Realistic Aboriginal woman tours Australia to tell 'militant' city activists their anti-racism campaigns 'are doing more harm than good' to remote Aboriginal communities

She makes it clear that the luvvies are interested only in proclaiming their own big hearts.  They are not even interested in what is good for Aborigines  -- and they hate her for pointing that out

An Indigenous advocate is hoping to educate activists over their anti-racism campaigns as she believes they are hurting Aboriginal communities.

Jacinta Nampiginpa Price, a Warlpiri woman and conservative politician, said well-meaning city activists use Australia's history to make non-Indigenous people feel bad and were doing more harm than good.

'They are campaigning so hard and they're militant,' she told Daily Mail Australia on Friday.

'They're creating the divide between the most disadvantaged to connect to others in the country who could provide the advice and support they need to create opportunities.

'They (the activists) stop that happening. 'They believe indigenous people are babies and have to be compensated for their losses.

'They push for this dependency to continue instead of allowing Aboriginal people to stand on their own two feet and be responsible for our own opportunities and our own future. 'They get in the way of any of that.

'They say: ''There, there - you've been wrongly done by, someone else should be fixing things for you''. 'That's not empowerment.'

Ms Price said she was embarking on an 11-city speaking tour to create more understanding for city people of the cultural differences they have with remote Aboriginal communities, and what their needs really are, in order to bridge the gap.

She said symbolic issues are not helping remote indigenous communities move forward. 'Something always comes up,' she said.  'It's change the date (of Australia Day), or change the anthem words, or change the anthem entirely - and now it's constitutional recognition and The Voice.'

'A lot of these things are incomplete or there's a bit of a concept but no direction to how to achieve practical outcomes.'

Ms Price's Mind The Gap tour begins in late August and has adopted the slogans 'No Political Correctness' and 'No Identity Politics'. She will tour Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Adelaide as well as regional urban centres such as Newcastle, Toowoomba, Bendigo,  Mildura and Albury-Wodonga.

Ms Price will also speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney on Friday afternoon.

The indigenous campaigner wants practical changes to help remote indigenous communities thrive by themselves such as education geared to give children the tools to integrate into mainstream Australian society. 'People need jobs and less dependence on welfare,' she said.

'In remote communities where children are behind already - their health is not fantastic, their hearing is not great - the push to maintaining and teaching culture means the kids in the bush aren't getting the education they need to do well in life

Ms Price said Aboriginal people want the tools to thrive in the modern world, and while urban activists might feel warm and fuzzy by pushing the focus to keeping traditional culture strong, they were denying opportunities to remote indigenous children.

'My mother's generation ... had an emphasis on learning English and they learnt their own language at home. There was no bilingual education. My mother speaks her language fluently and English fluently.'

She also said land reforms were crucial. The Aboriginal Land Rights Act ensures that remote community land is communally owned in perpetuity with a land council having the final say over what happens.

'The Land Rights Act has to be reviewed,' she said. 'Traditional owners (TOs) don't feel at all represented by the land councils ... The ownership should go to the TOs themselves so they can have economic development on their own country. 'Imagine you live, owning a house and you can't fix it till you get permission from the land council.

Ms Price also had stern words for those who think 'racist laws' are the reason for a disproportionate number of Aboriginal men in jails.

'Statistically, about 70 percent of Aboriginal men  incarcerated are incarcerated for violence against their loved ones. If we take responsibility for domestic violence, we'll see a dramatic reduction in incarceration and less dysfunction in homes,' she said.

'Activists push the blame elsewhere in nearly every situation and expect someone else to solve issues.'

'In Indigenous law, if you continue to break traditional law they'd be punished probably in a very violent way.

'We talk of the high incarceration rate but almost never talk of why they are incarcerated in such high numbers.

'You've got to look at the whole picture - it's not a quick fix like a change in the law to be more lenient as that is not going to fix the crime situation and will not help the rights of the victims.'

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‘Can’t stand Islam’: Why Labor wants to block Raheem Kassam’s visa

He can be a bit crude but his words about Islam are more realistic than what we mostly hear.  That is the problem for Leftists

The Raheem Kassam visa dispute has developed into a free speech versus hate speech debate on the international stage.

A former Muslim who says he “can’t stand Islam” is due to take to the stage to speak at a conservative conference in Sydney next weekend, but the controversial views he wishes to talk about have already sent shockwaves through Australia.

Our politicians have torn shreds off each other in and out of parliament this week after Shadow Home Affairs Minister Kristine Keneally demanded a block on Raheem Kassam’s visa.

Some of the 33-year-old British political activist’s questionable opinions have also drawn criticism from both sides of the house, with finance minister Mathias Cormann blasting an infamous barb at Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon as “disgraceful, highly objectionable and completely outrageous”.

In that particular attack, Mr Kassam suggested on Twitter that Ms Sturgeon’s “mouth and legs should be taped shut so she can’t reproduce” — shortly after she had a miscarriage.

