Scott Morrison says the government’s climate change policies would “evolve” without putting people’s jobs at risk

Scott Morrison has rejected the need to set a more ambitious 2030 emissions reduction target in the wake of Australia’s bushfire crisis but left open the possibility of dropping the contentious use of Kyoto carryover credits if they are not needed.

In a half-hour interview on ABC TV on Sunday morning, the Prime Minister did not rule out increasing the government’s 2030 emissions reduction target and said actions to make Australia more resilient and adapt to climate change required greater attention.

The government’s climate change policies would “evolve” without putting people’s jobs at risk.

Mr Morrison later clarified at a press confernece in Parliament House the government had set its target of 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels but would look to “meet and beat” it.

“We will always be taking up the opportunities of measures that enable us to achieve lower emissions, but lower emissions at the same time as we stay true to the policy I took to the last election, and that was to ensure we get the balance right, to get our emissions down without putting a tax on people, without increasing their electricity prices, without removing the industries upon which they and their communities and their towns and their regions rely on for their very livelihoods. So it’s a balanced policy,” Mr Morrison said.

“There will be new technologies, as there has been since the Kyoto targets were first set, and we will look to embrace those and we will look to take the opportunities that are in front of us to ensure that we don’t just meet these targets but we beat the targets that we have set.”

SOURCE  







Help me close down Australia's illegal kangaroo courts

An update from Bettina Arndt:

A very sad start to the New Year with so much of Australia being destroyed by bushfires. I’m very conscious my little causes are trivial compared to what so many people are facing.

But we need to press on. I’m hopeful this is the year when Quiet Australians will get very noisy, reclaiming the public agenda to ensure a fair deal for men and boys.

So now I am launching what I hope will be a real splash to start 2020.

It’s a very important cause. As most of you know, we had some big wins towards the end of last year. The evil system of campus kangaroo courts was dealt a mighty blow. For years now, many Australian universities have had secret committees investigating and adjudicating rape. In a landmark Brisbane Supreme Court decision last November these were declared illegal. And then Education Minister Dan Tehan instructed the university regulator, TEQSA, that universities should leave these crimes to the criminal courts.

This is a huge break-through, but I need every one of you now to step up and help me ensure that the universities take notice. I’m starting a big campaign enlisting graduates of Australian universities, students, academic staff, parents and grandparents of young people planning to attend university. I want everyone with a university connection to write to the relevant Vice Chancellors and Chancellors alerting them to what has happened and putting them on notice that we are expect them to comply with the law. If you have no tertiary association, you can just write to your local universities.  

It's easy – just use my draft letter.

Various lawyers have helped me put together a draft letter you can use – which is on my website. We need to seize the moment, enlist heaps of people to do this across the country to make sure universities have the courage to stand up to the feminist lobbying.

Feminist activists will be appalled if their carefully manufactured campaign is derailed and will put immense pressure on universities to ignore the legal judgement and continue with business as usual. They have put years of effort into promoting the fake rape crisis and bullying universities into establishing these illegal courts. They are not going to give up easily.

Sadly, they have most of the mainstream media right behind them. I find it absolutely shocking the ABC reported the lurid accusations that in the University of Queensland case which led to the Supreme Court decision but mentioned not one word about the judgement. Ditto, the SMH, The Age, The Guardian - all those journalists who have been actively promoting the rape crisis have becomes strangely silent now that the crowning achievement of this activism has been found to be illegal. How about some of you complain to the ABC and Media Watch about this turn of events?

We are watching them

A clever friend in advertising has helped me put together a short social media video, designed to tell universities we are watching them. Here it is:

https://www.facebook.com/thebettinaarndt/videos/483879372510196/

Watch it now. It’s only just over a minute long. I hope you agree it really hits the mark.

We’re using this for what I hope will be a major social media campaign. Please help me circulate it in every way you can, retweeting, sending out to people in the media.

Contact me if you have ideas about how to get it to go viral – I need smart young social media experts to help with this one.

