Why are they hiding this violent attack from you?

Footage has emerged of a 16-yr-old girl being brutally attacked by a gang of eight Africans in Melbourne.

I have to warn you, the video you’re about to watch is confronting, it’s graphic, and if you have a heart, it’ll break it to bits.

But I have to show it to you, and you need to pass it on because everyone needs to see what happened to this defenceless 16-yr-old girl on Sunday at Southern Cross Station.

To think this gang was so proud of the cowardice behaviour that they shared it on Snapchat makes me sick to my stomach.

The scary thing is it happened in the middle of the day, in front of bystanders who did nothing to help the defenceless child.

How could you witness such a thing happening to a little girl and refuse to intervene?

I’ve spoken to the victim’s mother, and she says the worst part of it wasn’t even shared, moments later they dragged her daughter off the bench and stomped on her.

They hospitalised their victim who sustained numerous injuries, including broken ribs.

The terrified 16-yr-old is too scared to make a police statement in fear of retribution.

Police said they couldn’t open an investigation without a victim statement.



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Comment from a Melbourne reader:

That a group of African females will attack a lone white girl is to be expected in Melbourne. It is also expected that the Africans would attack her in a public place on a city central railway station in front of rail staff and numerous commuters. For Melbourne's African gangs will attack whites anywhere, day or night. It is also to be expected that ABC radio and tv, The Project, and other news programs will refuse to report on such a crime, for those in mainstream media are committed to pushing the leftist narrative that whites are racist and blacks are victims. That Melbourne's police will not charge the Africans is to be expected too. And what is also to be expected, or at least likely, is that not a soul will step forward to stop such an attack by Africans on a defenceless white girl.

Australians were once strong, brave, generous. Now we are weak, cowardly, selfish, pathetic. Made heartless, braindead, emasculated, by decades of browbeating by leftist propaganda.

The girl will be affected for the rest of her life. Not by African punches, kicks and stamps on her face and chest, her facial injuries and broken ribs, for those things are superficial, but by the deep intense loneliness of being bashed in clear view of other people who could easily help her but do not. Her soul silently screaming for help while those around her do not help. That lesson will stick with her. That even her country's media will not support her will also stick with her. That Melbourne's spineless police force will not charge the Africans will also stick with her. And in future if she shows reluctance or anxiety around Africans she will be called racist and ostracized by self righteous whites.

Yes such Africans are savages, but those who did not help the white girl have the greater shame, the greater misuse of heart and power, for they know better and they had the power to stop it. They did not stop it because they did not want to. At least not enough.      






"Mr Incorrectness" strikes again

Polarising media personality Sam Newman has sparked further outrage after  describing COVID-19 as the 'Chinese virus' as he called for the official AFL season to be cancelled.

His comments came 48 hours after the former Footy Show host parted ways with Channel Nine, ending a 35-year partnership.

No stranger to controversy, Newman suddenly left the network on Friday following an extraordinary tirade about George Floyd during an online podcast.

The AFL season was thrown into chaos on Saturday after Essendon Bombers player Conor McKenna tested positive to coronavirus.

Newman weighed into the debate about the season after Essendon's round three clash against Melbourne was postponed, with Bombers players ordered to self-isolate until they can be tested again this week.

'Let’s face it. The AFL 2020 comp is a farce. How can a table ladder be set, when games and players are postponed. Cancel the official season and just play on to entertain the TV audience,' the Geelong Cats great posted on Twitter on Sunday, adding the hashtag 'Chinese virus'.

It was the second time within 24 hours he had referred to coronavirus as the 'Chinese virus'.

'Due to the Chinese corona virus, Essendon and Melbourne won’t be on TV this weekend. I know how they feel. Boo boo. #ChineseVirus,' he posted on Saturday.

His latest tweet divided the internet and sparked disagreement among his followers.  'You’ve deadset lost it mate. Take a spell!,' one man commented.  Another added: 'Wrong wrong wrong... Get a life.'

'I like you Sam for calling it for what it is! ChineseVirus,' one said.

'You should take over the AFL Sam and in addition start the Sam Newman Footy Show and let loose. I miss your antics and your full frontals, let em rip again Sam,' another wrote.

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'There is so much fear in the lyrics': School children are forced to learn a chilling song about the killer coronavirus

Parents are furious after children as young as seven were forced to learn a disturbing song about 'people dying alone' from COVID-19 .

Year two students, aged between seven and eight, were taught the 'COVID-19 song' at Bogangar Public School in Tweed Heads in northern NSW for a month.

Outraged that children were learning the distressing song, Brenda Steel shared a picture of the lyric sheet to Facebook on Sunday.    

'This (the song lyrics) was pulled out of my friend's son's bag. They are learning this for assembly. YEAR 2. This is nothing but mind control to instill fear and conformity,' Ms Steel captioned the post. 

The song's morbid lyrics describe 'people dying alone, connected to family only by phone' due to social distancing restrictions. 'News was scary tonight, the future is not so bright. Invisible killer stalking its prey, message was clear, stay home today!' the lyrics read. 'We've been forced into the ring against this pandemic monster thing - officials set out to control, protecting the young and the old.'   

After building up fear, the end message of the song is for children to practice social distancing by not congregating and isolating when possible.

Mother Rachel Mathison said she was 'shocked' her year two son Kash was learning the song for a month before she found out.

'It's a very depressing song, there's so much fear in the lyrics,' Ms Mathison told The Daily Telegraph. 'I felt awful when I read it so I can only imagine how an eight-year-old would feel not only reading it, but having to memorise it.' 

'The song's made up by the school should now be sent to parents for feedback – it's actually a very sad day when you need to start monitoring the activities that go on at your local school.'

After considerable backlash from parents, Bogangar Public School Principal Muriel Kelly apologised to parents in a letter. 'It has come to our attention that the Year 2 song students have started learning is a sensitive topic,' Mrs Kelly wrote in the letter.

'The students were entering the Australian Children's Music Foundation singing and songwriting competition. 'To enable this to continue, a new song is being co-written with year 2 under the guidance of their teachers.'

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Did Australia's Black Lives Matter protests cause a spike in COVID-19 cases?

Of course not.  Most of the demonstrators were young and the virus mostly strikes the elderly

It's been more than two weeks since tens of thousands of Australians gathered for Black Lives Matter protests and the country has not experienced a major spike in COVID-19 cases linked to the events.

Despite strong warnings in the lead-up, so far only four people who attended the Melbourne protest have tested positive to coronavirus and experts say it is unlikely they spread it to other demonstrators.

"We've seen more cases, but they don't appear to be linked to the protests," Professor Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases expert at the Australian National University, told SBS News.

State and federal health authorities echoed this on Monday.

The nation's chief medical officer Brendan Murphy told reporters "we probably were lucky to have not seen major transmission at any of these events".

And Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton said the protests had not contributed to a rise in cases around Melbourne.

"I don't think the Black Lives Matter protest has contributed. We're not seeing people who've clearly acquired it there," he said.

The protests were held on 6 June and Department of Health material says the incubation period for COVID-19 can be up to 14 days.

In the lead-up to the protests, politicians and health authorities issued strong warnings and instructed people not to attend.

"Our message is very clear that the health risks of gathering in such large numbers and in close proximity are real," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Real villains in the Australian Labor Party are the ‘lunatic left’

Joe Hildebrand

In the mid-1990s the Labor Party’s greatest ever powerbroker Graham “Richo” Richardson summed up the ALP in all its beauty and terror with three simple words: Whatever it takes.

This was not just the title of his book but a way of life and the mantra of the NSW Right, the all-powerful political machine behind what was then Australia’s most powerful political party.

Richo possessed probably the sharpest and wiliest political brain Australian politics had ever seen, a mind like a streetfighter’s fist. It had no time for ethics or morality, just efficiency and impact.

But compared to the crop of so-called powerbrokers that succeeded him he might as well be cloaked in white and anointed for sainthood.

The Australian Labor Party has always been beset by factional powerplays, ruthless machine men and “colourful” identities. It is what makes it so endlessly alluring and tragic.

As Richo observes in his first sentence: “No one writes books about the Liberal Party.”

But all of these deals and characters are supposed to be in pursuit of something worthwhile. The morally impure means are supposed to be justified by the election-winning ends. Sometimes you have to break a few hearts and a few legs to get things done – or at least so the theory goes.

The problem is that Labor’s latter-day “powerbrokers” have lost sight of the ends, if indeed they were ever aware of their existence.

In NSW former MP Eddie Obeid pursued power only for self-enrichment and this week in Victoria, Adem Somyurek was sacked from the government ministry after branch stacking allegations were aired on 60 Minutes.

Neither appeared to have the remotest interest in achieving success for the party, let alone any benefit for the workers it is supposed to represent.

Meanwhile, far away on the other side of the Labor spectrum, there are activists seeking to drag the party to the radical left on issues that seem less to do with the collective good than with individual indignation and/or economically illiterate socialist fantasies. These cool young hipsters and crusty old hippies are ideologically pure but they are as far removed from the interests of mainstream working Australians as the backroom boys.

