Australian Politics
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Banning Candace Owens will only promote her ideas
Antisemitism is widespread in some jurisdictions, including American blacks, so trying to shut up Owens just tends to discredit the censor. We should tolerate antisemites, and argue with them gently. Otherwise they will go on unchallenged.
I put my money where my mouth is. I have been a Zionist for at least 70 years but I still tolerate the traditional antisemitism of my European girlfriend. That does seem to have toned down her attitudes a bit -- JR
Brendan O'Neill
I cannot stand Candace Owens. I find her the most grating of all the bigoted irritants on the internet. And that’s saying something....
Given she gets my goat, you might think I would welcome her banishment from Australia. You might think I would cheer the Immigration Minister’s rejection of her visa application to do a speaking tour in November. After all, why should the good folk of Australia, especially the Jews of Australia, have to watch as this queen of grift waltzes round the country planting seeds of bigotry? Keep her out – right?
Not so fast. A dangerous precedent is being set. The Australian state is assuming for itself the staggering power to determine which ideas its citizens may hear, and which ideas their dainty ears must be protected from.
It is behaving in loco parentis. Where mums and dads babyproof their homes to protect their little ones from bumps and grazes, the Australian government is Candace-proofing the nation to protect people from her barbs and nonsense.
I object to everything Owens says, but I object even more to the right of the state to protect people from what she says. If it’s a choice between being offended and being protected from offence by a bureaucracy that thinks it knows better than the rest of us, give me the former every time.
The thing is, Immigration Minister Tony Burke is right in what he says about Owens. He’s right that she’s been “downplaying the impact of the Holocaust”. He’s right that decent folk will find such drivel vexing and hurtful.
But he’s wrong – catastrophically wrong – when he says “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else”. Shorter version: Australia will be a better, healthier country if this wicked woman is kept out. Really? The edict against Owens’s speaking tour actually suggests Australia is a fragile country, one so jittery that it can’t even intellectually face down a bloviating muppet such as her. It also gives the impression Australians are a childlike people. When Burke says Owens could “incite discord in almost every direction”, he’s slighting his own citizens more than her.
He’s depicting Aussies as a mob-in-waiting. Apparently all it will take to tip them over the edge of civility is a lame speech or two by a visiting irritant.
This is always the impulse behind censorship – not only to silence problematic people but also to tame the unpredictable plebs.
Censorship is a double calumny: it shushes those who have something to say and patronises everyone else. The entire engine of censorship is the patrician urge to protect the masses from their own worst instincts. It is the government’s dread of its own populace and their alleged latent hatreds that convinced it Owens must be kept “somewhere else”.
It will backfire. Bans always do. The only person who will benefit from Burke’s edict is Owens herself. She will pose as such a brave teller of truths that states feel the need to crush her. Burke is aiding and abetting her grift. See, she’ll say, I told you the establishment is out to get me. More people will now look her up, to see what Australia is so scared of. How much better it would have been to give her the liberty to speak, and everyone else the liberty to laugh in the face of her lies.
That’s how bad ideas are best tackled – not by forbidding them but by mocking them, by subjecting them to the unforgiving spotlight of free discussion and frank ridicule.
I want to speak up for an under-represented minority – the one that hates what Owens says but thinks she should be free to say it.
For the price of the “safety” the government is offering you is your own autonomy. In protecting you from insulting words, the government is insulting you in a far worse way. It is taking away your liberty to hear and your liberty to decide for yourself.
That’s far more annoying than Owens’s shtick.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/candace-owens-is-a-bigot-but-banning-her-will-only-backfire/news-story/2de9b5e68bcc798279afc014fb45dc1c
****************************************
All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
Monday, October 28, 2024
Israel’s colonial secrets are hiding in plain sight
A rejoinder to Australia's antisemites
Journalists should be more sceptical of people claiming to be victims of colonial oppression.
In a week when a highly paid Aboriginal senator with English and Irish heritage claimed King Charles’s ancestors had stolen her land, too few asked about Lidia Thorpe’s generous salary or elite status as a federal parliamentarian.
Nor did enough pay attention to her mixed heritage. Neither is she ever challenged about standing with Palestinians against their Israeli colonisers.
Indeed, reporters here seldom ask the obvious question about pro-Palestinian, largely Muslim, anti-Israel protesters: aren’t they colonisers here?
Educated journalists should have worked out there is no evidence Jews, synonymous with Israel and Palestine for 3800 years, are colonisers.
Most of this column’s Aboriginal friends have no time for Thorpe. Many admit they have benefited from the education this “colony” has given them.
That’s not to downplay the history of frontier violence in Australia’s early days, especially in Tasmania. But Thorpe is wrong to claim Aboriginal imprisonment rates and deaths in custody today justify her protest in front of the King.
Friends of this column – Anthony Dillon and Warren Mundine – have pointed out many times that the 1991 Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Royal Commission report showed Aboriginal people die in prison at lower rates than the rest of the prison population.
The real problem is Aboriginal offending rates, especially in regional and remote communities, that often involve violence against women and children.
Yet no one, least of all King Charles, would deny Australia was taken from its Indigenous owners without treaty or negotiation.
Sky News host Peta Credlin observes the latest comments from Lidia Thorpe as the senator lands herself in “more hot water”.
That’s not the case with Jews in Israel.
The colonisers of Europe have far more in common with Palestinians than they do with Jews, either those who fled Europe after the Holocaust or those who never left their ancestral lands.
Most people who claim to be ethnic Palestinians also identify as Arabs, and Arabs did not originate in Palestine. They invaded from Arabia.
Arab Muslims outdid the Romans, Greeks and Alexander the Great in the colonising stakes.
Genealogical evidence today confirms most people who claim to be Palestinian are in fact of Arab background. Some can trace genetic links to the original Canaanite settlers of Israel and some converted to Islam after the Arab conquest. But all ethnic Jews, including Jewish families who fled Europe after World War II, can trace genetic heritage to the Canaanites.
The original Jews, who settled in ancient Israel and Judea, were a Canaanite clan. Only in the 1960s, after the formation of Yasser Arafat’s PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), did the area’s Arabs start referring to themselves as Palestinians.
The word Jew is a translation of the Hebrew “yehudi” – a member of the tribe of yehuda (Judea).
Jews speak Hebrew, as did the ancient biblical Israelites. Their scriptures are written in Hebrew, the only Canaanite language still in use today.
Palestinians speak Arabic, not a language known in the area until after the Muslim conquest between 636 and 640AD. The word Palestine comes from the Hebrew, Anglicised as “Paleshet”, meaning “invader”.
Prominent local Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah last week shared a post from another Palestinian activist demanding people use the proper spelling for cities in Israel: Al-Quds for Jerusalem, Umm Khalid for Netanya and so on. This is laughable: the original Hebrew names predate Arab settlement by thousands of years.
Abdel-Fattah is in effect saying to someone like Thorpe that the real name for Uluru should be the coloniser’s name, Ayers Rock.
Palestinian activists rely on resettlement of Jews from post-Holocaust Europe to claim Israel is a settler colony without any apparent awareness that 400,000 Arabs moved to the area under the British Mandate between the late 19th century and 1930. They came because Britain enforced labour and wages conditions not available in the wider Middle East.
Arab Palestinians used to know the history. Yousef al-Khalidi, Arab mayor of Jerusalem, said in 1899: “Who can challenge the rights of Jews in Palestine? Good Lord, historically it is really your country.”
The famous Nazi collaborator and Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, oversaw a 1929 publication that said the Al Aqsa Mosque had been built on top of two Jewish temples. This is correct, archaeologically.
It says: “The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps prehistoric) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This too is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built an altar to the Lord.”
The UN’s own definition of indigeneity lists seven prerequisites. The Jews in Israel meet them all.
The third – a strong link to territorial and natural resources – is a slam dunk. Jewish practice and culture are inextricably linked to the physical land of Israel – much like traditional Aboriginal custom here.
Zion is a hill in Jerusalem. The return to Zion, a central feature of Jewish practice, happened after the Babylonian exile (and biblically, after the exodus from Egypt).
Jews still pray at the same sacred sites they prayed at thousands of years ago: what’s left of the temple in Jerusalem and the tombs of the matriarchs and patriarchs in Hebron, among others.
Hebrew place names today are the same as those used by the ancient Israelites. Even the Jordan River comes from the Hebrew word “Yarden”, meaning to descend.
Jews see themselves as custodians of the land. A major part of the Jewish project is environmental restoration: making the desert bloom again like the fertile land of the Israelites. They believe desertification and the rise of coastal swampland came from unsustainable Arab farming practices.
Like fallow land in Europe, Jews still use an ancient kosher practice called “shmita”; every seven years the land is rested from farming.
Arguing Jews are colonisers flies in the face of documented history, archaeology and genealogy.
Yet Palestine and Arabia are the crucibles of the greatest colonising forces in history: respectively the world’s 2.4 billion Christians and 1.9 billion Muslims. While Judaism predates both by thousands of years, there are only 14 million Jews worldwide.
