Is Albo another Biden?

With an elite father, an Indonesian mother and being homosexual, you would think that Flinty would be a solid Leftist. And he was in his early life. Around the turn of the century, however, he switched his allegiance from the ALP to the Liberal party. And that drift has continued to the point where he is now very conservative.

We see that in the article below. He makes an energetic case about the importance of the upoming Australian Federal election, when others might see two very centrist candidates, with little depending on who gets in.

He may be right. An ALP government might create havoc. Politicians saying one thing and doing another are a familiar phenomenon. If Albo does turn out to be a disaster, Flinty can at least say that he told us so

David Flint

The 2022 election, closely monitored by criminals, domestic and international, could be one of the most important in Australian history.

As with other countries, a poor government could result in Australia becoming an unidentifiable shadow of itself.

The first criminal group is the fraudsters, strengthened by ‘reforms’ camouflaged as ‘making voting easier’. With the weakest protections against fraud among comparable democracies, the advent of pro-Labor ‘independents’ in Liberal electorates has given fraudsters an incentive to move beyond the marginals (this column, 2 April).

Opposition to European-style voter ID legislation, based on the insulting ground that it would disadvantage the indigenous, has been led by the man the pollsters suggest will be the next PM, Anthony Albanese. But pollsters can be very wrong, as this column demonstrated in detail before the last federal election.

The second criminal group is the same people smugglers who, under the Rudd government with Albanese as a minister, delivered with impunity over 50,000 illegal immigrants on 800 boats with over 1,200 drowning.

But when Tony Abbott promised to turn them back, Labor, LINOs (Liberals In Name Only) and the commentariat scorned him, claiming this was impossible and would lead to war with Indonesia.

Albanese claimed in the campaign that he supports Abbott’s Sovereign Borders policy, but draws the line at offshore processing which crucially denies illegal immigrants years of taxpayer-funded access to tribunals and courts. He said he agreed with Abbott’s temporary protection visas. But within hours he reversed himself on both, demonstrating that, as with the economy, he has no idea.

The third criminal group is the ruthless drug lords from the mainly Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Since Joe Biden, whom some Border Control officers say should be named the ‘Drug Lords’ and Chinese Communists’ Employee of the Year’, stopped building Trump’s nearly finished wall and threw open the southern border, there is little difficulty in delivering dangerous drugs into the US. With Biden recently announcing the relaxation of Trump’s Title 42 legislation authorising Border Control’s immediate expulsion of especially single male illegals, both people smugglers and drug lords are ready to step up the drug trade to epidemic proportions.

So is the fourth group of criminal gangsters, the ruthless multi-billionaire thugs who control the Chinese Communist party, the source, directly and indirectly, of fentanyl. This is a powerful synthetic opioid used not only by addicts but also to lace other products taken unwittingly. As a result, opioids are now the major cause of death among the American young, with over 100,000 deaths per year.

At the 2018 Buenos Aires G20, Senator Bill Hagerty says Trump told Xi to stop sending fentanyl to the US. While Xi obeyed, he crucially made no promises about Mexico.

While both drug lords and Beijing are enriched by this evil trade, the communists have a more sinister objective. This is to undermine and punish their enemies, above all the USA.

But since the Morrison government rightly refused to behave like a cowardly tributary country, Australia is now being punished by the most flagrant breaches conceivable of Beijing’s obligations under international trade law.

That this has not had the deleterious effect hoped for will only encourage Beijing to work with the drug lords to push drugs into Australia should the borders be thrown open by an Albanese government.

As they probably will be for the reason that Marxism, which Churchill likened to a bacillus plague, has infected many if not most of the West’s institutions through a variant which could be identified as ME2, Marxism with Elite characteristics. (ME1 would precede Marcuse’s invention of critical theory). Realising both Marx’s proletarians and Mao’s peasants are stubbornly conservative, ME2 thinkers substituted race and their invention, ‘gender’, as the new oppressed through whom the West and its institutions can be destroyed.

