Australian Politics
The main driver for this change is to exculpate young Aborigines, who are commonly expert sneak thieves from an early age. The change would give them licence to offend repeatedly. But Leftists just see their age and want them exonerated on that ground alone -- with the usual Leftist blindness to consequences
Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman says she will look at the minimum age of detention in Queensland following Tasmania’s move to increase it from 10 to 14.
Ms Fentiman described the recently announced decision by the Tasmanian Liberal government as an “interesting reform” as she spoke before the Queensland Media Club on Tuesday.
Under 14s will no longer be admitted to detention under the flagged changes in Tasmania, which are set to come into effect from 2024 – but they will still be held criminally responsible.
“Here in Queensland, very few young people – particularly aged ten to 12 – actually are in detention,” Ms Fentiman said. “But I think it is an interesting reform to look at. “Very happy to look at Tasmania’s approach, which is looking at detention, not (criminal) responsibility.”
Ms Fentiman acknowledged every jurisdiction across the country was meanwhile pushing for the minimum age of criminal responsibility to be raised from ten to 12.
She suggested each jurisdiction would want to make the move together to ensure consistency – with work underway in each state and territory to determine how it could be done.
“We haven’t had a Meeting of Attorneys-General yet with the new (federal) Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, but I know he is very interested in this,” she said.
“And perhaps we will get some leadership from the federal government on this issue as well which would help.”
Meanwhile, it can be revealed the government is now considering the Bob Atkinson-led review into its youth justice reforms – but it is yet to publicly release the report to the community.
Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said if the government valued transparency and wanted to take meaningful action on youth crime, it would release the report “immediately”.
“Is the government keeping this report secret because the Premier doesn’t want the negative publicity when it’s released,” he asked.
In response to questions put to Youth Justice Minister Leanne Linard, a spokeswoman would only say the report would be released “soon” – with recommendations being considered by the government.
She also wouldn’t say if electronic monitoring devices as a condition of bail for accused youth offenders would be made a permanent measure beyond the trial period.
As of January, only three electronic monitoring devices had been fitted on 16 and 17-year-olds as a condition of bail following the introduction of the government’s laws.
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"Dark Emu" rebuttal added to school reading list
"Dark Emu" is a monstrous work of fiction parading as history. But the Left love it. They routinely ignore the facts. That's what they do
A critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu has been included by Victoria’s curriculum authority on a resource list for the state’s Australian history teachers to use in the classroom.
In the latest challenge to Professor Pascoe’s work, a book by anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe – which says Dark Emu relies on colonial accounts as sources – has been endorsed by the state’s curriculum chiefs.
Professor Pascoe says before European conquest, Indigenous Australians engaged in sophisticated agricultural and farming techniques. He contends that precolonial Aboriginal people sometimes lived in houses and villages and employed technology to harvest food.
Professor Sutton and Dr Walshe challenge this, claiming Indigenous Australians were “complex hunter-gatherers”.
Their work, Farmers or hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu debate, was published last year and has been added to a list of optional resources, alongside Dark Emu, for teachers and now thousands of year 11 and 12 students across the state to use in the study of Australian history.
Professor Sutton, from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian museum, said if students were being given Dark Emu without a critical analysis of the work, they were being “misled”.
“I think that’s quite shameful. Let’s say the Dalai Lama tells you that two and two makes five. You say, look, with all due respect, your spiritual highness, two and two does not make five,” he told The Australian.
“So this issue is not really about Bruce … It’s about whether students are being guided … in terms of reliable sources of factual information.”
Professor Pascoe’s 2014 work, Dark Emu Black Seeds: agriculture or accident?, has been included on the same list since at least 2015 according to a VCAA resource list dated that year.
It argues that the economy and culture of Indigenous Australians before European conquest has been undervalued, and that journals and diaries of explorers revealed “a much more complicated Aboriginal economy than the primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle we had been told was the simple lot of Australia’s First People.”
