The LDP: Trumpism in Australia

John Quiggin

Leftist economist Quiggin is talking up an irritable and semi-hairless Swedish aristocrat with a tiny following as equivalent to Trump. It's part of his usual Leftist selective attention to reality. 

The  strange thinking emerges in Quiggin's very first sentence below.  He accuses Lion-helmet of attacks on "women".  I would like to know when Leyonhjelm did that.  As far as I can find he attacked just one particular lachrymose and self-righteous woman with an informal reputation for sexual enthusiasm, not "women" generally. 

Quiggin is really losing his grip if he can't spot a difference there.  62 is a rather young age for dementia to strike but you never know

The reaction to Senator David Leyonhjelm’s recent attacks on women have mostly focused on Leyonhjelm personally. If he were a private citizen or an independent member of Parliament, that would make sense, and would lead to the conclusion that best thing to do is to ignore him.

In fact, however, Leyonhjelm is the most senior elected representative of the Liberal Democratic Party, a national political party. His statements on the matter give his position as Parliamentary leader of the party and appear in the media section of the LDP website. They may be taken as official statements of the LDP position.

Leyonhjelm’s statements are entirely consistent with the general position of the LDP which may be summarized as “well off white men should be able to say and do whatever they like with no adverse consequences”. That’s pretty much the essence of Trumpism.

It’s also, in operational terms, the position of most of those who describe themselves as “libertarian” or “classical liberal”. That’s why so many self-described US libertarians voted for Trump in both the Republican primaries and the general election. The handful of true believers dismayed by this have mostly decamped to become “liberaltarians” organized around the Niskanen Institute.

The LDP is a minor party, but not a negligible one, especially when taken together with One Nation. Although there are differences between the two, they mainly come down to style. The LDP base is urban and well-off, while One Nation’s core supporters are rural/regional voters with limited education and middle or low incomes. However, the parties are united by their hatreds, in for environmentalists, feminists, and lefties, all categories embodied by Senator Hanson-Young. Unsurprisingly, Hanson has backed Leyonhjelm. The same enemy-driven politics characterizes a a large section of the LNP and their supporting commentariat.

In these circumstances, the suggestion that we should ignore Leyonhjelm and the LDP makes no more sense than the suggestion that we should ignore Trump. With the collapse of neoliberalism, Trumpism in its various forms is now the most important ideology opponent of the left. It’s necessary to face up to the fact that, despite its racism, misogyny and general ugliness, this is a movement with mass support in Australia and elsewhere. Pointing up its ugliest manifestations, such as the Liberal Democratic Party is a necessary part of the struggle against it.

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Sonia Kruger has failed to have racial vilification complaint against her dismissed

She told the truth about Islam!



SONIA Kruger will face a hearing next month over controversial remarks she made about Muslims two years ago.

The Today Extra and The Voice host failed to have a racial vilification complaint against her dismissed, after her 2016 suggestion that Muslim immigration should be temporarily halted sparked a firestorm of controversy.

The Civil and Administrative Tribunal refused an application by the Nine Network to have the complaint dismissed without a hearing.

In July 2016, Kruger endorsed a newspaper article by News Corp Australia columnist Andrew Bolt during a segment of the Today Show.

“I mean, personally, I think Andrew Bolt has a point here, that there is a correlation between the number of people who, you know, are Muslim in a country and the number of terrorist attacks,” she said on the show.

“Now I have a lot of very good friends who are Muslim, who are peace-loving who are beautiful people, but there are fanatics.

“Personally I would like to see it stopped now for Australia. Because I want to feel safe, as all of our citizens do, when they go out to celebrate Australia Day.”

In a subsequent appearance on the talk show, Kruger, 52, brought up an image of a baby covered in a plastic sheet after the July 14 terror attack in Nice, France, which she said, “rocked me to the very core”.

“I acknowledge that my views yesterday may have been extreme ... it is a hugely complex and sensitive issue,” she said.

Her comments ignited a storm of outrage on social media, and prompted an official complaint on July 18 by Australian Muslim Sam Ekermawi, from Moorebank in Sydney’s southwest, who said the Nine Network had vilified “ethnic Muslim Australians”.

“Kruger did target Ethnic-Muslims as a group; she believes that Muslim Australians are constructed as terrorist,” Mr Ekermawi wrote in an email to the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW in March last year.

He said her comments highlighted an “uncomfortable reality” for ethnic Australian Muslims, adding that “Islamophobia is a world wide phenomena”.

Under the Anti-Discrimination Act it is unlawful for a person, by a public act, to incite hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule of a person or people on the ground of race.

The matter is listed for a directions hearing on June 19.

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All teachers  must learn maths?

Not everyone is good at it so are they to be barred from teaching (say) English>

The federal government could use funding agreements with Australian universities to force them to make science and maths a priority in teaching degrees.

In a speech delivered in Sydney on Monday, education minister Simon Birmingham signalled that the government was willing to use university funding as a way of addressing falling participation rates in high school maths and science.

The government says that in 2013 one in five year 7 to 10 general science teachers had not completed a year of university study in that area, a figure Birmingham said was “unacceptable”.
Private schools on funding 'hitlist' actually increase their funding

On Monday he said states and territories should “be willing to make clear to universities where their employment priorities lie” and create incentives for more students to consider specialising in maths and science subjects.

