ABC censored church’s ‘positive story' about domestic violence

And lied about it -- in good Leftist fashion. For a fuller coverage of how totally dishonest the program was, see here or my final post here on 21st. It was a classic example of Leftist cherrypicking. They ran with one little quote they liked and ignored the other facts that totally contradicted what they were claiming. There is no truth in them (John 8:44). They are Satanic

A senior female Anglican leader has expressed “disappointment” that her “positive” story in fighting domestic violence was ignored by the ABC in its controversial TV program claiming Christian men who go to church occasionally are the worst abusers of women.

Sydney diocese Archdeacon for Women Kara Hartley was ­interviewed for more than an hour by ABC journalist Julia Baird for the report on 7:30 that aired on Wednesday night, but none of her comments were aired.

“I probably wanted to promote our views and our responses more than came through — my disappointment is that there is positive work and a positive conversation, and I would have liked that to be highlighted some more,” Archdeacon Hartley said yesterday.

Archdeacon Hartley’s remarks came as the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, ­revealed he had, on request, provided the ABC with extensive comments for a related online essay by Baird and co-author ­Hayley Gleeson. But not only did Baird and Gleeson not publish any of his remarks, they falsely reported he had not responded.

Only after the diocese made an official complaint to the ABC did it amend the article yesterday.

“The archdiocese of Brisbane tried to tell ABC reporters about the work we do to assist people who are affected by domestic and family violence,” Archbishop Coleridge said.

“It’s time that the ABC took ­seriously its role to tell the story of the real Australia. It should disengage from the groupthink that has produced an antagonistic, one-sided narrative about the Catholic Church in this country.”

An ABC spokesman declined to comment. The 7:30 story by Baird and ­fellow ABC journalist Paige MacKenzie has been widely condemned for its apparent reliance on, and distortion of, a footnote in a 2008 paper by a professor of ­theology at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, Steven Tracy.

ABC presenter Leigh Sales said: “We talk about women in Islam, but statistically it is evangelical Christian men who attend church sporadically who are the most likely to assault their wives.”

But 7:30 did not report that ­Professor Tracy’s original paper actually found “there is an inverse relationship between church attendance and domestic violence”.

“Conservative Protestant men who attend church regularly are found to be the least likely group to engage in domestic violence, though conservative Protestant men who are irregular church ­attendees are the most likely to batter their wives,” his report said.

The 7:30 segment, which acknowledged “there has never been any real research” on the topic in Australia, quoted advocates claiming “the church is not just failing to sufficiently address domestic violence, it is both enabling and concealing it”.

In the segment, Baird cited concerns that “as long as women’s voices are denied within the church, domestic violence will continue”.

But it made no mention of Archdeacon Hartley, who has been in the Anglican ministry for 20 years and is a leading member of the church’s domestic violence taskforce.

Archdeacon Hartley said she had emphasised to Baird that “domestic violence in our church is unacceptable … I and the senior leadership are absolutely committed, there is no confusion”.

“The first thing we do is we listen and we believe,” she said. “We work out with them what is the best way to be safe, to be cared for … is it going to the police, is it getting you out of your home?” “I am really passionate about this work.”

SOURCE




Diners served gold flakes on dessert at Bill Shorten’s inequality luncheon

SOMETIMES the irony of a situation is too much to bear. As Bill Shorten delivered a rousing speech on inequality at a luncheon on Friday, the assembled audience were being delivered desserts topped with gold.

The Opposition Leader’s speech, delivered in a ballroom in the Grand Hyatt Hotel to mostly well-off academics, public servants and media, marked a shift in emphasis for the Labor party – ranking the rich and poor equal first. The assembled crowd listened attentively as they spooned up the chocolate tart with salty caramel mousse and toasted hazelnuts, accompanied by gold leaf.

Bill Shorten made it clear the Labor party he leads will prioritise inequality before the next federal election.

“The system as it stands is accelerating inequality rather than addressing it. It is entrenching unfairness rather than alleviating it. A belligerent defence of trickle down economics is no kind of plan for Australia’s future,” Mr Shorten said.

