Thursday, March 28, 2024




What’s happening in Alice Springs?

A very uninformative article below. At least at the very end of the article they screwed up enough courage to utter the word "indigenous". The problem is in fact an Aboriginal one, with young Aborigines being particularly defiant, with their skin colour protecting them from most police action

Whites in a position to do so are already moving out. The town will eventually become a wasteland unless vigorous police action to arrest and imprison offenders is undertaken. Aborigines are in fact easy to control. They have a horror of being separated from their community so keeping them in solitary overnight will be strongly punitive and will give them a strong reluctance to repeating that experience


Violent brawls took place on Tuesday after a group of young people attacked a local pub, the Todd Tavern. Three people have been arrested so far.

According to police, the violence began when a large group of people from the Utopia district north of Alice Springs arrived in town to commemorate the death of an 18-year-old man who was killed on March 8 when the stolen car he was travelling in rolled over.

A dramatic 12-hour night curfew for everyone under the age of eighteen will be imposed across Alice Springs after violence erupted on the streets.

The group attacked other family members in the pub, which sustained $30,000 of damage after being pelted with rocks and bricks. Another brawl broke out nearby later that evening.

The Northern Territory government has declared an emergency.

Why was a curfew announced?

The two-week curfew is designed to stop people aged under 18 gathering in the town’s CBD between 6pm and 6am.

Apart from Tuesday’s brawls, a series of violent incidents have taken place in Alice Springs in recent weeks, including on Saturday when a group of about 10 young women bashed and stripped a 16-year-old girl.

Northern Territory police will send 58 additional officers to the town. There will be no criminal penalty for breaking the curfew, police said.

Why are there calls for the federal government to be involved?
“Horrendous doesn’t cut it, but I have run out of words,” the town’s mayor, Matt Paterson, said on social media. He has previously called for federal help to tackle crime in the area.

MPs at state and federal level have expressed horror this week at the levels of violent crime in Alice Springs and called for more resources and tougher laws.

The shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, wants the federal government to deploy the defence force to maintain order, while federal Labor MP for the Alice Springs electorate of Lingiari, Marion Scrymgour, also believes extra resources are needed and was seeking to work with the NT government.

The federal government could offer to deploy defence force or Australian Federal Police personnel to assist local authorities, though this would require the co-operation of the NT government.

Most policing and public safety measures, such as alcohol restrictions, are the responsibility of the territory government.

The federal government allocated $250 million in last year’s federal budget to improve social outcomes, safety and schooling in central Australia through a series of community-led programs.

Why are crime rates so high in Alice Springs?

The town has a long-standing crime problem, and has been subjected to a series of “crime waves” involving spikes in street violence and theft, and there have been periodic calls for federal intervention in recent years.

Widespread alcohol abuse is generally seen as a leading cause, coupled with chronic social disadvantage and intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities.

Crime rates reached a four-year low in 2023, though they were still high by national standards, after limited bans on alcohol sales were re-introduced.

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Government hostility to religious schools

So it appears that, after several more years of consultation, reviews and inquiries, Australia’s communities of faith will once again be disregarded, cast aside and left to fend for themselves in the land “beyond the wall”.

For those unfamiliar with the imagery, it comes from George R. R. Martin’s popular (and confronting) Game of Thrones literary series. In it, a giant ice wall is built to protect the land of Westeros from the horrors of the wintry north – primarily from the legendary dead army that is rumoured to be on the move. The only problem is that there are still humans who live beyond the wall, simple people, unaffectionately known as “Wildlings”. They are a free folk, a proud folk, with deep history, but fundamentally seen as lesser and cut off from the riches and protections of the mainland.

Such it seems is the view of religious people in Australia at this current point in history. Not only are we largely seen as backward and archaic by the elite ruling class, holding onto outdated superstitious beliefs, but also face repeated legislative raiding parties into our communities by state governments and activist media elements (who I like to refer to as the “Night’s Watch”).

This mentality is perhaps most evident when it comes to faith-based higher education, of which I run but a humble chiefdom. We are a significant minority in the Westerosian university landscape, and the inequality is increasingly blatant. Our Wildling students are forced to pay as much as four times the HECS fees of the city dwellers (despite our institutions often outperforming theirs); we have no access to the Maesters’ citadel (research funding and block grants), and our land rights are rapidly being eroded.

Take the example of the Queensland anti-discrimination bill introduced into the state’s parliament this month which strips faith-based educational institutions of the ability to employ staff who share their religious ethos and values – arguably the most oppressive laws in the land. We thought that those in the northern realms might at least have some empathy, but perhaps their long summers have made them complacent towards their devout Wildling brothers and sisters.

We have always felt, however, that we would be able to endure, particularly when those in King’s landing reassured us that we were indeed an important part of Westeros. We would be respected and left in peace, and when it came down to it, they would ensure our protection and survival. Indeed, the kings and queens on the revolving blood-splattered chair of political swords would even sometimes praise us from afar as we educated their children, looked after their poor and took care of their aged.

However, it now seems that, despite all the promises from the Iron Throne, that the protections will not be forthcoming. The Hand of the King (Australian Law Reform Commission) has advised that exemptions for religious educational institutions in the Sex Discrimination Act should be removed. Additionally, the High King of the eight kingdoms has now also indicated the Religious Discrimination Bill is to be dropped. Roughly translated, this means the Wildlings and their backwards ways are condemned. The long, dark night is upon us.

It is no shame to say that we hold a healthy fear of the army of the dead, or in our case the waves of frozen-eyed lawyers primed to overwhelm our educational institutions with litigation. We have already seen internationally that most cases of religious freedom involve educational institutions – where communities of individual Wildlings who hold the sacred values of marriage, or maleness and femaleness, or that life is sacred, are cast out to wander the wilderness.

One idea that has been discussed in our villages is that perhaps we should all just attempt to clamber back over the wall into Westeros, tell our communities to walk out and enrol in the already underfed public schools south of the wall. I anticipate, however, that there would not be enough food to feed us all.

The real question, therefore, is: does the Iron Throne and its multitude of cunning advisers genuinely want diversity in Westeros? By that I mean diversity of perspectives, cultures and opinion. Or are they seeking a monoculture which ensures every inhabitant bends the knee to whoever controls the ideology of the day?

If it is the latter, then the free folk will always be a thorn in the side of any ruler. Whatever the Wildling tribe – whether it be Christian, Islamic, Judaic or just individuals who covet the free life – the reality is that they won’t ever bend the knee to anyone who is not the True King of Westeros and beyond. Our allegiance and salvation does not rest with men and women – thank God.

All we Wildlings really pray for is the opportunity to live in peace, to educate our young people, freely associate, and serve where our help is accepted. Unfortunately, in this current wintry climate beyond the wall, that is by no means assured.

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Rushed bill forcing hundreds of non-citizens to facilitate own deportation passes lower house

If people have been found to have no case to stay but refuse to leave what do you do?

Legislation that would force hundreds of non-citizens to facilitate their own deportation or face imprisonment has been rushed through the lower house, despite warnings it breaches human rights obligations.

The Labor government combined with Peter Dutton’s opposition shortly before question time on Tuesday to approve the new powers for the immigration minister despite howls of dissent from independents and minor parties about lack of due process.

After the bill was introduced at noon, Labor and the Coalition gagged debate after a little over two hours. The migration amendment (removals and other measures) bill passed to the Senate, where it will be considered by a two-hour inquiry hearing on Tuesday evening before possible passage on Wednesday.

The bill gives the minister the power to direct a non-citizen who is due to be deported “to do specified things necessary to facilitate their removal”, or risk a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in prison or up to five years.

The Greens, independents, Refugee Council of Australia and Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law have raised concerns that the bill applies to those who had “fast-track” assessment of their protection claims, which Labor criticised in opposition.

“We are concerned that those who do have strong claims, but have not had a fair hearing or review, will be sent back to real harm,” the Refugee Council chief executive officer, Paul Power, said.

At the Tuesday inquiry hearing, home affairs officials said the bill would apply to people whose claim for refugee protection had been finally resolved, but could not say how many were assessed by the fast track.

They said the bill would apply to at least 150 to 200 people in detention, people on bridging visa R including those released by the NZYQ high court decision, and an unspecified number on other bridging visas on a pathway to removal.

But the Greens senator David Shoebridge noted there was “no limit” to the minister using regulation to add visa classes to the list of those who can be given directions.

In parliament, the independent MP Kylea Tink argued the bill breached Australia’s obligation not to forcibly return asylum seekers to their country of persecution.

The independent MP Zoe Daniel warned that “if we make a mistake here” people may be taken back to their country of persecution and “murdered”.

The most contentious provision states that it is not a “reasonable excuse” to the new offence of refusing a direction that the person “has a genuine fear of suffering persecution or significant harm if the person were removed”.

The Human Rights Law Centre said the provisions “will apply to people who have serious and legitimate claims for protection”.

“They risk serious non-compliance with Australia’s obligations under the refugee convention as well as other international instruments.

“The bill deliberately separates families,” it said. “The minister can require a person to comply with a direction in relation to their removal, irrespective of the impact this would have on their spouse, children or other family members.”

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, warned the bill meant “a mum who refuses to sign a passport application for her children to be returned to Iran where they have a fear of persecution could be put in jail”. He noted this carried a mandatory minimum sentence of a year in prison, in apparent breach of Labor’s platform.

In the hearing, the home affairs general counsel Clare Sharp said the “legislation doesn’t prevent [family separation] from happening, it’s possible”, but it may be a reason the minister may grant a person a visa.

