Shame on Mission Australia

Bettina Arndt comments below on feminist bias.  She leaves out an important consideration, though: She does not confront who Mission Australia are.  They are an amalgam of a number of Christian charities.  As such we are then entitled to ask whom they serve these days?  If it is a gospel of Feminism, are they serving the Devil's gospel? Christ pointed out how deceptive the Devil can be so might not Mission Australia have become deluded by the Devil?  Or has Christ become to them just some old-fashioned fuddy-duddy who obstructs their virtue signalling?

Christ's gospel on the matter is clear.  He left no room for differential treatment of persons. "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

Equal treatment in fact goes right back to Mosaic law: "do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit."  In other words favouritism is wrong even if for kindly motives.  Mission Australia should stop to consider prayerfully the commands of their Lord.  If they are above that they are apostles of the Devil.


We were really excited to see people finally standing up against organisations pandering to the feminists. Recently Australia spoke out against Lifeline’s decision to include the anti-male feminist crusader Clementine Ford in a domestic violence forum. Nearly 15,000 signed a protest petition and the event was cancelled.

That’s inspired me to take on Mission Australia for their ghastly new homeless campaign which features a frightened woman and her child escaping a violent man. Mission Australia knows all too well that domestic violence involves violent women as well as men – as acknowledged on their website.

Last week Ross Cameron, one of the popular co-hosts of Sky News’ The Outsiders programme suggested that the Mission Australia campaign is motivated by a desire to benefit from “the tsunamis of cash heading their way from the Commonwealth government” – that’s the money paid out to organisations choosing to virtue-signal by conforming to the feminist script pretending that only men perpetrate domestic violence.

As Ross Cameron pointed out, there’s no evidence that any of this money actually reduces domestic violence. He urged Australia not to support this misguided campaign: “I say, if you’ve got a spare $10 in your pocket don’t waste it on Mission Australia.”

I’m now launching a petition asking Mission Australia to cancel this anti-male campaign and tell the truth about family violence. Here’s my new video, telling you all about it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v28rsTz5tjw

And here’s the actual petition:

https://www.change.org/p/bettina-arndt-mission-australia-fails-children-by-ignoring-violent-mothers

I’ve summarised evidence showing that that children in violent families are just as likely to be cowering from their mothers as their fathers – see the petition for the links.  Most family violence is two-way violence, involving women as well as men.

Help our campaign by signing our petition censoring Mission Australia for failing to protect children by denying the truth of what is happening in violent homes.

Here’s a link to my Facebook page where we have just posted all this information. You might find this easier to circulate:

https://www.facebook.com/Bettina-Arndt-146481039248876/

Please help circulate the video and the petition. We need big numbers to come on board to show most people are fed up with this type of anti-male campaign. I hope you will really make an effort with this one. We need to capitalise on the success of the Clementine Ford petition!

Write protest letters

It’s also important to tell the people who run Mission Australia that we object to this blatant manipulation of an important social issue. Please write to MA Board members and executives voicing your objections – see email addresses below. The petition provides many of the key arguments, with evidence as to how they are misrepresenting domestic violence research.

Executive

James Toomey     ToomeyJ@missionaustralia.com.au;

Mark Newton      NewtonM@missionaustralia.com.au;

Sally Ascroft         AscroftS@missionaustralia.com.au;

Chris Bratchford  BratchfordC@missionaustralia.com.au;

David Pigott         PigottD@missionaustralia.com.au;

Iain Keddie           KeddieI@missionaustralia.com.au;

Marion Bennett   BennettM@missionaustralia.com.au;

Paul Molyneux    MolyneuxP@missionaustralia.com.au;

Ben Carblis          CarblisB@missionaustralia.com.au;



Board

Kenneth Dean      DeanK@missionaustralia.com.au;

Grant Dempsey   DempseyG@missionaustralia.com.au;

Jennifer Lambert LambertJ@missionaustralia.com.au;

Ian Hammond     HammondI@missionaustralia.com.au;

Simon Miller        MillerS@missionaustralia.com.au;

Hon Dean Brown BrownD@missionaustralia.com.au;

Evelyn Horton     Attn: E Horton smart-facility@uow.edu.au;

Debra Stirling      StirlingD@missionaustralia.com.au;


These large organisations receiving substantial government funding need to be told that ordinary Australians have had enough of blatant pandering to the feminist vote, at the expense of tackling the real issues.

