Australian Politics
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Grace Tame hits out at Scott Morrison for his thankfulness about not having disabled chidren
Like Ms Tame, I am a high-functioning autistic so perhaps I can make a useful comment here.
The big problem in this "discussion" is overgeneralization. Leftists are very prone to overgeneralizations so that is no great surprise. Morrison's words were taken as having greater generality than he undoubtedly intended. He was construed as saying that all non-normal children were not a blessing -- which is not what he said at all.
And the "replies" to him were equally over-generalizing. Shorten's claim that ALL chidren are a blessing is plainly false. Fervent Christians may sometimes be able to convince themselves of that but many severely disabled children are undoubtedly a burden to their parents.
In the case of high functioning autism, the child may indeed be blessed in some ways -- e.g. be good at music, some schoolwork etc -- but even there handicaps arise -- principally some difficulty in understanding other people's feelings, which is a considerable social handicap.
So the generalizations extracted by the Left from Morrison's statement of a particular case are the sort of nonsense that we unfortunately have to expect of them
Tame's view that high functioning autistics can more easily spot a phony was interesting however. I was not previously aware of such a generality but, on reflection, it is true in my case that I have never remotely been taken in by any fraudster. I get scam phone-calls almost every day but I usually hang up on them within seconds. So Ms Tame may have a point in some cases
Grace Tame has taken a swipe at Scott Morrison after the Prime Minister said he and wife Jenny were 'blessed' their children were born without disabilities.
Mr Morrison made the comments - which have since been heavily criticised by Labor MPs and left wingers on Twitter - during the first election debate on Wednesday night.
The Prime Minister was asked about removing funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme by Katherine, a mother of autistic four-year-old boy Ethan, who said she'd heard stories about families losing funding under the scheme.
'I have a four-year-old autistic son, we are grateful to receive funding under the NDIS. I have heard many stories from people having their funding cut under the current government, including my own,' Katherine said during the debate.
'I've been told that to give my son the best future, I should vote Labor. Can you tell me what the future of the NDIS looks like under your government?'
Mr Morrison replied: 'Jenny and I have been blessed. We've got two children who haven't had to go through that.
'So parents of children who were disabled - I can only try and understand your aspirations for those children. And then I think that is the beauty of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.'
Following the debate, Ms Tame, who has high-functioning autism, shared a photo of her and Mr Morrison from their frosty encounter at this year's Australian of the Year morning tea at The Lodge and didn't hold back in her caption.
'Autism blesses those of us who have it with the ability to spot fakes from a mile off,' she wrote.
She wasn't the only one unhappy with his comments about children with autism on Wednesday night.
Labor frontbenchers Senators Kristina Keneally and Katy Gallagher led the criticism, with Ms Gallagher pointing to the example of her own autistic child.
'I am 'blessed' to have a child with autism. She teaches me things every day. Our lives are enriched by her,' she wrote.
Ms Keneally retweeted her post, sharing her apparent outrage at Mr Morrison's choice of words.
'Unbelievably, Scott Morrison just said he was 'blessed' not to have a child with a disability. Parents of children with a disability are blessed too,' she wrote.
Bill Shorten, Labor's NDIS spokesman also weighed in, saying: 'ScoMo says he is 'blessed' to have two non disabled children. Every child is a blessing.
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Another defence equipment blunder
One of the most important tasks for the winner of the May 21 election will be to find a way to end Australia’s foolish commitment to spend around $US46bn on nine frigates, which modern warfare has turned into potential death ships.
The ALP’s shadow defence minister Richard Marles has had the courage to say the frigate contract will be reviewed.
Peter Dutton no doubt understands the potential disaster, but so far remains mute.
The war in Ukraine has confirmed what the US has been telling Australia for some time – future wars will be missile to missile games.
The devastation of the Russian tanks, the sinking of the Moskva and the Russians missile attacks on Ukraine are illustrations of modern warfare.
Neither Marles nor Dutton will find reversing the frigate disaster easy because, almost certainly, it was indirectly part of the UK free trade negotiations.
Key defence decisions are too important to be mixed up in trade negotiations.
In explaining the technology behind the frigate disaster, I am indebted to the material assembled by a former chief engineer to the fleet commander of the Royal Australian Navy, Paul Greenfield, and Jon Stanford, a former senior official in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, writing in the Strategist publication.
When defence officials began the task of replacing our Anzac-class ships, the initial specification was for a lightly-armed warship that specialised in anti-submarine warfare.
The British use surface ships to track submarines in the Atlantic and to protect their ballistic missile submarines.
By contrast in the Indo-Pacific, the US uses aircraft and submarines as the main assets to track hostile submarines.
Americans say deploying a frigate to engage a submarine is like sending a chicken to kill a fox.
Yet we chose a ship being designed for the British way, ordering a Type 26 Hunter class vessel believing it could be adapted it to our oceans by adding the American Aegis, missile systems and Australia’s CEA radars.
These systems had never before been integrated on a British warship, so not surprisingly serious problems soon emerged.
The weight added to the ship to accommodate the Australian requirements necessitated extensive redesign. The extra weight slows the Hunter’s speed so it will need significantly more gas turbine power to keep up with the fleet.
Constant use of its gas turbine will compromise both the ship’s vaunted stealth abilities as well as its range.
A ship of the Hunter’s size should have two gas turbines in case of failure or battle damage. The Hunter has only one.
It’s true that the combination of the American missile systems and our radar provides world class weaponry.
But on the Hunter, there are only 32 missiles cells. Rival ships have three and four times that number.
By contrast, with the Hunter and similar vessels, once missiles are fired the ship must return to port to be reloaded.
In a battle where rival ships have many more missile cells, the Hunter has a dangerous disadvantage. It may be forced to struggle home hoping that its one gas turbine is still working.
The distances in the Pacific and Indian oceans are much greater than in the Atlantic.
Not only are we buying a vessel where the odds are stacked against it in the missile game, but we’re paying an exorbitant sum for an inferior vessel.
The best way to calculate the cost of buying frigates is to calculate the price of each missile cell. The cost of one missile cell on the new US frigates is $US22m, compared with $US119m for Australia’s frigates. Australia is paying five times the US for an inferior vessel.
The South Korean Maya class is even more cost-effective than the US.
There are lots of solutions around to overcome the frigate problem.
But one avenue seems obvious.
BAE Systems have reputable people who must be unhappy about receiving pots of cash for a frigate with defects that they know may cost lives.
BAE also make the British nuclear submarines and maybe it’s possible to swap the contracts.
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Morrison promises no mining and carbon taxes
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will attempt to wedge Labor on taxes and support for the mining industry in Western Australia as he tries to win over voters in the resource-rich state in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Morrison suffered his first major gaffe of the election campaign while on the hustings in Perth on Monday, incorrectly stating the rate of JobSeeker.
But he will shift the conversation to taxes in a speech to the WA Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, saying the government knows how to keep a lid on them.
“That’s why if the Coalition is returned at the forthcoming election, I can assure you there will be no mining tax,” Morrison is expected to say. “There will be no carbon tax. And there will be no adverse changes to fuel tax credit arrangements.”
The Coalition is at risk of losing up to three seats in the state, with Western Australians overwhelmingly backing their Labor premier Mark McGowan’s border closures during the pandemic which effectively cut them off from the rest of the country for two years.
The Coalition is expected to use previous comments from Anthony Albanese from as early as 2018 supporting a price on carbon and an emissions trading scheme to argue Labor cannot be trusted to make the same pledge.
Morrison will say that his government never takes the resources sector in WA for granted and that Australia needs to back its traditional strengths “from iron ore and gold to gas and coal”.
He will also promise to continue investing in critical minerals, mining regions and cutting-edge research and technologies.
“The resources sector has been and remains central to our economic plan that has led us through this crisis and setting our opportunities for the future,” Morrison is expected to say.
Geo-politically and economically, Australia have entered a period of renewed tension and turbulence in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Morrison will warn.
“On top of the economic fallout from the global pandemic, we now face the biggest energy and commodity price shock since the oil shock of the early 1970s,” he will say.
Morrison will say that critical shortages in energy have led to widespread increases in prices in recent months.
“While the economic consequences of Russia’s war of aggression are still playing out, sanctions applied to Russia are affecting commodity supply chains, and further sanctions are in prospect,” he will say.
“Commodity market dislocation and supply chain stresses have pushed up inflation around the world. Australia is not immune from these pressures.”