In question time, Tink noted the bill can force guardians “to take actions in the aid of having their children removed from Australia”.

The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, noted the bill contains a “safeguard which deals with children”, that is, that children cannot be issued directions to facilitate their own deportation.

Giles claimed that the bill was “consistent with Australia’s human rights obligations”. In fact, the statement of compatibility said it was consistent in “most respects” but to the extent it limits human rights it does so “in order to maintain the integrity of the migration system”.

“What we’re doing with … this important piece of legislation is to fill a very significant loophole, that a small cohort of people who have no basis upon which to remain in Australia are refusing to cooperate with efforts to affect their removal.”

Giles said that those affected were “not refugees”. The bill’s explanatory memorandum says those who have “been found to engage Australia’s protection obligations … cannot be directed to interact with or be removed” to their country of persecution, but can be directed to do things to be removed to a “safe third country”.

The bill also creates a power for the government to designate another country as a “removal concern country”, which will impose a bar on new visa applications from non-citizens outside Australia who are nationals of a country that does not accept removals from Australia.

The power could affect applicants hoping to leave countries including Russia, Iran, Iraq and South Sudan.

Shoebridge said that “entire communities” in Australia face being permanently barred from visits from relatives from those countries.

The Refugee Legal executive director, David Manne, said this aspect of the bill was “discriminatory and extreme overreach”.

The shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, told Guardian Australia the Coalition was worried if the bill “doesn’t work as intended, it could force people to get more desperate and jump on boats” if their country is designated.

The independent senator David Pocock said it was “incredibly disappointing” that Labor was rushing the bill through, accusing the major parties of “disgraceful” treatment of independents who had raised concerns about the bill.

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LGBTQI+ intolerance prevalent among Australian air force chaplains, inquiry told

Hardly surprising in view of what the Bible says about homosexuality. Are Christian chaplains allowed to believe their Bibles when their Bibles tell them that homosexuality is an abomination to God? (Leviticus 20:13) Asking them to defy God's word is pretty heavy

Some religious chaplains in the air force hold “unacceptable views about minority groups, women [and] LGBTQI+ persons”, posing a mental health risk to members, the royal commission into defence and veteran suicide has heard.

And part of a review commissioned by the defence department into the air force chaplaincy unit – quietly tabled as evidence to the royal commission – found tension between theology and values, “notably in relation to gender and LGBTI inclusion”.

“Some chaplains perceived other chaplains to be intolerant towards LGBTI people, women and those chaplains who express differing theological views,” the review found.

Collin Acton, a former director general of chaplaincy for the navy, said chaplains were members’ first port of call for mental health help, with other forms of help off base or harder to access.

The “vast majority [of ADF members] are ticking the ‘no religion’ box” and would be reluctant to seek support from chaplains, many of whom were ordained ministers, Acton said.

“A large portion of our workforce would prefer not to speak to a minister as their first port of call when they’re going through difficult times,” he said.

“They might be well-equipped to look after members of their own flock, but they’re under-equipped to look after the rest of the personnel.

“Religious ministers don’t sit down and have a conversation with someone about their worldview, they come with an agenda.”

Guardian Australia revealed last year that the Australian defence force as a whole has a disproportionately high number of pentecostal and evangelical chaplains. For example, there are 13 Australian Christian Churches (formerly known as Assemblies of God) chaplains for the 13 members that identify with that denomination.

Chaplains are also ADF members, so the ratio could be anywhere from one-to-one to 13-to-none, depending on how individuals identified themselves.

Meanwhile, there are five non-denominational Christian chaplains and 4,217 serving members who identify that way, a ratio of one-to-843.

In a commission hearing, the air force chief, Air Marshal Robert Chipman, said the review found there were “deep-rooted cultural challenges” within air force chaplaincy.

“And there was an unhealthy mix of theological beliefs … of a view that things that happen between chaplains should stay within chaplains,” he said.

“Both of those created conditions for an unhealthy culture to develop within chaplaincy branch and that had very significant impacts on the welfare of some of our chaplains.”

Commissioner Erin Longbottom put to Chipman that the review found “there was a conflict between faith-based values of chaplains within that branch and the requirements of a modern defence force”. Chipman agreed.

“We did find chaplains … from certain theological schools that had concerns with female chaplains or LGBTIQA chaplains and so those … beliefs that they bring as chaplains into our organisation did intersect unevenly with our Defence values,” he said.

Chipman also agreed that the review found “unacceptable views about minority groups, women, LGBTQI+ persons”.

“If there are chaplains practising in Defence that cannot abide by our values and behaviours, then they need to find somewhere else to be employed,” he said.

But Chipman said that in general the chaplains did a “phenomenal job” and “save lives every day”.

Guardian Australia has sought the air force chaplaincy review under freedom of information laws since September. The request was initially rejected because it would cause an unreasonable workload. Defence sought an extension to the deadline for a revised request to November. In February the request for “any reports or directives produced from the air force chaplaincy review” returned a directive about the implementation of the review but not the report itself.

But an executive summary of the report was provided to the royal commission.

It found there was “tension” reconciling “strong theological beliefs with Defence values”.

Chaplains dealt “‘in-house’ with unacceptable behaviour complaints within the branch” instead of through Defence processes, it found. Some complaints went without action or resolution.

“Others identified inappropriate behaviour which appeared to them to be condoned within the branch”, it found, while some chaplains said that “unacceptable or undesirable behaviour or comments falling short of unacceptable behaviour was excused within the branch where they were associated with views supported by a chaplain’s faith group but not otherwise consistent with Defence values and behaviour”.

In its submission to the royal commission, the Rationalist Society of Australia pointed to research that found almost 64% of ADF members – and 80% of new recruits – were not religious.

The society claimed chaplains viewed the position as missionary in nature and were “unable to provide non-judgmental care”, which the organisation said could stop personnel getting appropriate support.

“The religious-based nature of the capability opens the door to chaplains identifying problems as ‘sin’ and the solutions as requiring ‘repentance’.”

Acton was pivotal in a push to get a non-religious chaplains into the navy and has since pushed for secular reform despite a significant backlash from some opponents.

“I’m not saying get rid of religious chaplains, but they should be in proportion to the religious portion of our workforce,” he said.

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Wednesday, March 27, 2024


Smiling but lying – if real estate agents won’t tell the truth, I will

Jenna Price (below) is a grumpy old thing. She fails to realize that real estate valuations are very uncertain, which is why auctions are so often resorted to. And note how often auction results are surprising. There'a an old saying in real estate that you only know the value of a property when the cheque clears. I have bought and sold many houses and have generally guessed well but I have had disappointments too

Have real estate agents changed, or have I? You be the judge.

We bought our first house in 1984. It was previously owned by the kind of real estate mogul who knew which suburbs were on the move. It came with a needy neighbour, an outside dunny and was right under the flight path, but we loved it. We made our first baby there and then our second.

It became clear we needed a laundry, an indoor toilet and, spare me your judgment, a kitchen which had room for both a fridge and a dishwasher. I seriously felt I was more likely to survive without a fridge than without a dishwasher. And that was before No.3.

But real estate agents could tell us, more or less, what we should pay for a bigger house in the neighbouring suburb. News in Victoria that an agency is being charged for massive underquoting must act as a warning that all agents should be fair and, more or less, square.

If only warnings worked.

Here’s what I discovered this week. My kids are on the lookout. In fact, I’m friends with an entire generation of parents whose kids are on the lookout, both for their inheritance and the prospect of leaving behind the government-sanctioned malfeasance of renting. Which brings me to this predicament.

A couple of weeks ago, a long-time friend discovered we were planning to downsize. She told me her kid and the kid’s partner were selling their house and could expect to get, according to their local agent, $1.7 million for it. Yes, it’s in one of those newly groovy suburbs, but it’s small and perfectly formed. She sent me the address. Looked great. I’m too old for groovy but whatever.

Imagine my utter lack of surprise when it turned up on your favourite real estate site, with a buyer’s guide of $1.45 million. That’s a quarter of a million dollars less than what the agent guided the sellers. I even wrote to the real estate agent just to check on that buyer’s guide because, you know, glitches happen online. He confirmed $1.45 million as the buyer’s guide. God, you’d love to be issued the seller’s guide as well, right?

In my highest dudgeon, I called the only non-real-estate-agent-real-estate-expert I know – Macquarie University’s Cathy Sherry – filled with grumpiness directed at the real estate agent.

She reminded me that the duty of the agent is to the vendor. They are engaged by the vendor. That means they have to act in the best interests of the vendor.

It’s nearly impossible to get anyone defending real estate agents in Australia, but Sherry said agents can’t ever – really – tell how many people are going to show up at an auction and how much they are prepared to spend. She says the best way to prepare yourself for what you should pay is to look at all the houses.

“Once you’ve looked at five properties, it’s not rocket science,” she says. Mind you, she did agree that my example revealed a big gap.

Now, imagine my utter frustration when one of my own children thought buying it was a possibility based on the unrealistic (and indeed phony) buyer’s guide. If you pop in the top price you want to pay (as you can on these exhausting websites), it comes up as under $1.5 million.

The problem is not the underquoting exactly. It’s the sheer manipulation of the hopes of young buyers drifting around homes which are nearly identical because they’ve been styled. (Please – I beg you – no more white walls, cream couches and AI artwork. And turn off the lights in the middle of the day. We see you.)

