JobKeeper payments made to school linked to ‘extremist cult’

The Left have hated the Brethren ever since they advertised in favour of John Howard in 2004. EVERY other religion at that time advocated for the Labor party. Howard won that election in a landslide.

The Brethren are very Bible-based. Their talk about being separate from "the world" is straight from the words of Jesus Christ. e.g. John 15: 18,19. Jesus would be called a cultist by some if he were alive today. The Sanhedrin certainly saw him that way

A private school linked to the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, a group once described as an “extremist cult” by former prime minister Kevin Rudd, has received an estimated $9 million in JobKeeper payments.

In addition, the OneSchool Global network, which provides education for the children of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church members from the ages of eight to 18 years, also received $34 million in federal and state government grants last year, or about $16,000 per student.

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church was established in the early 19th century in southern England and is now led by multi-millionaire Sydney businessman Bruce D. Hales, who is known by his congregation as the Elect Vessel, or the Man of God. It follows a strict doctrine, known as “separation”, under which church members are discouraged, on pain of excommunication, from eating, drinking, forming friendships or communicating with outsiders, except to do business with them.

They aim to live a life apart from worldly pleasures and associations, refer to themselves as the “saints” and to outsiders as “worldlies”.

However, under another doctrine called “spoiling the Egyptians”, the church is also assiduous about seeking as much public funding as is legally available. In 2004, Mr Hales told his global flock: “You charge the highest possible price to the worldly people. That’s the way to get ahead, I mean, materially, you’ve got to spoil the Egyptians. It doesn’t belong to them anyhow, so we’ve just got to relieve them of it!”

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have retrieved the accounts of the OneSchool Global network that operates 31 schools across six states, and has 2413 students. Children under the age of eight attend government schools.

In the year to December 31, 2020, OneSchool Global declared a total of $13.3 million in “other revenue, JobKeeper and cash-flow boosts”. It’s estimated that almost $9 million of that is stimulus payments, such as JobKeeper.

A OneSchool Global spokesman said 70 per cent of the schools’ operation costs were staff wages. “The COVID-19 pandemic impacted on the schools’ revenue base,” the spokesman said. “The schools were eligible for, and complied with, all the obligations set out by the government in relation to the JobKeeper program.”

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, which was once known as the Exclusive Brethren, has been the subject of intense scrutiny and controversy over the past two decades because of its alleged treatment of former members, and also accusations that some of its members have been involved in campaigns against political parties, even though its members are not allowed to vote.

They grew close to former prime minister John Howard, and visited him in his office before the 2007 election, while Mr Rudd criticised the group as an “extremist cult” that “breaks up families”. Some church members who have left the group have also referred to it as a cult.

Members of the church have donated to the Liberal Party, and some members became involved in anti-Green and anti-gay advertising. When Helen Clark was New Zealand’s prime minister, she said members of the group ran a smear campaign against her.

On its website, the church states it has never made political donations nor instructed any of its 15,000 Australian members to be politically active. The church has about 50,000 members worldwide.

However, NSW Liberal Party records seized by the Independent Commission Against Corruption show that in December 2010, dozens of PBCC members donated individual payments of less than the disclosure threshold, which together made up $67,000. The Liberal Party operatives who accepted the donations labelled the sheet recording the payments as having come from “friends”.

OneSchool was one of 700 private schools that were eligible for the federal government’s $89 billion JobKeeper program, which has been controversial. On Monday, the federal Treasury disclosed that $27 billion of JobKeeper payments were to recipients that didn’t experience the requisite 30 per cent decline in turnover.

But in that calculation, the Treasury excluded not-for-profits, new businesses or those too small to submit a quarterly activity statement to the tax office, and subsidiaries of larger businesses. This means the actual payment to businesses that didn’t meet the requirements to be eligible for JobKeeper could have been as much as $40 billion.

According to Australian Tax Office data, 700 private schools received $750 million in JobKeeper payments. Among the many non-government schools that received stimulus payments, including JobKeeper, were Melbourne’s Wesley College which received $18.2 million, and Sydney’s Moriah College, which qualified for $6.8 million.

When students graduate from OneSchool Global, they can enrol at university but only through distance education because they are not permitted to attend campuses in person. Many complete certificate-level courses in office studies and accountancy at school, then typically go to work in businesses run by members of the church.