ME2 critical race theory has delivered an anti-white, anti-European agenda which has led some Western governments into deceitfully making sudden, secretive and irreversible changes to a country’s population and its sense of order.

This has been done not only without the consent of the electorate, but without even consulting them, probably in the belief that they will be neutered by the new votes the politicians believe they have bought.

Blair did this to Britain, Merkel to Germany and much of the European Union and now Biden is doing this to the US. It was only Abbott, with Morrison and Jim Molan, and at an earlier time, Howard, who saved Australia from a similar fate.

(Pity then that the politicians have so mishandled legitimate immigration. But that is another question.)

One truly informative feature of the current campaign is the debate over the Liberal candidate Katherine Deves. She is dedicated to saving women’s sport through the self-evident truth that sex is not a matter of choice and a born male can never become a woman. In this debate, Albanese has emerged as a card-carrying adherent of critical gender theory. This is a clear indication that he, like most politicians, is infected to the gills with the ME2 variant. He will inevitably follow this on the borders and everything else. He will be a local mirror of the Biden administration, hopefully not as bad.

Meanwhile, Morrison clearly rejects critical gender theory, has refused to bend the knee to Beijing and has appointed our first real Minister of Defence in many a year, Peter Dutton.

Dutton is the likely architect of Aukus, the one truly global response to the emerging Moscow-Beijing-Tehran Axis. Pending a return to the White House of Donald Trump or someone as effective, we, even more, need a government in Canberra that will stand up to China and resist the pressure to open the borders.

Conservatives would be advised to vote carefully, preferring proven candidates including those from sound smaller parties but ensuring their ultimate choice is a return of the Morrison government.

The future of this country is at stake as it rarely is in an election.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/04/is-albo-another-biden/

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Students shun maths as enrolments fall to all-time low

High school maths enrolments have collapsed to unprecedented low levels, sabotaging Australia’s shift to a “clever country” of tech-savvy workers.

The proportion of year 12 students studying the highest level of mathematics has fallen below 10 per cent for the first time, a new analysis by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute reveals in a “wake-up call” for educators and industry.

AMSI director Tim Marchant warns that maths enrolments have dropped to an “alarming new low”.

“Action must be taken now – these students are our future workforce,” he said.

“Mathematics skills are essential across so many industry sectors and the severity of this situation will impact Australia’s innovation capabilities.

“This data should be taken as a wake-up call and chance to reform.”

Professor Marchant called for better quality teaching, noting that up to 40 per cent of maths teachers were not qualified to teach the subject.

“Particularly in junior high school, years seven to 10, many (maths) classes are being taught by teachers that aren’t trained in mathematics,” he said.

“Students need their teachers to be trained in the discipline.

“We need to be working with these teachers, increasing their training and professional development.”

Only 9.2 per cent of year 12 students enrolled in specialist maths in 2020, compared with 11.6 per cent in 2008, the AMSI report shows.

Just 17.6 per cent studied intermediate mathematics in 2020 – down significantly from 23.3 per cent of students in 2008.

Together, the proportion of year 12 students who studied intermediate or advanced mathematics has crashed from 34.9 per cent in 2008 to 26.8 per cent in 2020.

Boys were nearly twice as likely to enrol in the highest level of maths, with 6.7 per cent of girls and 11.9 per cent of boys studying the subject in 2020.

Higher maths subjects are essential for university study in medicine, science, engineering and technology courses.

Professor Marchant said the schoolteacher shortage was exacerbated by competition for maths graduates to work in other industries.

“Demand is increasing for maths grads and the supply isn‘t there,” he said.

“For masters grads in maths sciences the starting salaries jumped about 20 per cent in the last five years to over $100,000, which is much more than other disciplines.”

Professor Marchant said Australia must produce more maths graduates to build a modern economy.

“The Australian economy is really evolving to a much more services-based and hi-tech type economy, and a lot of the new jobs involve data science and analytics, AI (artificial intelligence), cyber security, logistics, financial services,” he said.

