ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is horrified at Canada's now speech crime laws





Bar gets raised for terror sentencing
   
The Victorian judiciary condemned as "contempt of court" criticism by politicians of their light sentencing for Jihadis. From the report below it looks like they now have contempt for their own past sentencing practices! One for the politicians, I think


The sentencing landscape for terrorism offences across the country has been transformed after Victoria’s top judges yesterday signalled a tough new direction more in line with NSW by ­imposing longer sentences on two would-be jihadis.

The significant shift was heralded in two Court of Appeal judgments delivered yesterday that overturned and condemned initial prison terms given to the two men last year as being out of step with community expectations.

Eminent legal figures said the judgments showed a clear shift in emphasis towards protecting the community through tougher sentencing ahead of considering ­offenders’ personal circumstances, including rehabilitation prospects.

Chief Justice Marilyn Warren, with judges Mark Weinberg and Stephen Kaye, found the original sentences for Sevdet Besim and a teenager known as MHK were manifestly inadequate and increased them both by four years.

In separate terror plots, Besim had planned to publicly behead a police officer on Anzac Day while MHK was building a pressure-cooker bomb in his bedroom with plans to explode it at a Mother’s Day event.

The decisions will significantly realign the sentencing guidelines for terror sentences in Vic­toria, which are closely examined by judges in other states, and comes amid plans for a review of the country’s counter-terrorism laws in the wake of the Brighton attack this month.

Highlighting the shift, the judges yesterday noted the revised sentences for Besim and MHK were harsher than those imposed on Abdul Nacer Benbrika’s conspirators in 2009 for plotting terrorist attacks with mass casualties including at the MCG and Melbourne’s Crown cas­ino. “Those sentences may have been regarded as within range at that time,” the judges said. “However, having regard to the scourge of modern terrorism, and the development of more ­recent sentencing principles in this area, they seem to us to have been unduly lenient. No such sentences would have been imposed today.”

Victorian Attorney-General Martin Pakula welcomed the judgments, declaring a tougher regime appeared to be in place.

Former NSW prosecutor John Anderson, now an associate professor at the University of Newcastle law school, said the Victorian judgments showed a change in direction in favour of community protection. “We are moving towards probably a much tougher approach to terrorism sentencing,” he said. “It looks to me like from these judgments there has been a shift maybe that’s been influenced by what’s going on more broadly in the world.”

Former NSW Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy QC said community protection had not been overlooked in Victoria but rather “not sufficiently emphasised” compared with NSW. “I think in the past Victorian sentences have tended to emphasise the hope of rehabilitation for people involved in terrorism ­offences,” Mr Whealy said.

MHK was initially sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment with a five-year non-parole period after he began building the pressure-cooker bomb in his bedroom with instructions from an al-Qa’ida propaganda magazine. The 19-year-old has been resentenced to serve 11 years, with an eight-year, three-month non-parole period. Besim, 20, had received a 10-year sentence, with a 7½-year non-parole period for the Anzac Day plot. He has been resentenced to 14 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 10½ years.

“The sentence did not accord with community expectations, and did not meet the requirements set out by various intermediate ­appellate courts throughout this country as to the principles that govern sentencing for terrorism offences,” the judges said in Besim’s case. “The aggravating factors present in this case, including the fact that a police officer was targeted for beheading, that the killing was to take place publicly, and on Anzac Day, and the respondent’s willingness to kill other innocent civilians if at all possible, made this an extremely serious ­example of a terrorist offence. The principles of general deterrence and protection of the community must be given substantial, if not primary, weight.”

The court’s decisions came after hearings this month in which Chief Justice Warren and her ­colleagues noted a sentencing ­disparity between NSW and Victoria on terrorism offences, describing it as a problem that needed to be resolved. An ABC report of the hearings contained comments by the judges that prompted federal ministers Greg Hunt, Michael Sukkar and Alan Tudge to accuse the bench of ­“endorsing and embracing” shorter sentences for terror offences as part of “ideological experiments’’.

Those comments and others attacking the judges as “hard-left activists’’ who were “divorced from reality’’, reported in The Australian, have since been withdrawn by the ministers, who yesterday sent an unreserved apology to the court. Lawyers acting on behalf of The Australian have also apologised for publication of the article.

A full transcript of the appeal hearings, released this week, shows the judges were acutely aware of the sentencing disparity and concerned by it.

