Defence Force chief promotes gender diversity as crucial to Australia's military capability

Politically correct rubbish.  Women should be free to try for any job but it is just ideology to say that they must be equally represented in all jobs.  How about treating people just as individuals, regardless of what they have between their legs?  Neither sex discrimination nor race discrimination has any place in the official policies of a just society

A gathering of women who work in defence and national security has been told their participation in the traditionally male-dominated sector is crucial to Australia's military capability.

Addressing the inaugural Women and National Security Conference in Canberra today, Defence chief, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, stressed the importance of a diverse workforce for the ADF.

"A diverse workforce is all about capability. The greater our diversity, the greater the range of ideas and insights to challenge the accepted norm, assess the risks, see them from a different perspective, and develop creative solutions," he said.

"I've seen this on operations but I also see it every day in my own office.  "Right now 57 per cent of my personal staff are women. This is no mistake. In fact, I hand choose everyone for that office.  "They are the first to tell me how it really is in their candour on behalf of their peers and the networks that they represent.

"Combined with the mix of unique insights, [it] helps me see issues from a different point of view, and in my experiences, our differences make a stronger team."

Asked when Australia might have its first female chief of Army, Navy or Air Force, the Defence chief declined to nominate a date, but singled out the Royal Australian Navy for praise in allowing women to rise to leadership positions.

"The area that is leading most is Navy. We have some very talented senior Navy females who have commanded ships, they've commanded on operations," he said.

"So without making a prediction about where this might go, you can get an idea of where I'm thinking.

"The other two services are behind in that area but we're growing women with the appropriate experience through those roles and you'll see that come out.

"But a generational change takes a generation and so if you rush it you sometimes force people into a point of failure, not because they're not capable of doing but they just don't have the experience.

"So you've got to watch that as you're looking to progress anyone through the organisation."

Air Chief Marshal Binskin, who once served as a fighter pilot, said he was surprised and concerned he still had not seen an Australian woman in that role.

"Air Force have done a good assessment of what's there and what might need to change culturally, as well as the professional development in looking to develop females in the fighter pilot community.  "I'm confident we'll start to see women flow through that stream soon."

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Dear Australia: Stop being a bunch of f**king sooks

Joe Hildebrand customarily writes in a rather florid way but he has a point below

WELCOME to Earth in 2017, a world where university courses need trigger warnings, Hillary Clinton supporters need safe spaces, emergency evacuation centres need transgender toilets and everybody has a right to everything — except of course free speech, because words are violence.

Granted, this doesn’t apply to most of the world, because it’s still got shit like war and poverty and death to worry about.

It only applies to Western civilisation, which is in itself now considered an oppressive colonial construct by the petals who are protected by it.

It has now been seven decades since the last world war and almost every adult in every developed country has equal rights, equal pay and basic access to food and shelter.

In Australia we are probably doing better than any of them, with free health care, free education, a welfare safety net and a democratic government so stable that even after a decade of both major parties completely f***ing it up there still hasn’t been a revolution.

Critical to this has been the incredible advance of technology. We have put so many people on the Moon that one day we just got sick of it and stopped bothering. Then we invented the internet, probably the most revolutionary development in all of human history.

But what do we use it for? To whinge our bloody arses off. To get offended and outraged by anything we can find to offend and outrage us. Oh, and porn.

Consider a story this week in the UK where a bartender saved a hotel guest’s life as he was having a heart attack, only to have the man’s family later complain on TripAdvisor because breakfast wasn’t included.

Or in the US, where social media has deadset sharted itself because a semi-Kardashian made a Pepsi ad featuring a bunch of ethnically diverse models holding corflutes.

Or here in Australia, where an online activist group is vowing to inflict “real pain” on a mild-mannered centrist crossbencher because he agreed to a tax cut for medium-sized businesses.

Seriously, if that’s where the revolution is at we have run out of real problems.