“They all need maths, stats and data science.”

Professor Marchant called for more girls to study advanced maths in high school.

He said only 38 per cent of advanced maths students were female, although girls made up 49 per cent of intermediate maths students.

“I think it’s really important that the states and territories and the federal government work on increasing that to 50:50,” Professor Marchant said.

“We want gender equity in the various kinds of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) occupations.”

The AMSI report states that the national decline “can be traced back to one state, which changed its examination system in 2020, and where year 12 maths enrolments collapsed”.

AMSI refused to name the state, but in 2020 Queensland joined the rest of the nation in using the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank system.

As a result, students had to sit external exams for half their marks in maths, compared with in-school assessments used previously.

Fresh data from the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority shows the proportion of year 12 students studying specialist maths in Queensland has plunged from 10 per cent in 2019 to 5.9 per cent last year.

Enrolments in “mathematical methods”, the intermediate maths subject, collapsed from 37 per cent of year 12 students in 2019 to just 19 per cent last year.

In Victoria, 7.8 per cent of year 12 students completed specialist mathematics last year – down from 8.3 per cent in 2019 – while 31 per cent completed mathematical methods, similar to the rate in 2019.

In NSW, maths enrolments have remained stable, with 25 per cent of year 12s graduating with an advanced maths subject and about 17 per cent studying a maths extension subject last year.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/students-shun-maths-as-enrolments-fall-to-alltime-low/news-story/c08f2197fb24186768e8a05d591ca256

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Federal election 2022: Warning over Labor’s ‘stealth carbon tax’

Labor has been accused of planning a carbon tax by stealth with its policy to cut emissions from major industrial polluters as the climate wars ignited new political brawls despite a bipartisan commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

After Anthony Albanese pledged there would be no carbon tax “ever” if he became prime minister, Whitehaven Coal chief executive Paul Flynn warned that Labor’s plan to drive down emissions in the industrial sector was a “carbon levy by stealth”.

As Labor’s climate plans faced the blowtorch, splits widened in Coalition ranks, with Nationals senator Matt Canavan describing the ambition of net-zero emissions by 2050 as “dead’’, backing fellow Nationals MPs and candidates who had claimed it was “flexible’’.

“The net-zero thing is all sort of dead anyway,” Senator Canavan told the ABC. “Boris Johnson said he is pausing it. Germany is building coal and gas infrastructure. Italy’s reopening coal-fired power plants. It’s all over.”

The Prime Minister was forced to clarify that the government stood behind its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050 as Liberal MPs facing challenges from Climate 200-backed independents including Dave Sharma in Wentworth and Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney repudiated the Nationals’ comments.

“Our commitment to net zero by 2050 is a commitment of the Australian government that I made in Glasgow. It is the government’s absolute policy,” Mr Morrison said while campaigning in central Queensland.

With Labor facing growing questions about the impact of its policy after mixed messages from frontbenchers, Mr Flynn took aim at a centrepiece of its emissions-reduction plans — the safeguard mechanism — which will impose tighter limits on industrial polluters to force greater carbon cuts over the rest of the decade.

“It certainly looks as if some in the ALP want to turn an ­emissions-reporting mechanism into a carbon levy by stealth, all while claiming the policy position is pretty much the same as the ­existing government scheme,” Mr Flynn said.

“Those two things can’t be true at the same time. The fact the ALP sees such an enlarged role for the Clean Energy Regulator in negotiating with impacted facilities suggests some in Labor are only just beginning to turn their minds to what this policy might look like in practice and what the impacts could be across the economy.”

Opposition energy spokesman Chris Bowen said on Sunday coalmines would be forced to comply with Labor’s more stringent safeguard mechanism, after assistant climate change spokesman Pat Conroy last week said no coalmine would be affected by the policy.

The safeguard mechanism was created by the Abbott government and captures facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon a year, including 60 coalmines. It has been criticised by climate groups for doing little to enforce a lower carbon footprint from major emitters.