Businesses run by its members operate in sectors as varied as building, manufacturing and aged care, and according to the church’s website, generate a combined turnover of $22 billion. The church is also linked to a charity, the Rapid Relief Team, which has provided assistance in regional areas in recent years to drought-affected farmers and families affected by bushfires.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown has accused the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church of having a contrived and cruel religious dogma.

The church came to greater public attention during Mr Howard’s prime ministership, after its members spent $370,000 on anti-Greens campaigns at the 2004 election. They also met with then Greens leader Bob Brown after he unsuccessfully called for an inquiry into the group.

In his book Optimism, Mr Brown dedicated a chapter to the PBCC, a group which he wrote had a contrived and cruel religious dogma. He quoted Mr Hales as telling his members: “You come in touch with worldly people, you’ll have some sense of defilement … and you’re in control, you’re superior, I mean morally.”

Mr Brown also wrote of how Mr Hales advised church members to scorn, disdain and hate the principles of the outside world.

In that chapter Mr Brown also told of how he had met several former members who reported harrowing stories of excommunication from the church, including from their spouses, children, siblings, parents and grandparents.

The church has said it follows up on members who decide to leave the congregation.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/jobkeeper-payments-made-to-school-linked-to-extremist-cult-20211014-p59014.html

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Education ministers must act on our woke national curriculum

In a matter of weeks, Australia’s nine education ministers will decide the fate of the revised national curriculum released earlier this year for public consultation. The document was roundly condemned for prioritising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and spirituality to the detriment of learning about Western culture and Judeo-Christianity.

The history framework, in particular, was criticised for presenting a black armband view of Australia’s origins and development as a nation, with European settlement described as an invasion leading to genocide and society and its institutions as inherently racist.

There is no question about the importance of studying Indigenous history and culture. Of all the lessons to be learned from Australia’s oldest settlers, top of the list must surely be a profound respect for passing on the knowledge and wisdom of the elders. The Indigenous tradition of oral history epitomises the sense of belonging and purpose that humans gain from understanding the past, particularly as they deal with the present and make decisions about the future.

Such is the significance of these links across the ages that Australia’s national curriculum includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures as one of three cross-curricular priorities that all teachers must emphasise in the classroom.

All teachers are instructed to provide “opportunities for all students to deepen their knowledge of Australia by engaging with the world’s oldest continuous living cultures” and learning about “the significant contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ histories and cultures on a local, national and global scale”. These opportunities are reinforced in every learning area (English, Mathematics, Science, History and so on) across the curriculum.

Where the revised curriculum is flawed and open to attack is its failure to provide a similar sustained focus on the nation’s Western heritage. There is no equivalent cross-curricular priority requiring primary and secondary teachers to ‘engage’ with the evolution of Western culture since ancient times, ensuring that all students develop a shared, objective understanding of the origins of Australia’s liberal democratic values and practices.

On the contrary, the lack of curricular alignment and intellectual cohesion of the key elements of the curriculum that reflect Western civilisation – English, History, Civics and Citizenship, the Arts and others – is striking. In addition, while students are asked to study Indigenous spirituality in detail, the curriculum ignores the enduring significance of Judeo-Christian traditions, especially where these have uniquely and powerfully informed our modern concepts of equality, tolerance, justice and the rule of law, and individual freedom.

One of the key documents guiding the current review states the Australian Curriculum “must ensure young people have a good understanding of the nature of Australian society within which they will be living and working as adults. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and perspectives are an important part of the development of our nation, as are the traditions and values of what is often referred to as ‘Western society’.”

Not only does the phrase “what is often referred to as Western society’” signal a qualified and uncertain view of what constitutes the West’s culture and way of life, it also reduces thousands of years of extraordinary philosophical, creative, scientific, religious, economic and other developments to a minor event in history. It is difficult to see how the proposed curriculum can fulfil the goal of producing ‘active and informed’ citizens.

The move to de-colonise the curriculum and cancel what Woke activists describe as ‘Eurocentrism’ and ‘whiteness’ partly explains why the curriculum is so jaundiced and politically correct. Also influential is the ever increasing emphasis on 21st Century learning given the increasing rate of technological, medical, scientific and societal change.

The panel responsible for investigating Australia’s senior school (Years 11 and 12) curriculum and pathways has produced a report titled Looking to the Future. The Chair, Dr Peter Shergold, says “the panel’s view is that we have to design our education system to prepare young people for their future rather than for our past”.