As this column wrote on October 14 last year, a week after the October 7 massacre, Judaism is not a missionary religion. Jews have only one country and seek neither converts nor colonies.
That column also said “Israel needs to be feared” to survive in a region largely committed to its destruction.
The murders of October 7 last year and the anti-Semitism of Hamas and Hezbollah have cost tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian lives. Like the Islamist terror of al-Qa’ida and ISIS, most victims of Islamism globally are other Muslims.
That’s the real Palestinian tragedy – the repeated failures of their leaders to accept two-state solutions offered several times since 1947. And the willingness of Islamists to risk innocent Muslim lives.
************************************************************
Jewish leaders take radical cleric Wissam Haddad to court amid government inaction
The country’s peak Jewish body has taken a radical cleric to the Federal Court after a slew of sermons referring to the Jewish community as “vile and treacherous people” and peddled anti-Semitic tropes.
The legal action is an example of the escalation of testing how, and whether, hate speech can be prosecuted in Australia.
The action comes after state and federal police recently laid charges against people who waved the flag of listed terror group Hezbollah, and high-profile restaurateur Alan Yazbek for displaying the Nazi swastika symbol.
On Friday, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry instigated proceedings in the Federal Court against extremist preacher Wissam Haddad, also known as Abu Ousayd, and his Bankstown-based Al Madina Dawah Centre.
The Australian in January revealed how the ECAJ had lodged a vilification complaint with the country’s human rights body against the preacher and the Bankstown centre, given perceived police inaction and an inability to lay charges, partly due to NSW’s “toothless” hate-speech criminal provisions.
The proceedings are made under part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act – which outlaws offensive behaviour based on racial hatred – and brought to the court by the ECAJ’s co-chief executive, Peter Wertheim AM, and deputy president Robert Goot AO SC.
Mr Wertheim said attempts at mediation between the parties at the Australian Human Rights Commission had failed and that the court move was a last resort forced upon the Jewish community and its leaders.
“We have commenced proceedings to defend the honour of our community, and as a warning to deter others seeking to mobilise racism in order to promote their political views,” he said.
Among other things, the ECAJ is seeking declarations that Mr Haddad and his centre contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, injunctions to remove the sermons from the internet, and an order that the cleric refrain from publishing similar speeches in future.
Mr Wertheim and Mr Goot are also seeking publication of a “corrective notice” on the centre’s social media pages and costs, although no order for damages or monetary compensation is sought by the ECAJ.
Among other things, Mr Haddad, or speakers at his Al Madina Dawah Centre, have called Jewish people “descendants of pigs and monkeys”, recited parables about their killing, described them as “treacherous people” with their “hands” in media and business, encouraged jihad, and urged people to “spit” on Israel so Israelis “would drown”.
In most cases, he has claimed that he was referring to or reciting Islamic scripture.
The ECAJ separately filed a vilification complaint at the AHRC against Sheik Ahmed Zoud, who said Jewish people “ran like rats” from Hamas in the October 7, 2023 attacks.
That conciliation process remains ongoing but could be exhausted soon, and The Australian understands the ECAJ could file separate proceedings at the same court against Mr Zoud and his As-Sunnah mosque in Lakemba.
Mr Wertheim said Australia was a “multicultural success story” with different faith and ethnic communities living in “harmony and mutual respect”, and that the court move against Mr Haddad was to protect the Jewish community, but also the country’s social harmony.
“We are all free to observe our faith and traditions within the bounds of Australian law, and that should mean we do not bring the hatreds, prejudices and bigotry of overseas conflicts and societies into Australia,” he said, adding that the ECAJ had “no alternative” than to pursue court action.
“Maintaining and strengthening social cohesion is the role of governments and government agencies, but lately they have failed us. It should not fall on our community, or any other community, to take private legal action to remedy a public wrong, and to stand up to those who sow hatred.”
Federal and state political leaders criticised that “policing” had fallen on the shoulders of Jewish leaders, with opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson calling it “profoundly unjust”, saying the Albanese government had “vacated the field”.
“Incitement to violence against another community is a crime and it should be enforced through criminal proceedings,” Senator Paterson said.
“If we had strong leadership from our Prime Minister, and if police enforced the law, the Jewish community never would have been left to fend for themselves like this amid an unprecedented anti-Semitism crisis.”
NSW senator Dave Sharma said he was “appalled” that a community organisation had been forced to bring private legal action, “not only to protect its own members but to uphold values and norms we all cherish”.
“That the ECAJ has been forced to take matters into its own hands demonstrates just how weak and conflicted this government is,” he said, adding that Australian values and social cohesion must be “fought for”.
NSW Upper House deputy president Rod Roberts said no religious or ethnic community should be having to do “their own policing”.
“Regardless of which community, it should not be their role and they shouldn’t have to do it,” the former police officer said, adding that Mr Haddad’s “inflammatory” comments harmed society as a whole.
Since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7 2023, debate has raged as to whether law enforcement agencies have the legislative tools to clamp down on hate speech.
In the past few weeks, police have successfully charged people under legislation outlawing support for terrorist groups and Nazi symbols, and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has cancelled the visas of American speakers Khaled Beydoun – for calling October 7 a “good day” – and extremist influencer Candace Owens.
“Non-direct” hate speech, however, has been harder to prosecute, given the narrow and high thresholds of both state and commonwealth legislation that outlaw very specific calls to violence, failing to capture hatred or broad incitement against an ethnic or religious community.
NSW’s hate-speech provisions, enclosed in Section 93Z of the state crime code, are subject of a Law Reform Commission review, given operability concerns.
************************************************************
Even with a price tag, our renewables future is already broken
The Silverton Wind Farm and Broken Hill Solar plant were supposed to produce enough electricity to power 117,000 homes. They’re supported by AGL’s 50MWh battery facility at Pinnacles Place, one of the largest in Australia. Yet Broken Hill, population 19,000, has been in a semi-permanent state of blackout since a storm brought down the transmission line connecting the town to the east coast grid.
Broken Hill’s plight exposes the gap between the promise of renewable energy and what it actually delivers. AGL claimed its battery would ensure a reliable electricity supply to the town if the transmission lines went down. The combination of wind, solar and storage would allow Broken Hill to operate on a renewable microgrid until its connection to the outside world was restored.
Yet the battery wasn’t switched on until Friday. Diesel generators are being used to recharge it because the wind and solar generators are disconnected from the rest of the grid. Rooftop solar is affecting the grid’s stability. Essential Energy, which supplies power to Broken Hill, has asked customers to turn off their solar supply main switch to prevent the 40-year-old backup gas turbine generator from tripping.
Yet Broken Hill’s experience shows how crucial baseload generation is to the grid’s stability. Without it, balancing supply and demand becomes impossible.
Some $650m worth of renewable energy investment within a 25km radius of Broken Hill has proved to be dysfunctional. The technical challenges of operating a grid on renewable energy alone appear insurmountable using the current technology.
Broken Hill’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale for the incoming Liberal National Party government in Queensland as it assesses the energy policy mess left by Labor. Among the expensive proposals on the books is CopperString, a 100km high-voltage transmission line from Townsville to Mount Isa, crossing the remote and rugged terrain of North Queensland.
Mount Isa operates on a micro-grid served by two gas-fired power stations with diesel generators used as a backup. Replacing locally generated power by linking Mount Isa to the National Energy Market is costly and introduces the risk of transmission failure.
The latest estimate for CopperString, which would be funded entirely by the government, is $5bn, but the cost of building transmission lines is escalating dramatically.
David Crisafulli has every reason to put the project on hold while other options are considered. One solution could be micro modular reactors – self-contained, mass-produced nuclear power plants that are relatively easy to transport and install close to where the electricity is needed. This is the preferred option in Canada, where MMRs are seen as a breakthrough for remote indigenous communities and mining operations.
Bowen’s claims about the cost of renewable energy were called into question last week when senior executives from the Australian Electricity Market Operator gave evidence under oath to a Senate select committee.
AEMO’s assertion that its blueprint for the transition to renewables was “the lowest-cost pathway” is misleading. AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman told the committee its modelling only considered the wholesale cost of electricity. AEMO did not model network costs, transmission and distribution costs or retailer margins. “A home electricity bill will need to consider all of those factors,” he said.
Senator Matt Canavan asked: “You’re saying you cannot guarantee that the current government policy settings you model will deliver lower power prices?”
Westerman replied: “I can’t guarantee that. No.” He said AEMO “explicitly doesn’t consider other parts of the consumer energy bill”.
Westerman was asked if AEMO had costed other policy options before concluding that the cheapest path was renewable energy backed by storage and gas.
No, said Westerman. “It is the role of policymakers to identify alternatives and make those public policy decisions.
“If policymakers wanted to ask AEMO for advice, we would be pleased to provide it. But it’s not really our role to judge on whether it’s a good policy or not.”
Canavan asked: “So there’s no analysis of whether that’s a good idea or not?”
“No. Sorry. We don’t analyse that,” replied Merryn York, AEMO’s executive general manager for system design.