Buying property, unless you are a hardened investor with no emotions in the game, is a nightmare. Conveyancers. Maybe lawyers. Building reports. Banks. All under the pressure of time and fear, of not knowing what comes next. It’s a crushing combination of mundane tasks under extreme pressures of time and money. Then you have to do it all again when you fail.

Now this is not a thing where everyone got overexcited at the auction. It’s before the auction. I’ve watched a few of those and understood what happened. I’ve even been the participating underbidder (relieved when unsuccessful). But this agent knows it’s likely to go for much more, has told his vendors it will go for much more, yet is luring people in with the prospect of a bargain.

And it doesn’t just happen to buyers. Vendors often fall victim to conditioning, the practice of being told the place is worth more than it is. It’s how agents win business. Please do not imagine that because an agent tells you they can sell your palace for a huge sum, that will actually come to be.

Likewise, there are no bargains in the groovy suburbs; there is no honour in the real estate market.

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New Vehicle Efficiency Standard welcomed by car industry after tweaks

The car industry has cautiously welcomed the Federal Government’s softer new vehicle efficiency targets.

The New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, which will be introduced to parliament tomorrow, includes concessions for work utes and four-wheel-drive wagons.

CO2 targets have been tweaked for utes, while some 4WDs, which originally had to meet passenger car targets, will be reclassified as commercial vehicles.

They include vehicles such as the Ford Everest, which is essentially a Ranger ute with a roof, and the popular Toyota LandCruiser, which is used extensively by farmers.

Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Tony Weber, who was controversially frozen out of government briefings and the press conference because of his strident criticism of the standard, said the new target was “a step in the right direction”.

“The FCAI has made its position clear on this issue and it’s good to see that government has moved in part to our position to get a better outcome for consumers,” he said.

Car industry heavyweights Toyota and Hyundai, who both attended the announcement, were supportive of the new plan, which will take force from January next year. Penalties and credits won’t be introduced until the middle of next year.

The Motor Trades Association of Australia was upbeat about the new standard.

Chief executive Matt Hobbs said the association was pleased the government had made concessions based on industry feedback.

He said the changes would reduce the “very real risk” of price rises and reduced access to popular vehicles.

The amended standard would “better reflect the country’s love of utes and SUVs while preparing for an EV future,” he said.

“We all intend to do our part in decarbonising the country’s transport sector. But consumers must come first, and we believe the adjustments to the policy strikes this delicate balance,” he said.

He said the proposed standard was still “ambitious and challenging” for the industry but “workable.

Toyota, which was a vocal critic of the proposed standard in its original form, welcomed the changes.

Toyota Australia President and chief executive Matthew Callachor said the company supported an “ambitious fuel-efficiency standard that is calibrated to the unique requirements of the Australian market and leaves no-one behind”.

“We welcome the willingness of the Federal Government to consult on this important public policy and to make changes that represent a positive step forward,” Mr Callachor said.

“Even so, Toyota and the industry face huge challenges that must be addressed before these significant reductions can be realised,” he said.

Hyundai chief operating officer John Kett said the standard struck “the right balance between ambition and practicality”.

“With this standard in place, Hyundai dealers will have great vehicles to sell, customers

will have great vehicles to drive, and the automotive industry will be playing its part to

reduce emissions in line with Australia’s commitment to decarbonise,” said Mr Kett.

Tesla and the Electric Vehicle Council, who also attended the press conference, backed the plan.

Electric Vehicle Council chief executive Behyad Jafari said the announcement was “a great day for Australia”.

“Everyone wants these standards in place so we can get on with providing Australians with lower fuel bills and a greater choice of particularly the most efficient, the latest and greatest electric vehicles,” he said.

Tesla policy and business development boss Sam McLean, said nobody “had left with everything they wanted” in discussions with the government.

“This is a very moderate standard that takes Australia from being really last place in this transition to the middle of the pack,” he said.

He described the new plan as “a very solid compromise”.

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Fatal flaws exposed in the Net Zero transition. What is to be done?

According to NSW’s Ausgrid, the most recent AEMO draft Integrated System Plan (ISP) for electricity supply will require $325 billion for transmission to meet Net Zero emissions by 2050.

Aside from blowing the lid on this element of Net Zero’s cost, the call for submissions on the draft ISP allowed a sliver of realism to be voiced.

Electricity suppliers, including the major generation businesses, (who are also beneficiaries of renewable energy subsidies), warned the government and its appointed advisers that their time-frame for closing down coal and most gas generators is impossible.

However, businesses have to work with the government and were understandably guarded in expressing their reservations:

AGL addressed a lack of adequate reserves

Alinta discussed ‘significant challenges’ and practical issues facing the transition

Delta stressed an absence of long-term storage is a risk to AEMO’s favoured path and ventured to say that coal generators must be retained

EnergyAustralia also discussed the need for more storage and for gas to counter the risks posed by intermittent renewables

According to Origin ‘the underlying generation pathway that incorporates key risks’ should be modelled to make it easier ‘to understand the implications for the transition should these risks not be addressed’

It was left to some independent submissions to fully specify the fatal flaws in the push to the energy ‘transition’ that is being orchestrated.

A comprehensive analysis by a group of 16 Independent engineers, scientists, and professionals minced no words in stating:

‘The transition of the NEM, which has been accelerating for several years, will lead to a collapse of system reliability should any more reliable baseload power generation be retired without prior implementation of the means to maintain proper positive dispatchable reserve margin under worst case conditions.’

23 years on from when renewable energy electricity generation was declared an infant in need of temporary nurturing, Australian governments (mainly the Commonwealth) are spending $16.5 billion a year in regulatory requirements and other subsidies favouring wind and solar generators. That is equivalent to one-third of spending on national Defence.

Unlike other government spending, there are no benefits accruing.

The subsidies to renewable energy (mainly wind and solar) are intentionally designed to force the replacement of low-cost, reliable coal and gas generators by high-cost alternatives. Accordingly, the costs they entail are far in excess of the measured regulatory costs.

The annual subsidies to renewable energy have more than doubled since the last year of the Morrison government, but it would be mistaken to exonerate the Coalition from participating in the damage. Morrison went to the 2019 Glasgow Climate Change conference with a ‘Net Zero’ pledge and the Coalition had previously done much to reverse course from the climate policy back-peddling that Tony Abbott had embarked upon – indeed, Abbott’s resistance to further harmful climate change policies was a major factor in the Liberal Party voting to replace him with Malcolm Turnbull.

In this respect, the Liberals were in a similar position to that of the UK Conservative Party, currently in power but expected to lose in a general election. Some UK Conservatives are having doubts about the wisdom of Net Zero, but the party’s policy is almost identical to that of the Labour Opposition. The Australian Liberals and Nationals are seeking to differentiate themselves by pursuing nuclear as an alternative low carbon emission policy, but this faces formidable opposition on spurious safety grounds as well as massive impediments from the regulatory framework which has been developed.

Commercial and regulatory reality will likely force some reversal of current policy stances. This is already evident with governments shifting to subsidise some coal plants that are adversely affected by the subsidies to their renewable energy competition and to create special exemptions for energy-intensive industries like nickel smelting.

However, an efficient energy policy requires a more radical change of course. Although Alexandra Marshall suggests the present lamentable course in energy and other policies stems from poor political leadership, the major parties’ policies are formulated by carefully researching what the voters want. As when they buy breakfast cereal, in the absence of a crisis, few voters put effort into reviewing all the options before them. At present, the dominant voter paradigm is: greenhouse gases bad; wind/solar clean and cheap.

Changing this is difficult in view of prevailing attitudes in the media and other institutional elites. Changing it also confronts a political establishment and a profession of bureaucrats that see no attraction in simply holding the ring for private enterprise to pursue Smithian economic prosperity, especially when there are obvious cracks to fill.

It is difficult to see a new political consensus focusing on competition policy and disengaging public business enterprises from political oversight which allowed an efficient energy industry structure to be created. For the Labor Party, this would mean a return to an ahistorical Hawke-Keating belief in market capitalism. For the Coalition, it would mean politicians seeking to implement notions that they presently regard as window dressing.

More likely is Australian policy being re-formed by overseas developments.

Already Europe is seeing a backlash against socialist interventions in national elections, which are likely to be reinforced in EU-wide elections in June. But it would take a Trump victory in November to bring about an early change. A Trump Administration would abruptly reverse the many energy subsidy programs in the Biden Administration’s misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act as well as abrogating the Paris Agreement on climate change. Australia and the rest of the world will have to follow this.

Even so, this will not be easy for Australia where regulatory inertia rules. Restoring a sensible energy policy will entail longer-term measures that dislodge the many agencies – regulatory and propagandatory – that live off the public purse. Immediate-term measures will require:

Removal of all subsidies

Defunding of many government agencies (under Gillard/Rudd, the CSIRO used to claim that half its programs were global warming oriented)

Requirements on banks, finance houses, and superannuation funds to cease discriminatory energy policies

Reform of planning laws that embrace climate change in evaluating development proposals

Use of the State Grants Commission to prevent state governments from using climate (and other environment policies) to penalise productive activities

This is a formidable program for the handful of politicians, with – unlike the Hawke-Keating government – no bureaucratic support favouring the dismantling of the economy-throttling measures on which they have built their careers.

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"COVID Revisited" Conference to Shed Light on Australia's Pandemic Response

Almost four years since the pandemic began, COVID-19 continues to leave its mark on Australia, affecting healthcare and society in general. While the vaccines offered some degree of protection, controversies remain around the pandemic response. These include a case brought against pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna and calls seeking transparency from the Australian government about its pandemic measures. TrialSite has reported before on Australian analysts challenging the pandemic narrative driven by the government.

