on Australian barley have effectively blocked $916 million in exports to the world's biggest beer market.

'The removal of these duties means that Australia will now discontinue legal proceedings at the WTO,' the ministers said.

'This outcome demonstrates the importance of the WTO dispute mechanism in defending the interests of Australia's world-class producers and farmers.'

The Australian government will continue to pursue its wine dispute in the WTO and remained confident of a positive outcome, they said.\

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12372093/Penny-Wong-announces-major-win-Aussie-farmers-China-lifts-punitive-tariffs-Australian-barley-exports.html

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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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Sydney teacher found to have racially vilified Indian student

This report rather grieves me. I have been to India 3 times and have always admired Indian people for their patience and good nature amid adversity. And a very important person in my life at the moment is of wholly Indian descent. I admire her greatly. See her below:



The Department of Education has been ordered to make an official apology to a former Cronulla High School student after a teacher allegedly described Indian people as “Uber drivers and Deliveroo people” during a Year 12 business studies class.

The teacher – James Anderson – played an educational YouTube video for the class entitled Elements Of Marketing which featured a presenter of Indian descent.

During the video, Anderson is alleged to have mocked the presenter before saying “all Indians are Uber drivers and Deliveroo people, and their service is bad”.

The incident, which happened on March 3, 2021, was complained about by a student who was of Indian descent.

The student and her parents met with the principal following the incident, but filed a complaint with NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal after being unsatisfied with the school’s response.

“As the video was playing, I saw Mr Anderson, while smiling, glance at me a few times and continue to mockingly giggle at the lady and her accent,” the student said during her evidence at the tribunal.

“During the playing of the video which ran for over twenty minutes, I recall a girl in the class asking for the video to be turned off a few times ... but Mr Anderson did not do so.

“I was distressed and uncomfortable that Mr Anderson was looking at me during the video and mocked the Indian presenter, knowing that I am of Indian race. It was embarrassing and hurtful.”

During his evidence, Anderson denied mocking the presenter, but admitted he said something to the effect of: “Don’t assume because she is Indian that she is an Uber driver or works at 7-Eleven”, before complaining about the quality of service provided by Uber and food delivery providers.

He admitted his statements were “inappropriate” and “racial in nature”.

“At the time there was nothing in the nature of any reactions by the students in the class that day to cause me to think that one or more of the students was upset,” he told the tribunal.

On Tuesday, the Tribunal handed down its decision finding the student’s complaint of racial vilification substantiated.

The Tribunal ordered the Department of Education – the first respondent in the case – to issue the student with a written apology which acknowledged the Tribunal’s findings of racial vilification and the harm caused to her.

The teacher remains at the school but received a disciplinary warning and training.

In a statement provided to the Herald, a spokesman for the Department of Education commended other students in the class who spoke up during the incident.

“We reject all forms of racism and are committed to the elimination of racial discrimination in NSW public schools,” he said.

“The matter was reported to the Professional and Ethical Standards Directorate in 2021 and appropriate action was taken.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sydney-teacher-found-to-have-racially-vilified-indian-student-20230802-p5dtc7.html

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Growing doubts over whether troubled Taipan helicopters will return to duty

These European-made contraptions were always problematical. They should have been returned to their manufacturer years ago. Calling them Taipans was a joke. In 2022 Norway terminated their purchase of them and demanded a full refund.

As someone who has worn my country's uniform, I am always particularly perturbed when the lives of servicemen are put at risk by government incompetence

Future flying operations for Australia's troubled Taipan helicopter fleet are increasingly uncertain, as the painstaking and difficult recovery operation from last week's tragic MRH-90 crash continues in Queensland.

For several days navy divers and a Royal Australian Navy Minehunter vessel have taken part in a multi-agency search for wreckage of the army helicopter, which is scattered across hundreds of square metres of the ocean floor.

"It's clear the helicopter hit the water with a hard impact and it's a difficult job to gather all the debris for the investigation," one figure familiar with the recovery operation told the ABC.

Inside the army community there is also growing anger over Friday's tragedy and speculation the troubled MRH-90 fleet may never return to full operations ahead of the helicopter's scheduled retirement next year.

"The Army Aviation community isn't just merely saddened and grieving so much as f***ing furious," one 5th Aviation Regiment army veteran told the ABC.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity the aviator, who previously worked on the MRH-90 Capability Assurance Program (CAP), claimed successive governments and military leaders ignored increasing risks with the multi-role helicopter.

"The myriad of contributing factors associated are so voluminous that a catastrophic incident such as Friday night not occurring before is actually the true testament to the professionalism and capabilities of the people that fly, maintain, operate and directly support them."

Senior Defence and government figures have declined to comment this week on whether the planned 2024 introduction of new American-made Black Hawks could be expedited.

Earlier this week the ABC reported on concerns that the grounding of the Airbus manufactured multi-role Taipans could limit the ability of Australian special forces to respond to critical incidents.

The ABC understands private civilian contractors are continuing to provide some air services for the military while the MRH-90 fleet remains grounded.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-03/will-taipan-helicopters-return-to-duty/102678508

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ACT’s system of justice hangs in the balance over crooked prosecutor

There is a dark cloud hanging over the proper administration of justice in the ACT. The Sofronoff report, handed to the ACT Chief Minister on Monday, will go some way to lifting that cloud. But only a series of resolute responses to that report can reset justice in the nation’s capital territory.

