Youth crime down, 2000-plus busted as cops blitz entire state

There must be an election coming up

Police have nabbed 2093 youth crims and charged them with 6167 offences since widespread deployments across Queensland targeting youth crime.

Commissioner Steve Gollschewski announced the milestone after Taskforce Guardian reached 102 deployments including more than 20 to crime-plagued Townsville.

He said 252 adults had also been charged during the operations and 980 people had been diverted from the youth justice system since Taskforce Guardian began in May 2023.

Acting Assistant Commissioner Andrew Massingham, who heads the youth crime taskforce for the service, said there had been a 22 per cent decrease in youth offending in Townsville from January to September, compared to last year.

He said overall there had been a 6.3 per cent decrease in youth offending in Queensland.

Assistant Commissioner Massingham said there had been decreases in nine of the 15 police districts.

“A very important indicator to me is those numbers won’t mean anything to people continue to feel unsafe in their home environments or where they walk along in the streets in their local communities,” he said on Tuesday.

“It’s not so much the numbers for me, it’s about our high visibility presence with Guardian.

Assistant Commissioner Massingham. said police had a solid understanding of the worst offenders after the deployments.

He said serious repeat offender numbers had decreased almost 18 per cent since November last year to 388, which was about 100 less than this time last year.

Police have been tracking social media accounts of some of the youths who post their exploits online, bragging about cars they’ve stolen or crimes they have committed.

“Our digital intelligence team, which is the first in this nation, we are intercepting livestream images invariably on social media of children in stolen vehicles (and it is) is a very very key aspect to the way we deploy Guardian,” he said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-qld/youth-crime-down-2000plus-busted-as-cops-blitz-entire-state/news-story/d82af27d92a758a8c4fd4b05e73fa4ec

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Albo’s Orwellian Bill: Censoring free speech is dangerous, not to mention downright un-Australian

A friend of Socrates once visited the Delphic oracle to ask who is the wisest man in the world. The oracle told him that Socrates was. Socrates could not believe this, as he believed he knew men who were wiser than him, such as a politician friend of his. But when Socrates spoke to his friend he realised that the politician ‘thinks that he knows but he really knows nothing’. Socrates then went to speak to the poets and artisans but came away with similar conclusions. He then realised that, ‘The men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better.’

Things have not changed much from Ancient Greek times. We still have politicians that think they know more. Our government wants to make sure it silences the ‘inferior men’ with its new misinformation laws.

No healthy society would empower a bunch of politicians to define what is true or false. Imagine living in a country where the politicians have the gall to tell the rest of us not to lie.

The Albanese government’s misinformation laws are fundamentally un-Australian. The Australian way is to thumb our nose at authority. The Australian way is not to suffer tall poppies telling us what to do.

But the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill would see a two-tier society established when it comes to free speech. The Bill, astonishingly, exempts the media from being accused of spreading misinformation or disinformation. Just last month, the ABC was caught airing doctored footage from Afghanistan in an attempt to tar Australian soldiers as war criminals. This clear form of misinformation would be exempt from Albanese’s censorship regime.

The protection of the Australian military does not even rate a mention in the Bill. If you were going to protect a class of Australians from the spreading of lies, there is probably no more deserving group than those of us who put their life on the line to protect us.

Instead, the Bill defines ‘serious harm’ to be that which could damage electoral authorities, various identity groups, public health bureaucrats and, perhaps most amazing of all, the banks.

What marks this eclectic group out is that almost all of them have been guilty of propagating misinformation in recent years. Our banks have been found to have regularly defrauded their customers, public health authorities have admitted they lied to the public for the ‘greater good’ and even our otherwise decent electoral authorities lost 1,375 ballots during the 2013 Western Australia Senate election, causing a strange recount at the cost of $20 million.

All authorities, especially those that benefit from public funds, should be subject to free and unfettered criticism from the Australian public.

There is another more explicit way that this Bill is un-Australian. The new misinformation regime does not directly establish a government Ministry of Truth, but rather it requires social media companies to establish their own internal Ministries of Truth to police the speech of Australians.

Almost all of these social media companies are foreign-owned. I do not think we need our fellow Australians policing each other’s speech, but I definitely do not want tech billionaires in San Francisco deciding what is said in Sydney.

Of course, there is another social media company called TikTok. This Bill would deputise TikTok to apply a censorship to the Australian people. The provisions of the Bill are so broad that TikTok would have no problem in applying the Chinese Communist party censorship regime to Australians, astoundingly with the backing of the Australian government.

Authorising foreigners to control what is discussed is the opposite of what should happen. In the last parliament, I co-authored a Bill with George Christensen that would outlaw the censoring of political discussion among Australians by foreign social media companies. Not only will I do everything to try to stop Labor’s Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill from becoming law, I will re-introduce a Bill to protect Australians’ right to speak freely online.

The prospects of stopping the new misinformation regime in the Senate are not great but I would hope that my friends on the left think deeply about this intrusion into people’s rights. The current Bill is clearly designed to combat anti-Voice and anti-vaccine views. The Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill defines misleading information to include attacks on ‘referendum proposals’, and vaccines are mentioned eighteen times.

In the future this Bill could easily be weaponised to silence anti-war or anti-big business views. A few months ago, the Australian Conservation Foundation was briefly cancelled on X after it made some claims about nuclear energy. I thought its statements were wrong but I do not want an American social media company to have the power to silence an Australian organisation from speaking about an important public policy issue.

One of the most important reasons to allow free speech is so that we can listen and not just speak. When someone is silenced it is not just the rights of the person to speak that have been breached, it is also the rights of everyone else to listen to that person. I, as an Australian, have the right to listen to my fellow Australians, even the ones I disagree with.

A healthy society encourages the airing of different opinions. That is how we test and strengthen our own ideas. That is how we correct our mistakes. The duration of a lie depends on how quickly someone is allowed to point it out.

The government will probably ram its misinformation laws through the parliament. Ironically, laws designed to silence the Australian people will likely be passed by silencing the parliament and limiting debate.

But, even if we end up with a misinformation tsar, we should not be downcast. This desperate move is a sign that the left are losing. Every cancellation will be a vindication that we are right.

There is always a silver lining. If established, the misinformation tsar will become the best barometer of truth since the Delphic oracle. Except this time it will work in reverse.

Whatever the misinformation tsar says is false will actually turn out to be true.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/albos-orwellian-bill/

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Class war: ‘We’ll teach the Greens’, vow private schools

Fat chance that they will be able to budge the views of hard-Left Bandt, the Greens leader. He is an old-time Trotskyite, committed to maximum destrucion of socity as we know it

Independent schools are preparing to launch a nationwide campaign in Greens and marginal electorates calling out the “relentless and baseless vilification” of private schools and urging constituents not to support parties that would abolish their funding and limit educational choices.

Independent Schools Australia revealed it would begin targeting seats held by the left-wing minor party, as well as other hotly contested electorates, following increasing criticism over the allocation of government funding to private schools.

School funding is a crucible issue for Labor and its biggest source of division with its state ALP counterparts. The Greens are expected to push for ­reforms that would slash some independent schools’ funding in any power-sharing agreement with a minority Labor government.

ISA chief executive Graham Catt said his organisation was gearing up to take the fight to the Greens, with school leaders, teachers and parents making clear “they’ve had enough of the relentless and baseless vilification of families who simply want the best for their children”.

“Parents are making significant sacrifices in a cost-of-living crisis, and we know from our ­research that families – especially in key marginal seats – feel ­betrayed by policies that threaten their educational choices,” Mr Catt said.

“With an election approaching we will be working to ensure ­families’ voices are heard loud and clear in key electorates, including those held by the Greens.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt ­declared earlier this year that his party would be fighting for more public school funding and arguing against “the continued over­funding of those very wealthy private schools that clearly don’t need even more public funds”.

The row with the ISA could be one of the Greens’ first major tests in holding the formerly Liberal Queensland seats of Ryan and Brisbane, with the potential to complicate the party’s plan to win more wealthy marginal seats off Labor, the Coalition and teal independents at the next election.

As part of research by the ISA conducted late last year, more than 80 per cent of the 2000 ­parents surveyed agreed it was important that families had the right to choose which school was best for their child.

More than 70 per cent agreed every child had a right to “some level of government funding” for their education, while 66 per cent agreed that if independent school funding was cut, the public system could not cope with the increased enrolments.

The Albanese government sought to quell concerns over a lack of funding for public schools this month, with Education ­Minister Jason Clare introducing legislation to lift the commonwealth share of state school funding by $16bn over the next decade after intense negotiations with states and territories.

Mr Catt said all students in all school sectors should be supported to “access a great education”, but that this should not result in attacks against private schools and campaigns to have their funding slashed.

“The relentless attacks against independent schools, particularly by the Greens, only hurt the families and teachers who deserve better,” he said.

“With over 700,000 students and growing, many of whom ­attend independent schools in what will be hotly contested ­marginal seats, we will be advocating strongly for these families during the election.”

