Big Brother star Tahan Lew-Fatt reveals she was a victim of domestic violence…but SUPPORTS Mark Latham's comments that men were being demonised

Former Big Brother star Tahan Lew-Fatt has revealed to Daily Mail Australia she was previously involved in an abusive relationship.

The 25-year-old, who is now dating racing driver David Reynolds, opened up about her experience on Saturday after Mark Latham's appearance on Weekend Sunrise, in which he reiterated his opinion that domestic violence can be a coping mechanism for men.

'[A] previous relationship [of mine] was abusive so I have first hand knowledge of what it's like to be in that kind of relationship,' Lew-Fatt told DMA before revealing she agreed with some of the points Latham made on air.

'Even though I did not condone what happened during that part of my life... after counselling sessions there are bigger issues and I understood it more,' she explained.

'Lucky I got out when I did, but even though it wasn't healthy, there was still love and respect, just underlying issues that needed to be dealt with.'

'So what Mark Latham said [regarding] coping mechanism, I kind of understand where he is coming from. Like whether we [like] it or not [it] has some fact behind it,' she added.

Lew-Fatt's statement comes after she took to Twitter earlier on Saturday morning to support Latham after he said on air: 'You can only go by the official statistics rather than left wing feminist hysteria.'

She tweeted: 'I am with Mark on this one ... Over feminism'.

Addressing this particular social media post, Lew-Fatt told DMA: 'All my post was about was I am over this feminism double standards stuff'.

Latham appeared on Weekend Sunrise after a podcast of his that was aired on Triple M on Friday was labelled a 'disgraceful attack' on domestic violence campaigner and Australian of the Year Rosie Batty.

He stood by his comments the following day, telling Seven hosts Edwina Bartholomew and Mike Amor that women are safer than ever before, despite there being close to 80 deaths from domestic violence in Australia last year.

'Read the ABS personal safety survey....you'll notice that since 1996 the rate of domestic assault and incidences has come down according to that report. So you can only go by the official statistics rather than left wing feminist hysteria,' Latham said.

In his Triple M podcast, Latham clearly had domestic violence campaigner and Australian of the Year Rosie Batty in his sights.

'A lot of Australians are asking how did [Batty's] tragedy where a lunatic drugged-out father sadly maliciously killed his own son, how's that morphed into a generalised campaign against all Australian men?' he said.

'I'm worried that the domestic violence debate is being used as a Trojan horse to push left-wing feminist position, saying that we're a patriarchy, there's a demonisation of men here, if you listen to Rosie Batty. 'Every man is a potential wife basher. Every woman is potentially at risk.'

In February 2014, Ms Batty's son, Luke, was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of his father, Greg, when he murdered the 11-year-old at cricket practice in the outer Melbourne suburb of Tyabb.

Since then Ms Batty has tried to put domestic violence on the national agenda and was given the award of 2015 Australian of the Year for her efforts.

But that was not how Latham saw it. Calling domestic violence 'a coping mechanism' in his podcast, he believed it was 'a concentrated problem that needs a concentrated solution'.

Addressing his particular claims about Ms Batty, Sunrise host Bartholomew asked Mark: 'So you do believe that in fact Rosie Batty you quote "causes more harm than good"?'.

'Well I don't think it's helpful to demonise men in these circumstances,' he responded. 'I don't think it's helpful to go around talking about an epidemic when actually in Australia the domestic assault rate against women in a 12-month period is one per cent.'

'Now I wish it was zero per cent. Of course, we all want it to be zero per cent. But I know enough about politics to realise that if you want to analyse and get solutions to a problem, you have to be accurate.'

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Baird Government sees economic boost from public housing revamp

There will need to be swift evictions for misbehaving charity tenants if mixed public and private tenancy is to work.  Otherwise anti-social behaviour by social tenants will drive out private owners and renters

The Baird government is promising a $22 billion construction boom will flow from an historic decision to privatise public housing in NSW.

The construction of tens of thousands of private dwellings is expected to help ease Sydney's housing affordability crisis by putting downward pressure on rents.

Ageing housing estates will be bulldozed and rebuilt by private property developers into communities where private tenants and home owners outnumber social housing tenants by a 70:30 ratio.

A third of government housing stock will be transferred to community housing organisations, who will be expected to offer support services to assist social housing tenants rebuild their lives.

The Baird government will rely more heavily on private rental subsidies to house families in crisis, including women fleeing domestic violence, so they can avoid a public housing waiting list which has stretched to 60,000 families.

A 10-year framework to be released by Social Housing Minister Brad Hazzard on Sunday will outline the NSW government's plan to break the cycle of poverty that has seen successive generations of families relying on government-provided housing.

The number of private rental subsidies will be increased by 60 per cent, to 37,000, by 2025.

Mr Hazzard said the plan would see 23,500 new and replacement social and affordable housing dwellings constructed by the private sector, ranging from high rises to townhouses.

Property developers will be expected to form joint ventures with community housing groups to bid for the redevelopment projects.

"We have billions of dollars worth of land with ageing public housing that no longer does the job we expect for those community members," said Mr Hazzard.

"This is a really innovative way of saying we can use that old, run down, tired stock on taxpayers land to go to the private sector and say build us more, far more social housing and mix the private housing and give us better social outcomes."

Mr Hazzard cited the Lend Lease redevelopment of the London council housing estate Elephant and Castle, which now includes luxury penthouses and is dominated by private dwellings, as an international example of the model.

Construction and property companies had established business units to pursue social housing redevelopments, he said. Projects would be staged to provide a construction pipeline to sustain the NSW economy as the WestConnex and North Connex projects tapered off.

"The health of NSW will be enhanced by doing something that no Liberal government has ever considered – building thousands of new social homes," he said.

Under the framework, families who have experienced loss of income through a sudden event such as retrenchment or illness, and young people, will be a priority for a new three-year private rental subsidy. Recipients will be required to undergo training or support programs.

The strategy identifies two groups of social housing tenants: a safety net group of the frail, disabled, elderly and mentally ill who need long-term support; and another group that can be moved out of the system, with appropriate support such as TAFE training.

To improve the educational outcomes of children living in social housing, $2 million will be spent building childcare centres, and a program of health worker visits for mothers and babies introduced.

NSW Council of Social Service chief executive Tracy Howe said the framework was "a flexible and progressive and modern take on what needs to be done".

"It acknowledges there is a safety net cohort, and we need to ensure that is not watered down because it is a key milestone for social housing. I don't want to think there will be a group of vulnerable people who feel more vulnerable because the framework says they can be moved out of the system," she said.

Ms Howe cautioned that moving people into jobs may not be easy.

"The jobs aren't always going to be there. It seems there is a hope someone will be able to get out of social housing and into the private rental market. There are areas where jobs don't exist. For Aboriginal young people, it's hard to get work."

Community housing providers would do "a great job" in providing services for vulnerable tenants, but need to be given long-term, 20-year contracts to provide business certainty, she said.

The NSW government has asked the Commonwealth to allow rent to be automatically deducted from Centrelink payments for social housing tenants. Mr Hazzard said this would reduce the number of evictions for unpaid rent.

Ms Howe said the jury was out on rent quarantining, with some women's groups welcoming it after a Centrelink trial in Bankstown.

Rental bonds will be imposed for new social housing leases in the second half of 2016 for the first time, capped at $1400. The bond, previously announced by the NSW government, can be paid over two years.

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Australia's radical plan to save native wildlife from extinction: Authorities begin killing off more than TWO MILLION cats as they try and save bandicoots and bats

Australia has increased its efforts to protect unique native species and has already started by wiping out 2 million feral cats.

Figures have shown that the country has lost 29 native species to a population of more than 20 million cats since 1788.

Sixteen threatened species were also added to the list of animals that need to be taken into priority due to their risk of extinction.

The Commonwealth’s threatened species strategy added the mahogany glider, eastern quoll, western ringtail possum, woylie, black-footed rock-wallaby, Gilbert’s potoroo, northern hopping-mouse and Christmas Island flying-fox to a list of 20 mammals under threat, reported The Herald.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt told The Herald: ‘It is our duty to care for them, so our bilbies, numbats, quolls and other unique fauna and flora remain a living part of our culture.’

‘As any international visitor will tell you, we are truly lucky to share this continent with so many wonderful and distinctly Australian plants and animals,’ he added.

Improving habitats and helping with 500 programs that already help with emergency intervention to create safe environments for the animals can be seen across the country.

Scientists are also working close with government officials to help the leadbeater possums found in the Toolangi Forest in the North of Melbourne.

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’Australia Post - you are the weakest link':  Couple was shocked to find the expensive parcel just sitting on their lawn

Ahmed Fahour is a great networker but he doesn't seem to be the boss Australia Post needs.  I recently had a letter take two weeks to get delivered.  For many years, most deliveries were overnight

IT SEEMS there is no end to the frustrating stories Australians have to share when it comes to poor postal delivery service.

Late last year, Australia Post copped a storm of criticism after CCTV footage was published showing a Sydney courier making no attempt to actually deliver a resident’s parcel.

Now, a married couple from Far North Queensland have a fresh horror story to share.

On Friday afternoon, Mark and Jharna Hogan were shocked after discovering a parcel worth thousands of dollars just sitting in the middle of their front lawn. They claim the driver had made no attempt to physically deliver the parcel directly to them.

Mark had taken the whole morning off to wait for this important parcel to arrive, as it contained hearing aids for his wife that had just come back from repair.

When he finally checked outside, it had apparently just been tossed next to his letterbox.

Mark took to Australia Post’s Facebook page to complain about the incident, saying:

"This is a whole new level of incompetent blatant indifference to any level of service. There was zero effort made here! I did not accept delivery yet it says I did! The parcel easily fits in

the letterbox yet your delivery man simply threw it on the grass. Disgraceful!

