The ABCs of race relations

ABC Chairwoman Ita Buttrose laments that the Australian media landscape is “too white” and not representative of our multicultural society. She even suggests we may need quotas.

Quotas assume employers are biased because, whether they know it or not, they might be favouring one race over another.

Using quotas to ensure representation of racial groups on the telly, or the boardroom is a move in the wrong direction and could lead to more social division as merit gives way to affirmative action.

It used to be progressive to be colour-blind –  to focus on character over skin colour. But we have flipped this over: now we see race in everything.

If Buttrose wants to “better reflect the culture of Australia” she should focus on who we are — and not what colour we are.

We are a nation of larrikins who, regardless of where we were born, or our level of income, believe this is the best country on Earth.

This was a finding of the Australian Talks National Survey that Buttrose was spruiking while complaining about our pale media.

If we want a more egalitarian, liberal society we should resist blunt instruments such as quotas.

Australia has developed a harmonious, multicultural society by accepting our differences — and sometimes even making fun of them.

Historically, this has been the argument against the introduction of federal ‘hate speech’ laws. Dividing Australians by race would threaten social cohesion.

Racism is not accepted in Australia.  On the rare occasion a politician or commentator says something even remotely racist, they are swiftly mobbed and sometimes sacked. These are not the responses of a deeply racist country. They are the responses of a nation that has long been driven by a determination to move beyond racial differences.

Buttrose needs to do the same.

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Climate protesters have set taxpayers back MILLIONS - and businesses have lost even more money

Climate change protesters have cost Australia's police forces millions of dollars and staff had to be diverted from road safety and domestic violence complaints to patrol last week's chaos.

Victoria Police Commander Tim Hansen said 16,000 patrol hours had been spent policing the Extinction Rebellion protests, which blocked traffic in Melbourne's CBD causing widespread disruption. 

'It's had a huge impact on our resourcing out in the regions and out in the suburbs,' Commander Hansen told reporters on Sunday.

The cost is thought to be at least $3million, the Herald Sun reported, although Victoria Police say the exact cost is still being determined.

'What I can say is the overtime budget is in the hundreds of thousands already,' Commander Hansen said.

Victoria Police will not try to make protesters pay for the cost of policing, however, as Commander Hansen said it was a community protest in a public space.

'The first gateway in considering whether user pays is applicable is there needs to be a level of commerciality,' he said.

Police had to be re-tasked from suburban patrol duties and from specialist units to cope with the mass disruption during which 111 people were arrested.

'Because of the need to resource this protest, we've had to take some resources away from those programs,' Commander Hansen said.

'Sustained and unplanned protest activity has seen a dilution of these policing programs.'

Queensland police said on Friday that more than 150 officers had to be deployed each day, arresting a total of 125 protesters during the week including several who glued themselves to the William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane's CBD on Friday. 

'More than 150 general and specialist police have worked each day this week to deal with the unlawful behaviour undertaken by Extinction Rebellion protesters,' Acting Chief Superintendent Fleming said in a release on Friday.

Daily Mail Australia understands this figure does not include police at the watch house, or the cost of administrative staff needed to process those arrested.

The disruptions also cost Queensland businesses thousands in lost productivity the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland said.

'On any given day, data from Tom Toms shows that $2.4 million is lost in productivity due to traffic and congestion – with protests of this magnitude, it swells to a loss of $3.5 million,' spokesman Dan Petrie told the Courier Mail.

Extinction Rebellion Southeast Queensland responded by saying the large police presence was not necessary because their protests were non-violent.

'We are seeing unprecedented bushfires and droughts due to climate change,' an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia via email. 'These disasters are already destroying businesses. Disruption is necessary to demand urgent climate action. XR is a non-violent movement, and the large police presence was unnecessary.'

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They finally got the despicable Punchard

His fellow cops tried to protect him but justice has prevailed in the end

A Queensland police officer who leaked a woman's address to her violent ex-partner has pleaded guilty to computer hacking.

Senior Constable Neil Glen Punchard is being sentenced on Monday after pleading guilty to nine counts of using a restricted computer in Brisbane Magistrates Court.

He disclosed personal information about the woman and her partner to her former partner, a long-time friend of Punchard's, over a one-year period from 2013.

Crown prosecutor Angus Edwards said it was a "complete breach of trust" by Punchard, who had done the "exact opposite" of the role of a police officer - to protect.