Morrison will pledge to “keep investing in mining regions”.
“Australians in our capital cities have long been the beneficiaries of visionary investments to develop the Pilbara, going back more than 50 years,” he will say.
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Olympic hero's defiant take on trans debate
Australia's most decorated Olympian of all time, swimming superstar Emma McKeon, has made it clear she's against transgender athletes competing in women's sport, declaring "it's just not fair".
The trans-in-sport debate raging in Australia is more intense than ever because of the federal election campaign by Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, who's copped backlash for comparing her activism for women's sport to protesting against the Holocaust.
McKeon weighed in on the debate at Griffith University's A Better Future for All seminar this week. "I personally wouldn't want to be racing against someone who is biologically a male, so that's a concern," McKeon said.
"It's not a new thing, but it's new in that sport, swimming, are going to have to deal with it."
New Zealand's Laurel Hubbard sparked debate when she competed in women's weightlifting at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
More recently, Lia Thomas of the USA became the first known transgender athlete to win an NCAA swimming title when she took out the 500m freestyle.
On Australian shores, the AFL hasn't allowed Hannah Mouncey to compete in the AFLW, resulting in the former Australian men's national handball player taking the AFL to court.
McKeon says she doesn't think she'll race against transgender athletes in her career but admitted it had become a major point of contention. I don't think it's going to come to that point," McKeon said.
"But now that it's a growing thing, the sport has to think about how to handle it and how to deal with it, because you do want to be inclusive, but you don't want to have females racing against swimmers who are biologically male, because it's just not fair."
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Pauline Hanson slams Aboriginal 'Welcome to Country' ceremonies as 'left-wing virtue signalling'
I think they are a lot of rot too. Why should we repeatedly say that Aborigines once lived in a partiular place? They possibly did but how does that affect us?
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has described Welcome to Country ceremonies as 'left-wing virtue signalling' and declared she is 'tired' of them.
Senator Hanson made the controversial remarks after Anthony Albanese was booed while acknowledging traditional land owners on stage at Bluesfest in Byron Bay on Sunday night.
'It is common for politicians to be booed at events but some Australians were shocked that Anthony Albanese would get such a hostile reaction while trying to deliver a so-called ''welcome to country'', she wrote on her Facebook page.
'I don't know about you but I am very tired of being left out of the ''welcome'' to my own country.'
Welcomes to Country ceremonies between Indigenous Australian communities date back thousands of years.
TV presenter Ernie Dingo and musician Richard Walley performed the first for non-Indigenous Australians in 1976 at a festival in Perth.
Indigenous elders now regularly give a Welcome to Country at major events including sports games and concerts.
'Some of you might not realise but this "welcome to country" isn't some ancient tradition. It is a modern invention,' Senator Hanson wrote.
'Just one of the many overused methods of left-wing virtue signalling that shoehorns politics and pandering into everyday life.'
The One Nation leader said her party believes that 'everyone should be equal.' 'We shouldn't be elevating one group above others,' she wrote. 'We are all Australians equally sharing our country together.
'That's why you won't ever hear me welcoming people to their own country.'
Sparking discussion among her supporters, she added: 'I'm curious to know how others feel about it? Do people care or is this a classic case of the emperor having no clothes and everyone is going along with it but no one is ready to call it out?'
Many of her followers unsurprisingly agreed, saying the Welcome to Country was 'way overused'.
At Bluesfest on Sunday night Mr Albanese was brought on stage to introduce rock legend Jimmy Barnes.
He was initially met with deafening boos from revellers before receiving cheers as he promised a funding boost for the arts sector.
The announcer introduced Albanese as 'the man that represents the working class people' as he asked festival-goers to give the Labor leader a 'world-class welcome'.
Albanese approached the stage to boos, telling the crowd it was 'great to be at Bluesfest'. He then acknowledged the traditional owners of the land at Byron Bay.
'I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which we meet, pay my respect to elders past and present and what we want is to recognise First Nations people in our constitution.'
The outcry from revellers eventually quietened down before erupting into applause and cheers as Mr Albanese hinted at arts funding if his party was elected into government and he brought Barnes onto the stage.
'Australians have been magnificent over the last couple of years, and what we want is a government that backs the arts sector. So ladies and gentlemen, welcome Jimmy Barnes!'
One Nation is running candidates in all 151 lower house seats. Senator Hanson is battling to retain her Queensland senate spot.
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NT: How teachers could soon be forced to call students 'crew' instead of 'boys and girls' and encouraged to organise 'non-gendered' sports teams
Teachers calling students 'boys' and 'girls' may soon be a thing of the past under plans to create a more welcoming environment for gender diverse children.
In draft guidelines on gender identity from the Northern Territory's Education Department, a variety of steps would be taken to ensure those questioning their gender weren't being offended in the classroom.
School sport days would not be split between boys and girls while students on overnight excursions and school camps would be allowed to sleep in rooms and use bathrooms of their 'affirmed gender', Sky News reported.
'Using gendered language such as 'girls and boys' or 'ladies and gentlemen' confirms gender stereotyping and roles and can be alienating for gender questioning and gender diverse children,' the document says.
'Avoid this by using vocabulary such as 'students', 'class', 'crew', 'everyone', people' or 'year X' that are more inclusive.'
Schools have also been encouraged in the guidelines to organise 'non-gendered' sport days, teams and events.
Rules around tight-fitted clothing should also be changed to cater to gender diverse children such as during swimming events, the document says.
'Many transgender and gender diverse children often withdraw from taking part in sport and physical activities because they feel highly uncomfortable or are forced into teams that do not match with their gender identity,' the guidelines say.
LGBTIQ students on school camps who require 'increased privacy' may be allowed to be given private rooms.
The guidelines also include a warning that concerns from other kids may be seen as bullying.
'If a child, or their peers, do not agree that they would feel safe and comfortable sharing, seek alternative solutions and acknowledge that this is an indication of possible exclusionary behaviour and potential bullying toward the LGBTQI child,' the guidelines say.
Labor NT Education Minister Lauren Moss stressed the document which has surfaced has not been finalised and said the terms 'boys' and 'girls' would not be banned in the classroom.
She did not comment on the specifics of the guidelines but said the department was looking at creating more inclusive environments for LGBTQI children.
'We know that often these students are young people and children who experience greater levels of harm or greater levels of isolation or greater levels of bullying and we need to make sure that we are working together as a school community to support all of our students and make sure that they all feel welcome,' she told the publication.
But the draft wasn't well received by everyone in the state with Country Liberal Party Senate candidate Jacinta Price labelling it 'utterly ridiculous'.
'I'm stunned the (Chief Minister Michael Gunner) Gunner government would even consider attempting to apply any Marxist ideology into our schooling system,' she said.
'It infuriates me. This government think that they can go ahead and make these decisions on behalf of teachers, on behalf of the Indigenous community. To suggest that terms like girl and boy are gender stereotypes and can be offensive is utterly ridiculous.'
She said the focus should instead be on lifting attendance rates in schools in remote communities.
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Another senior’s group has condemned Labor’s pension card lies, with the Prime Minister saying the Opposition is “peddling lies to scare pensioners”
Labor is refusing to pull its claims, despite them having been rejected by the government, the Council on the Ageing, National Seniors and resulted in a Labor MP apologising for misleading the Parliament when repeating them.
Labor has targeted social media and letterbox drops in marginal seats with claims pensioners would be put on the cashless debit card, which in some trial areas quarantines 80 per cent of JobSeeker payments for under 35s to prevent welfare being spent on alcohol, gambling and drugs.
It has expanded its attack, pointing to a Toowoomba North LNP branch motion taken to and supported at the party’s state conference calling for the cashless debit card to be expanded to more districts – though it does not mention pensioners.
Nationals Seniors Australia spokesman Ian Henschke criticised the tactic and said his organisation was receiving calls from pensioners scared they would end up on the card.
“Why don’t we just focus on the real policies instead of the ones that are not real? This is what we should be doing,” he told 3AW.
Mr Morrison said pamphlets claiming pensioners would be put on the welfare card was a “despicable lie” and accused Labor of “pedalling this lie seeking to scare pensioners”.
“Anthony Albanese needs to come clear on this, he needs to rule this out, because it is not true,” he said.
The Prime Minister also took aim at Mr Albanese’s treasury spokesperson Jim Chalmers, who he branded as ‘Sneaky Jim’ while responding to Labor’s claims pensioners would be forced on to cashless welfare cards. “It’s just simply not true,” Mr Morrison said.