And so, not for the first time, Labor is caught in an identity crisis. It was cleaved in two by the 1950s split between communists and Catholics, it was awkwardly reunited by the Whitlam government, which tried to straddle the values of the traditional working class concerns and the progressive university class, and it found its greatest and strongest expression with the Hawke-Keating era of the 1980s and 90s that managed to roughly coalesce the interests of workers and inner-city luvvies and even — shock horror! — the business community in a 13-year golden age of government that the party had never experienced before nor has since.

The lesson of history is clear: Labor dies when it is torn between cynical corruption on the right and ideological cuckoos on the left and thrives when it is the rational, reasonable, natural party of the centre.

This is clearly what led it to lose the unlosable election last year – as far away as that now seems – when this cognitive dissonance was embodied not just by the party but in the very person of its leader.

Anyone with half an eye open to politics over the past two decades knows that Bill Shorten is far from a socialist – if anything he is a political operator whose career has been wholly unimpeded by any ideological intrusion. And so it was jarring to many to hear him suddenly sounding like one.

All the bolshy talk about “the top end of town” simply never rang true. Shorten once loved hanging out in that part of the world and the AWU’s mushroom-picking membership certainly never enjoyed the benefits of his revolutionary rage.

As one wry commentator noted, it was difficult to trust Bill Shorten when even his own face didn’t seem to believe what he was saying.

Albo, on the other hand, is authentic. Yes, he has always been a political animal but he is a sincere one. He was raised by a single mum in crazy circumstances in working-class Sydney and that earthiness shows.

It also shows in his sense of right and wrong, which goes from the very grassroots of the party to the highest levels of power. Albo cut his teeth fighting dodgy branch-stacking in inner Sydney in the 1980s and when Labor’s ugly civil war destroyed both the Rudd and Gillard governments he was arguably the only leading figure to act with unimpeachable honour.

He was loyal to Kevin Rudd to the last and offered his resignation to Julia Gillard when Rudd was defeated. Gillard nobly refused to accept it and he equally nobly refused to move against her despite still supporting Rudd.

No other top level minister managed to navigate that unprecedented moral minefield with their honour so intact. Few people value such loyalty in politics these days but I do.

And so Albo unquestionably has the integrity to lead Labor out of this quagmire but that is only the first half of the battle. The second and more vital mission is to make sure Labor regains its position as the party of working and middle Australia and is no longer held captive to hard line sectional interests.

Gillard was both tricked and forced into this after the electoral disaster that followed the Rudd assassination and never recovered from the breach of faith with the electorate. A thumping mandate for a carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2007 was turned into a carbon tax built on a fundamental deception in 2010. Little wonder it was the millstone that brought her down and what should have been a great, later-achieved political legacy instead became a cautionary tale of a fleeting palace coup.

And even after the fatal damage they’d inflicted the Greens still turned on Gillard, cutting her down in a brutal public denouncement at the National Press Club. Loyalty? You’d find more of it in a junkyard dog.

In other words, there is a place for the fanatical dead-eyed ideologues of the lunatic left and that place is in the Greens. The Labor Party should have no quarter with it and do no deals with it. Not only are these people intellectually vacuous and emotionally barren but they cannot be trusted. They are by history and definition the worst possible allies anyone could ever hope to have.

Instead the ALP needs to reach across middle Australia to once more become the party of reason and rationality. The party of common people and common sense.

This work is made all the more difficult in times of crisis but that only makes it more crucial. And it won’t be done through loud protests, it will be done through quiet conversations – in office blocks and factories and shopping centres. It will be through people feeling the party is familiar to them, an extension of their instincts, not an imposition of ideology upon them.

Elections aren’t won by graffiti tags and hashtags, they’re won in hearts. And if Labor wants to win the nation’s hearts it must reflect the heart of the nation.

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How 'Chairman Dan' Andrews' lockdown went too far: Why Victoria's overzealous restrictions have led to MORE people getting COVID-19

Leftists never seem to allow for the fact that people will seek and find ways around their rules and regulations

Victoria has been called out for its slow approach to lifting coronavirus lockdown restrictions as experts claim it could actually be fuelling a spike in cases.

The state recorded on Thursday 18 new COVID-19 cases, the biggest jump in the country this week, bringing the total to 1,780.

The wave of cases comes despite the fact Victoria was slower to lift lockdown restrictions than other states, including a delayed return to school, a stricter cap on patrons allowed in venues and greater emphasis on working from home.

Dan Andrews has been labelled 'Chairman Dan' by the state's Liberal Party Opposition for what they claim are his draconian COVID-19 lockdown measures.

Now, microbiologist Peter Collignon claimed the strict lockdown measures have done more harm than good, as people were more likely to break the rules because they were considered to be too severe, Daily Telegraph reported.

'If you overdo it, you find people rebelling,' he said.

'Having a really strict lockdown when you have a low community restriction has not given better results.

'My view is Victoria always went too far.'

Professor Collignon added the matter was made worse as Victoria had initially carried out fewer COVID-19 tests than its neighbour state New South Wales, during the early days of the virus outbreak. 

NSW tested 1,320 people per 100,000 while Victoria tested 708 per 100,000 between January and March.

The gap narrowed slightly in April when New South Wales tested 1,597 people per 100,000 while Victoria tested 1,102 per 100,000.

Although New South Wales has recorded more than 3,100 COVID-19 cases - almost double the 1,780 cases in Victoria - the state has been quicker to ease lockdown restrictions. 

All New South Wales and Queensland students were back in the classrooms by May 25.

Victoria took on a staggered approach as some grades returned sooner than others -students in prep to Year 2 and Years 11 and 12 returned to class around the same time as its neighbour state but it was until  June 9 that all grades finally returned to class.  

Workers in New South Wales have also been encouraged to return to the office, while Victorians have been told to continue to work from home.


Cafes and other outdoor venues have also been slower to reopen in Victoria. 

Victorian restaurants, cafes and hospitality businesses are only allowed 20 seated patrons per enclosed space, irrespective of their size and ability to accommodate more people based on the one person per four square metre rule.

This is far less than NSW, which has had more COVID-19 cases, but allows up to 50 per eating space - and up to 500 in one indoor venue.

Victorian state premier Daniel Andrews has been labelled 'Chairman Dan' by the state's Liberal Party Opposition for what they claim are his draconian COVID-19 lockdown measures.

Liberal member for Kew Tim Smith said: 'Daniel Andrews is sabotaging cafes and restaurants in Victoria. 'Andrews has never had a job in the private sector, he doesn't have a clue about small business.'   

Justin O'Donnell, Chairperson of Chapel Street Precinct Association, which represents more than 2200 businesses, said the 'one size fits all' capacity regulation could see 20 to 30 per cent of the area's largest employers permanently shut down.

'Our State Government's one size fits all approach does not work financially for many Chapel Street Precinct businesses, particularly many of our larger businesses that are some of our precinct’s largest employers, ' he said.

'We are asking for those Chapel Street Precinct businesses that have a larger space (square footage) for limit numbers to be based on their areas available, while maintaining the one metre by four metre rule. The issue is the number cap that has been stamped for all businesses regardless of the size.'

Victoria's Deputy Chief Health Officer Annaliese van Diemen said authorities still plan to further relax restrictions on Monday, though a lot can happen in the meantime.

'Monday is not that far away. The plan is to continue to ease those restrictions on Monday, but a lot can happen in five days,' Dr van Diemen said.

'We don't want to take any chances and if it does continue to climb, we will be taking all of that into account when we decide whether or not to ease further on Monday.'

Gyms, cinemas, indoor sports centres and concert venues will reopen on Monday, while cafes, restaurants and pubs will increase capacity from 20 people to 50.

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Mining lobby increases its virtue signalling

Australia's peak mining lobby group will release a road map on Monday to cut carbon emissions as it throws its support behind the Paris Agreement.

The Minerals Council of Australia wants to use clean energy and electric vehicles at mines across the country.

"This is a time for action, instead of vague virtue-signalling about future ambitions without the courage to outline concrete plans," chief executive Tania Constable told The Australian on Monday.

The three-year plan is expected to help Australia's major mining companies compete while calming community concerns on climate change.

Ms Constable said climate change posed risks and opportunities for the sector with sustained action needed to dampen its effects.

The federal government is currently designing its technology investment blueprint to entice funding in gas, hydro and hydrogen energy as a way to cut carbon emissions.

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Pauline Hanson claims people are faking Aboriginal heritage to get special welfare payments and calls for racial preferences to be abolished

Andrew Bolt was prosecuted for saying that

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has called for race to no longer be taken into account in welfare eligibility, as she claims people are faking Aboriginal ancestry to get access to programs reserved for indigenous people.

Sen. Hanson said programs, which include welfare payments, grants and employment preferences, were open to abuse.

'The definition across the government departments is you can self-identify as being Aboriginal,' Sen. Hanson said on Sky on Tuesday.

'You can be accepted by elders of a community, and they will actually write a letter to say they accept you as being Aboriginal. So that is not good enough.'

Challenging her views, Sky host Chris Kenny said she was returning to the 'horrible, divisive' views she expressed when launching her political career.

'This takes me back to 1996 when you were kicked out of the Liberal Party,' he said.

'There are issues here sure to be discussed, but you're saying that people are feigning Aboriginality to get access to government payments.'

Ms Hanson said that the number of those who claimed to be Aboriginal had swelled in recent years.