We are also going to spend some of the funds people contribute to me to promote it widely. You are very welcome to donate.

Closing down Australia’s illegal campus kangaroo courts.

I have put also together a proper video. It’s been a long time since I released something new and we realised that we hadn’t told my YouTube and thinkspot audiences about all these exciting developments.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg0Vp0qph6Q

Remember it really helps if you like the video, comment and subscribe.

When I was researching all the events I wanted to cover, I made an amazing discovery. We knew that the university regulator, TEQSA, had sent out advice to the universities telling them that they should “take disciplinary action against perpetrators of sexual assault” – advice which led to our kangaroo courts.

I stumbled across footage, now included in this video, of TEQSA CEO Anthony McClaran, proudly announcing he has told universities to “hold perpetrators to account.” Well, now it turns out he was advising them to do something quite illegal.

By email from Bettina -- Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Wealth rise the fastest in two years

Australian households will begin the new decade with surging levels of wealth as rebounding property prices and a buoyant sharemarket drive the fastest rise in prosperity in almost two years.

Household net worth on a per capita basis jumped over the three months to September by $10,699, or 2.6 per cent, to a record $428,574 — the largest quarterly increase since December 2016, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.

Rises in national housing prices of almost 3 per cent and the sharemarket of almost 2 per cent over October and November mean the financial position of households is almost certain to improve again in the December quarter.

The figures are fuelling hopes that consumers may open their wallets in the new year, delivering a boost to growth after a year of sluggish spending.

The official wealth data, from the September national accounts figures, comes amid anecdotal evidence that an encouraging number of shoppers hit the Boxing Day discount sales.

PwC chief economist Jeremy Thorpe said: "There is a general rising tide ... as house prices rise, Australians should feel more confident in spending, or at least we hope that's the case. "A lot depends on people having jobs, and The last labourmarket release was more positive than anyone had expected."

Josh Frydenberg said Australians could look to the new year with confidence about their economic future. "Not only did they dodge Labor's $387bn of higher taxes but, under the Coalition, tax cuts we took to the election have been legislated, putting more money in people's pockets and helping to increase household disposable income at its fastest rate in a decade," the Treasurer said on Friday.

"In the face of challenging economic headwinds, with the drought at home and trade tensions abroad, the Australian economy has proven to be remarkably resilient"

The ABS said the property market revival was the key driver of wealth accumulation over the September quarter. "The value of residential land and dwellings increased by 2.9 per cent, driven by holding gains of $174.4bn — the first quarter of real gains after six successive quarters of losses," the ABS said.

The bounce put an end to 18 months of declining values, and aggregate net worth at the end of the September quarter increased 3 per cent to $10.9 billion.

The rise continued in the latest quarter, with national home values jumping 3 per cent in November and 12 per cent in October, bringing the total gain to 2.9 per cent, according to CoreLogic data.

Since September 30, the share-market has added 1.9 per cent. With only two trading days left in the year, the benchmark S&P/ ASX 200 index was up by more than 20 per cent in 2019. Once dividends are included, the annual returns for shareholders could push closer to 25 per cent. Household net worth on a per capita basis has surged 60 per cent over the past 10 years

From the "Weekend Australian" of 28 December, 2019






Good For You, Craig Kelly

Peter O'Brien

The Coalition needs Craig Kelly but they certainly don’t deserve him.  The pile-on against Scott Morrison, for his vacation, his ‘lack of leadership on climate change’ and his alleged responsibility for the bushfires, has been of Trump Derangement Syndrome proportions.

Kelly comes out in a combative interview with ITV talking head Piers Morgan and (a) defends the PM regarding his vacation, (b) points out that the bushfires have nothing to do with climate change and (c) that in terms of emissions reductions we are doing more than most countries.

And what thanks does he get?  Minister for water resources, drought and a lucky dip of other portfolios, David Littleproud, says:

That’s just a sideshow. He doesn’t represent the views of the government and you know what I couldn’t give a rat’s what he said, it’s irrelevant, let’s just focus on those people that are out there that need our help.