In summary, AEMO’s “least-cost pathway” turns out to be the wholesale cost of a transition to renewable energy on the accelerated timetable stipulated by the government. The destination of this plan is not cheaper electricity or cleaner energy.
Instead, AEMO’s lowest-cost pathway aims to meet Labor’s political target of 82 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2030 and 100 per cent renewable power by 2050, using mostly wind, solar and some gas. AEMO’s model excludes any consideration of nuclear energy.
It’s alarming that AEMO has not even attempted to model the retail cost of electricity. AEMO’s Integrated Systems Plan is the blueprint for the government’s energy transition. It sets the deadline for phasing out coal generation by 2038, a fourfold increase in rooftop solar, a sixfold increase in grid-scale wind and solar, and a 13-fold increase in battery storage.
Yet AEMO doesn’t consider it part of its brief to estimate how much this will cost. Nor does AEMO attempt to vouch for the technical feasibility of its plan. Engineering, like economic modelling, is not part of its job.
**********************************************
Australia has two Green partie
Much is being said about the Greens’ ‘failure’ in the Queensland election. At the time of writing, the Greens have failed to win any new seats and likely lost one of the two seats they held. Already, mastheads are proclaiming that federal Greens leader Adam Bandt has been put on notice.
As Queensland Labor congratulates itself for holding its inner Brisbane seats – glossing over the slashed margins in those once-safe electorates, not to mention the outer suburban and regional seats that fell to the LNP and drove Labor out of government – there is a glaring truth hidden in plain sight.
Only one person has come close to acknowledging what happened: Michael Berkman, Greens MP for the university-dominated seat of Maiwar.
On election night, wedged between bouts of predictably overblown grandstanding about how the Greens had really, truly, if you hold it at arm’s length and squint, done exceptionally well, Berkman made a comment that exposed how far Labor has drifted from its once-proud status as the party for ordinary people.
He observed that in politics, winning can take many different forms, and sometimes you can still win even though you lose seats. He went on to say that whatever the final count, the Greens – and the constituency they represent – have won, because Labor has adopted so many of their policies.
He was right, but he also pulled back from the full truth, one that – curiously – pollsters, pundits, and self-styled political gurus have omitted from discussion.
There is no real need for people to vote Green anymore because the Labor left is firmly in ascendancy around Australia.
This is not just about Labor coddling a few vacuous, tattoo-covered women who are so desperate to be liked that they will adopt any cause going. Nor is it about tactically deploying a handful of policies crafted to placate the massively over-privileged vegan latte set. Sorry, I mean, ‘being progressive’ as left-leaning commentators like to term it, particularly when they call for more of it.
What has happened to Labor runs far, far deeper.
Climate lunacy. Astonishing attacks on farmers, miners, and the other industries that keep this country going. Transgender issues. Genuflecting to Indigenous mysticism. Sheer loathing for the rednecks outside the cities. A war on ‘masculinity’. Public health fascism. The endless Nanny state.
There is a reason why Labor around the country has adopted, wholesale, almost all of the Greens’ obsessions, prejudices, and hatreds. As a surprisingly honest Laborite once let slip to me: ‘I joined Labor rather than the Greens because I want real power.’
Labor’s left and the Greens are indistinguishable. They have the same perpetual whining and pious thought bubbles, the same bandwagon-jumping, and the same never-ending obsession with identity and victimhood. They are one united, sanctimonious bloc that just happens to operate under two brands. The reason for this is because they come from a shallow – and narrow-minded – pool of people.
The dead giveaway in Queensland is that despite a few token mumblings about needing to do better outside Brisbane, still-standing Labor members appear unconcerned to see their colleagues losing seats in the outer suburbs and regions. They don’t like losing government, of course, but they seem oddly sanguine about how the geographic aftermath of that loss looks.
A real Labor party would care deeply about losing touch with the masses and start doing serious work to reverse its endless procession of city-centric, damaging, and alienating policies. A Labor-branded branch of the Greens would not, because having to govern for plebs outside the cosy intelligentsia bubble means having to moderate one’s views, genuinely listen to different opinions, and accept that diversity is about more than recruiting firmly Woke middle class professionals who have slightly differently coloured skin.
A counterfeit Labor party would, in fact, be glad to lose those awkward seats. Getting rid of them means less schism, less pressure, less dissent within the party room, and a clearer run for ever-greater flights of self-indulgence inside the echo chamber where the perennially petulant feel most at home.
Labor’s faux-attacks on the Greens, in Queensland and federally, are just a diversion. A cynic could even suggest that Labor doubling down on its own ‘progressivism’ is intended to draw attention to how well the Greens branch of Labor is operating, and damn the consequences for MPs outside its precious city enclaves.
Labor’s real voter problem lies within itself. Its already shrivelled right shrinks further by the day, and its false flag left thinks maintaining war on that emasculated right, along with perpetuating undergraduate ideologies and petty grievances, is the only game in town. Whether Labor can excise its gangrenous core is doubtful, and in all probability, it will not really try. But until and unless it does, it has little chance of regaining credibility with the very Australians it now needs the most.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/labors-green-gang-is-killing-it/
****************************************All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
Sunday, October 27, 2024
ABC reporters canot see their own Leftist bias
It was not so long ago that prominent ABC journalist Fran Kelly declared: “What I am, really am, is an activist.” The comment was reported by Tim Elliott in The Sydney Morning Herald on March 13, 2012. In recent times, newly appointed ABC chair Kim Williams has told staff at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster that if they want to be activists, they should get another job.
So it came as no surprise that when Kelly delivered the ABC’s 2024 Andrew Olle Media Lecture in Sydney on October 18 there was no praise for journalists of the activist genre. But there was much flattery of her current and former colleagues, along with a warning about misinformation and disinformation.
What was missing in the long dinner speech was evidence to support much of the argument. Early on, Kelly declared that she and her colleagues always sought to be objective, accurate, balanced and empathetic. And then went on to accuse ABC critics of coming to “hate the national broadcaster”.
Her evidence? Well, there was none. Except for a reference to a male neighbour who once located her lost dog but, later on, verbally abused her and her employer. Kelly stated “he doesn’t like the ABC”. Probably not. But there is no discussion as to whether the badly behaving neighbour might be suffering from a mental illness.
It was not long before Kelly was warning that “truth can be manipulated” and that “people in power have always known it; that facts can be manipulated”. She then went on to make this comment: “It seems we’ve lost any notion of ‘agreed facts’ as a baseline for civilised debate.”
This is a significant misreading of democracies. The success of democracy is that it is possible to manage disagreement in a peaceful manner. It is rare indeed that in Australia there have been instances of “agreed facts” on most contentious issues.
I was not present at the 2024 Andrew Olle Lecture. But it would be surprising if a room full of journalists would concur with the proposition that we can all agree about facts. Kelly went on to specifically condemn misinformation and disinformation. The problem is that what is misinformation to, say, Kelly may be the truth to someone else.
Kelly told her audience: “It is one year since the referendum that proved to be a case study of the widening fissures in our society and the distorting impact misinformation and disinformation can have on our democratic processes.” But was it? Kelly cites the analysis by the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods of the voice to parliament referendum.
The ANU study found “the data suggests that Australians voted no because they didn’t want division and remain sceptical of rights for some Australians that are not held by others”. The majority agreed that Indigenous Australians suffer levels of disadvantage and require extra government assistance. But “they did not see the voice model put to them as the right approach to remedy that disadvantage”.
The 40 per cent of Australians who voted yes would disagree with this position. Fair enough. But it is not, in itself, a product of misinformation or ill-will. Moreover, one of the most prominent leaders of the No case was Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Indigenous woman.
The problem Kelly faces in analysing contemporary Australian politics is that she has worked in a conservative-free zone for more than three decades and finds it hard to understand why others would disagree with her “progressive” positions. Sky News presenters during the voice debate included Chris Kenny (a Yes advocate) and Peta Credlin (a No advocate). I am not aware of any ABC presenter who indicated support for the No cause.
What was also missing from Kelly’s address was any sense of self-awareness. The problem with the ABC, which Kelly seems to regard as beyond reproach, is not such emerging cliches as misinformation and disinformation but, rather, factual error along with a lack of viewpoint diversity.
Kelly, an ABC staff member, used a high-profile public lecture to condemn the misinformation of others – but not that of the ABC. Some examples illustrate the point:
* The ABC led the media pile-on against the late Cardinal George Pell from 2017. The ABC’s prosecutor-in-chief was Louise Milligan who was open about the fact that her book, Cardinal, was written “from the complainants’ point of view”. In time, the only convictions of Pell for historical child sexual abuse were quashed by a unanimous judgment of the High Court.
* In 2018, ABC reporter Sarah Ferguson presented a three-part Four Corners series titled “Trump/Russia”. It was advertised as “the story of the century – the election of US president (Donald) Trump and his ties to Russia”. In time, the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory was correctly dismantled by reports by John Durham and Robert Mueller.
* In March 2021, the ABC ran a three-part program titled “Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire”, presented by Caro Meldrum-Hanna and Patrick Begley. The “big story” was that former NSW premier Neville Wran was somehow involved in the 1979 Luna Park fire that killed six children and one parent. This theory has been totally discredited by Milton Cockburn in The Australian on July 26 this year and in his book, The Assassination of Neville Wran (Connor Court). The ABC withdrew the program.