The amount of government funding a school needs is based on the Schooling Resourcing Standard. The commonwealth provides 20 per cent of a public school’s funding needs, while states and territories are required to provide the other 80 per cent.

For private schools, the funding arrangement is flipped so the federal government provides 80 per cent and states and territories deliver 20 per cent.

The Greens and the Australian Education Union have ­steadily ramped up criticism against private schools in recent years, with the AEU conducting several rounds of analysis that showed disparities between private and public schools.

As part of this, the AEU ­released a report showing five elite private schools splurged more money on new facilities than governments spent on half of Australia’s public schools collectively in 2021.

Mr Catt said the majority of students in independent schools – which included specialist schools such as Muslim and Jewish institutions – came from middle to low-income families, with ­median annual school fees sitting at just over $5500.

“(These families) should be supported, not penalised, for making educational choices that align with their values and aspirations for their children,” he said.

“Over 85 per cent of capital funding comes from these families, who are taxpayers too.”

Greens primary and secondary education spokeswoman Penny Allman-Payne said private schools received $51m from the federal government every day, and yet some of the richest schools were “still gouging parents and carers”.

“It’s great to see the private school lobby highlighting the stark inequity of Australia’s two-tiered school system,” Senator Allman-Payne said “But I think many private school parents would be surprised that they want to campaign against the Greens, when we’re the only party calling out the outrageous fees that parents are being charged by wealthy private schools. Meanwhile, public school teachers are spending their own money to provide stationery for their kids – I think every parent and carer in the country knows that’s not right.”

As part of the calculation for the level of federal funding a private school will receive, parents’ “capacity to contribute” is looked at alongside other considerations, with commonwealth funding tapering off the higher the ­median income of the families whose child attends the school.

“Independent school parents are taxpayers, and yet they face criticism for choosing the best education for their children and subsidising the cost by paying fees,” Mr Catt said. “Meanwhile, families across Australia face a postcode lottery, where the quality of education depends on their location. All families should have the right to make the best educational choice for their kids, and politicians need to support – not punish – those decisions.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/class-war-well-teach-the-greens-vow-private-schools/news-story/2e469a960cde0cb0cf152e80c8ea22e9

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Dreaming or dreamt up? Mystery of the blue-banded bee deepens



The artist behind the “blue-banded bee” mural cited by federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to justify her veto of the Blayney goldmine was a member of the main resistance group against the $1bn project, and the local government had never heard of the Dreaming story before the artwork was painted.

The Australian can reveal Brisbane artist Birrunga Wiradyuri, a Wiradyuri man whose mural was used as evidence in Ms Plibersek’s official reasons against the mine, was a regular contributor with the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation and a member up until at least this August.

The WTOCWAC’s highly disputed claims that the Blayney mine site is a place of historical and spiritual significance to local Aboriginal people are the centre of Ms Plibersek’s moves to kybosh the mine.

Amid deepening questions about the validity of the anti-mine group’s claims, it also can be revealed that the blue-banded bee Dreaming story has not appeared in any of the six ethnographic studies seen by mine owner Regis Resources and there is no public evidence of the story before 2022.

Wiradyuri declared in February 2022 that the mural on the wall of the Bathurst post office was tied to a songline east of the Belubula River. But the Bathurst Regional Council said on Monday it was not aware of the Dreaming story before commissioning the artwork.

“The subject of the art (the blue-banded bee) was developed in partnership with elders during the commission,” a spokesperson said. “Council was not aware of the story prior to this.”

Wiradyuri previously has consulted with WTOCWAC on artworks significant to the Bathurst area, with a February 2022 post on the mural tagging the group, while a June 2022 post gave its “love, esteem respect (sic) and gratitude to the Traditional Owners and Elders of the Bathurst area, the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation for their counsel and sharing of Cultural Knowledge”.

The WTOCWAC later would cite his artwork in its submissions detailing the blue-banded bee’s longstanding significance to the Blayney site on which the McPhillamys mine was to be established.

In an interview with local newspaper Western Advocate at the time of the artwork’s display, Mr Wiradyuri said he consulted with members of the WTOCWAC in its creation regarding its cultural ­significance.

“In close consultation with Aunt Wirribee, Uncle Mallyan, Uncle Yanha and Uncle Dinawan (WTOCWAC member and historian Uncle Bill Allen), the story of the bee became an artwork that evolved as we delved deeper into the storytelling process,” he said in an interview.

Documents from the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations also indicate that Wiradyuri was a member of the WTOCWAC from November 2021 to August this year, a period beginning after the artwork was commissioned until two years past its completion.

As revelations came out about his mural’s role in the decision to veto the mine and his membership of the most prominent local anti-mine group, Mr Wiradyuri was contacted for comment but had not responded by deadline.

Roy Ah-See – one of the most senior Wiradjuri leaders on the national stage and former chairman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council – has told The Australian elders from the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council believed the songlines of the blue-banded bee Dreaming “had never previously existed”.

Significant surveys in 2021, including the Philip Clarke Aboriginal Cultural Values Mapping Report, the Lance and Kamminga report and the Sneddon cultural surveys, did not mention the Dreaming.

In her detailed reasons, Ms Plibersek said six members of the OLALC, including five Wiradyuri elders, had disputed the veracity of the blue-banded bee Dreaming in a February submission.

“Information about a public artwork by Wiradjuri artist Baranga Wiradjuri (Birrunga Wiradyuri), named the Blue Banded Bee Creation Story, was also submitted to support the validity of the Dreaming as an Aboriginal tradition,” she said in her report. “Whilst not identical, the description of the artist’s interpretation of the Dreaming is largely consistent with WTOCWAC’s explanation.”

Additional details on the Dreaming story were provided to Ms Plibersek by an unnamed Wiradyuri elder whose submission was delayed due to medical issues.

Mr Wiradyuri began painting in the 2010s, later opening his own gallery in Spring Hill, Brisbane.

He was born Robert Henderson and presented his art under that name until at least August 2018, before going by Birrunga Wiradyuri.

Originally from rural NSW, he has lived in Queensland since primary school, primarily around the Sunshine Coast.

Created in collaboration with Indigenous artists Kane Brunjes and Stevie O’Chin, the artwork’s portrayal and placement on a songline is detailed on Mr Wiradyuri’s gallery website.

“Our sacred mountain is Wahluu (Mount Panorama). There is a sacred songline that runs from Wahluu to Bubay Wahluu (Mount Stewart) and it is this songline that is portrayed in the work,” the caption reads.

“We Wiradyuri, with the counsel and guidance of our Elders, performed a healing ceremony that healed this Songline in 2018. In 2022 the production of the work was housed in Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre which is on that Songline.”

In an interview with Bathurst radio station 2BS from February 2022, Wiradyuri said the work “very much sticks to that story (of the blue-banded bee); it’s very close to us Wiradyuri”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/mural-cited-in-blayney-mine-rejection-made-in-consultation-with-dissident-indigenous-group/news-story/24dce73a3a5cd153cb915e7497197936

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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)

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Time to get rid of Indigenous reconciliation police

It's just a racket

After last year’s referendum there is a new willingness to look closely at Indigenous agendas that favour division over unity.

When Indigenous elder Marcia Langton said no Indigenous person, including her, would deliver a welcome to country if Australians voted No to the voice, the floodgates opened to lingering concerns about whether a welcome to country divided us or united us. We discovered that many Australians believed it was the former, and had grown tired of receiving mini-lectures before meetings, sporting events, school assemblies and other gatherings.

Another issue crying out for sunlight is embedded inside most Australian companies, especially the biggest ones, along with government departments, not-for-profits and other groups. There you will find a Reconciliation Action Plan. And behind this “RAP”, as they are colloquially called, is one single organisation – Reconciliation Australia.

Reconciliation Australia tells these groups how to run their Indigenous outreach programs. Within RA and the bodies that unthinkingly do RA’s bidding with their RAPs, there is a shocking misreading of mainstream Australian values. Though the referendum proposal failed, the voice’s radical separatist spirit lives on in the RAPs of thousands of groups across the country. Given that ignores the memo sent by voters on October 14 last year, it’s time we asked whether RA, and RAPs, should be abolished.

The referendum result shows that Australians overwhelmingly believe in a single sovereign Australia in which we all have equal civic rights.

At the same time, Australians have enormous goodwill for Indigenous Australians, especially those suffering disadvantage. The country has devoted vast amounts of time, money and effort to practical measures to improve the lives of Indigenous people, and we are overwhelmingly happy to devote more to such practical endeavours.

However, the latest Closing the Gap report shows that RA and the 2700 RAPs inside Australian organisations have failed to shift the needle. There are poorer outcomes in early childhood development, increased numbers of Indigenous people in prison and more children in out-of-home care, as well as more Indigenous suicides.

Life expectancy gaps are not on track, nor are school completion rates, or employment or training or tertiary education.