To discuss the lessons learned and examine past challenges, the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) is organizing a conference named “COVID Revisited: Lessons Learned, Challenges Faced, and the Road Ahead.” The event aims to provide a platform from which to discuss the government’s decisions during the pandemic and policies to guide future responses.

As time passes, the controversies surrounding the lockdown measures and vaccine mandates in Australia seem to intensify. TrialSite previously reported on a legal case filed against Pfizer and Moderna in the Federal Court of Australia accusing them of lacking transparency regarding alleged DNA contaminants and GMOs in their vaccines. This case was filed by Dr. Julian Fidge and handled by lawyer Katie Ashby-Koppens and former barrister Julian Gillespie.

Providing an update in a February 2024 Substack article, Gillespie explained that the presiding judge, Hon Helen Mary Joan Rofe, had at the time delayed a final decision on the defendant's application for a case dismissal. However, on March 1, 2024, Rofe dismissed Fidge’s lawsuit against Pfizer and Moderna. For the time being, this ruling has put a halt to any likely legal challenges gaining traction against the mRNA vaccines.

We also reported in February 2024 that Australians were demanding a COVID-19 Royal Commission to investigate the vaccine mandates and pandemic measures implemented in the country. Ashby-Koppens was among those calling for this Royal Commission. According to Gillespie, the Senate Terms of Reference Committee is currently deliberating this.

Despite Rofe’s ruling, the critics are not backing down. With the AMPS’s conference looking to help people learn and discuss better ways to handle future pandemics through the “COVID Revisited” program and the ongoing process at the Senate Terms of Reference committee, the critics believe that the upcoming conference “reflects the Australian people's wish for a review of the government response to COVID-19.”

The “COVID Revisited” conference

The conference is scheduled for April 2, 2024, and will take place in the State Library NSW Auditorium. According to AMPS, top medical and academic professionals from around the world will be in attendance, with the event garnering support from notable organizations like the National Institute of Integrative Medicine (NIIM), Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM), World of Wellness International (WOW) and Children’s Health Defense Australia Chapter (CHD).

Speaking about the conference’s mission, AMPS secretary Kara Thomas stated, "Our mission is clear. We aim to generate tangible policy recommendations that substantially influence the management of future pandemic crisis situations."

Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy, one of the speakers, provided insights into the event’s structure and its focus on examining the government's handling of the COVID-19 response. “This symposium is structured to reflect the collective views of those involved in this response,” Clancy said, “with a particular focus on lessons learned as to mistakes made and how best to go forward with the best plan to handle health challenges of similar ill when next encountered.”

He further stated, “Presentations from professionals covering these disciplines will be followed by an interactive workshop with an expert panel charged with identifying outcomes. The day will conclude with a reception allowing informal discussion amongst participants and attendees. A book including presentations and outcomes will be published.”

According to AMPS, the conference will produce a set of well-defined resolutions, to be shared widely with practitioners, public health authorities and government bodies. These resolutions will identify practical measures to ensure safe and effective responses. In doing so, they aim to reduce mishandling in crisis management that could potentially compromise Australians’ health.

Another speaker, Professor Philip Morris, highlights the offerings attendees can expect: “deep-dive sessions into key aspects of pandemic response, insights from top-notch experts in the medical and public health fields, interactive workshops fostering collaboration and idea exchange, networking opportunities with like-minded professionals and access to cutting-edge research and best practices”

Who are the speakers?

One of the keynote speakers at this event is a retired nurse, John Campbell. Campbell is based in the UK and has a YouTube channel with over three million subscribers where he shares about COVID-19-related topics. The conference will be divided into three sessions.

Progress achieved and challenges faced during the pandemic

The Australian government’s pandemic measures yielded a mixed set of outcomes. The Financial Times reported that while Australia’s initial zero-COVID strategy showed positive results in containing the virus, some critics argued that it was too strict with potential adverse economic implications.

The government’s actions included closing international borders to non-residents and, at times, restricting internal state border crossings. Widespread testing and contact tracing enabled authorities to suppress community transmission and by June 2021, Australia had recorded low COVID-19 case numbers compared to other countries.

However, these actions by the government had some negative impact on businesses and families, as business owners complained that the lockdown lingered for too long. According to a Lancet study, the Australian government was accused of discriminatory travel restrictions against specific countries, leaving many Australians stranded abroad for long periods. Moreover, as new variants emerged, maintaining zero-COVID became increasingly difficult. The Australian authorities then shifted their focus to pushing vaccination campaigns and moved from their zero-COVID policy in September 2021.

A call for investigations and open dialogue

The safety of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and the Australian government’s response to the pandemic are still being discussed in the Australian medical community. While critics like Gillespie are challenging pharmaceutical giants and calling for transparency, the AMPS has created a platform for open dialogue to discuss policies that will help guide future pandemic responses.

By bringing together experts and stakeholders, the upcoming conference aims to shed light on the lessons learned, address ongoing concerns, and chart a path forward for better preparedness.

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Tuesday, March 26, 2024



‘Starving, extreme pain’: Young mum’s ‘inhumane’ treatment at Queensland hospital laid bare

The joys of government healthcare. I once had a similar painful problem: kidney stones. I took a taxi to my usual private hospital and was on the operating table within hours. The woman below could have got similar treatment if Queensland Health fired some of its many bureaucrats and redirected the funds into employing more doctors and nursesTorrens University pushes private sector path to higher education targets

Australia’s only for-profit university is besting its sandstone rivals in taking on more Aboriginal, female and poorer students, as its chancellor warns the nation will fail to meet the goals of a landmark review into higher education if doesn’t embrace a new model of private universities.

Torrens University chancellor Jim Varghese said the targets set out in the recent Universities Accord report – that 80 per cent of the population aged 25 to 34 should have at least a tertiary qualification and 55 per cent should have a university degree by 2050 – would not be possible with public institutions alone.

He has called for a shake-up of the tertiary sector, which has been dominated by government-funded institutions, arguing that without competitive private alternatives there will not be enough places. The Accord report estimates an additional 940,000 Commonwealth supported places will be required to reach the university attainment goal by 2050.

“It is not possible unless you get the private sector actively involved,” Mr Varghese said.

“Unless you have a private higher education sector working hand in glove in competition, it will become very bureaucratic, very difficult and we won’t reach that very ambitious and laudable target.”

As Australia’s only for-profit higher education institution with university status reaches its 10-year anniversary, a new Deloitte report has found Torrens University was already leading the way on the access and equity goals set out in the Accord’s final report ­released last month.

The report found 25 per cent of its students were from disadvantaged backgrounds, compared to 12 per cent of Group of Eight universities; 19 per cent were from regional areas, compared to 9 per cent at the Go8; and 3 per cent were Indigenous, compared to 1 per cent at sandstone universities.

It also found that Torrens ­University – which is owned by US company Strategic Education – had added $468.9m in value to the Australian economy and supported more than 3000 jobs, all without any investment from the government.

Torrens University president Linda Brown said it was the nation’s fastest-growing university, expanding from 165 to 24,000 students in a decade, and had built its brand by scrapping the requirement for an entry score, attracting non-traditional students and ­offering flexible study options.

She said the university also focused on offering degrees in high demand areas including health, nursing, hospitality, education and business, and was becoming a leader in artificial intelligence. “I believe that we should be allowing investors to invest in universities, all universities – people should be able to raise private money for public good,” she said.

“I also believe that individuals should put their hand in their pocket because they’re getting the return on investment and the ­benefit for that, so there should be more individual investment,” Ms Brown added. “And there should be government investment … one plus one plus one is much better than relying on funding from one source for 90 per cent of the market.”

Ms Brown said Torrens had attracted international students from 150 nationalities, warning Labor’s crackdown on student visa holders using the pathway to work rather than study could harm the nation’s reputation.

“We will manage whatever is coming, but this uncertainty or drip feeding of changes is not great for our reputation as a country for being open for business for international students,” she said.

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Submissions for Draft Legislation on Homeschooling

From Left-wing unions

Submissions are closing on proposed legislation changes to Homeschooling.

On the 6th of March proposed homeschooling legislation was tabled in the Queensland state Parliament. You can read the bill here.

Qld statistics show the increase in the last 5 years

CLOSE TO 300% INCREASE IN HOME-SCHOOLING!

Parents see an issue with the current curriculum, which is why families are choosing to homeschool. Government needs to look at the reason why there has been an almost 300% increase in home-schooling, not try to stamp it out.

The main points of concern are:

Homeschooling families must use the National Curriculum and it will require homeschool educators to report on all subject areas in the curriculum.

There is concerning wording in the legislation

(da)for chapter 9, part 5, home education of a child or young person should be provided in a way that —

(i)is in the best interests of the child or young person taking into account their safety and wellbeing; and

(ii)ensures the child or young person receives a high-quality education;

Who decides what is in the best interest of our own children?

If this bill passes in its current form, it will no longer be the parents who look after the best interest of their children, but unelected bureaucrats under the thumb of the governments and their corporate controllers.

Any legislation which takes the rights and decision away from the parents, is a direct attack on our freedoms and aimed at creating an environment in which the government has control over our families.

Via email

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Net overseas migration likely to surpass 375,000 by June, experts and Coalition say

Immigration experts and the Coalition have warned Australia is not on track to cut the net overseas migration (NOM) number to 375,000 by June 30 under current policy conditions, with questions raised over whether the government will need to further tighten rules around international students or begin targeting other temporary visa holders like working holiday makers.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures last week showing the NOM had totalled 548,000 in the year to September 30, prompting backlash from the opposition, which accused the government of running a “big Australia” policy.

But Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said the figures did not capture the many policies Labor had introduced to curb the NOM to 375,000 by June.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan warned the NOM target was getting progressively out of reach.

“The Australians who are struggling to find a place to live or pay the rent want to hear a commitment from the Albanese government that they will meet expectations and cut NOM to 375,000 this financial year,” he said.

“They still have no answer to the question: where will all these people live?”

According to Coalition analysis, to reduce the NOM to 375,000 by June, the government would need to ensure NOM was no more than 76,600 over the remaining three-quarters in the 2023-24 financial year.

Figures also showed a total of 2,214,695 temporary visa holders in Australia as of January 31, not counting tourist and crew visa-holders, representing a reduction of 3.23 per cent since September.

The Coalition estimates that to meet the NOM estimate, there will need to be a reduction of 27 per cent by the end of the 2023-24 financial year.

A spokesman for Ms O’Neil said the migration data recorded so far was in line with all expectations, indicating confidence the government would reduce the NOM to 375,000 by June.

“This data does not capture the measures the government has introduced to get migration back down to sustainable levels and restore integrity to our international education sector,” the spokesman said.

Former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, Abul Rizvi, said he would be surprised if the government curbed NOM at the rate it hoped to, arguing the figure would be more like “400,000 to 500,000” by the middle of the year.

He noted student visa holders – which are significantly driving up NOM – totalled 571,000 by January 24 while net student arrivals in February 24 were over 147,000.

“Total students in Australia (is) likely over 700,000 for the first time in … history,” he said in a post on X.

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Canberra to blame for gas shortfall: developer

A looming gas shortfall that threatens to curtail industries and derail Australia’s energy transition is the fault of 10 successive government interventions, the Gina Rinehart-backed Senex Energy has declared, and now the country has little time left to fix the mess.

Australia faces a looming gas shortage which could emerge as soon as next winter, and while there are marginal supply boosts that can be implemented, authorities said the chasm would be impossible to bridge by 2028 without urgent new supplies.

Should new supplies not be brought online, large industries that rely on gas are likely to face a battle for survival and Australia’s energy transition away from coal could be scuppered.

Senex Energy, half-owned by mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, said the difficulties were a direct consequence of governments intervening to pick winners – though there is now a gradual acceptance that gas is vital and will be required for decades to come.

Chief executive Ian Davies said Labor and its state counterparts would need to show “unambiguous and unequivocal support” for gas.

“Something needs to change – and quickly – before the warning bells turn to a death knell for industry and lights out for households,” Mr Davies will say in an industry speech in Sydney on Tuesday. “Unrelenting gas market intervention has created this mess and it’s time for effective energy policy to get us out.”

The comments will heighten pressure on Labor, which insists it understands and appreciates the value of the gas while taking steps to bolster domestic supplies.

Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen last week said the shortfall estimates for gas had been delayed by two years, though the gas industry insists the lack of progress in improving the regulatory landscape and exclusion of the sector from key energy security policies is indicative of the government’s support for gas.

Sharpening his attack, Mr Davies said there has been sustained talk but there continued to be little actual progress.

“Following the most recent Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council Meeting, ministers announced ‘a more robust assessment of gas market conditions and better integration of demand-side opportunities’.

“But no amount of further assessment and analysis is going to fix the problem. What we need are policies that will ensure investment in new supply and result in gas being produced.”

Mr Davies said urgent and real action was needed, the most obvious of which should be speeding up approvals of projects.

Senex submitted an application for environmental approval for its $1bn expansion 500 days ago, Mr Davies will say – which he will label “legislative bureaucracy.”

Senex has struck supply agreements with big gas users, but ongoing delays threaten the timetable.

Labor has committed to streamlining approvals for resource projects but Mr Davies will declare there is no time to waste.

“The longer approvals take, the more profound the shortfall risk becomes – not to mention the risk to manufacturing jobs and the energy transition. And the more expensive the development becomes. To date, approval delays have increased the cost of Senex’s project by more than $150m and counting,” Mr Davies will say. “We remain unwavering in our commitment to the domestic market, but it’s fair to say ongoing approval delays are making it increasingly difficult to deliver the critical gas supply Australian manufacturers and households so desperately need.”

Labor is expected to tweak legislation governing environmental approvals in a bid to accelerate the progress, but Mr Davies will tell the federal Labor government to change the way it consults all stakeholders.

“That means doing more than secret ‘lock-ups’ under punitive non-disclosure agreements with select industry groups and no formal consultation papers or regulatory impact statement,” Mr Davies will say.

“The original (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation) Act took the best part of a decade to create. It was formed co-operatively with state governments and through extensive public consultation. Fast forward nearly 25 years and the Albanese government wants to replace it with a new Act in less than 18 months with secret and selective micro-consultation.”

Recent government consultation has seen those included required to sign non-disclosure agreements, which blocks participants from discussion of potential legislation changes.

While the onshore gas industry, which services the needs of domestic customers, continues to wait for the legislative amendments the country’s offshore resource sector has secured a win.

Labor on Tuesday moved an amendment that would allow Resources Minister Madeleine King the power to define what hurdles new offshore gas projects must clear before securing approval.

The change is seen as limiting the capacity of environmentalists to mount legal challenges against new LNG projects.

The decision follows a spate of legal victories by environmentalists that have delayed mega projects, including Santos’s $5.3bn Barossa LNG development and Woodside’s $16.5bn Scarborough project.

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Monday, March 25, 2024



Gay conversion banned in NSW after all-night debate

It seems that most talk is unaffected by this bill so that is good but some more active therapy offered by non-psychologists will clearly be banned. That clearly affects the offerings of certain church-based groups.

What is unclear is if qualified pychologists are allowed to offer more than talk. Are active therapies such as behaviour therapy allowed? Such therapies can be very effective. Restrictions on proven active therapy are unfair to the minority who WANT all available help towards normalizing their feelings. Not all homosexuals are happy about the way they are


Gay conversion practices will be banned in NSW after the state’s parliament passed new laws following a marathon debate that stretched into the early hours of Friday morning.

Bleary-eyed members of the upper house supported Labor’s Conversion Practices Ban bill just after 6.30am on Friday after debate kicked off at 11pm on Thursday with a number of attempted amendments from the Coalition, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party and the Greens.

However, the government had stressed it would not be changing its bill and when it returned to the lower house just before 7am, NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley said, “history is made”.

“Our friends in the LBTQ+ community deserve that history,” Daley told parliament, thanking MPs for the “respectful way in which this debate has been conducted”.

The ban, which was the focus of months-long discussions between the government, LGBTQ advocacy groups and religious organisations, will outlaw practices that attempt to change or suppress a person’s sexual identity, following a 12-month introduction period. It will also be illegal to take someone outside of NSW to undergo conversion therapies.

NSW follows Victoria and the ACT, where conversion therapy has already been outlawed.

The bill has some exceptions for religious groups, meaning, for example, it is still legal to give a religious sermon that preaches against homosexuality or pray with someone experiencing same-sex attraction.

Exemptions are also given to registered psychologists and families, with conversations in those settings still legal under the bill.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said he was comfortable with the exemptions. “The exemptions relate to medical professionals and counsellors, those that are governed by a professional association … There [are] also exemptions for families because we recognise parents are primarily responsible for raising their kids and they need to be able to have honest conversations with their children,” he said on 2GB on Friday morning.

Independent MP Alex Greenwich, who withdrew his own version of a bill to ban the practice last year to work with the government on its own legislation, celebrated the news outside Parliament on Friday morning.

“NSW is waking up as a safer place for LGBTQ people today,” he said, adding that the bill sends “a really clear message that LGBTQ people are loved, are beautiful, and now, any futile attempts to change who we are is against the law”.

Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown said the passing of this legislation shows that governments shouldn’t be afraid of pursuing LGBTQ reform.

“This is a historic day and this law will save lives,” she said, saying conversion practices are “alive and well in NSW”, with people aged in their 20s coming forward as victims of these practices in recent years.

Teddy Cook, the director of community health at ACON and a survivor of conversion practices, praised the legislation for being inclusive of transgender Australians.

“We truly wake up today with more pride and more euphoria than the state has perhaps ever experienced,” he said.

“As a proud trans man, I wake up here after a huge night knowing that this state is telling us loud and clear that we are perfect.”

Announcing the news outside Parliament on Friday morning, Penny Sharpe, the leader of the government in the upper house, said the passing of the bill was “a very long time coming”.

“It’s been many years of advocacy for many people,” she said.

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Government Targeting ‘Ghost Colleges’ in International Student Visa Crackdown

Despite an uptick in net migration, the Australian government forecasts a significant drop due to measures introduced to clamp down on illegal visas in the international education sector.

According to data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on March 21, net overseas migration totalled 548,800 until September 2023, resulting in the total population growing by 2.5 percent.

The new population figure is 26.8 million, an annual increase of 659,800 people.

This latest data does not account for measures implemented by the Labor Party to curb migration, which is expected to halve by next year, primarily due to major restrictions in student visa approvals.

“Net overseas migration grew by 60 percent compared with the previous year, driven by an increase in overseas migration arrivals (up 34 percent), predominantly on a temporary visa for work or study,” said Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil.

Last year, as part of a greater move to drive down migration, the Albanese government implemented a migration review.