“Between better workforce planning and smarter use of technology every high school should have access to specialist teachers to teach specialist science and maths subjects,” he said.

“And we should strive to achieve this within the next five to ten years.”

While Birmingham conceded the federal government cannot force states to hire teachers with maths or science backgrounds, he indicated he could “influence” the teaching students entering university by tying it to university enrolment funding.

“If need be, federal funding powers over university places could be used to help the states to influence enrolments to secure the science teachers we need for the future,” he said.

It comes after a report from Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel which noted a long-term decline in year 12 students enrolling in science and challenging maths subjects.

The report, released in April, found the number of students choosing science had dropped from 55% in 2002 to 51% in 2013. And while maths participation had remained steady, Finkel’s report found a trend towards students choosing easier subjects.

The Finkel report argued that not enough universities required mathematics subjects for degrees – saying it is only a prerequisite for five of 37 universities offering a bachelor of science, four of 31 for a bachelor of commerce and one of 34 for an engineering degree.

He also called for a complete overhaul of the Advanced Tertiary Admission Rank system, or Atar, saying it encouraged students to game the system by aiming for higher scores by doing less demanding subjects.

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Conservative candidate in by-election fails to bow down before global warming

The Liberal National party candidate for Longman, Trevor Ruthenberg, has refused to clarify whether he believes climate change is happening, after telling a group of environmentalists he had a different “understanding of the science” when confronted about the link between burning coal and global warming.

Ruthenberg, a former Queensland state MP, is contesting the marginal electorate on Brisbane’s northern fringe for the LNP at the upcoming byelection.

In a video recorded on Saturday and seen by Guardian Australia, Ruthenberg is shown talking to members of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who were campaigning in Longman before the 26 July super Saturday byelection.

On the same day, his Queensland-based party’s conference supported motions including removing subsidies for renewables, committing to build a new coal-fired power station in the north and bankrolling a rail link to the Galilee basin.
Mark Latham voices robocall for One Nation urging voters to punish Shorten
Read more

In the video, Ruthenberg is challenged by AYCC campaigners who say: “You can’t mine and burn coal responsibly.”

Ruthenberg responds: “There you and I will fundamentally disagree.”

One campaigner says science shows that coal is a major contributor to climate change and is fuelling global warming.

“I’m saying that your understanding of science, and wherever you’re getting science, and my understanding of science, are not the same science,” Ruthenberg says.

He is then asked by another campaigner: “I just want to clarify, do you mean that you do not believe in climate change?”

“No, not at all,” Ruthenberg says.

The campaigner says: “But 99% of scientists agree that climate change is happening.”

“Yeah, OK,” the candidate responds.

Ruthenberg has been contacted and asked to clarify his comments, including whether he believes that climate change is human-made. He was also offered the opportunity to explain the alternative understanding of the science he was referring to.

Briana Collins from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition said the comments were “outrageous” especially given Longman includes Bribie Island, where the local council says 63% of homes are at risk to sea level rises.

“Young people are tired of politicians who refuse to protect our future from dangerous global warming,” she says. “If Trevor Ruthenberg wants to represent the people of Longman, he cannot support climate-wrecking coalmines and giving public money to Adani’s mine.”

Longman is notionally a Labor electorate with a margin of 0.8%. Susan Lamb won the seat for Labor in 2016 and is contesting the byelection, after she resigned in May under a dual citizenship cloud.

The Moreton Bay region has pockets of strong One Nation support.

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Lauren Southern’s Australian visa approved after ‘unusually prolonged process’

A little birdie tells me that the approval came through after David Leyonhjelm had a word with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton

Lauren Southern’s Australian speaking tour will go ahead after her visa was approved following an “unusually prolonged application process”.

It comes after the 23-year-old Canadian’s application for a temporary Electronic Travel Authority was denied, leading to accusations the Australian government was attempting to prevent her from entering the country.

Ms Southern is scheduled to appear in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland alongside commentator Stefan Molyneux in a series of events hosted by Axiomatic Media later this month.

“Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were advised in writing this morning by their Australian immigration lawyers and migration agents that their applications for working visas subclass 408 have been formally approved,” Axiomatic Media founder Luke Izaak said in a statement on Tuesday.

“This has followed an unusually prolonged application process, due to which, as the dates of travel rapidly approached, the lawyers advised it would be advisable to apply to travel on an Electronic Travel Authority.

“Although many armchair experts on social media have expressed their opinion that Lauren and Stefan somehow did the wrong thing by following expert legal advice, it remains true that most reasonable people in the same situation would follow legal advice,” Mr Izaak said.

“The suggestions that they did not, from the very beginning, apply for the correct visas is categorically false and has been emphatically silenced by this morning’s final approval of the correct 408 visas, originally applied for months ago.

“On behalf of Lauren and Stefan, Axiomatic Events would like to publicly thank all the Australians who contacted their local members of parliament to urge the government to ensure no politics be allowed to play a part in deciding their applications, despite the petitions and political pressure organised to deny them.

“We additionally thank the Australian media for raising the issue of freedom of speech. We also appreciate the government processing the applications on their merits instead of personal politics, if belatedly.”

Ms Southern earlier told The Daily Telegraph she believed the “unprecedented” number of hurdles being put in her way were due to her criticism of radical Islam.

“There are so many people that are offended by debate and free speech that sometimes governments cower, it’s just way easier to play into the hands of people who are totalitarian,” she said.

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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