That Closing the Gap targets are not being met is not from lack of care among mainstream Australians. It’s down to something else.

Reconciliation is one of those words that sounds nice. But what if this word, reconciliation, has become camouflage for holding tight to a set of policies that continually fail Indigenous people? What if RA is nothing more than a shakedown racket, playing on institutional anxiety and laziness to instil in those same institutions across the country a radical rights-based agenda that has patently already failed generations of disadvantaged Indigenous people?

RA enjoys monopoly power. Just about every major company or other group wanting to signal to the rest of the country that its leaders and workers believe in reconciliation drafts a Reconciliation Action Plan agreed with RA.

Once that’s done, they will be applauded by RA for formalising their commitment to reconciliation and can parade as moral corporate citizens. Many will be at Reconciliation Australia’s gala dinner next month in Brisbane.

In 2006, prime minister John Howard launched the Reconciliation Action Plan program with professor Mick Dodson to encourage companies and other groups to effect practical solutions for Indigenous Australians. Since then, it seems that RA and its soldiers inside the environment, social and governance departments of big corporations have turned reconciliation into a covert pursuit of a ’70s-style separatist rights agenda.

What follows is hard to say and may be harder for some to hear. The focus of Indigenous activists on reconciliation and self-determination have set back the lives of the most disadvantaged Indigenous people. These are big amorphous words used by elites in the Indigenous industry – by groups such as Reconciliation Australia – to capture demands made by Indigenous groups.

And the model of modern identity politics means that when a victim group makes demands, the oppressor group must say yes because, as Damien Freeman said in this newspaper recently when explaining the voice agenda, who are the oppressors to question what victims demand?

This dismal model has certainly delivered good outcomes for elites in the Indigenous rights industry – they work in our law schools, sit on advisory committees, host radio programs, deliver speeches and fill the board of RA. The other consequence of identity politics has been to entrench even further into our body politic a rights agenda, giving short shrift to responsibilities.

Reconciliation Australia is a prime example. This not-for-profit entity is primarily funded by the federal government (through the National Indigenous Australians Agency) and various BHP entities. Its funding pie of about $10m is neither here nor there.

RA’s influence comes in controlling and giving its imprimatur to RAPs, and emphasising self-determination for Indigenous peoples. About 2700 groups have a RAP. That includes every significant Australian company – BHP, of course, but also the big banks, Coles and Woolworths, and the rest of the ASX 100, as well as the pre-eminent professional legal and accounting firms, government departments, not-for-profit entities, governmental agencies and other groups. RA offers four levels of RAP, each more activist than the former.

Many companies have the two highest levels – called Stretch and Elevate – which, according to the website, “can only be done in careful consultation with RA” due to the “specific requirements, expectations and processes”.

RA tells would-be RAP applicants that after they have paid their RAP registration fee, they will draft their RAP using one of RA’s templates, submit it to RA and “expect a minimum of 2 to 3 rounds of feedback” before RA will conditionally endorse it.

Given they are sourced from an RA template, it’s no surprise most RAPs look the same and embody principles peddled by RA from the separatist era more than 50 years ago when Gough Whitlam endorsed the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1972.

That UN instrument, applicable to every person equally, was overtaken in 2007 by the radical UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP.

As RA chief executive Karen Mundine said to a 2023 parliamentary committee looking at incorporating UNDRIP into Australian law, RA’s Reconciliation Action Plan program “has been informed by a strong commitment to self-determination, drawing on the principles of UNDRIP”. According to Mundine, the organisations with RAPs “are committed to actions to progress reconciliation and embed the principles of UNDRIP in the policies, governance and practices of those organisations”. How many board members of big Australian companies realise that their RAP embeds the UNDRIP principles in their organisation?

UNDRIP is part of that UN phenomenon where the world’s activists for a particular cause design a “one size fits all” revolutionary charter that is often grossly inappropriate for many countries.

There may be countries and indigenous peoples for whom UNDRIP, or parts of it, makes sense. Australia is not one of them.

Our federal parliament has not incorporated UNDRIP into domestic law and could never do so because it is comprehensively inconsistent with Australian law and our political framework. Even a recent Labor-Greens dominated parliamentary committee stopped short of recommending it be made binding.

For example, article three of UNDRIP provides that by virtue of the right to self-determination, Indigenous people must “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

Article four says self-determination includes “the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions”.

Under our Constitution every Australian has equal rights, but this UN document clearly gives special rights to indigenous people. How does that work in practice when a company or other group endorses UNDRIP?

Take Coles, for example. Its RAP prominently features UNDRIP and says the supermarket recognises the declaration’s principles and will explore how to apply them within its operations.

Did executive and board members at Coles take some time out from thinking up clever pricing strategies to read the details of UNDRIP before signing off on the company RAP? Is Coles supporting self-governing states for Indigenous groups?

Article 14 of UNDRIP demands that “Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems”. Is Coles demanding a separate Indigenous school system? What about the fundamental responsibility of parents to ensure their children go to school?

How many chief executives and board members of other companies and groups understand that their RAP is a Trojan horse for a rights-based agenda that has failed generations of the most disadvantaged Indigenous Australians, especially women and children?

Or do companies sign up to RAPs without proper board scrutiny? It’s entirely possible the ESG department tells the chief executive that their company needs a RAP to be a good corporate citizen and, hey presto, a RAP – largely dictated and overseen by RA – is born.

That’s not to say all things companies and other groups commit to in a RAP are divisive or inappropriate. Coles deserves credit for supporting Aboriginal health service The Purple House, for donations of food and groceries to remote Aboriginal communities and for its training and recruitment of Indigenous young people.

But corporations could, and should, deliver all these steps to practical reconciliation without linking them inextricably to what appears to be the inflammatory separatist agenda of Reconciliation Australia.

The separatist attacks on Australian sovereignty are undoubtedly the worst features of the corporate RAPs sponsored by RA because they go to the heart of our cohesion as a society and a polity.

But plenty of other features in RAPs surely irk mainstream Australians to varying degrees. Endless claims that the land we live and work on is Indigenous land – even if it’s located in Pitt Street or Collins Street, are ubiquitous in RAPs and a constant feature of the welcomes to country we are forced to endure.

Indeed, it’s the compulsion behind RAPs, similar to how groups foisted the voice on workers, customers and other stakeholders, that will cause division.

The more aggressive corporations make no apology for their coercion. KPMG (some will say, who else) actually brags that in 2021 its national executive committee decided that Indigenous cultural awareness training would become mandatory for all staff and partners because attendance at voluntary training fell short of targets. This is terribly counter-productive. Compulsion is not even close to what reconciliation should be about.

The unforgivable shame is that by swallowing the four RAP flavours of RA’s Kool-Aid, big Australian companies, government bodies and other groups are taking the lazy and irresponsible path.

By outsourcing reconciliation to RA, Australia’s biggest companies have turned RA into the nation’s reconciliation policeman. That allows RA to guarantee that reconciliation and self-determination are far more wedded to rights agendas than practical outcomes, let alone responsibilities.

The biggest beneficiaries of this reconciliation racket are those Indigenous elites who give reconciliation directives, provide cultural training courses, sit on boards of groups such as RA, deliver welcomes to country, advise companies on how to draft a RAP and trot off to international gatherings to talk about self-determination.

How this provides any help to an Indigenous child in a violent family who hasn’t been to school for more than 100 days, has a mum who’s addicted to grog and an absent father is not obvious.

Companies and other groups don’t need RA. Forget the RA model of re-education cultural training camps in the workplace. As working adults, we can read and learn for ourselves.

If all companies, especially our biggest ones, got rid of their RAPs and instead focused on practical and generous steps towards reconciliation – scholarships, apprenticeships, support for health centres, food banks and the like – we would cheer their commitment to improving the lot of disadvantaged Indigenous Australians from the rooftops.

Corporate Australia should move out from under the shadow of RA for another reason, too. The separatism at the core of RA, and the RAPs signed by companies and groups across Australia is out of step with the result of the October 14 referendum last year when an overwhelming majority of Australians voted for unity, not division. That’s another way it saying it is time to get rid of Reconciliation Australia and its ineffective and divisive RAP program.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/time-to-get-rid-of-indigenous-reconciliation-police/news-story/98e12392df94cbdc153b4debbbf329a0

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ACT Greens accused of ‘extremism crisis’ after candidate James Cruz’s Hezbollah post

An ACT Greens candidate has been forced to issue a clarifying statement after a social media post in which he appeared to suggest Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah should be removed from Australia’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations.

James Cruz, Greens candidate for the seat of Kurrajong, came under fire after he said on X that “more and more” people were arguing that Hezbollah should be taken off the terror list, prompting Coalition calls for the Greens to address their “growing extremism crisis”.

Mr Cruz was replying to Guardian podcaster Nour Haydar, who suggested Jewish groups had led the charge for Hezbollah to be listed as a terrorist group.

Mr Cruz replied: “Remove Hezbollah from the list of terrorist organisations? You’re hearing it more and more.”