One of the most serious issues aired during the May public hearings concerned evidence that ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold instructed a very junior solicitor to draft an affidavit asserting that legal professional privilege attached to police documents known as the Investigative Review Documents.

These documents, sought by Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyers but withheld by Drumgold, revealed inconsistencies in evidence provided by Brittany Higgins about her allegation of rape and questions about her credibility.

When Lehrmann’s legal team made an application to the court for disclosure, Drumgold instructed solicitors in his office to draft an affidavit to support nondisclosure on the basis that the documents were protected by legal professional privilege. Drumgold gave evidence that it was for the Australian Federal Police, not him, to assert legal privilege over the documents.

Therefore, an affidavit would need to cite the AFP was the source of information about privilege. Drumgold emailed two solicitors in his office about drafting the affidavit. The more senior of the two solicitors asked Drumgold, by return email, what the source of the information about legal privilege would be.

Drumgold did not respond to that question. Instead, he told the more senior solicitor that he would instruct the junior solicitor to deal with this part of the affidavit. Drumgold sent the young solicitor suggested wording for the critical part of the affidavit that claimed the police documents sought by the defence were privileged.

That wording was included in the affidavit sworn by the junior solicitor at the DPP’s direction. It created a falsehood, when presented to the court and to the ACT Chief Justice, that police had claimed privilege over the investigation documents. In fact, the AFP had not claimed privilege over these internal investigation documents. Evidence presented to the inquiry revealed that police believed these documents should have been disclosed to defence.

If Walter Sofronoff KC finds the DPP was knowingly involved in presenting a false affidavit to the ACT Supreme Court for the purposes of withholding information from the defence, Drumgold’s demand for this inquiry last year will rate as the biggest legal own goal since Oscar Wilde brought a defamation suit against the Marquess of Queensberry.

The ACT government’s response will be critical to the administration of justice in the ACT. Consider what was at stake. A young man was on trial for rape. If he was found guilty, he would, in all likelihood, go to jail. If the DPP tried to withhold evidence on false grounds, and if he presented that falsehood to the court, the DPP’s removal from high office is the easy decision. So is his removal from the roll of legal practitioners.

The most important decision will be to investigate whether the DPP knowingly attempted to pervert the course of justice.

The information that the DPP potentially tried to withhold from Lehrmann’s lawyers may have assisted them in formulating their client’s defence. The information may have revealed material that could have given rise to trains of inquiry for Lehrmann’s lawyers to pursue. Any attempt to withhold that information would interfere with those avenues of defence, and potentially it would keep information hidden that should probably have gone to the jury.

As was revealed during the Sofronoff inquiry, even if the material was not admissible in court, it was still material that should have been disclosed to the defence. It is a serious crime if Joe Citizen makes a false statement with the intent to pervert the course of justice. It is another level of seriousness if done by a person charged with upholding the administration of justice.

A prosecutor, entrusted with the enormous powers of the state over citizens, must behave as a minister of justice at all times: searching for the truth in an objective, impartial and fair manner.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr had better start consulting numerous sections of the ACT Criminal Code. First, under section 703(1), a person commits perjury if they make a sworn statement in a legal proceeding that is false and the person making it is reckless about the statement being false.

It becomes aggravated perjury, under section 702, if a person makes a false statement in a legal proceeding with the intention of procuring a person’s conviction for an offence. If the DPP knowingly presented a false affidavit to the ACT Supreme Court for the purposes of withholding information from the defence, section 708(b) is also relevant. It makes it an offence if a person deceives someone else so that this other person gives false or misleading evidence in a legal proceeding.

Consider, too, section 713, which makes it a criminal offence if a person, by his or her conduct, intentionally perverts the course of justice. It won’t matter that the affidavit was sworn by the junior solicitor and not by Drumgold. Under section 46 of the ACT Criminal Code, a person is taken to have committed an offence if they procured someone else to engage in the conduct. That means if the DPP was knowingly involved in presenting a false affidavit to the ACT Supreme Court for the purposes of withholding information from the defence, he could face multiple charges, each charge giving rise to maximum jail terms of seven years.

Let us be emphatic about this: in any criminal prosecution, should it come to that, Drumgold is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, just as Lehrmann was, and may have been denied that by Drumgold. The rule of law applies equally to all.

Barr and his Attorney-General, Shane Rattenbury, will need to refresh their memories about Marcus Einfeld, the federal court judge who was sentenced to two years in jail in 2009 for lying about a speeding fine. The judge completed a false statutory declaration that stated he was not driving his car at the time his silver Lexus was clocked for doing 60km/h in 50km/h zone. The potential fine was $75 and the loss of three demerit points. Einfeld claimed his friend, an American academic, Teresa Brennan, was driving his car. This was a gross lie. Brennan had died three years earlier and Einfeld knew it.

When sentencing Einfeld to jail, NSW Supreme Court judge Bruce James said the judge’s lies struck “at the heart of the administration of justice”.

Outside court that day, the head of the police fraud squad, Detective Superintendent Colin Dyson said there were “no winners today but justice has been served”.