'There's no real definition of Aboriginality,' she claimed.  'In 1971, when we had the first census, there was approximately 116,000 [Aboriginal people] and that has now increased 459 per cent to 798,400 people identifying as Aboriginal.

'One fella wrote to me saying "I'm an Islander, I came to Australia, applied for a job couldn't get it. '"But then I applied for an Aboriginal-only job, and when they asked me for identification I told them I was from the Stolen Generation, I didn't have paperwork and gave me a job anyway".'

But Mr Kenny explained that the population was always going to increase over time, like it did for people of all racial backgrounds.

In 1971, Australia had a population of 13 million, which has swelled to 25 million in 2020 - demonstrating that population does naturally increase over time because of high birth rates as well as immigration.

Criticising her assessment that population growth meant people must be lying, Mr Kenny replied: 'People are happy and proud to proclaim their indigenous heritage....but that's a huge leap to say that people are pretending.'

She went on to explain that she believed it was unfair that non-indigenous Australians cannot access the same welfare schemes despite some being in as much need.

'Right from the very beginning, I've called for equality,' she said. 'And giving that helping hand to someone who desperately needs a helping hand should not be based on race.

'Just because of the colour of your skin, the race you are, does not mean you don't need that helping hand.

'So when I have families who are not Aboriginal living in cars, who can't get housing, or their kids can't get the education they require, I just feel that we are heading down the wrong path.

'And division is happening in our country.'

A former fish and chip shop owner, Ms Hanson was pre-selected for the Queensland seat of Oxley at the 1996 federal election for the Liberals. But she was dropped by the party after a series of controversial comments about  indigenous entitlements.

That led her to found the One Nation party, which she has since led.

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Must not disrespect George Floyd

Controversial media personality Sam Newman has spoken out about the life-changing phone call which ended his 35-year partnership with Channel 9. The former Geelong AFL great announced on Friday night he had left the network, claiming it was 'mutual decision'.

The 74-year-old has since revealed it was his podcast tirade about George Floyd, first reported by Daily Mail Australia that sparked his departure.

In the rant Newman called Floyd, whose death while in police custody sparked mass Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S. and the world, a 'piece of sh*t'.

When the call from the network came through at 3pm on Friday, Newman knew the writing was on the wall, he revealed on Saturday.

'The station rang me and said: ''We are getting a bit of blow back from some of your comments'' and I said: ''Well, I don't want to put the station in an invidious position, anymore than I have in the past'',' he told the Herald Sun.

'I said: ''I am very happy, if it will solve anything for you, very happy to withdraw forthwith from appearing on the network''.'  He said the network agreed it would be for the best.

'Whether I beat them to it or they were going to say that anyhow is irrelevant,' Newman said.

Newman made the comments about Floyd on his podcast 'You Cannot Be Serious', alongside fellow footy great Don Scott and journalist, Mike Sheahan. He insisted he was talking about Floyd's criminal record and that people should have focused on condemning police brutality. 

Speaking on his podcast 'You Cannot Be Serious', alongside former AFL great Don Scott and footy reporter Mike Sheahan, Newman teed off on Floyd. 

'George Floyd, who is a piece of sh*t incidentally,' he began before his co-hosts attempted to intervene.

'You know who George Floyd is? He has been in jail five times, he held up a pregnant black woman with a knife, he's a drug addict, he's a crack head and he's a porn star.'

Records showed Floyd had been arrested nine times for mostly drug and theft offences, and served several short prison sentences.

His most serious offence was aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, in which he and other suspects forced themselves into a woman's home and Floyd held a pistol to her abdomen. He served four years in prison for the crime.

His autopsy found high levels of fentanyl in his system and evidence of recent use of methamphetamine which the initial examiners said 'contributed to his death'.

Newman said he will continue to work on the podcast with his co-hosts saying there are still 'a hell lot' of people who agree with his views.

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Mother who criticised an event which saw drag queens read stories to children is baffled to learn she's facing legal action accused of discrimination

A mother is facing legal action accused of discrimination after criticising an event where drag queens read stories to children.

Katrina Tait shared a petition started by the Australian Christian Lobby on her Facebook opposing the Drag Queen Story Time event at a Brisbane library in January.

'I can't believe I have just had to sign a petition to try to stop drag queen story time happening at libraries in our country,' she posted.

'What happened to protecting children's innocence and letting them just be kids?'

That post has seen the mother-of-four investigated by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Boardwith after a complaint from activist Garry Burns.

She faces legal action and potential fines. 

The case caught the attention of One Nation's Mark Latham, who accused the Board of taking on a 'vexatious complaint' from 'the serial complainant Garry Burns'.

Mr Burns has previously taken actions agianst the likes of former radio braodcaster John Laws and controversial footy star Israel Folau. 

'Mr Burns has continued with his unhinged, vexatious and threatening messages in this and other matters, having been emboldened and empowered by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board over the past seven years in hundreds of accepted and investigated complaints, including scores of investigations against people who do not even live in NSW,' Mr Latham said, as reported by The Daily Telegraph.

He labelled the complaint against Ms Tait, who lives in Queensland, an 'amazing waste of money' and 'abuse of process'.

Ms Tait is unsure why action has been taken against her.  'I really felt that what I had written was nothing more than any mother would write who was concerned about this type of public event,' she said.

Mr Burns, who has won 62 of 65 cases, denied being vexatious and said 'my case law speaks for itself'.

Protests at drag queen library reading sessions took a dark turn in January, when president of the University of Queensland's Liberal National Club Wilson Gavin was found dead in a suspected suicide after leading a divisive demonstration.

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Ozophilia: The Tories’ promised land

Why the Conservative Party adores Australia

Although its members occasionally launch into “Land of Hope and Glory”, the Conservative Party lacks an official anthem. “Australia”, a song by The Kinks released in 1969, would be a good pick. It satirises the aspirations of the “ten-pound poms” who took up the offer of cut-rate passage out of stuffy post-war Britain for a new life by the beach: “No class distinction, no drug addiction… No one hesitates at life or beats around the bush in Australia.”

As Britain and Australia begin negotiations on a trade deal, the Tories are in the grip of Ozophilia. Boris Johnson, who picked up a pair of skimpy shorts and a widened vocabulary on his gap year at Geelong grammar school, holds Australia up as a model of prosperity outside the European Union. The government is creating an “Australian-style” immigration system, which will discriminate by skills and qualifications. The prime minister has even attempted to rebrand an ugly no-deal exit from the EU as an “Australian” deal.

Sir Lynton Crosby, an Australian political adviser, and his protégé Isaac Levido, have been teaching the Conservative Party how to win elections for the past decade. Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister, is a star of the Tory conference fringe. Alexander Downer, an erstwhile Australian high commissioner who advocates taking a tough line on Europe, is chairman of Policy Exchange, a think-tank close to Downing Street. Conservatism is developing an Australian accent. Mr Johnson has repainted the Tories as a classless, plain-speaking, macho outfit not unlike Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party.

Rich, stable and not led by Donald Trump, Australia is at present a more attractive template than America, which has long fascinated British politicians of both right and left. The Five Eyes intelligence partnership, which also includes New Zealand, Canada and America, is increasingly important. And Britain and Australia think ever more alike about the risks of doing business with China.

Often the most unyielding Brexiteers are the keenest on Australia. For them, restoring trade ties to the Commonwealth (which Britain mostly cut when it joined the European Economic Community in 1973) is one of the great opportunities created by Britain’s departure from the EU. Shortly after the Brexit vote in 2016, a poll found that Leavers gave priority to a trade deal with Australia; for Remainers, the country was not even among the top five. In “How We Invented Freedom and Why It Matters”, Daniel Hannan, a former mep and star of the Eurosceptic circuit, describes the “Anglosphere” as a “civilisational model” in need of rescue.

Australia’s popularity among Conservatives reflects its allure to Britons in general. No other country is regarded so favourably, according to Yougov, a pollster. That is a product of Australia’s recent history as a destination for Brits to escape their rainy island. Post-war émigrés were promised a technicolour workers’ paradise of high wages, plentiful houses and sun. Until 1966 the country followed a “white Australia” policy, which appealed to some. Australia’s modern points-based immigration system is a hit with British focus groups partly because so many participants have relatives who moved there, says Jill Rutter of British Future, a think-tank specialising in migration. “Wanted Down Under”, a popular daytime television show, features would-be emigrants exploring the Australian labour market. A recent tourism ad featuring Kylie Minogue was described as “a little bit of escapism” for Brexit-weary Brits.

But Australia is decreasingly white and no longer very British—only 5% of its inhabitants were born there. Most Australian foreign-policy hands know that the future lies in the Indo-Pacific. Trade negotiations are likely to be hard-nosed and uncomfortable for British farmers. Britain’s negotiators can certainly cut their teeth on an Australian deal, says Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former Australian trade official and director of Explaintrade, a consultancy, but the British should not imagine that any combination of deals with distant lands can substitute for EU membership

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Let’s tear it all down at the dawn of Great Awokening

EDITORIAL

HBO Max pulls Gone With the Wind from its streaming service. Cranks are burning and composting JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Winston Churchill’s statue is defaced. A staff hissy fit over an opinion article at The New York Times forces an editor to quit. The intolerable killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has lit fires for all manner of intolerances, under the banners of racial equality and identity politics. While calling for compassion and tolerance, activists intimidate and destroy. In another week in the creep of the “woke” state, where social media police drop a knee on freedoms and thoughts are cancelled as easily as a swipe and delete, ordinary people could think the world is off kilter. Never mind that we are in a cook-off between great powers, economies are shrinking and the coronavirus is sweeping the globe; someone, somewhere is threatened by an opinion that’s different, outraged by a historical relic, triggered by works of art, films, books and their creators. Control + alt + delete is a pathology.