Amid a backlash over the post, Mr Cruz issued a statement saying he had only remarked that “other people have queried the listing”.

“Hezbollah is a listed terrorist organisation and the Greens are not arguing to change that,” Mr Cruz said. “I back that position of the Australian Greens.”

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said it was “utterly extraordinary” that an endorsed Greens candidate believed the remarks were appropriate, calling on the left-wing party to dump Mr Cruz from its ticket.

“Hezbollah are proscribed in Australia and around the world for very good reason – they are terrorists,” he said.

“Over a four-decade reign of terror they’ve killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and even Argentina, where they blew up a Jewish community centre in 1995, killing 84 people.

“The Greens must address their growing extremism crisis and it should start with disendorsing James Cruz.”

During a recent wave of demonstrations marking one year since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the Australian Federal Police targeted protesters displaying the Hezbollah flag, which is a prohibited symbol due to concerns it could ignite violence.

The furore over Mr Cruz’s post came just a week out from the October 19 ACT election, which will see Chief Minister Andrew Barr pitch for another term after 23 years of Labor government.

ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury said the comments raised a “sensitive and complicated issue”, but declined to comment further.

Greens sources told The Weekend Australian Mr Cruz’s X account had recently been hacked and deleted by a third party.

Conservative group Advance accused the Greens of “standing with Hezbollah and Hamas at protests”, rather than acting as a “party of environmentalists”.

“Not only do they stand with Hezbollah and Hamas at protests, they float changes to how those barbaric organisations are treated by our national security apparatuses,” spokeswoman Sandra Bourke

“The Greens aren’t who they used to be, and more and more Australians are seeing it as the Greens show their true colours.”

The stoush followed federal Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi’s refusal to declare Hamas should be dismantled.

Mr Cruz’s comments surfaced the day after revelations came to light that ACT Greens candidate Harini Rangarajan had reportedly written a blog post comparing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden to Jesus Christ.

“I’ve gone on to idolise several other martyrs – Bhagat Singh, Husayn ibn Ali, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Che Guevara, Jesus Christ, Balachandran Prabhakaran, Joan of Arc, Osama bin Laden, etc,” her post reportedly said.

In his pitch to voters Mr Cruz said he was drawn to run for the Greens because of the party’s commitment to end homelessness and its recognition of housing as a fundamental human right.

“Growing up in poverty and living in public housing showed me the urgent need for a society that addresses inequality and the growing housing crisis,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/greens-accused-of-extremism-crisis-after-candidates-hezbollah-post/news-story/108c0ecd5411bc97d85cf5ec8173b49f

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The eSafety Commissioner concedes – for now

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has conceded their position regarding orders sent to X to block footage of the attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.

In April of this year, the eSafety Commissioner wrote, or should we say, ‘demanded’:

‘I am exercising my powers under the Online Safety Act to formally compel [online platforms] to remove [the footage]. I have issued a notice to X requiring them to remove this content. A legal notice will also be sent to Meta this afternoon, and further notices are likely to follow. I will not hesitate to use further graduated powers at my disposal if there is non-compliance.’

This request was made possible by the authority contained within the Online Safety Act and its new eSafety Commission set up by the former Liberal government.

Australia now sits on the map beside places such as China, Brazil, and Russia when it comes to the restriction of news stories.

Many have grown to suspect this Online Safety Act, whether intentional or accidental, constrains the independent press granting a de facto market advantage to established media giants. In doing so, it also strengthens the media’s existing political relationships.

Social media and the sudden rise of citizen journalism presents an existential threat to the media. By extension, it has weakened the control our government has over public reception to its policies. Criticism can no longer be silenced with the promise of a seat on the press bus.

Previously, online government censorship existed in the shadows through private requests made to platforms, particularly during Covid. The public suspected something was amiss, but Elon Musk confirmed the political interference after purchasing Twitter. 4,000 requests were secretly made by the Morrison government to censor posts, the majority of which turned out to be true. Was this an abuse of power, and why has there been no apology from the Liberals who today say they oppose Labor’s censorship bill? Does the current leadership regret its previous actions? We do not know. They will not discuss it.

‘The online world cannot be a cowards’ cavern where the rules of the real world do not exist,’ said then-Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. ‘Big tech and social media giants must be held to account. Our plan will force them to do more – they cannot create it, and wash their hands of all consequences of it.’

Funny. That’s how most people feel about politicians and their hair-brained policies.

Over the weekend, the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, announced:

‘Today I have decided to consolidate action concerning my Class 1 removal notice to X Corp in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. After weighing multiple considerations, including litigation across multiple cases, I have considered this option likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children.’

It would be interesting to hear an elaboration from the eSafety Commissioner about how removing video footage of a news incident helped ‘keep children safe online’ when no such action has been taken to remove far more violent footage of things such as … the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

Why this footage? Why this incident? By what criteria is the censorship of the news undertaken and how, we may ask, is one piece of footage more damaging to ‘children’ than another?

Or, as many of us suspect, is ‘child safety’ being increasingly and lazily used as a means to justify the censorship of adults?

X’s Global Government Affairs account posted the following:

X welcomes the decision of the Australian eSafety Commissioner to concede that it should not have ordered X to block the video footage of the tragic attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.

After the attack, a number of X users posted video footage of the event. The Bishop himself thought the public should be allowed to see the footage. However, the eSafety Commissioner ordered X to block Australians from seeing the footage on X – even though it was available on some other platforms.

X objected but complied within Australian borders, pending a legal challenge by X. Unsatisfied, the eSafety Commissioner demanded that social media platforms censor the footage worldwide. While other social media companies did so, X fought in the Australian federal court. The court ruled in favour of X and rejected the eSafety Commissioner’s global censorship demand.

Meanwhile, X filed a legal challenge arguing that the video footage should not be blocked even in Australia. Six months later, the eSafety Commissioner has conceded that X was correct all along and Australians have a right to see the footage.

It is regrettable the Commissioner used significant taxpayer resources for this legal battle when communities need more than ever to be allowed to see, decide and discuss what is true and important to them.

Whether in Australia or around the world, X will fight for your right to free speech.

This is not the only battle for free speech being fought online. Billboard Chris is still waiting for his appeal against the eSafety Commissioner to be held next year.

The eSafety Commission brands itself as ‘empowering all Australians to have safer and more positive experiences online’ but that depends on your definition of ‘safety’, ‘positivity’, and ‘empowerment’.

What is empowering about having an unelected and unaccountable government authority deciding what we can and cannot know about our world?

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/the-esafety-commissioner-concedes-for-now/

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The Christian vote swings against Labor

When planning for the next federal election, due by September 2025 with some pundits suggesting as early as March, Prime Minister Albanese (aka one-term Albo) cannot ignore the Christian vote, the majority of which is Catholic.

Approximately 44 per cent of Australians identify as Christian and, proven by the 2019 election when Scott Morrison was unexpectedly re-elected as Prime Minister, a significant number of such voters appear to be swayed by their religious beliefs.

Such was the impact of the Christian vote that the review commissioned by the ALP after its electoral defeat recommends the party do more to ensure its polices gain the support of faith-based voters, instead of alienating what is a key constituency.

The report concludes that in outer urban and regional electorates, especially in Queensland, ‘When all other variables are controlled for, it is estimated that identifying as Christian was associated with a swing against Labor.’

While inner-city electorates, now dominated by the Teals and Greens, champion Woke causes including Indigenous reconciliation, multiculturalism, gender diversity, and climate change – there are millions of voters who are more conservatively minded.

One only needs to look at the 60/40 vote against the Voice to Parliament to realise, as argued by the cultural critic Roger Scruton, that most people, unlike the cosmopolitan, inner-city elites, centre their lives on family, local community, and the need for social cohesion and stability.

It’s obvious that if Albanese and the Labor government are keen to attract the millions of Christian voters who will decide the electoral outcome in marginal seats across Australia, they are going about it the wrong way.

Based on existing policies, and what the government plans to do if re-elected, it’s clear the ALP government has turned its back on Christian and Catholic voters when it comes to issues like religious freedom and freedom of conscience as well as school funding.

The Albanese government’s failure to introduce its Religious Discrimination Bill to Parliament, even though the draft bill was made public in 2021, represents a serious threat to the millions of voters identifying as Christian.

Whereas current anti-discrimination legislation makes it illegal to unfairly discriminate against someone on the basis of age, sex, gender identity, race, and disability the same protection is not afforded to people of religious beliefs and faith.

While those of Jewish faith are facing a rising flood of antisemitism in Australia where they are vilified and attacked on a daily basis by those seeking Israel’s destruction, it’s also true, though less violent and less extreme, that Christians face hostility and prejudice in Australia.

Examples include Victoria’s legislation to fine and imprison priests and Christian parents for daring to counsel children about the dangers of gender transitioning. Tasmania’s Archbishop Porteous has also been punished for advocating church teachings. To this we add the ACT government’s compulsory acquisition of the Catholic-owned Calvary Hospital, public figures like Israel Folau and Margaret Court being attacked for their religious beliefs, and the head of Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College being pressured to resign over the school’s enrolment policies.