The irony, of course, is that there are still a lot of real problems to get outraged about. It’s just that they never seem to be the ones to attract the outrage.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a protest march against terrorism or a trending hashtag about homelessness yet as soon as some poor sod says the wrong thing on Q&A their name explodes onto the internet like a dose of salts. And half the time it’s spelt wrong.

This is the “Outrage Tardis”. We have just as much anger as we’ve always had but less and less to get angry about. As a result we have to squeeze all our outrage into ever more extreme and diminishing problems, whereupon it becomes more and more hysterical and ridiculous.

For example it recently emerged that IBM Australia was one of many major companies to actively endorse same-sex marriage. Great! So do I!

Yet instead of welcoming this, activists simply turned on the fact IBM happened to employ one Christian executive who didn’t. Presumably if IBM had sacked him they would then protest the fact he was still alive — although even dying didn’t save Bill Leak from their wrath.

Nothing, it seems, is ever enough. It’s not progress they want, just protest.

We know this because the complaints get louder and louder and more and more specific even though the world has never been more progressive — especially in the West, which is the part the activists hate the most.

Yes, there is still poverty and violence and oppression but the fact is that for most people life is simply not that bad and, certainly as far as tolerance and equality is concerned, it’s getting better and better. Society’s only fault, it seems, is that it isn’t perfect.

In fact this is the massive disconnect between the radical left and the retrograde right. Revolutionary ideologues imagine their theoretical utopia and then get upset when the real world falls short of it. Meanwhile arch conservatives pine for a golden age that for many people felt more like a golden shower.

The truth is that if you are lucky enough to live in the West, right here, right now is probably the best time in history to be alive. Want proof? Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Just to make it fair, let’s ignore the caveman days, human sacrifices in Mesopotamia, the dark ages and the bubonic plague. Let’s just take the last 100 years.

Exactly one century ago World War I hadn’t even ended. By the following year it would have claimed 16 million lives, including seven million civilians and nine million combatants slaughtered on such an industrial scale it was referred to as “the meat grinder”. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. It wasn’t.

Then, as the world was still reeling from the loss, it was hit by the so-called Spanish flu which killed three times as many people again — an estimated 50 million deaths. Up to one third of the world’s population was infected.

A decade later, in 1929, the global stockmarket crashed, plunging the world into the Great Depression. In the 1930s the unemployment rate in Australia hit almost 32 per cent. It’s currently 5.9 per cent, in case you were wondering.

Everyone thought this was pretty much as bad as it could get. Little did they know a certain politician was building up quite the following in Germany.

World War II broke out at the end of that decade. It ended up killing between 50 and 80 million people, the deadliest conflict in human history. This of course included the mass genocide of some six million Jews — including 1.5 million children. Whole cities were incinerated.

OK, who am I kidding. The 1990s were pretty much the perfect decade — the world had all the technology it needed to function but not quite enough to 3D-print handguns or give every last hand-jammer a platform on which to complain how much they’d been violated.

Instead we used to do that by marching to Parliament House every second Wednesday, which was just as pointless but at least annoyed far fewer people.

Of course the funny thing is that the world is still potentially on the brink of nuclear war, but nobody’s out in the streets protesting against Iran or North Korea. They’re all crying into their iPhones because some red-headed reality TV star was so stupid he managed to win a US election.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter because China’s going to take over the world in about 10 years and crying will no doubt be banned as a sign of bourgeois Western decadence. So at least some good will come out of it.

In the meantime, can every overindulged oversensitive sookerati please stop whining about every single thing that upsets them in their overprivileged lives?

Thanks very much for that and a big “Ni hao!” to our future masters. [Ni Hao is a Chinese greeting]

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Parents' outrage as schools remove the word Easter from their annual hat parades to be more 'inclusive'

Sydney schools have come under fire from angry parents after removing the word 'Easter' from annual hat parades to be more 'inclusive'.

Public schools including Bondi and Batemans Bay caused controversy after changing the event's name to call it 'happy hat day' or 'crazy hat day'.

