Conservatives criticize big business while the Leftists defend it!

As even Adam Smith saw, big business is not your friend

Following a hard-hitting speech to a chamber of commerce function in Canberra last week, Ben Morton, the assistant minister to the Prime Minister, has delivered the same message to about 100 chief executive officers gathered in Parliament House for a  Business Council of Australia seminar.

"We don’t represent corporate Australia; we represent hard-working middle and aspirational Australia,'' Mr Morton said.

"It follows that, when engaging with this government, business should explain how what they are proposing will improve the lives of those quiet Australians we represent. "And tell us how they will communicate that to these same people.

"We’re interested in what’s good for hard-working, aspirational Australians."

Mr Morton lauded the BCA under the stewardship of chief executive Jennifer Westacott for its tireless campaigning over recent years for a company tax cut and to generally lift the image of big business by promoting the benefits it provides.

He cited the BCA's Strong Australia project which, for the past two years, has featured a roadshow of BCA executives visiting rural and regional Australia extolling the virtues of big business such as the jobs and economic activity they generate.

However the BCA was a notable exception, Mr Morton said.

"The BCA campaigned for company tax cuts, opposed Labor’s 45 per cent emissions target, supported personal income tax cuts in full and is supporting workplace integrity legislation,'' he said.

"I believe more large corporates need to follow suit by explaining to their employees how sound economic policies have a direct bearing on corporate profits and therefore their own remuneration and job security.''

Mr Morton said it was important that voters understood that what was good for business was good for them. He also called on individual companies to invest more in industry associations like the BCA "so they can also take their message to the wider Australian community".

Labor response

Earlier on Wednesday, Labor leader Anthony Albanese used his speech to the BCA seminar to side with big businesses against the Morrison government by backing their right to speak out on social and environmental issues. He also pledged to rebuild relations with the corporate sector.

Mr Albanese emphasised that he never agreed with the business-bashing rhetoric Labor used under Bill Shorten to, for example, justify its opposition to company tax cuts, and to generally decry the "top end of town''.

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Vegan who wants to dictate to other people accuses OTHERS of Fascism

An animal rights activist, who wore a pigs mask and spread fake blood across the floor at a McDonalds resturant, has accused the legal system of 'wasting public money' after she was sentenced to 60 hours unpaid work.

Dylan Roffey, 24, who marched into a Brighton branch of the fast-food chain with around 10 to 20 protesters in May, also said that people should not be arrested for 'having basic compassion'.

The actress was convicted of criminal damage at Brighton Magistrates' court this month and ordered to pay £250 court costs, £50 compensation to McDonald's and an £85 victim surcharge, along with her unpaid work requirement.

It comes after the vegan was sentenced to 150 hours unpaid work for an unrelated incident, where she called a woman a 'piece of s***' and allegedly spat in her face at Brighton station after noticing she was wearing a £750 Canada Goose fur coat.

Speaking exclusively to Femail, Dylan branded the decision to arrest her 'ridiculous'. 'I think it's ridiculous that people's time and money was spent on people who are trying to save lives, instead of doing something about people who are profiting from people being killed,' she said, referring to the animals.

'I don't think people should be arrested for protests, or for having basic compassion, and that thinking that killing non-human people is an unacceptable thing to do.

'There isn't a gentle way to macerate a chick for the egg industry, or a passionate way to slit someone's throat. 'We're facing such fascism and animal exploitation on a scale that we've never seen before.'

Photos and videos from the protest in May show Ms Roffey sitting in a pool of fake blood, an edible mixture of flour and food dye, surrounded by activists.

They are holding up pictures of cows, chickens and pigs emblazoned with the phrase 'I want to live'.

She was arrested at the scene by police after making no attempt to move, and was later charged with criminal damage and resisting a police officer.

'I knew going into it I would be arrested', she said, 'that's why I stayed'. 'I knew it would get more attention and get more eyes on what's happening. 'And make people think that this isn't something that is done on a whim but something that people are really horrified by.'

During the hearing judge Amanda Kelly threw out the charge of resisting arrest, but sentenced Dylan for criminal damage.

'Not withstanding the fact that the mixture was flour, water and food dye... the damage need not be permanent in order to be criminal,' she explained, reported Sky News.

The judge went on to say that she was 'absolutely sure' that Miss Dylan' intention was to damage. 'I find that Miss Roffey's purpose was to raise awareness and attract publicity for her cause but that these purposes are too far removed from providing the animals' immediate protection.

'I have a lot of respect for a young woman with strong principles, which you clearly do, but this is not the way to go about it.'

Dylan became a vegan almost four years ago after deciding it would be 'morally inconsistent' to care for animals while she continued to 'hurt them' by eating them.

She has been an animal lover ever since she was small. At the age of two Dylan told off a group of hare-hunters, her mother fondly remembers.

Dylan was also convicted earlier this month for spitting in a woman's face. She was ordered to pay £500 court costs, £150 compensation to Ms Boyle and an £85 surcharge.

Although the CCTV footage was unclear, judge Kelly said the accounts of the two witnesses were compelling, reports The Daily Express.  'I am absolutely sure that Dylan Roffey did spit at Ms Boyle because she was angry and upset at not being listened to. She lost her temper.

'It may have been completely out of character. She is a pleasant young woman with strong beliefs. But to deliberately spit at someone is a serious offence.'

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Facts on fires forgotten in rush to blame climate change

Bushfires in Queensland and New South Wales dominated the news last week — and much of the media was quick to amplify claims climate change was at play.

Here’s retired NSW fire commissioner and former NSW climate change councillor Greg Mullins on ABC regional radio: “There are fires breaking out in places where they just shouldn’t burn. The west coast of Tasmania, the world heritage areas, subtropical rainforests, it’s all burning. And this is driven by climate change, there’s no other explanation.”