“We’re dealing here with commonwealth legislation, commonwealth ­offending, and we are dealing with behaviour in which there is a national interest,” Chief Justice Warren said at the time, highlighting the need for consistency between states.

Justice Weinberg said a terrorist act in NSW could attract a sentence of 20 to 25 years but under 10 years in Victoria. “We have an ­apparent and obvious disparity, it seems to me, in the way that we’ve approached these cases,” he said. “There is a problem.”

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Great white shark debate: Lifting protection hinges on scientific population finding

The Liberal Party federal council has unanimously moved to lift protection of great white sharks if the CSIRO’s forthcoming population study finds the species is no longer endangered.

The council is the party’s highest forum for debating policy. More than 100 delegates, including MPs, voted for the motion, proposed by Anthony Spagnolo, WA Liberal Party vice-president.

The motion said the “federal government should remove the white shark as a vulnerable and threatened species from the EPBC Act should the finding of the CSIRO study prove that the species is no longer endangered.”

Speaking from the council meeting in Sydney, WA senator Linda Reynolds told The Australian the vote “reinforces that there are other opinions than those held by environmentalists”.

“It starkly illustrates the divide between the far left and mainstream Australia, who think human life always comes first,” Senator Reynolds said.

She said that relying on the CSIRO was “unequivocally the right course of action”.

“We want to base any future measures on scientific evidence, not emotional rhetoric.”

Last week, former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott told The Australian that lifting protection and restarting commercial shark fishing would “ensure that we have a stronger economy and a safer society”.

“They’ve been protected now for 20 odd years. Every fisherman knows the numbers are exploding. They are not an endangered species.”

Federal Environment minister Josh Frydenberg this month said he expected the CSIRO population study to be delivered this year.

South Australian Liberal MP Nicolle Flint said it was time to start protecting Australians.

“We must protect our swimmers and surfers and hard-working Australians like abalone divers from being attacked or killed by sharks,” she said.

“In an era when rates of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes are at an all-time high, we should be encouraging more, not less, people to be active. This means keeping them safe from shark attacks along our coastline.

“I strongly support the Liberal Party’s Federal Council Motion today moved by the WA Division. We need evidence-based decision making and management of great white shark populations.”

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'Teachers are emailing us saying Pauline Hanson is RIGHT'

Sunrise host David Koch has questioned the education minister about how children with disabilities will receive the attention needed in mainstream schools following Pauline Hanson's controversial comments.

Pauline Hanson refused to back down on Thursday following her comments in parliament that children with autism are putting a strain on classrooms in schools and Koch put the dividing question to Education Minister Simon Birmingham.

The host claimed even though Pauline Hanson's comments seemed confronting, teachers have emailed the network claiming they do struggle to seamlessly include children with disabilities into the classrooms due to a lack of funding.

'Whenever Pauline says anything it's like using a sledgehammer and we all react against her because we all want inclusion in our schools,' Sunrise host Koch said on Friday morning.

'But a lot of teachers emailed us and said Pauline is right, because we don't have the funding and we don't have the teachers aids to be able to integrate kids with disabilities into the classroom. We want more funding.'

While disagreeing with the way the One Nation leader expressed her opinion, Mr Birmingham does accept there needs to be more support in mainstream classrooms.

'Well I don't agree with the way Pauline put her comments at all, but I do accept there is a need for additional support for schools, teachers and classrooms to be able to support all students with disabilities, including the number of students with autism,' the education minister said.

'What Pauline did last night to her credit and a number of minor parties, with the Turnbull Government's leadership, was back fairer funding arrangements for students with disability.'

The education minister said thanks to One Nation and other parties backing Gonski 2.0, it will provide funding to schools to help students with disabilities - especially children with higher needs - while still remaining in the school environment.

Walled Aly, The Project Host on channel 10, said the One Nation leader missed the mark and that funding for teacher's aids would go a long way to helping autistic children thrive in the classroom.

On Thursday, Federal Labor MP and proud mother Emma Husar fervently demanded One Nation leader Pauline Hanson apologise to children with autism.

The mother-of-three, with a son with autism, claimed Hanson's comments were 'ill-informed' and she owed parents of Australia an apology.

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'Move to an Arab dictatorship': Angry immigrant senator calls for Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied to LEAVE Australia

A Liberal senator is so incensed with  controversial Muslim youth activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied that he wants her to move to an Arab dictatorship where child brides and female genital mutilation are common.

The 26-year-old Sudanese-born former ABC presenter has this week declared that Australia's system of parliamentary democracy 'does not represent anyone' because it's biased against women and racial minorities.

Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, who is also a migrant, is so outraged by her remarks he had suggested she move to an Arab dictatorship.

'Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s attacks on our democracy, calling it a 'neo-liberalist capitalist project' and effectively backing Arab dictatorships where forced marriages, female genital mutilation and sexuality-based executions are legal are reprehensible,' the former Abbott government minister told his Facebook followers.

'If Ms Abdel-Magied thinks our system of government is so bad perhaps she should stop being a drain on the taxpayer and move to one of these Arab dictatorships that are so welcoming of women.'

Egypt and Yemen are the only Arab nations on the World Health Organisation list of 30 mainly Muslim nations where female genital mutilation is practised.

Ms Abdel-Magied, who is on the taxpayer-funded Council for Australian Arab Relations, has the backing of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, putting her at odds with her Liberal colleague Senator Abetz, who was born in Germany.

The founder of Youth Without Borders also went on a 11-day tour of the Middle East to promote her book last year, costing taxpayers $11,000, but she failed to raised the issue of female genital mutilation in her native Sudan.

But despite receiving many platforms to air her views, she rubbished a suggestion from former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans that she could run for parliament if she wanted to change things.

'Look at the photo of the House of Representatives. It does not represent anyone,' she told the Future Shapers conference at Canberra's Australian National University on Wednesday night.

'It doesn't represent me and it doesn't represent the people that I know.'

She added that Australia's political parties were biased against women and racial minorities.

This is despite the fact federal parliament has a black, Kenyan-born senator, a Muslim woman, a Muslim man, three indigenous women, two Aboriginal men, a senator who fled Iran as a boy and a prominent Malaysian-born lesbian.

Her remarks were also made on the same night that South Australian independent senator Lucy Gichuhi delivered her maiden speech to parliament as the nation's first black African federal member.

'Do you know how to get to office? I have to go to preselection, which works really well, and I have to go through these other systems which for women and people of colour are actually biased,' Ms Abdel-Magied said.

Mr Evans, who was a Hawke government cabinet minister in 1991 when Ms Abdel-Magied was born, said people like her needed to be involved in parliamentary politics to effect change.

'Yassmin, I am making an unequivocal plea for engagement in traditional politics, parliamentary politics as well as all the other social dimension politics you're talking about,' he said.

'Because unless you do, you abdicate the field to the Brexiteers.

'You opt out and you just play the GetUp! game or the social media game and don't do the serious parliamentary game as well, you're missing a very important vehicle for actually getting decent policy.'

Ms Abdel-Magied's Australia Wide program on ABC News 24 was axed in May.

The decision came after the national broadcaster had rejected calls for her to be sacked for a controversial Anzac Day tweet which said: 'Lest. We. Forget. (Manus, Naura, Syria, Palestine)'.

In February, she sparked outrage as a guest on the ABC's Q&A program for suggesting Islam is the 'most feminist' religion.

She also clashed with independent senator Jacqui Lambie by suggesting Sharia law to her was praying five times a day as a Muslim.

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Citizen test overreaction

Any sovereign state can decide who it will admit as citizens. The Turnbull government now wants to beef up the test permanent residents must take if they want to become Australian citizens.

The proposed test for which permanent residents will need to take time to prepare is set to include questions about Aussie values as well as English skills.

Some say this will make it harder for some people to become citizens, and that by ‘excluding’ them the Australian government is guilty of xenophobia. But that is an overreaction.

In our discussion on Monday night’s Q&A, panellists took different views about the importance of English proficiency with some emphasising the importance of English for integration.

Our open, multicultural society is proof of Australia’s success in integrating people from many cultural and ethnic backgrounds over a long period of time.

We enjoy great cultural diversity in our country and have always resisted any attempt to enforce cultural integration requiring people to forego their heritage.

But social integration is something quite different. Common mores and principles, such as a commitment to the rule of law and the liberty of the individual, underpin our society.

We are also bound together by a common language which enables people from very different cultural and ethnic backgrounds to communicate with one another.

You don’t need to have the linguistic proficiency in English of a Les Murray or a Clive James to be able to take part in Australian society, but you do need some degree of proficiency.

A common language allows for integration in a common society, and helps to overcome the danger of social isolation that can result from not being able to communicate with other Australians.

Social stability depends on us having a sense that we belong together. English is part of the common bond that unites Australians from all walks of life into a country of which we can be proud.

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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