The Marmot thinks more money would fix Aboriginal health


Is that you, Sir Michael?

The Marmot has been peddling nonsense for a long time.  He has the typical Leftist's lack of imagination:  Government spending fixes everything.  That more money given to blacks would mostly  lead them to piss it up against a wall, he does not confront. 

We see here that he knows that low IQs are strongly associated with poorer health  -- but no mention of that below, of course.

He says that treating black children better would fix their problems.  So how are you going to do that?  How are you to get them to attend school?  Send the police after them every day?  But wouldn't that be too "authoritarian"?  Perhaps take them away from their families and give them to whites to bring up?  Hasn't he heard of the "stolen generation"?  The Marmot is just a blow-in Pommy Leftist who hasn't got a blind clue about Aborigines.  No wonder the ABC has treated him as an honoured guest


If Australia wants to close the gap between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, the traditional approach of treating disease will not do it, epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot says.

Indigenous life expectancy is 10 years lower than that of the general population. Rates of diabetes are more than three times higher.

An Aboriginal Australian is 19 times more likely to die of acute rheumatic fever or chronic rheumatic heart disease.

The rate of suicide for Indigenous boys aged 15 to 19 is four times higher than for their non-Indigenous counterparts; among girls, the rate is six times higher.

In 2016, the prime minister's Closing the Gap update found that while there had been improvement in some areas, other targets are unlikely to be met.

"In my view, the reason why Aboriginal Australians have worse health than the non-Indigenous population is because of inequality," Sir Michael, president of the World Medical Association and director of the Institute of Health Equity, says in his second ABC Boyer Lecture.

He argues the best way to deal with that inequality is investment in early childhood development.

"What happens to children in the early years has a profound effect on their life chances and hence their health as adults," he said.

"A poor start in life, of course, affects everything that happens subsequently, the kind of job you do, the amount of money you earn and these, in their turn will affect health.

"More adverse conditions in early childhood, fewer educational opportunities, fewer opportunities for good and meaningful work, low income, worse environments, and high rates of smoking, poor diet, alcohol and drugs.

"People are not responsible for the social forces on their life. Get the social conditions right, ensure optimal early child development, and then, of course, people can be expected to take responsibility for their own health."

Sir Michael's research in the UK suggests that good child development is less common among the socio-economically disadvantaged.

However, he points to Hackney in East London as an example of how it need not be so.

There, investment in teachers and pre-school services closed the performance gap between children who were eligible for school lunches — a marker of disadvantage — and those who were not.

On a larger scale, Sir Michael pointed to the correlation between taxation and social welfare policies and child poverty in the United States and Australia.

Before taxes and transfers, 25 per cent of US children are classed as being in poverty — defined as having a family income that is less than 50 per cent of the median — while in Australia the figure is 28 per cent of children.

But after tax and transfer payments, poverty drops to 11 per cent in Australia. In the US it remains as high as 25 per cent.

This has led Sir Michael to an inescapably political conclusion: if Australia is serious about the health and wellbeing of its citizens, it must get serious about inequality.

"Social injustice is killing on a grand scale," he said.

"The social injustice of condemning some children to a poor start in life should not be tolerated."

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A Thank-you from an African "refugee" that Australia kindly took in -- Murders lovely lady



This murder happened in the same part of the world that I come from and affects people of the sort that I grew up with.  I know the places concerned, even such obscure ones as Feluga, where her parents live.  This matter has therefore given me much grief.  I would burn the offender to death if I could.  I know the sort of farming family she comes from.  Lovely people.  To think that such a treasure as her is lost at the hands of a scum "refugee" is hard to bear.  Africans tend to be very pushy towards women and get aggressive when rejected

A man has been given a life sentence in jail for raping and murdering a woman in far North Queensland in April 2014.

Musa Brandon Ngwira, 33, pleaded not guilty to rape, murder and interfering with a corpse.

He was sentenced to life in prison in the Cairns Supreme Court on Friday, reported Perth Now.

Ms La Spina was found by a friend naked in a shower with a cord around her neck in a Bingil Bay Road townhouse about 5pm on April 19, 2014, with the water still running, reported the Cairns Post.

