Australian Politics
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Man who strained his back picking up company car keys will receive workers compensation
How on earth is the employer responsible for this? Is the employer responsible for damage that he does to himself while he performs an everyday task? If he was acting on the instructions of his employer it would make sense. But he clearly was not. He was making a private decision about a private matter
It's all an instance of the courts assisting people to target those who have deep pockets. If some one suffers in some way, lawyers look around for someone who is even tangentially involved and puts the reponsibility on him if he has significant resources. And judges allow that.
Liability is not dermined by guilt or responsibility but by ability to pay
A tribunal found the link between his work and his journey to work meant his injury was compensable
The South Australian Employment Tribunal has ruled that Robert Thelan, a works coordinator for SA Power Networks, must be compensated for the injury.
Mr Thelan was on call at home, on September 9, 2019, when he received a text message asking him to attend a job to fix a power line.
He got dressed for work and went out to the company Ford Ranger in his driveway, and sat down in the drivers' seat.
Mr Thelan accidentally dropped the keys to the four-wheel-drive ute onto the driveway, according to the judgment of Deputy President Judge Miles Crawley.
Staying in the seat, 90 centimetres above the ground, he leaned out the driver's side door to pick them up, straining his back in the process.
He drove to the Port Pirie SA Power Networks depot and reported the injury, and was taken to hospital soon after.
He was subsequently unable to work and incurred medical expenses, but SA Power Networks rejected his compensation claim.
The company, which builds and maintains the state's electricity infrastructure, argued that the injury "did not arise from employment and employment was not a significant contributing cause of the injury".
SA Power Networks said Mr Thelan was "merely undertaking activity preparatory to undertaking duties of employment".
But he submitted that his injury did occur when he was carrying out his duties of employment, and that he therefore deserved compensation.
Under his employment agreement, he started getting paid when he began his journey to a job, and he was required to use a company vehicle to get there.
In 2019, another judge had found that there needed to be a "real and substantial connection between the employment and the accident" as well as "a real and substantial connection between the employment and the journey" for an injury to be compensable.
But in this week's case, Judge Crawley said Judge Brian Gilchrist was wrong in his decision.
"I find that it is not a prerequisite to compensability that there be a real and substantial connection between the accident and the employment," the judgement reads.
SA Power Networks declined to comment.
New nuclear treaty will be 'ineffective': DFAT
Australia says a new United Nations nuclear treaty signed by more than 80 countries will be ineffective in eliminating nuclear weapons from the world.
The Morrison government has not signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which comes into effect on Friday.
The treaty, signed by 86 countries, bans signatories from testing, developing, producing, stockpiling or threatening to use nuclear weapons.
The Australian government decided not to sign the treaty on the basis that it failed to recognise the realities of the current international security environment.
Government sources confirmed there was concern about how the treaty would affect Australia’s dealings with the United States, including intelligence sharing through the Pine Gap satellite surveillance base near Alice Springs, because it banned signatories from doing anything to assist a nuclear weapon state in its nuclear plans.
New Zealand, which is part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement with the US, Australia, Canada and Britain, has signed the treaty.
As a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed in 1968, Australia is already prohibited from manufacturing or acquiring nuclear weapons.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia shared the view of many other countries that the treaty “will be ineffective in eliminating nuclear weapons”.
“Australia is committed to the goal of a peaceful, secure world free of nuclear weapons, pursued in an effective, pragmatic and realistic way,” the DFAT spokesman said.
“Our long-held focus is on progressing nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament through a progressive, practical approach that engages all states, especially nuclear weapon states, in the process”.
Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said Labor welcomed the treaty.
"After taking into account the need to ensure an effective verification and enforcement architecture, the interaction of the treaty with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and achieve universal support, a Labor government would sign and ratify the treaty," she said.
"Australia can and should lead international efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. A Labor government would work with our allies and partners to this end and would always act consistently with the US alliance."
Helen Durham, director for international law and policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross, said all countries should sign the treaty as it was the “most explicit and clearest expression that the horrific weapons need to be banned”.
“It deals not only with their use but also with their threat of use, with their stockpiling, with their production, with their development and their testing,” she said.
“This treaty is a great opportunity to move a very stagnated, to date, agenda forward and we would encourage every state to take up this opportunity.”
Dave Sweeney, co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said the treaty was a “sign of hope for our planet”.
“The changed status of nuclear weapons means Australia faces a clear choice,” he said. “We either choose to be a responsible and lawful member of the global community or we remain silent and complicit in plans to fight illegal wars.”
Two alarming assaults on your freedom by a government that spruiks liberty
Coalition politicians who champion Donald Trump’s right to free speech have passed numerous laws making it a serious criminal offence to exercise this right in Australia. Labor parliamentarians have also helped pass laws criminalising speech that’s clearly in the public interest or simply innocuous.
When Prime Minister Scott Morrison was invited at a recent press conference to condemn far-right conspiracy theories promoted by government members such as George Christensen, he refused. He also defended another Liberal backbencher, Craig Kelly, who has undermined the government’s health message by spreading false information about COVID-19. At the time, Morrison said: “There’s such a thing as freedom of speech in this country and that will continue.”
In fact, there are severe constraints on free speech in Australia, more so than in North America or Western Europe.
The Coalition government’s 2018 security laws make it an offence to leak, receive or report a wide range of "information, of any kind, whether true or false and whether in a material form or not, and includes (a) an opinion and (b) a report of a conversation". Another clause makes it a serious crime to say anything that harms "Australia’s foreign relations, including political, military, and economic relations". Even if ministers should sometimes be circumspect, other people should be free to criticise any country without resorting to disinformation.
Jail sentences for some offences can be 15 or more years, even when little genuine harm results. There is no recognition that leaked information has never killed anyone in Australia. In contrast, secret intelligence generated by Australia and its allies has led to innocent people, including children, being killed in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Parliamentarians have endorsed the serious erosion of core liberties over recent years. The rot set in when they abjectly acquiesced in the Australian Federal Police’s raid on Parliament House in 2016, with police accessing IT systems and seizing thousands of non-classified documents to search for the source of leaks to a Labor opposition frontbencher. The leaks revealed problems with rising costs and delays in the National Broadband Network – information that should have been public.
In an earlier era, ASIO and the AFP would never tap phones in Parliament House, let alone raid an institution at the pinnacle of Australia’s democratic system. The Parliament should have found the AFP in contempt. Instead, the politicians squibbed it and the AFP was emboldened.
Last July, after a protracted investigation, the AFP recommended charging an ABC journalist Dan Oaks, co-author of the 2017 series "The Afghan Files", which exposed alleged war crimes committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. In October, the prosecutor declined to proceed. The law should clearly state the AFP should not conduct an extensive pursuit of a journalist who was unambiguously acting in the public interest.
Undeterred, the Morrison government is pushing for more powers that undermine free speech and civil liberties. Its International Production Orders bill would give ASIO and the AFP the right to order communications providers in "like-minded" countries to produce any electronic data they request and remove encryption. One downside is that the FBI and a wide range of American law-enforcement and security bodies will have reciprocal rights to access private data held by Australian people and corporations. A big stumbling block is that the US law, called the CLOUD Act, prohibits other countries accessing American data if they have weaker privacy and civil liberties protections than the US. Australia falls into that category. The protection in European countries is even stronger than in the US.
In a bold move, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton last month introduced a bill creating extraordinary new powers to affect a wide range of people, not just paedophiles as the government claims. The bill covers all crimes with a jail sentence of three or more years. This includes whistleblowers and journalists and innocent people expressing an opinion that falls foul of foreign influence laws.
If passed by our politicians, Dutton's bill will give the AFP and Australia’s Criminal Intelligence Commission the ability to covertly take over a person’s online account to gather evidence of a crime. Even more disturbingly, they will have an unprecedented “data disruption power” to add, copy, delete or alter data on the internet.
Law Council president Pauline Wright described the proposed powers as extraordinary. She said allowing a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to issue “disruption warrants” is of “particular concern” – only superior court judges should be able to make such orders.
Both these proposed new powers should be severely curtailed. No Australian government should be able to destroy individuals’ online data without a court finding them guilty of a crime. Nor should foreign security agencies be allowed to access Australians’ private information under the US Cloud Act.
Hurrah for Mark Latham
Bettina Arndt
Now, here’s some positive news for a change. Mark Latham has achieved a real breakthrough in his role heading up an inquiry into Higher Education for the NSW Parliament. The inquiry’s final report, tabled today, includes Recommendation 36 which seeks to abolish the kangaroo courts in NSW universities.