"Raising your prices yet lowering your service, the question is is it possible to go any lower than you have today? Australia Post - You are the weakest link.”

Jharna Hogan, his wife, was equally as unimpressed.

"It would have taken the delivery driver about ten steps to actually exit his vehicle and place the parcel in the letterbox,” she told news.com.au.

"I can’t fathom why the delivery driver thought leaving a parcel on the ground next to a mailbox (which had plenty of room for the parcel) was appropriate.”

The frustrated couple said lax delivery processes were something they’d become accustomed to - a problem many Aussies can no doubt relate to, even when they had been home all day."We’ve had parcels left on our doorstep in the rain, on our deck in view of the street and inexplicably, in our garage behind the freezer, with no note left indicating that a parcel had

been stashed there,” said Jharna.

"When talking to friends yesterday, it became apparent that we’re certainly not alone in our

Australia Post experiences - one delivery driver thought the best spot to leave my friend’s new NBN modem was on top of the garden waste bag, which thankfully wasn’t due for collection by the garden waste company that day.”

On January 4, Australia Post received approval to increase the price of regular postage stamps from 70 cents to $1.

Last year, the company reported a loss of $222 million, with its mail division losing $381 million as demand fell by 10.3 per cent.

Addressing the company’s financial issues, the couple criticised it for "raising prices yet lowering service”.

"I was amused to see that they’re rolling out a campaign promoting that ‘they love delivering’ - given the ongoing poor service we receive from them, I’m thoroughly unconvinced that any of our local Australia Post staff do in fact love delivering, or working at all.”

Mark’s post fired up fellow customers on social media, who deemed the incident "shocking” and in "poor form”.

One user said she "thought the photo was a joke until reading the post”, and urged the couple to make a formal complaint.

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Feminist, Em Rusciano, wants to censor Mark Latham

There is a major hue and cry about domestic violence going on in Australia at the moment, with some extravagant pseudo-statistics being quoted. Miranda Devine  pointed to the actual statistics some time ago. And, as she pointed out, those statistics do tend to expose the current mania as a lot of feminist nonsense. She has taken a lot of flak over her comments but nobody has shown any fault with her statistics

And the  Left are up in arms at the moment over some comments by Mark Latham about it. He offered  a perfectly ordinary account of the psychology behind wife-bashing -- and one which largely reflects what Miranda Devine showed -- but was apparently not apologetic or condemnatory enough about it.  Below is an emotional and unreasoned rant from feminist Rusciano in response to Latham.  She is, by her example, doing her bit to portray women as overly emotional and irrational.  One wonders what the "sisterhood" will think of that. 

One also wonders if she actually read what Latham said.  Latham is certainly aggressive and outspoken but he is the former leader of the federal ALP so is no fool and no blind traditionalist. He has in fact exceptionally good Leftist credentials.  Compare what he actually said below with her account of what he said.  She is not answering what he said at all.  She is just answering a fantasy in her own mind of what she thinks he meant

There is a very wide range of explanations for domestic violence and I take no position on any of them -- including Latham's. I think many such incidents are "sui generis". But Latham's is a "displacement" explanation -- a type of explanation most associated with Sigmund Freud that has long been familiar in psychology for a number of phenomena.  In popular parlance, it is sometimes called a "kick the cat" syndrome. So it is very dogmatic and bigoted by Rusciano to dismiss it without argument

She seems to think that something psychologists have discussed and argued about for generations can just be dismissed by her  with a wave of her hand.  I am glad that I don't have that sort of self-confidence.  But feminism generally is very dogmatic and unreasoned so I suppose that Ms Rusciano's hubris was to be expected.

And who can dispute Latham's comment that feminists demonize men?  Some even call men "the enemy".  More details of what Latham said here


ACCORDING to Mark Latham, domestic violence is a coping mechanism for men who have had their masculinity taken away by women.

WTF. No.

For some unexplainable reason, radio station Triple M have given him a platform for his podcast called “Lathamland”, and in the first episode this is what he says about why some men hit their intimate partners:

“I don’t think it’s about how men look at women, it’s about how men look at themselves. They’ve lost their self-esteem, they’ve lost their job, they’re welfare dependant, they’ve got other troubles, drugs, alcohol in their life. It’s that loss of self esteem where I think they use domestic violence as a coping mechanism to get over all the crap in their lives.”

Lathamland: A place where women are the reason men are hitting them.

I wonder how Triple M’s sponsors and advertisers (who currently include Dell computers — advertising back to school specials, and Fiji airways) feel about that.

You’ll never guess who the evil queen is driving the demonisation of men agenda. Yep, former Australian Of The Year and domestic violence survivor Rosie Batty.

“I’m worried that the domestic violence debate is being used as a Trojan horse to push the left wing feminist position, saying that we’re a patriarchy, there’s a demonisation of men here, if you listen to Rosie Batty. Every man is a potential wife basher. Every woman is potentially at risk.”

Yes Mark, Rosie Batty is using the horrific, violent and tragic death of her beloved son at the hands of a man who systematically abused her over many years, to push the left wing feminist man-hating agenda. I mean, that makes total sense, and by total sense I mean none at all.

His obsession with attacking Batty every time someone gives him an opening needs to stop. His use of mainstream media to publicly bully her needs to end, yesterday.

On the most basic level it appears that Latham has completely broken away from his humanity.

Even if there was an infinitesimal amount of truth to what he was saying, a shred of credibility to it (which there categorically is not) he is forgetting that this woman watched her child die at the hands of her former partner.

Do you not feel she is the last person who should be attacked in this way? Instead of locking herself away to try and reconcile her grief and loss she has tirelessly campaigned against domestic violence. She has unselfishly told her story time and time again, so that no other family need go through what hers did. Has Latham put himself in Rosie’s shoes once? He has children, how can he continue to tear her down time and time again?

Rosie Batty is not a man hater, she is not on an unspoken campaign to emasculate all men and she is not unfairly targeting them either. The statistics speak for themselves. One in six Australian women has experienced violence from a current or former partner. One in six.

Triple M needs to take Mark Latham off the air immediately. He is a dangerous person targeting a vulnerable section of the community. Domestic violence is at epidemic proportions in our country and we all need to come together to end it; men and women. What he is doing is counter productive and it almost feel as though he is trying to whip up a war between us. This situation isn’t men vs. women, it’s much bigger than that.

Yes, for those of you keeping score this will be the third time I have responded to his statements. Why do I keep returning serve? Because I’ll be f***ed if I am going to allow his words to float around in the ether like a corrosive, poisonous acid cloud, unchallenged. I also wanted to put up a protective shield for Rosie, who through all his tirades and attacks has stayed silent. She clearly has more class than Latham or I

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University degrees aren’t as valued by employers as they once were, which is great, or terrible, news, depending who you are

BIG employers are going cold on university degrees, leaving students and jobseekers to wonder

if their qualifications are worth the investment and extra study.

This week, international publishing house Penguin Random House decided to drop degrees as a requirement for job applicants, following in the footsteps of major consulting firms Ernst and Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The move comes as smaller employers are shifting away from hiring graduates or university students, believing kids are coming out of university with “no real skills” or simply being taught the wrong things.

Penguin hasn’t been so harsh, saying the shift in requirements is simply a move “to make publishing far, far more inclusive than it has been to date”.

“While graduates remain welcome to apply for jobs, not having been through higher education will no longer preclude anyone from joining,” a statement from the publisher confirmed.

“Simply if you’re talented and you have potential, we want to hear from you.”

But it’s still a scary prospect for higher education providers, a welcome relief from stressed out students or those who didn’t get the grades for the course they wanted, and a source of endless frustration for over-qualified graduates.

The value of tertiary education has consistently decreased in Australia over the past decade.

Graduate employment is the lowest it’s been since the 1992-93 recession.

The 2015 Graduate Careers Australia survey showed more than a quarter of bachelor degree graduates had failed to find work within four months of completing their studies. The money they’re being paid is on the slide, too, with university graduate salaries going down.

Meanwhile, soft skills, such as being personable, adaptable, possessing strong digital skills, and adept at time management are being increasingly valued.

Maggie Stilwell, managing partner for talent at Ernst and Young, which did away with academic and education details in its application process, said the new recruiting strategy would “open up opportunities or talented individuals regardless of their background and provide greater access to the profession”.

While the growing culture of qualification-ignorant hiring is being spun positively by the companies enforcing it, it’s hard not to see it as a slight on universities too.

In an earlier interview with news.com.au Australia Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive officer Kate Carnell said employers found 20-somethings were more qualified than ever before. Graduates were showing up to work with degrees from universities but were “disconnected with the workforce”, she said.

“A number of our members consistently tell us they’re seeing students come out of university or training programs and they might have the academic or theoretical skills, but no skills to work at all. It makes them really hard to employ,” she said.

“General issues are not understanding that a job is about turning up on time every day, not just when you feel like, that it’s about taking direction, and basic things like you’ve got to be well presented and you’ve got to be pleasant.”

Speaking with ABC radio, Deakin University deputy vice-chancellor Beverley Oliver said universities weren’t bothered.

“I think it’s a good thing. I think credentials are things we all look for; they’re signals. We look for experience or a degree completed or a course,” she said.

“This message has been loud and clear for some time to higher education providers. I think the sector has made great changes over the last 15 years, particularly making sure the degree is a signifier of a more than just marks and grades.”

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Shifting winds on free trade

Economists famously disagree on everything; the old joke goes that if you ask five economists for a prediction you’ll get six different answers. About the only thing the profession broadly agrees on is the benefit of free trade.