In an increasingly extreme secular world where human rights activists and elected representatives of various left-wing political parties argue Christians must be banished from the public square, it’s obvious more must be done to protect religious freedom.

Currently, faith-based schools are exempt from anti-discrimination legislation regarding who they employ and who they enrol. Religious schools, given their primary purpose is to remain true to their faith, must have control over staffing and enrolments.

The Albanese government’s failure to ensure such rights are protected represents another reason why parents who send their children to religious schools have every reason to fear what happens next year if the ALP government is re-elected. Especially if the Greens hold the balance of power.

Education Minister Jason Clare has stated a number of times that government schools deserve greater funding while one of the ALP’s long-term supporters, the Australian Education Union, opposes funding Catholic and Independent schools.

To financially penalise parents by reducing Commonwealth funding to non-government schools threatens parental choice as well as being financially counter-productive. Catholic schools enrol 19.7 per cent of students while Independent schools, the majority of which have a religious affiliation, enrol 16.3 per cent.

The cost to government, and taxpayers, of educating students in religious schools is significantly less than the cost of educating students in government schools as non-government school parents contribute billions of dollars annually to educate their children.

Catholic school parents contribute approximately 23.6 per cent of their children’s school income while Independent school parents contribute 46.9 per cent. If such students were enrolled in government schools the cost to government and taxpayers would increase dramatically.

There’s no doubt cost of living will be the main issue at the next election but, at the same time and proven by Scott Morrison’s win in 2019, the Christian vote will also be a deciding factor.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/the-christian-vote-swings-against-labor/

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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)

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Western Sydney University chief Jennifer Westacott: ‘We will not tolerate hate speech on campus’

Western Sydney University chancellor Jennifer Westacott has slammed anti-Israel campus protesters, two of whom were arrested and charged for allegedly assaulting security guards.

“Western Sydney University condemns anti-Semitism in any form, full stop,” Ms Westacott told The Australian.

“We condemn Islamophobia, hate speech, intimidation and violence in any form, full stop. I cannot be clearer than that.

“We will not tolerate these behaviours on our campuses. This is now a police matter and we are fully co-operating with the police investigation.

“The safety and wellbeing of students is our priority. Universities should be places of intellectual challenge and the contest of ideas, but they must never be places of fear or intimidation.”

Peak Jewish groups have expressed outrage at Western Sydney University protesters who claimed to name a campus building after the slain former leader of Hamas’s political wing. In a social media comment, the protesters confirmed their banner, which read “Haniyeh’s building”, was a reference to Ismail Haniyeh, the former leader of Hamas’s political wing who was assassinated this year.

The protesters have scheduled a “cops off campus” protest on Friday at the university campus, saying two of its members were “violently arrested” in a case of “racial profiling”.

“Ismail Haniyeh was the leader of Hamas, a terrorist organisation listed in Australia, just like ISIS and al-Qa’ida,” Zionist Federation of Australia chief executive Alon Cassuto said. “Imagine students glorifying bin Laden on campus a year after 9/11.

“Failures in university leadership across Australia have emboldened students to think they can get away with glorifying a genocidal terrorist leader with no consequences. Western Sydney University must come out strongly … to condemn this behaviour and send a clear message to all students that this will not be tolerated.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry condemned the protesters for being “some of the most ignorant and brainwashed people imaginable”.

“It has taken a year for the anti-Israel movement to drop any pretence of supporting peace and Palestinian statehood,” ECAJ co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said. “It is now plain for all to see they’re only interested in war and Jewish destruction.

“In time they will undoubtedly turn up as Greens candidates or researchers for ‘human rights organisations’ but their proud support for a murderous anti-Semitic psychopath will follow them.”

Separately, University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell sent a note to students and staff on Thursday after The Australian revealed anti-Israel protesters had trespassed and protested in a Jewish physics professor’s office and left only when police were called.

Victoria Police on Thursday confirmed it had been called to remove “around 25 people” from a university staff member’s private office.

“This type of behaviour is completely and utterly unacceptable and stands in direct opposition to the values we hold as a university,” Professor Maskell wrote. “There are no circumstances whatsoever where a member of our university community should be targeted in this way.

“Everyone has a right to be safe at work and this is enshrined in law. Colleagues also have a right to be able to do their job without being or feeling threatened. Intentional acts of intimidation, violence, vilification or anti-Semitism against members of our community will not be tolerated.”

He said such acts cannot be allowed to be repeated: “I exhort everyone in our community to come together and stand against such attacks on our colleagues and our values.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/western-sydney-university-chief-jennifer-westacott-we-will-not-tolerate-hate-speech-on-campus/news-story/5a7ffbd4becdbd69c4174e312ecdab56

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‘It’s almost beyond belief’: Findings blast Australia’s biggest carbon offset scheme

Australia’s biggest carbon credit scheme is barely removing any greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, according to a new study, despite hundreds of millions of dollars being pumped into it by businesses and the government.

One of the study’s authors, Dr Megan Evans from UNSW Canberra, said the findings about the Human Induced Regeneration scheme, known as HIR, pointed to “such huge failures that it’s almost beyond belief”.

The HIR is intended to allow farmers and project proponents to reduce stock and feral animals from vast areas of rangeland Australia which, they argue, allows forest to regrow there in a way it would not otherwise.

Credits are then issued for each tonne of carbon dioxide abated by the assumed growth in trees based on a model of how the forest should regrow in those areas, plus on regular audits.

The new research from a group of ANU and UNSW scientists, led by Professor Andrew Macintosh, used historical and current satellite images to suggest there was no meaningful change between forest growth on areas that were claiming carbon credits compared with neighbouring areas.

The new paper suggests that whatever trees have grown on the 116 projects surveyed was overwhelmingly due to recent rainfall, not the human management of projects.

The study found most projects showed “minimal impact on woody vegetation cover in credited areas” even though they had already generated about $495 million in carbon credits.

Their findings were immediately rejected by another ANU scientist, natural resource management associate professor Cris Brack, who has done extensive work for the government regulator, the Clean Energy Regulator.

Brack rejected the statement that little or no abatement had taken place, saying he had “personally reviewed numerous projects across NSW, Queensland and WA”, and had access to independent assurance-audit reports that proved projects were on track.

The HIR method is the largest single contributor of carbon credits to the Australian government and private industry, with 465 projects covering 42 million hectares – an area significantly larger than Japan. Having issued 44 million carbon credits, the Australian scheme is, according to the new study, the fifth-largest nature-based scheme in the world, making these findings of global significance.

ANU professor of climate change law and policy Andrew Macintosh.
ANU professor of climate change law and policy Andrew Macintosh.Credit:Vikky Wilkes

The problem, the researchers say, is that HIR schemes are being credited on rangeland that was unsuitable because it was never cleared of forest in the first place, and is already close to its natural coverage of forest (trees above two metres tall over at least 20 per cent of the landscape).

Since 2021, Macintosh and a growing team of scientists have described the method as a fraud that would cost Australia up to $5 billion by 2030.

Their concerns have prompted a number of reviews, most notably by former chief scientist Ian Chubb. In 2023, he found the method was sound and said, “we have no reason to believe that there are substantial numbers of [Australian Carbon Credit Units] ACCUs not credible at the moment”.

But the new, peer-reviewed report, published by Macintosh and his team on Friday in The Rangeland Journal, closely analysed 116 sites in NSW, Queensland and South Australia using high-resolution satellite images.

Based on the number of carbon credits generated on the project areas, the tree canopy should have covered 30 per cent of the sites. Instead, they found the average cover was just 13 per cent. They also found the project’s management had made little difference to tree coverage.

“The areas are likely to be at or near their carrying capacity for woody vegetation, meaning any changes in tree cover are most likely to be attributable to seasonal variability in rainfall,” the report said. “Projects are being credited for regenerating forests in areas that contained forest cover when the projects started.

“Given that 2023 was the third year of a rare triple-dip wet La Niña, if the projects were performing as expected, observed levels of canopy cover across the projects would be significantly higher.”

The scientists said the real problem with this was that emitters would not alter their behaviour because they could buy offsets, then if those offsets did not produce real cuts in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Australia would not genuinely reduce its emissions.

Another of the project’s authors, Professor Don Butler from the ANU, said the government body that administers the scheme, the Clean Energy Regulator, had “let us all down terribly”.

“They’ve used hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to build a house of cards that is enabling climate inaction ... The failure of this scheme will only become more obvious as time goes on.”

But Brack, who has audited the scheme for the Clean Energy Regulator, and found it was meeting its targets, said the other scientists had got their measurements wrong.

The satellite images they used were not picking up all the extra growth, he said, much of which could only be seen from photographs or “in situation measurements” on the ground.