Some schools have reinstated the wording this year in response to parents' criticism, while others have stood by the decision, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper reported that Bondi Public School is among those to backflip on their decision.

Reports last year said the school's principal Michael Jones changed the wording in 2011, telling parents the decision was made to be more 'inclusive'.

'As we are an inclusive community which celebrates our diverse range of cultures and beliefs, I have not called it an Easter Hat parade,' Mr Jones wrote in the school's newsletter in 2011.

'Many religious celebrations occur at this time of year but we want to include all students in any celebration at school.'

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph reported Batemans Bay Public School principal Tom Purcell has held firm on his decision, despite an online petition with 600 signatures to reinstate the hat parade's original wording.

Sarah Culic created the petition, slamming the wording of 'happy hat day' as 'nonsensical political correctness'. 'The claim that celebrating Easter in a public school is exclusive of other religions is simply untenable,' she said. 'Everyone has and should have the right to partake in [Easter] according to our constitution and tradition.'

Mother Danielle Stevenson said she would like to meet the parent who made a complaint to Batemans Bay Public School, and called the decision to rename the event as 'pathetic'

The petition has 620 signatories from people who downplayed the connection of the event to the religious celebration. 'I went to this school and [Easter hat day] was a massive memory I still have,' one signatory said.

'If it had a different name I would have most likely remembered it as just another crazy thing we did at primary school, the name itself holds value to memory, and tradition.'

'It is a parade with an Easter theme that is held just before the Easter weekend. No matter what the reason for the change is, it is an Easter Hat Parade,' another person said.

Batemans Bay Public School renaming of their hat parade reportedly came after a parent complaint, saying it was offensive and not inclusive of all cultures and religions.

One mother said on Facebook she would like to meet the parent who made the complaint and called the decision 'pathetic'.  

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Mark Latham calls for 'whites' and 'straights' to take back Australia

As a reaction to unfair discrimination against the majority under the guise of affirmative action, this is a reasonable response

Mark Latham has allegedly taken to social media to unleash a bitter and racist tirade against his political peers by claiming "white people" and "straight people" must stand up and reclaim their country.

The controversial former Labor leader posted the string of bizarre comments to his Twitter account today, just hours after boasting about streaming his first 'Outsiders' show on Facebook Live.

"Facebook an amazing technology: can create free TV shows, no ads, lots of free speech. By-pass the elites and confected outrage industry," he wrote to his @RealMarkLatham profile.

Mr Latham turned to the social media platform to resurrect his 'Outsiders' program after he was dumped by Sky News last month for commenting on the sexual orientation of a Sydney schoolboy.

He called on his 5480 followers to "fight for the people" so they can take back "our country. He then went on to say that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is a "waste of space".

"White people must fight against the Left's new anti-white racism," he added, naming [Iranian] Senator Sam Dastyari and his "grubby mates".

Not to outdo himself, Mr Latham then wrote: "Straight people must fight the new militant gay-left, seeking to sack those who believe in God and man-woman marriage. No persecution."

During his Sky News show late last month, Mr Latham said he thought Hugh Bartley, Sydney Boys High School captain, was gay after he fronted a social media video involving the school.

"I thought he was gay. Well, yes, who wouldn't think that? Only later in the video did it become clear the students were reciting the words of women as part of some strange social media presentation," he said.

The video, which the school posted to Facebook, featured Mr Bartley and a number of his fellow students putting a male voice to the answers to why feminism is important to the women in their lives.

"Feminism is important to me because a few months ago a guy decided for me that I wanted to have sex with him. I didn't want to," Mr Bartley says in the video.

Mr Latham was savaged by members of his party-faithful, namely Labor leader Bill Shorten and deputy Tania Plibersek over the remarks.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham and NSW state minister Rob Stokes also took issue with his comments.

A spokesman for the school told nine.com.au they had no further comment to make on the matter.

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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