Free trade is the sine qua non of capitalism. Free trade – both across countries and within borders – generates competition, which drives innovation, and fuels markets and the efficient allocation of resources.

Both sides of politics have made crucial gains on dismantling protectionism, from Whitlam through Hawke and Howard. Yet increasingly, neither side of politics understands or can articulate the benefits of free trade and foreign investment. Indeed, for different reasons, both left and right are in danger of moving away from free trade as an ideal.

Elements of the left have always been hostile to free trade. For trade unionists, the availability of cheap foreign goods threatened jobs and wage gains (and was mixed at times with not an inconsiderable amount of xenophobia). Hence the union campaign against the China Free Trade Agreement.

As unions have become less important in society, so too has left-wing politics moved from class-based to identity-based politics, and the inequality of welfare. Many on the left now object to free trade on the grounds it exploits poor foreign workers, preferring instead to talk about ‘fair’ trade and multi-national tax avoidance.

They choose to ignore the enormous lift in living standards free trade made possible.

Yet as the left moved away from the working class, the right has courted them. Pandering to anti-immigration sentiment, together with an aggressive trade nationalism (see Trump’s comments on Chinese tariffs), has led some on the right to talk about free trade only from the perspective of opportunities for exporters to chisel gains out of foreigners.

Certainly, many conservatives in regional areas have long been vocally opposed to inward foreign investment and control. Nor are the Liberal government’s strengthening of anti-dumping provisions and a crackdown on foreign ownership of residential property good signs.

Free trade has always been important, but never popular. If neither side of politics fight for its benefits, we risk free trade becoming a relic of a bygone era of economic prosperity.

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People overseas like Australia's squeezy sauce sachets



IT IS a fairly standard thing found in every shop in Australia. We begrudgingly pay 30c for them, and generally take them for granted. And yet people overseas are losing their minds over our incredible invention.

Reddit user Youlikeitlikewhat posted a video of the "magical" easy-to-squeeze sauce packet in use, and people couldn’t believe what they were watching.

He captioned the video: "Australians not only have a beautiful country. And beautiful people. They also have these motherf***ing personal sauce dispensers."

Even overseas news sites couldn’t believe how cool these things were. "Why can’t we get these here? Australia has the best no-mess ketchup sachets ever," read a headline on UK site The Sun.

But Aussies quickly reassured everyone that these aren’t really that big of a deal.

"This is a normal boring thing that every shop has in Australia, is this not common in some countries?" said YouTube user roboshuffler555. Another user Imogen Rowan said, "Wait I’m Australian. I thought this was in every country — what I’m so confused."

Others complained about the size of the packets and were angry at being charged for them. "I reckon they’re a cruel joke. Such ingenuity, yet just not quite enough sauce inside for a pie. But 2 is a little bit too much, and it gets all over your hands," wrote one Reddit user.

Another said: "It’s an ingenious way for bakeries to charge you for sauce that they should provide for free in a squeeze bottle."

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Bill Shorten turns a blind eye to his militant union masters

In February 2013, the West Australian secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, Chris Cain, addressed the union’s "militancy conference" in Fremantle and told the assembled gathering that "laws need to be broken, you’re going to get locked up".

The next day the conference was addressed by Bill Shorten, who said: "There’s no other place I’d rather be today anywhere in Australia and I mean that with all my heart … I wish we could bottle a bit of the spirit here and spread it on perhaps some members of the Labor caucus … I was proud to be invited to come here by Chris Cain today."

Shorten was paying homage in his capacity as the then minister for workplace relations, the minister responsible for upholding the integrity of the very workplace laws that Cain had just pledged to break. This background is important in understanding the context of the recent unlawful MUA blockade of the ship MV Portland.

Last year Alcoa decided to decommission MV Portland, a vessel almost 30 years old, and source shipping services from elsewhere to transport alumina from Western Australia to its smelter in Portland, Victoria.

When the ship was due to sail for the last time from Portland, MUA members on-board refused to sail or allow others to do so.

The dispute ended up in the Fair Work Commission, which found that the actions of the MUA members were unlawful industrial action. The commission ordered them to return to work. The MUA appealed against the commission’s order — and lost.

The MUA continued to ignore the commission’s order. The company then sought to have the order enforced in the Federal Court, where Justice North upheld the order and again directed union members to return to work.

Once again, the Maritime Union of Australia ignored a decision by an independent umpire.

For Australia’s industrial relations system to operate effectively, all parties must comply with orders of the commission and courts, even when they lose.

The MUA’s attitude that "laws must be broken" is typical of its culture and that of other militant unions such as the CFMEU. They pretend to support "fairness" in the workplace and the role of the independent umpire until the umpire rules against them.

Next, the MUA took legal action in the Federal Court, trying to undo the licence that had been granted under the Coastal Shipping legislation allowing Alcoa to obtain a replacement vessel for the MV Portland.

This tactic revealed another distinguishing trait of militant ­unions. While they will not hesitate to ignore the law when they believe it suits them, they have no hesitation in using every trick possible in the legal system to frustrate their opponents when it is expedient to do so.

The Coastal Shipping legislation the MUA was now objecting to in the Federal Court was introduced by the previous Labor government. The Federal Court dismissed the MUA’s application. That makes two court decisions and two Fair Work Commission decisions against the MUA. Yet in a demonstration of union militancy, the MUA refused to allow the MV Portland to depart.

As is always the case when unions break the law, the big losers are not just the companies involved but other innocent workers. Australian jobs at risk due to the MUA’s actions included not only those directly and indirectly connected to Alcoa’s operations but also the wider Portland community.

The MUA’s action in keeping the ship in port held the local Portland berth to ransom, putting at risk the arrival of thousands of tourists on cruise ships which needed to dock at the small port.

It is deeply concerning that in a society supposedly governed by the rule of law, we still have ­elements in unions such as the MUA, who believe they are above the law and can ignore the law with impunity.

The law clearly needs to be strengthened. After the 2013 election the Coalition government introduced relatively modest legislation to impose the same obligations on officials of unions that apply to directors of companies. The Labor opposition and Greens refused to support this bill.

Since then, the Heydon royal commission has recommended even stronger legislation to ensure there are effective consequences for officials who repeatedly break the law.

Under the corporations law, if company directors break the law or ignore court orders they can be banned from being company directors. This happens regularly in corporate Australia.

Yet there is no equivalent sanction available to ban union bosses from union positions if they repeatedly flout the law. The royal commission recommends just such a reform and it is something the government is now considering. No responsible political party could do otherwise — which leads me to the Labor Party and Bill Shorten.

Many sensible and responsible Labor leaders have urged Shorten to act decisively and stand up to the militant unions that currently determine his party’s policies.

Former Labor minister Martin Ferguson has branded the MUA a "rogue union" and supported the government’s legislation to clean up the building industry.

Former ACTU leaders Bill Kelty and Jennie George have also urged reform to deal with workplace corruption and expressed alarm at the damage that such corruption is doing to the union movement. More recently, former ALP president Warren Mundine has declared that "unions should be subject to the same rules of governance, transparency and financial disclosure as public companies".

None of this advice has been heeded by Bill Shorten, who has ignored the findings of the royal commission and was last week meekly repeating the MUA’s lines on the MV Portand — like a puppet on a string.

Bill Shorten’s relationship with militant unions is defined by career dependency and wilful subservience. In both form and substance, the relationship is akin to that between Mr Smithers and Mr Burns in The Simpsons.

As we have observed in numerous episodes, such a relationship is corrupting and demeaning for both parties.

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Australia, not UN, has final say on Syrian and Iraqi refugee intake, Peter Dutton says

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says the Federal Government will have the final say on who is resettled in Australia as part of the intake of 12,000 additional refugees.  Key points:

    Australia taking an extra 12,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq

    Resettling to cost $900 million

    Immigration Minister says Australia, not the UN, has final say on who comes

The former Abbott government agreed to the one-off intake of those displaced by conflict in Syria and Iraq, with the first people arriving late last year.

Mr Dutton said the resettlement program would focus on persecuted minorities, including Christians and families.

He told Macquarie Radio the department had been working with Syrian Christian leaders and the United Nations, but the latter could only make suggestions.

"Ultimately we want to make sure that we're bringing the right people," he said. "People who can integrate into our community, that can get a job, can speak English, can give their kids the opportunity to go to school, that don't treat women appallingly."

Mr Dutton said "Australia will decide who we accept".  "The UN can make referrals and if we're not happy that person satisfies our criteria, they won't be settled in our country," he said. "The Prime Minister has been as adamant about that being the case as prime minister Abbott was."

Mr Dutton said significant checks were being undertaken, including the searching of US databases.

Security concerns have been raised by some in the Federal Government, but fears have been downplayed by ministers and coordinators for the resettlement.

More than $900 million has been allocated to resettling the refugees and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection last year doubled its staff numbers in the Middle East to enable quick processing.

Syria has been embroiled in a vicious civil war since a popular uprising against dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2011, with increasing violence being inflicted at the hands of Islamic State militants.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke on Australia's role in the conflict earlier this week, telling a Washington think tank that an enduring victory against militant forces "must be won and owned by the people of Iraq and Syria".

"The destruction of ISIL requires military action including boots on the ground but they must be the right boots on the right ground," he said.

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Now honey is bad for you

Australian honey is the most contaminated in the world and contains cancer-causing toxins as a result of lenient food-safety standards, according to new research.

All but five Australian honey brands tested had more contaminants which would not be considered safe or tolerable in Europe.

Research published in the Food Additives and Contaminants scientific journal reveals the majority of honey sold by leading brands in Australian supermarkets have the highest level of this poisonous toxin.

