Move to decriminalise abortion in New South Wales voted down

Various legal decisions, such as the one in the Heatherbrae case have meant that abortion is effectively legal in NSW -- so this move was largely symbolic

A proposal to decriminalise abortion has been voted down in the New South Wales parliament.

Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi’s abortion law reform bill was defeated 25 to 14 in the state parliament’s upper house on Thursday. Public members in the gallery shouted “shame” as the result of the conscience vote was announced in the state’s legislative council.

The defeat means that abortion will remain an offence in the NSW Crimes Act, and unlawfully procuring abortion will continue to be punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment under the act.

Unlawfully supplying a drug or instrument for an abortion will also continue to be punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.

Abortions in NSW are currently made legal by an interpretation of the Crimes Act by the NSW district court in 1971. That interpretation, known as the Levine ruling, allows doctors to approve an abortion if a woman’s physical or mental health is in danger, and taking into account social, economic or other medical factors.

Proponents of reform said the current situation created considerable uncertainty for doctors and women, stigmatised abortion, and was archaic.

But the Catholic church mobilised in opposition to Faruqi’s bill, led by Sydney archbishop, Anthony Fisher. “Archbishop Fisher has asked all Catholics in Sydney and others of goodwill to defend life by giving a voice to unborn and signing a petition to the NSW members of parliament,” a statement on the archdiocese’s website said last month.

The Greens’ bill had the support of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Marie Stopes, Family Planning NSW and many other groups.

The ACT has decriminalised abortion completely and Tasmania and Victoria have also successfully pursued abortion law reform.

But similar attempts in Queensland ran into difficulty and were delayed earlier this year, following opposition from the state’s Liberal National party.

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Customer given 'racist' receipt in Australian restaurant

Waiters sometimes put notes on an order to help identify the customer when it comes time to bring the food out.  Such notes should be erased before the docket is printed but slipups do  occur

An African Australian man received a personal apology from chef Neil Perry this morning after finding a derogatory term on his receipt from a Melbourne burger restaurant.

Nicholas Muchinguri posted a photo of the Burger Project receipt, which labelled the order “#16: N----s”, to social media, slamming it as “totally disgusting in this day and age”.

The parent company Rockpool Dining Group issued an apology on its Facebook page last night, confirming the employee had been terminated and claiming the company had apologised.

“Rockpool Dining Group is a caring and inclusive company. We have a clear policy of respect and care for our customers, staff and community… This is why the behaviour of one employee is so disappointing,” the statement said.

“As soon as we became aware of the matter this afternoon, when we were contacted on behalf the customer, we acted: we reached out and apologised and the employee’s position was terminated.

“The employee’s behaviour was in breach of our code of conduct and such behaviour won’t be tolerated. We apologise profusely for the upset and hurt this has caused,” the company said.

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Anti-Islam candidate claims discrimination

The founder of a controversial anti-Islam party wants the operators and venue manager of a Queensland pub to undergo "anti-discrimination training" after barring her from the site, tribunal documents reveal.

Love Australia Or Leave Party founder Kim Vuga, a grandmother who rose to prominence after starring on SBS program Go Back To Where You Came From, made headlines when she and her members were blocked from meeting at the Beach House Hotel in Hervey Bay in April 2016.

The stoush has now made its way to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, with Ms Vuga claiming she was discriminated against because of her political beliefs and seeking orders including a public apology in writing, as well as "anti-discrimination training" for the pub's operators and venue manager.

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Free speech the loser in Australia's defamation bonanza

Australia's punishing defamation laws have made Sydney the libel capital of the world, and people posting on Facebook and in blogs are the latest target for expensive legal action and threats.

But the number of matters reaching court are a small proportion of total writs served, with most cases settled in advance to avoid the cost of a trial.

Sydney's role as "defamation capital" is "a matter of public record," said NSW Judge Judith Gibson, who compiles the details of all defamation cases in Australia for legal publication LexisNexis.