A horrible death in Minneapolis has unleashed a scramble for moral supremacy. The fight is not waged in a robust contest of ideas but through the silencing, deplatforming, bullying and defaming of opponents. It’s a brazen attempt to overthrow what we value in liberal democracy by those who slander it as a system of minority oppression and impoverishment. An ordinary person, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, may wonder: How did we get to this miserable place? Yet liberalism has been under assault for some time, from within universities and political parties, by oligopolist tech titans and those with control of the cultural ramparts.

It’s acute in the US, as Paul Kelly detailed in Inquirer last week, with polarisation at the extremes and a hollowing out of the political centre, with its middle-class suburban stability, anchor of family life, aspiration and widely shared cultural norms. Beneath this is a crisis in liberalism. “The new age of rising anger and grievance is defined by excessive individualism and the relentless rise of subcultures, both trends advanced by technology,” Kelly argued. “These are the killing agents stalking the liberal order.” The killing of Floyd has exposed an America where trust has evaporated. As US social psychologist Jonathan Haidt observed, the battle between conservatives and progressives is a struggle between “different cultures”, with a descent into tribal identities and inter-group conflicts a threat to democracy itself.

This degradation has its roots in the progressive takeover of universities in the West. The dominant fashions of postmodernism and critical theory junked any pretence of searching for the truth or objectivity, opening the space for rampant identity politics, purity tests and the shutdown of free speech. The arrival on campus at the turn of the century of millennials, followed soon after by younger, anxious snowflake siblings, supercharged the dynamic. Some have labelled it the “Great Awokening”. These students were showing us what would happen when social media became the public square for democracy at a time of collapse of mainstream media, cyber trolling by China and Russia, and the rise of fake news. What started as a cult, if not quite a culture, of safe spaces, aversion to criticism, thought policing and primacy of identity in the social sciences has taken hold in all institutions, especially education, media, the public sector, corporations, even science, health and medicine.

Rather than being institutions of open debate, rigorous inquiry and academic freedom, universities have quickly succumbed to the tyranny of “diversity” and the perversion of scientific method. We see it here in different guises and fields, and in the legal travails of Peter Ridd at James Cook University and Drew Pavlou at the University of Queensland. As well, universities have been at the forefront of the “diversity industrial complex”, pledging “gender equity” and other fads. Diversity, in this instance, is simply identity politics with critical theory and anti-capitalist overtones, rather than a multiplicity of viewpoints. Even in times of financial crisis, universities protect these bloated, feel-good bureaucracies, which are at odds with learning, inquiry and freedom.

But the mainstream is waking up to what is going on in these citadels, with the riots, cancellations and lily-livered responses by culture controllers signalling a tipping point. The lunacy has spilled into crusades to defund police departments, tear down statues of dead “oppressors” like Cecil Rhodes and James Cook, purge platforms of comedies such as Little Britain and Chris Lilley’s satires, and push wacky “critical race theories” that the West is “structurally racist”. Apart from being boring, corrosive and limiting, this is dangerous, dodgy terrain. On Friday art photographer Bill Henson called this out as “fascist revisionism”, seeing parallels with Pol Pot’s Year Zero and the Cultural Revolution in China. He argued Mao Zedong — who said, “We must abolish the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas” — was a “precedent for these millennial tantrums”.

In the news business, the malaise is a symptom and cause of decline. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, a headline — Buildings Matter, Too — over a story by its architecture critic in the wake of damage to buildings from rioting, hastened the end for its top editor. Staff members saw it as an affront to the Black Lives Matter cause. The woke rebellion at The New York Times was over publication of a piece by Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who called for troops to be sent in to restore order in US cities, an opinion shared by millions of Americans. The journalistic bastion, whose mission is “All the news that’s fit to print”, is in schism. As columnist Bari Weiss noted, it’s a split between mature libertarians, who put an emphasis on the “all” of its motto, and young progressives fixated on narrowing the meaning of “fit”.

Imagine working for perhaps the most influential US media outlet and needing a safe space from ideas, history or reality? It’s OK because the new NYT opinion chief advised staff that anyone who finds “any piece of Opinion journalism — including headlines or social posts or photos or you name it — that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately”. Get me my blanky! As The Wall Street Journal duly noted, the resignations of two editors were another milestone in the march of identity politics and cancel culture through liberal institutions. “The agents of this politics now dominate nearly all of America’s leading cultural institutions — museums, philanthropy, Hollywood, book publishers, even late-night talk shows,” the Journal editorialised. At home, whether it’s in the coverage of US riots, local protests, trials of culture war enemies such as George Pell, or the meat, potatoes and organic greens of politics and policy, your ABC is similarly afflicted. This mulishness leads to blind spots and a lack of curiosity, with these activist-friendly news brands completely missing the forces behind, say, Brexit and the 2016 election of Donald Trump.

As we’re seeing in the rush to topple monuments, cancel culture shows a profound failure to understand history, where horror and glory are intertwined, often in the same person, and great civilisations have atrocious failings, including near universal slavery. The revival of unironic cheer squads for socialism among Gen Z, who drop “Nazi” as a weapon like grandparents dropped acid, is dispiriting. They clearly know nothing of communism and the bastard symbiosis between Nazis and Stalinists. There’s narcissism at play, for sure, but also a wilful, luxuriant ignorance of history. Anyway, why over-think a slogan, hashtag or meme? As Geoffrey Blainey argues in Inquirer the essence of studying history is to try to see the obstacles and dilemmas people of the past struggled against or evaded. “We also hope that the future will try to understand why we made blunders, and learn from failures and achievements of our era,” he writes.

Amid the tumult, this time of the Great Awokening, there are signs people are pushing back against the tide of despair and rage, of dismal forgetting and fracturing. One is in the sheer ridiculousness of these excesses. Frankly, the mainstream, as opposed to vice-chancellors and chief executives, will never give a damn about activist pieties. On many measures, the world has never been a better or safer place, although COVID-19 has shocked us out of any complacency about risks to health and harmony. Our enduring values are from the Enlightenment, where science, technology and reason prevailed. That legacy is not completely lost, nor faith in democracy. But we need running repairs, emphasising open inquiry, civil debate, the virtues of liberalism in all its manifestations, and the power of individuals to promote that reform. The zealots of the Zeitgeist — mad, bad and dangerous to know, as Lord Byron’s lover once described him — are prone to overreach and hubris. Like other despots, they can still be toppled by evidence, reality, reason and informed democratic consent.

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Enemies of the people reveal their true colours

The ferals of Seattle have done us a favour. So have Australia’s rule-flouting, anti-social-distancing protesters and their comrades, the history-hating statue vandals.

The chaos and inanity seen across liberal democracies these past weeks are the best thing that could happen to Western civilisation. Those of us who have long argued the need to nurture and protect our culture can never again be scoffed at as alarmists.

The connoisseurs of cancel culture have demonstrated how ­intellectual integrity is under constant threat. Public institutions that should strengthen our society — think of the universities and the ABC — have outed themselves as enemies of the people.

When politicians argue society would be better off without police, local governments surrender precincts and property to anarchists, and commentators justify violence and vandalism, we know we have crossed the Rubicon. Culture warriors must take the field because we can see, ever so clearly, that there are powerful forces willing to usurp democracy, abandon freedom of speech, unlearn history and undercut the rule of law.

Readers and viewers often respond to my commentary by saying, yes, we see the problems, but what can we do about it? Let me make a start. A proper response involves all aspects of society, from preschools to university, public institutions from the courts to the bureaucracies, all levels of government, artistic institutions, media and private corporations. They all need to learn, recognise and value the strengths of our sovereign, liberal, democratic model, rather than virtue signal on the back of its perceived flaws.

We learned the power of positive reinforcement for our children but decided the best way to nurture our society was to run it down. This is institutional self-harm, societal suicide — and you see it in businesses torched in New York City, police locked out of a Seattle precinct, students rejecting history, activists staining Australia with slavery, universities de-platforming speakers and online warriors attacking a brewery for using the word colonial.

Soon they will want to turn our national day into one of shame. Woops, too late.

When Chinese diplomats unfairly smear us as racist, they echo the rhetoric of our own academics and human rights commissioners who have made careers from ­inflaming identity issues. There is no critic of this country, no matter how strident, who will not be ­lauded or amplified by our own media/political class.

Teachers need to educate children about our flaws, sure, but they might want to buttress them with little morsels like how we fashioned perhaps the least imperfect democratic and federal system on the planet, or explain we are the most successful multicultural nation, or boast about how indigenous women in South Australia had the franchise in the 19th century, decades ahead of even the most well-to-do women of Europe.

