Why did a police officer give out a woman's address to her abusive ex?

A Queensland Police officer has managed to keep his job after he deliberately and callously leaked the address of a woman fleeing intimate partner violence to the abusive ex-husband she was trying to escape.

Senior Constable Neil Punchard had found Elizabeth’s (not her real name) address using the confidential police database, and directed the man to “just tell her you know where she lives and leave it that”. He then joked with Elizabeth’s ex that she would “flip out” when she realised her ex – who had a string of domestic violence orders against him – had her address and “will f...ing explode”.

Sickeningly, SC Punchard is also said to have offered advice to the man in dealing with the Family Court, and offered to liaise with other police officers to assist him in any complaints.

“If she gets the police,” he told the man, “tell them to contact me or give me their names and I will contact them. I won’t hinder the investigation, but I will give them a heads up on what has happened.”

As Elizabeth said back in 2016 when the case was first brought to light, “Knowing an officer had not only aided and encouraged a perpetrator to not only stalk me but many other horrible things, it’s really left me feeling very unsafe and I really would like to know why the police commissioner has not stood this person down.”

In April 2017, Elizabeth received a letter from the assistant commissioner who informed her that an investigation had found “sufficient evidence to support the allegations made by you”, which is to say that SC Punchard had deliberately leaked details that put Elizabeth and her family in fear for her safety. Despite this acknowledgment of fact, Elizabeth was informed that the constable wouldn’t be charged and that, following an internal disciplinary hearing, “the matter has been addressed [and] I do not intend to take any further action and now consider this matter closed”.

Yes, you read that correctly. A senior constable who colluded with her abusive ex-partner to reveal a woman's private location and facilitate further harassment and fear really did just get a little slap on the wrist while being allowed to keep his job. A job, by the way, that places him in the path of other victims fleeing the abusive men he very clearly feels kinship with.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. In February 2017, a woman reported that her ex had been accidentally informed of her address due to an apparent clerical error, despite having breached several intervention orders and having threatened to kill the woman’s children.

As Sherele Moody reports here, “Queensland public servants have handed out women’s addresses to accused DV perpetrators three times in the past twelve months.”

It’s another damning indictment on police services generally throughout Australia, who have presided over a long and sordid history of Aboriginal deaths in custody, police bashings, and who have – in the past month alone – been implicated in situations where disabled members of the community have been beaten and humiliated and an Aboriginal woman has been forced to give birth alone in a police cell.

There are no other words for it. This is an absolute outrage.

Not only has this most recent incident endorsed the practice of boys protecting boys, it has doubled down on that by providing no consequences to a man with the authority to enforce the law who thinks it's funny to terrify a woman in his community. By choosing to handle this internally and continue SC Punchard’s employment, the Queensland Police Service has sent a clear message that they cannot be trusted to protect the community, only to protect the men who command it.

If members of an already male-dominated police force are working against the interests and safety of women victimised by abusive men, how can anyone trying to escape those circumstances possibly look to the institution for help?

This isn’t a case of men’s rights activists stoking each other’s paranoia in the pub or on Facebook groups – these are men’s rights activists who have access to sensitive information, power and authority.

One of the riskiest times for a person escaping an abusive partner is in the period immediately after leaving. According to social workers specialising in the field, this is when a victim is most at risk of being killed. In Australia, one woman is killed every week by a partner or ex-partner, and a significant number of these domestic homicides are perpetrated following the dissolution of the relationship.

But in addition to the risk of homicide, the victims are also subjected to harassment, bullying, threats, and ongoing attempts to continue to exert control. It’s absolutely vital that support and protection be granted to people who have been brave enough to flee situations like this, and that there are systems in place they can trust to take care of them.

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‘Let them display their symbols’

In a fortuitous coincidence, The Australian today published comments from Australian soldiers a century apart in their origins and inspiration, yet surely linked by culture and relevance.

Former sergeant Justin Huggett reacted viscerally to new defence chief Angus Campbell’s ban on “death-style iconography” and other symbols used by army units to identify and motivate themselves. He says the new directive “denigrates morale” for soldiers and this can only diminish their combat power.

“There’s a lot of history with this. There’s the spirit and pride. I’ve had Vietnam veterans tell me about the emblems from Vietnam. This is a tradition that has been around for years. They are going to be lost to history,’’ Mr Huggett told The Australian.