Well, he’s an expert, he’s worth reporting. But shouldn’t such claims be tested? He cited places burning that shouldn’t burn, such as Siberia where other sources confirm bushfires happen there every summer.

And Mullins mentioned the west coast of Tasmania. We saw fires there earlier this year and on this program we exposed emotive reporting suggesting this was unprecedented. It wasn’t, of course.

This report, for instance, in the South Australian Chronicle of February 1915 reported lives lost and the “most devastating bushfires ever known in Tasmania sweeping over the northwest coast and other districts. The extent of the devastation cannot be over-estimated.”

And as for Mullins’ claims on rainforests of the west coast, there was this report in 1982 from The Canberra Times, detailing a “huge forest fire” burning out 75,000 hectares of dense rainforest.

Nine newspapers’ Jane Caro tweeted her surprise at the fires: “So there are bushfires all the way up the NSW & Queensland coasts and no rain forecast for 6 to 8 weeks — in September!” she exclaimed, saying this was with one degree of warming and spruiking the climate action strike this Friday.

Yep, that’ll do it.

Back in the 1940s there were September days in Brisbane of 90 degrees fahrenheit, or over 32 degrees Celsius. Now sure, last week’s conditions were horrid, and not the norm. But they are not unprecedented. Drought, dry winters, hot springs, we get them. They might fit into a global warming narrative and they might not.

The best thing to do last week, surely, was to fight the fires. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott did — but I don’t know about the social media alarmists.

Channel 10 news reporter Alex Bruce-Smith wrote the fires were “unprecedented.” “There’s no beating around the bush,” she said, “climate change is helping drive the catastrophe we are currently seeing … it’s the worst start to a Queensland bushfire season on record.”

But is it?

To be fair to the journalists, this stuff was being put out there by people in authority. Andrew Sturgess of Queensland Fire and Emergency Services said: “It is a historic event. We have never seen fire danger indices, fire danger ratings at this time of the year, as we are seeing now. We have never seen this before in recorded history.”

Never before in recorded history? The Chronicle in the late winter of 1946, August 22, noted: “From Bundaberg to the New South Wales border”, “hundreds of square miles of drought stricken southeastern Queensland were aflame …”

Two years later on September 30, 1948, the Central Queensland Herald reported: “An 800-mile chain of bushfires fed by dry grass stretched tonight along the Queensland coast from Cairns to Maryborough.”

Both these easily-retrievable examples put the claims of “worst ever” and “unprecedented” into perspective, if not in the shade.

Perhaps the media ought to be more careful about such descriptors, or check them, or try for some perspective rather than just going with the zeitgeist.

Last week, The Guardian linked bushfires in Queensland rainforests to global warming. “I never thought I’d see the Australian rainforest burning. What will it take for us to wake up to the climate crisis?” That was written by Dr Joëlle Gergis of the ANU’s Climate Change Institute and member of the Climate Council.

“Despite being ridiculously busy, I couldn’t turn down this opportunity to share my thoughts on the current bushfires,” she tweeted. “As a scientist, what I find particularly disturbing about the current conditions is that world heritage rainforest areas such as the Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland are now burning,” she wrote.

Well, we were busy too but were able to dig this out. It’s the Cairns Post from October 25, 1951. “A bushfire in Lamington National Park today swept through a grove of 3000-year-old Macrozamia palms. These trees were one of the features of the park. The fire has burnt out about 2000 acres of thick rainforest country.”

That’s right, nearly 70 years ago, rainforest burning in Lamington National Park, before global warming.

Journalists were quick to share the alarmist views. Hey, it’s easier than checking them.

Seemingly forgotten in the rush to fit up climate change as the cause of these fires was one highly relevant fact. Arsonists were responsible for many, if not most of the blazes.

As news.com.au reported last Wednesday” “Detectives have already established that ten fires — in Brisbane, Stanthorpe, the southeast and central Queensland regions — were deliberately lit. Eight of those were set by juveniles.”

Unless climate change is changing juvenile behaviour, it is hard to overlook crucial facts, such as how the fires actually started.

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Victorian prosecutors appeal magistrate's decision not to jail paramedic's attacker

Victoria's Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has lodged an appeal against a magistrate's decision not to jail a man who attacked a paramedic while in a "psychotic state" after taking a cocktail of drugs.

James Haberfield was last month sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order for his attack on two paramedics in Melbourne.

He also became the first person to be slapped with a compulsory treatment order under new Victorian laws for those who attack emergency workers.

But Haberfield, 22, avoided a minimum six-month jail term also included in the new laws, which came into effect last October.

In sentencing, Magistrate Simon Zebrowski had said jailing Haberfield would have a "disproportionate and catastrophic effect" on his future.

A psychiatric expert had told the court Haberfield would be at "acute risk" of suicide in jail.

The non-custodial sentence drew criticism from emergency service workers including one of Haberfield's victims, who wished to be named only as Monica, who cried in court when the sentence was delivered.

The court heard Monica had not returned to work since the attack and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.

Today Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd QC revealed she had lodged an appeal against the sentence, a move urged by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews last month.

In a statement, the DPP said it had appealed the sentence in the County Court on the grounds that based on Magistrate Zebrowski's findings, "it was not open to the Magistrate to impose any sentence other than a custodial sentence" as required under the Sentencing Act.

The Victorian Ambulance Union's general secretary, Danny Hill, said he was pleased the appeal had been lodged. "Paramedics and ambulance workers are waiting for the courts to have their back and send a strong message of deterrence to the community that bashing and injuring an ambo is unacceptable," Mr Hill 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