Shorten has made it clear he will focus on inequality in coming months. But for the message to help him win the next election, it will have to travel far beyond the well-fed crowd at the Economic and Social Outlook Conference, sponsored by The Australian and the Melbourne Institute. The question is: will the rest of Australia bite?

“I think people are hungry for something more substantial than the current political fare,” Mr Shorten said, promising to do things that were in the past dismissed as too politically difficult.

He promised to go back to the “too-hard basket” and re-examine the tax options that had been put in there. But for now the details of what that might mean is scant, beyond already-announced changes to tax arrangements like negative gearing and deductions.

Bill Shorten’s speech – and one by shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen the day before – made it clear the Labor party is trying to draw on the legacy of the Hawke and Keating governments. But they want that legacy understood in slightly different terms.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen referred to it as “a grand bargain.”

“The Hawke government floated the dollar, deregulated the economy and brought down tariffs, opening up our economy, they also embarked on a grand bargain,” Mr Bowen said.

“Reforms which opened up the economy were accompanied by new social standards, through Medicare, superannuation, increased school retention rates and the social wage. Hawke and Keating understood that these were vital reassurances at a time when there were serious threats to the status quo and that they were essential components of good economic reform.”

When Mr Shorten echoed the same sentiment a day later, Mr Bowen’s argument started to look like part of a strategy: Labor wants to make sure the Hawke Keating era is remembered not just as a period of economic reforms – but of social interventions that made them possible.

SOURCE





ALP delivers ‘false’ pitch on inequality

Truth and falsehood are all the same to Leftists.  Their only aim is to sound good

Bill Shorten’s claim that ­inequal­ity is at a 75-year high is “patently false”, according to one of Australia’s leading labour market economists who suggested stagnant wage growth had made such claims believable.

Speaking just hours before the Opposition Leader railed against surging inequality in a landmark speech, Roger Wilkins, deputy ­director of the Melbourne Institute, said conventional measures of inequality showed both ­inequality of income and wealth had been falling in Australia since the financial crisis almost a decade ago.

“Inequality is still relatively high by modern standards but the narrative that says inequality is ever rising is patently false,” Professor Wilkins told the Melbourne Institute/The Aust­ralian Economic and Social Policy Conference in Melbourne yesterday.

Pointing out that the proportion of Australians over 15 with incomes less than half the median level of income had fallen to about 10 per cent, he added: “If anything, inequality has been declining.”

While Mr Shorten didn’t spec­ify a timeframe in his speech to the Melbourne Institute yesterday, he argued that Labor was the party best placed to combat rising ­inequality, saying a crackdown on tax concessions favouring high-income earners would balance the budget and help make Australia a fairer nation.

“Inequality is an economic problem, but it is not just an ­abstract concept,” he said. “Inequality is why young people, young Australians are more uncertain than they’ve been for generations. But it isn’t just about young people. Inequality is Australians going for years without a pay rise — but paying more taxes than their boss.”

Mr Shorten’s speech to the conference was seen as helping to frame his pitch for the next election, focusing on inequality and fairness. “Tackling inequality will be a defining mission for a Shorten Labor government,” he said, adding that “the system as it stands is accelerating inequality rather that addressing it. It is entrenching unfairness, rather than alleviating it.”

But the Business Council of Australia also took issue with Labor’s “fairness” platform yesterday, with strongly worded comments from chief executive Jennifer Westacott about the current political debate.

“How fair is it to let the country fall behind and be unable to compete globally and attract investment, to create jobs, better jobs and higher incomes?” Ms Westacott said. “How fair is it to spend all of our policy focus distributing an ever-diminishing pie and then have very little left? How fair is it to lumber our future generations with debt if we go on spending and expect them to pay for it?”

Professor Wilkins said Mr Shorten’s claim that inequality had been rising was “overegging” the truth and dependent on one statistic: the share of income ­accruing to the top 1 per cent of earners, which has risen from about 4.5 per cent in the early 1970s to 8.2 per cent in 2015, the latest year for which data is available.