This is the same Littleproud who, only months ago, opined that he ‘didn’t know if climate change was manmade’, only to scuttle behind a ‘clarification’ when challenged by that bastion of objectivity The Guardian:

… he “totally” accepts that worsening droughts are linked to climate change, as he signalled more taxpayer support for regional communities was coming as Australia’s big dry “escalates”.

Now there’s a man of conviction for you.

Sometime ago I postulated in this forum that logic dictated there must be someone in the Liberal ranks who was sceptical about CAGW and I lamented that they did not speak out.  Craig Kelly took me to task on this and I was pleased to acknowledge  in a subsequent article, that Kelly had given voice to the sceptic position and has been doing so ever since.  His mastery of this brief is second to none among the political class.  He can cite chapter and verse of the relevant research to support his case whereas the best the wets in the Liberal Party can come up with in response to Kelly’s specific points is along the lines of Treasurer Frydenberg’s anodyne contribution to this latest furore:

Our view of climate change is that it’s real. We accept the science.

While Mr Frydenberg said fuel loads had been a factor in the bushfires, he said climate change was causing hotter, drier summers.

Which is exactly what the Greens want him to say so that they can go on beating the government over the head for achnowledging the ‘problem’ while not doing enough, by their yardstick, to remedy it. Let me summarize Craig’s argument.

Order Peter O’Brien’s Bitter Harvest here

Firstly, even committed warmist Dr Andy Pitman has conceded there is no direct link between drought and ‘climate change’. Like Littleproud, he then demonstrated quite the talent for back-scuttling.   ‘Climate change’ is in quotation marks because Pitman was talking about one particular form of climate change – the kind caused by atmospheric warming as a result of human emissions.  He has to say that, because a warming climate of this nature will produce a wetter world.  That is why most of the world’s rainforests are in the warmer tropical zone.

The current bushfire emergency has come about because of three factors:

# the prolonged drought

# the accumulation of fuel, and

# the malice and/or carelessness of almost 200 people charged with starting fires

In as much as high temperatures have contributed to the problem, if they really are records  (a doubtful proposition, given the revelations of Jennifer Marohasy et al regarding the BoM’s adjustments acolytes), they are only marginally higher than in previous decades and would  have had no greater impact now than in the past.

But on the subject of CAGW itself, no-one has done a useful cost/benefit analysis of CO2 mitigation.  That is because no-one knows just how much warming will occur in the future, how much of it will be due to man-made CO2 emissions (as opposed to natural climate variability) and how much of it will be beneficial.  So the ‘precautionary principle’ argument is often made, illustrated by rhetorical devices such as comparing the price of CO2 mitigation with that of insuring one’s house – something most people do without thinking twice.  That decision is almost instinctive but how much one is prepared to pay requires more thought. But analogies are often imperfect – sometimes laughably so, as recently demonstrated by Peter Van Onselen.  We don’t insure our homes to prevent bushfires but to recompense us in the event that one damages or destroys our house.

A better analogy, but again imperfect, is a military operation.  If your country is threatened with invasion there are two options – strike first in a do-or-die pre-emptive action, or prepare your defences, build up your strength and allow the enemy to exhaust his resources before launching a counter strike.  You would only adopt the first strategy if the danger was ‘clear and present’.  That is not the case with CAGW, despite the hysteric frothing of Piers Morgan and his sidekicks in the clip above.  In the CAGW sense I’m talking about adaptation – more dams, more robust infrastructure etc — because what we do know with certainty is that, regardless of CAGW, we will continue to see floods, droughts, bushfires and cyclones.

Even if they’re not prepared to diss the CAGW myth entirely, any half-smart conservative government would leap on Craig Kelly’s contributions to enable them to craft a case for making haste slowly and directing resources to the cause of adaptation rather than mitigation. On climate change the Coalition is half-pregnant and that is their problem.

Good on you, Craig Kelly.

SOURCE 

 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