If Drumgold is found to have knowingly lied to try to keep police investigation material from a defendant who faced jail if found guilty of rape, it enters a different realm of gravity.

A decision to launch an investigation into a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice will fall squarely on the shoulders of three institutions: first, the ACT Chief Minister, as the first recipient of the Sofronoff report; second, ACT Policing, the unit within the AFP responsible for investigating criminal offences in the ACT; and, third, the ACT Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the body charged with carriage of prosecutions.

This raises obvious challenges. The ACT government appointed Drumgold. The AFP had a fractious relationship with Drumgold, as laid out over many weeks in public during the Sofronoff inquiry. And a new minister of justice who heads up the ODPP in the ACT won’t relish the prospect of having, as one of their first jobs, the prosecution of the previous director.

That said, if any of these powerful institutions of state turn a blind eye to a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice, then they will be responsible for the darkest chapter in this saga, one that will do the most harm to the administration of justice in the nation’s capital territory.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/acts-system-of-justice-hangs-in-the-balance/news-story/01df612d813fb3558b182fc52bac303c

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Global boiling. Ouch!

It’s been quite the week for overblown climate hyperbole and preposterous exaggerations, so we thought we may as well join in the fun: ‘New Ice Age to arrive by summer 2023. Australia prepares for a White Christmas.’ In reality, our own far-fetched prediction is probably more credible than the nonsensical ‘the era of global boiling has begun’ trotted out by the clownish and increasingly toad-like Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. Every politician rightly dreads the moment the public stops fearing them or taking them seriously and instead starts laughing at them, and Senhor Guterres certainly toppled over that particular tipping point this week. Sadly, however, his is not a democratically elected position, so it is unlikely he will disappear from our TV screens any time soon. Thus, we must take his prediction seriously, not so much for what damage our ‘boiling’ planet may do to us all, but rather, the incredible damage such asinine rhetoric is doing and will carry on doing to our economic outlook and future prosperity.

You didn’t have to be a climate-denier or even a climate-sceptic to find the Guterres rant risible. But the problem is that such inflammatory climate language is then regurgitated through all channels of the media and fed directly into our schoolchildren’s daily diet of woke disinformation. Most well-meaning but less-politically engaged people and hard-pressed parents tend to presume that the truth about subjects like climate change ‘lies somewhere in the middle’ and are quite happy for others invested in the culture wars to battle it out. However, by constantly ramping up the extremist language, the left wilfully and deceptively shifted the ‘sensible centre’ further and further away from reality. Even one of the head honchos at the IPCC was forced to admit that Guterres’ ‘global boiling’ was wide of the mark. But of course such cautionary notes gain nowhere near the publicity of hysterical fear-mongering.

Full marks as always to Speccie contributor and South Australian Senator Alex Antic for his suggested future alarmist expressions for the UN to excitedly promote when ‘global boiling’ loses its scare factor, which it shall, including ‘Global Climate Inferno’, ‘Mega Universe Heat Death’ and ‘Super Global Spine Chillingly Hot’.

Equally absurd, and linked, was the claim by both Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that their government had ‘saved’ the Great Barrier Reef. Hilaire Belloc would have adored the twisted logic that has the United Nations not declaring the Great Barrier Reef to be in mortal danger as they had been feverishly plotting to thanks entirely to the one-and-a-bit-year-old Labor government having increased the cost of your electricity bills. Or something like that. Here’s a wildly radical and heretical thought: perhaps it was never in danger to begin with. Because maybe the oceans aren’t actually boiling.

In this week’s magazine, Michael Baume exposes just one tiny but incredibly disturbing aspect of where all this madness is leading us to. It was Alan Jones who used to speak of the ‘national suicide note’ that is net zero. But our foolish Energy Minister seems hell-bent on living up to that promise, as he jeopardises our critical relationship with Japan courtesy of his climate dogma and renewables fantasies. As Michael writes, ‘[Our new emissions laws] are of such major concern that not only have Japanese senior ministers already requested flexible measures under the safeguard mechanism for LNG projects supplying Japan, but PM Kishida has made a similar approach to PM Albanese.’

At the same time, Rebecca Weisser reveals that even the net-zero luvvies have added up the carbon numbers and come to the conclusion that offshore wind farms in NSW are a flat no-no.

No hyperbole there.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/global-boiling-ouch/

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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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A Greenie who puts his trust in hysteria

He's certainly drunk the Kool-Aid. He really seems to think that one degree of warming over the last century is dangerous change

A Greens senator unleashed on a climate sceptic Liberal National Party rival with a no-holds-barred attack in the Senate on Tuesday night.

In a wild night in Canberra, Nick McKim told Matt Canavan: 'Shut your mouth - people are dying because of... sociopaths like you.'

The angry exchange of views came during a speech where Mr McKim noted: 'This planet has just experienced the three hottest days on record.'

The Tasmanian senator said: 'I'm usually an optimistic person but I just want to say...' - prompting Queenslander Mr Canavan to interject, quipping: 'You hide it well'.

That outraged Mr McKim, who lashed out with an extraordinary verbal assault, erupting: 'Mate, you can shut your mouth.'

That earned Senator McKim a rebuke from Senator Jess Walsh, the acting deputy president of the Senate.