It is difficult to disagree with the soldier’s point of view. We expect — nay demand — our military personnel are trained to kill, in order to protect our way of life, and we expect — nay demand — that they are prepared to risk their own lives in order to do so. There can be no greater expectation.

We send our military personnel into theatres of horror and uncertainty. We cannot imagine the pressures or the difficulties, not to mention the terror and grief they have confronted over recent decades in Afghanistan where Huggett was awarded a Medal of Gallantry and 41 Australian soldiers have been killed.

I have been lucky enough to meet soldiers on deployment in East Timor, Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan — their professionalism, dedication and refusal to ever complain is always immensely impressive. Yet, dug in on a mountain outpost in Afghanistan, or bunkered down against terrorist insurgencies in Iraq, we demand they don’t display symbols of death or camaraderie?! They are in a situation where the choice is to kill their enemies or be killed; yet from the offices of defence headquarters in Canberra our soldiers are constantly lectured on gender diversity and fluidity, inclusive employment targets and eschewing symbols of war.

They are paid to kill and risk their lives on behalf of all of us but, at all times, to watch their manners and be sure not to offend the sensibilities of self-righteous human resources professionals and human rights advocates back home.

The other quotes — dating from experiences exactly a century ago — come from our most celebrated soldier, General Sir John Monash. He is quoted in Paul Kelly’s article today from his own memoir, writing about the character of the Australian soldier. “His bravery was founded upon his sense of duty to his unit, comradeship to his fellows, emulation to uphold his traditions and a combative spirit to avenge his hardships and sufferings upon the enemy,” wrote Monash.

“Very much and very stupid comment has been made upon the discipline of the Australian soldier. That was because the very conception and purpose of discipline have been misunderstood. It is, after all, only a means to an end. It does not mean lip service, nor obsequious homage to superiors, nor servile observance of forms and customs, nor a suppression of individuality.

“The Australian is accustomed to teamwork. The teamwork which he developed in the war was of the highest order of efficiency. The truest test of battle discipline was the confidence which every leader in the field always felt that he could rely upon every man to perform the duty which had been prescribed for him, as long as breath lasted. A soldier, a platoon, a whole battalion would soon sacrifice themselves than ‘let down’ a comrade or another unit.”

Sir John Monash would know. Our current defence leaders might want to ponder this culture, this legacy.

Our men and women in the battlefield need to be accorded the freedom and encouragement to fight for their values and their comrades rather than have to worry about the equal opportunity goals of their superiors or contemplate how they can mete out the ultimate in violence without ever giving the impression that they might be motivated to employ actual aggression. Let them be. Let them proudly display their symbols of defiance, aggression and teamwork.

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University entrance exam should be simplified or even abolished, says chief scientist Alan Finkel

If it discourages STEM enrolment it certainly should be altered

Australia's chief scientist Alan Finkel says the national system for university entry should be simplified or even abolished entirely because it is "completely obscure" and lacks transparency.

The controversial call prompted the head of the NSW committee on HSC scaling to concede it was impossible for the system to be simple and transparent as well as being equitable.

Dr Finkel said the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank "might be fantastic" as a university selection tool but was "very, very poor" in helping students choose their year 12 subjects.

The disagreement arises from concern the ATAR motivates students to pick HSC or VCE subjects based on how well their scores will "scale", or convert, into their final ranking.

Speaking upon the release of his report on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education - first reported by Fairfax Media on Saturday - Dr Finkel said the perception that the ATAR rewarded easier subjects was having a detrimental impact on the take-up of STEM courses.

"For whatever reason – rightly or wrongly – the ATAR is leading to students being given poor advice," he told Fairfax Media.

"It’s completely obscure. As a tool for university selection, ATAR might be fantastic. But as a tool that guides students as to what they should choose, through the consultations we saw that it was very, very poor."

Experts have defended the integrity of the ATAR system but Dr Finkel said that did not matter because "the reality is not what it is but what it’s perceived to be".

"We did not come across anybody who was capable of explaining it to us, and there was no value for us to go and find out from an absolute expert because it doesn’t matter," he said.

"When you make something sufficiently complex – and it is – then the perceptions of it will necessarily be either confused or simplified or completely erroneous."