The Australian defamation law was passed in 2005, and to the end of last year, there were 72 trials in NSW compared to 21 in Queensland and 19 in Victoria, she wrote in Defamation Case Law Analysis and Statistics.

London was traditionally considered the libel capital of the world, with its strict defamation laws, but the number of actions there has fallen quickly in recent years. Legislation introduced in 2013 has made it more difficult to sue and has limited damages.

"A more plausible candidate for the international title might be Sydney," wrote British libel expert Hugh Tomlinson.

"Although the population of NSW is just over seven million it appears to have similar numbers of libel cases to the whole of England and Wales with nearly eight times the population."

Judge Gibson wrote that a growing problem was that "claims based on publications on the internet, emails and on social media, are now far more common than claims against traditional media defendants".

That means ordinary people increasingly find themselves defending defamation actions in court, often representing themselves in a complex and expensive area of law. In NSW, there is no limit on how much money the court can order in costs to the winner of a defamation complaint.

Defending a court action for defamation cost between about $100,000 and $1.1 million, which far exceeds the legislated maximum damages of $381,000, the figures show.

Damages can also be substantial. A WA court last year awarded the largest ever Australian payout in a defamation case brought by three people against a blogger (described as a troll), Terence McLernon, of $700,000.

Australia's Uniform Defamation Act was last amended in 2005, and does not differentiate between publishing by a media company or an individual, and makes no mention of internet, print or social media publication.

In fact, under the law it is unclear who the publisher is of a post on social media.

The law says there is a time limit of 12 months for someone to take legal action for defamation, but the High Court has ruled that each new download from the internet can be considered a fresh publication. This it means there is effectively no time limit on suing over something published online.

Defamation lawyer Matt Collins, QC, said Australia's laws were now "a Frankenstein's monster" of rules and exclusions, and prevented good journalism from investigative reporters.

"There are important, high-profile stories that don't get told because of the chilling effect of defamation law, and the high cost of actions".

Dr Collins said the law needed urgent change

Fairfax Media lawyer Richard Coleman said only about 10 to 15 per cent of defamation claims made against the media organisation, publisher of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, ever made it to court.

Many are settled for undisclosed sums because taking cases to court is so expensive.

Richard Ackland of the Gazette of Law and Journalism, described it as "a racket".

"You start sending nasty letters and pleadings to newspaper lawyers and they respond 'how much is this going to cost'?"

However, the issue of defamation law is not on the political agenda, and even Australian politicians who have cited free speech when arguing for amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act have used the defamation law to sue or threaten people who criticise them.

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Education’s biggest trend: Why home taught kids are doing better

IT’S arguably the biggest trend in education and even teachers are shocked.

Home educated kids are outperforming their mainstream counterparts in just about every area, according to NAPLAN results and other studies. And more and more Aussie parents are taking their kids out of school.

No one is more surprised than Dr Rebecca English, from the Queensland University of Technology.

“I’m a teacher of two decades standing and I assumed that teachers knew better than parents how to teach.”

The shock for Dr English was to learn that lots of parents are doing better than teachers at educating children. This was “because of their ability to be able to individuate, and to draw on an incredible knowledge of what all parents know about their children’s likes”.

Home educator and casual high-school teacher Myfanwy Dibben says one of the reasons parents are taking their kids out of school is that teachers are not respected by parents or their students, which is leading to chaotic classrooms where teachers are often making children copy from the board because nothing else is possible.

Myf has been educating her 10-year-old daughter, Pi, for five years because of “the disengagement and disruptive environment of schools”.

Statistics are hard to come by, largely because most home educators are technically doing it illegally rather than face the invasive task of registering. Although only 14,510 students were registered as home educated in 2015, estimates of the actual number range from 25,000 to 55,000.

“This means three or four per cent of the population have been home schooled, Stuart Chapman, CEO of Christian based Homeschool WA, says.

“That’s almost mainstream. It is the fastest growing educational demographic in the country.”

