Obsolete health advice in NSW schools

This is a good lesson in the folly of relying on governments.  The "health" advice below is based on minimizing the intake of dietary fat and salt.  That was of course conventional wisdom for many years. 

Over the decades however, the research did not support that and current  medical advice is that fat is actually GOOD for you and that it is sugar that should be minimized.  There is however a lot of research indicating no harm from sugar. And the advice on salt is that it is only a deficiency of it that kills you. 

So governments should get out of the health advice business.  Their current advice is just an obeisance to fads.  It is actually contrary to the best current scientific advice.  It is nothing more than a parade of ignorance


SCHOOLS have been told to stop using butter in the latest NSW government crackdown on the food sold at ­canteens.

Banning or severely restricting fairy bread, Vegemite, schnitzels, pies and cream is also part of a dreary new regimen for kids.

“We can’t teach good ­nutrition in the classroom and then sell rubbish in the playground,” Education Minister Rob Stokes said.

Under a blanket regimen starting next year, public schools are being told they must not buy hundreds and thousands, butter, cream, salt, Nutella, icing and chocolate chips.

The war on fat has also spread to Vegemite, which may now only be used in “small amounts, lightly spread”.

Fattier foods such as schnitzels, bacon, hot chips, pies and other foods must make up no more than one-quarter of canteen menus — and they must be healthier versions.

New Education Department advice says these ingredients “should not be used in your school canteen”.

The department has prepared a list of meals it would prefer kids have, including hummus, rice paper rolls, a “veg-o-rama burger” and a bean and corn salad. It wants canteen menus to contain at least 75 per cent healthy food, and water should be the kids’ “main drink”.

“The nanny state is getting ridiculous — governments are interfering too much in our lives,” Liberal MP Peter Phelps told The Saturday Telegraph.

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African man jailed for abandoning girlfriend in desert

A BLIND, hearing-impaired woman overdue for medical treatment was abandoned in the desert south of Alice Springs without food or water in a “particularly callous” crime committed by her boyfriend, the Supreme Court has heard.

Kenneth Mututa, then 53, was jailed for two years and six months after pleading guilty to failing to provide the woman, 36, with the necessities of life, as well as two aggravated assaults committed before in the hours before the woman was abandoned.

Justice Trevor Riley said Mututa’s “heartless conduct” in November 2015 could easily have killed his girlfriend.

“Your conduct in leaving her there alone and completely vulnerable was particularly callous,” he said.

Mututa’s attacks on the woman began when he punched the woman in the face, cutting her lip and loosening her tooth, and continued with an indecent assault in a remote stretch of bushland south of Alice Springs.

Mututa then abandoned his victim, who suffers from end-stage renal failure and who was due for a dialysis appointment. A passing train woke the woman around late on the day she had been abandoned.

The woman, “lost, helpless and completely vulnerable” wandered towards the tracks, thinking they would lead her into town, but inadvertently turned south and began walking further into the outback.

A second passing train stopped to help the woman after nearly hitting her.

“It was mere good fortune that she was not killed or badly injured at that time,” Justice Riley said. “Had the train not arrived, and the operators been so observant, she could easily have perished while walking south rather than north.”

In a victim impact statement, the woman said she was “very scared when she was left alone” and no longer trusts people other than her family members.

Justice Riley said Mututa “must have known how helpless she would be in those circumstances”.

Mututa, who has served 14 months behind bars since police tracked him down in South Australia’s far north, will be eligible for parole in two months.

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Catholics declare war on the Libs over school funding

The Catholic education system will campaign against the Turnbull government’s school funding arrangements.

The Catholic education system has declared war on the Turnbull government with plans for a ­nationwide mining tax-style campaign against the Gonski 2 education reforms, which it claims will rip funds from the most in-need primary schools and force closures.

The Weekend Australian has confirmed that members of the National Catholic Education Commission voted on Wednesday night to approve a campaign that would involve a grassroots, social and main-media blitz across the country.

It is believed Catholic officials have also approached several Liberal Party research companies and pollsters, including Crosby Textor, as part of a bid process for the focus group and campaign research that would guide the campaign against the government.

It is understood the campaign would also focus on marginal Liberal seats, with parent forums to be held across nearly every diocese in the country.

An NCEC source confirmed that the campaign would be the largest ever undertaken by the sector, claiming that the integrity of the entire Catholic school system was under threat.

“The National Catholic Education Commission was resolute,” the source said. “It will be a long and sustained campaign and based on ‘Who do you trust more: the school, the principal or the government?’ This will be an informed campaign to let parents know the impact of the government’s policy on their schools.”

With independent schools, including the most elite in the country, now admitting that they came out “better off” under the government’s deal, the Catholic schools are claiming they want the playing field to be levelled.

The independent school lobby has hit back with a sectarian attack on the Catholic school sector, accusing it of going “beyond ­robust advocacy”.

Colleagues of Simon Birmingham said the Education Minister was working on a solution but it was not clear what that would be.

The government is unlikely to countenance taking money back from the independent sector.

The alternative would be to find up to $700 million in the second half of the 10-year Gonski 2 deal, well beyond the current budget forward estimate parameters, to redress the issues claimed by the Catholic sector.

The government has privately argued that the issue was being conflated by Victoria and ACT Catholic educators. However, The Weekend Australian has confirmed that every diocese and state represented on the Catholic education commission voted in favour of the campaign.