Dr Finkel's STEM report, which is under consideration by the country's education ministers, urged governments to review the ATAR but did not make specific recommendations.

The chief scientist said he was not certain of the solution but one "extreme" option would be to abolish the ATAR in favour of the US system whereby individual universities manage their own entrance schemes.

Alternatively, Dr Finkel said, "let's at least simplify the ATAR so that every single parent and every single teacher and every single career adviser can understand it".

However, the chair of the Technical Committee on Scaling in NSW, Rod Yager, said complexity was necessary if the calculation of student rankings was to be kept fair.

"Everyone wants us to have a system that is equitable, simple and transparent. Unfortunately those three things are mutually exclusive," he told Fairfax Media.

"In order to be equitable, one has to consider and make adjustments for a whole host of factors that take away the simplicity and the transparency."

The complexity was illustrated by research that found the scaling system had led to lower scores in some language subjects and contributed to the declining popularity of languages.

But Mr Yager denied the ATAR could be "gamed" or manipulated by strategically choosing subjects that were disproportionately rewarded by the system.

"That’s not how it works in reality. There is some perception out there that that’s what happens, and unfortunately people react to that perception," he said.

"Don’t play the scaling game. We work really hard to make sure that there is no advantage from taking one course or another."

But the two men agreed universities had erred by largely abandoning mathematics prerequisites for courses such as science and economics.

"There is no doubt that that has been one of the worst decisions that universities have made, in my opinion," Mr Yager said.

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Wind turbines delivering next to nothing to grid despite hysteria

Are we completely insane? Well, almost our entire political class and the overwhelming majority of – self-believing – “clever people” seemingly certainly are.

As I write this Wednesday evening, all those wonderful “clean” wind turbines across Victoria and South Australia are pumping out all of 30MW of electricity.

They are supposed to have the capacity to produce more than 3400MW – that’s 1½ Hazelwoods. They were operating at less than 1 per cent of capacity.

How many times do you have to say and write “when the wind don’t blow (and the sun don’t shine) the power don’t flow” to break through the thick skulls of “clever people” from PMs and premiers, through company chairman and CEOs being paid salaries in the millions and all the way down to academics and media idiots?

If the wind doesn’t blow then no power is generated.

Oh wait, sorry; all those turbines across SA and Victoria have now kicked up to producing 74MW. That’s a much more impressive 2 per cent of capacity.

Supply – more accurately, non supply – of electricity is one aspect of the insanity. The other is price. The wholesale price in SA was running at over $130 a MW hour. Victorians were doing a little better at around $108 a MW hour.

As the wind picked up, the SA price plummeted to $126 a MWh and Victoria’s to $106.

In the “bad old days” – all the way back to around 2000 – when we had wicked old, coal-fired power stations chugging away reliably pumping out electricity, irrespective of wind and sun, we paid $20-$30 a MWh, day in and day out.

It was so terribly boring – there’s so much more excitement, indeed real frisson, when prices can change by as much as that in a matter of minutes, as the wind chooses to blow or not.

And of course back then Gaia was crying tears of blood.

Never mind, as the AFR’s renewables (and Tesla) fanboy Ben Potter breathlessly informed us this week, a mammoth 9691 megawatts of new wind and solar capacity would be added to the national energy market by the early 2020s.

One can assume that Potter is as mathematically challenged as energy minister Josh Frydenberg; that like most of our 2018 “clever people” they’ve never had explained to them that any number multiplying zero still gives you zero.

We now have 3400MW of installed – OK, I’ll go along with the joke and call it – “capacity” – wind in Victoria and SA. As I wrote, that was producing all of 30MW, according to the market operator AEMO.

You can add that mammoth 9691MW, but if the wind is blowing as the same gentle zephyr, you’ll kick the relative output up to all of 115 MW.

Pity, that Victoria and SA alone need around 7500MW pretty much every hour, all day. Although, true, presumably the two states will need less by the early 2020s as more and more factories are shuttered as a consequence of crippling power prices.

To emphasise for Josh and Ben and all the others “clever people”/idiots: if you’ve got 3400MW of wind “capacity” and the wind don’t blow you will get zero or close to zero electricity.

You can have 13,000 MW of wind “capacity” and if the wind don’t blow you will still get zero or close to zero electricity.

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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