* And then there’s Kelly herself. On October 4, she introduced the ABC Saturday Extra program with the following claim: “Since the Hamas attacks (of October 7 last year) Israel has exacted devastating revenge; its forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians with relentless bombing of the Gaza Strip.”
Kelly did not state that the 40,000 figure was calculated by Hamas health authorities – or that it is estimated that some 20,000 Hamas fighters have been killed by Israel (who are counted in the 40,000 figure).
There was not one word of criticism of the ABC in Kelly’s lecture. It would seem that to Kelly, only those with whom she disagrees are into misinformation and disinformation. However, it would be difficult to come to “agreed facts” on this.
*****************************************************
Increasing realism on housing supply
Amid the brutish financial waterboarding of young Australians with extortionist home-price inflation, the slow drip of independent research and advocacy has led to breakthroughs in the conversation about housing policy.
Sensible proposals about increasing housing supply are seeing the light of day and leaders, such as NSW Premier Chris Minns, are finding courage to offer solutions beyond those that simply pump up demand, rents and home values. Following a housing statement last year setting out a decade-long plan to build 800,000 homes, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan is on a roll.
In the past week, Allan has announced a 12-month cut to stamp duty for all off-the-plan units, townhouses and apartments; a 10-year greenfields land release plan to support greater housing supply across greater Melbourne; the introduction of the state’s Building and Plumbing Commission; and further consideration of making it easier, cheaper and faster to subdivide blocks of land for homes.
A senior Victorian Labor figure audaciously tells Inquirer the Suburban Rail Loop boondoggle, estimated to cost a gazillion dollars (no one really knows), is actually a housing play, putting thousands of homes above metro stations rather than adding to the city’s sprawl.
But Allan’s most controversial move to ease the housing crisis was to make public last Sunday the first 25 locations for 50 “train and tram zone activity centres” for new homes in developments reportedly up to 20 storeys near public transport across Melbourne, primarily located in inner-east and southeast suburbs.
High-vis federal Victorian teal MPs immediately flipped the lollipop sign to STOP for what they saw was the Premier’s lack of consultation. On Wednesday, their NSW crossbench colleague Allegra Spender was more welcoming about what planners call “densification”. “I support housing of all different shapes and sizes, but it has to work for the community,” she told the National Press Club.
It’s true we’re in the slippery realm of “announceables” and the wiles of messaging merchants for a government about to clock up 10 years in office. Builders, however, are cautiously welcoming the changes. The Housing Industry Association’s executive director (Victoria), Keith Ryan, said on Thursday the land release plan was an important step, “but not the full answer” to greater supply.
“Alongside this, industry needs all areas of policy working together to support greater housing supply and put downwards pressures on housing affordability,” Ryan said. “The industry continues to face a number of challenges in boosting housing supply, including the costs and time associated with delivering new housing, slow and restrictive planning approvals, and the continuing raft of cascading regulatory changes.”
Just over a week ago at the University of Sydney, opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor sketched out the principles that would guide the Coalition’s economic policies; in truth, it was recital of “back to basics” platitudes, post-it notes and dot points, rather than fresh policies written in ink and cohering into a winning platform.
Nevertheless, Taylor declared housing the nation’s most important economic challenge. Like other politicians and commentators, he conceded “there is no silver bullet” in this area. “It requires every lever to be pulled,” he said.
Taylor said the Coalition’s focus would be to allow withdrawals from superannuation for the purchase of a first home; managing budgets to put downward pressure on inflation and interest rates; and ensuring there is enough supply (and aligning population growth with available housing).
Superannuation withdrawal, however, is an entry-level demand booster. Best let super be super. During the pandemic, the Morrison government’s oversubscribed HomeBuilder scheme added to the industry’s miseries, which include a lack of skilled trades workers, exorbitant wage and materials costs, difficulties in accessing sites, and company collapses.
In its latest Business Outlook, Deloitte Access Economics says HomeBuilder “distorted demand by inducing a ‘bring forward’ of activity that otherwise would have taken place later (or not at all), further straining a sector already under pressure”.
Although construction costs are no longer accelerating, they’re not declining either. According to the HIA, the median price of a residential lot reached an all-time high of $351,044 in the June quarter, due to acute shortages and rising tax imposts. Annual building block inflation is 6 per cent.
With very little capacity to begin new projects and permanently higher costs, Deloitte partner Stephen Smith says the sector will be both unwilling and unable to lift supply unless property prices also rise. “That is, housing affordability will get worse before it has a hope of getting better,” he says.
Deloitte has revised down its forecast of residential activity. Fewer than one million new dwellings are now expected to be built over the next five years, well below the federal government’s National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes by 2029.
Labor’s priority is social and affordable housing, through the Housing Australia Future Fund, but its supply initiatives go beyond industry incapacity. There’s been legislative delay on the Help to Buy plan, Greens grandstanding on loopy ideas like rent freezes, and a crowding out of activity from state “Big Builds” on roads and rail.
A week ago, Peter Dutton put theoretical cash down, announcing a Coalition government would set up a $5bn “use it or lose it” fund of grants and concessional loans to jump start infrastructure development, such as water, power, roads and sewerage, with the aim of building 500,000 homes in new greenfield locations. It was welcomed by the property lobby and economists as a supply booster, although there are qualms about a 10-year freeze on changes to the National Construction Code to reduce unnecessary “red tape”.
Labor, too, is throwing in incentives for housing infrastructure and to spur state governments to lift their work rates. But as Geoff Chambers revealed this week, its $1.5bn Housing Support Program is being funnelled into marginal and winnable seats ahead of a federal poll due next year.
This week the Business Council of Australia provided evidentiary ballast and corporate impetus through the It’s Time to Say Yes to Housing report. It’s the BCA’s major contribution in this area, seemingly driven by the promise of a productivity dividend, a desire for intergenerational equity and getting more homes built in areas where people want to live.
The key takeaway is a $10bn national reform fund, a variation on the landmark National Competition Policy. Those measures were a down payment on reforms a generation ago across three tiers of government and provided a boost to our material living standards. The Productivity Commission estimated a 2.5 per cent permanent increase in the size of our economy from the competition reforms, or around $5000 per household.
The BCA argues a reform fund could incentivise states to rezone land for housing in areas of demand and lead to faster and more efficient approval processes. As well, it calls for performance management of local councils to crack the whip on approvals, as well as new intervention and approvals powers for state governments.
Other measures are aimed at raising workers’ skills, better skilled migration visa settings and interstate mobility for tradies, lowering taxes and charges, and tackling criminal behaviour on building sites, as well as new ways to consult with communities and manage heritage issues.
BCA chief executive Bran Black backs many of the latest measures. Fixing the housing crisis “means putting hard but important policy changes on the table; the scale of the task before us remains immense, and so we need every good reform on the table if we’re to hit our targets,” he says. Black says stamp duty is “a horrible tax that stops Australians getting into a home” and is urging Canberra to help the states replace it with a land tax.
But in NSW, the Minns government reversed the Coalition’s policy that offered home buyers the choice of paying stamp duty or an annual property tax, while waiving stamp duty paid by first-home buyers on properties worth up to $800,000. The ACT has slowly weaned itself off stamp duty, while lifting land taxes; receipts for the former continued to climb and the move is often viewed as a tax grab.
Federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil declares stamp duty is a bad tax and welcomed moves that states and territories have made to wind it back or to remove it altogether. Yet the property levies raise around $130bn a year and even skint state treasurers won’t switch to “forever” land taxes.
At the conclusion of an official mission to Australia this month, International Monetary Fund staff said addressing our housing affordability challenges “requires a holistic approach to tackle the continued supply shortfall”.
“A comprehensive strategy is essential, focusing on increasing construction worker supply, relaxing zoning and planning restrictions, supporting the built-to-rent sector, expanding public and affordable housing, and re-evaluating property taxes (including tax concessions to property investors) and stamp duty to promote efficient land use,” the IMF said.
Finally, some of those elements are falling into place; the NIMBYs may be in retreat and the Greens’ harebrained ideas exposed. Mainstream politicians and mature homeowners may soon realise that the supply science is in and accept that torturing young Australians on housing affordability can only come back to bite us all.
*********************************************************
Big Tech puts final nail in ALP’s anti-nuclear coffin
Who do you think would be smarter and more experienced in matters of energy and economics, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, or lifelong ALP operatives Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese? How would the smarts of our Prime Minister and his Climate and Energy Minister shape up against Google chief executive Sundar Pichai or Oracle chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison?
These are pertinent questions given the four tech companies have recently announced decisions to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in nuclear energy, while Albanese and Bowen claim nuclear power does not stack up. Not everyone can be right; one side of the argument must be wrong.
If Gates, Bezos, Pichai and Ellison are wrong, their companies will be devalued and shareholders will revolt. If Albanese and Bowen are wrong, we will weaken our country in economic, technological and social terms for decades to come.