“If he wants to talk about trust and integrity, he should show some today and the Labor Party should stop frightening pensioners.
“It is an out and out disgusting lie.”
Asked how this wasn’t a scare campaign, given Labor had been accused of “scaring old people” by the Council on the Ageing, Mr Albanese said it was based upon the government’s policy.
Department of Social Services deputy secretary Liz Herfren-Webb told a recent Senate estimates hearing that there was no current laws that would allow pensioners to be put on the cashless debit card, and the prospect had never been raised with her.
On February 24 this year Labor’s state Keppel MP Brittany Lauga was forced to apologise and withdraw comments she made misleading Parliament that “the current federal coalition government was planning to force every age pensioner in Australia onto the cashless debit card”.
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Climate cowards and apocalypse peddlers
Have you ever questioned the links between bushfires and atmospheric CO2?
Discussions about the changing climate and the level of human contribution are only allowed if the discussion follows the approved narrative. Heaven forbid somebody decides to do their own research into how global average temperatures are calculated, how many temperature stations were around in 1850, how climate models compare to observations, how CO2 functions as a greenhouse gas, and how past predictions have borne out.
For those who would label me a ‘denier’, I have a label for you – coward. Allow me to explain my contempt.
If green-left politics is your bag and you endorse the approved message, please explain your doomsday cultist narrative and how your objectives will send us backward to enjoy the living standards of a third-world country, with negative impacts on the environment.
To those who say that ‘Australia should be a climate leader’, I ask you to show evidence of a country both cutting emissions and improving its economy, living standards, and security, while pushing the renewables mantra. The world’s best examples of high renewables all have high electricity costs – Germany, United Kingdom, California, and Australia.
If you are not swayed by real-life examples of failure, then I urge you to ask yourself, why the ‘experts’ are pushing us into weather-dependent power sources, when the weather is supposed to become more unpredictable and extreme?
To the renewables lobby, including their sycophant ‘experts’, media, and political allies, I ask why, if your product is so good, do you continuously push for subsidies, targets, market intervention, cheap finance, and government spending, all while demonising the fossil fuel industry that has almost single-handedly created our current abundance of wealth and health.
To those who say ‘we need more climate action’, I ask you to quantify those actions and the effects of those actions on the climate. Please be specific. You and your ilk have a history of vagueness and being very, very wrong.
To those who rave about ‘the transition’, I ask you to define the end of the so-called transition – when will this magic outcome occur, and what does it look like? Because to me, this transition looks like a never-ending cycle of building wind/solar/batteries, with their short life-span requiring replacement every 10-20 years.
To anybody who believes emissions reduction is important, I ask if you support nuclear power.
If you think the federal government has any role in the management of bushfires, I ask you to look at the responsibilities and performance of the state environmental and emergency service bureaucracies.
If you think the world is going to end because of sea-level rise, I ask you to put ice cubes in a glass, fill it with water, then wait for the ice to melt and observe the glass not overflowing.
If you think ‘the science’ is infallible, I ask you to read what Alan Finkel, Peter Ridd and Richard Horton have to say about the credibility crisis in scientific published research. Then give the ClimateGate emails a once-over. Then ask why the world’s primary atmospheric carbon dioxide measurement laboratory is located beside an active volcano.
If you are swayed by ‘the consensus’, I ask you to read Happer, Lomborg, Plimer, Schellenberger, Epstein, Spencer, Curry, Peiser, and Ridley. Then compare those with the writings of Gore, Thunberg, and Obama.
If you find yourself convinced by the weighty opining of ‘experts’ that all CO2 increase is caused by human activities, I recommend the mission pages of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory and the finding that in one year, the combined emissions from three rainforests increased by five-times Australia’s annual emissions.
If CO2 emissions are the first thing you think about when you wake in the morning, consider that global emissions reduction reduced by almost 10 per cent in 2020 because of Covid lockdowns, and that it cannot be differentiated from natural variation (according to NOAA).
If the fact that burning coal has led to prosperity and improved health for billions of people hurts your brain, try this:
Burning wood releases the carbon isotopes C12, C13 and C14
Burning coal and gas releases only C12 and C13
Measuring the dilution of C14 in the atmosphere proves the increase of C12 and C13
You can’t apportion how much CO2 is entering the atmosphere from burning coal, without knowing how much CO2 of all types is also entering and disappearing from the atmosphere separately
If you think the UN has Australia’s best interests in mind, I ask you to name another large, unelected bureaucracy that you trust to decide your best interests. Then ask what the UN has done for you lately.
If you think CO2 emissions are the harbinger of doom, then I ask you to lead by example and commit to a single vehicle, composting, no air conditioners or plane travel, using only local seasonal produce, no batteries, no computers, no electricity, no running water, no textiles, nothing made in a factory or transported or harvested by machine, or grown using fertiliser and herbicides.
If you find yourself nodding along with phrases like ‘green hydrogen superpower’, I suggest you look up how much energy is consumed in producing green hydrogen, how the energy for green hydrogen is generated, and what that looks like on the environment.
If you quite like your first-world lifestyle, spare a thought for the third-world where people are being offered the joys of solar panels, which doesn’t remove them from poverty.
If you are tempted to label me a right-wing nutjob, climate-change denier, racist, a symptom of the colonial white privileged patriarchy, go for it. But please allow me to respond…
If you are part of the media, political, or scientific elite and you disagree with anything I’ve said, but you cannot be bothered to look it up yourself, if you’ve never bothered to look into the so-called ‘other side’, if you have no interest in the truth of things, if you cannot bring yourself to challenge your pre-conceived ideas, then you are a climate coward.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/04/climate-cowards-and-apocalypse-peddlers/
***************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Katherine's PFAS water treatment plant finally ready for action
This is an old Greenie scare but there is still no clear evidence that PFAS compounds are harmful to humans in the concentrations normally encountered
In a small remote town in the outback, a multi-million-dollar mega facility shipped in from America will soon turn potentially toxic drinking water into some of the cleanest in Australia.
It is the largest to be built so far and one of the first, but experts and activists say many more will be needed as Australia begins to deal with PFAS contamination.
A few years ago, residents of Katherine received the alarming news that the water they had been using was contaminated by a group of human-made chemicals known as PFAS, which some experts say are linked to cancers and other serious health concerns.
Between 1988 and 2004, during firefighting training at the Tindal RAAF Base, PFAS leached into the Katherine River and spread kilometres through the highly connected aquifer below.
The government advised against eating fish caught from the river, the local swimming pool was closed, bore-reliant properties surrounding the base were delivered bottled water by Defence and residents lined up for blood tests.
A major study on the health effects of PFAS and a landmark class action were launched and an interim water treatment plant was brought in, but its size left many in fear the clean water would run out.
Since then, residents have been clinging to the promise Australia's largest PFAS water treatment plant would be built and after years of delays it has been confirmed the facility will be completed by August at the latest.
Senior project manager at Power and Water Corporation Liam Early said it would deliver "very high-quality water," and agreed it would likely be the first of many needed across Australia as the nation began to grapple with the enormity of PFAS contamination.
Associate professor Suzie Reichman, an expert in pollution science at the University of Melbourne, said the sticky substances were known as "forever chemicals" because of their persistence in the environment and could be found in hundreds of everyday products like cosmetics, sunscreens and non-stick pans.
"Evidence is mounting that high concentrations can have a number of health impacts, including cancer," Dr Reichman said.
"We haven't definitively proven that in humans, but we also don't know what concentrations cause [cancers].
"The Australian government has taken a very precautionary approach and we have very low thresholds for PFAS in the environment, including in drinking water.
"But because it wasn't on people's radars as a contaminant for so long, we're now seeing it has gotten out into the environment … the more we look the more we're finding."
With an already high reliance on groundwater projected to rise across Australia as surface resources become less available due to climate change and droughts, Dr Reichman said treatment plants, despite their expense, would offer a good solution.
"We have already contaminated the environment with PFAS, and if it's the only source of water, the solution to keep it safe for people and stock … is to clean it up," she said.
After water is sucked up from the groundwater through a bore, it is processed through the pressure vessels.
Microplastics made of resin called "media" capture the PFAS and remove it from the water.
While Defence continues to filter contaminated water and pump it back into aquifers at Katherine, Oakey and Williamtown, ongoing droughts and lingering health concerns are far from over for residents.