On other occasions, he’s called the Koran “fundamentally evil”, blasted Islam as a “fascistic and totalitarian ideology” and asked his followers whether a prominent UK Labour politician was in the “special needs class” in school.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese piled more criticism on the British firebrand today, labelling his comments “misogynist and disgusting” and urging the immigration minister to cancel his visa.

The debate even caught the eye of Donald Trump’s son, who accused the ALP earlier this week of trying to silence conservative views. “The insanity needs to stop!”, he tweeted.

Mr Kassam was formerly a Muslim and his parents are Tanzanian immigrants.

However, he became inspired by the late socialist writer Christopher Hitchens’ rejection of religious faith and is now an atheist.

He has also written books with alarming titles such as No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is Coming to a Neighbourhood Near You, which detail why he is so strongly against Muslim immigration.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton — who also appeared on Today — said he fears shutting down controversial views could lead Australia down a slippery path. “I worry in our country, as we are seeing in other democracies at the moment, that views are shouted down either because they are politically incorrect or people don’t agree with them,” Mr Dutton said. “I think allow people in a democracy like ours to have their say, to have a civil debate then make up your own mind.”

Fellow senior Liberal Mathias Cormann agreed, telling Sky News on Friday that Australia didn’t want a reputation as a ban-happy nation. “I was absolutely critical of what (Mr Kassam) was quoted as saying, and I indeed find some of his comments objectionable and unacceptable,” Senator Cormann said. “But I don’t think, as a country committed to freedom of speech, that we want to put ourselves in a position where we ban everyone and anyone on the basis of objectionable and offensive speech.”

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Overcoming the odds in high school

Parents often focus more on the choice of a secondary school, but it turns out primary school is probably more important for a child’s academic success. Many parents send their child to the local primary school but then invest significantly more time and money in choosing a secondary school.

And Years 11 and 12 are often the time where parents are most hands-on in their child’s education, helping with subject selections, constantly updating ATAR calculations, and appealing assessment results to gain the moral victory of a few extra marks.

But ultimately, student achievement at this late stage depends largely on having mastered literacy and numeracy skills in primary school.

The well-established education phenomenon, the Matthew Effect — the tendency for differences in student achievement in early primary school to grow into more significant differences towards the end of secondary school, unless rectified — means that waiting for improvement in secondary school is often simply waiting to fail.

That’s why effective early literacy and numeracy teaching is so important to ensure students don’t fall behind. And it should be a priority for secondary schools to identify underachieving students when they enrol.

This is especially the case for students from disadvantaged social backgrounds. Our new research has found it is more challenging for secondary schools to help disadvantaged students succeed, compared to primary schools.

Using NAPLAN data and the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage, we identified only 3 Australian secondary schools that are both disadvantaged and high-achieving (no, before you ask, these schools do not receive more funding than other similarly disadvantaged schools). In contrast, 21 Australian primary schools are both disadvantaged and high-achieving.

There are evidence-based policies for improving outcomes for disadvantaged students in high school. For example, international education datasets indicate school discipline issues are especially prevalent among disadvantaged secondary schools in Australia. And direct instruction — an evidence-based teaching practice, where new content is explicitly taught in sequenced and structured lessons — is less common at disadvantaged secondary schools.

A policy focus on building positive school cultures and ensuring teachers are well-equipped to use effective direct instruction could significantly improve academic outcomes for disadvantaged students. And this wouldn’t necessarily require more taxpayer funding.

We all want to ensure that no student finishes school without essential knowledge and skills. But the solution isn’t to spend more money.

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Nuclear power to be examined in Australia for the first time in ten years

Australia could lift its ban on nuclear energy after the government’s Federal Energy Minister asked the Environment and Energy Committee to look into the use of nuclear power in Australia.

Nuclear is banned as a source of power and while Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor has confirmed Australia’s embargo on nuclear energy will remain, a parliamentary inquiry will revisit the issue and investigate “any future government’s consideration” into the topic.

According to the ABC, a 2006 report on nuclear power claimed Australia “could have up to 25 reactors providing over a third of the country’s electricity by 2050”.

“This will be the first inquiry into the use of nuclear power in Australia in more than a decade and is designed to consider the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power,” Mr Taylor said in a letter to Environment and Energy Committee and Queensland LNP member Ted O’Brien on Friday.

“I am confident that your committee — involving all sides of politics — is the best way to consider this issue in a sensible way.”

The ABC reports “several Coalition backbenchers” supported the idea of nuclear energy, including Barnaby Joyce who suggested residents living near reactors could be offered free power.

“Clearly there are very passionate views on either side of this debate,” Mr O’Brien said.

“There are new and emerging forms of nuclear energy technology that are very different from the old smokestack reactors people tend to picture when they think nuclear energy and it’s on these newer technologies that we’ll focus.”

“Our job will be to determine the circumstances under which future Coalition or Labor governments might consider nuclear energy generation.”

Last month Queensland Nationals MP Keith Pitt and his Senate colleague James McGrath were reportedly behind the push, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

“I am not saying that there is a nuclear reactor coming to a shopping centre near you but we have to be able to investigate all options,” Mr Pitt told the newspaper.

