Dismantling Australia

The great civilizational success of Australia is a dagger in the heart to the hate-filled:Left and they are determined to destroy it

Back in 2017, the University of Sydney launched a campaign to ‘unlearn’ education. In 2022, the University of Melbourne upped the ante by launching a campaign to unlearn the entire nation. In an extraordinary act of institutional suicide, one of Australia’s most prestigious universities has introduced an initiative titled Undoing Australia.

The enterprise is being run by The Australian Centre, a research unit of the university’s faculty of arts which has set out to prove Australia is an ‘unfinished political project’ that is ‘constructed, contested and refused every day’. Key focus areas include policy, law, education, literature and the media – all picked due to their dubious roots in the ‘colonial nation-state’.

At the heart of the Undoing Australia project is a desire to dismantle the Australian nation-state entirely in order to right past wrongs. The initiative is revolutionary, promoting activism, statue-toppling and the eradication of a positive narrative about Western civilisation from the history books. The political, legal and social framework of our nation must go down in flames before a new, vaguely defined utopia can rise from the ashes to replace it. This message is evident in The Australian Centre’s obsession with white supremacy, white privilege and entrenched racism.

One webinar titled ‘Whiteness in Education’ looks at how ‘whiteness’ is not innate but learned. According to Associate Professor Jessica Gerrard and Dr Sophie Rudolph, ‘the systems of white dominance that operate worldwide are not natural but created and maintained through social and political life’. They advance the argument that education and government are sustaining ‘systems of racial domination’. The authors encourage listeners to grapple with the ‘politics of education’ and reimagine a future ‘thoroughly divested from racism’.

Next is a webinar which asks the weighted question ‘How do we tell the truth about Australia?’ According to Professor Sarah Maddison and Dr Julia Hurst, ‘truth-telling’ by way of ‘truth commissions’ will play a pivotal role in responding to a ‘culture of active silence on colonialism’. The reference to ‘truth-telling’ is puzzling to say the least given most of the University of Melbourne’s postmodernist intellectuals don’t even believe in truth.

This contradiction is openly admitted by the authors who claim that ‘truth-telling rarely lives up to its promise’ and ‘it is not clear that there is a shared understanding of what truth might offer’. On top of this, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are praised in the webinar for investigating historical and ongoing injustices against indigenous people. All these examples suggest that ‘truth-telling’ is in fact a priority for Australians and ‘colonialism’ a hot topic of discussion in the public sphere.

A third webinar titled ‘Counter-Monuments: Challenging distorted colonial histories’ examines how a culture of silence on colonialism can be combatted by toppling imperial-era statues and building counter-monuments. Indigenous woman Genevieve Grieves and Dr Amy Spiers note that public memorials ‘celebrating imperial conquest’ are now inciting action against ‘racist violence’. They claim white settlers are routinely honoured over indigenous counterparts. Their solution to this inequality is more ‘counter-monuments’ bringing to light the darker aspects of Australian history.

Last but not least is a webinar titled ‘Dismantling Settler Futures’ which looks at how the ‘colonial future’ can be rejected to make way for a new age of indigenous empowerment. Dr Alissa Macoun and Dr Elizabeth Strakosch argue that ‘settler colonial technologies’ operating through Australian indigenous policy are sustaining the ‘settler project’. They decry any non-indigenous claim to ‘sovereign legitimacy’ as ‘violence’. Even ‘decolonising agendas’ are tainted by ‘European understandings of sovereignty’. Given neither author claims indigenous heritage, this naturally raises questions about the legitimacy of their own arguments. For instance, Dr Macoun self-identifies as a ‘white woman’, a fact which could taint her opinions on indigenous matters according to her own logic.

Perhaps the academics behind the Undoing Australia project are forgetting the benefits of the so-called ‘settler project’ which include Western intellectual traditions and Judeo-Christian values. British and European settlers imported democracy, freedom, education, tolerance, welfare and human rights to Australian shores. The campaign to ‘refuse settler futures’ is a campaign to refuse a socio-political system which has brought freedom and prosperity to billions of people across the globe.

