Adam Goodes documentary sparks breastbeating about race in Australia

Unmentioned below is that it is common for footballers to be booed by supporters of the opposing team.  It has  been handed down from on high that such booing is "racist". But lots of white footballers have been heavily booed.  For one or two people race may have had something to do with it but the great majority of it was not racist.  Australia has in general remarkable racial harmony.  We even put up with Middle-Eastern Muslims.

Goodes was a crybaby.  And that REALLY wound up the spectators.  Showing weakness just invites further attack.  His onfield antics were rightly criticized as foolish.

What the wise-heads are ignoring is that Goodes was aggressive, confrontational and a whiner.  He has done a lot to make himself unpopular. He once did some sort of Aboriginal war dance on the football field, complete with an imaginary spear thrown in the direction of the opposing fans --  Not exactly the "mature discussion about the state of race relations in this country" that his Leftist supporters called for.

It got to the point that he just had to run onto the field to get booed.  He made himself an oppositional figure.

Adam Goodes’ documentary in which he addressed routine bullying and racism he faced in Australia while playing in the AFL sparked an outpouring of emotion and support for the former Sydney Swans star.

The Final Quarter aired on Channel 10 on Thursday night and showed the booing and abuse Goodes faced over the last three seasons of his career, eventually driving him into an early retirement.

After hosting a special late-night edition of The Project, Waleed Aly penned an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald where he outlined the justification behind people’s booing of Goodes.

“Critics of Goodes loved to point out that there were more than 70 other Indigenous players in the AFL who weren’t getting booed at the time,” Aly wrote.

“That sort of thing is falsely offered as a defence against the charge of racism because it pretends racism can exist only if the prejudice in question applies to every single member of a race; that if something is not exclusively about skin colour, then race is not a factor at all. But that’s almost never how it works.

“More often, racism lives in the double standards that mean someone gets attacked in a way a white person never would, even if they were to behave in the same way.

“Racism doesn’t require a belief that there are no “good” blacks. In fact, it frequently relies on the “good”, precisely because it wants to identify the “bad” ones.”

After leading the discussion, he capped the night off by thanking those involved in making the film and asked a key question about where we go from here as a nation.

“It seems that what began as personal torment for Adam quickly became a national controversy,” he said.

“The question now really is whether it can become a productive national conversation. And the answer to that question rests with each of us.”

As part of the debate, he explained why there were no indigenous voices in the media representatives appearing on The Project — who discussed how the press handled the issue at the time.

“I deliberately didn’t have an indigenous voice, because I felt that we needed to reflect the media as it was, and that doesn’t include indigenous voices,” he said.

Journalist for The Australian Chip Le Grand told the show that one of the most “disturbing” aspects of the documentary is that it highlights how “a lot of us don’t seem to even know racism when we see it”.

He also said the AFL’s failure to step in and help Goodes was “such a failure of leadership”.

“They just needed someone to clearly stand up, and it was Gill McLachlan’s time, in that instance, to just say: ‘Look, yes, it is complicated but, clearly, race is a part of this, it’s a big part of this, it’s ugly and it has to stop’,” he said.

On Thursday morning on Studio 10, director and award-winning filmmaker, Ian Darling said he wanted “everyone to look at (the documentary) with open eyes and an open heart.”

“Just be prepared to think that maybe we didn’t get it right,” he said. “Literally, every single person I’ve shown it to — from Gill McLachlan at the AFL through to schoolkids — have said ‘Wow, I didn’t understand the extent of the booing’ or ‘I didn’t understand the enormity of the media conversation.’”

SOURCE  





Peter Dutton dismisses Jacinda Ardern's demands for Australia to stop deporting criminal New Zealanders

Most of the criminals concerned are Maori.  Nobody wants them

Jacinda Ardern has stepped up her criticism of Australia's policy to deport New Zealand criminals as "wrong" and "unjust", saying she will continue to push for change.

The New Zealand Prime Minister met with her Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, in Melbourne on Friday morning, in their first face-to-face talks since the Coalition won the May election.

Top of the agenda for Ms Ardern was the ongoing concern about Australia deporting New Zealanders convicted of criminal offences, some of whom had spent most of their lives in Australia.

"If something's wrong and if something is not fair and is unjust, you don't let it go," she told NZ media after the meeting with Mr Morrison.

"I totally accept that it is within Australia's rights to deport those who engage in criminal activity in Australia. But there are some examples that will not make any sense to any fair-minded person."

Successive New Zealand governments have raised concern with the policy, after more than 1,500 Kiwi criminals were deported since the rules were tightened in 2014.

Ms Ardern repeated her warning that the issue was having a "corrosive" impact on the relationship between the two countries.

"I just think we can't take our friendship for granted, we can't take our closeness for granted. And if there is something that is causing concern for one side of a friendship, it should be raised. "I just ultimately think New Zealanders look at this policy and just think that's not … fair dinkum."

Speaking ahead of the meeting between Ms Ardern and Mr Morrison, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton insisted the policy would not change.

"We need to stand up for Australians," Mr Dutton told Channel Nine. "And the New Zealand Prime Minister is rightly doing that for her people.

"But where we've got Australian citizens who are falling victim in certain circumstances where people are sexually offending against children, for example, we've had a big push to try to deport those paedophiles."

Ms Ardern and Mr Morrison also discussed global trade and the development of the Pacific, along with ways to combat extremist material being shared on social media in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.

Another policy area where the Australian Government is unlikely to shift is New Zealand's ongoing offer to resettle refugees housed in offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru.