"(He) put at risk somebody who was involved in an acrimonious separation," Mr Edwards said.

Punchard was charged in late 2018 after a series of "erroneous" decisions by police not to prosecute, Mr Edwards told the court.

Two police investigations cleared him before the Crime and Corruption Commission overturned those decisions.

Last month, Punchard failed in a bid to have the charges thrown out on a technicality.

He argued the criminal investigation against him was tainted by the use of an interview he was forced to give during internal disciplinary proceedings, in which he made admissions.

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Regretful ‘detransitioners’ on rise

Regretful “detransitioners” ignored by the upbeat narrative of gender change are entitled to medical help and research into what they went through, says Jacky Hewitt, a leading expert on trans youth health.

Dr Hewitt, a paediatric endocrinologist and sex researcher, is the first within Australia’s small circle of specialist gender clinicians to take a public stand at odds with the trans lobby tendency to dismiss detransitioners.

There has been a global spike in teenagers, chiefly girls, given hormone treatment and surgery to cure their “gender dysphoria” or distress about their biological sex, with some deciding as young adults it was a mistake.

Canadian psychologist Ken Zucker, a world authority on dysphoria, said it was an “urgent clinical issue” to find out whether today’s surge of teenagers were like previous patients.

In past studies, about 60-80 per cent of children diagnosed with dysphoria as young as three or four grew out of it, without need of medical treatment that can make them infertile and permanently dependent on doctors.

Now, Dr Zucker said, there were more patients arriving at gender clinics with the de facto treatment of “social transition” — new names and pronouns, living as the opposite sex — already under way.

“Parents certainly should be informed that if you go down this pathway (of early social transition) … the odds are much higher your kid is going to require biomedical treatment, whether it’s hormonal or surgery,” he said.

Australia’s biggest “child-led affirmation” gender clinic at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne promotes medical intervention as sometimes vital to reduce suicide risk, claims children as young as two or three are experts on their trans identity, and insists less than 1 per cent of those who change gender regret it. RCH ignored a request for comment.

Dr Hewitt, a Monash University academic and lead author of a 2012 study on 39 children and adolescents given hormone treatment at RCH between 2003-11, said: “There is a need for both research and medical services for people who previously had gender dysphoria and hormonal/surgical intervention, who are now detransitioning.

“This (need) is regardless of whether they represent a tiny minority, or a larger group than previously thought.”

She declined to elaborate on her comments, tweeted in reply to a report of London’s Tavistock youth gender clinic being urged to take seriously the issue of detransitioners.

Dr Hewitt’s 2012 study is cited in the trans health policy of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, which has quietly removed from its reliance on the RCH’s controversial 2018 treatment standards.

The Hewitt-led study says: “Current evidence suggests that when a strict assessment and clinical protocol is followed, hormone treatment to suspend the development of puberty is associated with a good outcome and a low rate of regret.

“(But) concerns exist regarding the long-term outcome following hormone treatment ... Evidence from larger international cohorts suggests behavioural problems and depression improve in the period following pubertal suppression, but anxiety, anger, and gender dysphoria may remain unchanged.

“The long-term psychological and health outcomes of cross-sex hormone treatment are unknown, as is the rate of ‘regret’ with reversal of gender identity.”

Sceptics of the confident affirmation model say previous studies of regret define it narrowly, do not capture the recent group of “rapid onset” teenagers, and fail to account for the fact that detransitioners often have no desire to report back to the gender clinics that encouraged their mistaken belief they could change sex.

A rise in detransitioners has been predicted, as more young adults emerge with medical compli­cations and untreated psychological issues. Many reportedly presented at gender clinics with pre-existing mental health problems, autism spectrum disorder, ­awkward same-sex attraction, sexual abuse or family trauma.

A reddit detrans forum has 5,600 members; it is believed about 40 per cent are detransitioners.

In a recent letter to the Medical Journal of Australia, RCH clinic director Michelle Telfer and her team dismissed media reports of detransitioners, claiming most were not “true” cases and blaming “outside pressures” from family and religion.

The 2018 RCH guidelines do not mention the detransitioner phenomenon.

University of Newcastle psychologist Rachel Heath, co-author of a new book that promises a “state-of-the-art” guide to transgender health, said she put the share of detransitioners at “no more than 1 per cent.

“And certainly no one from the best-run clinic in the world at Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital. These (detransitioner) campaigns by ignorant people are designed to eliminate all trans people.”

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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