This was aimed at ending pandemic-era concessions afforded to education providers to prevent rogue operators from running so-called “ghost colleges” that often recruit international students who are not genuinely coming to Australia to study.

“Instead of pretending that some students are here to study when they are actually here to work, we need to look to create proper, capped, safe, tripartite pathways for workers in key sectors, such as care,” said Ms. O’Neil on March 21 at a press club event.

“More than half of the people who receive permanent skills visas under our current system arrived in Australia on a student visa.”

Over the next week, high-risk providers, referred to as “visa factories” by the government, will be sent warning notices that give a six-month compliance period to eliminate dodgy practices. If standards are not met, the provider runs the risk of being suspended from bringing in overseas students.

“Increased powers for the regulator and tougher penalties will deter dodgy providers who currently see fines as a risk worth taking or merely a ‘cost of doing business,’” Skills and Training Minister Brendan O'Connor said.

A new “genuine student” test will ask students to answer questions about their intentions for study, provide evidence of their current and potential financial situation, and sign a declaration that they understand what constitutes a genuine student.

Additionally, English language requirements for student and graduate visas will increase, with the minimum requirement from IELTS rising from 5.5 to 6.0 and for graduate visas from IELTS 6.0 to 6.5.

Results of the increased enforcement are already starting to show says Clare O'Neil.

“Since September, the government’s actions have led to substantial declines in migration levels, with recent international student visa grants down by 35 percent on the previous year,” she said.

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Qld. government urged to dump ‘CFMEU tax’ in $6bn saving, industry heavyweights claim

The Queensland Government could pay the bulk of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games if it dumped its controversial, union-backed BPIC policy, industry heavyweights say.

The Labor government’s Best Practice Industry Conditions policy – dubbed the “CFMEU tax” – has been partly blamed for eye-watering costs across the sector, with claims it was driving up labour bills as much as 30 per cent while slashing productivity.

Queensland Major Contractors Association chief executive Andrew Chapman told The Courier-Mail even with the most conservative of estimates, dumping BPICs would save at least 10-15 per cent on major government projects.

“We’ve got a $64bn Big Build program over the next four years. If BPIC was not applied you could – conservatively – save 10 to 15 per cent of that cost, and that’s well over $6bn,” he said.

“With that, you could easily cover delivering a brand-new Victoria Park stadium, and almost the entire Games.

“You would see a reduction in costs, because BPICs not only drive up labour costs but they drive down productivity – making the projects a lot more expensive

“They also remove the ability of a contractor to bring innovation to the table – things like precast and modular solutions are ruled out – which is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing more of.”

Premier Steven Miles this week rejected an independent review’s advice to build a new $3.4bn Victoria Park stadium despite a panel finding it would be the most cost-effective option, saying he could not justify the price tag.

But a major projects pipeline industry report release late last year found the government’s own

BPIC policy was lifting the already “high floor” of construction costs, and leading to a “substantial reduction in the value for money equation.”

Aerial images of how the proposed and rejected Victoria Park stadium for the Olympics would look. Picture: ARCHIPELAGO
Aerial images of how the proposed and rejected Victoria Park stadium for the Olympics would look. Picture: ARCHIPELAGO
One construction executive said it was “pretty rich for (Mr) Miles to be talking about value-for-money when Labor introduced BPIC”.

A CFMEU spokesman denied the policy was leading to blowouts, saying BPIC projects were ”good for the industry and good for the taxpayer”.

“Blue collar unions including the CFMEU are on a unity ticket about BPIC,” he said.

“BPICs are an important safeguard against contractors who for years have price gouged on government projects and treated Queensland taxpayers like an ATM.”

A government spokeswoman said “good wages and conditions means we can attract more skilled workers to Queensland”.

“At a time when people are experiencing rising household costs, it doesn’t make any sense to suggest cutting workers’ wages,” she said.

Mr Chapman said the government needed to focus more on the value for money of the options on the table as well as the whole-of-life costs for the venue options.

“Just because something is the cheapest option, does not equate to it delivering the best value for money,” he said.

“Contractors will build what they’re told to build, but greenfield construction is more cost-effective than brownfield construction.”

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Revealed: How many landlords sold up in Queensland

Thousands of landlords listed rental properties for sale in Queensland in the first two months of this year in a further blow to already struggling tenants.

Exclusive research by SuburbTrends has also revealed the hotspots where the most investors are selling up, and where renters might soon be facing eviction — if they haven’t already been ordered out.

The data shows 6,248 ex-rental homes hit the market across the state from January to February, accounting for 21.65 per cent of total listings.

SuburbTrends founder Kent Lardner said any area with a two percentage point spike or more was concerning, as landlords buckled under the higher costs of holding their property with rising interest rates and inflation, coupled with a punitive legislative environment.

Brisbane’s northern and southern suburb belts recorded a significant uplift in landlord sales, while in regional Queensland the area covering Mackay, Isaac and Whitsunday notched up a three per cent increase.

“I think the alarm bell has started now,” Mr Lardner said. “There’s always a natural number of people selling rentals. But the thing that is not normal is that significant spike.”

The Gold Coast suburbs of Southport and Surfers Paradise had the highest number of landlord sales over the two months, with 65 and 61 transactions respectively, followed by Nundah (56) and Roma (54).

An annual survey of investors by peak industry body, the Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA), found 40 per cent of landlords sold one or more properties in Queensland in 2023.

PIPA chair Nicola McDougall said investors had sold more properties in Queensland than in any other state for a number of years, and pre-dating the recent record run of interest rate hikes.

“So, if it wasn’t for financial reasons back then, why were investors selling? Generally speaking, it was because they had simply had enough of being treated appallingly by policy-makers with policies such as the emergency tenancy laws during the pandemic, as well as the failed Queensland interstate land tax, proving to be a bridge too far for many,” Ms McDougall said.

“Queensland investors want and deserve policy stability when they provide the lion’s share of rental housing over decades of ownership – not continual market intervention, generally for political purposes.”

Ms McDougall said a main reason cited by investors exiting the market this year were changes to tenancy legislation, impacting their control and increasing their compliance and holding costs.

The latest round of rule changes banned rental bidding, attached annual rent price caps to the property rather than the tenancy, and could potentially allow tenants to make modifications to the home without the owner’s consent.

“Private investors are the key to solving the current rental crisis, yet, there doesn’t seem to be any appetite from political leaders to not only encourage them into the market, but to incentivise them to stay over the long-term,” Ms McDougall said.

“If the exodus of investors from Brisbane and across the Sunshine State isn’t halted, then the rental crisis will become even more entrenched, which will push rents higher and result in even more people becoming homeless.”

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Vaccine mandates for NSW health workers to be dropped

NSW health workers will no longer need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 under a plan to phase out vaccine mandates.

Health workers in NSW will no longer be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as the state government moves to ditch mandates for the sector.

Health Minister Ryan Park confirmed the change would be going ahead after consulting with the state's health workforce.

'We know that COVID is still around but we've got to get back on with life,' he told Sydney radio 2GB.

'That means having a look at the measures we put in place during this period and seeing whether they still apply.

'We think this is one that we can engage with the workforce on and have a look to see if it's still applicable now.'

Public health orders mandating vaccines for health professionals were brought in during the pandemic and workers who refused either quit or were sacked.

While the order expired in November 2022, some workplaces have still been able to require mandatory vaccination under their own work, health and safety obligations.

Mr Park said if a decision was made to drop the mandates, workers who lost their jobs would be able to reapply to available positions through the usual recruitment processes.

He said COVID was still a public health threat and encouraged people to keep up with their vaccinations.

'But we've also got to make sure that we get on with running a health system after COVID and we can't continue in the same way that we did in the middle of the pandemic,' he said.

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Sunday, March 24, 2024



Senate votes against vaccine-injured Australians

I am a vaccine-injured Australian, writing under a false name to protect my identity. The reason I do this is because I don’t want my claim to be affected. No one in power wants to believe me, they just want me to curl up and disappear. I am an inconvenience that threatens the narrative. But there are tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of Australians like me, and we are not going to go gently into the night.

Today, I watched as Gerard Rennick, an LNP Senator for Queensland, moved for an inquiry into the federal COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme. Senator Rennick is one of the only voices that stands up for us. He stands up for us loudly. But his calls for an inquiry were shot down by his colleagues.

According to the parliamentary Hansard, Senator Rennick specifically wanted an inquiry into the scheme’s eligibility criteria, the time in processing claimants’ applications, the differences between the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s assessments and specialists’ assessments reported in vaccine injury claims, the adequacy of the scheme’s compensation of claimant’s injuries, mental health and lost earnings, the risks that inadequate support and compensation for vaccine-related injuries might exacerbate vaccine hesitancy, and other related matters.

In speaking to his motion, Senator Rennick told his colleagues how, in Australia, the government has done a woeful job of acknowledging and compensating those people who it has injured through drugs that it has prescribed. He talked about the victims of thalidomide, and how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s apology came 60 years too late. He talked about how Australians had suffered in the 1980s when the Red Cross and CSL Limited allegedly infected tens of thousands with AIDS and Hepatitis C. He talked about mesh injuries, and how his uncle had been left blind after taking a sulfa drug. He talked about how the pharmaceutical industry has a history of putting their wallets in front of people’s health. He said that Australians ‘were told the vaccine was safe and effective.’ He asked, ‘If we [politicians] aren’t here to protect the people, what exactly are we here for?’ He said that Australians ‘should not be made to suffer for following the advice of the government that said they would be protected’.