Professor Sutton and Dr Walshe “contend that Pascoe is broadly wrong” and say Indigenous Australians were “hunter-gatherers-plus” whose “hunting, fishing and gathering economy was far more complex than might be imagined from the word ‘mere’.”
Dark Emu is listed as an optional resource in two NSW high school subject “sample programs” – they include stage 6 Investigating science and Stage 4 Technology Mandatory – but it is not a prescribed text. Nor is Professor Sutton’s work.
Queensland and Western Australia recommend neither book as a prescribed or recommended resource.
Professor Sutton, an anthropologist since 1969, said students should have the opportunity to review both pieces of work, not Dark Emu alone. “(Dark Emu should) either be excluded on the basis that it’s been disproved by the heavy weight of Aboriginal evidence in our expert opinion or you present both that book and its answer and you get the students to compare the pair,” he said.
“I often say to people ‘Don‘t read our book first. Go and buy a copy of Dark Emu, have a good read, then read ours,’ ”
Professor Pascoe did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman from Victoria’s Department of Education said books were selected by individual schools to support teachers in delivering the state’s curriculum.
“Texts to support the implementation of the Victorian curriculum are determined by individual schools, consistent with advice provided by the Department of Education and Training on the selection of suitable teaching resources,” he said.
“Farmers or hunter-gatherers: The Dark Emu debate" by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe is not on any of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s prescribed text lists for senior secondary VCE studies. However, the book is on a list of optional resources that teachers may use to explore a range of different interpretations of the past in the study of VCE Australian History Units 3 and 4.”
Professor Sutton described his work as a “forensic examination” of Professor Pascoe’s, whom he said omitted evidence that did not suit his theory and relied too heavily on the work of European explorers.
Professor Sutton’s work is included in the optional reading list for the VCE subject area “from custodianship to the Anthropocene (60,000 BCE-1901)”.
A spokeswoman for the national curriculum authority, the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority, said it did not recommend books for students to read.
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Cook cancelled: when will we call this out as racism?
Peaceful explorer, cartographer, and navigator Captain James Cook has been removed from the Australia versus England Test match crystal Cook Cup.
After a quarter of a century, one of the greatest men in history will be replaced by the ‘Ella-Mobbs Trophy’ due to be unveiled in Perth this July.
The hyphenated name is for two people, an English winger and casualty of the first world war on the Western Front Edgar Mobbs, and the Indigenous Australian Mark Ella who served as the first Indigenous captain.
Ultra-Woke Rugby Australia is believed to have led the move to rename the cup.
Bowing to the ridiculous cancel culture of the foreign Marxist-driven social movement set on committing acts of cultural vandalism in the West, Rugby Australia and the Rugby Football Union said that this change would ‘better represent’ the history of both nations.
‘The majority of Indigenous people wouldn’t want that [Cook’s name] on the cup,’ said Glen Ella, Mark’s twin, in a comment that would be deemed highly offensive and inappropriate if it were said about an Indigenous person.
‘I don’t have a problem, personally, it doesn’t really worry me. But to do the right thing by Aboriginal people, yeah, I understand why they’ve made that call. There is still a lot of angst about that among the elders, so they’re doing the right thing and making an effort to change the name to something more to do with rugby, and not carry those connotations.’
Considering Cook discovered Australia, no one would be playing rugby and certainly not an Australia-England Test match if it weren’t for Captain Cook.
‘The Wallabies’ England Test series will see a new trophy introduced for all future series between the nations. Australia and England first played against each other in a Test match in 1909 in London. With such a vast history between them, Rugby Australia and the Rugby Football Union made the decision that the trophy should better represent the proud rugby history of both nations,’ said an RFU spokesperson.
The claim is that Cook is a divisive figure in Australia – except that he isn’t – or at least he wasn’t until the Black Lives Matter mob latched onto the navigator and tried to tear down his achievements to elevate their race-driven revenge activism.
It has become Woke and ‘cool’ to hate the people who contributed the most to the founding of Australia, even when they were decent human beings.