Brack added that projects could still meet targets if there were small trees that had not yet reached full size.

In a statement, the Clean Energy Regulator said the HIR method had been reviewed and found to be sound, by Chubb, the Australian National Audit Office and most recently by Brack who had given “strong assurance that the projects are being managed properly”.

If a project was not compliant, carbon credits already paid out were clawed back, the statement said. “We only issue carbon credits where a project can demonstrate regenerating native forest,” it said.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australia-s-biggest-source-of-carbon-offsets-built-on-house-of-cards-credits-worth-495m-20241009-p5kh3m.html

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Some Australian states are discovering what happens when they have too much rooftop solar

What a muddle!

When Victoria basks in mostly sunny spring weather this weekend, energy authorities will be monitoring how far electricity demand ebbs. If needed, they’ll turn off rooftop solar systems to ensure stability for the grid.

Such minimum system load events, as they are called, have emerged as a new challenge as households across Australia take advantage of plunging prices for solar panels to shield themselves from rising power bills and cut carbon emissions.

The Australian Energy Market Operator issued two such alerts for Victoria during the AFL grand final weekend a fortnight ago, and warned of two for this Saturday and Sunday.

Prior to this cluster, the state’s only previous warning was last 31 December.

The public has become inured to annual alerts to possible power shortfalls during summer heatwaves or extended cold snaps during winter.

It won’t be long before the obverse – a grid strained by too little demand – is common during mild, sunny spring and autumn days, when the need for cooling or heating abates, experts say.

“It’s all going to be uncomfortably interesting for energy system people,” said Tennant Reed, director of climate change and energy at the Ai Group, noting there are “emerging rules to keep the show on the road”.

Having a grid that is supplied entirely by renewable energy is something Aemo and state and federal governments have anticipated as they step up support for so-called consumer energy resources. Australian households have already embraced rooftop solar at a pace unmatched anywhere, with more than a third generating power at home.

Many options are available to source extra demand, such as encouraging people to use more of their generation at peak sunny periods, renewable advocates say.

Hot water heaters, now often operating at night, could be switched on during the day, while certain industrial users could be given incentives to increase production, much like they are now rewarded to power down during summer heatwaves.

Still, the looming challenges aren’t small, particularly as coal-fired power plants shut.

The grid’s system strength is “projected to decline sharply over the next decade”, Aemo said in its latest 2024 Electricity Statement of Opportunities report.

From October to December is likely to be when demand sinks to its lowest for most parts of the national electricity market. (The national electricity market or Nem serves all regions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory.)

Windy, sunny spring days – much like the coming weekend in Victoria – also mean an elevated supply of renewable energy in a season of minimal heating or cooling need.

A year ago, on 29 October, Nem grid demand hit a record minimum of about 11 gigawatts for 30 minutes. Small-scale solar, most of it on residential roofs, met 52% of underlying demand.

As more homes install solar, the Nem’s minimum demand may continue to shrink at the present rate of 1.2GW each year, Aemo said.

The Nem needs at least 4.3GW of electricity moving across its transmission network. If there are “unplanned network or unit outages”, the threshold rises to about 7GW – a level that may be breached as soon as next spring, Aemo said.

“While these periods of very high distributed PV levels relative to underlying demand are currently not frequent, they will increase over time and could occur during unusual events and outage conditions,” it said.

“A credible disturbance could lead to reliance on emergency frequency control schemes which are known to be compromised in such low operational demand periods, escalating risks of system collapse and blackouts.”

However, the market has a sizeable toolkit to address those risks. South Australia, where about half the homes have solar panels, already has coped with two minimum system load events of level 3 – the most serious – on 11 October 2020 and 14 March 2021.

For the latter, SA Power Networks, a company part-owned by the Hong Kong-based conglomerate Cheung Kong Infrastructure, was ordered to turn off 71 megawatts of photovoltaic systems. It was the first such intervention by Aemo.

So-called solar curtailment is now a feature of SA’s operating system even if such an intervention is meant to be a “last resort”, the network group said.

Before such action, large-scale solar and wind farms will be turned off, as will big solar systems on shopping centres and factories. Exports of surplus solar power from homes will also be halted before the systems themselves are turned off.

According to WattClarity, a leading energy data website, SA had at least eight such rooftop solar curtailments in 2022 and 2o23.

Victoria, which introduced similar “backstop” rules on 1 October this year, says consumers can do their bit. Solar curtailment should be authorities’ last move.

“We encourage households with solar panels to make the most of their clean energy and save on bills by using their solar power during the day – whether it’s charging electric vehicles, doing laundry or running dishwashers,” a Victorian government spokesperson said.

For Victoria, the backstop mechanism won’t affect a household’s ability to consume their own solar generation. Large batteries are part of the toolkit from this spring, with storage on standby to create additional demand by charging up.

New South Wales and Queensland are expected to face similar challenges in coming years. NSW, though, is yet to start public consultation on restrictions of solar exports, with minimum load issues not forecast until late 2025 or beyond.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/12/australian-states-too-much-rooftop-solar

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Landlords giving up: Victoria sees record fall in rental stock as investors leave the state

Victoria is experiencing the sharpest fall in rental stock since record keeping began in 1999, suggesting an investor sell-off is gaining pace.

The number of active rental bonds (a proxy for the number of rental properties in a market) fell from a little over 676,400 in June last year to 654,700 this year – suggesting there were 21,700 fewer rentals in the market.

The state has only ever recorded two quarters of rental bond falls, and both occurred in 2024.

The speed of rental stock loss also appeared to be increasing, with the total number of rental bonds dropping 1.3 per cent in the three months to May, and 3.2 per cent in the three months to June.

The new data, released by the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, supports a trend identified in the recently-released Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA) 2024 Annual Investor Sentiment Survey.

The survey described a "sell-off of investment properties around the nation" that was "continuing unabated" and "fuelling fears of an even tighter rental market".

The outlook may be grim for investors, but home owners appeared to be benefiting, snapping up 65 per cent of the properties investors sold, according to PIPA.

First homebuyers in Melbourne have also enjoyed months of falling prices, while most of the rest of the country has experienced continued increases.

However, the survey's 1288 respondents declared Victoria to be the "least accommodating state or territory for property investors", and Victoria and Melbourne were found to have some of the highest proportions of investors selling up.

In Melbourne, roughly 22 per cent of investors surveyed had sold at least one rental in the past year, the second highest after Brisbane.

When it came to investors selling in regional areas, Victoria also had the second highest rate, with just over 9 per cent of investors selling, just below NSW, where the figure sat at just over 10 per cent.

PIPA Victoria board director Cate Bakos said legislative changes around minimum rental standards and increased land taxes were driving investors from the state.

She said real estate agents were also reporting a higher percentage of sellers being investors.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-12/victoria-sharp-fall-in-rental-stock/104464504

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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)

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LNP commits to keep coal fired power stations open ‘indefinitely’

David Crisafulli will keep Queensland’s coal fired power stations open “indefinitely” if he is elected to ensure energy remains “reliable and affordable” during the transition to renewables.

The Liberal National Party leader has committed to net zero emissions by 2050, but is yet to release a detailed plan on how that would be achieved.

Speaking in Mackay on Thursday, Mr Crisafulli said Queensland had the youngest fleet of coal-fired power plants in the country and he would keep them maintained and operational.

“We will continue to ensure that they operate whilst they are needed to form part of the mix of affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity,” he said.

“There is no way the vast majority of thinking Queenslanders would want us to shut off baseload power before the capacity of the next generation of energy has been developed.”

Asked if that meant they would run indefinitely, Mr Crisafulli said: “Well, I guess the answer to that is yes”.

“We need the baseload power that comes from those coal-fired power generators, we need that there,“ he said.

“We also need to have a vision to make sure that we are part of a transition to renewable energy, but it’s got to be done in a way that makes sure that Queenslanders can continue to afford their bills whilst we work towards the future.”

Mr Crisafulli’s LNP voted to support Labor’s legislated plan to cut 75 per cent of emissions by 2035, but has not set a renewable energy target.

Labor is relying on the proposed Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro project, near Mackay, to enable it to shut down the state’s five coal-fired power stations and reach its target of 80 per cent renewable energy by 2035.

The project is still being subjected to financial, engineering and environmental investi­gations and is yet to get government approvals or substantive funding.

Initial estimates put the project at $12bn but that figure is expected to balloon after more detailed financial modelling is complete.

Mr Crisafulli has backed Labor’s other Borumba pumped-hydro station, near Gympie, but has rubbished Pioneer-Burdekin as a “hoax”.

He has pledged to fund Borumba and partner with the private sector to build smaller pumped-hydro projects.

On Thursday he refused to say how many pumped hydro plans would be built if the LNP won government, when or where they would be built and the estimated cost to taxpayers.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/lnp-commits-to-keep-coal-fired-power-stations-open-indefinitely/news-story/550d8c34ae75c3415485399f02d1f2ad

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China to drop ban on Aussie lobsters following Anthony Albanese meeting

China’s ban on Australian lobsters will be dropped by the end of the year, the last major sanction on Aussie produce to be dumped in the wake of the trade war ignited during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese emerged from meetings with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Laos on Thursday to announce the ban on the $700 million industry would be ended in the coming months.