If you argue nuclear energy is uneconomic then the United States, UK, France, Finland, South Korea, UAE, China, Taiwan, Russia, India, Canada, Pakistan, Japan, Argentina, South Africa, Spain and others must have it wrong. You contend that only Australia has it right with a nuclear-energy ban.
Last year, 22 countries, including our AUKUS partners the US and UK, pledged to triple global nuclear energy output by 2050. Google has announced a deal with Kairos Power to deploy several small modular reactors (SMRs) to power AI data centres, with the first reactor to be in place within six years; Amazon announced a $US500m ($750m) deal for SMRs; Microsoft has underwritten the reopening of a reactor at the infamous Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania; and Oracle is building a data centre requiring a gigawatt of power supplied by three small reactors.
Yet here in Australia Albanese and Bowen talk about becoming a “green energy superpower” as they ignore uncapped renewable costs and regional battles against solar, wind and transmission projects.
All the while, our descent from a plentiful cheap energy economy to an electricity basket case continues.
This is a grand exercise in national self-harm driven by climate catastrophism and ideological zeal. Labor seems incapable of reconsidering it.
This week we heard two astonishing admissions from the Australian Energy Market Operator – one of the bodies the Albanese government uses to buttress claims its renewables-plus-storage plan will lead to cheaper prices. In a parliamentary hearing, AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman was asked by LNP senator Matt Canavan whether he could “guarantee” current government policy would deliver lower prices. “I can’t guarantee that, no,” Westerman replied.
AEMO limits its goal to delivering the “lowest-cost path” to the government’s emissions reduction targets. Even then, its calculations are confined by the government’s chosen model.
The Integrated System Plan is AEMO’s road map for the electricity grid, and Albanese and Bowen rely on it to promise lower prices. Renewables proponents also use the GenCost report (where AEMO and the CSIRO calculate comparative generation costs) to argue renewables are the cheapest form of energy, but critics point to major flaws in both reports.
“Since coal plants are not considered a long-term option because of emissions targets, and nuclear energy is off the table because of federal legislation, the ISP has effectively omitted the modelling of the only credible alternatives to renewables, storage and gas that could be used as a baseline for comparison,” declares Aidan Morrison, director of energy research at the Centre for Independent Studies.
Morrison says the GenCost conclusions are “incorrect and misleading” and he pinpoints holes in the ISP and GenCost costings because they fail to include the full expense of transmission, storage, household solar and batteries, subsidies to keep coal generators going, and Snowy 2.0.
Governments and their authorities are underestimating the cost of their renewables-plus-storage model by hundreds of millions of dollars. And in assessing the costs of nuclear they fail to factor in the 75+ years of reactor lifespan compared to 15 or 20 years for renewables kit.
At this week’s hearing, Westerman also revealed AEMO does not even calculate the electricity cost to consumers. “We don’t model power prices,” he said.
This is scandalous. Despite promises of cheaper power (remember the $275 pledge?) there is no analysis from the market operator to either confirm the government’s undertakings or ensure the country is adopting the best option.
The facade is crumbling. It has long been clear to anyone prepared to examine the facts that the renewables-plus-storage model is not only expensive but might not even be possible – no comparable country has even tried it.
Now we see the advice and modelling cited by government is so deeply flawed that it exposes Bowen and Albanese as frauds. Voters have been told that AEMO and the CSIRO have considered various generation and distribution models to arrive at a system to deliver reliable, low-emissions power at the cheapest cost to consumers – but nothing of the kind has occurred.
Albanese and Bowen have been flying blind. And the teals, the Greens and most of the media have happily gone along for the ride.
We will all wear the consequences. This world-first renewable energy experiment risks our money and economic future – the government gets to grandstand, but consumers invariably will pay.
*************************************************
Politically correct NSW prosectuor under fire from judges
The growing rift between the NSW judiciary and the state’s top prosecutor has been dramatically laid bare with a senior judge alleging DPP Sally Dowling SC tried to “exert influence” over the judiciary and engaged in “ethically questionable” behaviour.
In what is understood to be the first recorded instance of a NSW judge filing a formal complaint against the state’s chief prosecutor, Judge Wass claims Ms Dowling possibly defamed, bullied and intimidated her when issuing a media statement saying her private comments to chief judge Sarah Huggett were “entirely appropriate”.
The extraordinary complaint marks an inflection point in a feud between the state’s judiciary and prosecution office, in which some judges have accused Ms Dowling of running baseless sexual assault cases that have no hope of securing a conviction.
The growing tension has culminated in three official complaints being made by Ms Dowling against sitting judges – one that was upheld, a second that was partially upheld and a third with an outcome unknown.
An Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions spokesperson said Ms Dowling had formally responded to Judge Wass’s complaint, and it would be inappropriate to comment further.
NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley has refused to become publicly involved in the standoff despite demands from MPs that he take urgent action to protect the integrity of the state’s justice system.
The simmering conflict erupted again when Ms Dowling raised concerns with the Chief Judge about what she believed to be an “emerging practice” under which Judge Wass directed witnesses to “produce their mobile phones and on occasion their PIN code” when giving evidence.
According to Judge Wass’s complaint, filed on June 28, Ms Dowling told the Chief Judge she believed forcing a witness to hand up their phone “infringed upon the rights of the accused person and the Crown to a fair trial”.
Ms Dowling also told the Chief Judge she would “consider steps she considers to be properly available to her to seek judicial review should further directions of this nature be made”.
But in her complaint, Judge Wass condemns what she viewed as a “threat” in Ms Dowling going over her head to the Chief Judge without the knowledge of the defence and saying she may seek judicial review.
Two of the matters were in the middle of hearings at the time Ms Dowling complained.
“It is evident that the Director has determined that it is appropriate to approach and co-opt the Chief Judge to receive, and presumably act upon, her complaint(s), about the conduct of a judicial officer(s), including when part-heard, without the knowledge of those conducting the litigation and without the need to follow any established protocol,” Judge Wass said.
“By these communications, the Director has attempted to exert influence over the future exercise of my judicial function by untransparent means.”
The complaint comes amid longstanding tension between Ms Dowling and members of the judiciary, some of whom say the ODPP puts accused rapists on trial despite not having enough evidence to secure a conviction.
The NSW Judicial Commission in August upheld a complaint made by Ms Dowling against judge Robert Newlinds, after he had accused her office of making “lazy and perhaps politically expedient” referrals of meritless rape accusations to court.
Judge Peter Whitford is also the subject of a complaint from Ms Dowling, after he accused her office of prosecuting matters “without apparent regard to whether there might be reasonable prospects of securing a conviction”.
The result of the complaint against him is unknown.
Ms Dowling late last year also lodged a complaint against judge Sean Grant after he accused her of the most “blatant judge-shopping” he had seen during his time on the bench.
In answers to supplementary questions to NSW parliament earlier this year, Ms Dowling said the complaint was “upheld in part” and the matter had been “referred to the Chief Judge of the District Court with a recommendation to the Chief Judge that Judge Grant be counselled as to the proper limits of case management in criminal matters and that questions as to the reasonable prospects of prosecution are for the Director of Public Prosecutions and not for a trial judge”.
In her complaint to the Commissioner, Judge Wass said that in no case was the phone direction appealed, and in two of the three cases “both parties agreed to the course adopted, or at least did not demur”.
Judge Wass characterised Ms Dowling’s comments to the Chief Judge as what she considered to be a “knowing and deliberate interference by a member of the executive in a judicial function” and therefore an “improper infringement on the separation of powers”. In her opinion, the complaint was a “clear risk to the administration of justice” and had the “potential to undermine my independence”.
“Such communications are in my view irreconcilable with principles of open justice and an independent, impartial judiciary,” she wrote. “To my knowledge this practice is not sanctioned by the NSW Bar Association, and is ethically questionable, where there is no representative of the defence Bar or the criminal law committee of the Bar Association, nor is it consistent with any protocol or practice note issued by the District Court.”
Judge Wass further complained of a statement issued to The Australian on June 7 in which she said her contact with the Chief Judge was “confidential” and related to a “matter of mutual concern”.
“If the Director’s criticisms and warning to me were not matters of ‘mutual concern’, the comment to the media is also false or misleading, and may arguably be defamatory of me in the sense that it creates a false impression that the criticism was warranted and shared by the Chief Judge,” Judge Wass wrote.
Judge Wass said if communications between Ms Dowling and the Chief Judge occurred regularly, that practice “fundamentally risks the integrity of the justice system and risks bringing the justice system into disrepute by giving the appearance that the Director has a special relationship or has special favour with the Court”.
She asked the Legal Services Commissioner to investigate whether Ms Dowling had breached the bar rules in engaging in the private complaint, including whether her statement to The Australian constituted “bullying” or was “intimidating”.
“I appreciate that these are very serious allegations,” Judge Wass said. “I do not make them lightly. I make them because I consider the independence of the judiciary and the public confidence in our system of justice to be of utmost importance and am of the firm view that it has been materially put at risk by the Director's conduct.”