Peter Spafford, Katherine's sole GP during the peak of the PFAS scare, said long-term health issues were still a worry for residents despite a major study finding no conclusive evidence of increased risk of cancer or disease in the three towns.
Amid over-pumping, drought, and the steady influence of climate change, he said the treatment plant was a "bandaid measure".
"It's tapping into underground water supplies, which, certainly with decreased rainfall and the increased usage due to fracking, [are] not necessarily sustainable," Dr Spafford said.
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Heart problems as a Covid vaccine side-effect may be more common than is usually admitted
It started with the ambulances. Queensland recorded its fourth-highest number of triple-0 calls for a single day last Monday with paramedics waiting up to three hours to offload patients and nine ambulances waiting outside a major hospital because there were no beds.
Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath was flummoxed. ‘I don’t think anyone can explain why we saw a 40 per cent increase in code ones,’ she told journalists. ‘We had a lot of heart attacks and chest pains and breathing/respiratory issues. Sometimes you can’t explain why those things happen.’
Ambulance ‘ramping’ has been at crisis point in every state in Australia over the summer. In Western Australia, just 70 per cent of priority one emergency call outs in March were responded to within 15 minutes. March was also the busiest month ever for paramedics in Tasmania with a 15 per cent increase in callouts. Ambulance Victoria experienced its busiest quarter on record, a 16 per cent increase on the same period last year. In South Australia, ramping was so bad that it became an election issue. Paramedics in New South Wales were so angry about staff shortages that they went on strike this week.
Part of the problem was the callous and stupid decision to sack paramedics during a pandemic because they refused to be immunised with a vaccine which, as it turns out, has almost no efficacy in preventing infection with the omicron variant. So, staff numbers have been reduced by mandates, by infection with omicron, and by the need to quarantine.
But what explains the increase in demand which has occurred in summer, not during the winter flu season? It’s not the pandemic. NSW, for example, has a combined private and government hospital capacity of 12,500 beds including 1,000 in intensive care units, but there are only 1,583 people admitted to hospitals ‘with’ Covid, and only 71 in intensive care. The chief executive of Ambulance Tasmania offered a clue saying that while a lot of the patients had respiratory complaints or chest pain in line with Covid, there was also an increase in mental health cases and in falls. What caused them?
To get some clues out, you needed to turn on the Footy Show. Discussing Brownlow medallist Ollie Wines, who was taken to hospital at half time where he was diagnosed with a ‘heart irregularity’, former Richmond forward Nathan Brown asked, ‘Is there a lot of this going on in world sport?’, clarifying that he was referring to the side effects of Covid vaccine booster shots. Journalist Damian Barrett said the question was being asked, ‘by a lot of people’ and that it wasn’t just the heart issues’.
Essendon star Matthew Lloyd, another panellist on the show that night confirmed that he had Bell’s palsy – and that both heart issues and Bell’s palsy had ‘gone through the roof since the boosters and Covid issues’. He added that 3AW sports journalist Michelangelo Rucci had said that there’s a ward in Adelaide filled with people with similar symptoms to Ollie Wines – nausea, heart issues – ‘so there has to be something more to it’.
That Covid vaccines can cause myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) and pericarditis (inflammation of the sac around the heart) as well as other severe reactions, including death, is a taboo topic in mainstream media. The Daily Mail accused the Footy Show hosts of making a ‘shocking claim’ for suggesting Wine’s heart issues could be linked to the Covid vaccines.
Yet as the Therapeutic Goods Administration confirms, myocarditis is a known side effect of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. So far there have been 1,168 reports of myocarditis to the TGA (10 fatal) and another 3,215 of pericarditis (1 fatal).
The TGA claims that only 593 are likely to be confirmed as myocarditis. But the Myocarditis Foundation in the US warns that nearly 20 per cent of sudden cardiac deaths are linked to myocarditis because common symptoms are misinterpreted. They include many reported to the TGA including chest pain (11,976 reports), shortness of breath (9,519), fatigue (14,569), palpitations (5,249), tachycardia (2,428), fainting (3,424), dizziness (2,843), and peripheral swelling (1,057). If any of these symptoms are detected, the foundation urges people to see a doctor straight away because myocarditis is the third leading cause of death in children and young adults and discouraging talk about the symptoms of post-vaccination myocarditis is dangerous, especially for young athletic men and boys who are at the greatest risk.
In less than three months, since Covid vaccines were rolled out to children aged 5-11, three have died. A 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl suffered cardiac arrests, the worst outcome of myocarditis, and a 6-year- old boy also died but whoever filed his report simply described his medical reaction as an ‘adverse event following immunisation’, a description that provides no useful information to investigators and has been used in 755 reports, 161 of them fatal.
There have also been 49 reports of adverse reactions in babies via exposure their mothers’ breast milk including trouble breathing, chest pain, fatigue, dizziness – all symptoms of myocarditis. One infant suffered Bell’s palsy. There have been 244 reports of spontaneous abortions, 14 stillbirths, 11 reports of foetal deaths, 11 of foetal hypokinesia (decreased bodily movement of the foetus). The vaccines were not tested on pregnant or breast-feeding women. The TGA had no clinical basis to say they were safe.
Since the vaccines were rolled out in February last year, 19,926 people have reported adverse reactions and 815 people have died. More than two every day. Compare that to influenza vaccines – 21 deaths in 47 years, less than one death every two years. Are any of these tragedies caused by the Covid vaccine? Is anyone at the TGA trying to find out? When the US government rushed out a swine flu vaccine to 45 million people in 1976, the program was halted when it was reported to have caused one case of Guillain-Barré syndrome per 100,000 persons vaccinated, and 53 deaths. To date in the US there have been 26,693 deaths, including those Pfizer, Moderna and J&J have reported occurring abroad, 49,516 people are permanently disabled, and the mainstream media says nothing.
Why the difference? In 1976, vaccine manufacturers could be sued for injury and death. Now they have immunity from prosecution unless they can be shown to have engaged in fraud or to have hidden safety data. While courageous scientists, doctors and whistleblowers sound the alarm about damning evidence, no one who has been coercing people to get vaccinated – government, media, employers – wants to admit that there might be a problem. Like ramping ambulances, nobody wants to explain why those things happen
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/04/vaccine-mysteries-need-explaining/
****************************************************Antisemitic nut not welcome at Israel Independence Day celebrations
She is clearly a Leftist "independent" candidate. Ever since Karl Marx, Leftists have despised Jews and they often still do beneath the surface
Outrage within Melbourne’s Jewish community over independent candidate Zoe Daniel attending upcoming Israel Independence Day celebrations has resulted in a Shule stopping her and Liberal opponent Tim Wilson from taking part in the festivities.
The former ABC journalist was due to attend a local event on Shabbat on May 7 at the Blake Street Shule at Caulfield South to celebrate Israel’s national holiday, but serious concerns were raised after Ms Daniel recently refused to withdraw her signature from a controversial letter accusing Israel of maintaining an “apartheid regime against Palestinians”.
When The Australian contacted the Shule on Monday both Ms Daniel and Mr Wilson, the incumbent MP, were both due to attend the celebrations, but hours later they were both told they were no longer welcome.
Many members of the Jewish community remain furious Ms Daniel has refused to remove her signature from an open letter she signed in 2021 that states, “Israeli vigilante mobs attack Palestinians and the Netanyahu government has unleashed a new, brutal war against the besieged population of Gaza”.
Alex Goodman, one of the Shule’s founding members, said he was “concerned” that Ms Daniel was scheduled to attend the Israel Independence Day celebrations at any Shule, including his own.
“The main reason is her signing of the letter with other journalists to be blatantly biased against reporting on Israel and the false claim that Israel is apartheid which is totally offensive,” he told The Australian.
The celebrations on Israel Independence Day mark the anniversary of the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein has repeatedly called for Ms Daniel to “remove her signature and renounce the “Do Better on Palestine” letter.
The letter said “the coverage of Palestine must be improved” and “consciously and deliberately make space for Palestinian perspectives, prioritising the voices of those most affected by the violence”.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he won't allow a controversial Liberal candidate who campaigned against trans women in sport to be 'silenced'
Some moderate Liberal members have called for Ms Deves to be disendorsed after she apologised for calling transgender children 'surgically mutilated and sterilised' in tweets last year.