'Senator McKim,' she shouted, as Mr Canavan also interjected using words not clearly picked up by microphones in the chamber.

But Mr McKim was not deterred, and repeated his call for his rival to keep quiet.

'You can shut your mouth... People are dying because of you and sociopaths like you.'

At this point, the chamber exploded into a cacophony of sound, with Dr Walsh struggling to keep control.

'Senator McKim! Order. I have a number of senators on their feet. I don't really need you to be on your feet for me to say that you,' she said, before the ruckus drowned her out.

Moments later, she tried again, saying: 'Senator Canavan! Senator McKim! Order! This is disgraceful behaviour in the chamber. It is disgraceful.

'Now, Senator McKim, I ask you to withdraw your comments about Senator Canavan and resume your speech and, Senator Canavan, I ask that you cease interjecting across the chamber.'

The Greens senator withdrew his initial comments - but then doubled down.

He said: 'I withdraw, and I'm not going to cop interjections from sociopaths like Senator Canavan. I will not cop it and I won't...'

His halfhearted withdrawal earned him another slapdown from Dr Walsh, who told him 'resume your seat' and then asked him again to withdraw his comments.

'I will withdraw, and I will say... that the sociopaths who run fossil fuel corporations on this planet who are literally destroying the lives and the futures of billions of people,' Mr McKim said.

He added that people on both houses of parliament 'have got a lot to answer for (including) death, disease, displacement, starvation, people dying of thirst'.

'Arable farming lands turning into desert and, most likely, billions of people dead by the end of this century and the collapse of the ecosystems that actually support all human life on this planet,' he said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12362697/Greens-senator-Nick-McKim-melts-climate-sceptic-politician-Matt-Canavan-Mate-shut-mouth.html

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The ABC is under pressure to explain why one of its camera crews was outside the home of Woodside Energy boss Meg O’Neill just as a group of extremist climate protesters invaded her property in the early hours of the morning

Ms O’Neill on Wednesday called the protest a deliberate attempt to threaten her and her family, as her company said the protesters came with camera crews ready to film the attack on her Perth home.

Police attended Ms O’Neill’s home in the City Beach at 6.45am on Tuesday, with reports indicating two men aged 34 and 31 and a 19-year-old woman had been arrested.

Labor moved swiftly to condemn the protests, with Resources Minister Madeleine King calling the invasion of the energy chief’s home an “extreme act” and not a legitimate protest.

A source has told The Australian that the camera crew was not one of the usual ABC news crews, and there were suspicions it was a team shooting footage for investigative program Four Corners.

A spokeswoman for the public broadcaster did not say why the crew was at the property so early and what prior knowledge it had of the climate extremists' intentions.

The ABC denied any “collusion” with the people who targeted Ms O’Neill and her family.

“A TV crew filmed the protest for a story,’’ the ABC said in a statement. “Any notion that the TV crew was colluding with the protesters is false.’’

The Australian has asked a follow-up question as to whether the crew was collecting footage for Four Corners.

Woodside on Tuesday pointed to the camera crew’s presence to show the home invasion was “an organised and deliberate act designed to intimidate Ms O’Neill and her family’’.

“This is an unacceptable ­escalation in activity designed to threaten and intimidate by an ­extremist group which has no ­interest in engaging in respectful and constructive debate about Woodside’s role in the transition towards a lower-carbon world,’’ a Woodside spokesman said.

“Illegal activity like this only serves to distract from the real work being undertaken to achieve decarbonisation,’’ he added.

Ms O’Neill thanked West Australian police for their swift response in acting to ensure the safety of her family members.

“This was not a ‘harmless protest’,’’ she said. “It was designed to threaten me, my partner and our daughter in our home.

“Such acts by extremists should be condemned by anyone who respects the law and believes people should be safe to go about their business at home and at work.’’

In a statement, the federal Resources Minister said ­ “seeking to intimidate someone in their home or workplace is ­intolerable”.

“Extreme acts like this are not legitimate protest activity,” Ms King said. “Such acts are violent and ­intimidating and I condemn it entirely.

“It would be a loss for all of us if Australia were to become the kind of place where public figures needed to surround themselves with security at all times.’’

WA police have not publicly identified those arrested.

Woodside has been targeted in recent times by the Disrupt Burrup Hub group. A member of the group was arrested in June for allegedly setting off a “stench gas” bomb at the company’s Perth headquarters, necessitating evacuation of the building.

The group is protesting the expansion of energy projects on the Burrup Peninsula in WA’s Pilbara region, with Woodside’s Scarborough and Pluto Train 2 projects targeting eight million tonnes a year of new gas from offshore wells starting in 2026.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/antigas-protest-at-woodside-bosss-home-designed-to-threaten-and-intimidate/news-story/45eeed6db60aca8145765ca032652f81

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Farmers battle prospect of high-voltage electricity lines on properties as expert's alternative plan rejected

A prominent energy expert has joined landholders in calling for the Australian Energy Market Operator and the Victorian government to scrap plans to build the controversial VNI West transmission line and Western Renewables Link (WRL).

Across the country, landholders are battling the prospect of new above-ground high-voltage transmission lines that authorities say are critical to transporting the influx of renewable energy coming online around the nation.