Moreover, Professor Maddison and Dr Hurst’s accusation that there is a ‘culture of active silence on colonialism’ in Australia collapses upon examination. In fact, the opposite is true. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Culture is one of the three cross-curriculum priorities taught in all Australian schools from kindergarten to year 10. Most Australian universities have entire departments and multiples policies devoted to educating students about indigenous culture. The so-called ‘culture of active silence’ on indigenous issues is well and truly dead.

Educators involved in the Undoing Australia project who suggest otherwise are weaponising words like ‘truth-telling’ to impute the guilt of historical figures onto current mainstream Australians. They claim that this nation’s institutions are riddled with racism and need to be replaced.

Unfortunately, while there are plenty of criticisms in this webinar series, solutions are few and far between. What is clear is that apologies, reparations and welfare will abound. It will be a world of colonial statue-toppling, indigenous politics, truth commissions and treaty negotiations. The University of Melbourne’s plan to ‘Undo Australia’ is self-destructive, disingenuous and fails to recognise the great achievements of this country. Australia would be better served by its oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning if they focused on building up rather than tearing down this nation.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/undoing-australia/

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International students are applying for Australian visas in record numbers

Good for university finances

The number of international students applying for visas hit an all-time record in June, giving heart to universities and other education providers who are looking for a strong bounce back in student numbers.

In an update sent to education providers on Monday, the Home Affairs Department said that about 42,700 student visa applications had been lodged in June, in a post-Covid rush to return to Australia.

“This is the largest number of offshore applications received in a single month in the last 10 years,” the department told education providers. Because the number of international students coming to Australia in the past decade is far higher than in earlier decades, the June figure is an all-time record.

The department said that the high numbers seen in June are continuing, with an average of 10,000 student visa applications a week being received during July from offshore applicants. In comparison, only 34,015 student visa applications were received in June 2019, before the pandemic.

International Education Association of Australia CEO Phil Honeywood said the figures showed that demand was recovering “notwithstanding the reputational damage” which Australia had suffered as an education destination during the pandemic.

“This latest data proves there is still a strong appetite to study in Australia,” Mr Honeywood said.

The record number of applications will put even more pressure on the Department of Home Affairs which has struggled to process the volume of student visa applications since borders opened at the end of last year.

In an effort to speed up processing the department has assigned 140 more people to visa processing in its overseas offices since May.

Last week Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said 62,000 student visas had been finalised since the beginning of June but warned that the situation would not change quickly.

“The processing of visas will continue to be a major priority for this government, but reducing the backlog of applications can’t happen overnight,” Mr Giles said.

“People reallocated to dealing with the visa applications on hand need to be trained and skilled before they can go about this important work.”

Currently the international education industry is lagging well behind the boom conditions it experienced pre-Covid, when the value of Australia’s education exports reached a record $40.3 billion in 2019.

The latest student data from the federal Education Department, issued on Monday, said that 171,000 international students had commenced courses in the five months to May this year, 31 per cent less than in the same period of 2019.

Mr Honeywood said it was important to learn from experience as international education recovered from Covid.

“Lessons learnt from the pandemic show that we need to build back better,” he said. “Going forward, the key concerns include visa processing times, motivation of student applicants and diversity of source countries.”

Currently international students have no limit on the hours they work since the Morrison government removed the previous 40 hours per fortnight restriction in an effort to ease labour shortages.

However this has raised concern that international students are being attracted to Australia by the prospect of working to earn money in a high wage economy rather than coming to study.

If the Albanese government does not move to reinstate the work hours restriction there are fears it could damage Australia’s reputation for quality education.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/international-students-are-applying-for-australian-visas-in-record-numbers/news-story/141b8c5dcdc5da1f6396ee6ffa725b9c

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Climate tropes: Don’t be fooled

Judith Sloan

Last week, I wrote about the importance of language as a means of influencing people’s thinking and, indeed, decision-making. When it comes to manipulating language, turning meanings on their head and creating short-hand terms to deride opponents, the Left has won hands down.