Sky News host Peta Credlin says Prime Minister Scott Morrison is “failing” to give his own voters something to… vote for, and he isn’t giving swing voters “enough to vote against”, as Labor maintains its lead in the latest Newspoll results. “Scott Morrison won his ‘miracle’ victory last More
Labor will move to bring steeper emissions-reduction requirements for major industrial emitters, with its modelling saying it will deliver 213 million tonnes of emissions reductions by 2030.

“Emissions covered by the safeguard mechanism have grown 7 per cent since its commencement in July 2016, rising to 140 million tonnes in 2020-21,” Labor’s ­modelling says. “Under current policy, covered emissions are projected to grow to 151 million tonnes by 2030 to be 27 per cent above 2005 levels.”

Under Labor’s version of the safeguard mechanism, the cap for the 215 biggest industrial emitters will be progressively lowered to put the nation in line with Mr Albanese’s target to lower emissions by 43 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. Companies that exceed “baseline limits” will need to offset emissions through carbon credit purchases, predicted to be about $24 per tonne of carbon.

Mr Albanese on Tuesday echoed former prime minister Julia Gillard’s infamous pledge in the 2010 election campaign in declaring there would be no carbon tax under his government. “There will be no carbon tax ever,” Mr Albanese told 2GB radio. Ms Gillard broke her promise after the 2010 election when she did a deal with the Greens to implement what she described as a “tax”.

Mr Morrison said Labor’s plan to reform the safeguard mechanism would lead to fossil fuel companies being penalised and taxed.

“The carbon credits scheme that Labor has put in place, just to be clear, it not only affects the coal industry, it affects mining and oil and gas production,” Mr Morrison said. “It affects rail freight. It affects cement production. It affects fuel refining. And many other sectors are caught up in those arrangements which would see them penalised and taxed.”

On Tuesday, Mr Conroy said he did not regret saying coalmines would not be impacted by Labor’s policy “because it’s true”.

“The policy very clearly stated that when the Clean EnergyRegulator looked at the trajectories for each of the facility, they would take into account two factors: one, the available technology, and emerging technology to allow that facility to reduce its emissions; and, very importantly, the comparative constraint that their international competitors face,” Mr Conroy said.

“The coalmining industry will not suffer a disadvantage or a negative impact compared to their international competitors.

“And that’s further confirmed by our independent and comprehensive economic modelling that made it very clear. That found that not a single coalmine would close early because of our policy, and not a single coalmining job will be lost because of our policy.”

While Labor has confirmed coalmines will be part of its safeguard mechanism, it has promised trade exposed sectors will be at no disadvantage to international competitors. Labor will decide in government how each facility will drive down emissions based on the advice of the Clean Energy Regulator.

Whitehaven Coal, which last month sold 70,000 tonnes of coal to the federal government as part of a donation to energy-starved Ukraine, is committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 and is a member of the Minerals Council of Australia. The chairman of Whitehaven Coal is Mark Vaile, a former Nationals MP and deputy prime minister.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/federal-election-2022-warning-over-labors-stealth-carbon-tax/news-story/70ec5196f1fbab3ca8bfe8f20a7e93ca

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Greenies as prohibitionists

Matt Canavan

As I was driving home on Saturday after a busy day, I realised that everything I had done that day, the Greens want to ban. I had not had this much fun campaigning since Bob Brown came to town.

I had started the day at RockyNats. A worthy successor to SummerNats, the annual car festival of burnouts, drag races and drifting that comes to Canberra once a year. The SummerNats organisers have squeezed in a second event in Rockhampton to be held over Easter. They’re perhaps getting in more festivals before the Greens want to ban the sale of petrol cars by 2030.

I then headed over to Paradise Lagoons just west of Rockhampton, where a massive horse ring and grandstand emerges from the Fitzroy river floodplain. Built by the visionary cattle king Graham Acton, the Paradise Lagoons campdraft this year celebrated its 20th anniversary and people come from all over the country to compete.