Later in the debate, another senator said that no one else had spent more time talking to vaccine-injured Australians than Senator Rennick. ‘He speaks with a good heart and from a place of deep conviction.’ And that’s right. Senator Rennick does. He talked about and said all the right things. He gave me and all those other vaccine-injured Australians a voice. He was fighting for us, and he was winning.

Then the Albanese government’s chief spokesperson in the chamber, Katy Gallagher, stood up.

Senator Gallagher used her speaking time to gaslight Senator Rennick, describing his views as ‘irresponsible’. She said that the government would consider the recommendations made to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, which advocates for a national no-fault vaccine injury compensation scheme. ‘There is no need for another inquiry,’ she finished.

Except that’s exactly what the recommendations made to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee demand: a review of the COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme. How can you conduct a review if you can’t have another inquiry? How, Senator Gallagher, how? She said that the government had only received the report earlier this week, and implied that decisions were being rushed. No, Senator Rennick was just getting on with the job, fighting the good fight. Fighting for us.

When Rennick’s motion went to a vote, a division was required. The bells were rung. Coalition senators rocked up to support their colleague, as did Malcolm Roberts from One Nation, but it wasn’t enough. The Labor government, the Greens, Jacquie Lambie’s mob, and Lidia Thorpe all voted against the motion. It was defeated 24 votes to 31.

This is what the government thinks of us. We are the problem that, in their collective mind, deserves no solution. Australians are dying because they were forced to take an experimental drug and were told that if they didn’t, they would lose their jobs, their livelihood. They were ridiculed and shamed into submission. At least the Coalition seems to have the courage to admit it got it wrong, and under Senator Rennick wants to try and repair the damage as best it can. Why, now, is the Labor Government so frightened of uncovering the truth?

And I cannot believe that Senator Rennick won’t be on the LNP’s ticket at the next federal election. One of the last blokes with any real guts in Canberra, prepared to stand up to the powerful, has been, like we have, shoved aside.

This is a dark day for Australia, but it’s just another day in the last four years for me, for all those Australians injured by the Covid vaccines.

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Woke mathematics teaching: Rather sickening

Cresta Richardson, the head of the Queensland Teachers’ Union, declared that the 1.3 million children in Australia preparing to sit this year’s Naplan test should be spared the ordeal because it is too stressful for them. It is not surprising Richardson is calling for a boycott of testing, because Naplan testing exposes the complete failure of our education sector to teach people how to read, write and add up.

To his credit, federal Education Minister Jason Clare disagrees, stating he believes Naplan should stay. Since being sworn in as minister in June 2022, Clare has often repeated the mantra that we need to get ‘back to basics’. This is an admirable sentiment, but as long as this country’s education sector is controlled by a cohort of progressives who believe education is a vehicle for politicisation, it will remain nothing more than wishful thinking.

The progressive view of education is of course completely at odds with the expectations of most mainstream parents who still cling to the antiquated notion that, at the very minimum, schooling should be about acquiring basic skills such as numeracy and literacy. Nowhere is this difference more vividly illustrated than in the mathematics learning area of Australia’s national curriculum.

Deeply embedded in the K-10 mathematics syllabus is the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures’ cross curriculum priority, which ensures ‘students can engage with and value the histories and cultures of Australian First Nations Peoples in relation to mathematics’. The consensus seems to be that children should be taught things like statistics and algebra, not because these will furnish them with necessary life skills such as planning budgets or finding the best prices for products bought and sold, but because it will give them a deeper appreciation of Aboriginal dance, corroborees and dreamtime. Not so long ago, this was called anthropology.

Indeed, Aboriginal dance features heavily in the primary syllabus, especially when it comes to addition and subtraction. In Year 1, teachers attempt to explain to the kiddies why 2 + 2 = 4 through First Nations Australians’ dances. In Year 2, the point is hammered home again, using ‘First Nations Australians’ stories and dances to understand the balance and connection between addition and subtraction’.

For those students who still have not caught on, their teachers will explain through ‘First Nations Australians’ cultural stories and dances about how they care for Country/Place such as turtle-egg gathering using number sentences’. In Year 4, teachers explore ‘First Nations Australians’ stories and dances that show the connection between addition and subtraction, representing this as a number sentence and discussing how this conveys important information about balance in processes on Country/Place’. Just in case you thought this might be the last time children are subjected to the silent snake or cassowary dance, think again. The Year 5s are investigating ‘how mathematical models involving combinations of operations can be used to represent songs, stories and/or dances of First Nations Australians’.

As it turns out, these all-singing, all-dancing classes are a bit of a distraction. Not from learning the times tables or how to do a long division, but from something much more pressing, which is Reconciliation. This highly charged political concept is introduced in a Year 3 ‘Number’ class by ‘comparing, reading and writing numbers involved in the more than 60,000 years of First Peoples of Australia’s presence on the Australian continent through time scales relating to pre-colonisation and post-colonisation’. Two years later, they are busy ‘investigating data relating to Australia’s reconciliation process with First Nations Australians, posing questions, discussing and reporting on findings’.

It is in secondary school, however, that the architects of the mathematics syllabus really get down to business. From Year 7 onwards, students studying statistics are introduced to the notion of reconciliation between ‘First Nations Australians and non-Indigenous Australians’. They are told to look at ‘secondary data from the Reconciliation Barometer to conduct and report on statistical investigations relating to First Nations Australians’. The Reconciliation Barometer was invented back in 2008 by Reconciliation Australia to measure, every two years, just how racist non-Aboriginal Australians really are. This racism is confirmed for students in Year 9 as they go about ‘exploring potential cultural bias relating to First Nations Australians by critically analysing sampling techniques in statistical reports’ as well as observing ‘comparative data presented in reports by National Indigenous Australians Agency in regard to Closing the Gap’.

Every Australian parent should know that their children are being subjected to overt politicisation in maths classes courtesy of the national curriculum. They should also know that the technique being used was developed by Brazilian Marxist, Paolo Freire, who proposed that the only true education is political education and that all teaching is a political act. When Freire talked about literacy, he meant political literacy, rather than actually being able to read and write.

His view was that the teacher’s role is not to educate in the traditional liberal education sense of the word, but to bring about what he termed the ‘conscientisation of the student’ by awakening their consciousness to the real political condition of their lives. Freire claimed that conscientisation could be achieved in the classroom by ensuring children are taught to see structural oppression in all aspects of life.

Thus, a potentially dull statistics lesson on standard deviations, random variation and central tendency is transformed into an entirely different, and much more exciting class in which children develop a critical consciousness of Australian society.

They might discuss the devastating consequences of the invasion of this land and colonisation, past and current systemic racism in Australia, the need for truth-telling, the reconciliation processes, or the need for reconciliation action plans. By the end of the session on statistics, all they will see is structural oppression. And by the end of twelve years of schooling, they will be ready and willing to overthrow the oppressive capitalist power structures and replace them with a utopian socialist society of diversity, equity and inclusion.

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The grim cost of firming up solar and wind

Alan Moran

The ‘transition’ of the electricity supply industry has been forced by government subsidies to renewable energy generators with increased impositions on coal and gas with higher royalty charges and bans playing a secondary role. The first subsidies were introduced by John Howard in 2001 as the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. He later described this as his worst political decision. It required electricity retailers gradually to include wind or solar to comprise 2 per cent of their additional energy. This was quantified as 9,500 megawatt hours.

These measures pandered to concerns about the global warming. They also responded to lobbyists, who wheeled out experts claiming that renewable energy technology would follow a variation of Moore’s Law, where computer chip performance doubles every two years. The application of this to electricity supply, it was argued, just needed a short-term leg-up.

Time has demonstrated this to have been spurious. The need wind and solar facilities have for subsidies, far from withering away, have escalated.

The initial measure provided a subsidy to renewables (and cost to consumers) growing to about $380 million per year. To his credit, John Howard resisted pressures to increase this but the Rudd/Gillard governments and state governments vastly expanded the support with new schemes for rooftop facilities and budgetary expenditures. The Turnbull and Morrison governments further expanded the subsidies, which at the outset of the present government’s tenure amounted to $9 billion per annum.

The Albanese government has introduced a number of additional measures. These include the Safeguard Mechanism, which requires the major carbon-emitting firms to reduce their emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 or buy the equivalents in carbon credits. The cost is conservatively estimated at $906 million per annum.

The government is also set to introduce the Capacity Investment Scheme involving power purchasing agreements designed to attract $68 billion of spending on additional wind, solar, and batteries. The best estimate of the cost to the taxpayer is $5,775 million per annum. In addition, the government is expediting the transmission roll-out.

Present subsidy levels are estimated at $15.6 billion per annum. The effects of subsidies have come in three phases.

The first was in the decade after 2003 when renewables progressively increased their market share as required by regulations. By 2014/15, wind and solar had grown to about 7 per cent of the electricity market. The subsidised supplies placed downward pressure on the market price as well as taking market share from coal. That outcome was intensified by new Queensland gas supplies coming on stream. Without access to export ports, that gas was redirected to domestic electricity generation and the share of gas supplies in the National Electricity Market increased from 8 per cent to 12 per cent. Gas now has more lucrative markets overseas and governments are exerting pressure on the producers to allocate more than is commercially sensible to the domestic market.

This first phase came to an abrupt end when low prices and higher supplies forced major coal generators, Northern Power in South Australia and Hazelwood in Victoria, out of the market.