Captain Cook quite literally put Australia on the map. By all accounts, his morality, ethics, courage, and leadership stand in better stead than most activists screeching at the nearest microphone. He was revered and honoured across Australian culture because he deserved it. He is also the link between England and Australia, hence his significance for the Test match trophy.
Despite being a good and peaceful man, he was killed and cooked in 1779 by Hawaiian natives.
The only criticism activists can level at Cook is that he ‘enabled Colonialism’ but if activists were being honest with history and themselves, every culture on Earth went out and explored lands. The Indigenous people of Australia are themselves explorers from Asia who came down in successive waves with today’s people having warred with, intermarried, and in many cases killed existing tribes.
As far as anyone can tell, Cook never killed anyone. At one point, he fired three non-lethal loads toward antagonistic Aboriginal warriors with the intention of scaring them away. One shot slightly injured a warrior in the leg after the warrior had thrown stones and other projectiles at Cook’s men. The object was to keep his crew safe after cultural misunderstandings arose during otherwise peaceful trade negotiations which the Aboriginal people had previously been engaged in. What is often left out of the story is that at the time of the shots being fired, the Aboriginal warriors were throwing poisoned darts with the intent of killing. Cook was merely trying to hold them back without causing harm while his men retreated.
This trade exchange between two peoples who were unable to communicate except through the most crude of hand signals and offerings is exaggerated by activists into an act of imperialism or aggression. It is a complete nonsense and fabrication of history designed to re-paint the world as a ‘struggle’ between victims and oppressors instead of human beings trying to navigate the world and its challenges.
Cook was an adventurer that greatly expanded our scientific knowledge of nature and geography – something that the Left proclaim to value and yet refuse to praise or acknowledge the individuals who actually did it because they don’t like the colour of their skin.
Cancelling people because of their heritage, culture, or skin colour is a racist trend imported from jealous, hateful Marxists looking to tear down their ideological betters and replace Australia’s truly equal political system with a race-based society of victimhood and division which can be easily extorted for money and power.
The Left love to go on about ‘offense’ well, it is offensive to attack, malign, and paint an historical figure like Captain James Cook with fabricated hatred. It shows a complete lack of respect to Australia, its history, and the story of how we all came to be here together in peace.
Shame on Rugby Australia and RFU for cancelling one of the greatest men in Australian history – especially considering they chase balls around for a living. Perspective…
https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/cook-cancelled-when-will-we-call-this-out-as-racism/
**********************************************Coal, gas payments for reliable power fix
Coal and gas power stations would receive payments to secure reliable supply and keep Australia’s ailing electricity system operating, as the government faces pressure to avoid blackouts and fix the national energy crisis.
The Energy Security Board has rejected demands for the fossil fuels to be cut from its draft capacity mechanism, saying it was essential coal and gas plants did not exit the power grid before replacement renewables and storage generation were in place.
The mechanism would allow generators to be paid for guaranteeing standby supply to meet demand, helping to avoid a repeat of the current grid suspension and incentivise companies to invest in new energy capacity.
But the states will retain the final say over whether to include coal and gas in the mechanism amid calls for it to be focused on storage technologies to support more renewables.
“From an investor’s point of view, a capacity mechanism would reduce reliance on wholesale market outcomes that are becoming increasingly difficult to predict. It would provide an alternative revenue source that would be potentially more predictable and secure, rewarding the capacity service that the market needs,” the ESB said.
After a horror week which saw the entire national electricity market suspended, repeat warnings of blackouts and allegations from Anthony Albanese that generators were gaming the system, the ESB said offering incentives only to new clean energy and storage suppliers would hand them an unfair advantage over existing generators, including coal and gas.
“Providing payments to only new capacity would, all else being equal, give them a competitive advantage while at the same time reduce revenues for all capacity providers – through increased competition, which will drive prices down – and potentially make some uneconomic, thereby increasing the risk of a disorderly transition to net zero,” the ESB said.
The loss of a quarter of coal supply in recent weeks has contributed to soaring wholesale prices and the threat of power blackouts, underlining the need for the fossil fuel to remain in the electricity mix during the transition to a renewables-dominated energy system.
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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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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
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