This poison is known as pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA), which has liver damaging toxins that have serious health consequences for animals and humans when consumed in high quantities.

Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) have sent out a warning to anyone, including pregnant or breast feeding women, not to consume more than two tablespoons of honey a day and to avoid that made from the plant Paterson’s Curse.

FSANZ told Yahoo7 there is no way to remove the poison from honey, so the action they take is to lower it's count in honey by blending and diluting it.

"Currently there are no methods for removing PAs from honey and removing source plants is not feasible for many areas where apiaries are kept," a spokesperson said.

"Contaminants should be kept as low as achievable. Therefore, blending is the most practical way of reducing the levels of PAs to the lowest achievable."

According to other food authorities around the world, this blending is deemed as an unrealistic solution.

The European Food Safety Authority consider 0.0007 micrograms of PA per kilogram of body weight, per day a safe intake to be consuming.  Whereas Australia's standards restrict the recommended intake to 1 microgram.

Australian toxicologist, Dr John Edgar, claims eating these poisons "could be a significant cause of cancer", Fairfax reported.

"Reducing the contamination in foods such as honey, teas, salads, flour, dairy and herbal products could result in a significant reduction in cancer cases worldwide."

Although, PSANZ sent out a warning to not ingest Paterson’s Curse honey, the government agency told Yahoo7 the levels of PA found in Australian homes is unlikely to pose a health risk.

"For people who eat small amounts of honey, the levels of pyrrolizidine alkaloids should not be a cause for concern," the spokesperson said, adding that the toxin in Australia has a lower toxicity than the standard used overseas.

"The predominant PA in Australian and New Zealand honey, echimidene, is of a lower toxicity than the PA used as a standard to set values by some authorities," a FANZ spokesperson said.

Dr Nadine Chapman, from the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney, researches Australian bees and says the industry is aware of the issue and are finding ways to mitigate it.

"To say that Australian honey is the most contaminated in the world is an exaggeration and it depends on the contaminant," she said. "As Australia does not have the Varroa mite and a number of other pests and diseases, we use less chemicals to manage our bees; we also try to minimise exposure to pesticides."

In regard to the outcomes of this expert, FSANZ said they will still "reconsider whether the setting of a tolerable daily intake is appropriate for PAs in Australian and New Zealand foods".

SOURCE.  Bee keepers disagree






Stop using these words right now

I am pleased that I cannot remember using any of these words -- JR

ARE you passionate? Motivated? Strategic? These are the 10 most overused words you have to drop from your vocabulary.

Professional network LinkedIn has released its list of the Australia’s 10 most overused buzzwords, with "passionate" once again topping the list.

"Motivated" has taken second place again, followed by "leadership", which has edged out "extensive experience" for third place this year.

LinkedIn analysed the profiles of members in Australia to determine the words and phrases most commonly used by professionals to describe themselves.

Compared globally, Australians use the majority of the same buzzwords with the exception of "track record", which places ninth on the Australian list but does not appear in the global top 10. The top 10 buzzwords in Australia for 2016 are:

1. Passionate

2. Motivated

3. Leadership

4. Extensive experience

5. Strategic

6. Creative

7. Driven

8. Successful

9. Track record

10. Dedicated

LinkedIn’s Shiva Kumar said members should steer away from cliches and show — not tell — their achievements.

"In our everyday conversations we would naturally stray away from using buzzwords to describe ourselves, so why do it on your LinkedIn profile?" he said.

"We’re encouraging our members to steer away from cliches and show off achievements on their LinkedIn profile through photos, presentations and other work to demonstrate how they are ‘passionate’, ‘successful’ or ‘creative’ rather than use tired old buzzwords."

SOURCE

Claim: One in 10 Australians ’highly Islamophobic’ and have a fear of Muslims

A phobia is an irrational fear.  There are daily reports of Muslims killing other people -- mostly other Muslims but also Westerners -- so what is irrational in fearing attacks from them?  Many Australians have already died at their hands and their attacks are often random and unpredictable.  Are we supposed to look forward to that?  I am surprised that so few Australians fear Muslims. 



One in 10 Australians are “highly Islamophobic” and have a fear or dread of Muslims, a University of South Australia study has found.

The University’s International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding has surveyed 1000 Australians, finding 10 per cent of people had negative or ­hostile attitudes towards Muslims, with the elderly, less educated and those with a poor attitude towards migrants more likely to hold such views.

The level of worry about terrorism in Australia had a strong influence on their views, the report, provided to The Australian, said.

Riaz Hassan said the survey was the first “pulse” taken of ­Australians’ perceptions towards one of the country’s most diverse religious communities and he hoped more research would be done to gauge shifts in attitudes.

The findings indicated most Australians were not Islamophobic, with 70 per cent surveyed ­comfortable having a Muslim as a family member or close friend, ­although more felt social distance from Muslims than from other ­religious groups, Professor Hassan said. A further 20 per cent were ­undecided on the issue.

The centre’s work examines the basis of tensions between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds and the role governments, local communities and the media play within a social and cultural rather than purely religious context.

“There are pockets of prejudice and anxiety directed towards Muslims, for example among the aged and those facing financial ­insecurity, but the great majority of Australians in all states and ­regions are comfortable to live alongside Australian Muslims,’’ the report, based on a survey taken in September, said.

About 60 per cent of the 500,000 Muslims living here came from 183 countries, making them the most ethnically and nationally heterogeneous religious communities, the report said.

By 2050, Muslims would grow from 2.2 per cent to 5 per cent of the Australian population, making Islam the second largest religion.

Professor Hassan said Australians’ tolerance towards immigrants strongly influenced their Islamophobia score while higher proportions of older Australians, aged 65 to 74, people who had not completed Year 12, and those not in the labour force showed higher rates of negative views.

The report authors said it was surprising that political affiliations had a strong correlation with ­Islamophobia.

Australians aligned with the Liberal and Nationals parties have significantly higher levels of ­Islamophobia than those aligned with the Labor Party while Greens voters tended to have the lowest Islamophobia score, the ­report said.  [So supporters of the less realistic political parties were also more optimistic about Muslims!  It figures!]

SOURCE






West Australian minister calls on anti-uranium lobby to 'accept WA mines'

Western Australia's Minister from Mines is calling on the anti uranium lobby to accept WA mines in the wake of last month's climate change agreement in Paris.

Bill Marmion said there were currently four uranium mines on the cards for WA and nuclear energy could be the solution to the current fossil fuel problem.

And he believes that Western Australia is well placed to take advantage of the current and future demand for non fossil fuels, given that one of the world's largest uranium supplies is sitting just under the surface in some rather remote regions of the state.  "We could be a leading exporter of uranium on the world scene if these mines get up and running and that could actually help carbon emissions worldwide," he said.

"So I think now it's timely that everybody takes another look at uranium and nuclear energy."

Mia Pepper from the Conservation council said she and Mr Marmion must have been tuned into two different conferences, because her take on Paris was quite different.

She said the minister was overly optimistic in his hopes for a West Australian uranium mining future.

"The outcomes of the Paris conference were actually very not supportive of the nuclear industry," she said.  "The nuclear industry has for a very long time, tried to capitalise on climate change as a foothold for the nuclear industry and I think now more than ever, because of Paris, those dreams are very much dashed.  "It's becoming clearer and clearer that renewable energy is very much the solution to the climate change problem that we face."

West Australian uranium miner Vimy Resources has welcomed the Minister's call for the anti-uranium lobby to accept to accept WA mines.

The company is currently undertaking its public environmental review and Mike Young said it was inevitable that uranium mining would eventually become part of the West Australian economy.

"If we all work together, we can all ensure that uranium mining in Western Australia is done to world's best practice and considering that the nuclear power industry is not going to disappear, that's probably the best outcome for everybody," he said.

SOURCE






Low-earning Australians to be kicked out of Britain under new visa rules

Australians working in Britain may not be able to stay there indefinitely if they are on a lower income, under new rules due to kick in this year.

The changes, which take effect from April, will mean non-European workers will have to earn at least £35,000 ($72,000) a year to be allowed to settle in the UK for longer than six years. 

The visa move, which was first flagged in 2012, will apply to those outside the European Economic Zone in a bid to "break the link" between working and staying permanently in Britain.
The changes will require non-Europeans to earn at least £35,000 a year to extend their visas.

The changes will require non-Europeans to earn at least £35,000 a year to extend their visas. Photo: Anna Bryukhanova

It follows a Cameron government push to reduce migration numbers, with estimates the numbers of non-European skilled workers settling in Britain each year would drop from 60,000 to 20,000 under the change.

Along with Indians and Americans, Australians make up the top nationalities given work visas in Britain. About 17,250 of the visas were given to Australians in 2014, but more than 12,300 of these went Australians under 30, who are on the two year "youth mobility" scheme.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia had "made representations" to the British government on the changes to its migration system.

This included making a submission to a review into the visa changes in September last year.

"The Australian submission noted that further restricting the Tier 2 visa [which involves the £35,000 rule] had the potential to adversely affect the commercial interests of both countries' businesses and investors, and consequently the economic interests of both Australia and the UK, and could impact on people-to-people links," the spokeswoman said.

The visa change is also generating opposition in Britain, amid concerns that it will force skilled graduates, teachers, health and charity workers to leave the country.  A petition against the change, lodged with the British Parliament, has so far generated more than 70,000 signatures.

"This ridiculous measure is only going to affect 40,000 people who have already been living and working in the UK for 5 years, contributing to our culture and economy," it says. 

"It will drive more workers from the NHS [National Health Service] and people from their families. This empty gesture will barely affect the immigration statistics. It's a waste of time, money and lives."

If the petition reaches 100,000 signatures, it is likely it will be debated by the Parliament.