“All I am calling for is an inquiry as to whether it’s a feasible option to ensure we are up to date with the latest information.”

During the federal election campaign Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had no plans to reverse the ban on nuclear energy, after earlier saying he’d be open to it if the sector paid its own way.

The inquiry is due to be completed by the end of the year.

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After 23 years, a day of reckoning has arrived for Big Tech

British web expert Jamie Bartlett was a tech optimist. About a decade ago, that is. The fellow of London think tank Demos grew increasingly worried about what was happening under Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and the rest.

Finally he confessed to a mild panic about the industry and opened his most recent book with these words: "In the coming few years either tech will destroy democracy and the social order as we know it, or politics will stamp its authority over the digital world."

Big Tech has had 23 years to do exactly what Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg urged in his company's old motto: "Move fast and break things."

Because the tech firms haven't just had an unbounded Wild West opportunity to roam and raid unregulated territory. Twenty-three years ago, the US Congress passed a law that actually suspended the normal operation of law so that the tech industry could have unique advantages.
It was section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act that cast a magical protective spell to give the tech companies a special immunity – they're not responsible for what others put on their platforms. Other countries, afraid of seeming uncool and anti-innovation, generally followed America's lead.

So the tech firms moved fast and broke a lot of things and now the governments of the world have had enough. They're no longer quirky, fun, garage start-ups. They are among the biggest and most ruthless corporations on the planet. Google's parent, Alphabet, for instance, has a share market value three times that of entertainment behemoth Walt Disney, six times that of the biggest Australian company, BHP Billiton, and 140 times that of the New York Times Company.

Do they really need special legislative immunity from the consequences of their businesses any longer? Consequences like the propaganda and recruitment successes of the terrorist army Daesh, or Islamic State. Or the Russian government's subversion of US elections and democracy everywhere. Consequences like the exponential proliferation of child abuse images.

And the US Congress didn't actually grant them immunity from paying tax on their earnings – that's a little extra liberty the tech firms granted themselves. After 23 years, the reckoning has arrived. The Australian government is at the forefront. It started four years ago with the Office of the e-Safety Commissioner, a world first designed to protect kids from cyberbullying and other web-borne harms. Now it also removes revenge porn from the web. It's been a success, which is why other nations are studying it and the tech companies are lobbying to curb it.

Australia's e-Safety Commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant, started her tech involvement with Microsoft when the tech industry could do no wrong: "Fast forward two decades and the policy pendulum is definitely swinging the other way, with calls in the US for section 230 to be repealed and governments across the world seriously contemplating whether the internet industry should be more closely regulated," she told the National Press Club in Canberra last year.

Incidentally, if you do a Google search for more on America's section 230, you'll find a set of self-serving results. You'll find more objective information if you use a non-profit search engine, such as duckduckgo.com.

"I’m proud to say that I believe it is now Australia that is leading the way in terms of regulating the social media industry for the content and conduct that takes place on these platforms," Inman-Grant said.

Three other examples. First. After an Australian man walked into two Christchurch mosques in March and murdered 51 people in a hate crime partially livecast on Facebook, Scott Morrison joined his New Zealand counterpart, Jacinda Ardern, to get a G-20 agreement to work towards the elimination of terrorist and violent extremist content online. The G-7 summit in France next month will develop the theme. France's President Emmanuel Macron invited Morrison and Ardern in recognition of their leadership.

Second. The Australian Tax Commissioner, Chris Jordan, had a gutful of big multinational firms dodging their Australian taxes. He went after the big mining firms too, but the tech companies were the main target. They were collecting billions in Australian sales but booking the revenue through low-tax subsidiaries in Ireland or Singapore. In four years, armed with new laws and a hand-picked taskforce, he's got the multinationals booking an extra $7 billion of revenue a year in Australia. And paying tax on it in Australia. Recently, some European governments have reached the same breaking point and announced new tax regimes specifically to target the tax-dodging tech titans.
Mark Zuckerberg urged his company to "move fast and break things". Now governments are pushing back.

Third. Last week the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission delivered its final report into digital platforms. Its chair, Rod Sims, spoke of "many adverse effects" that flow from the market dominance wielded by Google and Facebook in particular. In neat symmetry, the commission delivered 23 recommendations for action to protect Australia from some of those effects, one for each year of the era of untrammelled techxploitation. The Morrison government immediately agreed to one of the 23 – for the ACCC to create special branch to protect online privacy and prevent abuse of market power – and is considering the other 22.

There are two big caveats. First is that while Australia's government can be proud that it is leading in the much-needed regulation of Big Tech, it should also be working to allow Australian business to lead in innovation, as well. Second is that all these initiatives are positive, but they are piecemeal and partial. For instance, none of the Australian measures address Jamie Bartlett's larger worry – the "manipulation, endless distraction and the slow diminishing of free choice and autonomy" that Big Tech delivers.

Is Bartlett's mild panic giving way to paranoia perhaps? Read what Google's then boss, Eric Schmidt, said in 2010 and make up your own mind: "You give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our services. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about."

That's not creepy at all.

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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