To justify the argument that studying the past is of declining value, those responsible for the report quote American educationalist John Dewey’s assertion that “The world is moving at a tremendous rate; going no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past, not for our world, but for their world – the world of the future”.

The OECD’s Education 2030 Program, to which Australia’s national curriculum body ACARA contributes, puts a similar case about cancelling the past and prioritising the future. The world is “rapidly changing” and we now live in a world characterised by “a new explosion of scientific knowledge” and “complex societal problems”.

The globalist groupthink pushed by the Paris-based bureaucrats purports to prepare students “for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have not yet been invented, to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated”.

Associated with this futurist perspective is the argument that knowledge acquisition is secondary to developing 21st century skills and competencies such as critical thinking, working in teams and embracing diversity and difference. Students are encouraged to see themselves as global citizens dedicated to “transforming society and shaping the future”.

This worldview is strongly represented in the draft Australian Curriculum. It holds that all students should take on responsibility for solving problems in an unprecedentedly uncertain and volatile global environment.

The net effect is that nation-building is no longer emphasised, a concept diminished by a curriculum that fails to give students a clear idea of what it means to be an Australian citizen and what is most valued about our institutions and way of life.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/10/education-ministers-must-act-on-our-woke-national-curriculum/

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No climate duty for Ley, court told

Extremist judge Mordecai Bromberg strikes again. He was the judge who convicted Andrew Bolt for saying that white "Aborigines" were in it for the money and perks. Not much respect for free speech from Mordy. This time his biased judgment was overturned

Environment Minister Sussan Ley is appealing a Federal Court declaration that she has a duty of care to protect children from future personal injury caused by climate change.

At the outset of the three-day appeal hearing, Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue QC argued the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is not predominantly about the interests of humans or the environment generally.

The EPBC Act is really only concerned with environmental issues that enliven commonwealth powers, he argued, and should not be co-opted to serve the "collateral purpose" of establishing a duty of care.

Eight children took action against Ms Ley in 2020, challenging an expansion to the Vickery coal mine project in NSW.

Justice Mordecai Bromberg ruled that Ms Ley owed a duty to all Australian children when exercising her legislative decision-making powers regarding the mine.

One of the children who brought the case, 17-year-old Anjali Sharma, said on Monday the federal government continues to deflect responsibility for worsening climate change risks.

"We will proudly defend the historic ruling that all Australian children are owed a 'duty of care' by our government, and fight to protect my generation from the increasing risks of climate change," she said in a statement.

The Vickery project was approved previously by NSW's Independent Planning Commission and would result in 100 million additional tonnes of carbon emissions.

But Mr Donaghue said the issue of greenhouse gas emissions was not relevant to the EPBC Act, noting the mine did not require approval under the act when it first opened.

He also said the duty of care established by Justice Bromberg's ruling did not give sufficient weight to constitutional issues and was based on an incorrect conclusion.

Argument in the appeal before Chief Justice James Allsop, Justice Jonathan Beach and Justice Michael Wheelahan is expected to continue for two more days.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/no-climate-duty-for-ley-court-told/ar-AAPEcPp

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Extinction Rebellion protest against Environmental Minister Susan Ley with fake ‘corpses’

Extinction Rebellion protesters dressed in black and carried fake ‘corpses’ through Brisbane’s CBD on Tuesday morning in a ‘duty of care’ protest against Environmental Minister Susan Ley.

Four protesters were arrested for public nuisance after glueing their hands to the ground. Police used syringes filled with acetate to un-glue all four of the protesters from Queen Street Mall. They were then taken from the scene in police vans.

The demonstrators claim the corpses represent 10,000 premature lives to draw attention to Environment Minister Susan Ley’s appeal of a Federal Court’s declaration that she has a duty of care to protect children from future personal injury caused by climate change.

Ms Pestorius said that doctors and health physicians were amongst those who gathered on Tuesday morning. “They are concerned over the amount of Co2 going into the atmosphere and the impact on people’s health.”

She said that the emissions from the three extra mines recently approved by the Federal Government will cause anywhere been 130,000-170,000 premature deaths.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/extinction-rebellion-protest-against-environmental-minister-susan-ley-with-fake-corpses/news-story/bb7bc6049e19721af14c15103e013cc7

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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