An ODPP spokesperson said Ms Dowling had “formally responded to a complaint made by Judge Wass to the Office of the Legal Services Commissioner”.
“It would be entirely inappropriate to comment further until the matter has been finalised,” the spokesperson said.
One Nation upper house MP Tania Mihailuk said: “With every new revelation, confidence in the Office of the DPP is being eroded. We haven’t seen this level of micromanaging, tumult and controversy through the history of the ODPP.
“What is the Attorney-General going to do?” she said. “He can’t continue to simply brush aside these incidences.”
A spokesperson for Mr Daley said the Attorney-General was unable to comment on complaints, or reported complaints, made about legal practitioners to the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner. “Judges operate independently of the executive branch of government. Similarly, the ODPP is a statutory body that operates independently of government,” the spokesperson said. “The Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner is an independent statutory body.”
****************************************
All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
Thursday, October 24, 2024
China accuses Australia of ‘systemic racism and hate crimes’ as Xi meets Putin in Russia
The Peace of Westphalia ended a long episode of war. It said that governments should not meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. Regrettable that Australia has not followed that
China has accused Australia of “systemic racism and hate crimes” and “hypocrisy” after an Australian diplomat raised international concerns about human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet in the UN.
In some of the sharpest comments launched at Canberra by Beijing during the “stabilisation” era, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Li Jian on Wednesday evening denounced Australia for criticising China publicly.
“Out of their ideological bias, Australia, the US and a handful of other Western countries stoked confrontation at multilateral platforms for their selfish political interest,” said the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, in response to an apparent dorothy dixer by China’s national broadcaster CCTV.
“Australia, long plagued by systemic racism and hate crimes, have severely violated the rights of refugees and immigrants, and left Indigenous people with vulnerable living conditions,” the Chinese government spokesman continued.
“Australian soldiers have committed abhorrent crimes in Afghanistan and other countries during their military operations overseas.
“These Western countries turn a blind eye to their severe human rights issues at home but in the meantime point their fingers at other countries. This says a lot about their hypocrisy on human rights,” he said.
Anthony Albanese said Australia had been “clear and consistent” with China in its concerns over Beijing’s human rights abuses.
“We, of course, will always stand up for Australia’s interests. And when it comes to China, we’ve said we’ll cooperate where we can, we’ll disagree where we must, and we’ll engage in our national interest” Mr Albanese said at a press conference in Samoa on Thursday.
“And we’ve raised issues of human rights with China. We’ve done that in a consistent and clear way,” the PM said.
Opposition foreign Affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said Australia’s ambassador to the UN had been “factual, balanced and considered”.
“Australia has acknowledged that none of us is perfect on human rights, yet that is what China pretends,” senator Birmingham said.
But he said the government’s words underscored that Foreign Minister Penny Wong had fallen “a long way short of delivering on the tough talk of sanctions” she made before the last election.
The diplomatic tussle comes as President Xi meets with Vladimir Putin at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan, a key plank in their shared efforts to increase China and Russia’s voices in the international system and reduce the clout of America and its allies.
The group’s original members include countries with strategic ties with America, such as India, and countries that are openly hostile to Washington, such as Russia.
Chinese state media has hailed the grouping, which it argues is reshaping the international system to give more clout to marginalised non-Western countries.
China’s official newsagency Xinhua noted that Xi had compared the five original members of the BRICS group, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to the fingers of one hand.
“They are short and long if extended, but form a powerful fist if clenched together,” Xi reportedly said.
China’s fresh diplomatic fight with Australia — redolent of the near daily tirades it launched at the Morrison government for much of 2020 and 2021 — demonstrates the intense struggle that continues below the surface of “stabilisation”, the Albanese government’s euphemism for its modest expectations for relations with Beijing in the Xi era.
China’s president has ordered his diplomats to show “fighting spirit” when their country is criticised.
Earlier this week, Australia’s UN Ambassador James Larsen told the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee that Canberra, on behalf of its partners, had urged Beijing to implement all the recommendations made by a UN report into human rights abuses in Xinjiang, home to most of China’s Muslim Uighur population.
The Australian Ambassador noted that rather than meaningfully address the UN’s “well-founded concerns”, China had instead labelled the UN assessment “illegal and void”.
Mr Larsen called on Beijing to allow “unfettered and meaningful” access to Xinjiang and Tibet for independent observers, including from the UN, to evaluate the human rights situation.
“No country has a perfect human rights record, but no country is above fair scrutiny of its human rights obligations,” the Australian diplomat said.
“It is incumbent on all of us not to undermine international human rights commitments that benefit us all, and for which all states are accountable,” he said.
Chinese diplomats were able to blunt the criticism by rounding up countries — almost entirely members of its Belt and Road Initiative — to support its position or withhold support for the Australian motion.
Pakistan, a huge recipient of Chinese financial support, delivered a joint counter statement on behalf of 80 countries that said any issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet were internal matters for China.
Australia’s joint statement was supported by Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the US.
Benjamin Herscovitch, an expert on the bilateral relationship, at Australian National University, said despite the “diplomatic sparring”, both the Australian and Chinese governments would keep prioritising their respective trade and investment agendas.
“This is sharper rhetoric than we usually see from either Canberra or Beijing in the recent stabilisation era. But it’s unlikely to cause serious turbulence in bilateral ties.
“Disagreements over human rights are baked into the Australia-China relationship,” Dr Herscovitch told The Australian.
*********************************************
An incredible feat of bureaucratic failure: Bass Strait ferries on ice until 2027
In what is labelled “Australia’s biggest infrastructure stuff up”, two new $900m ferries will be leased out or stored for up to two years because their new berth is not ready.
Tasmania’s ferries fiasco deepened on Thursday after the state government revealed the two new Spirit of Tasmania Bass Strait passenger and car ferries may not have a suitable berth built until February 2027.
The delay, on top of estimated $500m-plus budget blowouts and years of previous delays, led the state’s business community to suggest it had lost trust in the state’s Liberal government.
“This is a dark day for Tasmania,” said Michael Bailey, chief executive of the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “This is even worse than we first thought.
“The economic costs will be felt by businesses and taxpayers for years to come, our brand has been damaged and it has impacted on business confidence…It will be very difficult to trust this government again because of this.”
It is estimated each year of delay in deploying the new larger capacity Finnish-built vessels on the busy Geelong-Devonport run will cost the state $350m in lost revenue.
The extraordinary failure to build a wharf capable of accommodating the new ships, despite years of notice, has already cost Treasurer Michael Ferguson and two ferry bosses their jobs.
Premier Jeremy Rockliff on Thursday said an expert report into how to best respond to the “extremely regrettable” situation had now advised the new Berth 3 may not be ready until February 2027.
Previous plans for a temporary solution at a nearby wharf had been rejected as too slow, costly and risky, given the proximity to commercial shipping.
Instead, attempts would be made to build Berth 3 by October 2026, allowing the new ships into service for the 2026-27 peak summer season, while leasing them out until then.
The first new ferry is due to leave Finland in coming weeks and the second is due to arrive by the second half of 2025.
While leasing could provide some income to offset cost blowouts – and to fund $25m tourism industry compensation announced this week – the government conceded it may not be “financial beneficial”.
In this case, the government said it would find a “medium-term storage option” and direct the state-owned port authority to provide it for free.
Mr Rockliff said the government – which has blamed its own ferry and ports government businesses enterprises for the blunders – would also reform these bodies.
“We will sort the Spirits, fix the GBEs and back Tasmania’s tourism industry,” Mr Rockliff said.
Transport Minister Eric Abetz said infrastructure delivery experts Ben Maloney and Peter Gemell would continue to help oversee project delivery.
“Despite the challenges, Tasmanians can be confident that Peter and Ben will get this project back on track and delivered,” Mr Abetz said.
Labor leader Dean Winter said the fiasco was now “even worse than anyone could have imagined”.
“The additional delay will cost our tourism industry another $500 million,” Mr Winter said. “When they do arrive, the Spirits will be second-hand.
“Tasmanian taxpayers have paid nearly a billion dollars for new ships, but it’s now another country’s tourism industry that will benefit first. It is a national embarrassment.
“This could well be the biggest infrastructure stuff up in Australian history.”
********************************************
No elected official should boast about what looks like trying to dodge constitutional requirements
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has doubled down on her importance in government saying she is there to do a job in getting “justice” for her people and bringing the “nation together”.
The real problem with Lidia Thorpe is not her manners. It’s her ignorance, closely followed by her duplicity.
How could a member of the Senate be so confused about basic elements of this country’s system of government?
And how could any elected official boast about what looks like an attempt to dodge the constitutional requirement to swear allegiance to Australia’s head of state?
This affair proves the case for a renewed emphasis on civics education, not just for new members of parliament but for schools and other institutions where woke ideology is attacking the legitimacy of so-called “settler states”.
Thorpe’s shouted assertion that King Charles is not her king was not just rude, it is at odds with constitutional reality and the fact that she purported to swear allegiance to the Crown when she entered parliament.
The Crown in question is not that of Britain. It is the Australian Crown – an institution that Charles personifies by force of the Constitution which is itself an expression of the will of the Australian people.