SOURCE






Operation Boomerang: Anti-vegan Australia Day lamb ad gets the all-clear

The controversial Australia Day ad criticised for inciting hatred towards vegans while encouraging people to eat lamb has been given the all-clear.

In an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday, the Advertising Standards Bureau dismissed all complaints, giving the ad the OK and in effect telling any objectors to learn to take a joke.

The ad from Meat and Livestock Australia, starring popular SBS newsreader Lee Lin Chin and long-time lamb consumption advocate Sam Kekovich, includes a scene showing a military officer taking a blow torch to vegan's apartment.

There are two versions of the ad; a 30-second version appears on free-to-air TV, while the full version appears on YouTube, where it has racked up close to 2 million views.

But both versions have been met with fierce objection from vegans and sympathetic vegetarians and meat-eaters alike.

Vegans took personal offence to the ad, while others criticised the use of the term "Operation Boomerang" that referred to the ad's premise of bringing home Australian expats for the sole purpose of eating lamb on Australia Day.

The bureau received more than 600 complaints.

"The Board noted that the overall tone and theme of the advertisement is intended to be humorous and considered that the advertisement did not depict material that discriminated against or vilified any person or section of the community.

"The Board first considered whether the advertisement is suggestive of terrorism. In the Board's view, most members of the community would understand this advertisement to be a humorous take on movies such as James Bond and Austin Powers-style movies – in particular through the use of Lee Lin Chin in the main character role.

"In the Board's view the advertisement is unlikely to be viewed as depicting or condoning terrorist behaviour and that the level of action and implied violence is not inappropriate for the likely audience.

"The use of the tagline or phrase Operation Boomerang ... is not a reference to Indigenous Australians, but is meant as a reference to something which is to be returned.

"There are exaggerated and unrealistic situations which have the look and feel of a movie. In the Board's view these images ... are fantasy and unrealistic and are not depictions of violence.

"Whilst some members of the community could find the advertisement to be in poor taste ... the issue of taste does not fall under the Code of Ethics."

Meat and Livestock Australia has welcomed the bureau's decision.

SOURCE

Understanding 'nativism' will help us end it (?)

The writer below, lawyer Michael Bradley, makes the procrustean  Leftist assumption that all men are equal. Procrustes was a landlord  in Greek mythology who had only one size bed in his hostelry.  So if someone was too tall to fit into the available beds, Procrustes would cut off enough of the visitor's legs to fit the visitor to the bed.  He was the ultimate "one size fits all" man -- but not in a good way. So Bradley makes the assumption that all immigrants are equal and that they will all fit in well to the existing society eventually. 

But what if he is wrong about that?  Most of the previous waves of immigrants that have ended up as more or less undifferentiated members of the Australian melting pot have, for instance, all claimed a loyalty to the risen LORD.  Might not an allegiance to Allah produce a very different result?  Might not Muslims be an exception to the rule?  Or do all groups whatever have to fit into a single procrustean bed?

Some major groups such as Hindus and Han Chinese fit in perfectly well without any Christian background but that is surely a contingent matter.  Most importantly, their religions don't preach hostility to other faiths.  Additionally, both groups are very business-oriented and studious and consequently tend to do well economically.  So they have a strong positive connection to Australia and no negative push.

But Muslims are not like that.  Any reading of the Koran will tell you that Muslims are commanded to be hostile to non-Muslims.  And, additionally, Muslims tend to be economically unsuccessful and welfare dependent.  So they lack the positive attributes that have caused other immigrants to adapt peacefully and successfully  to Australian life.

So could we possibly entertain the thought that opposition to Muslims in our society is perfectly rational?  When many Muslims make clear their hatred for us and some of them physically attack us, might we not reasonably be dissatisfied with that?  Might we not reasonably think that Australia would be better off without adherents of that religion?

So lawyer Bradley relies on a questionable proposition. But if the equality of all migrants is questionable, Bradley makes another large assumption below that is demonstrably wrong.  He asserts that attitudes to the ingroup and the outgroup march in tandem.  You are only hostile to the outgroup because you have an exaggerated veneration for your own group.

That's also a popular theory among Leftist psychologists.  They even embody it in a word: "ethnocentrism".  It is however a testable theory and in my 20 years as an academic psychologist and survey researcher I tested it repeatedly.  I included in my questionnaires groups of questions ("scales") designed to measure both attitude to the ingroup and attitude to the outgroup.  I had the results of such studies published in the academic journals.  See e.g. here and here. And there is an independent finding that mirrors mine here. 

On all occasions I found no trace of the expected relationship.  In statistician-speak I found that attitude to the ingroup and attitude towards the outgroup were "orthogonal".  And orthogonality precludes causation. So despite his attempt at moderation, Bradley is simply wrong.

And, equally interesting, I found that there was often little relationship between  attitudes to different outgroups.  A person (say) who disliked blacks would often (say) have nothing against Jews.  More specficially a man who disliked groups on the basis  of their perceived poor hygeine would be unbothered by other groups who had no reputation for deficient hygeine. Different people are bothered by different things and if something that bothers them is prominent in a particular group, they will dislike that group.

So attitude to outgroups is not some monolithic kneejerk response to "otherness" but rather something with a rational basis. And it seems to me that dislike of Muslims falls into that category.  I know of no proof to the contrary.  Nobody attempts to prove it, in fact.  "Islamophobia" is an article of faith.  A phobia is an irrational fear but fear of Muslims has clear rational grounds.  There are daily reports of them blowing up and otherwise killing people. Is there any reason why that does not matter?


The clue is in the name: Reclaim Australia. It's poignant, emotive, speaking of something lost. We're in one of those moments now, when the fear of loss underpinning all anti-immigration movements comes to the surface.

I'm going to avoid the usual loaded terminology: racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia. Instead, I'll use a neutral term to describe popular national movements against outsiders: nativism.

I'm not so interested in name-calling as I am in exploring what causes these perennial outbursts against demographic minorities - noting that the divisions are not always racial or ethnic.

This point in a sense supports one of the nativists' standard defences - that their opposition to the targeted minority is not racist. That is, they do not object to the outsiders because of their race (or religion). The concern is not their defining label, but the behaviours which that label predetermines.

The list of excluded minorities is endless: Romany, Baha'i, Asians, Africans; in every country on Earth, at various points of history those already there have objected to the arrival of others. If you listen carefully today, you can hear in Australia complaints being raised about the incompatible cultural behaviours of recent immigrants from mainland China.

As always, this is self-described not as racism, but as self-defence. The one feature that every successive group of immigrants has shared, from the first Chinese arrivals in the gold rush, through the Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Muslims and Africans, to the latest Chinese from China, is the accusation that they threaten our national values. Not because they're inherently bad people, but because there's something inherent in their background, whether ethnic, national or religious, which just doesn't fit.

Pauline Hanson's seemingly permanent exasperation is worthy of deeper analysis than it tends to receive. She says "I'm not racist" often, with conviction. She explained her position with clarity in 2010, when she was selling her home in Queensland and told the media that she would refuse to sell it to a Muslim buyer. Her reason:

"Because I don't believe that they are compatible with our way of life, our culture. And I think we are going to have problems with them in this country further down the track"

Nativists would call Hanson prescient. The current rumblings from Reclaim Australia, the more radical United Patriots Front and nascent political parties such as the Australian Liberty Alliance, echo (in their view) exactly what she warned. Their expressed concern is to protect Australia; their method is to exclude those who don't fit in.

Nativism is a deceptively simple ideology.

It starts with the very human desire to belong. Nobody likes to be on the outer. In the quest for a sense of belonging, we easily attach ourselves to group identifiers - a football team, the cool kids at school, religion, race, nationality - and equally easily ignore that they are artificial constructs. It makes no more sense to seek to define a group of people as "Australian" than it does to distinguish Queenslanders from Victorians, or Jordanians from Iraqis. They're all accidents of history, geography and demography.

Nativist movements have always ultimately collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions.

Reclaim Australia has, to some extent, claimed legitimacy by co-opting Indigenous Australians under its banner, along with some Asian Australians. It doesn't take a lot of thought to see the difficulty of claiming a prior entitlement to Australian soil when, one way or another, your own presence here displaced a culture with tens of thousands of years of incumbency. Whatever the quintessential "Australian" values and way of life the nativists believe they are protecting might be, they sure wouldn't have been recognisable to the Indigenous population of 1788.

Since nativism is really at its core about belonging (it just defines itself by the exclusion of others), it's no surprise that it tends to attract those whose personal sense of belonging is most fragile: the poor, less educated, unemployed, socially isolated, the alienated and disenfranchised. People who feel most keenly that they are on the outer in society are the most vulnerable to the simplistic pull of nativism - the idea that they are among the true chosen keepers of the faith, called upon to protect what we have created from those who would tear it down.

Today's victims of nativism in Australia are Muslims. There may be some violence, perhaps quite bad, before this current surge inevitably subsides. It, like all its forebears, is the final howl of impotent rage from a subset of society whose inchoate fear of change is only a reflection of how unattached to society it really feels.

These people's anger, irrational and misdirected as it is, is real. We can understand it, reject it and try to cure it, without the name-calling.

SOURCE






Australian teacher shortage fears as student numbers soar

The number of teachers leaving the profession has increased at a time the student population is also on the rise, prompting concerns Australia could be facing a teacher shortage.
Key points:

    The population of school students is expected to increase by 26 per cent by 2022

    A recent study found between 30 and 50 per cent of teachers give up their job within the first five years

    Teachers say challenges they face include student behaviour and pressure from the curriculum

A recent report by the Australian Council for Educational Research found that somewhere between 30 and 50 per cent of teachers give up their job within their first five years in the profession.