Here’s what it actually says:
That the NSW Government ensure the rule of law and the processes of the NSW criminal justice system are respected by universities in dealing with alleged sexual offences. Universities must use the NSW Police as their first and most important point of reference in dealing with any allegation of the law being broken, in all instances, for all allegations. In particular, NSW universities must respect the presumption of innocence and not create their own ‘Kangaroo Court’ and tribunal processes that circumvent the rules and standards of natural justice established at law by the NSW Parliament. The NSW Government should establish a legal protocol for universities to follow in this regard and, if universities chose to ignore or breach it, the protocol should be legislated as mandatory for NSW universities.
This is the first time an Australian government has been asked to take action on the appalling system for adjudicating sexual assault in our universities, which usurps criminal law and denies accused students their legal rights.
That’s pretty exciting and it was good to see the submission from our Campus Justice group featuring prominently in the report. (See p80 - 81, 6.47- 6.49)
Next step is the report will be considered by Cabinet – which is where you come in. We must get a heap of letters into Cabinet Ministers to give them the backbone to follow this through. See here – a draft letter you can use to urge each Cabinet Minister to ensure action on this issue, plus email addresses of the ones we want to lobby.
So that’s your first task for 2021 – just a few minutes of your time to make sure we tip the balance on this critical issue. After the End Rape on Campus activists’ efforts to destroy me last year, I’m even more determined not to let these wicked witches win. But I need your help.
Coercive control inquiry closing next week
Mark Latham has put out a plea for more submissions to the NSW Coercive Control inquiry – the deadline is Jan 29 so that is coming up very soon. The feminists are swamping the inquiry with letters/submissions urging this to be added to the armory women can use to destroy the men in their lives. And they are out in force massaging public opinion to show women are never really perpetrators.
Look at this research by Melbourne University academics suggesting women never use force without having good reason – like a controlling husband. “There is only so much a person can take. Everyone has a breaking point,” they quote one woman who ended up in a violence program after breaking a window. She admitted she was intoxicated, “using alcohol to help with the fear and anxiety.” We won’t tolerate excuses for violence from men but with women it is different, of course.
I’ve been looking at some fascinating statistics from the UK. There were 24,845 coercive control incidents recorded in England and Wales in the year ending March 2020. But that resulted in only 305 convictions, 301 men and 4 women. That ratio is hardly a surprise. The coercive control legislation is supposed to be gender-neutral but most men are reluctant to see themselves as victims and know if they complain they are unlikely to be taken seriously by police and the legal system.
So here we have this flood of complaints chewing up valuable police time but most come to nothing due to either women withdrawing their complaints or difficulty providing evidence for nebulous crimes like economic abuse, “invasive surveillance”, “gaslighting” and “denying freedom”.
We certainly don’t need this nonsense adding a huge burden on our own stretched legal system.
That’s why I need you all to do another little job for me – and for the men of NSW. Here's the link to make a submission and here is background information you can use to object to new legislation on coercive control. At minimum you can just write a few sentences, or a paragraph or two.
We’ve allowed so much of our legal system to be weaponized against men. Here’s a chance stop it getting any worse.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Saturday, January 23, 2021
Google, Facebook think they are above Australian law
The editorial below is rather over the top. No matter how big it gets, a private company has little power over a sovereign state. And in this case the media companies' response to the threatened Australian legislation is mostly bluff. There are many alternatives to social media companies and the idea that anybody has to rely on Google et al. for their news is laughable. There are more news sites around the world than you could poke a stick at. Russian news site RT in particular delights in putting up stories that are little covered in the West.
And even search is far from a monopolized function. Bing, Duckduckgo and Yahoo are well established alternatives. Anybody who finds the offering of a major media company suddenly missing will quickly learn to log on to an alternative site.
And precisely that will cause Google et al. to back down. They would be very allergic to a loss of business to their competitors
The threats and bullyboy behaviour of Google and Facebook yesterday tore away any last facade hiding the tech titans’ true nature as virtual rogue states who consider themselves immune to fair law or regulation.
Both companies’ appalling tactics will be of deep concern to thinking Australians – who are the ultimate victims.
Over several years the several million Australians who use these platforms have become increasingly suspicious and disturbed at the way tech giants wield their power without any responsibility; from allowing the publication and distribution of extremist and harmful content and the proliferation of fake news, failing to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, and manipulating audiences at the end of their algorithms.
Yesterday both companies proved once and for all they believe they should not be answerable to the rule of law.
Before a Senate hearing examining a proposed code of conduct which will for the first time make the digital behemoths pay news organisations for the content which helps drive their superprofits, Google threatened to remove its search engine from Australia in retaliation.
It’s a crucial moment in time: Australia wants to apply a simple – and small – set of reins but both tech giants want to gallop away, unfettered by regulation or scrutiny.
The threat to withdraw Google Search follows on from Google’s decision a few weeks ago to hide some Australian news sites from its search results – a move interpreted in several quarters as another retaliation against an Australian government backing the payment proposal.
Google is now the third technology company behind Apple and Microsoft to exceed a value of One Trillion US dollars, putting it ahead of a few successful western countries when compared to their wealth as measured in GDP.
Independent Senator Rex Patrick has compared the company, which in a burst of idealism once incorporated into its mission statement the phrase, “don’t be evil,’’ to the oppressive leadership of China.
“Google’s behaviour is straight out of the Chinese Communist Party’s playbook, and it’s not appreciated,” Senator Patrick said.
Senator Patrick, who along with five other upper house colleagues was examining the merits of the proposed legislation, said he and his Senate colleagues took a dim view of Google’s threat to remove itself from the Australian market.
Senator Patrick, quite rightly, pointed out that Google was threatening to withdraw its service from the market place just as countries around the world were examining ways of sustaining public interest journalism.
Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, also a member of the Senate committee at yesterday’s hearing, warned of the dangers of big companies amassing the sort of global power which he compared to the oil companies of the last century.
“Their power and market reach is such that there needs to be intervention to redress the imbalance.’’
Google and fellow travellers in the tech world such as Facebook have grown enormously rich in the past two decades partly because they can harvest data valuable to the world of marketing.
But what began in 1996 as a Stanford University research project has become such a corporate juggernaut that it is beginning to become apparent that Google believes it can dictate terms, and decide the rules, of a game which it believes it controls totally.
Executive director for Reset Australia, Chris Cooper, gave a wonderfully illustrative quote on how the company’s corporate maturity may not have kept pace with its financial growth.
“Today’s egregious threats show Google has the body of a behemoth, but the brain of brat,’’ he said. “When a private corporation tries to use its monopoly power to threaten and bully a sovereign nation, it’s a sure-fire sign that regulation is long overdue.’’
While slightly more restrained, Prime Minister Scott Morrison had a blunt view of the latest development, clearly indicating he would not be intimidated by Google’s threat to limit the nation’s access to Google Search.
“Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia,” the Prime Minister said. “And people who want to work with that in Australia – you’re very welcome. But we don’t respond to threats.”
This case has implications that go far beyond our shores. It is a true test of whether these global tech titans can be brought to heal or whether they are above the law and unanswerable to the people of Australia.
Coronavirus Qld: Hi-tech quarantine solution
The State Government is pushing ahead with controversial plans to establish quarantine camps in central Queensland and Toowoomba.
Dr Anseline, together with epidemiologists Professor Marylouise McLaws and Dr Henning Liljeqvist, is lobbying for a similar national scheme.
They said recent evidence suggested hotels were far from optimal for quarantine, as the virus could easily spread among guests and workers.
Dr Anseline said locking people up in hotel rooms for 14 days – often without fresh air or exercise – was having a huge impact on mental health.
He said while state and federal governments had done a great job thus far containing the virus, changes were needed as the pandemic dragged on.
“Hotels have been a stopgap solution, but we have to look at the medium and longer term because even with a vaccine, this virus could be with us for years,” he said.
“There are still tens of thousands of Australians waiting to return home, as well as overseas students and tourists hoping to travel to Australia again in the not-too-distant future once travel bans are lifted.
“We need to come up with safer, novel and more effective solutions, and we believe that new technology and processes, which can be overlaid on existing hotel quarantine protocols, are the answer.”
Under Hemisphere’s plan, overseas arrivals would be rapid-tested on arrival in Australia, with those testing positive housed in separate quarantine accommodation.
Those testing negative would be quarantined in single-level cabins with their own kitchens, outside CBDs but close to airports and hospitals. “This would reduce worker and guest transmission but also significantly improve mental health outcomes,” Dr Anseline said.
The plan also involves guests and staff wearing new hi-tech wristband trackers to monitor movements and vital signs. The wristbands could also be used for home quarantine, Dr Anseline said.
Quarantine facilities would have COVID marshals and on-site sewage testing.
