Australian Politics
What Australians really think about climate change
Sampling, sampling, sampling. The revelation that only one in seven Australians take climate change seriously is very encouraging but ALL the figures below have to be taken with a large grain of salt.
The "sample" was derived from an online panel study and the biases of online studies are well-known, to say nothing of the inaccuracies in panel studies. Online samples tend to skew Left. So even the 7% is probably an overstimate
The journal article is "Australian voters’ attitudes to climate action and their social-political determinants" in https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248268
Just one in seven Australians considered climate change their decisive issue when voting in the 2019 federal election.
But some 80 per cent say action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions is important, including almost 70 per cent of Coalition voters.
They are two key findings from new ANU research published today in the journal PLOS ONE, based on online and telephone surveys with more than 2000 Australian voters after the 2019 poll.
In the paper, researchers Dr Rebecca Colvin and Professor Frank Jotzo looked at some of the reasons why, in the “climate election,” the party that was offering the more “status quo” emissions policy was returned to government.
They found 52 per cent of survey respondents said climate change was a factor in how they voted in 2019, but it was the single biggest issue for just 13 per cent of voters – or slightly more than one in seven people.
Asked whether this finding could be a source of hope or despair for supporters of climate action, Dr Colvin said both interpretations were possible.
“One way to look at it is that there isn’t a massive unbridgeable divide across the political spectrum on climate change,” she told News Corp. “There are lots of people who say they want to see action on climate change but they’re not determining their votes on it – but that broad based of social support is there.”
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Many young African-Australians are in jail. Some blame police, but the data tells a different story
It's the high rate of offending among the South Sudanese
There's a concerning trend in the kids we're locking up. For some, it's clear evidence of racist policing.
While overall youth crime rates have declined in Victoria, the imprisonment of African-Australian youth has spiked.
African (predominantly South Sudanese) youth comprise at least 19 per cent of young people in custody despite being less than 0.5 per cent of Victoria's youth population.
But are prejudice and police tactics behind numbers, or is the answer more complicated?
Between 2016 and 2018 a small number of African-Australian youth were involved in a number of highly publicised offences.
These incidents received extensive media attention — with some outlets criticised for politicising their coverage and demonising the African-Australian community.
For some commentators and community advocates, racial profiling was a factor in this sequence of offending, and the coinciding spike in African-Australian youth imprisonment — which has now reached concerning levels.
In a number of recent community surveys, African-Australian youth say they're being targeted and harassed by police in public places because of their race.
While the sample sizes of these reports are small, the concerns raised by the participants are similar to those expressed in the 2012 lawsuit.
For people who are regularly breaking the law, police attention is expected and should not come as a surprise.
But there are occasional incidents of overzealous policing, and perhaps isolated incidents of profiling.
Police behaviour can also stigmatise, even if it is unintended.
A young person who is publicly stopped and questioned on the street as part of routine police activity may feel signalled out and humiliated.
There is always room for improvement to ensure that people are treated with dignity and that procedural fairness is adhered to.
But it's unlikely police services have the explicit intention to disfavour particular cultural groups.
For the most part, police are reacting to information given to them by the public.
So what is behind the over-incarceration?
Higher rates of African-Australian youth imprisonment are most likely because of an increase in violent criminal activity by some members that group.
A recent study pointed to the significantly higher rate of "crimes against the person" by South Sudanese-born youth compared to Australian-born youth between 2015 and 2018.
Crimes against the person include serious offences such as robbery and assault, which often involve less police discretion. They're also crimes that tend to receive custodial sentences.
In contrast, rates for less serious crimes, such as public order and drug offences, have remained stable and relatively low for South Sudanese-born youth.
If police profiling of African-Australian young people is pervasive, one might have expected public order and drug offences to climb during a period of intense media coverage, given that such crimes generally involve more police discretion.
One may also expect to see over-representation right across the African-Australian diaspora if profiling was both rampant and regularly pulling kids into the justice-system.
However only specific African-Australian sub-groups (i.e., South Sudanese) have been over-represented in recent years.
This is likely the result of those groups being collectively exposed to a number of socio-economic and environmental risk factors that increase the likelihood of young people engaging in crime.
It is unlikely that alleged racial profiling by Victoria Police members is driving the imprisonment rates of African-Australian young people.
This does not suggest in any way that racial profiling does not occur at all. Some African-Australian young people have experienced adversarial confrontations with police, however it's not known how widespread these experiences are across the community.