The population of school students is expected to increase by 26 per cent by 2022 and more teachers will be needed to teach those students, or class sizes will once more need to become larger.

If the ratio of teachers to students continues to fall, Australia could face a teacher shortage, at the very time it is intending to increase its innovation agenda.

Kimberly Crawford said she chose to leave her job as a primary school teacher in Brisbane after five years.

"I was keen to stay in the education sector to a certain degree, but just really felt that I was emotionally burnt out from the demands of a classroom environment," Ms Crawford said.

"There were a large amount of additional needs, I taught children with behavioural difficulties and a wide range of special needs.

"A lot of the time it was dependent on seeking out support yourself."

Merryn McKinnon, a lecturer at the Australian National University, has researched teacher attrition rates and found the level of work teachers are expected to do has increased over time.

"You have this sort of domino effect where the work burden sort of gets passed on and on and teachers' burn out," Ms Mckinnon said.  "So ultimately we're sort of short-changing students in many ways."

The Australian Council for Educational Research report found even conservative estimates show big increases in the number of primary school-aged children in the next four years.

They estimate there will be an extra 92,000 primary school kids in New South Wales by 2020, as well as more than 100,000 both in Victoria and Queensland.

Teachers say there is a lack of support

Data from the National Teaching Workforce Dataset Data Analysis Report in June 2014 showed the ratio of teachers to students was continuing to fall.

In addition to time pressures and lack of support as described by teachers, the Teaching and Learning Senate Inquiry in 2013 found that casualisation of the workforce was having a harmful effect on the profession.

New teachers were found to be the most likely to be offered short-term contracts, so they were not always offered induction or support.

Graduates interviewed as part of that Senate inquiry said they had left teaching because they were unable able to find permanent jobs.

Kylie Sweeting, a pedagogical coach in a Queensland state school, said her role involves working with teachers who identify as needing support.

Ms Sweeting said that in the past, teachers had received funding and support to go to professional development.

"But then after research was done they found that teachers were coming back into schools and not using what they'd learnt," she said.

She said that so far her role was having more success than other training courses for teachers because she was there long term, coaching the teachers at the school.

Ms Sweeting said the two main challenges teachers have said they are faced with was student behaviour, and the pressure from the curriculum.

"There's always way too much to teach and not enough time," Ms Sweeting said.

SOURCE






The flexible definition of autism -- and its expanding incidence

GPs should be given stronger guidance about how to diagnose autism to prevent "doctor shopping" by desperate families trying to access funding for their children that is tied to a medical ­definition, researchers say.

New, nationally consistent guidelines that crack down on fluid interpretations of the international Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) — the global yardstick for identifying a suite of mental disorders — would push down prevalence rates, which have been climbing dramatically in Australia for years.

The number of those diagnosed with autism in Australia ­almost doubled between 2003-06 and has doubled every three years since, hitting 115,000 in 2012 and likely to top 230,000 in 2015 when survey data is finalised.

University of Western Australia child development expert ­Andrew Whitehouse told The Australian: "Without a doubt the bulk of the increase in autism cases is due to shifting diagnostic boundaries over time. This has been a human-imposed change rather than a biological change over time. That is not to discount the fact there may be a new cause in the modern environment but there has been a wealth of ­research into this and we have not found another factor yet."

The Australian spoke to multiple academics who confirmed a stricter diagnostic regime applied across the country would remove some of the wriggle-room medicos have to fudge diagnoses and eliminate confusion.

Professor Whitehouse, who is also a program director at the ­Autism Co-operative Research Centre, said every state and territory adhered to the DSM-V but the manual set out only broad categories of behaviours. Actual ­diagnoses "varied wildly between states".

"At the moment what we call autism — or at least autism concepts — differs wildly between those states and that absolutely has an effect on prevalence rates," he said.

"I have heard numerous ­stories over many years of families being able to go to a single sole practitioner and receive a diagnosis of autism without an extensive assessment. Moreover, if you don’t get the diagnosis you need then you can go to another and another and another.

"Once you tighten up those ­diagnostic procedures, it just has to have an effect on numbers."

Professor Whitehouse said parents did not automatically want to have their children diagnosed but government funding programs that linked diagnoses with funding created a perverse incentive for cash-strapped families who wanted to access early-­intervention services.

Cheryl Dissanayake, director of the Olga Tennison Autism ­Research Centre at La Trobe University, told The Australian the number of people diagnosed was "flexible" and largely in the hands of people on the frontline.

Professor Dissanayake and colleagues examined data from a federal government support program and found three times as many children aged under five were enrolled in the federal government’s Helping Children with Autism package than anticipated.

The Productivity Commission tried to reckon with rising autism rates as it built the framework for the $22 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme and said it ­believed the rise in diagnoses was at least partly linked to the HCWA program, which had to be propped up with another $30 million in funding after its popularity.

Professor Dissanayake was part of a working party which, in 2009, recommended the Victorian government copy the "best practice" diagnosis model operating in Western Australia which requires a paediatrician, speech pathologist and child psychologist to agree on an outcome.

"That was adopted in Victoria but it was mandated and there is a big difference between requiring best practice and simply ­recommending it," Professor Dissanayake said. "That is the real issue."

The last official data in Australia shows Victoria had far and above the highest rate of autism, about 0.7 per cent compared with slightly more than 0.5 per cent for the closest other state, Tasmania.

Nationally, there is also a slow shift in education departments away from requiring ­labels before releasing funding to students and schools, a model that led the rate of autism in Queensland public schools to hit one in 50 in 2010 when the global rate was much closer to one in 160.

A spokesman for Victoria’s Education Minister, James Merlino, said a review of disability support programs was finished and the findings were expected to be presented to the government within months.

In NSW, the state government broadened support for students with disability by paying a loading to students without the requirement of a formal diagnosis.

About $63m has been allocated to schools this year to support those efforts.

Queensland is moving toward needs-based funding while South Australia’s Education Minister, Susan Close, said diagnoses could still be useful.

"While specific support for students with disabilities ­requires a professional diagnosis, in SA there is also support for a range of learning difficulties that is based on what individual children need to be successful, and does not require formal ­diagnosis of disability," Ms Close said.

Australian Medical Association president Brian Owler said that having "consistent guidelines would make things easier" for doctors during diagnosis but added the emphasis should still be on assessing children early.

"It is probably harder early on to make the diagnosis, harder to make a firm diagnosis but at the end of the day, if early therapy is instituted and a child is found later on to not have autism that is a good thing," Dr Owler said.

Professor Whitehouse said greater thought needed to be given to the range of support provided in the early years and during school years.

"We have to think about what those programs look like," he said.

"The mark of a civilised society is how it treats its most disadvantaged. There are families crying out for help, a great big population of them."

SOURCE






'We can't help you': Harvey Norman branch fined for misleading consumers about their rights

A Harvey Norman franchisee has been fined $52,000 for repeatedly telling customers with new but problem-plagued computers that it couldn't help them.

The Federal Court found a Harvey Norman store on the Gold Coast breached two sections of consumer law by falsely telling customers with malfunctioning computers that it had no obligation to provide a remedy and couldn't assist any further without payment.

One woman, whose Sony laptop sometimes failed to start, failed to shut down and was slow, kept being told by a salesperson: "We can't help you."

One man, who complained his new Acer desktop randomly froze and shut down, was told on two occasions: "There's nothing we can do."

Under consumer law, products sold in Australia come with a consumer guarantee, meaning they must be of acceptable quality. If not, the retailer must offer a repair, replacement or a refund.

The proceedings were brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.  "This penalty is a timely reminder to all businesses, whether large or small, that they must not mislead consumers about consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law," the ACCC's acting chairman Michael Schaper said.

The latest order bumps up the total amount of penalties paid by Harvey Norman franchisees in regards to false or misleading representations about consumer rights to $286,000.

In 2014, four franchisees were hit with penalties ranging from $10,000 to $26,000 - an Oxley store in Queensland, a Gordon store in NSW, and Mandurah and Albany stores in Western Australia.

Justice John Dowsett said, in imposing a penalty of $52,000 against Bunavit, the operator of the Bundall superstore in Queensland, he took into account that there were more impugned statements than in other comparable cases, the conduct continued over a longer period, and more staff members were involved.

He also took into account Bunavit's sales revenue of nearly $70 million and net profit of $1.2 million in 2012-13 - "significantly larger" than other stores in comparable cases.

In the Bunavit case, the salesperson told the customer with the faulty Sony laptop that they couldn't help her and to approach the manufacturer.

But when she received her laptop back from an Sony-authorised service centre, it had developed more problems. Again, Harvey Norman told her to go back to Sony.

When she got her laptop back for the second time, the DC input wasn't working, meaning she could no longer charge the battery.

Harvey Norman employees then told her the DC input issue was her problem, they couldn't help her unless she wanted to pay, and they were not willing to pay for a refund or replacement.

"The reason is that you did not come to us for the initial repair," a salesperson said.

"If you send the laptop back to Planet Tech to repair the DC input issue, then we will agree to pay for half of the repair costs," the same salesperson said later on the same day.

Only after she lodged complaints with the ACCC and the Queensland Office of Fair Trading did Harvey Norman begin fixing the laptop problems.

Justice Dowsett said broad denials of liability by a retailer may lead a consumer into thinking the persistence required would be "too much trouble, with too little assurance of a satisfactory outcome".

"A great number of electronic devices are purchased by consumers from retailers such as Bunavit. Consumers frequently return such devices, claiming that they are faulty, or not of an acceptable quality," he said.

"A retailer should ensure that its staff members are informed about, and conduct themselves in conformity with, the Australian Consumer Law."