Many of our most prestigious universities rejected a centre for the study of Western civilisation but queued up for Confucius Institutes that kowtow to Beijing or centres for Asian or Islamic studies. We have activists, politicians, journalists and academics campaigning against our largest ­export industry, and when UN agencies produce tendentious reports slamming our migration, border protection, climate or pandemic policies, our chattering classes damn their own country rather than defend it with facts.

Like Australian Cypriot performance artist Stelarc, who grotesquely hangs from hooks in his skin, we do terrible things to our country to showcase our own inadequacy. It is painful to watch.

Those of us who care, the silent majority, need to do the opposite; we should trumpet our strengths and strive for improvement. The dichotomy between self-loathing and self-confidence is perhaps the pivotal battleground for Western civilisation — if the miserable side wins, there will be a downfall.

Politicians must argue harder and with more courage; bureaucrats need to understand what underpins their wages; artists and writers, too, might want to ponder self-reliance; and, importantly, private enterprise needs to stand up for core business rather than sue for peace by appeasing sanctimonious activists. Complacency creates a vacuum happily filled by revolutionary progressives and their socialist, communist and ­anarchist running mates.

And this is where we need to focus on the most important cultural institution in the nation. The ABC, combined with SBS, soaks up about $1.5bn annually and should be a force for good.

But instead of fulfilling its charter, adding to the cultural and intellectual ballast of the nation, it throws our achievements overboard and chips away at our hull. Instead of being a cultivator of our national project, the public broadcaster chooses to be an enemy of the people.

Interviewing Jacinta Price this week I was dismayed (but not surprised) that despite weeks of controversy around Black Lives Matter and indigenous deaths in custody, and despite countless ABC platforms and programs claiming an interest in indigenous issues, she had not been sought out. Price is an Alice Springs councillor, a former federal Coalition candidate, a columnist, a commentator, and an advocate who heads up the indigenous program at the Centre for Independent Studies.

She is articulate and strong. The only conceivable reason for the ABC to shun her is because it does not agree with her — she ­focuses on self-reliance, personal responsibility and the need to tackle the problems within Aboriginal communities where most of the violence, disadvantage and deaths occur.

That is one small example of the ABC’s delinquency — but think of the damage. Indigenous disadvantage must be the gravest social challenge facing our country, yet the ABC ignores honesty, diversity and intelligent debate in favour of the politics of grievance and victimhood.

There is perhaps no area of ­national policy where the ABC could do more good, but it chooses to play the politics of division and self-loathing instead.

Likewise, on border protection, the ABC has never allowed itself to comprehend what the bulk of the population has always understood — that the bedrock of a successful multicultural society is confidence in the integrity of the immigration system. The national broadcaster overwhelms us with a hypercritical stance against strong borders, animated by false claims about torture by our navy and sexual assault by the people of Nauru.

On climate the ABC actively censors crucial facts about our relative achievements on emissions reductions, the financial and practical costs of those efforts and their futility when it comes to the global environment. Instead it runs endless fear campaigns blaming everything from damaged reefs and bushfires to droughts and floods on climate change.

While our emissions are cut and global totals rise, the ABC simplistically urges our country to do more. It insults our intelligence daily; and it does not occur to the broadcaster that in every election since 2007 voters have favoured parties vowing not to put a price on carbon.

The ABC campaigned against the Adani coalmine, disregarding the poor of India as well as the aspirational of central Queensland. With highly dubious journalism built around footage supplied by animal rights activists, the ABC has tried to destroy industries such as the live cattle export industry, live sheep trade, greyhound racing and horse racing.

The ABC spent a fortune and precious prime-time hours on ­Donald Trump and Russian collusion; it seems to be more interested in mulesing than female genital mutilation; and more concerned about the treatment of livestock than the plight of women in the Muslim world. Instead of embracing a plebiscite on same-sex marriage, the ABC hyperventilated about how the country was too spiteful to debate such issues.

Despite employing more than 4000 people the ABC had no one who understood why Trump might win in 2016, or why the Brits might vote for Brexit, or Scott Morrison might win the election last year. For all its focus on politics it constantly fails to pick the currents because it is detached from mainstream values and intent on tearing down the nation rather than understanding it.

One ABC television host, Julia Baird, wrote a piece last weekend justifying the destruction of statues — she perceived the mob as the enlightened rewriters of the next phase of history. The ABC is obsessed with identity but shuns diversity.

It recruits people with disabil­ities to report on disability issues; puts an indigenous person on set when it realises it has been talking race issues with white panels; and even assigns Muslim reporters to cover issues in Muslim communities. It cannot see its own tokenism.

When will it understand that people are more important than their skin colour, faith or gender? When will it listen to Martin Luther King Jr about the content of people’s character? And when will it ever foster a plurality of ideas rather than trot out the same views from different identity kits?

The second story on Wednesday night’s main Sydney ABC TV news bulletin was about a police welcome to country joke. This was not worthy of a mention, let alone a significant news report, but it was dressed up to portray our ­nation and our police as racist.

Civilisations do not survive just because they were once successful. Complacency can bring them undone through sclerosis and vulnerability to outside attack and ­internal subversion.

When we spend $1.5bn annually on public broadcasters that seek to demean and diminish us, rather than consolidate and improve us, we are asking for trouble. If the ABC cannot add substance to the national project, then we would be better off spending the money elsewhere; we should leave those who want to undermine our country to find or fund their own platform.

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Acknowledge past injustice without rewriting history

What to do with ­memorials to members of the left-intelligentsia who supported communist ­regimes led by mass murderers?

On Wednesday, ABC News and on television and the influential ABC AM radio program made much of an incident where a member of the NSW Police Force tactical operations unit had done a parody of the Aboriginal “welcome to country” ceremony.

The occasion was a rowdy Christmas party in December last year at an inner-city hotel in Sydney. No mention was made of Aborigines but a senior policeman referred to the “TOU nation” and its role as protectors (not custodians) of Australia in place of the traditional words.

It was an insensitive and untimely moment. But it took place well before the impact of the Black Lives Matter protests in the US and their take-up in Australia.

Nevertheless, NSW Police Force assistant commissioner Mark Walton has said that the TOU will undergo reassessment and training. For its part, the ABC interviewed indigenous leaders Yvonne Weldon and Larissa Behrendt, who criticised the police involved and the culture that made such behaviour possible.

Clearly the times are a-changing, as Bob Dylan wrote a half-century ago.

In November 2009, leftist comedian Julian Morrow delivered the 2009 Andrew Olle Media Lecture. This annual event is sponsored by ABC Radio 702 in Sydney. Morrow began his lecture as follows: “In this most esteemed forum of the Australian media, I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners: the Murdoch people of the Delaware incorporation.”

Laugh? The audience — comprising, among others, the ABC’s best and brightest — burst into spontaneous laughter. Moreover Morrow, who was a constant presence on the ABC at the time, was not forced by the public sector broadcaster’s management to re-education as to sensitivity.

Primarily, but not exclusively, it’s the members of the left who are now campaigning for the remaking of history. But the call is fraught with double standards.

Take the left-wing Guardian, for example. This week conservative British writer Tony Parsons initiated a lighthearted petition for the closure of what was originally called the Manchester Guardian.

The paper was established in the early 19th century by John Edward Taylor, who made his fortune from cotton production that profited from slavery. Taylor supported the south in the American civil war and depicted US Republican president Abraham Lincoln as “abhorrent”.

Asked about this by The Daily Telegraph’s Clarissa Bye, Guardian Australia’s editor Lenore Taylor went into no comment mode. She directed attention to an article written by Katharine Viner, the paper’s global editor, in November 2017. Viner however, merely referred to The Guardian’s pro-slavery past as “this period of complacency”. Yes, just complacency. But, to Taylor apparently, Viner’s rationalisation is good enough.

The evasion of Viner and Taylor serves as a reminder that in the US it was the Democratic Party that was the supporter of slavery and it was the Democrats who were involved in the creation of the racist and murderous Ku Klux Klan. Racism is not the preserve of conservative movements.

At times of widespread anger, rationality invariably exits the debate. Take the issue of the statues of founding fathers of what became Australia — the likes of James Cook, Lachlan Macquarie and Arthur Phillip. By the standard of their time, none of this trio was a racist who deserves to have his statue destroyed.

The point is, without those who created European settlement in Australia, most of us would not be here. And this includes many who identify as indigenous. In this sense, many of the invaded were also invaders.

Any indigenous Australian who has even one European ancestor would not be around today were it not for 1788 and all that. That’s why it makes sense for contemporary Australians — while acknowledging the, at times, brutal past — to also recognise what we have in common today and not dwell on past injustices.

Take the contemporary issue about slavery in Australia, for example. In the common sense of the term, slavery means the effective kidnap of people from a foreign land to make them live and work for no pay in a new land. Viewed in this light, Australia’s only involvement with slavery turned on what was termed indentured labour in the final decades of the 19th century.

Many Pacific Island labourers — mainly from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands — were forced or tricked into working on the Queensland sugar and cotton fields. It was a wicked practice that was condemned at the time by, among others, the leaders of the Christian churches and the trade union movement.

Blackbirding, as it was called, occurred before the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia. It was outlawed by the first act of the new Australian parliament and coincided with the introduction of the White Australia policy.