The Victoria Energy Policy Centre's (VEPC) Professor Bruce Mountain and retired transmission expert Simon Bartlett's report 'No Longer in Transmission' puts forward an alternative plan for transmission in the state.

"I think if VNI West goes ahead, it will be a giant public policy failure," Professor Mountain told 7.30.

"This will be a very grave mistake."

VNI West and WRL are critical parts of the Australian Energy Market Operator's plan to rewire the nation to help transport energy between states as more renewables come online.

The projects would see 500-kilovolt high-voltage transmission lines cut through mostly farmland over a total of 400 kilometres from outer-suburban Melbourne to the New South Wales border with towers as high as 85 metres dotted along the route.

Professor Mountain recently resigned from an advisory role with the Victorian government's rebooted State Electricity Commission.

He told 7.30 the VEPC's alternative to AEMO's transmission plan for Victoria could deliver more renewables cheaper with less impact on landowners.

Professor Mountain's report estimates the total price tag for AEMO's Extended VNI West Plan (which includes the WRL and smaller related projects) could blow out to $11 billion.

According to official figures, the total price for VNI West and WRL is expected to be about $7 billion in total.

The VEPC's report also estimates transmission charge costs in electricity bills could increase by 15 per cent for households and 35 per cent for industrial energy users under AEMO's transmission plan for Victoria.

A map outlining a transmission project in Victoria.
The current transmission line's proposed route.(Supplied)
Under Professor Mountain's proposal, the increase could be limited to 5 per cent for households and 15 per cent for industrial users.

"Essentially, our plan uses the existing Victorian grid upgrades rather than building a whole new trunk line through new territory at a much higher voltage than is commonly used in the state," Professor Mountain said.

"We will have a decentralised electricity supply, we'll have wind and solar production around the state, not just concentrated in one part of the state."

The report also states AEMO's VNI West project would require 1,600 kilometres of new power lines compared to Plan B which is using mostly existing lines.

Professor Mountain said AEMO's transmission plan for the state impacts more than four times as much new land as the alternative solution.

"The only big winner is the developer and owner of the transmission infrastructure, who gets a regulated charge for the assets that they'll build. Everyone else is paying a price. And that is surely not acceptable."

The Victoria Energy Policy Centre's report also argues AEMO's Extended VNI West Plan won't do enough to help Victoria reach its target of 95 per cent renewable energy generation by 2035.

It states its Plan B would carry more renewables.

"If we do not get the new wind and solar capacity to displace coal, we will not be able to close the coal-fired power stations down. It's as simple as that."

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) rejects the criticisms and alternatives provided by the Victoria Energy Policy Centre's report.

In a statement, AEMO said it maintains the proposed Western Renewables Link and VNI West projects are required to deliver renewable energy to Victorian electricity consumers and across the National Electricity Market at the lowest cost.

"Compared to our proposed projects, Plan B would have detrimental outcomes for more landholders, regional and rural communities and renewable generation investment required to provide reliable and affordable power for all Victorians."

AEMO said VNI West was linked to several transmission projects already underway which included input from 1,500 stakeholders and energy professionals.

"AEMO's initial review of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre report confirms that many of the claims were already addressed using detailed engineering and economic analysis with the authors last year and again more recently remain. This creates ongoing confusion and concern for landholders and communities," the statement said.

AMEO also said Plan B won't sufficiently support renewable generation development in north-west Victoria and would require the demolition of people's home to widen the 1,040km of existing easements and threaten power supply to major regional and rural towns during construction.

AEMO did not reveal how many homes would need to be demolished and in which locations.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-02/calls-to-scrap-vni-west-transmission-line-730/102675146

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Qld schools’ ban on religious knives deemed by Supreme Court to be racial discrimination and invalid

An old controversy.

Queensland’s weapons legislation barring Sikhs from carrying religious knives on school grounds is racial discrimination and is therefore invalid, the state’s highest court has found.

Sikh man Kamaljit Kaur Athwal has won a fight against the State of Queensland over a provision in the weapons act prohibiting the possession of a knife on school grounds for genuine religious purposes.

Initiated Sikhs are required to wear or possess five articles of faith at all times, including a ceremonial sword known as a kirpan, typically worn sheathed and concealed beneath clothing.

Under Queensland law, there is a reasonable excuse to possess a knife for genuine religious purposes, such as the Sikh faith.

But that does not extend to schools, with the legislation stating: “however, it is not a reasonable excuse to physically possess a knife in a school for genuine religious purposes”.

In 2021, Mr Athwal made an application to the Supreme Court seeking a declaration that the Weapons Act was inconsistent with the Racial Discrimination Act and was therefore invalid.

In September last year, Justice Sue Brown dismissed his application.

But the Court of Appeal has this week overturned the decision, finding the provision directed at Sikhs affected “their exercise of freedom of movement and freedom of religion in a significant way”.

“An initiated Sikh, who may be a student, a parent of a student or a teacher, is given the choice of committing an offence against (the weapons act), never entering a school or contravening the tenets of their religious belief by entering a school without physical possession of their kirpan,” the appeal judges wrote.

“By making provision that is directed at their religion, s 51(5) in its substantive operation provides for Sikhs to enjoy the rights to freedom of movement and freedom of religion to a more limited extent than persons of other ethnic groups.