Dr Anseline said masks should be compulsory on all flights and quarantine facility staff needed to be given special COVID-19 safety training.
Relocating to Queensland? Get in line, Sunshine state builders record four-fold rise in new home enquiries
A building company says the level of inquiry for new homes in south-east Queensland is "phenomenal," with a mass domestic migration apparently underway to the Sunshine State.
Metricon Queensland general manager Luke Fryer said new homes sales were up 80 per cent and the level of enquiry in local property had been extraordinary.
"The major relocation companies are quoting 400 per cent increases in quotes to people who are wanting pricing to relocate from Sydney and Melbourne up to the Gold Coast and Greater Brisbane," Mr Fryer said.
Interstate migration and government stimulus measures have helped boost new homes sales and building approvals across south-east Queensland, he said.
"We are seeing a significant increase in domestic migration.
"The level of enquiry and level of people committing to building a new home on the Gold Coast and south-east Queensland has really been phenomenal."
"I'd suggest some 80 to 90 per cent up year on year.
"It's been an extraordinarily positive result and response from Australians who do have certainty around their employment."
While trades and product supply pressures were currently manageable, Mr Fryer said they could become an issue later this year when more building approvals will be processed.
"Certainly trades will come under pressure in 2021, because there's only so many plumbers, so many brickies, so many electricians to go around at the moment."
'Absolutely the biggest boom'
Darryl Meehan director of Q Coast Homes said demand for renovations was unprecedented and unlike anything he had experienced in over 40 years. "The renovation sector is doing even better than the new home market, especially on the Gold Coast," Mr Meehan said. "I think that has just gone in absolutely the biggest boom … its [ever] been."
Mr Meehan said 2021 was looking very positive and the Federal Government's HomeBuilder and JobKeeper programs had saved the industry. "Every builder on the Gold Coast that was able to survive through the pandemic has had an increase in volume, I would say somewhere between 20 to 25 per cent."
Mr Meehan said interstate migration was putting pressure on property prices for existing homes too. "Any existing house that comes onto the market, it's not on the market for very long."
HomeBuilder figures show the grants have been most popular in Victoria, Queensland then NSW.
Mr Fryer said real estate agents have been inundated with eager buyers and many existing homes are being sold before they even hit the market. "They've got a book of buyers that have given them very clear instructions that if they find a property that fits their criteria to purchase it."
"Properties are selling before their listed for sale," Mr Fryer said. "In the olden days that would be sight unseen but now with modern technology with virtual walk throughs and the like, they're able to view the property digitally and they're purchasing."
Violent women are mad but violent men are bad
Bettina Arndt
Our captured media really showed their bias in the reporting on the tragedy at Tullamarine, in Melbourne where the bodies of a mother and three children were discovered last Thursday. The ABC led the charge, with their thinly veiled account which highlighted the fact that the father of the children was “assisting police with inquiries”. Using the classic journalist’s fake nod to fair reporting, the story mentioned that there was no history of family violence but then featured prominently a list of family violence support services bang in the middle of the article.
All the media stories waxed lyrical about this caring, protective mother who adored her children, and wasted few words on the devastated father who had called the police to report the tragedy. One report in The Australian suggested the father had been led away in handcuffs by police, which wasn’t true. He was apparently never really a suspect and certainly was not charged.
By the next day, police had released their conclusion that this was a murder/suicide perpetrated by the mother. Boy, did that take the wind out of the sails of these prejudiced reporters. Within two days the story was forgotten with only the occasional piece appearing, often featuring heart-wrenching letters written by schoolfriends of the little children. No one seems to want to write about this devoted father who has seen his entire family wiped out. No investigatory reporting on how and why this happened.
Now that we know the mother was the perpetrator, how come we see absolutely no reporting about exactly how these poor children were killed? If the father had been responsible, the media would have delighted in exposing grisly details of why crime scene cleaners were required at the house.
Naturally, most of the media isn’t interested in highlighting the fact that women are just as likely as men to commit filicide, killing their own children. Currently mothers are actually more likely to do so than fathers in Australia. But have a look at this telling piece from Denise Buiten, a sociology and social justice lecturer from Notre Dame – “Men and women kill their children in roughly equal numbers and we need to understand why.”
The answer is pretty simple, according to Buiten. When it comes to perpetrators of filicide, the women are mad and the men bad.
It’s all part of our biased justice system where the gender of the perpetrator influences the outcome from the moment a crime is reported.
Email: newsletter@bettinaarndt.com.au
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Friday, January 22, 2021
Would-be Canberra car salesman wins $46k after tribunal finds he was discriminated against over road rage offences
A person with convictions for road rage is fit to be a car salesman?
A Canberra man has successfully sued the ACT Government for more than $46,000 after he was refused a car sales licence because of two prior road rage convictions.
Last week the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT) found the ACT Commissioner for Fair Trading had discriminated against the man when they rejected his application for a motor vehicles sales licence in 2018.
The would-be car salesman successfully argued two "irrelevant" criminal convictions were used as basis to reject his application, which he said led to financial and emotional distress.
Road rage incidents
ACAT heard the man had applied for the licence in 2018, but two separate criminal convictions for property damage and assault showed up during a police record check.
The tribunal heard first offence took place in 2016 when the man hurled a small sledgehammer through the front windscreen of another driver's vehicle during a road rage incident.
The second conviction was from an incident two months later where the man spat in another driver's face during a dispute, resulting in a good behaviour bond.
The man told government staff in an email that he suffered from a permanent back injury and had suffered a deterioration in his mental and physical health in the lead up to the incidents.
"Metaphorically speaking, the overloaded ship had set sail and had now entered a storm en route to its destination," the man wrote. "As I reflect on the events and how I handled them, my only option at the time was to hang on to what I could as I embarked through this storm."
The man also claimed he had been "blinded by ego and pride" and had since addressed his behaviour. "I am no longer the invincible young brave man I used to be," he told Access Canberra staff.
"But the hardest battle for me has been to not allow the negative notions of the subsequent criminal records imposed on me to affect me mentally. "I have been a law-abiding citizen … Now I am labelled a criminal and have this stigma attached for the rest of my life."
ACAT heard after discovering the man's criminal record, the Commissioner for Fair Trading refused the man's application due to the seriousness and "nature" of his previous offending.
Senior ACAT Member Heidi Robinson found that amounted to discrimination, and awarded the man $46,766 in damages.
"The intention of the amendments to the Discrimination Act are clear: a person's criminal conviction should not ‘hound' them for their whole life, keep them out of employment, or cause them to be subject to discrimination," she wrote in her decision.
"I am satisfied that the applicant was treated unfavourably because of his irrelevant criminal record."
The government was also warned not to reject any of the man's future applications based on his criminal convictions.
Thousands of tutors register to help kids who fell behind due to coronavirus in Victorian schools
There's growing excitement about the start of the school year as Victorian public school students prepare to return to the classroom on January 28.
Some things will return to normal, like interschool sports and choir practise.
Other things will look very different as schools across the state hire thousands of tutors to help kids who fell behind during remote learning.
Overall, parents, teachers and students are feeling pretty "optimistic" about the new school year, said David Howes, the deputy secretary of Victoria's Department of Education and Training.
Teaching staff were exhausted at the end of the 2020 school year but after a well-deserved break they are "re-energized" and ready to go, he said.
"There's a fair bit of excitement around. There's a lot of enthusiasm just for getting back to school productions, school sport, school concerts — all of those things that were so very difficult last year," he said.
"People are pretty optimistic."
'Huge' interest surrounding tutors in schools program
The Victorian Government is spending $250 million to recruit and deploy more than 4,100 tutors at state schools to help students who fell behind last year.
Catholic and independent schools are getting similar funding.
It is the single biggest boost to individual learning in the state's history.
It is estimated about 20 per cent of children will need help to catch up.
"Schools are going through the process of selecting tutors to match their programs, and particular students," he said.
Mr Howes said there was also a desire to capitalise on the use of digital technology to enhance student learning.
"There's a lot of schools looking forward to taking that learning and putting it into place without the necessity of the pandemic to drive that," he said.
"I think overall, people are reenergised, certainly refreshed."
Teachers will get a mental health checklist to identify any student who needs additional help.
"That checklist is important — teachers are not professional psychologists and we don't want them to be," Mr Howes said.
"What we do want [teachers] to do is look out for any warning signs that students might need that extra support and then they can be referred on."
Mr Howes said it was clear some kids suffered from anxiety last year and schools reported a large number of young people were unsettled when they returned to school.
"There was this pattern that kids were really excited to first come back and then they found they had to adjust … to being around a large group of people," he said.
"Then there were some kids who really thrived and learned at their own pace."