I used examples from economics because that’s what I know best. But let’s face it, climate tropes are another outstanding case in which language is constantly used to persuade doubters to change their minds and to bolster the case for action, aka feathering the nests of green rent-seekers.

One example is renewable energy. It’s misleading because it fails to highlight the two key features, its intermittency and its low density relative to fossil fuels. But I guess weather-dependent, unreliable energy just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

It’s worth interrogating some climate tropes because they are important to understanding how well-heeled electors fall for the claims of activists – think here of the good burghers of Kooyong, Wentworth and the like. (To be sure, having lots of assets and high incomes incline these folk to hold post-material, worthy opinions even if they know in their hearts a lot of it is wishful thinking, at best, and complete hogwash, at worst.)

Let’s start with the most fundamental of all climate chestnuts – the science is settled. Any sensible person would immediately smell a rat. What the hell is ‘the science’? There is no such thing as ‘the science’. The very process of scientific discovery means nothing is truly settled. The best scientific approach is to test a refutable hypothesis but most climate science uses black-box, simplified models with untested predictions the main output. When the predictions are back-cast using data that is already in the can, the errors are there for all to see. But for climate scientists, there are always excuses.

(Some of you may have followed the recent ructions in medical science. In the case of the efficacy of antidepressants working to affect serotonin uptake, it turns out that there is no evidence and many millions of prescriptions may have been written for no benefit to patients. Fraud turns out to be the foundation for the incorrect belief – scientific belief – that the build-up of plaque in the brain is the principal cause of dementia. But, hey, the science was settled.)

Another favourite climate platitude is that renewables are cheaper than other forms of electricity generation. A very large number of current Labor ministers fall for this line. The Prime Minister is still banging on about cheaper, more reliable renewable energy and making some ludicrous suggestion that Australia can become a renewable energy superpower – another climate cliché.

Even Defence Minister Richard Marles who is no fool, has fallen into the same trap. ‘We’ve made it very clear we’re going to act on climate change in a way which gets more renewables into the electricity grid. The real thing now is that renewable power is cheap power, and then we’ll see electricity prices come down.’ Here’s the thing, Dick, the wholesale price of electricity in Australia has risen as the proportion of renewables in the grid has risen. In the middle of last decade, the wholesale price was around $70 per megawatt hour; it is now around $350, after a very substantial expansion in renewable energy installations.

Even the green activist regulator, the Australian Energy Market Operator, has conceded that the recent high wholesale electricity prices and convulsions in the National Electricity Market are in part due to the lack of coal-fired generation. That’s right, not having enough coal has been causing problems. The failure to link increases in subsidised renewable energy in the grid – recently, mainly as a result of state government and corporate initiatives – to the exit and unreliability of coal-fired power is a potent reminder of how removed green dreamers are from reality. Why would any rational owner spend money maintaining or extending the life of a 24/7 coal-fired electricity plant when various governments deliberately undercut their business models and gun for their exit?

A dictum frequently used by the climate crowd and associated politicians is ‘international pariah’. Unless Australia signs up to ambitious targets; fully commits to the Paris climate agreement; contributes to the climate fund for developing countries, we risk becoming an ‘international pariah’.

But if you read international media, as I do, there is hardly ever a mention of Australia being an international pariah on climate action. Sure, egg-heads like Alok Sharma, UK parliamentarian and president of Cop 26, and John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, criticise Australia’s emissions reductions. But these men do this for their own self-serving reasons while Canada and New Zealand, whose leaders are fully-signed up climate evangelists, largely escape criticism because they make the right climate sounds even though their emissions reductions are much worse. And do you ever hear Sharma or Kerry, who regularly fly around the world in private jets, criticise China, the world’s largest emitter by far? It’s obvious to any rational person that China has been playing the West like a violin, pretending to be concerned about the climate while cashing in (and cornering the market) on the export of renewable paraphernalia.