But Mr Morrison today stood by his candidate, saying: 'I'm not going to allow her to be pushed aside as the pile on comes in to try and silence her.
'I will stand up with her, my team is standing up with her, and we will make sure that she won't be silenced.'
Ms Deves co-founded the group Save Women's Sport which aims to stop transgender women competing alongside biological women.
'She is standing up for women and girls and their access to fair sport in this country,' Mr Morrison said.
'I think she will make a great Member of Parliament, she has learned in her advocacy in her private life there are better ways to do things to take things forward as a Member of Parliament.
'I believe that is how she will approach the task if she is elected as the member for Warringah, and I don't think she should be silenced,' he said.
In the first week of the election campaign Ms Deves apologised for the wording of her old tweets about the issue.
In those tweets she described transgender children as 'surgically mutilated and sterilised', and likened her stance on the issue as being akin to the French Resistance fighters who resisted German occupation during World War II.
Ms Deves revealed she has been bombarded with death threats by left-wing activists on social media.
High profile Liberal moderates Trent Zimmerman and Matt Kean have publicly called on Mr Morrison to dis-endorse her over fears her views will haemorrhage support in inner-city seats.
'I don't think having candidates that want to spruik the politics of division is in the interests of the party or in the interests of those people candidates,' NSW Treasurer Mr Kean said.
But Ms Deves has support on the party's conservative wing with former Prime Ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott backing her stance.
On Monday, independent Warringah MP Zali Steggall told Sky News the topic of trans athletes competing in female sport was a 'distraction' from bigger issues.
'I feel there's a lot of lying going on about the actual status quo, we already have a law. The Sex Discrimination Act already deals with the situation, this is just not an issue,' Ms Steggall said.
'And saying that parents will be concerned is just repeating a transphobia line.'
When she was asked to clarify why concerns about the issue should be deemed 'transphobic' she said 'because we are talking about a minority of the population that is already incredibly vulnerable.'
Warringah takes in part of Sydney's northern beaches and north shore. It was Tony Abbott's seat but was taken by Ms Steggall at the 2019 election. She is favourite to hold on to the seat.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Monday, April 18, 2022
Climate-change clots have well and truly lost the plot
Anthony Albanese – the man who fights Tories but emulates John Howard – has got it in hand. Together with Adam Bandt, he will transform a land of droughts and flooding rains into a land of milk and honey.
Albanese and Bandt have a plan, and with at least 20 of their fellow Australians dead, thousands homeless, and tens of thousands dealing with damage and hardship, the Labor and Greens leaders have decided life would be better without floods – in fact, without any natural disasters.
As Bandt tweeted during these floods: “Let’s be clear, this could have been avoided. The Liberals are supercharging climate disasters with new coal and gas mines and have failed to prepare for the devastating impacts.”
It makes you question the patriotism and humanity of Scott Morrison and the Coalition doesn’t it? Because what sort of callous ideologues would refuse to dispense with natural disasters if they had the option?
The Greens leader said: “Nothing is natural about this. And nothing will save this climate-wrecking government this election.” You have got to admit, he has a point – if you could stop this and you chose not to, then why would people vote for you?
Thankfully, Bandt and Albanese do not just whinge, they have solutions. Bandt says we just “have to leave the coal and gas in the ground” – which I guess makes sense.
We could lead the way, abandon fossil fuels, and then just hope we are followed by China, India, Indonesia, Russia, America, Canada, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Kuwait, Iraq, Papua New Guinea, Brunei, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. You never know.
The Labor leader says, “too many Australians have first-hand knowledge of the brutality of bushfires, drought and flood – climate change is here now”. And, according to his policies, the way to fix this is to build more renewable energy generation and subsidise people to buy electric cars.
If only Morrison had thought of that. Half price Teslas for all, and Lismore stays high and dry.
The good news is that, according to the politicians and esteemed oracles of the fourth estate, all this can be fixed. All voters need do is use the election to switch from the Coalition’s net zero by 2050 pledge to Labor’s net zero by 2050 promise. Painless.
ABC regular and NSW Senate candidate Jane Caro is on to this solution. This week she posted a video, standing under a collapsed ceiling in her kitchen – which seemed a particularly perilous place to be, given it had apparently fallen in after the torrential rain that hit Sydney.
“Climate change is real and happening now, even in my kitchen,” she posted. In the video she said it might “take a while” to get her ceiling repaired, but selflessly she conceded many people might be suffering greater trauma.
“Stay safe, stay dry, let’s hope the sun comes out,” she implored her climate-savvy followers, “and we get a change of government”. Yep, that will do it. Change the government, and you change the climate. Barack Obama proved that in 2008 when he proclaimed that this was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.” Job done. No wonder he got that Nobel prize.
We have seen the same healing effect here. The last time Labor was in power, under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, when they were trying to impose an emissions trading scheme and then teamed up with the Greens to impose a carbon tax, the only natural disasters we had were the Black Saturday bushfires that took 173 lives and the Brisbane floods.
Oh, and cyclone Yasi, and cyclone Oswald, and some other bushfires.
But still, these must have been “natural” natural disasters rather than “supercharged” by global warming because I do not recall any politicians or media blaming the federal government for those extreme events at the time.
Climate obsessed, so-called independent candidate Allegra Spender this week noted that “three years ago we had historic drought, two years ago we had historic bushfires, now we have historic floods” and then linked these events to emissions targets.
But we are left to wonder why the highest floods in so many regions – and the worst droughts in most of the country, and many of the worst bushfires – occurred way back in the 19th century, or in the early to middle years of the 20th century.
Were the early settlers secretly driving V8s? Did those sneaky convicts have a coal-fired power plant running on the sly? Best ask Bruce Pascoe.
The blaming of floods on global warming makes more sense than the finger pointing about droughts, given anyone with a basic understanding of climate science understands a warmer planet is a wetter one.
But this just makes us wonder why the very same people blaming climate “inaction” for the floods were doing the same in recent years for fires and droughts.
In 2005, the former climate commissioner Tim Flannery said, “if the computer models are right then drought conditions will become permanent in eastern Australia”. I am no climate scientist but a quick gaze around the Nepean-Hawkesbury these past two years would struggle to find evidence of a permanent drought – perhaps he was misquoted, and actually referred to “drowning” conditions.
A couple of years later, Flannery told the ABC that “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems”. Maybe he was right, it has not so much filled them, as overfilled them.
These inconsistencies and this opportunism cannot be easily dismissed, even if the only media Flannery speaks to never question him on it.
This permanent drought fearmongering, backed up by other climate alarmists, led to the mainland state governments spending a total of more than $12bn building desalination plants.
Only Perth’s was necessary and has been useful; the others are expensive white elephants kept on standby, chewing up money and energy in the hope they will be required some day.
In NSW and Queensland, the money spent on desal plants would have been better spent on flood mitigation dams.
Another one of the climate-obsessed so-called independents, Georgia Steele, is running in Hughes, in Sydney’s south. She reckons the evidence is clear that Morrison has “botched” climate policy because it fits a pattern of him botching the bushfire response, Covid quarantine, Covid vaccine supplies, submarine deal, religious discrimination bill, federal integrity commission, making Parliament House safe for women, and the flood response. Wow, that is some list; it leaves you wondering who is putting the Prime Minister’s pants on in the morning.
All this politicking, fact-free partisan abuse and phantasmagorical opposition promises of kinder, gentler natural disasters are undone by plain facts and logic. As Alan Finkel – the nation’s chief scientist at the time – told a Senate committee in 2018 that if all of our country’s carbon dioxide emissions disappeared overnight the impact on the global environment would be “virtually nothing”.
At that time we contributed about 1.3 per cent of global emissions; we now account for even less, about 1.1 per cent – while China, India, Indonesia, in fact, most of the world’s 10 most populous nations continue to increase emissions.
The fear, alarm and unquestioning coverage is every bit as astounding as the loopy claims of the activists.
Every hot day, dry day, cold day, wet day or fire day is cited as evidence of global warming.
The Guardian Australia’s Katherine Murphy leads the charge; her fringe views are elevated as mainstream commentary by the ABC.
“If every country acted with the abject derangement that Australia has exhibited for a decade,” she ranted this week, “then the planet will most decidedly cook.”
You will have to ask her whether that cooking will lead to floods, droughts, fires or snowstorms. But I reckon she would be likely to bet on the lot.