Canberra has repeatedly knocked back the offer, suggesting it could provide asylum seekers with a "back door" into Australia, given the immigration regime between the two nations.

Ms Ardern said New Zealand's offer to resettle refugees housed in offshore detention was not raised in her discussion with Mr Morrison. "The offer has been made, it's acknowledged, it's known," she said. "And I don't think for a moment there's any question that Australia knows that offer still stands."

However, there is a sense among some in the Government the offer may be accepted once the existing resettlement deal with the United States is exhausted.

That agreement, made by Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama, angered Donald Trump. But US authorities have accepted some refugees under the arrangement.

SOURCE  






'Dark satanic mills': Tony Abbott continues his crusade against wind turbines

The former prime minister Tony Abbott has continued his crusade against wind turbines, labelling them the “dark satanic mills of the modern era”.

Abbott, who was dumped at the 18 May election as the member for Warringah, had previously questioned the health impacts of wind turbines, despite there being no “consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects”. He has also previously dismissed them as “ugly”, “noisy” and “visually awful”.

Abbott lost his Sydney seat to the independent MP Zali Steggall, who campaigned on taking action on climate change.

Asked by the Sydney radio 2GB host Alan Jones on Friday morning whether his successor had been “sticking them [wind turbines] up there” in his former electorate, Abbott replied there had been “a lot of wind, but not too much action”.

“And thank God,” he told Jones. “Because the last thing we want is what I regard as the dark satanic mills of the modern era spoiling our landscape.”

“Absolutely,” Jones said. “Absolutely.”

Abbott said he was comforted by the energy minister Angus Taylor’s pledge to keep Australia’s coal-fired power stations open.

“The great thing about Angus Taylor, Alan, is Angus wants to try and keep our existing coal-fired power stations like Liddell open, because we’ve got more and more wind and solar flooding into the system, and that is great when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, but it doesn’t always blow and it doesn’t always shine, but we still have to be able to flick the switch and have the lights come on,” Abbott said.

“That’s why keeping existing coal-fired power in the system is the vital first step in trying to avoid the disaster that will otherwise befall us, the de-industrialise disaster that will otherwise befall us.

“This is why the re-election of the Morrison government has been in some respects, I think we have dodged a bullet.”

Batteries were not mentioned as part of the conversation, but Jones did remark on “irrelevant” people interjecting into national debates who “exercised a lot of power” in regards to Steggall and the former Greens leader Bob Brown.

Abbott did not go into detail about his plans post-parliament in Friday’s interview. As a former prime minister, he automatically receives an annual pension of $296,000, $90,000 more than the backbencher salary he earned in his final years in parliament.

Steggall, who won the seat Abbott held for 25 years, has not proposed wind turbines for the Warringah electorate, but was named in some spoof petitions calling for wind farms along Manly beach.

Abbott declared in 2015 he wished the Howard government, of which he was a member, had never implemented the Renewable Energy Target. He then signed Australia up to the Paris agreement while prime minister but later campaigned for Australia’s withdrawal when he was returned to the backbench following a leadership coup.

SOURCE  





   
Attendance matters when it comes to student achievement

A new report from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) reinforces the strong correlation between school attendance and student achievement, and highlights the importance of forming good attendance habits early.

The release of the Attendance Matters Spotlight report is also a reminder of how crucial it is to ensure students feel welcome, safe and supported at school, and encouraged to attend.

The evidence summary indicates that the overall school attendance picture in Australia is good, with year 1-10 students attending, on average, 92% of available school days in Australia – a rate comparable to other countries with high performing education systems.

Nevertheless, there remain areas of concern including that 25% of Australian school students attend less than 90% of school days, and that school attendance decreases as remoteness increases.  

The report also identifies that there remains a notable difference in attendance rates between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and non-Indigenous students. In 2018, the overall national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander attendance rate was 82.3% compared to 92.5% for non-Indigenous students. This shows that there is still much more work to do to lift attendance rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Highlighting that ‘every day counts’ when it comes to attendance, the report reinforces the negative correlation between absence from school and achievement, which is cumulative and can affect academic outcomes in future years of schooling.

Given the importance of early learning experiences on academic and social achievement, the report identifies school attendance should be prioritised in the formative years, and that strategies for addressing chronic absenteeism must take a holistic approach.

The report also highlights the important role families, schools, policy makers and the community have to play in the complex task of addressing student absenteeism and enabling students to reach their potential in the classroom.

AITSL CEO Mark Grant said while the issues contributing to absenteeism are complex and challenging, it is important that systems, sectors and jurisdictions across Australia continue working together to ensure schools are welcoming places that students want to attend.

“I’m proud to release this report to provide a summary of evidence the teaching profession and decision makers across the education sector can use to reflect on their approach to the critical issue of ensuring Australian school students attend and truly engage with their learning,” Mr Grant said.

“The findings reinforce that there remain particular challenges to address when it comes to attendance and that understanding the relationship between attendance and achievement can help teachers, school leaders, parents, and school communities promote positive attendance habits and tailor early and individualised interventions, to address problematic absenteeism and lift outcomes for students.

“Policies and responses at the school level will be most effective if they simultaneously target factors both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the school gates, showing that we all have a part to play when it comes to school attendance.

“While there are many complex issues at play when it comes to school attendance, we shouldn’t shy away from the challenges. Clearly it is crucially important to involve families and communities in purposeful, authentic and ethical ways to provide students with every opportunity to reach their potential.”

Medianet Press Release: aapmedianet@aapmedianet.com.au

 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