Put simply, the leaders of the trade union movement did not want the pay and conditions of Australian workers undercut by cheap labour from southern Asia or the South Pacific. The Pacific Island labourers were repatriated.

So the ending of the evils of indentured labour was made possible by the injustices of the White Australia policy (which prevailed until the mid-1960s). Life is complicated since human nature and utopia are incompatible.

Soon, no doubt, there will be an attempt to tear down the statues of those who supported the White Australia policy. This would include every politician, including Labor heroes such as John Curtin and Ben Chifley, up until but not including the Liberal Party’s Harold Holt.

And then there’s the problem with what to do with ­memorials to members of the left-intelligentsia who supported the communist ­regimes led by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Cambodia’s Pol Pot and so on. All were mass murderers and Stalin was a racist with respect to minorities.

Take for example, the plaque in memory of Jessie Street (1889-1970) in Sydney. Street did some good work for the poor. But she also supported Stalin’s totalitarian regime when it was at its most repressive. I would not dismantle this memorial. But, then, I’m not into double standards.

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Cost of an arts degree set to DOUBLE while students will pay less to study nursing and IT

The price of an arts degree is set to double while students with better job prospects will pay less for their education in a huge university overhaul.

Education Minister Dan Tehan will today announce school leavers will get financial incentives to choose 'job-relevant' degrees such as IT, health, teaching, science and mathematics from 2021.

Nursing qualifications will cost just $3,700 per year while IT, science and engineering degrees will drop by $2,000 per year.

Meanwhile humanities degrees are expected to jump from $6,804 per year to $14,500.

The cost of a maths or agriculture degree will fall by 61 per cent, while students in humanities will pay 113 per cent more.

Teaching and nursing degrees are expected to drop by 45 per cent, while a law degree will cost 28 per cent more. 

There will also be 39,000 new places available to prospective students next year, with Mr Tehan expected to say it will 'give students a choice'.

'Their degree will be cheaper if they choose to study in areas where there is expected growth in job opportunities,' Mr Tehan will say in a speech to the National Press Club.

The ranks of the unemployed swelled to 927,600 - the highest number since December 1993

The overhaul comes as Australia's employment rate hit a two-decade high, surging to 7.1 per cent in May.

Up to 227,700 Australians last month either lost their job or felt so bleak about their prospects they gave up looking for work following the COVID-19 shutdowns.

'We are facing the biggest employment challenge since the Great Depression,' Mr Tehan will say.

'And the biggest impact will be felt by young Australians. They are relying on us to give them the opportunity to succeed in the jobs of the future.'

New official payroll figures show 980,000 jobs were lost between mid-March, before the coronavirus shutdowns, and the end of May.

The official jobless ranks are now the highest since December 1993.

Following the grim economic news, Prime Minister Scott declared: 'This is the biggest economic challenge this country has ever faced.'

He said the figures were 'heartbreaking,' adding: 'The sad truth is these numbers are not surprising in these circumstances.'

Mr Morrison said these 'are our dark times'.  'I can see that ray of light … but we have to keep moving towards it and work harder each and every day.' 

Inner-city Sydney and Melbourne have been the worst-hit by COVID-19, with new Australian Bureau of Statistics maps showing one in ten or 10.6 per cent of jobs in these areas were lost in just 11 weeks.

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Humanities graduates earn more than those who study science and maths

But medicine and dentistry still get top spots

Undergraduates who study physiotherapy and occupational therapy have the highest level of employment (98.8 per cent) three years after finishing their bachelor degree, while creative arts graduates the lowest (89.3 per cent).

Of the study areas where the government is proposing students contribute more, law graduates (95.8 per cent) and business graduates (95.5 per cent) are employed at rates above the average. Humanities graduates are employed at a rate of 91.1 per cent (above science and maths).

The median salary for university graduates differs as well. After three years, medicine graduates earn the most ($100,000) along with dentistry graduates ($97,400).



As the graph above shows, humanities and social science graduates ($70,300) earn more than maths and science graduates ($68,900).

During a recession many people look to study while the employment market remains weak. In his speech, Mr Tehan said “we know that people turn to education during economic downturns and we also know the Costello Baby Boom generation will begin to finish school from 2023”.

In 2017 the Australian government effectively put a cap on university places, after five years of “demand driven” funding (where government essentially funded the amount of places students were enrolled in).

In practice, this means there are now limits on the number of government subsidised places at universities.

Because of demographics and previous growth in enrolments, the cap was not expected to restrict the number of people going to university until 2023. But the COVID-19 pandemic means these assumptions may no longer apply.

Normally school leavers follow a number of pathways into the workforce (including going straight to work, or studying a university of vocational education and training course first). Most young people take the university pathway.

However, these school leavers don’t start their courses at the same time.

Around 20-25 per cent of school leavers who go to university before working take a gap year. Travel restrictions and a weaker employment market may mean this year’s school leavers will bring forward their study plans.

There may also be more school leavers who choose to study at university instead of entering the workforce directly after school. For instance, 44 per cent of 18 and 19 year olds who are not studying work in retail, accommodation and food services, and trade.

These industries have suffered large job losses because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A reduction in new apprenticeships and traineeships, fewer jobs and higher youth unemployment mean school leavers may look to enrol in education and training.

Before COVID-19 hit, the number of year 12 students was only projected to go up by around 1-2 per cent in the next few years – meaning minimal demand for extra university places. However, due to COVID-19, there already has been a reported doubling of year 12 students in NSW applying for a university course compared to the same time last year.

The government believes 39,000 extra university places will be created by 2023 because of these changes. But this number is not specifically designed to meet a projected increase in demand because of the coronavirus. Therefore, it is unclear (without the government lifting the cap) whether there will be enough funded university places for school leavers whose plans have been displaced by the pandemic.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Labor prepared to streamline environmental approvals for major projects

A pleasant surprise.  The conservatives are stressing this too

Labor is willing to fast-track approvals for major projects including mines and infrastructure in a new sign the Morrison government could reach a deal in Parliament to streamline environmental safeguards.

Labor environment spokeswoman Terri Butler backed the case for speedier decisions on big investments, declaring "every delayed decision is a delayed job" when projects deserved to go ahead.

The stance raises the prospect of an agreement between Labor and the Coalition on changes to environmental law after Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week said he would fix the regime in the name of creating jobs.

But Ms Butler blamed the government for allowing delays to blow out since the Coalition took power at the 2013 election with a pledge to cut red tape.

"They've been in government for seven years. Every delayed decision is a delayed job, a delay in getting a project kicked off and in getting jobs created," she said.

"Where an approval can be given to a project, where the project meets the environmental tests, where the environment can be protected, then that's not something that should be delayed."

Mr Morrison has opened negotiations with state and territory leaders to reach bilateral agreements that cut some of the duplication between the levels of government, potentially leaving more power with the states.

The idea has triggered warnings from environmental groups but the government is promising not to weaken safeguards and is not proposing detailed changes until it receives a review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act next month.

Ms Butler said Labor wanted faster decisions where it was safe to do so, where environmental protections were upheld and where decisions were made well.

"What we don't want is reducing decision-making times through having shoddier, under-resourced decisions," she said.

"If you rush a decision and you stuff it up, then that exposes you to litigation."

Ms Butler said Labor would support bilateral agreements between federal and state governments to reach the Prime Minister's ambition of "single-touch" approvals but said this could not sacrifice federal responsibility.

"The starting point has got to be that for matters of national environmental significance there always has to be a role for the commonwealth," she said.

Labor calculates that 86 per cent of project decisions were made on time under the EPBC Act in 2012 but this fell to 60 per cent in 2019.

The Gillard government attempted a single regime but dropped the idea after intense criticism from environmental groups and concerns that it could not achieve uniform rules for all states and territories. The Abbott government also sought to create a "one stop shop" for decisions.

Mr Morrison has revived those ambitions in national cabinet in the name of creating jobs during the recovery from the coronavirus crisis, but he is yet to receive the EPBC review by former competition regulator Graeme Samuel.

Labor is open to the idea of bilateral agreements on approvals to achieve faster decisions but Ms Butler said this would depend on the details, which would have to be made public.

Ms Butler also said Labor was open to the idea of amending the EPBC Act itself but only if it improved environmental protections when the country faced an "extinction crisis".

"Some wags, who don't like any form of regulation, will try to oppose this as a contest between jobs and the environment but of course that's ridiculous, because so many of our jobs depend on the environment," she said.

"Yes, I will be very interested to see what Graeme Samuel says about improving the EPBC Act, but it's got to have the twin focus of jobs and protecting the environment."

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Lidia Thorpe thinks Victoria should be renamed over ties with Queen Victoria

An Aboriginal activist and former MP wants the state of Victoria to change its name under a new treaty with Australia's First People.

Lidia Thorpe, who represented the Greens in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 2017 and 2018, is calling for the change because the state is named after British Empire ruler Queen Victoria.

'Anything that's named after someone who's caused harm or murdered people, then I think we should take their name down,' she told The Herald Sun.  

Ms Thorpe, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the Parliament of Victoria, believes Indigenous groups and the state government should consider the idea during treaty talks. 