The Catholic sector yesterday repeated its warning that the school funding shake-up would force the financial burden on to working parents, and those sending their children to low to ­medium fee Catholic parish schools could be looking at fee hikes of about $5000 next year.

Parents currently pay $2397 a child at the Father John Therry Catholic Primary School in the Sydney inner-west suburb of Balmain but exclusive modelling today reveals parents would need to find an extra $6082 a student next year. The shortfall is because the federal government’s reforms estimate the expected private income per child at the school in 2018 should be $8762.

The escalation in hostilities between the sector and the government coincides with the end of a budget-period truce agreed to by angry conservative Liberal MPs who claim they intend to resume internal pressure on Senator Birmingham to reach a compromise with the Catholic schools.

Several MPs said several marginal seats could be severely impacted, including Dunkley, Corangamite, Chisholm and ­Latrobe in Victoria and the Sydney seats of Banks and Reid. A number of Queensland seats were also vulnerable as was the ACT, where the Liberals hold a Senate seat.

A significant bloc of MPs took a view prior to the budget that they needed to allow the government to focus on core business but made it clear to Senator Birmingham that he had to consult and find an ­arrangement with the Catholic sector. “He has failed to do that,” said one senior Liberal MP.

Senator Birmingham’s office said the minister did not hold any meeting with the Catholic sector yesterday.

Claims by Senator Birmingham that the Catholic sector had in the past received “a special deal” because it operated as a school system appear to have been undermined. Lutheran schools also operate as a system, as can any private school sector that applies as is provisioned for under legislation.

The Catholic Education Commission’s new research, obtained by The Weekend Australian, examined 72 Catholic systemic schools nationwide, finding 31 would need to raise fees by between $3000 and $4000 a child next year and anothe­r 21 schools would be hit with hikes of between $4000 and $5000.

Parents at these parish schools, which are part of state-based Catholic education systems, currently pay an average of about $2000 a student in fees.

At Galilee Regional Catholic Primary School in South Melbourne, parents contribute about $1651 a child but next year the CECV data argues that the government is factoring in private income of about $6698 so fees could be expected to rise by more than double, or $4366 a student.

Fees at St Bernadette’s Primary School in western Sydney’s Castle Hill are also expected to double from $1944 to $4506 next year.

Bill Shorten has continued to push the cause of Catholic schools, visiting St Brigid’s in the marginal Tasmanian electorate of Braddon yesterday. It was the Opposition Leader’s seventh visit to a Catholic school in the past fortnight since the government’s Gonski changes were announced.

He accused Malcolm Turnbull and his team of launching “an ­unconscionable attack into the Catholic systemic system’’.

“When will Mr Turnbull rea­l­ise, in his out-of-touch universe … that people who choose to send their kids to a local parish school should not be presumed to be wealthy,’’ he said.

Mr Shorten said private schools at the very top end didn’t need much more money but disagreed with the proposition that parents who chose to send their kids to a Catholic parish school “shouldn’t get some investment back for the taxes they pay — I don’t buy that’’.

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A government avoiding all the hard issues

Cory Bernardi

We have a diverse crossbench, a government transitioning from Conservative to Social Democratic, an opposition devoid of any integrity, colourful characters and a multitude of controversial matters facing the country. It’s the latter that is actually getting quite repetitive.

The significant issues facing the country are the same as they were a year ago which are the same ones from three years ago, which are the same ones from five years ago…and so on. The issues we need to confront are pretty straightforward. Too few taxpayers are paying too much in tax and too many are paying nothing.

Governments of all political colours are spending beyond their means and accruing debts they will demand that others repay. Our migration system isn’t working to our advantage and bureaucrats are empowering abuse of the system.

There are only a couple of public voices left who are brave enough to champion the lower tax, limited government agenda. Everyone else seems to have abandoned all hope of getting our political system and public finances back on an even keel. For the true believers it’s never been a more challenging time to be a conservative beacon in an ocean of socialism.

I said on Sky News last night that the great socialist experiment of decades past was going to come to an unhappy end. Debts (social and financial) will have to be repaid in one way, shape or form. Unbridled welfare is unsustainable from a financial and human interest perspective. The deconstruction of societal norms is already having profound negative consequences - for our children and our families - which are evident for anyone who chooses to see them.

Perhaps one of the most alarming things I have read recently, but one that captures the new zeitgeist so clearly, was presented by ‘our’ ABC. It was posited that children who have a bedtime story read to them by a parent have an ‘unfair’ advantage over those children who don’t. Now I happen to agree with the benefits of reading to children, but rather than use this as a means to suggest stronger families are vital to children’s development, the ABC chose a different path. Instead, they suggested that bedtime stories should be restricted, even proffering the views of an ‘expert’ who posited the very concept of family should cease.

“If the family is this source of unfairness in society, then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field” the ABC’s chosen philosopher stated.

It is alarming that such an attitude barely raises an eyebrow on our public broadcaster or amongst many of our political leaders.
Yet it is emblematic of everything else we are facing. The inconvenient truths are that societal norms have evolved through multi-generational experience about what is best for society and the greatest number are being turned on their head by misty-eyed idealogues intent on re-purposing the established order in their experimental image. They are empowered by emasculated politics where too few stand for very much at all.

That has to change. We simply cannot continue down the path of least resistance because it only leads to a prison of misery and pain. Sure the journey to the cells might be relatively easy but, after that, there are few means of escape.

It’s not too late to turn around and pursue a better way but it will take a strength of character that is lacking in most of our political options available today.

Via email

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