The court heard Ngwira was working as a tour guide in Mission Beach and Ms La Spina, 26, was working as a photographer for a local white water rafting company.

The night before the incident, the pair had been partying with friends at a local hostel.

Friends reportedly said Ms La Spina rejected Ngwira's advances, before they went with a group of others to Ms La Spina's friend's house later that night.

Ms La Spina slept in an empty room upstairs, while Ngwira slept on a downstairs couch.

Ms La Spina had 52 injuries to her body and Ngwira's DNA was found on her, on her clothes and on a pillowcase in the room she had slept in.

A search of his laptop also uncovered that he had Google searched the penalty for killing a person in Australia. 
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Queensland University of Technology to divest ­itself of shares in coal, oil and gas

Des Houghton is getting a bit too excited below.  Divestment might slightly decrease the share prices concerned but it will do nothing else.  It just typical Leftist tokenism

WITH nearly 50,000 students on two splendid campuses, the Queensland University of Technology is run by astute academics in diverse fields such as engineering, law, teaching and the creative ­industries.

This makes it even harder for me to understand how one of our most respected tertiary institutions has allowed itself to be snared in two nasty ­controversies.

Last week the university announced it would divest ­itself of shares in coal, oil and gas companies following a ­review of investments “relative to climate risk”.

The resources stocks are in a $300 million QUT endowment fund managed by the Queensland Investment ­Corporation.

I don’t know what gives the taxpayer-funded QUT the right to make unilateral ­decisions that damage the economy.

The university is hypocritically mugging the very industries that provide jobs for some of its graduates. It is turning its back on the very companies delivering billions in royalties to keep our universities afloat.

Worse, the university has kowtowed to a green-Left American anti-coal pressure group that has claimed credit for the decision.

QUT graduates who got “real world” jobs in the ­resources sector should feel embarrassed with the divestment declaration.

Resources companies provided one in every $5 to the Queensland economy, one in six jobs and paid $2.1 billion in royalties to Queensland last year alone.

Nearly 6000 resources industry employees live in Brisbane which is the headquarters of many firms.

These companies have every right to refuse to ­employ any QUT graduates until the ridiculous decision is reversed.

Where will the university’s green activism end?

Queensland Resources Council chief Michael Roche points out the absurdities: “Presumably no QUT buildings in the future will be made from steel to avoid having to use ­coking coal which is an essential ingredient in making steel.

“Nor will students or staff be able to catch public transport or ride bicycles which are also made from resources commodities.”

Bicycles made from hemp seem like a safe option for the new “real world” at QUT.

Roche added: “I also ­assume the science labs at QUT have come up with a way of performing experiments without using Bunsen gas burners.”

QUT staff must now be banned from using petrol or diesel in their cars.

Each day I drive past the QUT’s Kelvin Grove campus and in recent years have watched a building boom supported by the very steel, gas, glass and cement QUT now seeks to run from.

A new carpark under construction off Herston Rd seems to have more steel in it than the Story Bridge.

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New amazing discovery:  Warming is GOOD for coral

I have been pointing that out for years

Coral reefs on the Great Barrier Reef grow better in the summer and in northern areas, a major ocean chemistry monitoring project has found.

The Future Reef 2.0 project is helping to identify which parts of the reef are most vulnerable to ocean acidification change and has just been extended for another three years.

CSIRO scientists have been running an advanced sensor system from a Rio Tinto vessel as part of the research, which also involves the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

CSIRO ocean carbon research scientist Dr Bronte Tilbrook said the research has found ocean chemistry remains positive for coral growth.

Dr Tilbrook said it had also found there were strong seasonal changes, with the best coral growing conditions in summer.

Conditions were also better in the outer regions of the reef and there was more coral growth in the northern parts, he said.

Specifically, the project has been examining how the entire reef is responding to ocean acidification, bleaching and cyclones.

"The data is going to help us understand how the reef is growing and how it's responding to certain stresses," he told AAP.

"We need to get the big picture and that's the thing the ship is allowing us to do."

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here