When classes resume, school life will look a lot more normal, Mr Howes said.
Masks will be recommended for secondary school students, but they won't be mandatory.
Things like choir and interschool sport are now back on the agenda.
"Kids can participate in full contact sport and non-contact sports," he said.
"Woodwind instruments — that there was a lot of interest in — will be back.
"We're asking schools to be cautious around that. So make sure there's adequate ventilation, limiting the number of students who might participate at any one time."
Drinking fountains will be working again and parents will be allowed back on to the school grounds — something particularly important for prep students.
"Parents and carers on that really important day when they send their children off to school," Mr Howes said.
Parents will have to register their details if they are at the school for more than 15 minutes in case contact tracing is necessary at a later date.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-21/tutors-start-of-the-school-year-in-victoria/13075100
Virtue signalling does nothing to make lives of indigenous Australians saferMoves to change the date of Australia Day, or ignore it altogether at the cricket, is pointless, divisive — and won’t help indigenous Australians, writes Aboriginal Jacinta Price
Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon has declared Zali Steggall will only be a one-term MP after her comments surrounding a minute silence on Australia Day clearly “does not reflect the views” of her electorate.
Right now the lives and wellbeing of all Australians depends on a unified nation, and Australia Day is more important than ever.
In Abraham Lincoln’s words: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” And with the threat of COVID — coupled with the economic damage threatened by China — we have to come together in order to stand strong. To do otherwise would be a deliberate act of narcissistic self sabotage.
Arguing to change the date of Australia Day is arguing to establish yet another superficial and ineffective act of symbolism that will change nothing for the plight of marginalised indigenous Australians.
And virtue-signalling sporting associations like Cricket Australia, who claim to want to make next Tuesday’s Big Bash “culturally safe” by not mentioning Australia Day — perhaps in the spirit of “don’t mention the war” — are doing nothing to make the lives of actual indigenous Australians safer.
Would changing the date have prevented the recent tragic death of an Alice Springs woman, allegedly murdered in a brutal domestic violence attack? Will a different date halt the continued bashings and child sexual assault in our remote communities? Will it stamp out the destructive alcoholism and welfare dependency?
No. It’s pointless window dressing. A curtain that simply works to conceal the real problems indigenous Australian face by giving a superficial matter centre stage under a bright spotlight; while in the wings, women and children continue to be molested, battered and killed.
Nor will making such a change appease the aggrieved and offended minority whose goal is seemingly not to solve our most critical problems or attain unity, but to spark and maintain division.
Along with the continued planning for Australia Day protests, we have the recent example of the rabid campaign to force the makers of Coon Cheese to change its name — which ignored the brand’s innocuous origins acknowledging the cheese process pioneer Edward Coon.
And were the complainants happy when the name was changed to the equally inoffensive ‘Cheer Cheese’? No … they then whinged that indigenous people should have been consulted about the new name. And Sky News has reported the main activist in the case plans to sue for $2.1 million in damages.
This proof that bending to the will of the ‘offenderati’ never appeases them is likely to be repeated if we capitulate to their campaign against our national day.
But the arguments they put forward don’t stack up, in any case.
They claim we Aboriginal Australians, or ‘First Nations People’ as termed by the elitist politically correct, are not recognised enough within our nation.
If you are Aboriginal or of Aboriginal descent you are told by activists and self-flagellating sycophants that we are victims of our colonial past and continued imaginary white oppression. This false depiction removes our agency and fails to recognise our individual abilities as human beings.
It also plays ignorant to the forms of recognition of Aboriginal Australia that Australians participate in whether wilfully or forcefully year in, year out.
There are 11 official days of the year and one entire week all dedicated to recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Not to mention every single event, program, sporting game, theatre performance, school assembly, Council meeting, conference and email salutation where there is a ‘Welcome to Country’ or ‘Recognition of the Land in which we are so very privileged to be gathered on’.
To suggest Australians don’t do enough to recognise Aboriginal Australia is to suggest the sun rises in the west: it simply is not true.
If they can get beyond being perpetually offended, they may instead find they could invest their energy into supporting practical outcomes to overcome family violence, child sexual abuse, youth suicide, alcohol and substance abuse in our indigenous communities and providing genuine help for those who suffer real world disadvantage and trauma.
It would also be wise not to invest in an action that is capable of spreading COVID to some of the most health-vulnerable members of our community — Aboriginal Australians.
Our nation provides the right for us to celebrate Australia Day how we see fit.
No one has the right to suggest on your behalf what you do on this day and why you do it. No one has the right to attempt to gaslight you into believing you are celebrating genocide if you eat some lamb or sport an Aussie stick-on tattoo on January 26.
It is everybody’s choice as to how they choose to recognise what Australia Day means to them.
By all means choose how you wish but do not impose your choices on others; and don’t put others lives at risk.
I will be celebrating Australia Day with my Warlpiri, Celtic, Mauritian, Asian and African family. I urge everybody else to come together with the people most important to them, and celebrate what Australia is and help foster what it can be.
Daniel Andrews opposes Australia Day honour for tennis legend Margaret Court because of her LGBTIQ views
More harassment of Christians
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says he does not support former tennis great Margaret Court being recognised with an Australia Day honour.
In recent years, Ms Court has come under fire for her views on the LGBTQI community.
"I do not support that. I do not believe that she has views that accord with the vast majority of people across our nation, that see people particularly from the LGBTQI community as equal and deserving as dignity, respect and safety," Mr Andrews said.
The Order of Australia has four levels, of which Ms Court's new status as a "Companion" is highest.
Ms Court won 24 Grand Slam singles titles and was the first female Australian to win Wimbledon in 1963.
The 78-year-old, who is now a reverend in Perth, wrote an open letter in 2017 saying she would boycott Qantas over its support of same-sex marriage. "I teach what the Bible says about things and you get persecuted for it," she said in an ABC interview last year.
In 2013, Ms Court wrote a letter to the editor in a newspaper lamenting the birth of Australian tennis player Casey Dellacqua's child in a same-sex relationship. "It is with sadness that I see that this baby has seemingly been deprived of a father," Ms Court wrote.
Her honour was supposed to be revealed next week, but news of the decision broke this morning.
Mr Andrews said he would prefer not to be giving oxygen to Ms Court's views. "But I don't give out those gongs, that's not a matter for me, that's for others," he said.
"You might want to speak to them about why they think those views, which are disgraceful, hurtful and cost lives, should be honoured."
One of the main stadiums at Melbourne Park — home of the Australian Open — is named in her honour. Mr Andrews said the name of Margaret Court Arena was a matter for other people
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Thursday, January 21, 2021
The Left-led destruction of standards in the schools
We will MAKE you equal, they implicitly say -- even if we can do that only by dumbing everybody down to a low common denominator. Their "all men are equal" gospel is truly pernicious but is part of their general disconnect from reality.
Reality is unimportant to them. They see only what they want to see. And what they want is to see everyone as miserable as they are. As Gore Vidal once said: "Whenever a Friend Succeeds, a Little Something in Me Dies"
In my university teaching career I saw several instances of the sort of thing mentioned below. I was in a very Leftist Sociology department and I saw student marks upgraded on all sorts of flimsy grounds
A friend of mine walked away from his job as a teacher recently, turning his back on career spanning over three decades.
He told me he was leaving because he was tired of being forced to give good marks to indifferent students, as there existed an unwritten but understood direction that no one was allowed to fail.
He said he was tired of coaching sporting teams to take part in competitions in which there was no scoring, so that everybody was a winner and no one suffered the ignominy of coming second.
If everyone passes and nobody loses, then the students are happy and parents are happy and the headmasters and education bureaucrats are happy.
Little Johnny never acquires the discipline inherent in study, but sails through high school without raising a sweat because the system says he must. He also thinks he’s great at sport as his team never lost.
His lack of commitment to learning doesn’t matter, because as long as he can sign his name and apply for a student HECS loan, universities will welcome him into their folds.
He spends three lovely years watching online lectures in between playing video games, going to the beach and hanging out with his mates.
His tutors give his barely comprehensible assignments a pass mark because they know that their superiors expect everyone to pass.
Tutors know that if they fail students, particularly those from overseas, they will be accused of having a bias against a particular group.
It doesn’t matter that these groups have poor written and spoken English language skills, and engage in wholesale cheating.
It’s much better to give everyone a tick and move on, rather than risk a career-threatening confrontation.
Three years and $30,000-plus later, Johnny emerges from the sun-drenched halls of academia with a degree and zero skills.
He has been in the education system for 15 years and learnt absolutely nothing because no one forced him to pursue goals and strive for excellence.