Over-involvement in serious crimes most likely explains the concerning trends in African-Australian youth imprisonment.
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Greens senator retracts rape claim against Home Affairs Minister, apologises
Women in fact lie prolifically. There are many cases -- particularly in Britain -- where rape allegations have been found in court to be false. Britain has even jailed some of false accusers in the more egregious cases
It is just amazing how readily Leftists resort to psychopathic lies -- lies that are easily found out to be lies. If they wish something to be true, they act as if it were true. Their reality-contact is very poor It is a major mental defect in them
Greens senator Larissa Waters has issued an “unreserved” apology to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton after calling him a “rape apologist” last month.
The Courier-Mail revealed on Saturday Mr Dutton had sent a legal letter to the Queensland senator demanding the apology and removal of online posts containing the insult.
Senator Waters’ comments were made on social media site Twitter in February, in reaction to a news article in which Mr Dutton referred to not knowing the “he said, she said” in the Brittany Higgins rape allegations that have rocked Parliament.
“WOMEN DO NOT LIE ABOUT BEING RAPED (Peter Dutton) YOU INHUMANE, SEXIST RAPE APOLOGIST,” she posted, with similar comments made in a press release.
Tonight she posted an apology to both Twitter and her own website.
“On 25 February 2021 I published a media release on my website, posted on my Twitter account, and made in the course of a press conference false and defamatory statements that Peter Dutton is a rape apologist, that he has sought to conceal and dismiss reports of rape, and that he has no sympathy for victims of rape,” she said.
“I accept that there was no basis for those allegations and that they were false. I unreservedly apologise to Minister Dutton for the hurt, distress and damage to his reputation I have caused him.”
Senator Waters’ original tweet was no longer online last night.
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Australian company signs deal to sell COVID nose spray in Britain
Australian biotech Starpharma is taking its COVID-fighting antiviral nasal spray to the world, signing a deal with UK chemist chain LloydsPharmacy to sell the product in Britain as the country emerges from lockdown.
The Melbourne-based company announced a deal on Thursday morning that will see its Viraleze virus-fighting product sold online in the UK starting next week. It will also be stocked in Lloyds’ 1400-strong pharmacy network.
Chief executive Jackie Fairley declined to comment on the value of the deal, but said the successful launch of the product overseas would pave the way for its long-term use beyond the pandemic. She said the company was also planning to register Viraleze in Australia, but would focus on COVID-ravaged Europe in the first instance.
“It’s been a pretty frenetic 12 months, and we’re delighted to have gotten to this point,” she said. “Clearly this market [Britain] is a very large market - this is a broad spectrum antiviral and it’s a product that has applications more broadly. The UK is currently locked down and will be emerging in a couple of weeks. This [deal] achieves a very high level of distribution through that market rapidly.”
The move makes Starpharma the first ASX-listed biotech to bring a COVID-19 preventative product to a global retail market. It comes after a year in which almost every drug developer around the world has tried to pivot its treatments towards the virus.
Starpharma’s shares opened up 3.5 per cent to $2.10 on the news, before dropping 1 per cent by 11am AEDT.
Starpharma started work on Viraleze around a year ago, convinced that SPL7013, the active antiviral compound that it already uses in registered antiviral condoms and sexual health products, could prove useful in stopping SARS-CoV-2 in its tracks.
Unlike vaccines for coronavirus, Viraleze has not gone through large-scale human trials and instead has been tested in the laboratory for its effectiveness. The company has been able to launch the product quickly because the active ingredients have already been reviewed and registered for use in Europe.
The company says the product is a “broad spectrum antiviral” spray that has been shown to inactivate 99.99 per cent of the virus that causes COVID-19 in lab studies.
The product is intended to be used alongside vaccines and other preventative measures as an extra level of protection against the virus and other viruses including influenza for candidates such as healthcare workers.
Dr Fairley said Viraleze was designed to be used in the overall battle against COVID alongside masks and vaccines.
“We’re not making a claim that [it] is the same as vaccines,” she said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
1 comment:
Those who reject individual freewill and responsibility, and who try to be altruistic towards others, can do none other than make excuses for them.
The reason Victoria's Africans are imprisoned at such high rates for crime against persons, is because they commit crime against persons at such high rates. It is that simple.
To keep blaming racist policing, Australian culture of systemic racism, socio economic conditions, an oppressive white male patriarchy,...... is to encourage irresponsibility in individuals.
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