I am not sure whether the Greens know what campdrafting is but when they find out I am pretty sure they will want to ban it, too.

I finished the day at the Professional Bull Riders rodeo at the Great Western Hotel, the only pub in Australia with a rodeo ring inside the pub. After sadly shutting due to Covid, the Great Western is back and it was pumping on Saturday night. It takes a special kind of guts, or perhaps insanity, to jump on the back of a 800 kg raging bull for eight seconds.

The Greens have introduced legislation to ban rodeos.

The Greens wrap their self-appointed roles as the fun police in concern over the environment and animal welfare. The truth is more prosaic, however; the Greens just want to have power to tell people what to do.

The Greens are a modern form of the Temperance movement that succeeded in disastrously outlawing alcohol in early 20th-century United States. Their aims were well intentioned. Our society remains afflicted by too much consumption of liquor and drugs but you cannot remove human sin through the law book.

All prohibition did was create a thriving underground industry run by criminal organisations that led to more violence than ever committed by drunks.

Notwithstanding this sobering tale, the modern day Temperance movement in the Greens wants to outlaw much more. The Greens want to ban or restrict cars, red meat, coal, gas, oil, zoos, factory farming, horse and greyhound racing, dams, forestry, fishing, plastics, live exports, bawdy jokes, smoking and guns. And that is just a selection from five minutes or so on their website.

It would probably be simpler to write a list of the things that you will be allowed to do under a Green dictatorship. Whatever is permitted, there will not be much fun.

In the Greens world you will be able to watch all sorts of violence online but you had better not go hunting to provide food and clothing. In the Greens world you will be able to consume all sorts of exotic illicit drugs but dare not have a smoke at the end of a hard day’s work. In the Greens world you can invest whatever money you like in carbon credits but putting a bit on the dogs at the pub is the work of the devil.

When you make this comparison you realise that the Greens are afraid of the real world. Their obsession with drugs, virtual experiences and the latest climate fad all allow them to escape from the harsh realities of the need to provide food and energy.

That is how their policies are so often disconnected from reality. They do not know how things actually work because they rarely do any hard yakka – aka ‘work’ – in the real world. They are not – or do not know any – people who drill for oil and gas. They are not – or do not know any – people who raise and slaughter cattle for food.

The Labor party used to have people who grew food, made things with their hands or mined coal. That always helped to keep the more crazy parts of their left wing in check. However, the modern Labor party is full of people who have gone straight from university to union activist to parliamentarian. They have lost touch with the real world.

As a politician in a country area, I visit mines, factories and farms regularly. I hear from people on the frontline how hard it is to deal with uncaring bureaucrats, unethical banks and unprincipled unions.

The same people that want to take away our fun want to take away our work. The Greens and their friends in the Labor party are on the ultimate power trip thinking that can control everything, including the temperature of the globe.

Carbon traders are the successors of the Temperance activists. Just look at how the authoritarian left are salivating at the prospect of Central Bank Digital Currencies, which could be weaponised to give us all carbon budgets of 14 grams of red meat a day, as recommended by the United Nations.

In the meantime, Labor has consoled itself by promising a new carbon trading scheme for over 200 businesses Australia-wide. These include almost all our iron ore mines, coal mines, gas facilities, major factories and our last two oil refineries.

Just like Prohibition, if we tax these industries to oblivion they will just move to other countries. It is like the old Hale & Pace joke, ‘no, I don’t think we should ban mining because it would just go underground then, wouldn’t it?’ By sending our mining industries offshore, more Australian jobs would be lost to overseas.

And we would be poorer for it and would not be able to afford to buy cars to do burnouts, buy bulls to use in rodeos or have the money to travel to a campdraft. Maybe this is the Greens plan then. The Greens will never get popular support to ban fun, but if they scare us so much about the climate, they just may make us too poor to have any.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/04/australian-notes-316

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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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