There is precious little questioning by our media about record maximums posted from weather stations that are barely three years old, or temperature records that are revised downwards and ignore all readings before 1910, and rainfall records that disregard detailed measurements from the 19th century.
Curiosity and facts have lost all value – ideology and narrative reign supreme. Presumably we will see the eyes of the world descend on this nation in May, because the global climate and the fate of the planet are going to be decided at our federal election.
For the green left and the media, it has become a simple world with simple solutions. None better than the flood mitigation strategy proposed by ACTU boss Sally McManus.
“I know there must be a really obvious answer to this, but a question for the hydrologists,” she tweeted last week.
“When Warragamba Dam is near capacity, why doesn’t Sydney Water suspend billing and ask people to turn on all their taps to take it down a bit before more rain comes?” Yep, and if that doesn’t work, I suppose the unions could just picket the rain.
The climate arguments are so simplistic and stupid that mainstream voters surely could not swallow them, no matter how disenchanted they are with the government.
Still, if they do, it will only confirm that the climate is the least of our problems.
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Kneeling to the rainbow
Scott Morrison put his head above the parapet for girls, women, and children in week one of the election campaign, but at the unfurling of a rainbow flag, took the knee.
Attempting to signal to mainstream Australia that he backed his two champions for saving women’s sports, Senator Claire Chandler and Warringah candidate Katherine Deves, Morrison trod on a landmine hiding in plain sight.
Monday saw Morrison heaping praise on his captain’s pick for Tony Abbott’s old seat of Warringah on Sydney’s northern beaches:
‘Katherine Deves over there in Warringah, you know, she’s standing up for something really important, and that is to ensure that, you know, when it comes to girls playing sport and women playing sport, that they’re playing against people of the same sex.’
While the Quiet Australians cheered, the reaction was swift and brutal from the well-oiled LGBTQ+ political machine and its media allies.
Suddenly left-wing journalists were trawling through Deves’ social media, unearthing ‘Nazi slurs’ and ‘bigoted’ comments about trans kids. I’ll return to this shortly.
Despite Deves’ high media profile as the co-founder Save Women’s Sport Australasia, the leftist media had never taken an acute interest in Deves’ social media.
But with the prospect of light being shone on the LGBTQ+ political agenda for children, girls, and women during a high profile election campaign, it became imperative that Deves be silenced.
The pile-on was on. A textbook cancel culture operation swung into action to silence her.
Within 48 hours, Morrison capitulated.
‘The government does not have any plans for that (Save Women’s Sport) to be a government Bill. It’s a Private Member’s Bill,’ said Morrison, backtracking.
Inadvertently feeding the trolls, Morrison went on to say Deves had apologised and withdrawn her comments.
As Morrison and Liberal campaign HQ folded like a cheap suit, Deves was further humiliated by being forced to delete her Facebook and Twitter accounts. Welcome to the party of free speech.
On Good Friday, Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott intervened, telling the Sydney Morning Herald:
‘She’s a tough, brave person who’s standing up for the rights of women and girls, for fairness in sport. I very much admire her and can’t understand the pile on from people who claim to be supporters of women’s rights.’
Abbott’s willingness to be crucified on Deves’ behalf seems to have saved her, stiffening Morrison’s spine enough for him to, by Saturday, resist growing pressure to have her dis-endorsed.
Her survival as Liberal candidate for Warringah by Resurrection Sunday is an Easter miracle.
But it was not before ‘modern Liberals’ Senator Andrew Bragg and state MP Matt Kean thumbed their nose at the PM, and Abbott, and joined the pile-on.
‘These kinds of horrendous views are not okay, and I’m sure the voters of Warringah agree. Time for the Liberal Party to beat them to it and disendorse her,’ Kean told news.com.au. ‘There is no place in a mainstream political party for bigotry.’
He also posted a tweet voicing a similar sentiment.
So, what are these ‘horrendous’, ‘intolerant’, and ‘bigoted’ views the media, LGBTQ+ political activists, and ‘modern Liberals’ say must be shut down?
News.com.au journalist Samantha Maiden breathlessly reported that Deves had tweeted that transgender children’s bodies had been ‘mutilated’ and ‘sterilised’, even tweeting the picture of a topless girl who had her breasts removed during gender affirmation surgery.
‘They (mainstream Australians) will not stand for seeing vulnerable children surgically mutilated and sterilised,’ Deves said, in the now-deleted tweet.
Instead of investigating Deves’ claims about the harms of LGBTQ+ ideology to children, Maiden wrote as if Deves had committed a mortal sin.
Yet images of these children are accessible via Google and there is a growing global de-transitioner movement, with UK woman Kiera Bell, who lost her breasts to LGBTQ+ ideology, serving as a prominent whistleblower.
There is no doubt that children are being harmed, as Stassja Frei, the founder of the Coalition for Biological Reality, wrote so eloquently in The Spectator Australia last week.
What about the assertion Deves’ used a Nazi slur? This is where it is important to read what she said, not believe the fake news.
‘I’ve got three small children. I have skin in the game on their behalf and people just weren’t willing to speak up and I just felt compelled to do so. I’ve always loved 20th century history. I think many people say, “I’d never be one of the villagers that stayed quiet when the trains went past.” I would have been part of the French resistance. But when all of this was happening and no one was speaking out, I thought this is it. This is the moment in my life where I am going to have to stand up and say something against the status quo and against the establishment, and say I don’t think this is right and it might come at a cost to me, but I have to say it.’
And boy (forgive the gendered language), has it come at a cost.
But how can anyone reading Stassja Frei’s article or Kiera Bell’s story to not be challenged about their silence on what is happening to children behind closed doors in our new and secretive gender clinics?
She is right to point out that history shows bad things happen when good people are silent.
Deves’ claim that up to half of all transgender women are sex offenders may not be accurate, but it does contain a documented underlying truth about offending rates that needs to be talked about it.
The UK police and National Health Service recently nearly covered up the rape of a woman on a single-sex hospital ward because apparently there were no men on the ward.
Another of Deves’ ‘crimes’ was to say she was ‘triggered’ by the rainbow flag.
So what? This is a political flag that, among other things, demands biological males be allowed to compete against and shower with girls and women as part of a radical overhaul of sports.
Announcing that Deves would not be disendorsed, Morrison showed weakness which is a red flag to trolls.
‘And so I think the comments that Katherine has made, obviously, were insensitive. And she’s admitted that.’
But how does one sensitively talk about the surgical alteration of children or the placing of girls at risk in sport?
Verballing her again, Morrison went on to say: ‘There are ways that she’s expressed this in the past that she no longer feels comfortable with. And it’s important that she understands that and learns those lessons. Which she has.’
Anyone who has watched Deves’ articulate and measured media advocacy on behalf of women and girls over the past 12 months knows this is rubbish.
Morrison thinks he can assuage the rainbow tiger when his head is in its mouth.
His insipid ‘backing’ of Deves won’t be the end of the LGBTQ+ activists’ attempts to shut down debate and stop a woman of courage from entering the Parliament.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/04/kneeling-to-the-rainbow/
********************************************For or against: coal test looms for Labor
The next federal government will face the prospect of assessing approvals for three new coal mega-mines in Queensland’s massive Galilee Basin during its first term in office.
With Adani’s Carmichael mine already exporting and about to move into full production, soaring coal prices and construction of an open-access rail line to port has reignited plans for at least three other mines in the burgeoning coal province.
In a statement, an Adani Australia spokesman confirmed the company had been approached by other third-party operators for use of its rail line to the Abbot Point coal port, which must be granted under the original open-access approval agreement.
The emergence of the projects would test an elected Labor government under Anthony Albanese, who, following the party’s disastrous performance in regional Queensland in 2019, has voiced his strong support for the coal industry. The Coalition is likely to approve the mines if they pass environmental tests, but could face blowback from Liberal moderates facing challenges in inner-city seats.
The emergence of the projects would test an elected Labor government under Anthony Albanese, who, following the party’s disastrous performance in regional Queensland in 2019, has voiced his strong support for the coal industry.
The emergence of the projects would test an elected Labor government under Anthony Albanese, who, following the party’s disastrous performance in regional Queensland in 2019, has voiced his strong support for the coal industry.
It could also determine a minority government, in the event of a hung parliament, with any elected Climate 200 independents and the Greens likely to make the further opening up of the Galilee Basin a deal-breaker.