“No other group finds their freedom of religion or freedom of movement limited in that way, by a law directed to a unique feature of the ethnic group’s religious beliefs.”

The appeal judges set aside the earlier order dismissing Mr Athwal’s application.

A declaration was made that section 51(5) of the Weapons Act 1990 is inconsistent with the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 and was therefore invalid under the Commonwealth Constitution.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-schools-ban-on-religious-knives-deemed-by-supreme-court-to-be-racial-discrimination-and-invalid/news-story/1d8ddadac45e29633573d620d335c339

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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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Cutting off your thumbs to spite your country

This is an important article. It notes the constant nagging attacks on our society from the Left and asks will those criticisms cause young people to think our country is not worth defending? It is clearly a possibility

The truth is that our country is a great triumph of civilization but no media will say that. They would be condemned as "racist" if they did.

The Trump phenomenon shows that at least half of the American population have not bought the negative view of their country preached by the media. One can only hope that there are similar large numbers of unblinded people in Australia


Wallace Breem’s 1970 novel Eagle in the Snow is a really excellent read that I couldn’t recommend more highly, and the work upon which the 2000 film Gladiator was loosely based. This Maximus, a Roman general holding the Rhine before the barbarian migrations of the late fourth century, must shoulder the heavy duty of protecting a civilisation that has lost any conception of itself. He faces young men who have cut off their thumbs to avoid conscription, middle-aged bureaucrats who impede him at every turn seeking to enrich themselves, and old priests who extol the brotherhood of man. ‘Cross the river,’ says Maximus, ‘and find out what your brothers are like.’ I won’t spoil the ending for you; pick it up if you can.

The image of young men severing their own thumbs, rendering themselves incapable of wielding gladius or pilum, left a lasting impression on me, one that was brought recently to mind by an apocryphal story regarding the Ukrainian ambassador. This worthy was asking local high school students who would join the Australian military, should the need arise, and was disappointed by the spattering of hands that appeared. It would seem his concern is well documented: the ADF report that they are struggling to gain recruits and retain soldiers. This is not unique to us down under, as the United States army expects to be twenty thousand recruits short next year. There’s something in these sorts of stories, apocryphal or otherwise, as there are in all the stories we tell ourselves, and we ought to be perhaps a little careful what those stories are. We might consider a little more Thucydides and a little less, well, whatever you receive when you tune in to what our culture presently manufactures.

None of this should cause any eyebrows to rise among those who’ve been paying attention. The schools are the right place to start asking questions and investigating stories, not because the young have any special claim to wisdom – they absolutely do not – but because if you want to know what Australia will look like in the future, that’s where you should look. Those who aren’t here today, as Mark Steyn said, won’t be here tomorrow. Those that are here today are manifestly very different from those who made up the schools even thirty years ago, courtesy of our ill-thought-out and entirely flippant leap into multiculturalism. And as all multiculturalism is premised on the belief, now all but mandatory, that the state of affairs that pre-existed it was irredeemably evil, it’s unsurprising that few want to fight for it, and fewer still want to die for it. Those who do are typically Anglo-Celtic males, whose very existence appears a little problematic according to certain narratives presently in vogue.

We, a nation increasingly propositional in ideation and multicultural in composition, don’t tell the right stories to make the hands fly skyward. All that’s left to love, for the everyman, is ease of living and money to be made, and it doesn’t seem like those are a given anymore, either. On the other hand, the only Australia our elites seem to think matters is the Australia that doesn’t exist yet, an Australia severed from the past and couched in banal progressive sentiments, the Australia imagined by the most fervent university professor, ABC journalist, or member for the Greens. It’s an Australia that could never be born, and even if it could be created, wouldn’t be one worth dying for. The young know this, and this is why their hands do not shoot upwards when asked – why they have, in equivalent terms, cut off their thumbs.

As we tend to address collapsing birthrates, shortfalls in labour or consumption, and the ever-upward valuation of property via opening the valves of endless migration, it’s not unfair to assume answers to our military problems might come from the same source; hence a recent proposal to reimport kanakas, with Austeyr rifles instead of machetes, despite how poorly that went down last time. Hoping for a reimagined version of the foederati – those tribes that were bound to defend Rome but weren’t citizens – to fight our wars might seem a sound plan. After all, Stilicho was a barbarian, and Honorius a Roman. Many Australians from various backgrounds fought bravely in the past, like Billy Sing in Gallipoli, to name only one. But we live in different times now, and the age of the citizen-soldier is gone. The difference then was not merely numbers, but that we gave those characters – as Rome gave Stilicho, even in those darkening days – something to love and aspire to. The ‘citizen’ part of the equation is important, and robust citizenship cannot spring from contempt for a nation’s past.

The truth is that we think we can hold onto the status quo, a status quo that has been predicated on the Anglosphere’s overwhelming advantages, without being prepared to make sacrifices. The fate of those who espouse naive principles in the face of power is that of the Melians in the Peloponnesian War, who badly needed their Dorian brothers across the sea rather than a ‘great mass of words nobody would believe’. That is no argument against principles; rather, an exhortation that we ought to be careful our body politic is composed of strong ones, and not prey to bad ones.