But not everyone agrees. “It is still a tiny number of kids who are home schooled,” CEO of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Lisa Rogers said.

“I don’t have a problem with home schooling but it is a tough job. It’s highly unlikely that kids have parents who are able to teach the specialist content across all the curriculum domains,” she said.

“It’s a trade-off. It’s difficult for parents to deliver a quality education in terms of curriculum outcomes, but school isn’t just about curriculum content.”

And of course, not all parents can afford, nor have the desire to stay home and teach their kids.

DIFFERENT PARENTS, DIFFERENT REASONS

There are three types of home educators: religious, libertarian and accidental teachers, whose children might have been bullied, have special needs or don’t fit for another reason.

Anita Webster* began teaching her two boys, Josh*, 12, and Lewis*, 10, at home this year. Josh, who is autistic, was bullied by his teacher. Josh’s desk was his special place but his teacher dumped everything from papers to a fish tank on it and eventually removed it so Josh was forced to sit on the floor by himself.

Anita says, “There was no safe space for Josh at his school, symbolically and in reality.”

“They’re focused on outcomes so the real needs of the students get lost.”

The experience has led Anita, who is an occupational therapist (OT), to “rethink OT”.

“I have realised that most of what we do as professional OTs is try to get children to go to school. That’s ridiculous. We should be asking what the best schooling option is for each child.”

Triana Parry was motivated to home educate a decade ago when her son’s local Steiner school in the Southern Highlands of NSW closed down but she had always liked the idea of home education.

Her son Kiahl, 17, has since entered the workforce and her two daughters, Elinor, 14, and Freya, 10, both elite ballerinas, “have totally thrived in a home school environment”.

The sisters have both trained with the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Russia, a rare honour for a non-Russian.

Elinor is the youngest in her Bolshoi Academy class, by years, and plans to complete advanced diplomas in dance. Freya accompanied her sister and mother to Russia and, after impulsively auditioning, was accepted and spent a fortnight training with the Bolshoi dancers.

Triana, a music teacher, is able to integrate her daughters’ love of dancing into their curriculum. ”Being able to follow your children’s passions is really important,” she said.

This flexibility is the most important aspect of home education for Elinor and Freya. “If Freya isn’t able to move she can’t sit and focus,” Triana said. This is an issue many teachers would either not notice or be unable to address.

“Teachers are passionate about what they do but their students are not their children,” Triana explained. “Parents have a much deeper understanding of their needs.“

WHAT ABOUT SOCIALISATION?

A lack of socialisation is often the main criticism of home educators, but these parents disagree.

“The impression of socialisation being a problem for home educators came about because of Christian minority groups keeping to themselves. In reality it has never been a problem,” says Myf.

“The issue is fitting it all in,” Triana says. Her children made lasting friendships through after-school activities, home-education gatherings and holiday workshops. “I just make sure I always get phone numbers.”

Myf’s home education network meets for three hours a week to, for instance, present science projects or refine circus skills.

THE END RESULT

Stuart Chapman, a former pastor, and his wife home educated their five children for 18 years. Three went to university to pursue professions. Two became tradies.

The Chapmans began home educating as there was no Christian school in the country WA town where they lived. “Most people’s reasoning for home schooling is multifaceted,” Stuart said.

“We didn’t want to have children to give them away for the best part of the day,” he said.

Stuart has observed numerous changes since he began home educating. “There is a stereotype. It used to be the Christian fundamentalist. Now it’s much more likely to be the child who is bullied or withdrawn,” he said.

Stuart maintains bullying is the single biggest reason for home educating. “But the big market nowadays is what I call crisis enrolment. This includes student refusals and special needs, particularly autism.”

“Schools do achieve their Number one aim, which is to enable parents to have two jobs and not look after their children,” he said.

Myf agrees.

“ It’s never been easier to home educate your child,” she said.

“Quite frankly the education ministers should be coming to home educators to find out what to do. We’re the innovators.”

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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