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Rising temperatures at Australian Open [tennis match] 'caused by global warming' (?)

Australian temperatures are not in close lockstep with the global average and they are not even in step with one-another.  While Southern Australia does seem to be having unusually warm  weather lately, December and January in S.E. Queensland where I live have been unusually mild.  This January in Brisbane has so far been the coolest I can remember in fact.  So all we are looking at is local warming, not global warming.  But could the local warming be in some way caused by global warming?  Hardly.   There has been no global warming for over 18 years and things that don't exist don't cause anything.  So the claims below are just the usual Greenie phlogiston

The Australian Conservation Foundation reported that in recent years players have complained about the heat at the first grand-slam tournament of the year, including Canadian Frank Dancevic, who collapsed during a match in 2014.

Analysis from University of Melbourne Atmosphere and Ocean researcher Ben Hague shows January temperatures in Melbourne have risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius each decade since 1987, but in the two weeks of the Australian Open the increase has been 1.25 degrees.

The Bureau of Meteorology 2015 Climate Statement showed days of extreme weather are on the increase across Australia.

A number of tennis clubs have implemented extreme heat policies to fulfill their duty of care to players, including Victoria based Australasian Academy of Tennis Coaches.

“At our local tennis school, our heat policy is 35 degrees,” their CEO Lynton Joseph said. “When the temperature hits 35, all lessons and play stops – there is no discussion.

“The most recent science from the Bureau of Meteorology and others shows an increase in extreme weather days in Australia and sports clubs have a duty of care to take precautionary measures.”

Climate change manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation, Victoria McKenzie-McHarg, said global warming was the catalyst for the scorching temperatures.

“Global warming is already having a big impact in Australia and the effect on both professional and local community sportspeople and sports clubs is significant,” she said.

“To stop these global warming impacts getting even worse, our government needs to support clean energy solutions that will cut pollution, and put the interests of the community ahead of the interests of a handful of big polluting energy companies.

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Can’t spell, can’t count: Bosses lash out at Australian workers’ lack of skills

WORKERS have such poor literacy and numeracy skills they can’t do simple sums, type on a computer or give clear ­directions in a worrying trend employers have revealed is cruelling their business.

The problem has been exposed by an Australian Industry Group study that found staff’s English and maths skills are so bad hardly a workplace in the country is unaffected.

The report, released today, found nine out of 10 bosses complain they have staff who can’t calculate orders, prepare work riddled with errors or give confusing directions.

AI Group chief executive Innes Willox said the results indicated a “deepening concern about the level of foundation skills in the workforce and a continuing drag on the nation’s productivity”.

He called on the Turnbull Government to tackle the problem as the need for highly educated workers became more crucial, with high-skilled occupations growing faster than low-skilled work.

It follows an international report showing 44 per cent of Australians have literacy ­proficiency below a level set as the minimum to operate effectively in the workplace and ­society.

Numeracy was worse, with 55 per cent below the proficient level, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies found.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the Government realised it must arrest our slide down inter­national comparison ­tables for mathematics and ­literacy.

“We must embrace the digital age, diversify our economy and upskill Australians to meet the jobs of the 21st century,” Senator Birmingham said. “Key to the success of this and future generations of young Australians is in having an excellent grasp of literacy and numeracy.”

He said the Government was improving teacher standards and pushing maths and science in schools.  “Mistakes are costly and business is saying too many mistakes are being made,” he said.

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Police officer filmed shoving mum's throat multiple times

WARNING, DISTRESSING: An Australian police officer has been filmed repeatedly pushing a woman by her throat, causing her to fall backwards.

Queensland police have been contacted by Yahoo7 for comment on this matter but declined at time of publication.

Loanna King, 17, said police allegedly entered the Boondal home, near Brisbane on Saturday night.

She claimed police barged inside and grabbed her younger brother, 16, while she was inside with her mother.

She said she was told he was being arrested for alleged domestic violence.

Miss King told Daily Mail Australia she had been left with scars on her legs after she was dragged out to the street by officers.

Footage shows her brother being pushed up against a wall while police handcuffed him.

His mother can be heard telling an officer that the boy is her son before she is told to ‘get back’ and is pushed in the shoulder.

Natasha starts to scream ‘that’s my son’ when the same officer shoves her in the throat with quite a bit of force.

Miss King told Daily Mail her two-year-old brother was left alone inside the home during the arrests.

The family was issued with a court order for obstructing police and they were released on to the street about 20 minutes later.

Since the video was shared on Facebook it has sparked outrage with many claiming it was an act of ‘police brutality’ and violence against a woman.

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Muslim who has 'spoken highly of Australians who travel to fight with ISIS' is revealed as a TEACHER at a popular Islamic school

A man with 'sympathetic' views towards ISIS has been revealed as a teacher at an Islamic college in Victoria.

Khoder Soueid has been named as a high school teacher at the Australian International Academy - previously known as King Khalid College - in Caroline Springs in Melbourne's west, according to the Herald Sun.

A LinkedIn page believed to belong to Soueid lists him as a 'teacher at AIA' and a worker in 'education management'.

It was also revealed the Islamist teacher was named in documents related to a young boy who pleaded guilty to plotting an attack last year, according to the newspaper.

Soueid ran a Facebook page where he spoke highly of Australians who had travelled to fight with ISIS. The page, which has since been shut down, had more than 3000 followers, including a 17-year-old boy from Greenvale who pleaded guilty to planning to detonate a series of explosives in Melbourne on Mother's Day last year.

According to the newspaper, the Australian Federal Police believe the 17-year-old used Soueid's Facebook page to get in touch with other people who had extremist views.

The Australian International Academy is located in Caroline Springs in Melbourne's west - and was previously known as King Khalid College

'Enquiries reveal he is an Australian-based Muslim sheik. Soueid has expressed sympathetic opinions in relation to the actions of the IS to Australian media,' the AFP statement of facts related to the 17-year-old said, according to the Herald Sun.

The newspaper also claimed the Australian International Academy had spoken to Soueid about his social media posts.

Soueid has previously been linked to ISIS recruiter Neil Prakash, who is suspected of helping to radicalise the two 18-year-old arrested over the alleged Anzac Day terrorism plot.

Prakash made contact with Soueid, who has a large following of young men in Melbourne, via Twitter so the pair could communicate, according to The Age. 'As Salaamu Alaykum akhee [Hello brother] please follow me,' Prakash wrote.

Soueid has posted a number of video message on YouTube, many where he discusses teaching of the Koran.

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Opening up Australia's empty North to settlement and farming

Another revival of an old and unrealistic dream. It fits in with the frequent Greenie cries that the world is overpopulated and about to run out of food. The latest such cry here.  It is true that vast tracts of Northern Australia are mostly unpopulated and used for very little.  And Chinese farmers in the gold-rush days of the 19th century proved that productive farms could be set up there even using very low-tech.  So turning an area about the size of Western Europe into farms seems an obvious thing to do. 

And from Adolf Hitler on, Greenies have been shrieking that we are about to run out of food.  So if that had any realism to it, opening up Northern Australia to arable farming  would indeed be an obvious thing to do.

The fact that everyone overlooks is that the international supply of most farm products is in GLUT.  We have too much food available for international trade, not too little.  So if you do convert more of our mostly empty North into farms, how are you going to sell the product? 

The Ord river scheme in North-West Australia was a warning for those who are capable of learning.  There's this huge river and lots of uncultivated fertile land nearby so governments of all sorts have thought to turn it into a resource.   Since the 1940s, it has absorbed many millions of taxpayer dollars. And it's only recently that they have found something worth growing there:  Sandalwood, used to make incense sticks for Chinese religious ceremonies!  No food!

And now that China has become a major food exporter, almost any farm investment would be blind optimism.  China now makes not only most of our electrical goods but also most of those low-priced "Own brand" cans of food in your local supermarket. The abundance that worldwide capitalism produces is in the end what will keep Australias's vast North mostly empty.  Greenie shrieks about overpopulation are a laugh to anyone who knows anything about the subject


A record-breaking drought in the state of Queensland has reignited calls to unlock the economic potential of Australia's under-developed and sparsely populated north.

As those on the land struggle, business leaders are promoting the idea that the region could be transformed into a giant food bowl for Asia.

What's needed, according to Troy Popham, the head of the Townsville Chamber of Commerce, is the vision to create a large network of new reservoirs and pipelines to help a thirsty country cope with prolonged dry spells.

"The rain across northern Australia can be captured and can be channelled to relevant places so that the downstream effects of the water can still be utilised," he says.

"It is going to cost some money, but the rewards that it will deliver to the country are enormous."

Bold irrigation schemes, a 600m Australian dollar ($418m; £290m) upgrade to outback roads, extra money to revamp airstrips, and funds to explore rail freight links are part of a federal government discussion paper released last June.

"No longer will Northern Australia be seen as the last frontier: it is in fact, the next frontier," proclaimed a statement from the governing Liberal Party.

Development challenge

The region, to the north of the Tropic of Capricorn, covers more ground than many countries, and spans Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

It is flush with potential; from agriculture and renewable energy, to tourism, education and tropical medicine.

Crucially, for policy makers it is on the doorstep of emerging markets in Asia.

But the dreams of exploiting the untapped riches of the north that go back almost as far as European settlement in the late 18th Century have remained unfulfilled.

Colonial explorers dragged boats into the mysterious interior hoping to find an inland sea, but discovered only desert and disappointment. Over the years, other lofty ambitions have also turned to dust.

While Canberra's ambition to eventually light up the north is praised by industry groups and farmers, there is - because of the area's sheer scale - caution.