GVK Hancock, the joint venture between GVK and Gina Rhinehardt’s Hancock Prospecting, has applied to the Queensland government for mining lease applications for two mines in the Galilee Basin which at full production would produce about 60 million tonnes of thermal coal annually for 30 years.
A Queensland Department of Resources spokeswoman said the department was currently “assessing mining lease applications for the (GVK Hancock) Alpha Coal and Kevin’s Corner coal projects in the Galilee Basin”.
Clive Palmer-owned Waratah Coal is also actively working on gaining approvals for mining tenements in the region. In recent years, the projects were put on hold – after receiving some environmental approvals – in the face of falling coal prices and delays in approvals of the Galilee Basin’s “first mover” project in Adani’s Carmichael Mine.
All three projects will trigger new environmental approvals over water usage and with plans for Mr Palmer’s proposed mine recently being revised.
Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfaralane, a former federal Coalition cabinet minister, said Adani’s “navigation” through the approvals and construction of the rail line had made it easier for other mines to follow.
“The thing that has really changed things has been the significant spike in thermal coal prices,’’ he told The Australian. “Europe is looking everywhere for any spare shipments of coal on the back of the Ukraine crisis.’’
Prices for both thermal coal and coking coal have surged since the blacklisting of Russian commodity exports.
The spot price for thermal coal shipments leaving the Port of Newcastle soared to $US446 a tonne in early March, compared with $US133.60 on January 1. Mr Palmer, who made his fortune from resources exploration and development but not directly by mining, said Waratah was working towards getting all necessary approvals.
Waratah Coal is facing a challenge in the Land Court from activist group Youth Verdict and landholders who have lodged objections to the applications. “There’s a couple of cases going through the Land Court now but I’d say it could be ready in 24 months,” Mr Palmer told The Australian. “At these prices and the cost of production, it has got to be (viable). There’s deals to be done and jobs to be created.”
Mr Palmer said the market for coal remained strong. “There’s a lot of coalmines being developed in China and India … and they’ve got to get their coal from somewhere,” he said. “By using (high quality) Australian coal, you are reducing emissions.”
Bill Shorten’s perceived ambivalence toward coal was blamed for voters turning against Labor, cutting support to a record-low 27.4 per cent primary vote in the state.
Mr Albanese has made several trips to Queensland coalmining regions since becoming Opposition Leader and has each time faced a grilling over his support for the industry.
He has said he supports future coalmining and that the viability of new mines would be determined by the market.
Last year he visited the Isaac Downs mine west of Mackay to meet with workers but he has refused to show his support for the stalled New Acland mine near Toowoomba, which is awaiting approval by the Palaszczuk government after lengthy delays. In February Mr Albanese said he would not be doing post-election deals with the Greens, whose leader Adam Bandt has said the party would request an end to new fossil fuel projects.
Mr Palmer said he did not believe Mr Albanese supported future coalmining. “He comes from the Left faction of the Labor Party,” Mr Palmer said.
A spokeswoman for Bravus, formerly Adani, said the company had been “approached by third parties interested in accessing the Carmichael rail network”.
“Our railway is designed to carry 40 million tonnes per annum and is a multi-user asset available to other miners and rail companies,” she said.
Queensland Greens candidate for the Labor held seat of Griffith, Max Chandler-Mather, said the proposed mines needed to be on the election agenda. “Federal Labor and the Liberals should go tell devastated communities in Lismore or Brisbane why Gina Rinehart’s coalmine should be approved,’’ he said. “Unless the Greens are in the balance of power, then we’ll just see any future Labor or Liberal government approve these mines and pour fuel on the climate crisis.”
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Ramp up efforts to fix hospital crisis or pay the price
QUEENSLAND voters may turn a blind eye to integrity and youth justice issues but politicians ignore health provision and challenges around hospitals and ambulances at their peril.
The Palaszczuk Government has had seven years to get Queensland’s hospital and ambulance system right and it has spectacularly failed.
It will lose the next election – still 30 months away – unless it fixes the problem with ramping and ambulance delays.
If Anthony Albanese becomes Prime Minister, and that’s no sure thing after being exposed as a bumbling fool, the Palaszczuk Government will have nobody to blame for its health woes.
The recent ramping crisis exposes a much deeper malaise within Queensland Health.
As regular readers know, I believe Queensland Health is the most poorly run bureaucracy in Australia.
It has been like that throughout the Palaszczuk years, a secretive, obsessive, paranoid organisation that punishes enterprise and rewards mediocrity.
It has terrible morale as hardworking doctors and nurses put up with a Kremlin-like attitude to the workplace.
The ramping crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Exhausted paramedics are sleeping at stations and being stood down because of fatigue.
Hospital ramping – where patients wait more than half an hour in an ambulance to get admitted – is at crisis levels, with one in two people unable to be treated.
It means long ambulance wait times for the sick, sometimes four or five hours. Patients are dying while waiting. The figures in Queensland are worse than South Australia, where new Labor premier Peter Malinauskassuccessfully campaigned on cutting ambulance ramping to win the recent election.
Official figures show Queensland paramedics lost an extraordinary number of hours stuck on ramps last year.
A parliamentary Question on Notice revealed our ambos lost more than 13,000 hours in March and May last year, and at other times of the year it routinely exceeded 10,000 hours.
The AMA’s Queensland branch says the situation is dire. It’s a crisis, they say.
Worse, the Palaszczuk Government did a review into the public hospital system, and rather than own the problem, as usual, blamed the Morrison Government.
AMAQ vice-president Dr Bav Manoharan says: “There were 40 recommendations in that report and only four of them were to be actioned by the Queensland government, 36 for the federal government. So it’s a little bit interesting with the timing with the federal election.
“When AMA Queensland engaged in this inquiry and we gave evidence as part of it, we really thought it was an opportunity for us to really consider what Queenslanders needed for their health care system and an opportunity to perhaps look at real ways to fix all the issues.
“I mean, hospital ramping, surgical wait lists, and all of these have been issues for such a long time.’’
Last week we saw the extraordinary situation where a gravely ill woman, waiting for an ambulance, told her husband to sue the State Government if she died.
The Opposition has received a flood of emails from people outlining their frustration at being unable to get an ambulance to their home, or waiting hours.
I got this email: “My brother who lives at Mt. Ommaney and has Parkinson’s fell yesterday morning and broke his hip.
“His wife rang for an ambulance at 7.00am and following a further three phone calls an ambulance finally arrived at 2.30am.
“He was operated on last night and thanks to the staff at the Wesley Hospital so far he is doing OK. In this day and age to have to wait that long is a disgrace.
“The Queensland Government blow their trumpet regarding how much they have spent on health. I wonder how much of the spending has gone to the frontline rather than propping up the administration and Fat Cats in the Public Service.’’
Telstra last week took the unprecedented move of having a recorded message for triple-0 calls, urging people to ring a telehealth line if it wasn’t urgent. Most people ring triple-0 because it’s urgent.
Lawyers say the Queensland State Government could find itself slugged with compensation lawsuits because of the state’s worsening ambulance response crisis.
Documents obtained by the Opposition covered three of Queensland’s busiest ambulance stations – Southport, Brisbane and Maroochydore. One disclosure revealed significant delays at Southport over several days with one patient waiting 10.5 hours for an ambulance last October.
Shadow Health Minister Ros Bates says frontline staff are overworked and under-resourced and doing an incredible job under the toughest conditions.
When former Labor premier Anna Bligh referred to the ramping crisis as a “basket case’’ in 2011, the ramping figures were 32 per cent.
Ramping is now over 50 per cent at major South East hospitals. Expect health to be the centrepiece of the LNP’s bid for election.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Sunday, April 17, 2022
First infection of new Covid variant detected in Australia
NSW has reported a case of Omicron XE infection brought in by an overseas traveller.
The state was also the first to report a case of another recombinant strain dubbed Deltacron, with that variant spreading two Queensland within 24 hours of being detected.
There are fears a further relaxing rules for international arrivals will see more - and potentially deadlier - variants enter the country.
XE is a combination of the two Omicron variant subtypes BA.1 and BA.2.
The variant is what’s known as recombinant, meaning it is a mixture of the two different strains and has characteristics of both.
More than a thousand cases of XE have been recorded in the UK and cases have also been detected in Thailand, India and Israel.
It’s presence around the world suggests it has been spread by open borders and international travel.
From Monday, international arrivals will no longer need to test negative to Covid-19 before leaving for Australia, meaning more cases of new variants could arrive in the country.