'It could even stay the same if that's what people want, if that's part of the negotiation outcome of a treaty where everyone gets to understand both sides,' Ms Thorpe said.

Her comments come as Black Lives Matter protests spark calls to tear down monuments linked to Australia's colonial past across the country. 

City of Melbourne councillor Nicholas Reece said monuments dedicated to Melbourne co-founder John Batman could be up for review through his hand in hunting Aborigines in Tasmania.

'There's a number of monuments and statues to John Batman in Melbourne, and I think there's a case to be made around perhaps them being given a less prominent place in our city,' he told 3AW.

A 50-year-old statue of Captain Cook in Cairns is under threat after activists petitioned for it to be torn down over the British Royal Navy captain's treatment of Aboriginal people when his ship landed in Australia.

The petition claims the statue is a 'slap in the face to all indigenous people', saying Cook's legacy was one of 'forced removal, slavery, genocide and stolen land'.

Two other statues of the explorer, both in Sydney, have already been defaced as Black Lives Matter protests shine a light on racial inequality.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told 9News he wants the statues to stay.

'I don't think ripping pages out of history books and brushing over parts of history you don't agree with or you don't like is really something the Australian public is going to embrace,' he said. 'There are good and bad parts of our history. You learn from that.'

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has also voiced his support for the statues to stay. 'You can't rewrite history, you have to learn from it,' he told Sydney radio 2GB. 'The idea that you go back to year zero of history is in my view, just quite frankly unacceptable.'

Mr Morrison has previously said he wanted to help the public to gain a better understanding of Captain Cook's historic voyage.

'That voyage is the reason Australia is what it is today and it's important we take the opportunity to reflect on it,' Mr Morrison said.

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Australia launches UK free trade agreement with a warning about protectionism

London: Trade Minister Simon Birmingham says the coronavirus-induced recession has made a new free trade deal between Australia and the United Kingdom even more important, arguing the agreement will help counter the damaging "lure" of protectionism taking hold around the globe.

Birmingham on Wednesday announced the immediate commencement of formal negotiations between Canberra and London, with the aim of striking a post-Brexit deal that will likely make it cheaper to import and export goods and easier to move between both countries for work.

The key phase had been delayed by the COVID-19 outbreak, but both sides are confident an agreement can still be struck by the end of the year.

Britain is particularly eager to secure a quick win because it would allow Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government to mount a case that leaving the European Union has allowed the country to pursue its own economic independence.

In an interview ahead of his address to the National Press Club, Birmingham said free trade should be embraced as the global economy rebuilds from the shock of the pandemic.

"The symbolism and ongoing policy benefits of nailing an ambitious agreement now is probably more important than it has been for years," he said. "We face a global environment where protectionist sentiment is causing more people to argue about the need to look inwards rather than be open, trading economies.

"I think in striking this deal and standing by our ambitions at this time, we will be providing a boost to confidence in our own countries but also an example to others to not be tempted by the lure of protectionism."

The UK’s departure from the European Union means it must seal new free trade terms with major economies - starting with the United States, Japan and Australia. The deals will help Britain's growth but struggle to cancel out the economic costs of leaving the EU.

The UK is Australia’s seventh-largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at $30.3 billion in 2018-19. Britain is also the second-largest source of total foreign investment in Australia.

There is "a mountain yet to climb" as the Australian economy tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, Scott Morrison warned.

Officials from Britain and Australia have been quietly discussing a deal for two years and are familiar with each other's bargaining positions, suggesting that finalising the agreement should not take long.

"There's no reason why negotiations between Australia and the UK should be anything other than relatively straight forward but lofty in ambition," Birmingham said.

Australia is focussed heavily on the potential benefits for services industries - Australia's largest source of employment - such as banking and insurance, legal services, transport operations, technology and the health, education and tourism sectors.

"We see the real upside in terms of services liberalisation and investment flow because they're the areas where the relationship is already very strong and have the opportunity to get even stronger," Birmingham said.

Two-way services trade between the UK and Australia is worth about $14.5 billion compared to two-way goods trade at about $12.3 billion.

Negotiators might aim to relax visa rules to encourage the movement of more highly skilled workers between both countries, and the Youth Mobility Visa - which allows young Australians to spend up to two years working in the UK - could also be tweaked.

Birmingham said the deal would also help Australian agricultural producers but played down the prospect of goods trade to the UK ever returning to levels experienced before Britain joined the European Union in 1973.

The UK was Australia's third-largest two-way goods trading partner in 1973 but is now the 12th.

"For us, this is really about giving sectors like agriculture a bit more choice to deal with market conditions as they vary from year to year," Birmingham said.

"I wouldn't expect us to quickly return to the types of volumes that we saw back in the early 1970s but the wine industry provides a shining example that with the right branded product, pitched into the market the right way, there are still big opportunities in the UK relationship just as I have no doubt there are real opportunities for high value, well branded products from the UK to shine out from Australian shelves."

The UK formally left the EU on January 31 but existing trading terms remain in place during a so-called 12-month 'transition period' that expires on December 31. Both sides are scrambling to thrash out a free trade deal to come into force once the transition period lapses but those negotiations are at risk of collapse.

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Now you can't say 'GRUBS': Politician who used the colourful language to describe young criminals is reprimanded in parliament

"Grub" is Australian slang for a low-life person

A politician has been chastised for using the word 'grubs' in parliament when referring to youth crime in his electorate.

Liberal Queensland MP Sam O'Connor was pulled up on his use of the term on Tuesday while speaking about the issue of crime in his seat of Bonney in the Gold Coast's western suburbs.

The parliament's deputy speaker Jess Pugh also said it was 'unparliamentary' to quote a father - whose 17-year-old son was allegedly stabbed to death outside a Surfers Paradise supermarket - as saying the justice system 'sucks'.  

'I want to raise the concerns of my community about the level of crime in our suburbs,' the 28-year-old MP began his speech at the state's legislative assembly.

He said he had run a community crime forum at a pub in his area attended by 200 locals - many of whom expressed their concern about the subject of youth crime.

'Stories of juveniles getting caught and getting a slap on the wrist means residents feel like there is no point even reporting a crime - it means these kids will often laugh off the possibility of ever being held to account for their actions,' he said.

'Two very special people came along that night too - Brett and Belinda Beasley. Brett and Belinda lost their 17-year-old son Jack, last December.'

Five teenagers stand charged with the murder of Jack Beasley - who was allegedly stabbed to death when another group of boys approached him outside an IGA supermarket on Surfers Paradise Boulevard.

'The young men charged with Jacko's murder have been granted bail and that shattered the Beasleys' faith in our justice system,' Mr O'Connor said.

'Brett summed it up saying, It's a kick in the guts, but that's the system. It absolutely sucks.'

'Member, that is unparliamentary language and I ask you to withdraw,' Ms Pugh responded.

The member for Bonney continued talking about Mr Beasley's parents setting up a foundation to fight back against knife crime - but was again warned about his use of language.

'They have set up a foundation to change the culture of knife crime and to reform a system that is putting no fear in these grubs,' he said.

'Member you have used unparliamentary language again,' the deputy speaker responded. 'Even if you are quoting, you cannot use unparliamentary language. I ask you to withdraw.'

Mr O'Connor told Daily Mail Australia he had asked the state parliament's Table Office for clarification about accepted parliamentary terms. 

SOURCE 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

University to admit students in 2021 even if they don't get an ATAR score this year due to coronavirus disruptions

Almost any scholastic aptitude test is a better filter for tertiary success than final exam results anyway.  Just an IQ test would exclude most of those unlikely to succeed.  Even parental income or parental attainments would make a good rough filter

A whole lot of factors can influence final High school marks so they have never been an efficient entrance criterion.  They are used because they are seen as "fair".  Good riddance to them as long as some other filter is used to keep out those unlikely to cope at university.

I suspect that they will in fact accept anyone who applies and can pay.  That would be most unfair to the less able

Another Australian university has announced it will accept year 12 students impacted by the coronavirus lockdown even if they don't obtain an ATAR score.

Swinburne University will offer an ATAR-free pathway to its most popular courses for all students that finish high school in 2020.

Students will be able to enrol in bachelor degrees such as business, science, design, arts, engineering and media, with just a recommendation letter from their high school confirming they meet the minimum English requirements.

In normal circumstances there are a limited number of places for each university course and students' ATAR scores determine whether they will secure an offer of enrolment in their chosen field of study.

Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Chris Pilgrim said although the transition from high school to university is always challenging, year 12 students have 'faced a year like no other' and deserve a shot at university even without an ATAR.

'We know that students in 2020 continue to rise to the occasion and achieve exceptional results, and that completion of VCE remains of utmost importance, Professor Pilgrim said.

'But we also understand it has been a unique year of study for many and we want to support students to continue their studies into 2021.'

Universities across Australia are experiencing a massive decline in profitability as the number of international students plummets due to COVID-19 border closures.

Foreign students make up about one third of Swinburne's total revenue and their absence this year means the university expects to see a deficit of $51million.

In 2021 and 2022, they've flagged losses totalling $101million.

Overall, the Australian university sector is bracing for a $16billion retraction over the next four years.

'We guaranteed them over $18 billion worth of funding as part of our COVID-19 package, and we'll continue to talk with the sector about increases in demand and how we best can meet those,' education minister Dan Tehan told ABC Radio National.