"It is a great principle, but it can end up being useless rhetoric if the government is not willing to drive this investment," says Queensland state MP Robbie Katter, from his offices in the mining city of Mount Isa in the rugged Gulf Country region.

"What many people have in mind is that it would be corporate-style farming with foreign owners or institutional investors that do a big irrigation scheme.

"That benefits a few and really doesn't help solve any of the problems for the established farmers out here."

The cost of upgrading key freight routes would be huge, and take years, but would be worth the time and money, argues Andrew Gray, chairman of Northern Territory Livestock Exporters Association.

"The pastoral industry has been crippled by poor roads," he says.   "We have heavy rain during our wet season. Roads become impassable for passenger vehicles, let alone for the transport of livestock."

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Surprise!  Man named Mohammad is a naughty boy

NOTORIOUS crime gang member Mohammad Qais Niazy will be sent back to Afghanistan after his online taunts to police and alleged criminal activity finally caught up with him.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton signed off on the cancellation of Niazy’s permanent residency because of his alleged involvement in criminal activity, with Niazy expected to be deported once his current legal matters are finalised.

Mr Dutton said Niazy did not meet the character requirements for a residency.

Police sources said Niazy’s deportation would likely cause the early demise of a newly-formed gang, which included several members who spent the majority of last year in jail.

Niazy is in custody awaiting trial in the Parramatta District Court on charges including possessing a shortened firearm, unregistered firearm and prohibited weapon.

It is understood he will be immediately deported if he is acquitted or after the completion of any further jail time.

Niazy, an alleged core member of the ­Afghani Murderers gang, has previously used Facebook to regularly taunt police, posting pictures of large piles of cash and himself sniffing a white powder.

He posted several photos in the months before his jailing last year, including a photo spelling out the words “f ... all cops” in $100 notes.

Also known as Ace Niazy and Ali Gewad, Niazy was arrested by Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad (MEOCS) officers last year. On Facebook, Niazy had previously taken aim at MEOCS and other agencies.

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Australian Greens ally themselves with thug unions

Greens leader Richard Di Natale and his colleagues have vigorously opposed federal Coalition policies to impose criminal sanctions on corrupt union and employer officials.

Unions are moving to widen their political influence before this year's federal election by pouring cash into the Greens, a strategy that is infuriating Labor and sparking accusations of disloyalty against union officials who are formally aligned with the ALP.

The unions have already given the Greens more than $600,000 and are tipped to go further this year, just as the minor party tries to defeat Labor candidates in marginal electorates that will be -crucial to Bill Shorten's campaign.

As the nation's biggest construction union comes under fire from the royal commission into union corruption, it and others have increased their donations to the Greens in a way that expands a powerful political alliance that challenges Labor.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale and his colleagues have vigorously opposed federal Coalition policies to impose criminal sanctions on corrupt union and employer officials, restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission and scale back the proportion of union representatives on superannuation fund boards.

There are divisions within the union movement over the donations, given that the construction division of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union handed $125,000 to the Greens last year while the same union's mining division lashed out at Green policies to scale back coalmining.

Anger at the trend is greatest among senior Labor figures who are frustrated that the CFMEU can use its numbers within the party to influence the selection of Labor candidates but then use its cash to help the Greens field rival candidates for the same seats.

The CFMEU is the second biggest union supporter of the Greens after the Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union, which gave $360,000 to the Greens in the year to June 2014, the last year for which figures are available. Total union donations to the Greens reached almost $600,000 in 2013-14 following -donations of $50,000 the previous year and $100,000 in 2011 from the ETU's Victorian branch, with smaller amounts from several -unions over the past decade.

Michael Danby, Labor member for Melbourne Ports and a strong critic of Greens policies, said: "Hundreds of thousands of dollars of the Greens political party's public funding is funnelled into defeating Labor represen-tatives. It's hard to see . what benefit it is to union members for the ETU or other unions to hand over their members' funds to Senator Di Natale and his Greens party, especially when the Greens have similar views to the Liberal Party on penalty rates."

Senior Labor figures have privately urged union leaders to stop funding their political rivals but the complaints have failed to sway the CFMEU or the ETU. Most Labor MPs would not comment publicly on the dispute.

Senator Di Natale has named Mr Danby's seat as well as the nearby Labor electorates of Batman (held by Labor frontbencher David Feeney) and Wills (held by retiring Labor MP Kelvin Thomson) as targets "within reach" this year. An effort is also under way to seize Labor territory such as Grayndler in NSW, which will be vulnerable to the Greens if sitting member Anthony Albanese, the opposition infrastructure spokesman, moves to another seat with a better chance of victory.

One Labor figure said it was hard for ordinary party members to see officials from the CFMEU sway policy decisions and pre-selections but then give money to the Greens to campaign against Labor.

Another warned that some -unions were taking a simplistic approach to politics but could not be convinced to stay loyal to the party that has traditionally backed workers.

CFMEU construction division national secretary Dave Noonan dismissed the anonymous critics as "sooks" and rejected claims he and others were being disloyal to Labor by helping the Greens.

"It's a matter for the union and determined by its democratically elected governing bodies," Mr Noonan said. "It is disclosed as required by law. The union is loyal to the interests of its members first and foremost."

The ETU ended its affiliation with Labor in 2010, declaring that it would support whichever party "speaks genuinely" for workers.

The union payments pale next to donations from mining and energy companies, which gave about $1.8 million to the Coalition and about $450,000 to Labor in 2013-14, but unions have the -capacity to offer more than cash.

The National Tertiary Education Union was hailed for mounting a $1m campaign to support the Greens in the Senate at the last election, confirming its break with Labor. The NTEU's last filing with the electoral commission confirmed it spent $1m on political campaigning in 2013-14.

Greens senator Lee Rhiannon countered the Labor complaints by arguing that the Greens had shown they would defend the -interest of workers.

"Union allegiance has been to improving conditions for working people," Senator Rhiannon said. "The reason some unions have moved away from Labor is because Labor has changed.

"We've won our stripes by doing the hard work and being consistent. The unions are not fools - they can see the political landscape is changing."

With CFMEU officials facing legal action as a result of the royal commission, the government has demanded Labor and the Greens halt any donations from the militant union.

Senator Di -Natale declined to comment but Australian Greens co-convener Penny Allman-Payne insisted the party would -accept donations just as other parties did. "It is the Australian Greens' long-held policy that elections should be publicly funded, to reduce the influence of political donations," she said.

"Within the current system, the Australian Greens do accept donations, subject to the review of all donations above $1500 by our Donations Reference Group."

The party also countered the idea that the donations influenced votes in the Senate, noting that the Greens had introduced legislation to abolish the ABCC in 2008 and its votes against the restoration of the ABCC were consistent with that position.

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How the Costco mirage is fooling Australians

The `membership warehouse club' is booming Down Under. Here's the secret behind the store's success

Costco - the bulk discount retailer - is expanding yet again.

The multi-billion-dollar global business has already opened stores in Melbourne Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra and Sydney. It sold $1.3 billion worth of merchandise to Aussie shoppers last year.

Now it intends to open three more stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, while gearing up to enter Newcastle, Darwin and Wollongong.

Is Costco any good? It offers some items more cheaply than other retailers and has many devoted fans. But its business model is set up to exploit our decision-making blind spots.

Costco can work amazingly well for many people. But it can be a mirage for many others, offering the appearance of great value while simply lifting $60 from your wallet.

Before you become a Costco fan, you should be wary of these three tricks Costco is using to help it make millions in profit every year.

1. Memberships

If you casually show up at Costco, they won't let you in. Not even to browse. You must be a member or a guest of a member. Memberships cost $60.

It is weird for a shop to charge entry. But there's a reason.

Prices in store have small margins. Costco make almost all of their profit on memberships.

Plenty of people join, then never buy enough to get their money's worth. Costco members will tell you it's your fault if you buy a membership and don't use it. But this is how Costco thrives. Selling heaps and heaps of memberships, including to people who never use it, is their business model. Just like a gym.

Some people will keep shopping at Costco even though it is inconvenient, just to make sure they don't "waste" their membership. They're probably even worse off than the people who just lost $60.

Spending time to try to feel good about $60 you spent six months ago is a classic case of the sunk cost fallacy, where you use resources inefficiently so previous resources you used up aren't "wasted".

2. Petrol

Costco petrol is really cheap. As low as $1.04 a litre recently, when nearby service stations are charging 15c more.

The CEO says they are seeing "spectacular" growth in fuel sales. But they're making basically zero profit. Why?

It's the same reason those four cents off shopper dockets were such a big deal a decade ago.

People are obsessed - even irrational - over the price of petrol. Price is the only way to compare petrol, so it is easy to compare prices between different service stations. They put the price on big signs and compete to be one or two cents lower than the servo up the road.

If Costco drops the price of its petrol by 10 cents, it looks amazing. We notice that far, far more than if they drop the price of a pack of toilet paper. Who can remember the exact price of toilet paper?

If you fill up there a lot, of course, it's good value. But not all Costco shops have petrol stations, so you could be driving a long way to make a small saving.

And if Costco aren't making money on the petrol, they are making it up elsewhere, in places you don't notice.

3. Bulk

Costco sells whoppingly large things.  Five kilograms of Nutella? Done. Six litres of vokda? Sure.

You should get a better deal when you buy in bulk anyway. But Costco implies the cheaper per unit price makes it special.

These whopping amounts put strain on your home. Who has space in the fridge for a kilogram of eggs?

When you're in the store, it's easy to forget how annoying it is to have your cupboards full to bursting and easy to convince yourself you'll use something fast. The reality can be different. At my house we just threw out half a packet of frozen beans we got at Costco over a year ago.

If Costco is coming to your town, make sure you're not getting fooled before you shell out for membership.

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