Those market exits led to a second phase, whereby reduced coal capacity brought a trebling of wholesale market prices from their 2015 level of $40 per megawatt hour (MWh). Covid caused a temporary downward blip but the wholesale price is averaging $119 per megawatt hour in the March quarter, 2024.

These higher prices reflect the higher cost of wind and solar and will continue to prevail and, in fact, increase. Price increases may be concealed by governments entering into power purchasing agreements but this means subsidies financed by taxpayers rather than electricity users.

The subsidies to wind and solar have now resulted in their market share growing from zero 20 years ago to over 30 per cent. This is ushering in the third phase of the ‘transition’, which involves desperately seeking ways to firm up the intermittent and largely unpredictable electricity supply from wind and solar.

Gas, coal, and nuclear can operate pretty much continuously and without special storage facilities, but weather and nightfall limit solar to generating only 20 per cent of the time and wind to about 30 per cent. And electricity supply from wind and solar generators is highly variable.

With wind and solar at their current market share, coal and gas can fill their troughs in supply, albeit unprofitably. But the policy in all Australian government jurisdictions is to force coal and most gas out of the market. Moreover, coal (and, for that matter, nuclear) is technically ill-suited and costly to be used as a back-stop to variable wind and solar supplies. ‘Social licences’ aside, new coal or nuclear plants could not be commercially built except as near continuous baseload.

Other means of ‘firming’ wind and solar supplies are therefore increasingly required. One such is the conversion of Snowy Hydro into a pumped storage facility. Pumped hydro generates by releasing water when alternative supplies are short and uses electricity when it is in excess supply (and therefore cheap), to pump the water back uphill. Batteries supply and replenish on a similar basis.

Snowy 2 is planned to provide 376 megawatt hours of storage. The Capacity Investment Scheme is an attempt to augment this, though, notwithstanding its name, it earmarks 70 per cent of its intended power purchasing agreements simply for more wind and solar. These add nothing to replacing the dispatchable (controllable) power being lost from the forced retirement of coal plants. The Capacity Investment Scheme will add just 36 gigawatt hours of storage from the 9 GW of facilities planned to be contracted.

The Australian Market Operator’s (AEMO) Integrated Systems Plan for 2050 envisages a total storage capacity of 642 gigawatt hours for a system double the size of the present one and overwhelmingly powered by wind and solar. This is utterly inadequate for backing up intermittent power.

Francis Menton has assembled a wealth of evidence of how much storage a renewables system would require. He authored a major report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation as well as many other papers like this. Basically, his work shows that a wind and solar system, if it is to provide a secure and reliable electricity supply, requires some 26 days of storage. For Australia, this means 13,000 gigawatt hours of storage, which is 25 times what the AEMO Integrated Systems Plan envisages.

The highly regarded GlobalRoam consultancy estimated that the National Electricity Market (which excludes Western Australia), with perfect planning and no losses in storage or transmission, would require at least 9,000 gigawatt hours of storage. The costs of this, at $US 350 per kWh, would be three times Australia’s GDP for batteries that would need to be replaced every 12 years.

It might be argued that Germany, with little storage back-up, already has wind and solar providing 45 per cent of its electricity and, although it has some of the world’s highest prices, its supply is reliable. But Germany also has access to supplies from Polish coal and French nuclear power to firm up its wind and solar. Australia has a stand-alone system.

Our politicians are plunging us into a perilous future. Policies have already given us an electricity supply system with costs that cannot support energy-intensive industries. Those policies are now poised to bring about lower reliability than is compatible with a first-world economy.

Got something to add? Join the discussion and comm

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Gasp! The Christians are voting in Tasmania

Dave Pellowe

It’s election week in Tasmania, and former leader of the Australian Greens, Christine Milne, appears to be clutching her pearls at the prospect of authentic Christians having a vote and a democratic voice in her home state of Tasmania.

When I tweeted last week that the Church And State conference is coming to both Hobart and Launceston in early April with teachings from God’s Word about the important public issues being debated in Tasmania, she was triggered.

‘This is where Tas Liberals want to drive Tasmania: extreme right wing religious views embedded in politics. Eric Abetz keynote speaker. By then he’ll be in Parlt (sic). Expect prayer breakfasts, push for conversion therapy, oppose women’s reproductive rights.’

Teaching from God’s Word is ‘extreme right wing’? Well, that says a lot about the Greens, doesn’t it?!

Yes, Christians have religious views [gasp], and do you know who else’s worldviews are embedded in their politics where they seek democratic representation?

Everyone’s. It’s what we call civilisation in the pluralistic, inclusive, liberal democracies of the Christian West.

A long time ago in England, it was mandated by the government that people couldn’t choose their religion. They were fined, arrested, tortured, or even executed if they refused to go to the government-run church on Sunday.

This led to the Pilgrims fleeing to the New World to create freedom of conscience. It is a story celebrated each year on Thanksgiving in America and enshrined in their First Amendment.

It was that history and Amendment, which Thomas Jefferson called ‘a wall of separation between Church and State’, that was used as a reference to the principle that never again should people have the free exercise of their conscience in private or public curtailed by an overreaching government (the kind extreme left wing demagogues fantasise about).

Along with a free press, free speech, rights to petition, and peaceable assembly, religious freedom is a check and balance on craven politicians who seek to bring the power of the State to bear against common people who dissent with their vision of society.

So yes, I am coming to preach the Gospel in Tasmania to those who are humble enough to listen to what Jesus says about debated issues. As it is said, ‘Captives will be released, the blind will see, the oppressed will be set free, and the time of the Lord’s favour has come.’

Not once was Jesus tolerant or inclusive of proud and unrepentant moral lawbreakers, because ‘Woke Jesus’ is only a false god of self-righteous hypocrites, an idol made of human imagination and ignorance.

But He shows patience, mercy, and grace to those who are poor in spirit and grieving their terminal unrighteousness and those who humble themselves willingly before Almighty God.

The Greens can expect a debate on debatable issues. Expect Christian behaviours like praying [gasp]. And expect more Bible-believing Christians to take an active interest in the injustice, oppression, and the chains which extreme left wing worldviews are imposing upon the vulnerable.

Because as much as it might trigger the Greens, we still have democracy in Australia.

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4 Billion Reasons Why Building Homes in Aboriginal Regions Will Achieve Little

The Australian prime minister has promised that $4 billion (US$2.6 billion) of taxpayer’s money will be a “historic investment” in housing in remote communities across the Northern Territory. Investment implies a return. I doubt there will be a return.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared, “The Northern Territory has the highest level of overcrowding in the country, which we are working to halve by building 270 houses each year.”

There was no guide as to which of the scores of discrete Aboriginal communities would be the lucky recipient. At the rate houses deteriorate in the north, and in these communities, the “investment” will be lucky to keep up. But is it even an investment?

Aboriginal Housing NT CEO Skye Thompson said it was. “This investment will help ensure Aboriginal Australians across the Northern Territory are able to live with dignity and pride, where their kids can grow safe, healthy and strong and truly look to their futures with real hope and optimism,” she said.
Ken McNamara of Wollongong had a different view.

In a recent Letter to the Editor of The Australian newspaper, he wrote, “These communities are economically unsustainable. After all, that’s why those areas were left alone for so long. Supporting people to stay ‘on country,’ irrespective of economics, just maintains the gap.”

I’m Indigenous and my family was subject to a natural experiment about whether it was better to stay “on country” or not.

My grandmother was sent off mission as an orphan to be a servant. Her immediate relatives were “allowed” to stay. Two generations later, not only are there a couple of doctors in our family but economically, healthwise, and spiritually, we’re doing just fine.

Those who stayed back on the mission—not so great. Unemployment, shorter average lifespans, and all the concomitant ills.

It’s clear that giving young people in remote communities every chance to get an education and career, is the only way to close the gap. Yearning for the old ways (usually selectively) and a past that will never return won’t close any gap.

The Commonwealth and the Northern Territory have done this before, paying for people to live in houses they do not know how to care for.

People’s capacity to maintain their houses is probably declining. Many evidently cannot and probably do not want to maintain them.

This investment is meant to help close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It cannot. These places do not have an economy capable of generating capital. They are capital sinks, and they will remain so.

The prime minister announced the housing giveaway while visiting the Binjari community near Katherine in the Northern Territory. By coincidence, I received correspondence from a colleague at Katherine the day after the announcement:

“We have around 30 funded NGOs and agencies here in Katherine, accessing millions of dollars annually, and for a small town like Katherine, that’s a bit of overkill in the number of agencies, especially when we aren’t seeing much in the way of returns for the money being spent.”

“It’s interesting to note that, when the business community was so fed up with the constant level of ram raids, smashing of windows and doors, theft of goods, threatening of staff, and trashing of premises that they had a meeting to put together a petition to Parliament about what was going on, the NGOs wouldn’t sign the petition, even though their premises were similarly affected.”

There is the golden insight.

NGOs rely on Aboriginal funding for their jobs, such as the newly announced Justice Reinvestment, which is $70 million; Safer Futures for Central Australia, which is $200 million; and Jobs for Northern Australia, which is $700 million.

As my correspondent wrote, “Aboriginal money is largely what makes the world go round here, so trying to get anything done is difficult because there are those who don’t want anything to change.”

The “historic” investment would best be made in out-migration and supporting services.

Building houses in the middle of nowhere to replace those ruined by bad behaviour is a fool’s errand.

Keep throwing our good money away, prime minister, but do not expect a better outcome until people’s capacity, place, and culture—not their leaders’ job prospects—are at the centre of policy.

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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