He eventually gets a job in retail or a call centre, and looks at the degree hanging on his bedroom wall and gets angry because he feels the system has failed him.
What happened to that high-paying job to which his degree entitles him?
He’s right, of course. The system did fail him. It thought it was doing him a favour by protecting him from the emotional damage he might suffer if he was told that if what he was offering up was his best, it wasn’t good enough and he would have to go back and give it another shot.
He never learnt that there are winners and losers in life, and that the difference between the two is that winners try harder.
We know the system is failing these kids because it’s evident in the studies that compare the performance of our students with those in other countries.
This evidence is incontrovertible, but no one seems particularly interested in changing anything.
In 2019 almost one in every 10 student teacher university graduates failed an online literacy and numeracy test.
How difficult is the test? Here are two sample questions.
* This year a teacher spent $383.30 on stationery. Last year the teacher spent $257.85 on stationery. How much more did the teacher spend this year than last year?
* A surf shop has surfboards for hire at $15 an hour up to a maximum of $60 a day. What is the cost of hiring a surfboard from 9.30am to midday?
Challenging? I don’t think so.
Surely a system that produces high school graduates who then progress through a degree at the completion of which they are unable to perform simple intellectual tasks is flawed.
They then go on to teach others and the process is perpetuated.
Many teachers do great work and it could be, I imagine, the most demanding of professions but that is not the point.
The concern is that far too many of our kids are completing their high school education ill-equipped to make their way in the world, and then drift into meaningless degree courses that qualify them for Centrelink payments and little else.
In a few weeks, thousands of Queensland children will part company with their tearful mothers and pass through the school gates for the first time.
We want these kids – all of our kids – to be winners in every sense of the word, but it falls to parents to instil the understanding that success is hard won because a system that seeks to please all and disappoint none will never do it.
Scott Morrison attacks Cricket Australia for decision to drop term 'Australia Day' from BBL promotions
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has criticised Cricket Australia (CA) for its decision to avoid using the term "Australia Day" in Big Bash League promotions.
Three Big Bash clubs will wear Indigenous jerseys and Cricket Australia decided to drop the term in a bid to normalise conversations over the date's history.
The move to abandon references to "Australia Day" prompted a rebuke from Mr Morrison, who is touring a refinery in Queensland on Thursday.
"I think a bit more focus on cricket, and a bit less focus on politics would be my message to Cricket Australia," he told radio station 4RO. "I think that's pretty ordinary but that's what they're putting on their press releases."
He said Cricket Australia should listen to any backlash from fans opposed to the decision and reverse it.
The Sydney Thunder, Perth Scorchers and Melbourne Renegades will all wear their special strips in matches on January 23, 25 and 26.
A barefoot circle, Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony will also take place before some games, with CA leading the initiative backed by the clubs.
The moves form part of several recommendations by the sport's National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cricket Advisory Committee, with three games to be played on January 26.
"They thought it was pretty important to not remove cultural elements we have celebrated all season on a day like that," Cricket Australia's diversity and inclusion manager Adam Cassidy told AAP.
"Obviously it's a bit of a challenge when you have matches being played on a day of mourning for a lot of people."
CA is well aware the issue is a sensitive one and is desperate for it not to prove divisive, but for it to encourage open discussion.
"When you are a business operating under a Stretch Reconciliation Action Plan, it does come with responsibility and accountability to lead on key reconciliation issues," Cassidy said.
"In an ideal world what we're trying to do is create a safe and inclusive environment for everybody."
Indigenous jerseys have been worn across different sports for some time, but it is the first time they will be used over the Australia Day period.
The move has been firmly approved by the game's players, with Sydney Thunder's Brendan Doggett championing the cause through his own Indigenous history.
"I hate conflict. So I am of the opinion if we can all merge forward together that's ideal," Doggett said. "The way we're going to do that is by starting conversations and talking about it and acknowledging the history of what's happened. "If we wear the kit and hopefully even start one conversation then that is a win."
The Thunder have long referred to the public holiday as the January long weekend and have been a leader in multicultural initiatives through the Thunder Cup.
Doggett, meanwhile, has grown increasingly aware of his Indigenous history in recent years, after only discovering his mother's family's links to the Stolen Generation around five years ago.
That, too, has changed his perspective on the day, which he says is now far different to when he was a carpenter in Queensland.
And it's with that perspective he believes it is possible to become more united, and that wearing the Indigenous jerseys could help prompt that.
"For me now it's more of a day to just recognise and acknowledge the history and everything that has happened. And do it respectfully," he said. "It makes me want to make sure that everyone's moving forward together.
"It's a pretty dark past but if we can move forward, together and united then in my opinion that's the best result."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-21/big-bash-league-indigenous-strips-australia-day/13077082
Medevac detainees freed from Melbourne hotel after years in immigration detentionAt least 26 refugees and asylum seekers have been freed from immigration detention in Melbourne, where some have spent more than a year detained in inner-city hotels, advocacy groups say.
The men were allowed to leave the Park Hotel and the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) on Wednesday, according to Ian Rintoul from Refugee Action Coalition.
Legal representatives for some of the men who were still detained said they had been told they would be freed on Thursday.
"We've got 100 cases where people are still in detention, and the minister has indicated that he's considering granting the visas in a number of other cases," Daniel Taylor from Sydney West Legal said.
Most of the men had cases pending in the court, where lawyers planned to argue they were being illegally detained.
The men who are being released were brought to Australia under the now-repealed medical evacuation law — widely referred to as the Medevac law — which allowed refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention to enter the country for urgent medical treatment.
Ramsi Sabanayagan, a Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka, learned that he will be freed on Thursday after eight years in immigration detention. "Tomorrow morning, I am released," the 29-year-old refugee said. "I can't believe, really, I can't explain our happiness. Really, very exciting."
Mr Sabanayagan said he arrived on Christmas Island in July 2013 and was later transferred to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea where he spent more than six years in Australian immigration detention.
In November 2019, he was transferred to Australia under Medevac to receive treatment for mental health issues and severe headaches caused by shrapnel wounds.
Mr Sabanayagan said in recent months he had made multiple requests to immigration officials to be returned to PNG but didn't receive a response.
Police cars lined the streets outside the Park Hotel in Melbourne on Wednesday as officials prepared to move the men to the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) to be processed.
Images showed at least one man waving to supporters as police escorted him to a waiting bus. Within hours, some walked out of the gates of MITA, according to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC).
"The entire refugee movement is feeling a great sense of relief that people are finally being released," Jana Favero from the ASRC said. "People's mental and physical health rapidly deteriorated over the past year, especially with the pandemic."
The Home Affairs department has long maintained the men's stay in Australia would be temporary, and that as soon as their treatment was over they would be returned to PNG, Nauru or another country that was willing to take them.
Before being transferred to Australia for medical treatment, the men had spent years in offshore immigration processing centres on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Under Australia's immigration policy, asylum seekers who arrive by boat are told they will never be settled in the country.
The Medevac legislation passed in February 2019 was short-lived, as the Government opposed it and repealed it in December 2019, months after the federal election.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton claimed the legislation offered a "back door" into the country that refugees would exploit to stay here.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Home Affairs Department said Australia's policy remained unchanged. "No-one who attempts illegal maritime travel to Australia will be permanently settled here," the spokesperson said.
The Home Affairs spokesperson did not confirm what visas the men had been given, but said final departure bridging visas give holders the right to temporarily reside in Australia while they finalise their arrangements to leave.
Mr Taylor from Sydney West Legal said all of his clients who had been in detention had asked to return to PNG or Nauru, but their requests were ignored.
Hundreds of people were transferred to Australia under the Medevac legislation. Most were held in Alternatives Places of Detention (APODs), namely hotels in Melbourne and Brisbane while they received medical treatment.
Some of the refugees said they did not receive adequate medical care and were confined to their rooms for 23 hours a day.
Fishermen reject Greenie claims Australians are 'eating endangered sharks' under the guise of flake
Queensland shark fishers have rejected an Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) campaign encouraging Australians to stop eating flake.
The Give Flake a Break campaign urges people to choose sustainable seafood alternatives, as there is no legal obligation to disclose what species of shark is being sold, or where it has come from.
Margaret Stevenson, who owns a fishing business with her husband Graham at Burnett Heads in Queensland, says there should not be any concern as fishers are already heavily regulated.
"We've got a total allowable catch that restricts how much we can catch," she said. "We have to call in and give out how many sharks we've caught, even if it's only one, and that's every trip. "We can't leave the boat ramp for an hour after we've called in so boating and fisheries patrol can inspect our catch.
"We have to identify each species of shark that we catch in our logbooks and report on it and we have to do that on the phone as well — we have to give them the numbers before we get in."