Via email from Tina





A conservative hounded out of the public service

But Leftists are ubiquitous

John Lloyd, the public service commissioner, has announced his resignation just days after a Senate estimates grilling that questioned his independence.

Lloyd told the governor general of his intention to stand down on Monday. His final day in the job will be 8 August.

The Labor party had questioned whether Lloyd, a longtime member and former director of the Institute of Public Affairs before his appointment by the Abbott government in 2014, could be independent in his role as head of the agency charged with ensuring the public service works properly.

The IPA is a longstanding critic of the public service and has called for thousands of jobs to be cut.

As one of Australia’s most senior public servants, Lloyd came under scrutiny over his contact with the IPA, including an email in which he attached the public service enterprise agreements, which he described as “generous” .

That email was the subject of estimates hearings in October. Lloyd later wrote to the head of the IPA, John Roskam, about that hearing, which he referred to as “more publicity for the IPA including page 1 of the Canberra Times thanks to ALP questioning”.

Labor senator Penny Wong accused Lloyd of acting in a biased manner.

“I think you are unfit to hold this office because you are partisan,” she told him during last month’s hearing.

“I reject that,” Lloyd responded.

Lloyd spent almost two hours of last month’s hearing refusing to answer whether he was under investigation for his contact with the IPA, at one stage attempting to see if he could claim public interest immunity over the queries.

He later took the question on notice and said he was not the subject of any current inquiries.

The department of the prime minister and cabinet had rejected freedom-of-information requests asking for emails between Lloyd and the IPA, on the grounds that releasing the emails “could reasonably be expected to prejudice the conduct of an investigation of a breach, or possible breach, of the law”.

The ABC reported the prime minister’s department referred allegations Lloyd had breached the public service code of conduct to the merit protection commissioner for consideration.

A delay in the appointment of a permanent merit protection commissioner reportedly delayed a decision over whether an investigation was necessary.

SOURCE 




   

Petrol station chain condemned after banning reusable coffee cups over food safety concerns

ADELAIDE petrol station chain On the Run has come under fire on World Environment Day for banning environmentally friendly reusable coffee cups due to the “food safety risk”.

In an internal memo, On the Run told staff that if a customer brought a reusable cup they should “politely explain that we are required to use our disposable cups and disposable packaging for food safety reasons”.

“We cannot control contaminants (bacteria, mould, viruses, foreign objects, etc.) which might be present,” the memo said. “Foreign containers present a high risk of cross-contamination when they come into contact with food preparation areas and equipment.”

Environmental campaigner Jon Dee from the DoSomething Foundation said the Adelaide service station, which has more than 100 locations, was the first chain in the country to ban environmentally friendly coffee cups.

“Australians use an estimated 1.2 billion disposable coffee cups every year,” he said. “Most of those end up as litter or landfill. Reducing that problem is the key reason why On the Run should reverse their ban on refillable cups.”

He said the move was “surprising” as many service stations and cafes were moving away from disposable coffee cups. “They’re going strongly against the tide of what the rest of the industry is doing,” he said.

Many cafes now offer discounts of up to 50 cents to customers who bring their own cup, and Mr Dee said one coffee chain had reduced its use of disposable cups by 46 per cent as a result.

“SA Health has confirmed that it has no policy or regulation that impacts on reusable cups,” he said. “Plus there are no health authorities anywhere in Australia that have a policy or regulation that tells companies not to use reusable cups. OTR’s claim that they are doing this for food safety reasons does not stack up.”