Thorpe’s return to obscurity might be hastened by her disclosure on ABC television that she only swore allegiance to the late Queen’s “hairs” not the Queen’s heirs.
If she thinks that’s clever, she has not read section 42 of the Constitution.
This provision says that before senators can take their seats in parliament they must make an oath or affirmation “in the form set forth in the schedule to this Constitution”.
The schedule is clear: it’s heirs and successors according to law, not hairs.
If the oath of office has not been taken in the form required by section 42 – and Thorpe says it has not – she cannot sit as a senator until that requirement is met.
But even that admission might be misleading if it turns out that she also swore allegiance in writing – something that now needs to be pursued.
Thorpe also seems to have forgotten that this country has been entirely decolonised since Labor’s Bob Hawke pushed through the Australia Acts in 1986 severing our last legal links with Britain.
Thanks to Hawke and earlier steps towards true independence, the source of sovereignty in this country is not the royal family or the British parliament, but the Australian people; all of us, including Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
The King is the symbol of that sovereignty. Its source is entirely Australian.
It is beyond argument that this country once consisted of British colonies. But that’s history.
To denounce contemporary Australia in obscene terms as a colony, as Thorpe did before the King, ignores the fact that the colonial era is dead and gone.
Unlike the American Revolution our break with Britain was incremental and amicable but it was just as decisive.
It was brought to completion on March 3, 1986, when the Australia Act came into force one day after equivalent legislation in Britain.
March 3, therefore, is this country’s true independence day – something that needs to be brought home to those who parrot the woke mantra calling for the “settler state” to be “decolonised”.
The Australia Act changed everything, including the nature of the Constitution which started life as part of a British statute drawing on the authority of the British parliament.
After the Australia Act, legal academic Geoffrey Lindell wrote that “ … the status of the Constitution as a fundamental law is now derived from the authority of the Australian people”.
Sir Anthony Mason, a former chief justice of the High Court, came to the same conclusion.
He wrote in the Federal Law Review that Hawke’s legislation “now provides a firmer foundation for the view that the status of the Constitution as a fundamental law springs from the authority of the Australian people”.
For Thorpe to denounce this country as a “colony” is an insult to one of the greatest achievements of one of our greatest prime ministers.
If Thorpe were aware of any of this, it was not apparent when she appeared draped in possum fur, face contorted in rage, screaming at a sick, old man who had just flown halfway around the world on his way to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.
Her performance reveals no understanding of what real decolonisation involves.
Hawke’s process did not require screaming fits and insults. It required mature negotiations with the governments of Britain and the Australian states.
History everywhere is full of triumph and tragedy. And those like Thorpe who are determined to seek out tragedy can always find plenty.
But relitigating history does nothing for the issues of today that demand practical solutions, not performances.
Thorpe’s rant is based on the silly idea that the current monarch is to blame for everything bad that has happened to Indigenous people since 1788 when Arthur Phillip stepped ashore at Botany Bay.
There was plenty of tragedy. And it continued for too long on both sides of the frontier.
But if the King is responsible for the horrors of the past, he must also be responsible for everything on the other side of the ledger such as universal suffrage, free education, welfare, the rule of law, decolonisation and the fact that Indigenous people are equal citizens in a nation where 40 per cent of the land is under native title.
The reality is Charles did none of that. We did it all. The good and the bad.
To focus on the tragic while ignoring the triumphant is to sell Australia short. We are much more than the unbalanced caricature portrayed by this grievance monger.
***************************************************
Is Labor finally realising the folly of its energy plan?
At the start of the year, Energy Minister Chris Bowen made clear that he’d sought advice from the Climate Change Authority about the government’s 2035 emissions target. He assured the public the target “would be very clear to the Australian people well before the election”. Now he’s walked away from the commitment.
For a possible explanation, look no further than Bowen’s statement that the target would be “ambitious but achievable,” with a qualification that there’s “no point setting a target which the country can’t meet”.
Is this finally an admission by the government that its 2030 targets won’t be met? That Bowen’s “reliable renewables” plan can’t deliver on the promises made? It might also explain why the CCA recently recommended that the loss of social licence for the transition required a “dedicated, independent information and engagement campaign to combat mis- and dis-information”.
The best antidote to such spurious claims is to let facts speak for themselves.
When asked about his legacy, Anthony Albanese said he wanted to be remembered for “acting on climate change”. He legislated a 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, underpinned by 82 per cent renewables in the grid and promised a $275 cut in power bills by 2025. It was clear, a long time ago, that the $275 promise was not going to be met. Prices have kept rising as the queues in energy poverty kept growing. Despite suggestions wholesale prices had recently stabilised, the facts tell a different story.
Sky News Political Contributor Chris Uhlmann slams the AEMO which announced it was unable to promise lower electricity prices despite Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s “explicit guarantee” the government could.
In the June quarter, average wholesale prices jumped to $133 per MWh, the highest since the spikes in 2022, and a 23 per cent increase on the previous year.
In NSW, the average price rose to a high of $173 per MWh. Low wind speeds and reduced rainfall in the southern states increased reliance on gas-fired generation, leading to a price hike of $131 per MWh in Tasmania, up by 104 per cent in a year. Proof positive that Bowen’s “reliable renewables” plan was adrift. There’s nothing “reliable” about intermittent, weather-dependent renewables.
These wholesale prices and further transmission costs will feed into the draft Default Market Offer, to be released in March. Labor’s transition plans will again be put to the test, with further power price rises forcing more people into energy poverty.
Emissions decreased by 0.6 per cent in the year to March 2024, now 28.2 per cent below the 2005 baseline and well short of target. Last year, the authority’s report to parliament advised that the transition was “not yet on track to meet its 2030 targets”. On current trends, the targets won’t be met and no expert independent advice suggests otherwise.
In the minister’s own words, “there’s no transition without transmission”.
The public is well aware of the inordinate delays in projects that are all hugely over budget. There’s not enough storage, nor battery capacity, to provide adequate firming for a grid absorbing more renewables. There’s huge workforce shortages in the trades and problems with accommodation and transport for projects in regional areas. This leaves us halfway to securing 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
Inevitably, progress with the transition will be measured against the government’s targets. That’s why Bowen’s priority and focus has been to meet them at the expense of securing reliable and affordable baseload power to replace lost capacity.
In that process, Labor has remained conflicted about the importance of gas, which puts manufacturing and jobs at huge risk. It’s a failure of public policy to not have a domestic gas reservation policy in place. It’s never too late to take decisive action in view of impending supply shortages for domestic use.
Being a responsible global citizen and playing our part under the Paris Agreement should not be at the expense of our national interest. In 2017, then chief scientist Alan Finkel was asked at a Senate estimates hearing to comment on the impact on the world’s climate if carbon emissions were reduced by 1.3 per cent, around the level of our contribution. In reply, Finkel said the impact would be “virtually nothing”.
His response won’t meet with approval by the virtue signallers, but surely our energy transition must be based on a strategy that’s grounded in reality, is accountable for costs, accepts the need for baseload power 24/7, recognises that renewables can’t power the economy, and avoids potential harm.
No doubt the results of the US presidential election will have a profound impact on climate policy. If Donald Trump is elected, will he withdraw from the Paris Agreement? And what might that mean for global climate action?
It seems the Albanese government won’t provide their 2035 emissions target before the election, signalling it could be as early as February. The Coalition made clear that while it’s committed to net zero by 2050, it would not be making any interim commitments ahead of the election.
Both parties have an obligation to provide their whole-of-system costings and the modelling that underpins their plans. This will enable voters to make an informed choice between two distinct and competing visions for the way forward. The result will decide the shape of our energy policy which, as ever, will be fundamental to Australia’s future prosperity.
****************************************
All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
After 18 months of battling, I’ve lost any faith I once had in our insurance industry
Cover for flood damage has always been big issue with no clear answers
Last Friday, the House of Representatives standing committee on economics released its report of the inquiry into insurers’ responses to the 2022 major floods. Anyone expecting them to intervene and enforce stricter standards and accountability across the insurance sector shouldn’t hold their breath.
As a commercial lawyer, I’ve witnessed some shocking conduct over the years. From fighting over a cowboy hat and the cost of horse semen, to dysfunctional families battling it out over multi-million dollar succession plans. But the actions of Australia’s biggest insurance companies, enabled by the government and local councils, sets a new standard in appalling behaviour.
In November 2022, Molong, in NSW’s Central West, and its surrounding districts was rocked by a one in 500-year thunderstorm. What can only be described as an inland tsunami brutalised the neighbouring town of Eugowra, resulting in damage to 80 per cent of homes and insured losses of around $150 million.
I live and work in the community, and following the devastation I provided pro bono services to 12 businesses that required assistance with their insurance claims. Eighteen months and more than 250 hours later, I’ve lost any faith I once had in our insurance industry.
I dealt with all the big insurers, as well as smaller, boutique agencies, and can confidently say they’re all the same. I sat through non-apologies, blame-shifting, inconsistent offers and misleading information. In one case, offers were continuously miscalculated and grew smaller with each conversation. In another, I was informed that one client’s claim was delayed simply because she had retained a lawyer.