The ban on lobsters was the last major trade hurdle remaining with China, following the dropping of restrictions on other Aussie produce like barley and wine, with Mr Albanese saying the trade impediments added up to $20 billion in value.

“I’m pleased to announce that Premier Li and I have agreed on a timetable to resume full lobster trade by the end of this year,” Mr Albanese said following their meetings, adding the ban would be dropped in time for Chinese New Year.

China banned lobsters as part of a trade war arising with Australia during the Covid pandemic in 2020 after then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into the virus’ origins.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/china-to-drop-ban-on-aussie-lobsters-following-anthony-albanese-meeting/news-story/281f844c1616c45eb704314daebfdbab

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English backpacker shocked to find Aussies don't like being called 'champ'

An English backpacker has found himself befuddled by various aspects of Aussie culture after moving Down Under, from our sense of humour to our obsession with early morning exercise. Most recently, he has put our aversion to a seemingly inoffensive word in his smartphone's spotlight, putting a video out on TikTok asking others to explain what is so offensive about it.

Speaking through hair so floppy it would put a storage disk to shame, the backpacker named Kyle said: "if you call [Australians] "champ" they're going to want to punch you in the face."

"Australians: explain it to me in the comments because I found out but I didn't exactly get the reason why and it's very interesting," he added.

Australians were quick to explain that, over here, calling someone a "champ" or "boss" is generally considered over-familiar at best, and patronising and condescending at worst.

"Champ is passive aggressive to Aussies," one social media user said, while another added: "Champ is like belittling; it’s patronising like buddy."

https://www.escape.com.au/news/english-backpacker-shocked-to-find-aussies-dont-like-being-called-champ/news-story/baadaae46b7f0ebee0fbe7f35169744a

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Trotsky-ite Greens and the common good

As Australia approaches its next federal election, a bipartisan agreement between Labor and the Coalition is essential to ensure political stability, economic growth, and the safeguarding of Australia’s national interest.

Historically, despite mutual antipathy, these two major parties have worked together in times of national crisis, such as when the Hawke Labor government liberalised both trade and the financial markets leading to a long period of strong economic growth.

Governing from the centre is where both parties function most effectively. However, the growing influence of the extreme left has pulled Labor toward ever more extreme positions. The Coalition now has an opportunity to counter this trend and support Labor in finding a balance that serves the national interest while Labor can end the pernicious influence of the Greens.

The primary threat which should lead to this agreement is the influence of the Greens, who advocate for a range of extreme economic and environmental policies while encouraging intimidating protests and stoking antisemitism. While the Greens position themselves as defenders of social justice and environmental protection, a closer look reveals that their radical agenda contradicts these goals.

Today’s Greens have drifted from their roots, embracing an ideology that rejects compromise and tolerates no dissent. This kind of rigid idealism is reminiscent of sectarian movements that thrive on hostility toward those holding differing views. The Greens have become a secular religion with an unhealthy cult of the leader who wants to destroy Australia to remake it in his image.

While the Greens’ policies are pernicious, dangerous, and extreme, they have managed to attract support from many well-meaning yet naïve Australians that find solace in the superficial slogans of the party just as many Australians have been conned by financial scams.

The Greens’ environmental policies are a case in point. They champion renewable energy sources like wind power with no regard for the financial or ecological costs. Pushing for a rapid transition to renewable energy, the Greens overlook the consequences on the environment, energy security, and economic stability. Their policies would force the shutdown of traditional energy sources without a clear plan for mitigating the impact on communities and industries reliant on these sectors.

This single-minded pursuit of emissions reduction sacrifices pragmatic solutions for idealistic goals, endangering Australia’s future energy reliability and affordability.

The cost of renewables increases exponentially – that is more than proportionately – in two dimensions: the higher the percentage of wind and solar in the total energy supply and secondly in how quickly the objective is to move to 100 per cent renewables. The Greens’ energy policy would lead to unreliable and expensive electricity, with frequent outages like in Pakistan where rich families have a large diesel-electric generator. Better a gradual transition that considers costs, technological feasibility, and environmental impacts.

It goes to the dualism and Manichaeism embraced by the Greens which sees everything as good or bad – wind and solar are always good; coal and gas are bad. Yet this is a typical Greens fantasy, a form of lexicographic preferencing. Everything has costs and benefits and there are always tradeoffs.

In agriculture, the Greens’ opposition to genetically modified crops and their endorsement of organic farming demonstrates a similar disconnect from practical realities. By rejecting advancements in agricultural technology, they risk lowering productivity and increasing resource usage. The world’s population demands a sustainable, secure food supply, which cannot be met through inefficient practices that prioritise ideology over outcomes, such as the theories of Trofim Lysenko – the Soviet agronomist – whose theories, based on Lamarckism, accorded with Soviet ideology and led to famines killing millions in the USSR and then China.

The Greens’ economic policies present a further challenge. Their tax and industrial relations policies are likely to harm Australia’s economy by driving up costs, reducing quality, and driving efficient workers abroad. Their signature housing proposal – capping rents – is so ludicrous to defy sense since has been tried and failed before. Such a policy generally leads to reduced housing availability and poorer conditions for tenants. This would harm low-income Australians while benefiting those who already possess wealth, further exacerbating economic inequality.

The Greens’ proposal to override the Reserve Bank is economic vandalism at its worst. It would at a stroke reduce the potency and credibility of monetary policy, and result in higher inflation and then higher interest rates.

Moreover, their approach to fiscal policy could lead to economic stagnation and reduced living standards. By increasing taxes and expanding government intervention in the market, the Greens’ policies risk deterring investment, stifling innovation, and pushing businesses to relocate overseas. Young Australians, in particular, would feel the effects, as they face rising housing costs, limited job opportunities, and declining access to quality goods and services. For the first time in decades, Australia’s living standards are poised to decline, a prospect made more troubling by the fact that many young people support the Greens without understanding the potential consequences.

The Greens’ impact on national security is another significant concern. They have consistently advocated for reducing defence spending and dismantling key security alliances, such as Australia’s involvement in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership. In a world of increasing geopolitical tensions, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, such policies would leave Australia vulnerable. National security requires robust defence capabilities and strong international alliances. The Greens’ policies, which favour isolationism and a weakened military, could compromise Australia’s ability to respond to global security threats and protect its national interests.

But it is the Greens’ stance on Israel and Palestine which is most troubling and here they are an enormity. The Greens have alarmingly stoked antisemitism and encouraged aggression toward Jews and Israel. By aligning with extremist views, the Greens have alienated communities within Australia and fostered divisive sentiments. The Greens’ rhetoric has encouraged polarisation and exclusion, and have damaged Australia’s multicultural society, giving succour to extremism which longs for the destruction of the only democratic country in the Middle East and the only country which gives freedoms to women and LGBTIQ people. It is beyond bizarre; it is madness. And yet the dualism that has been embraced by the Greens which divides everything into victims and oppressors has led the party inexorably to this sorry state. We should have acted earlier – their advocacy of the insidious BDS movement was a clear sign.

Sadly the Greens are having an ever more pernicious influence on the body politic and Labor in particular, which is seeing threats in a number of its inner-city seats. As a result, Labor has been trying to play both sides, especially when it comes to antisemitism where it has failed to provide strong and clear leadership which has in turn led to a disturbing increase in hatred of our Jewish citizens to a degree not seen in Australia before.

In short, the Greens are having an influence well beyond their small voting share.

The solution lies in a bipartisan agreement between Labor and the Coalition, which would allow the party that wins the most seats in the House of Representatives to govern without fear of blocked supply or no-confidence motions. Such an agreement would foster long-term policy-making, enabling Australia to tackle pressing issues in the economy, national security, and the environment with the confidence that their agenda will not be derailed by political instability. By reducing the influence of minor parties like the Greens, this agreement would restore governance to a stable, predictable footing that serves the national interest.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/common-ground-for-the-common-good/

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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)

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Australian Education Union boycotts reforms to help children learn

The Australian Education Union (AEU) has slapped work bans on teaching reforms designed to help children learn, in an ugly funding fight with the Albanese government.

AEU president Correna Haythorpe said the union had placed “an immediate ban on the implementation of the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement’’.

The ban would stop teachers from switching to evidence-based teaching techniques, such as the use of phonics to help children learn to read by sounding out the letters of words.

The union’s Victorian branch tried to boycott phonics-based instruction when it was mandated by Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll this year, leading to a revolt against the union from some classroom teachers.

Ms Haythorpe said the ban would stay in place until all schools receive 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) – better known as the needs-based “Gonski funding’’ that business leader David Gonski recommended 13 years ago.