“As the Covid pandemic has progressed, we’ve repeatedly seen the arrival of new viral variants,” University of Leeds virologist Grace Roberts wrote in The Conversation.
While the properties of XE are not yet well known, Dr Roberts said there did not appear to be cause for additional concern.
“We know that Omicron XE has the majority of its genetic information, including the spike protein, from the Omicron sub-variant BA.2, which is the variant predominating in the UK at the moment,” she said.
“ It is likely, therefore, that the characteristics of omicron XE (such as transmissibility, severity of disease and vaccine efficacy) are similar to those of BA.2.”
NSW recorded 17,856 positive cases of Covid on Thursday, with a total 1582 Covid cases admitted to hospital, including 71 people in intensive care, 23 of whom require ventilation.
The state also recorded 21 Covid-linked deaths on Thursday, including one person who was over 100-year-old. Of those that died, three people were not vaccinated
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Labor ditches Republic referendum plans
Anthony Albanese has quietly ditched plans for Labor to hold a vote on whether Australia should become a Republic in its first term as government, and will instead focus on establishing an Indigenous voice to parliament.
A Labor spokesman said if elected, the “voice to parliament” model – ensuring First Nations people have a say on policies and laws affecting their communities – would be the only referendum the party was committed to pursuing in their first term in office.
The decision represents a marked break from the previous election, when former opposition leader Bill Shorten committed $160m for an in-person ballot to determine public support for establishing independence from the British monarchy.
With cutting ties to the Commonwealth contingent on constitutional reform, the in-person vote, rather than the postal vote plebiscite model used during the vote on same-sex marriage, would have been used to assess as the first step before a full referendum was held later.
In a statement later provided to The Australian, a Labor spokesman excluded the reference to the “first term in government”, instead emphasising the voice to parliament would take constitutional priority.
“As we have made clear, Constitutional Recognition and a Voice to parliament for First Nations people remain Labor’s constitutional reform priority and we would pursue this in government before any further steps are taken on the matter of an Australian Republic,“ a Labor spokesman said.
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Anthony Albanese’s trainwreck of a first week highlights a very real and deeper problem inside the Labor party – its very structure promotes mediocrity, writes Peter Gleeson
THE fundamental problem with the Labor Party in this country is that it promotes and encourages mediocrity because of the way it is structured.
The factions have delivered up Anthony Albanese as the alternative Prime Minister, when there are at least a dozen better options.
Labor’s Left faction – more interested in climate change than jobs – is killing what was once a great political movement for the working class man.
Favours are called in, unions demand promotions, factional tit-for-tats create division and the next thing you know the best talent is sidelined.
A great example is Queensland, where the Right faction’s Cameron Dick, the Treasurer, is easily Labor’s best performer, albeit he has drunk the Koolaid on the dark art of political deception and spin.
Yet the deputy premier, Steven Miles, of the Left, will be Annastacia Palaszczuk’s successor because his faction clearly has the numbers. The result is that Queensland gets second best. Hopefully, the voters will sort out that anomaly.
The same applies at the federal level. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese is from the all-powerful Left faction, a nasty cult who “love taking on the Tories’’.
Yet Albanese is a plodder. He’s got little dash, a product of Labor’s assembly line of colourless, highly disciplined, win at all costs politicians, who cut their teeth in the hurly burly of factional brawls and rigged pre-selections.
He doesn’t even have the courage to call out a cohort of women in his party that have proven themselves to be the antithesis of what Labor touts for its females – empowered, ambitious and bold.
The real tragedy of this modern-day Labor obsession with mediocrity is being played out right now during the federal election campaign.
Albo – nice guy that he is – is being exposed as a bumbling fool. The rigour and blowtorch environment of a warts and all campaign is a stark reminder of what it takes to be the Prime Minister.
Failing basic tests around the unemployment rate and the cash interest rate is a sad reflection of how the Labor Party is its own worst enemy.
What makes it even worse for Labor is that two of its young guns – Jim Chalmers and Jason Clare – are super impressive. Both are from Labor’s Right faction, which like in Queensland, does not have the numbers in caucus.
Chalmers, the Treasury spokesman, is deftly throwing people off the scent about exactly what Labor will do with tax and their pay packets.
It is clear that they will come in with a sledgehammer, especially for those earning big coin, and tax them to within an inch of their lives.
Then there’s Jason Clare, who has been put up as Labor’s campaign spokesman. Clare is articulate and across every facet of his brief.
His mop up job on Anthony Albanese’s first day stumble was a masterclass, dismissing it as Albo simply being human, when in fact it was a trainwreck.
But he was believable and stuck to message. The text I got after his ABC 7.30pm performance from a good judge was – why isn’t this bloke running for Prime Minister?
Labor doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or courage to embrace Chalmers and Clare, the next generation, because, well, ahem, it’s Albo’s turn.
He’s done the hard yards, he deserves a shot. The problem for Labor is that if PM Scott Morrison outguns him during the campaign – which looks increasingly likely – they may face another three years in Opposition.
Until Labor rids itself of the archaic factional structure that determines who gets the spoils, the electorate will continue to be served up second rate fare.
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Break out the popcorn and get ready for one hell of a rollercoaster ride when the best debate of the federal election takes place
Break out the popcorn and get ready for one hell of a rollercoaster ride when the best debate of the federal election takes place on the Gold Coast on Tuesday night.
Sky News host Paul Murray and yours truly will try the political equivalent of herding cats when the so-called maverick’s debate is held.
The combatants include United Australia tsar Clive Palmer, One Nation guru Pauline Hanson, the Stetson-wearing Bob Katter and former Queensland premier and Liberal-Democrat Senate contender, Campbell Newman.
You’d go a long way, anywhere in the world, to find four politicians with the conviction, and quirkiness, of those four people.
This is an important debate, for many reasons. The Sky news audience, especially in the bush, is huge.
People in regional and rural Australia have abandoned the ABC because of its pro-Labor and Greens rubbish, and they’ve come across to Sky.
As such, Palmer, Hanson, Katter and Newman will be competing for the minds and souls of many of these people during this debate.
They are popular in the bush, many sharing Hanson and Palmer’s pro-choice mantra on mandatory vaccination.
Both Hanson and Palmer remain unvaccinated, and it is only that premier Annastacia Palaszczuk lifted the vaccination mandate at pubs and clubs that the event could go ahead on the Gold Coast.
Palmer and Hanson will be vying for the same voter demographic. They are seen as rebels with a cause by their base.
Palmer is spending a fortune on this election campaign, with the slogan “freedom, freedom, freedom’’ his catchcry to appease those who are fed up with lockdowns and border closures and governments running people’s lives.
At his campaign launch on the Sunshine Coast today, Palmer will also talk of his plans to keep mortgage rates below 3 per cent and a massive resources tax that will pay down our $1 trillion debt over the next 20 years.
Palmer cannot be underestimated. He faces a tough job to win House of Representative seats but he may secure a Senate spot and the UAP’s preferences will be crucial in a number of contentious lower house seats.
Hanson is a great political survivor, with a fearless outlook for calling a spade a shovel. She remains hugely popular, especially in Queensland, and is mobbed like a rock star wherever she goes. She will be fired up for this debate. She loves the combative nature of these things.
Bob Katter, 76, is an extraordinary politician, having held the seat of Kennedy, in the state’s west, since 1993. Before that he was a Minister in the Bjelke-Petersen government.
Katter has forgotten more about politics than most of his MP colleagues, and while he is known for his colourful language, this debate format will suit him down to the ground.
Then there’s Newman, who was Queensland premier from 2012-2015 before losing to Annastacia Palaszczuk, in a poll many thought he could not lose.
He is now going around with the Liberal-Democrats after becoming disenchanted with the Liberal Party under Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Newman will thrive at this debate. He remains articulate and focused but he certainly doesn’t have the party machinery, or budget, of Palmer and Hanson.
The debate will unquestionably have a resounding theme around governments interfering in our lives.
For many, our experience with the Covid-19 pandemic has solidified a belief that government has gone too far, imposing draconian laws that have hurt people badly.
Many people have lost their livelihoods and their mental health has been challenged during the pandemic.
As such, there’s a growing sense that many voters are going to shy away from the major political parties and park their choice elsewhere.
That’s why this debate is important. The winner will likely become a political kingmaker. The debate airs at 8pm this Tuesday on Sky News. Make sure you wear your crash helmet.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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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