Across the board, insurers sought to minimise payments on legitimate claims. They were greedy in signing up new customer policies and then callous in claim denials. They relied on overly technical arguments based on fine print in their product disclosure statements that, according to the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Commonwealth) should be front and centre before the contract is entered into.
Deloitte assessed insurers’ response to the 2022 floods in South East Queensland and NSW and found that a total of 242,351 claims were lodged – six times higher than the average for similar events in 2016. A year after lodging, almost 40,000 claims were still outstanding, and of the 34,269 complaints made by policyholders, 44 per cent were related to delays in claim handling.
Ultimately, the businesses in my community were successful in securing a total payout of more than $1 million. Payouts they were entitled to. Payouts they had paid premiums on for many years to protect themselves should this kind of event ever occur. That they had to fight so hard to get what they were entitled to was a disgrace.
Most of my clients suffered secondary trauma and were forced to seek counselling after dealing with insurers whose lack of empathy left them not only financially devastated but emotionally scarred. And even with their respective payouts, $150,000 on a $500,000 loss barely touches the sides.
Insurers told to clean up their act in high-risk flood zones
As reprehensible as it is, insurance companies are beholden to shareholders and no one else. Despite catchy slogans, they are not “here to help”, they exist for profit, as demonstrated by the close to $1 billion profit IAG recorded in 2024.
Federal and state governments, along with local councils, are complicit in this egregious financial, mental and emotional abuse of their citizens. Because while insurance isn’t a public function, there need to be checks and balances on how the private companies administering it operate. And this problem is only set to get worse with more life-changing climate-related disasters predicted.
Within the committee’s report are 86 recommendations, including that insurers must decide on claims within 12 months or be forced to pay; that insurers provide clear guidance on the operation of averaging provisions to commercial policies (which is already being legislated in the Insurance Contracts Act); and that insurers communicate key customer policy information in plain English.
While the recommendations are sound, they are undercut by language like “should consider” and allow too much wiggle room for an industry already committed to dodging obligations wherever possible.
************************************************
Australian councillor says he was forced to fly back to Russia to speak freely
London: A regional West Australian councillor says he has travelled to Russia to speak openly about how free speech is suppressed in Australia and warned he has been persecuted for his views on Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adrian McRae, a member of Port Hedland Council, doubled down on his praise for “Russian democracy” ahead of the three-day BRICS summit in Kazan, a city in south-west Russia, telling journalists he has been slurred as being “pro-Putin” for questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and for praising the Russian electoral system.
McRae, who contested the last federal election as a candidate for The Great Australian Party, founded by former WA senator and conspiracy theorist Rod Culleton, in the seat of Durack, previously travelled to Moscow in March to act as an independent observer for the presidential election.
“The reason we are at 11.59pm on the nuclear military conflict clock, it’s primarily because ... if the world understood what you know, those of us who dare to look outside the mainstream narrative for information,” McRae told journalists on Tuesday.
“If the world understood both sides of the conflict in Ukraine ... and they were able to talk openly and discuss it, then the decency of, I think people all over the world, would not allow their governments to get away with the nonsense narratives that were constantly being spoon-fed through our television sets.”
McRae, whose comments have previously been condemned by Australia’s Ukrainian community and WA Premier Roger Cook, said he had been turned into a villain by Australia’s mainstream media for airing his “informed” opinions, as well for his recent successful council motion, which urged authorities nationwide to immediately stop the use of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The motion passed by the town’s council, based around 1800 kilometres north of Perth, was centred on an unverified study from Canada in 2023 which found “high levels of residual plasmid DNA present in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 modified mRNA vaccine”.
“The fact that we no longer have any sort of semblance of free speech in our country – I have to come here to Russia to talk in a mainstream way because such a thing will never be permitted in Australia,” McRae said.
“Again, the usual smear is I’m pro-Putin, in the hope that this slur will be enough to make anything that I say across Australia be viewed as some sort of conspiracy or lie, which is quite frightening.”
He said he’d previously travelled to Russia with preconceived media-driven notions about the country and was embarrassed to say that everything he saw “left any democratic and election process that I’ve seen, certainly in my country or anywhere in the West, it in its wake”.
McRae’s latest comments were widely shared on several pro-Russian channels on social media following a weekend interview on Sputnik News, where he applauded Russian state-owned media organisations for “giving an alternate voice”.
Along with John Shipton, the father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, McRae has travelled as a guest to the summit, the biggest gathering of foreign leaders in Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
BRICS is an alliance started by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The meeting comes 19 months after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges.
In the same weekend interview McRae quoted Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi political theorist, while attacking mainstream media reporting on the recent Russian election. The comments were first reported by the North West Telegraph.
“I think it was the German philosopher that said: ‘You have to have an enemy figure to create a cohesive society’. And of course, the enemy figure at the moment in the Australian media, in the Australian narrative is Russia,” he said.
In a social media post following his interview, McRae wrote that he was unsurprised the Australian media was acquainted with Schmitt’s work, since it had applied Schmitt’s “Friend & Foe” theories in “a desperate attempt to destroy my reputation”.
*************************************************
Jordan Peterson a no-show at Australian conference after visa fail
It seemed that everyone on one side of politics has been clamouring to hear from Jordan Peterson, the reactionary Canadian psychologist best known for apocalyptic ramblings about the death of Western civilisation and life advice for teenage boys who just can’t seem to get a girl. But alas, the big guy was a no-show at his own conference in Sydney on Tuesday.
Peterson’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a conservative think tank which counts a number of past and present Coalition figures on its advisory board, held its annual conference at the International Convention Centre on Tuesday, with the star attraction forced to Zoom in after failing to get an Australian visa. What are the chances?
CBD hears Peterson only applied for the required visa last Friday. It didn’t arrive, and since then, the doctor was called to deal with a family matter back in Canada. Guests were forced to hear from local favourites like Tony Abbott and Peter Costello instead.
Former prime minister John Howard, ex-deputy PM John Anderson, and frontbenchers Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Andrew Hastie are all on the ARC’s advisory board. And given the strong antipodean flavour at the ARC’s maiden London event last year, Sydney was the natural choice for the sequel.
But Peterson’s late scratching didn’t deter a healthy crowd of conservative thought leaders, including former prime minister Abbott, his old chief of staff Peta Credlin, ex-deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, and former minister Keith Pitt and Matt Canavan.
And rebellious Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming was in the audience but her attention was divided. She was spotted by CBD’s spies absorbed in her phone, live-streaming the final submission in her defamation case against Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto still afoot back in Melbourne
*********************************************
Abortion too sensitive to be discussed
The Coalition’s senior female frontbenchers are seeking to shut down a national debate over abortion laws, labelling it a concern held by “fringe parties” as the controversial issue engulfs Queensland’s state election campaign.
Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley, Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie and Liberal Senator Jane Hume on Wednesday morning refused to endorse their colleague, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who had called for abortion to be on the national agenda.
As the issue derails the Queensland Liberal National Party’s state election campaign, the federal opposition frontbenchers said abortion laws were firmly a matter for states and territories and not on the agenda of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
Price, the opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman, on Tuesday told this masthead that the Coalition should not shy away from the debate in the name of political convenience, as she declared pregnancies ended after the first trimester were immoral and argued late-stage abortions were akin to infanticide.
But Ley said the Coalition had “no intention to change the settings from a federal health perspective”.
“Obviously, individuals have their own views, and Jacinta is entitled, as a member of the Nationals party, to her own view. But the federal Liberals have no intention of changing the settings when it comes to this issue,” she said on Sky News.
Hume was even clearer in her attempts to quash the conversation. “This is an issue that is the purview of the states … It’s not an issue for the federal government,” she said, also on Sky.
“What I can assure you, and assure your viewers, and assure all voters, is that a Dutton-led Coalition government has no plans, no policy and no interest in unwinding women’s reproductive rights.
“It has been an issue raised by fringe parties in a state election. It is not an issue for federal politics.”
McKenzie, when asked about the issue on ABC’s RN Breakfast, said Price had “very strong views on the issue”. She did not weigh in on the debate herself, saying it was an issue for state and territory governments.
“This is obviously a topic that has to be approached very respectfully, very sensitively. So she’s made those views clear,” McKenzie said.
Their comments suggest the Coalition is desperate to avoid a federal debate on the issue after the Queensland LNP was wedged by Katter’s Australian Party leader, Robbie Katter, who said he would force a vote on walking back abortion if the LNP was elected this weekend.
While Queensland LNP leader David Crisafulli said he had no plans to change abortion laws, he has not revealed whether his MPs would have a conscience vote on Katter’s bill, keeping the issue on the agenda because many of his MPs have signalled they favour unwinding the laws.
Dutton did not venture into the debate when asked by ABC radio on Tuesday. “To be honest, I don’t think it’s a debate that is shifting votes one way or the other,” Dutton said.
Senior Queensland Labor sources, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential research, said the abortion debate had, above other policy fights, helped tighten the race.
****************************************
All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
***********************************************
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