Mr Dee said what made the decision “even more bizarre” was that OTR had been selling reusable cups until recently. “The question has to be asked whether the people who bought those refillable cups will be getting a refund from OTR,” he said.

“South Australia is the state that’s known for doing the right thing by the environment. With this ban, OTR are not just doing the wrong thing by the environment. They’re doing the wrong thing by South Australia as well.”

A spokesman for OTR said the company had been researched reusable cups “for many years”. “We’ve had entire projects searching for the best reusable coffee flasks, and have sold them in store,” he said. “As we — along with many of our customers — have become aware of the problem of disposable coffee cups on the environment.

“We care about this problem, so it was not easy to decide that our food-grade (but disposable) coffee cups were the only ones we feel sure about serving our coffee and tea in.

“We have had many incidents of customers bringing in dirty, unhygienic, contaminated cups, more recently we had an incident where a customer brought a cup in that was contaminated with a heavy metal.

“We realised that there are other more common potential health risks in us serving coffee into cups that we can’t guarantee are clean and ready to use.

“Some people are particularly sensitive to this kind of risk, and they are our customers too. It is difficult for us to accommodate washing cups. There are bound to be solutions to this, but for now we have decided to serve coffee in our cups only.

“It’s heartening that so many people feel strongly about this. We will continue investigating better solutions to a sustainable, high-quality offer.”

SOURCE 






If all plastic were banned from supermarket offerings, food waste would skyrocket

IT SOUNDS great in theory, but getting rid of plastic bags comes with a “trade-off” — and Woolworths’ boss says he didn’t realise “what a headache” it would be

SHOPPERS must be willing to sacrifice convenience for the environment in giving up harmful single-use plastic items such as plastic bags, but they should also be careful not to “demonise” plastic.

That was the message delivered by industry leaders and experts during sustainability event at the Woolworths Bella Vista headquarters on Monday, which came as the supermarket giant announced it would phase out the sale of plastic straws by the end of the year.

Woolworths group chief executive Brad Banducci said the four main issues customers cared about were food waste, reducing plastic, a sustainable supply chain and energy efficiency.

“Very important for us is the journey of taking plastic out of fruit and veg,” he said. “We know our customers don’t like it; we do however know that there’s a complex trade-off between keeping the product fresh and [reducing] plastic.

“If we end up throwing things away because we’ve taken plastic out, that is a very false economy given only 10 per cent of the energy to grow a fruit and veg product on average is plastic.

“It’s quite a complex balance but we are working on it, and we have taken plastic out of a number of products already. We’re working through it product by product.”

With supermarkets around the country preparing to phase out single-use plastic bags later this month, Mr Banducci said he didn’t know if he “would have been quite as brave” in making the decision last July had he known “what a headache” it was to take 3.4 billion plastic bags out of the business.

“One of the things that actually upset me a little bit at the time was there was sort of an innuendo that we will profiteer, because we will be charging for a 15c or 99c bag,” he said.

“Actually [with] the incremental amount of time in store to actually service the customer, certainly it is not a profit driver and we never did it as a profit driver. We did it to do the right thing.”

Harris Farm Markets CEO Angus Harris said now that most states and major retailers had banned plastic bags, it was time for the federal government to follow up with legislation.

“We went to paper bags, our consumers all really got behind it — sorry, most of our consumers got behind it,” he said.

“A lot of people now take boxes rather than bags. We’ve gone from using two-and-a-half plastic bags per customer to half a paper bag per customer.

“I still think paper bags is a bad idea. It’s one of those things you just don’t need. You can bring your own recycled bags. Consumers, they’re funny — they like convenience and we’re trying to tell them you’ve got to do something that’s less convenient.”

Peter Skelton from not-for-profit sustainability organisation Wrap UK said there was a complex dynamic between food waste and packaging.

In the UK, 50 per cent more food waste is thrown away than packaging, but 67 per cent of packaging is recycled or recovered, compared with less than 20 per cent of food waste.

“The environmental impact of food waste is far, far higher than the average carbon impact of a tonne of packaging,” Mr Skelton said.