“In public schools today, we have chronic funding shortfalls, workforce shortages, increased workloads and student who need extra learning support,’’ Ms Haythorpe said.

“The failure to fund our schools properly impacts deeply on the teaching and learning conditions for teachers, education support staff and for students.’’

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has offered to give the states and territories an extra $16bn in extra funding for public schools over the next decade.

This would increase the commonwealth’s share of public school funding from 20 per cent to 22.5 per cent.

The money is conditional upon states and territories introducing evidence-based teaching reforms, such as the use of phonics-based reading methods, explicit instruction techniques, and reducing truancy and dropout rates.

Western Australia and Tasmania are the only states to have signed up to the deal, as the rest are demanding Mr Clare double the money and pay 25 per cent of public schooling costs.

The Northern Territory signed the reform deal after the federal government doubled its funding stake to 40 per cent, in recognition of the cost of teaching large numbers of disadvantaged students living in remote Aboriginal communities.

Ms Haythorpe said the reforms would increase teacher workloads.

“The Albanese government cannot implement reforms without providing proper funding to pay for them,’’ she said.

“If (the agreement) is implemented without the full resources needed for public schools, it will increase the workload of the already stretched teaching profession.’’

The union is also demanding that governments halve the length of the 10-year agreement to five years.

Mr Clare has been contacted for comment.

The work ban was dictated by the AEU executive, without going to a vote of member teachers.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/education/australian-education-union-boycotts-reforms-to-help-children-learn/news-story/f79adbd2879c9645664253a8a3e2428a

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‘Professional protester’: NSW Premier hits out at Marxist serial activist

Police could soon have the power to reject protests that stretch over months, as a clearly frustrated NSW Premier Chris Minns decried the more than $5m spent on controlling pro-Palestine rallies and attacked the leader of the protest movement as a “professional demonstrator”.

The move came after hundreds of police were deployed at rallies and vigils in Sydney on Sunday and Monday on the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas atrocities in Israel.

The protests were largely peaceful after police issued strong warnings not to bring the flag of the Hezbollah terrorist group, but two men were arrested for displaying swastikas superimposed on the Israeli flag.

“The cost is huge … so I’m going to have a review into the resourcing that police put into these marches, and it’s my view that police should be able to deny a request for a march due to stretched police resourcing,” he said.

Police were burnt out and tired, he added, and other important work had had to be sidelined.

“I think taxpayers should be in a position to say we would prefer that money spent on roadside breath testing, domestic violence investigations, knife crimes, rather than the huge resources that’s going into the city and the community.”

“Our resources are being stretched; it costs millions of dollars to police and marshal these protests and it’s completely reasonable for the police to take that into consideration when Form 1 applications are lodged with the courts,” Mr Minns said.

“Ultimately, this is a huge drain on the public purse”.

The Premier hit out at Josh Lees, a leading member of the Palestine Action Group who has lodged weekly applications for the past year to march in Sydney since the October 7 Hamas atrocities in Israel, agreeing with the description of the activist as a “professional protester”.

Mr Lees writes for Red Flag, the outlet of Socialist Alternative, which declares itself “Australia’s largest Marxist group”, and regularly calls for the overthrow of capitalism.

He was also a leader of the Lockdown to Zero movement, demanding that the then- Berejiklian government maintain strict Covid-19 lockdowns and branding the loosening of restrictions as “an offensive against the working class” by “the rich and powerful”.

Mr Lees has also been spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, organising protests at the 2011 ALP National Conference against then-prime minister Julia Gillard’s asylum-seeker policies.

The former University of Sydney tutor was arrested during the “Occupy Sydney” movement that camped outside the Reserve Bank in Martin Place in 2011, clashing with police during a Hyde Park rally and at the Martin Place encampment.

After police broke up the protest, Mr Lees claimed police brutality. “I woke to see about 200 riot police surrounding our protest camp … physically removing people, using painful wrist-locks, and occasionally throwing punches, one of which left a protester in front of me bleeding”, he said. Charges against Mr Lees and other protesters were later dropped.

Mr Minns emphasised he was not seeking changes that would affect union protests or industrial disputes, but police should be in a position to deny repeat applications for marches through Sydney if they didn’t have the resources to deal with it.

“If you were putting on a rock concert on the weekend, you would have to pay NSW police to keep the public safe – this all comes from NSW taxpayers’ back pockets.”

NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman called on Mr Minns to immediately implement a user-pays system for serial protesters, with a general rule against authorisation if organisers of repeat protests failed to meet the costs.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/professional-protester-chris-minns-hits-out-at-serial-activist-as-costs-pass-5m/news-story/0988faa286c60a3e8e03184ba9958a3b

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Put Greens last: peak Jewish groups demand major parties agree to preferences swap

Two of the nation’s peak Jewish groups have taken the unprecedented step of seeking to influence the make-up of the future parliament by writing to Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, urging the major parties to preference each other above the Greens at the next election.

The letter sent on Tuesday morning by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia also seeks a public commitment from both the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader that they will not allow the Greens to play any role in a potential minority government or make concessions to them in return for Greens support on confidence and supply.

Separate versions of the letter have also been sent to the five recontesting teal MPs – Allegra Spender, Kate Chaney, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps and Zoe Daniel – urging them not to form a negotiating bloc with the Greens in the event of a hung parliament.

Signed by ZFA president Jeremy Leibler and ECAJ president Daniel Aghion, the letter to the major party leaders says there is a precedent for such a step given Labor and Liberals “committed to preference One Nation last on multiple occasions, including by former prime minister Scott Morrison at the 2019 federal election.”

The letter sparked a ferocious response from Greens leader Adam Bandt who warned Labor that preferencing the Liberals above the minor party would devastate the ALP primary vote and trigger an exodus in support.

“Voters will desert them,” Mr Bandt told The Australian.

The letter urges Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton to work together to “counteract the shameful and cynical behaviour of the Greens” over the past 12 months, accusing the minor party of seeking “political gains by exploiting inter­community tensions that have been heightened by overseas conflicts, without regard for the social consequences”.

Mr Leibler and Mr Aghion warn in the letter that the Greens have undermined social cohesion and “threaten the foundations of our freedoms and democracy”.

“The Greens have knowingly spread outright falsehoods, ­including the monstrous lie that this government is complicit in genocide,” the letter says. “In doing so, the Greens have joined forces with and incited political and religious extremists who have at times engaged in violence.”

“We are writing to each of you to make a public commitment that you will not permit the Greens to play any role in a potential minority government,” the letter says. “We are also writing to seek a public commitment from each of your parties to preference each other above the Greens.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/put-greens-last-peak-jewish-groups-demand-major-parties-agree-to-preferences-swap/news-story/396ac727b7304d39a432cd1c8e40baec

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Why the word 'boomer' could soon be banned in this Aussie state

The Western Australian government wants to ban terms such as 'boomer' and 'millennial' because they claim it creates division between different generations.

The move is part of a 'Challenge Your Bias' project launched by the Cook Labor government on Tuesday to tackle ageism with a guide booklet calling for the end of proverbs such as 'over the hill' and 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks'.

A $400,000 two-year education campaign will seek to 'raise awareness of ageism, and its impacts on a person', according to the campaign's website produced by the Department of Communities.

'Terms that separate generations such as boomer, generation X, or millennial are unhelpful as they create conflict between age groups and can cause unnecessary tension,' the booklet, titled A Guide to Inclusive Language and Images, states.

'These generalisations are not scientifically defined, don't have consistent names and are best avoided.'

The seven-page guide also also said that generalisations about age groups are harmful.

'It is common to use generalisations and make assumptions to describe older people as a singular group,' it states.

'This negative stereotyping takes away the individuality of people.'

People are advised to avoid terms such as ‘facility’, ‘institution’, ‘nursing home’ or ‘old people’s home’ when talking about the places where older people (defined as those over 65 and 55 for Indigenous people by the guide) live out their last years.

To use such terms 'reduces their living environment to be clinical sounding or a place for a person to be forgotten about,' the guide advises

'Terms such as ‘aged care home’, ‘residential aged care’ and ‘assisted home living’ provides a respectful description of an older person’s living arrangements.'

WA Seniors and Ageing Minister Don Punch said the guide outlined 'how images, phrases, and words can better portray older people.'

'Western Australians are living longer than ever before, with older people projected to make up one-quarter of our population by 2071,' he told the West Australian.

'Raising awareness of ageist attitudes and language, and being mindful of how older people are perceived, can positively influence our behaviour and attitudes towards older people.

'The aim is to rethink how ageing and older people are described and represented in the media, in organisations, and everyday life, and to consider alternatives.'

Ageism is defined by the guide as 'how we think (stereotypes), how we feel (prejudice), and how we act (discrimination) towards people based on their age'.

'While reading this language guide, you may recognise some of the ways language and associated behaviours can be ageist and may find you have said these things yourself,' the guide advises.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13939251/Why-word-boomer-soon-banned-Aussie-state.html

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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)

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