Senior sharks campaigner for the Australian Marine Conservation Society Leo Guida argued the seafood labelling system was "broken".
"Fishers do record what species they catch, and there are fishers out there who do a fantastic job and provide us with sustainable alternatives," he said.
"But by the time it gets to the plate, somewhere along the way, the information as to what species — particularly with sharks — that people are eating gets lost or is very difficult to find.
"We know this because there are quirks in our national environment laws that allow the harvest and sale of endangered fish. "These include the endangered school shark and the critically endangered scalloped hammerhead."
Mrs Stevenson said what AMCS was implying was simply wrong. "It just can't happen with these claims that we're selling product that we shouldn't be — that it's threatening an endangered species," she said.
"If they [boating and fisheries patrol] come and inspect our catch and we have something that we shouldn't have or there's an error in what we've told them over the phone — we're liable to get fined. "Our whole livelihood, our whole business then is on the line."
A handful of species are listed as threatened under Australia's Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, including the grey nurse shark and the speartooth shark, which banned them from being fished in Australian waters.
But while the scalloped hammerhead shark is classed as globally critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, it is legally allowed to be caught in limited numbers in Australia under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
In Queensland, recreational fishers are prohibited from catching scalloped, smooth and great hammerhead sharks, but commercial fishers are not.
Graham Stevenson explained that they were not catching endangered species of shark. "The species of sharks that we catch here primarily are spinner sharks, which are a school type shark — they're in the thousands out here," he said.
"We get black-tipped sharks and weasel sharks — weasel sharks only ever eat octopus, they're very similar to the southern gummy. "At different times of year we do get a lot of hammerhead sharks — they're very prolific in this area."
Mrs Stevenson said she was frustrated that there did not seem to be anything they could do about it. "We're guilty until we're proven innocent and we've got no mechanism available to us prove our innocence as an industry," she said.
"The only thing I can say to consumers is to put the onus back onto these greenie organisations and demand the evidence, demand the proof of what these claims are.
"A few years ago, we had a really good market for shark and they [AMCS] came out and did a big campaign and because of it that whole business that used to buy our shark went bust."
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Is Novavax the dark horse of Australia's COVID-19 vaccines?
Experts say early clinical data on Australia's third COVID-19 vaccine, Novavax, is promising enough to suggest it could play a significant role in the nation's pandemic strategy.
The federal government has signed up to buy 51 million doses of Novavax’s two-shot vaccine and those involved in trials say it is expected to be made available as early as the middle of this year, in addition to COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca that will be available in coming weeks.
Australia's Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly on Tuesday confirmed the nation's drug regulator was in direct talks with European and Norwegian authorities after several elderly people died after receiving Pfizer's vaccine. It is not yet clear if there was a link between the deaths and the vaccine.
While large phase three studies for the Novavax vaccine are ongoing, early data released in December suggests it is likely to offer strong protection against COVID-19. There are even hints it may do something other vaccines have struggled with: stop the coronavirus' spread.
"The phase one data was really convincing. The immune responses were really strong – up there in the realms we saw with the mRNA vaccines. That level of immune response tends to be a bit of a correlation ... those are the vaccines that have ended up giving very strong efficacy," said University of Sydney professor of medical microbiology James Triccas.
Paul Young, co-leader of the University of Queensland's aborted COVID-19 vaccine project, agreed the data "does look promising".
"The preclinical animal data showed that viral titres in the upper respiratory tract were lower in vaccinated animals, suggesting but not proving that infectivity and transmission may be lower," he said.
Paul Griffin, medical director of the Nucleus Network – contracted by Novavax to conduct clinical trials in Australia – said if all went well, the vaccine could be available for use by May or June.
"I think this is one, just based on where it’s up to timing wise, that has fallen off the radar in this country. There has been a lot of attention on Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna," he said. "It is looking very safe and effective."
It is difficult to directly compare phase one trial results, but data reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in December suggested Novavax’s vaccine produced an immune response similar to vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
"They were able to induce higher [antibody] titres than recovered COVID patients. And that’s a really good sign. When we were seeing results like that, it did highlight Novavax is one to watch, and a really promising formulation," said Kylie Quinn, an RMIT vaccine designer.
Griffith University virologist Adam Taylor said the trials showed the vaccine was safe and generated good antibody responses. "Certainly, this is a useful candidate."
Other vaccines have already shown themselves capable of inducing strong immune responses and protecting people from the virus.
What makes Novavax different is a hint in the early data it could not just protect people but also stop the virus spreading. Stopping or reducing transmission of the virus is valuable to protect people who cannot or will not get vaccinated. At this stage, it remains unclear if any of the vaccines available can prevent transmission.
In a small study, Novavax’s vaccine effectively prevented COVID-19 growing in the noses of monkeys. Results in animals often do not translate to humans. But other vaccines have struggled to repeat the achievement; they effectively protect the lungs but still allow the virus to grow in the nose, where it could spread.
While other vaccines quickly moved from phase one to phase three trials and then approval, Novavax's progress has been slower. The company started its key phase three trial on December 28 after several delays due to issues scaling up vaccine manufacture.
Novavax has had a chequered history. Two failed vaccine trials in recent years led to the company’s stock plunging; it sacked 100 employees and closed two manufacturing plants. In its near-30-year history it is yet to develop an approved vaccine.
Nevertheless, the company is aiming to produce 2 billion doses of vaccine this year.
Novavax’s jab combines traditional and cutting-edge technology. Inside each vial are copies of COVID-19’s spike protein – the cellular harpoon it uses to attach to and enter our cells – and a dose of the company’s adjuvant. The adjuvant triggers the immune system, which recognises the spike protein and builds antibodies and immune cells capable of defending the body against the virus.
"It’s more of a traditional vaccine – the same type we have used for other vaccines we have in use," said Professor Triccas.
Novavax produces the spike proteins using moth cells, and then studs them on a nanoparticle, creating a shape that looks much like the spike-covered virus. In theory, immune cells should be much more likely to spot and attack these nanoparticles, as they look just like little viruses.
The company used similar technology in a flu vaccine it is developing. In a late-stage clinical trial, it produced much stronger antibody results than a current flu vaccine.
Addressing the deaths in Norway, Chief Medical Officer Professor Kelly said on Tuesday: "In a normal week, 400 people do pass away in their aged care facilities.
"In general terms, they were very old, they were frail, some of them were basically terminally ill."
It is not yet clear if the deaths are linked to the vaccine, and Australian experts have already said they are no reason to slow the vaccine's rollout.
Professor Kelly said it was possible Australia's drugs regulator would advise against giving the very elderly and frail the vaccine.
"That is a very tricky balance. We know elderly people, as is the case in Norway, elderly people in aged care facilities are towards the end of their life. We know from our own data from the Australian pandemic, of the 900 people who have died, they have mostly been in the very elderly group, they are of the greatest risk of severe infection," he said.
"The mortality rate is very high once you get over 80 or 90 if you get COVID-19. It's that risk balance equation which the [regulator] will need to do around which people should be excluded from the vaccine."
Barley finds a home in Mexico after China ban
Despite the trade tensions with China and the massive tariff imposed on barley exports, there are some good signs for grain growers on international markets.
West Australian grain handler CBH Group has sent a shipment of malt barley to Mexico, which is a first for the Australian grains industry.
The shipment of 35,000 tonnes of malting barley, used to make beer, was loaded at the port of Albany in WA and sent to Mexico.
CBH Chief Marketing and Trading Officer Jason Craig said other shipments could follow. "While it is early days, this shipment to Mexico signals a potential new market for malting barley. However, this will need to be developed over time."
There is an opening in Saudi Arabia, which is the second-largest barley market globally, importing approximately 7 million tonnes each year.
"Australian feed barley has become very price competitive compared to barley from alternative origins, such as Russia and the Ukraine that have dominated exports to the country for the past few years," Mr Craig said.
There is good news for Australian growers in the feed sector as well. Australian feed barley exports to Thailand and Vietnam are expected to double in 2020-21, according to CBH.
WA produced a big crop of barley, but growers were alarmed late last year when China, their biggest market, imposed a massive 80 per cent tariff. That dispute is heading to the World Trade Authority for resolution.
World wheat prices are also set to rise after Russia imposed a second levy on exports and cancelled some contracts for Russian wheat.
Commonwealth Bank Commodity Analyst Tobin Gorey said it was all being driven by domestic politics. "The Russian President doesn't want to see food prices in Russia continue to increase and he wants to keep more grain for local use."
Russia is the world's biggest exporter, so this latest action is expected to push world prices up.
"There will be a reduction in the amount of Russian wheat sold into the Middle East and South East Asia and it will pave the way for Australian grain sales," Mr Gorey said.