The funeral oration by Pericles, where Thucydides relates that the men of Athens meet danger with a light heart but laborious training, has been thrown about as the best defence of democracy from the ancient world. If one thing could be said of the Athenians, it was that they loved their flawed city-state, and were unselfconscious about it. Even the metics, for whom they threw open their city, were expected to serve, if they could never be citizens by simple matter of course, nor form the mainstay of the trireme crew or the hoplite phalanx. The franchise was alive, and mattered, and we take the word ‘idiot’ from the Ancient Greek for he who was willing to let politics wash over him.

The value of such a spirit is not to be expressed in words, as Pericles exhorted; and we must wonder if our modern spirit, a motley collection of bad principles with no purchase among the young, is worth anything at all.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/cutting-off-your-thumbs-to-spite-your-country/

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Mike O’Connor: I’ve had a gutful of being told by governments what’s good for me

As a child, I would sit for hours with my grandmother on the wooden bench seats circling the main arena at the Ekka and watch the sheepdog trials.

Occasionally, an errant sheep would prop and stubbornly refuse to be intimidated by the dog’s constant urging and cajoling, but in the end, the dog always won and the flock would allow itself to be herded into the pen.

We’ve become like the sheep at the Ekka – constantly herded, urged and cajoled into accepting positions that governments tell us are good for us without bothering to ask us what we think.

The latest victims of herding are Victorians, who with Dodgy Dan Andrews snapping at their heels, have been told that they can’t have a gas stove in their new house.

Anyone with an IQ exceeding their shoe size knows that this will have zero effect on the world’s environment – but don’t argue. Just do as you are told.

Farmers throughout the eastern states are being herded into submission by power companies threatening to compulsorily acquire sections of their land holdings to allow the construction of giant transmission towers on their properties.

The lines could be run underground but this would be more expensive, so sorry, we’re going to trash the value of your property because it’s cheaper for us that way.

Don’t argue. Just get out of the way as we march towards net zero.

Net zero will never happen in the lifetime of anyone reading this but the sheepdogs have worked themselves into an absolute frenzy, racing from one side of the paddock to the other as they herd us into the belief that we can attain the unattainable.

All that is required is a blind acceptance of the absurd.

In the cities and suburbs, we are being herded into the belief that we need taller and taller apartment buildings, crammed wall to wall in defiance of the planning restrictions imposed by neighbourhood development plans to solve the “housing crisis”.

Can you recall a city council election in which the parties campaigned on a platform of promising to ignore planning restrictions, cram as many apartments as possible into any given space and comprehensively ignore any effect on the quality of life of ratepayers so that developers could make lots more money and the council could rake in extra fees and rates?

Neither can I.

Don’t argue. Just roll over and cop it with the council safe in the knowledge that any sheep that refuse to budge will be forced into the pen by the massive expense involved in challenging these decisions in the courts.

The sheepdogs had a great time during Covid, police officers and health officials snapping and snarling at our heels as they herded us into our homes, threatening dire consequences for those sheep who refused to go into the pen in a blatant, nationwide abuse of power.

We are now being gradually herded towards an acceptance of converting place names from English to Indigenous dialects.

Why? Is that what the majority of the population wants? I can’t recall being asked.

The sheep dogs have also barked and wheedled us into enduring and accepting endless welcome-to-country ceremonies.

Why? It’s my country. I don’t need to be welcomed to it. I was born here. My parents were born here. It’s mine and I object to being treated as a stranger in my own home.

The Voice campaign stands out as one of the greatest herding scenarios since the first sheepdog trotted down a gangplank in Old Sydney Town and started harassing terrified sheep way back when.

Much to the surprise of the dogs, however, more than one sheep has stood its ground and refused to be herded into the Yes pen.

This was not supposed to happen. When the dogs snapped at their hind quarters, the flock was supposed to trot into the pen without question.

For daring to stare down the dogs, holding their ground and refusing to be cajoled and bullied, they have been branded as very bad un-Australian sheep.

The extension of government power into our lives, the presumption that we will meekly submit to being told what we must accept without question has been incremental.

We are snowed with faux science, directed to “do the right thing”, toe the line, feel the “vibe”, whatever that is and generally cop whatever Big Brother says is good for us.

Quite frankly, I’ve had a gutful of it.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/mike-oconnor/mike-oconnor-ive-had-a-gutful-of-being-told-by-governments-whats-good-for-me/news-story/68d8229613a8b031eba6f1f174c5beac

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The ABC is sticking to its wrong call

No admission that they could have got it wrong. They are Leftists and Leftists have a soft spot for Communist regimes so they are still trying to protect China

New claims that America’s leading infectious diseases adviser ­Anthony Fauci downplayed concerns that Covid-19 originated from a laboratory will not be ­acknowledged by the ABC’s Media Watch program and its host Paul Barry until a lab leak “proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak”.

Since the pandemic began, the TV presenter has on numerous ­occasions been highly critical of Sky News host Sharri Markson’s reporting, including concerns in the science and intelligence ­community that a lab leak was plausible.

A world exclusive by Markson published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday included her interview with Robert Kadlec, ­former assistant secretary for ­preparedness and response at the US Department of Health.