Don’t get me on to electric vehicles. The preferred term is Zero Emitting Vehicles, to emphasise their virtue. As if? EVs involve 40 per cent more emissions before they even hit the road. And given that electricity is generated mostly by fossil fuels in almost all countries, it’s a bald-faced lie to call them zero emitting. We are being taken for fools. It’s time to fight back.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/climate-tropes/

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Australia Day (dangerous) Melbourne Pride (safe)

Just three days after Daniel Andrews expressed doubts about whether it would be safe to hold an Australia Day Parade, the Victoria Premier has announced a Pride street party.

With Covid still circulating in the community, the government is taking a cautious approach to January 26 Australia Day celebrations.

You might imagine that with the Monkey pox being declared a global emergency and circulating in a very specific community, the government might also take a cautious approach to Gay Pride gatherings.

Not so much.

We are told that associating the Monkey pox with gay men risks creating stigma. This is despite 98 per cent of cases reportedly occurring in gay men presenting at health clinics and the World Health Organisation releasing a specific health warning to the LGBTQ+ community advising them to ‘reduce their sexual partners’.

An LBGTQ+ health advocate quoted last week by SBS said: ‘The virus doesn’t discriminate … this virus could infect anyone.’

Technically, that is true, but in practice there are significant risk factors. There have been almost 20,000 Monkey pox cases worldwide, with around 19,600 of those contracted by ‘men who have sex with other men’ – as the WHO put it.

Accuracy is meant to be crucial for health matters, so why are the media choosing to run with ‘this virus could infect anyone’ as if you might pick it up grocery shopping?

Sure, the Andrews government told children to stay away from playgrounds to avoid catching the Covid, but it hasn’t even thought about restricting high-risk LGBTQ+ events.

While Australia Day festivities are still very much up in the air, a press release from the Premier’s office yesterday enthused:

‘The Andrews Labor Government is throwing a massive summer street party as part of a statewide celebration of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) communities.’ Woohoo! Monkey-Covid for everyone!

The double standard applied by the Labor government is breathtaking.

Remember when two elderly women sitting on a park bench during the Covid pandemic were surrounded by five Victorian police officers anxious to avert a super spreader event?

There are no such concerns with the worldwide Monkey pox outbreak and a Pride street party. Everything is LGBTQ-A-OK in the Republic of Danistan.

The Premier said:

‘The street party will support the Government’s continued efforts to achieve equality for LGBTIQ+ Victorians, by breaking down the stigma and discrimination they continue to face and providing opportunities for rainbow communities to connect and celebrate who they are.’

With the emphasis on ‘breaking down the stigma’, one could be forgiven for asking whether the Andrews government was prioritising ‘Woke’ over public safety.

Mr Andrews tweeted excitedly:

‘It was one of last summer’s best parties – so we’re doing it all again in 2023. Live music and performers are coming together to celebrate pride, love and diversity in Victoria – where equality is non-negotiable.’ The tweet goes on to say, ‘Daniel Andrews invited you’ and asks people to RSVP.

I’m not sure that an invitation from Daniel Andrews is all that appealing. But I digress.

There is another double standard that will not be lost on long suffering Victorians.

Mr Andrews, who created a ‘vaccinated economy’ where the unvaxxed where shut out of employment and commerce, says the street party will demonstrate that in Victoria ‘equality is non-negotiable’.

Tell perfectly healthy Victorians who are unable to work because of their vaccination status that equality in Dan Andrews’ Victoria is ‘non-negotiable’.

And will admission to the LGBTQ+ festival be restricted to those who have had the Monkey pox vaccine? Will LGBTQ+ revellers be forced to show their Monkey pox vaccination status before being granted entry?

Of course not. The Victorian government would never stigmatise anyone, I mean, aside from everyone who dares to exercise their own judgement about medical treatment for their own body.

It’s hard to see any equality at all in Victoria for having one’s vision blocked by very selective applications of the ALP’s version of equality that continually creates division and discrimination.

Fortunately, there is a Victoria state election on November 26. People – gay and straight – who value their liberty will be hoping to party that evening, without Daniel Andrews.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/australia-day-dangerous-melbourne-pride-safe/

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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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