World wheat stocks have been running down over the last few years and Australian farmers on the eastern seaboard have had a big harvest.
It is a serendipitous moment, according to Tobin Gorey. "It's the best [harvest] for probably 10 years, and the world needs our wheat, so the prices have started to go up."
After three years of drought and the worry over the China trade dispute, it is good news for growers.
"We are still recovering from a three-year drought so having a bumper harvest and good prices are exactly what Australian farmers in Qld, SA and NSW were hoping for," Mr Gorey said
Government slams proposal to hold a minute's silence on Australia Day as the idea to recognise Indigenous Aussies will only 'increase division'
The Morrison government has slammed a proposal to hold a minute's silence on Australia Day.
Independent MP Zali Steggall wanted the silence to recognise the suffering of Aboriginal communities during and after colonisation.
But new citizenship minister Alex Hawke said the idea will only increase divisions. 'It is disappointing to see an ill-considered proposal from the Member for Warringah that plays negative politics with our history and which can only perpetuate divisions between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians,' he said in a statement.
'The truth is Australia Day unifies us all, because of our shared history – the good and the bad.
'Regardless of the failings in our history, Australia has become one of the most free, egalitarian, safe and diverse societies today, and our shared commitment to continuing this journey together is what matters most.'
Ms Steggall - who was an Olympic skiier before turning to politics - wrote to mayors in her Sydney electorate asking they observe a minute's silence on January 26.
The day celebrates the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of British ships into Port Jackson in 1788.
Ms Steggall has written to the Australian Local Government Association along with the mayors of the North Sydney, Mosman and Northern Beaches councils.
But Alice Springs councillor and Warlpiri woman Jacinta Price condemned Ms Steggall for 'painting Indigenous Australians as helpless victims'. 'Zali needs to learn a bit more about our country's history, instead of using shallow, PC, woke-ish ways of dealing with these particular issues,' she told Jim Wilson on 2GB. She said Australia Day is a time for unity with people who have travelled across the world to become Australian.
Last week, Scott Morrison's government warned councils not to use the Covid as an excuse to cancel Australia Day celebrations to appease Invasion Day activists who want the date changed.
Local councils are required to hold citizenship ceremonies on January 26 and could have their citizenship powers revoked by the government if they fail to comply.
While most councils are still holding citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, some have announced they have called them off in either solidarity with Indigenous people or the Covid pandemic.
Minister Hawke said local councils should not divide Australians over the contested date after a tough year marred by the pandemic.
'For any council seeking to play politics with Australia Day citizenship ceremonies, our message is simple - don't,' he told The Australian. 'Australians need this sort of negative bickering less than ever at this challenging time.
'We know the vast majority of councils across the country will do the right thing when determining whether to hold online or physical citizenship ceremonies.'
Inner-city Melbourne councils Yarra and Darebin will not be holding citizenship ceremonies on January 26.
The two councils voted to stop referring to January 26 as Australia Day in 2017, which resulted in their citizenship powers being stripped.
Yarra and Darebin councils will also hold events commemorating Indigenous people in place of Australia Day events.
According to a recent survey of 1,038 people by think tank Institute of Public Affairs, two thirds believed Australia Day should be celebrated on January 26.
Only 11 per cent were in favour of the date being changed.
About 72 per cent of people interviewed thought the day was an authentic way of of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to celebrate being Australian.
Aboriginal man slams the 'noisy minority' fighting to change the date of Australia Day - and says the event 'doesn't exclude indigenous people'
A proud Aboriginal man has slammed calls to change the date of Australia Day and says January 26 doesn't exclude indigenous people.
Indigenous affairs commentator and Australian Catholic University researcher Dr Anthony Dillon weighed into the debate this week when he said the date neither includes nor excludes people.
Dr Dillon has since publicly lashed the 'noisy minority' who want the date changed.
January 26 marks the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet into Port Jackson in 1788.
'For most of them it's a celebration… but you've got this minority who are trying to make out that the white man is yet again guilty and that it's a terrible day for Aboriginal people,' Dr Dillion told Sydney radio station 2GB on Wednesday.
'It does nothing for reconciliation, it does nothing for racial relations. It's ridiculous.'
He doesn't believe changing the date would change the situation. 'How would it?' he asked.
'The problems affecting Aboriginal people aren't going to be fixed by changing the date.'
He says it isn't the date that includes or excludes but individuals themselves.
'We are told that celebrating Australia Day on 26 January is not inclusive. Well actually, dates neither include nor exclude people. Individuals do that themselves. If you want to exclude yourself from celebrating Australia Day, go for it,' Dr Dillon tweeted earlier in the week.
He plans to celebrate next Tuesday's public holiday with friends. 'It will be a happy day for me but I guess ultimately, I will reflect on what a great country we live in,' he said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Tuesday, January 19, 2021
University humanities students sold short on riches of their heritage
Gender and race are legitimate themes for study, analysis and debate in universities’ humanities courses. Disciplines such as history, literature and social science should encourage students to take a broad view of the world and think independently, grounded in a deep knowledge of their subjects. Humanities courses overrun by identity politics and ideology, however, fail to provide the liberal arts education students are entitled to expect. To the contrary, such courses narrow students’ understandings of the world around them. The problem fuels divisions within the general community, evidenced by perennial controversies around Australia Day and “cancel culture’’ campaigns for the removal of public statues associated with European settlement. The trend is then perpetuated in schools, as a high proportion of humanities graduates become classroom teachers.
An audit of Bachelor of Arts subjects at 10 top universities last year by the Institute of Public Affairs found 572 subjects, or 44 per cent of 1181 subjects analysed, were concerned with identity politics. A further 380 featured critical race theory, a US-born framework for studying race and power. It coined such concepts as “white privilege” and “structural racism”. About 25 per cent of subjects focused specifically on gender issues. Such themes were dominant in humanities courses at Macquarie (70 per cent), and Melbourne (61 per cent) and Sydney universities (59 per cent). The dominance of such themes — which should be fair game for critical scrutiny — short-changes many students. Only a quarter of English literature subjects involved the study of great works comprising the Western canon, Rebecca Urban reported. And just 23 per cent of history subjects covered Western civilisation, from Ancient Greece to the modern world. Only 10 per cent of political science subjects surveyed taught students about the history of ideas and political thought. And freedom, a concept highly valued in democracies and traditionally a key tenet of the study of the social sciences, was featured in just 10 per cent of a possible 524 subjects.
IPA director Bella d’Abrera, who carried out the review, said academics obsessed with identity politics had turned the humanities into a political project. Subjects had become “homogenised” to the extent it was “almost impossible to differentiate’’ between sociology and English literature; philosophy and sociology. Regardless of the subject, the same worldview, of identity politics and critical race theory, was repeated through all disciplines. For example, one course on the history of sport examines the meaning of sport across “class, racial, gender and ethnic groups”, including “the rise of female, LGBT and transgender athletes”. The major problem is not that or any other particular subject — it is the preponderance of the trend, and the exclusion of much of the riches of history, literature, philosophy and political science. For many taxpayers, the trend underlines the sense of the Morrison government’s lifting fees for humanities courses in a bid to steer young people to nursing, maths, science and engineering courses, which offer greater job prospects.
It also shows that the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, which sponsors great books-style courses at several universities, and Campion College, a private liberal arts university in Sydney, are filling a major gap in the nation’s education. Campion College president Paul Morrissey is correct when he says disciplines such as literature and history should be studied for their own sake, using a wide range of interpretative lenses.
Activists wield ‘I’m uncomfortable’ like a sword
The guidelines for movie casting recommend that the director begins with some searching questions. For example: “Can this role be played by a woman, someone who is trans or gender non-conforming, someone with a disability, a person of colour, an older person, etc?”
The National Australia Day Council’s “Reflect. Respect. Celebrate” campaign advertisement has followed the advice up to and including “etc”. And why not? As the ad says, “we are all part of the story”.
Sadly, however, this well-intentioned call for national unity has been pulled from the schedule at Nova Cinema in Carlton, Melbourne. Like everything that gets cancelled these days, the action took place on Twitter.
“Hey @cinemanova,” wrote a person by the name of unaustralian native © @MerikiKO. “I love coming to your cinema to switch off and watch a good film at a great venue.
However, we were made uncomfortable by the Australia Day ads that you have screening. This is highly inappropriate for mob to have to pay to sit through. I hope you reconsider.”
Cinema Nova replied apologetically, claiming that “reduced in-office hours” meant the ad “may not have been vetted with our usual care”.