Dr Kadlec said that he, Dr Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins had discussed how they could “turn down the temperature” on accusations against China during the early days of the pandemic.

Dr Kadlec, in his first ever ­interview, told Markson that they tried to encourage a group of ­leading international scientists to reduce speculation about the ­origins of the virus. In a phone call on February 1, 2020, the scientists discussed concerns that SARS-CoV-2 looked like it might have been genetically engineered.

“When we talked about this in advance of that call, he (Fauci) would just try and see if he could get the scientists to take the temperature down, turn the rhetoric down, to at least find, we’re going to look into this, but we don’t know,” Dr Kadlec told Markson.

The Australian contacted Barry about the latest revelations on the weekend, but he did not ­respond. However, Media Watch executive producer Timothy Latham responded on his behalf in an email: “As Paul has previously said, if the Wuhan lab proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak, we will update viewers and apologise to Ms Markson for our criticism.”

He included a link to an article The Australian published in 2021 asking Barry if he would acknowledge fresh allegations that were ­revealed in a Sky News documentary, What Really Happened in Wuhan, presented by Markson.

In a Media Watch segment on May 5, 2020, Barry dismissed Markson’s initial reporting on the origins of Covid-19 and repeatedly used the phrases “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy theorists”, finishing his segment by saying: “Conspiracy theories like this are so hard to kill.”

He told viewers in the same report: “So how likely is it that the virus escaped from that Chinese lab? Well in short, it’s not.”

Among those to initially refute claims the virus could have originated from a lab leak was the ABC’s health expert Dr Norman Swan who in 2020 said he had “looked into this and other journalists have looked into this as well as scientists and there really is very little evidence”. “It’s on the outer bounds of possibility, but really so unlikely that you could say … it’s not the case,” he said.

However in May 2021 he said “in recent weeks alternate views of the sequencing have emerged which are quite compelling and a growing number of respected scientists are making a good argument”.

An ABC spokesman would not comment on the criticisms of Markson’s reporting and there was no response from chair Ita Buttrose.

It has also been revealed on the weekend, by The Wall Street Journal, that Facebook removed content relating to Covid-19 in response to pressure it received from the Biden administration.

The newspaper’s report included revelations about internal company communications, including emails divulging details of executives of Facebook (whose parent company is Meta) discussing how they handled users’ posts about the origin of a pandemic and the administration was seeking to control the narrative. “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” responded a Facebook vice-president in charge of content policy, speaking of the Biden administration. “We shouldn’t have done it.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/business/abc-media-watch-program-wont-correct-record-on-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-until-it-proves-to-be-source-of-covid19/news-story/4db7cfd046aa4225618f185d90e0cd63

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New bid to stop killing roos for shoes

The roos will be shot anyways as part of routine culling so what is gained by not using them? They reach plague proportions at times

American politicians are taking another shot at banning shoes made with kangaroo leather after Nike and Puma buckled to animal activists and scrapped using it in its soccer boots.

The Australian government has been fighting back against legislative crackdowns in several US states, based on what it says is the myth that kangaroo harvesting is threatening the iconic native species.

But a bipartisan group of US politicians has now reintroduced their proposed federal ban on the commercial use of kangaroo products, two years after their first effort fell flat.

Republican congressman Brian Fitzpatrick – who has previously predicted the bill would “pass overwhelmingly” in Congress – said it would ensure “that those who exploit these animals in the United States are held accountable”.

His Democratic colleague Jan Schakowsky added: “Over two million kangaroos are killed for commercial purposes each year. As a staunch animal rights advocate, I believe we owe it to these majestic creatures to protect their welfare.”

But the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, backed by the federal government, argues that humane and sustainable harvesting is necessary to conserve kangaroo populations and maintain agricultural land.

Nike abandoned using kangaroo leather in March – shortly after rival shoe giant Puma took similar action – as politicians in the company’s home state of Oregon sought to ban it.

While that bill did not proceed, Australian government officials have also been lobbying against similar moves in New Jersey, Arizona and Connecticut.

The state and federal legislation has been spearheaded by Animal Wellness Action and other animal welfare groups, who recently held protests at Adidas stores in Sydney and New York to force the German apparel giant to follow suit.

“In America, we don’t allow this kind of mass commercial slaughter of our native wildlife, and neither should we import wildlife parts and outsource these killing sprees,” Animal Wellness Action president Wayne Pacelle said in a statement.

“The Kangaroo Protection Act will cut off the US market for Australian commercial shooters and global major athletic shoe companies whose supply-and-demand relationship has been driving the slaughter of as many as two million kangaroos a year, including hundreds of thousands of joeys orphaned after their mothers are shot.”

Importing kangaroo products has been illegal in California since 1970 but other states are yet to follow suit.

It was revealed in March that the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry boss Andrew Metcalfe held talks with US officials to reinforce the “sustainability, quality and welfare standards” in the industry.

“The government is tackling misconceptions that harvesting of kangaroos in Australia is inhumane, noting the importance of sustainable, humane management of kangaroos to prevent ecosystem damage and crop loss,” a department spokeswoman said at the time.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/world/new-bid-to-stop-killing-roos-for-shoes/news-story/f1ce318624e06183f035133d29581dbb

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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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