'We'll continue to work with the sector to make sure that this demand can be met ... Understanding, of course, that there are, huge, huge demands on the Budget at the moment, and we've got to make sure that everything we do is done in a very sustainable way.'

'We have to remember, that the international education sector provides 250,000 jobs to this nation, and we want those jobs back as we grow our economy, as we come out of the coronavirus pandemic,' Mr Tehan said.

Swinburne will begin offering university places for 2021 as early as August.

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Censoring history makes the past impossible to grasp

By Tom Switzer and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

Much of history is a story of unintended consequences. What began as a protest at the brutal treatment Minneapolis police meted out to George Floyd has turned into an international movement, hijacked by manipulative people – more often than not white – who appear for the most part to be experienced anarchists. They are seeking to impose their values and political ideas on the rest of society.

We don't doubt that those involved in the movement genuinely oppose the evils of racism. America, after all, has a toxic history, not just because slavery ended there less than 160 years ago, but because African Americans won full civil rights only in the mid-1960s. It's just that the fully justified desire to end police brutality in America can only be clouded by aggressive acts of vandalism and violence.

For too many of the present protesters, opposition is not an end in itself, but rather the means to a greater end: the reordering of a political and social settlement accepted by the vast majority of people in Western nations. For example, the anti-fascist movement Antifa makes no secret of the fact that it wants to redesign American society according to its own recipe of proto-Marxism, identity politics and anarchism.

What these protesters lack in numbers they make up for in noise and intimidation. As a result, they attract media attention.

However, it is not just the present and the future that these anarchists propose to change. Like Pol Pot, with his Year Zero, or Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution, they wish to change the past.

In university history departments across the Western world in the last decade or so, there has been a determination to "decolonise the curriculum". This is an approach that politicises the subject by imposing a Marxist slant on it. Far from paying attention to the main facts of history, it concentrates on imposing the "woke" values of a noisy, self-advertising minority on a very different past.

Without attempting to understand the dynamics of the 19th century, these demonstrators want to remove evidence of imperialism and imperialists. In Britain, the Black Lives Matter leaders also direct their guns at capitalism, and it is a short step from there to a movement for anarchy.

Context is irrelevant to these people: historical figures who had attitudes or performed deeds of which today's society rightly disapprove are to be vilified and despised, with no quarter given. That is why statues and monuments are being ripped down or defaced around the world. For these people, the purpose of history is not to seek the truth, but to deploy it as a weapon – however crude and distorted – to manipulate the present.

It doesn't matter how you dress this act up: it is the imposition of the views of a minority of agitators on the rest of society without any attempt at consultation or respect for democracy. Then again, the whole point of being an anarchist is to reject democracy and to seize any excuse to attack manifestations of the establishment – whether they are statues, other monuments or police officers.

Just look at some of the statues that have been attacked. Winston Churchill, who fought against fascism at a moment when Britain could have gone under the Nazi jackboot, had "racist" daubed on his statue in London's Parliament Square.

In Ballarat, busts of John Howard and Tony Abbott were vandalised with red paint, which suggests that monuments to anyone who failed to advocate leftist politics is now fair game.

In light of that, it is perhaps inevitable that Sydney's Captain Cook statue should become a target. Australia has certainly had distasteful episodes in its treatment of our Indigenous people, especially in the 19th century. But our nation, admirable by almost every international standard, only exists because of James Cook.

Colonisation of Australia's land mass was inevitable, and as Howard has all too often argued, British settlement was a far better outcome than other possibilities. Think of the English language, rule of law, representative democracy, a free press and a market economy. Context is everything.

Defacing the statue of Cook will make no difference whatsoever to the plight of Aboriginal Australians. How would eliminating Cook from our history reduce the rates of family violence, youth suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, welfare dependence and incarceration in Indigenous communities?

History cannot be undone; its legacies are in every society, everywhere. Censoring the past – by removing statues, or stopping the showing of Gone with the Wind or even an episode of Fawlty Towers – only makes a proper comprehension of history (and what the past was really like) impossible to grasp.

To us, much of history was horrible, but it is why Western society is as it is. Removing evidence of that history is the construction of an alternative reality. It is not reality itself.

SOURCE  






Bushfires: Fire experts downplay reduction burns

I would like to know what else is as effective

NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro wants landowners to have more access to national parks for hazard reduction burns but fire experts warn that while prescribed burning can reduce bushfire risk it is not the solution

In a late submission to the Berejiklian government's bushfire inquiry, Mr Barilaro - who is also the minister for disaster recovery - said "now is the time for significant change and action" over fires. "We cannot afford to be complacent or waste the opportunity for reform," Mr Barilaro said.

His submission, one of 1000 made to the six month state-based inquiry into the devastating bushfire season that killed 25 people, also calls for cattle grazing to be used as a fire prevention method.

Mr Barilaro's submission said hazard reduction and traditional ecological burns are "under-utilised" and burn activities should be "prioritised to a level appropriate for the risk".

"Where there is great risk due to weather, fuel load, population etc the intensity of the burn activities should increase," the submission stated.

It also says "inadequate access to public land, including wilderness areas of national parks, creates unnecessary barriers to bushfire prevention activities".

However a separate, national inquiry into the recent bushfire season, the Royal Commission into National Natural Hazard Arrangements, heard on Tuesday from three top fire analysts who said that reducing fuel loads needed careful planning to ensure hazards did not actually increase if landscapes became more fire prone.

"One of the primary motivations for changing fire behaviour by manipulating fuel is to increase the potential for active suppression of the fire," Ross Bradstock, head of the University of Wollongong's Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, said.

"So by reducing fire intensity, for example, and reducing the rate of spread [and] reducing ember propagation, you are increasing the chance that people can get in there and work safely and suppress the fire."

Professor Bradstock said there was clear evidence "the more you treat, the lower the risk" of house loss from fire, with the greatest benefit coming from burning near residential areas rather than in distant bushland. The practice, though, was more expensive given the resources needed to ensure fires remain controlled.

"If you want the most cost-effective strategy for protecting those assets or mitigating risk to those assets, then treatment in close proximity appears to be the best option at this stage based on the evidence," he said.

The royal commission heard that while hazard reduction burning was an important approach to curbing fire risks, it also needed significant funding commitments.

Kevin Tolhurst, an associate professor with the University of Melbourne's Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, said "a lot of case studies [show] that areas that have been burnt one or two years previously, have a dramatic impact on the spread of fire."

Over time, though, the bush grows back and "by the time you get to 10 or 11 years, the effect is largely gone".

David Bowman, a professor with the University of Tasmania's School of Natural Sciences, said some landscapes, particularly tall, wet forests, were not amenable to fuel-reduction efforts and yet, with the wrong weather conditions, "could burn terribly intensively".

"So prescribed burning is generally, we're talking about grassy systems, savannas, woodlands and dry sclerophyll forests, where we have this classical accumulation of fuel that can be burnt and maintained in different states and quite simple vegetation structures," Professor Bowman said.

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Margaret River's Colonial beers ripped from shelves over name controversy

A chain of bottleshops in the eastern states will no longer stock Margaret River brewery Colonial Brewing Co's beers after complaints about the brand name.

A Melbourne-based writer said it was through his advocacy that the Blackhearts & Sparrows chain of stores made the decision to no longer stock the product.

"This is small in the scheme of things, not like anyone has solved racism ...," Shaad D'Souza wrote on Instagram.

"Change is generally meaningless without structural change but I appreciate it — I have been emailing Blackhearts (a shop I like) and other booze retailers on and off about how stupid and degrading 'Colonial Beer' is.

"A lot of people call for 'civility' when advocating for things we care about but sometimes being a bratty little bitch in public really gets things done."

Blackhearts & Sparrows' owners said the decision was made in light of recent events, both in Australia and around the world. Staff and customers had also reached out with their concerns.

"While we appreciate that the people behind Colonial Brewing had no malicious intent in their choice of brand name, words have power. We’ve had discussions with Colonial in the past with concerns about their name, but with their branding remaining the same our decision was clear," they said.

"'Colonial' is still a problematic word that speaks to a broader history of colonialism and colonisation that has caused irreversible harm to the First Nations people in Australia and Indigenous populations around the world."

The team running the business decided if they could make their stores a more inclusive place for all by no longer stocking the line of beer, it was a step they were willing to take.

Colonial Brewing Co managing director Lawrence Dowd said in light of the current climate and recent events, the brewery acknowledged the significant stress and angst surrounding the Black Lives Matter community built to bring justice, healing and freedom to black people across the globe.

"We have had significant messages and comments regarding our name, we want you all to know; we hear you," he said.

"The brand and name Colonial Brewing Co was inherited in 2008 when purchased what was at the time a small microbrewery in Margaret River – it was not chosen, or intended to celebrate
colonialisation.

"The name Colonial was given to the brewery as it was one of the first to establish itself in the well-regarded wine region of Margaret River, colonialisng the wine region with one of the first craft breweries."

He said over the past six months Colonial Brewing Co had undertaken a process to review and understand the options to approach the name, considering its historical meaning.

It is now a national Australian-owned brand, with the Port Melbourne expansion giving it the ability to brew up to 7 million litres.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here