We would never intentionally make our valued customers feel uncomfortable, so we will remove the associated propaganda from further sessions. We hope to welcome you back soon
That’s all it takes these days to get something that makes you “uncomfortable” pulled from the cinema. Just a single, ungrammatical Twitter message complaining that a 60-second ad is “inappropriate for mob to have to pay for”.
It would be just as futile to ask what makes a Cinema Nova audience uncomfortable. Presumably not the currently screening R18+ movie Possessor, which portrays a man stabbing himself in his head before killing another bloke with a meat cleaver. Yet an innocuous message from a federal government-funded body is declared “propaganda” and pulled down.
The ease with which a single slacktivist from the fruitcake fringe can force commercial businesses to take the knee is one thing. The damage this does to the cause of reconciliation is another.
The National Australia Day Council is damned if it leaves Aboriginal faces out of its ad and damned if it puts them in. Popular support for an Aboriginal voice to parliament begins to crumble when the demands for inclusiveness reach the level of the absurd.
If Saputo Dairy thought it could settle the argument about Coon Cheese by simply changing the name, it was mistaken. The cheese is named after its inventor, Edward William Coon, not the common name of the butterfly Astictopterus jama or the Maine coon, an energetic breed of domestic cat that tends to pounce unexpectedly.
Saputo, however, was not prepared for an etymological fight, even with a lone activist who claims that a walk down the supermarket dairy aisle hurt his feelings. Saputo announced last week that the product will henceforth be known as Cheer.
“We trust our valued consumers and those who are new to our products will embrace this new name,” Saputo’s commercial director, Cam Bruce, cheerfully announced, bringing a new dimension to the word cheesy.
“Cheer Cheese … brings that extra little bit of happiness. Whether it’s a sliced snack, a part of your family’s dinner time favourite or a melty midnight toastie (sic).”
Anti-Coon campaigner Stephen Hagan was not satisfied. “I would have liked it to be something a bit more inclusive of First Nations people,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald. “We weren’t even consulted on names. We would like to have contributed.”
This is not what Indigenous leaders had in mind when they signed the Uluru Statement from the Heart in May 2017. They wanted a structural mechanism to give Indigenous Australians input on policy and legislation, not fatuous campaigns on the nomenclature of dairy products.
The Morrison government has committed to a constitutional referendum to put just such a mechanism in place. Like all such questions, it should be considered on its merits, unclouded by distractions.
The biggest risk to the “yes” vote will not come from conservatives. It comes from the activist fringe dwellers who have co-opted Indigenous interests as one of a suite of causes with which to attack the status quo.
These play-fights over symbolic issues devalue the seriousness of purpose behind the Uluru Statement in the public eye. These people are as unserious as the social media platforms they frequent. They could choose to campaign to end the welfare and alcohol dependency that is endemic in many rural and remote communities. They could take a stand against the vandalism and violence symbolised by the boarded-up shops of towns such as Walgett and Brewarrina in NSW.
These, however, are not things you can fix on Twitter. Perhaps an Indigenous voice to parliament can.
The yes campaign must filter out calls to make Australia Day a Day of Mourning, flying flags at half-mast or dressing in black, as Greens MP Lidia Thorpe proposed in The Age last week. A yes vote will only succeed if Australians can be convinced that this is a permanent step towards a better future, not just a stick of shame with which to beat the rest of us over the head.
The Greens are already saying the proposed Voice to Parliament does not go far enough. They are seeking a legally binding treaty under which the elected parliament would be bound to adopt Indigenous advice.
This kind of crazy talk will all but guarantee the referendum’s failure. It comes from people more concerned about projecting their own virtue than winning a popular vote. It is why supporters of the Voice must take on the radical voices in favour of a yes vote, not just those arguing no.
Aboriginal man attacking woman had to be pulled off her by police
A man has been tasered and charged with attempted murder by police after he allegedly attacked a woman in a rural Queensland town overnight.
A call for help was made after 9pm on Monday in relation to a domestic violence disturbance at a home in Aurukun, in far north Queensland.
According to police, the 37-year-old man was allegedly attacking a 51-year-old woman, who is known to him.
A police issued statement said the man had to be tasered upon the arrival of police.
“Officers arrived to find a man allegedly attacking a woman known to him and consequently deployed an electronic conductive device before he was taken into custody,” the statement said.
The woman suffered serious non-life-threatening injuries, while the man was taken to the watch house where he was refused police bail.
He will appear at the Cairns Magistrates Court later today on charges of attempted murder offence (domestic violence) and assault occasioning bodily harm while armed with an offensive instrument.
No slowdown in scary climate prophecy phenomenon
The beginning of every year often triggers the release of doomsday predictions. You know the sort of thing: there will be no polar bears in 50 years, parts of the world will be uninhabitable within two decades, the world will run out of oil/gas/water very soon.
If you bother to tune into the ABC, you will regularly learn about these various catastrophic prophecies because they are very popular with the program producers. Add in a bit of scary music and the picture of a forlorn koala or parched landscape and the story writes itself. It has become almost a vocation for some jumped-up types who think their opinions should be taken seriously because of their accomplishments or positions in completely unrelated fields. Think Al Gore, Prince Charles, Greta Thunberg, Tim Flannery and plenty of others.
I was reminded of this when I came across a recent article with the juvenile title “Underestimating the challenges of avoiding a ghastly future”. Oh no, I thought, not a ghastly future. And who should be among the list of authors but Paul and Anne Ehrlich, who are still going strong with wild, over-the-top predictions. Who can forget The Population Bomb, published in 1968?
According to these authors, hundreds of millions of people were going to die in the 70s because of overpopulation and the world’s inability to feed everyone. But here’s the bit I really love about this book: Paul Ehrlich still thinks he was largely correct but his timing was just a bit askew. In 1986, Ehrlich doubled down by predicting that in 2020, one billion people would die as a result of climate change. That’s right: one billion.
Let me be clear: I’m not recommending you read about avoiding a ghastly future. Yes, overpopulation is still a big issue for the authors, even though all the demographic predictions point to falling world population around the middle of the century.
There is an unproven assertion in the article that COVID-19 and climate change are somehow linked because of increased interaction between different animal species because of changing climate patterns. That sounds scary.
Of course, Ehrlich doesn’t have a mortgage on barking out doomsday scenarios. Who can forget Al Gore, who has become extremely wealthy undertaking his climate change evangelism?
During the first decade of this century — his film, An Inconvenient Truth, was released in 2006 — he repeatedly declared there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013 or 2014. As it turned out, there was actually more ice than ever in those years.
And we can’t go past our own Professor Tim Flannery, a mammologist by training, predicting in 2007 that cities such as Sydney and Brisbane would run out of water because of climate change and that “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems”. This, sadly, was not an accurate prediction for the citizens of Brisbane, who endured a ghastly flood in 2011. And, while drought remains a perennial feature of Australia’s climate, most parts of eastern Australia have had above-average rainfalls in the past year and the landscape is green and lush.
I’m not exactly sure why we should pay any attention at all to Prince Charles and his climate change fanaticism. But in 2019, he stated: “I am firmly of the view the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.” The good thing is the 18 months is up and we can all move on without his opinions.
Embarrassing though these false predictions might be, they are perhaps slightly less excruciating than those made by actual experts — OK, so-called experts — in the field. Take this forecast in 2000 by Dr David Viner, senior research scientist at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia:
“Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event.” (This is the same unit that was the subject of an email scandal in 2010.) Sadly for Viner, but happily for the rest of us, winter snowfalls are very much with us. The UK is enduring a particularly cold winter with snow in various parts of the country. So neither rare nor exciting, it would seem.
And let’s not forget the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declaring in 2007 the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, only to then retract this projection. But it wasn’t a problem according to the IPCC because “in drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly”. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened as a result of the error and readers of the larger report were encouraged to accept the rest of the material as gospel.
The cannier experts in the field tend to project much further out than the next few years or decades because the chances of being tripped up by curious commentators checking for inaccuracies are very slim. Take the UK Met Office, a zealous climate change agency much like our Bureau of Meteorology. Dr Lizzie Kendon, a science fellow at the Met Office, has predicted by 2080 the hottest days in the UK will peak above 40C and the number of cold days will decrease. “We’ll still have cold days, but features like lying snow will become an increasing rarity …” Luckily for Lizzie, 2080 is in the very distant future.
Gratuitous and unverified projections are not science. They are not based on the testing of refutable hypotheses and generally reflect personal biases of the person making deliberately alarming forecasts to promote their preferred set of actions. The media should either ignore them or treat them with the scepticism they deserve There’s plenty of good science around but also plenty of rubbish. Claims that the end is nigh should be treated with the same level of respect given to the speakers in Hyde Park Corner.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