“This is not traditionally what scholars have focused on. For ­example, it’s pre-tax and more ­importantly it’s a personal income measure,” Professor Wilkins said. “It’s conceivable all of these people in the top 1 per cent are the only earners in their households and live in large households, and when you adjust for dependants they aren’t so rich after all.”

Official statistics from the latest census show inequality has ­fallen between 2011 and 2016: the Gini coefficient (where a lower score implies greater equality) has ­declined from 0.382 to 0.366.

Professor Wilkins said wage growth, which painted a “really stark picture”, was more likely ­responsible in Australia for the ­belief income inequality had been rising, which has helped drive populist politics around the world, including the election of Donald Trump as US President.

Real average household incomes rose rapidly in Australia from about $40,000 in the early 2000s but has hovered around $52,000 since 2010. “When that stopped people started looking around a bit more; when incomes grow strongly people tend to be less concerned about its distribution,” Professor Wilkins said.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen echoed Mr Shorten’s claims at the Melbourne Institute this week. “The facts and the challenges are clear. Income inequality in Australia is at (a) 75-year high,” Mr Bowen said.

Anthony Albanese previewed Mr Shorten’s speech by saying it was based on “the issue of inequality and the fact that inequality is at a 75-year high”.

Mr Shorten and the Labor Party have been making the claim for several years with Mr Shorten telling the ABC’s 7.30 in 2015 that inequality was at a 75-year high.

Grattan chief executive John Daley agreed that properly measured inequality had not been ­rising. “There’s actually no evidence at all that rising wealth or ­income inequality has fuelled populism in Australia,” he said.

Professor Wilkins, who oversees the Melbourne Institute’s Household Income and Labour Dynamics Survey, said inequality was “probably a little bit uncomfortably high” but could be ­reduced by reducing tax expenditures, ensuring retirees paid some income tax, lifting unemployment benefits, and improving education and training. “Lifting minimum wages would be a really terrible way to improve incomes of the poor,” Professor Wilkins argued, suggesting maximising employment opportunities was among the best ways to a mitigate poverty.

SOURCE






Turnbull takes high ground while Shorten looks for the bleak

The contrast between Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten could not have been greater, with one ­rekindling optimism in the potential for technology to transform our lives and the other painting a dystopian world in which a small wealthy class lords it over the struggling masses.

It was a side of the Prime Minister that has barely been seen since last year’s election. We live in a world of accelerating change, he told the Melbourne Institute/The Australian Economic and Social Outlook Conference. “Economic progress, innovation, technology have advanced humanity and changed our lives for the better,” he said.

If they were humans, the world’s biggest companies such as Facebook and Google would be at school, many at primary school.

It was understandable that ­people may feel threatened by the speed of the transformation, but they should face the future with optimism because technology was creating new jobs, and improving the quality of our lives.

“We have to harness the forces of change, make the best use of emerging technologies and secure the jobs, the opportunities of the future.”

The Opposition Leader picks up on the poor wage growth, the loss of penalty rates and the difficulty of young people gaining entry to the property market to argue that the government is failing the electorate at large while favouring a small coterie of high-income earners.

He uses a powerful metaphor of the “economy-class tax system” in which the PAYG taxpayers, many of whom have already filed their tax returns, pay the going rate less a few deductions while the “business-class tax system” enables the wealthy to reduce their taxes to less than that of a low-paid nurse.

“Inequality feeds the sense that the deck is stacked against ordinary people, that the fix is in and the deal is done,” he says.

Negative gearing, capital gains tax, superannuation and tax ­accounting deductions have ­already been targeted. Trusts are likely to be next in the attack on high-end tax.

Although Turnbull believes in the opportunity of the entrepreneurial age heralded by the internet, it was a message that did not connect with voters last year and will not play again in the next election.

It leaves the government selling its achievements, whether that is a school funding package, some “think-big” infrastructure or free trade deals while hoping the economy gathers momentum, bringing further gains in employment and easing the financial insecurity to which Shorten is playing.

SOURCE

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