“We need to get the balance right. We need less plastic. We need to make sure the plastic doesn’t go into the oceans, but actually what we mustn’t do is cause more food waste by the unintended consequences of maybe a knee-jerk reaction on plastic.”

Mr Skelton said the UK Plastics Pact, a pledge last month by businesses to ban single-use plastics, was “about saying, we need to tackle plastic but in a way that we don’t demonise it”.

“We need to prevent those unnecessary single-use items such as straws,” he said. “What are those items we actually don’t need? Let’s get rid of them, let’s find those alternatives.

“We want a world where plastic is valued, but doesn’t pollute the environment. Valued from a consumer’s point of view so they see why we use plastics, valued from an economic point of view so they’re seen as a resource, not just as a waste.”

Mr Skelton said for every two tonnes of food consumed, another tonne of food was wasted. In the UK, 53 per cent of all food waste occurs in households, compared with 19 per cent in the supply chain and 17 per cent in-store.

“This is actually more complex than the packaging challenge because the packaging issue is less about the consumer,” he said. “It’s down to millions and millions of small actions — planning your shopping trip, knowing how to store food properly.”

To that end, Woolworths has done a bit of in-house recycling of its own, repurposing Jamie Oliver — whose Created with Jamie range has shown signs of struggling — to be its food waste ambassador, offering tips on cooking up leftovers.

“We’re working a lot with our marketing team on food savers, teaching customers how to use leftovers,” Mr Banducci said. “In fact, you’ll see the repositioning we’ve done with Jamie Oliver on the topic of leftovers and it really does resonate with our customers.”

Meanwhile, billionaire Anthony Pratt, executive chairman of cardboard box giant Visy, said China’s so-called “Green Sword” ban on foreign waste could actually benefit Australia in the long run.

“We recently made a $2 billion pledge to invest in recycling infrastructure in Australia,” he said. “The China situation, whilst it’s very surprising and sudden, the short-term pain is probably a blessing in disguise. It will force people to use more of the recycled materials here. It’s not really recycling until you turn it back into something.”

Mr Pratt also called for landfill fees to increase. “The NSW government receives $700 million a year from landfill fees and they only spend about $200 million of it back into recycling infrastructure,” he said.

SOURCE 






NSW hate speech laws to be toughened to stop violent threats online or in the street

Threats or advocacy of violence are normally acknowledged as outside free speech protections

After years of widespread community campaigning, the New South Wales Government will move to strengthen the state's "ineffective" hate speech laws.

Under the proposed legislation introduced to Parliament today, individuals who incite violence against a community or person based on their race could face up to three years in prison and an $11,000 fine.

The bill, if passed, will create a new offence in the Crimes Act of "publicly threatening or inciting violence" on the grounds of race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex or HIV/AIDS status.

Attorney-General Mark Speakman said current provisions in the Anti-Discrimination Act have been ineffective in prosecuting people accused of encouraging violence and have not led to a successful prosecution in 30 years.  "We are very serious with these laws and we will throw the book at anyone who breaches them," he said.

Mr Speakman said there had been a reluctance to use the existing laws because of "procedural hurdles" and the "convoluted wording" of the legislation.

He said the new laws would apply to speech on social media and "anything that is available to the public whether it is transmitted electronically or physically in the street".

"Free speech does not include the right to incite or threaten violence based on peoples' characteristics," he said.

"This has nothing to do with saying things that are controversial, with robust debate, with intense criticism of other groups, this is about stopping violence.

The legislation will abolish offences in the Anti-Discrimination Act that currently carry a maximum sentence of six months in jail.
'It makes us all a whole lot safer'

Opposition Leader Luke Foley, who introduced a similar bill to Parliament earlier this year, welcomed the announcement.  "For too long some in the Liberal Party have confused freedom of speech with race hate," he said.

"Tough new laws will send a signal to the likes to the extremist fringe that their brand of racism is no longer tolerated under the law."

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