Australian Politics
Karl Stefanovic slams plans to introduce a smacking ban on kids in Australia
The claim that smacking/spanking has bad mental health outcomes is based on the old fallacy that correlation is causation. The bad mental health among some children who are smacked could be a CAUSE rather than the result of the smacking. Ill-behaved children are more likely to be smacked and mental health problems can cause bad behaviour. See here for an example of the research concerned
My father never laid a hand on me nor did I ever lay a hand on my son but both of us are quiet intellectual types not drawn to any kind of florid behaviour. But all children are not the same and some children do need pressure to observe boundaries. And smacking is a clear sign that a boundary has been transgressed.
Karl Stefanovic has furiously shot down plans to introduce a ban on Australian parents giving their kids a smack.
University of Melbourne Professor Sophie Havighurst supports the idea of making corporal punishment illegal, saying it 'has effects on children in a whole range of different ways'.
She referenced research from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study that found 61 per cent of young Aussies had been smacked at least four times in their life. 'We now know that that doubles their chances of anxiety and depression,' Prof Havighurst told The Today Show on Thursday morning.
But Stefanovic wasn't having any of it, saying there was no need for a law change. 'I don't want to see any more legislation around me as a parent, my head explodes,' he said.
'And the idea of parents being charged or going into court for smacking a child. I mean, come on, Sophie, give me a break, please.'
The professor said she wasn't seeking any consequences for those who use physical punishment on their children, but wanted the law to change. 'Any form of smacking or physical discipline has been found to have a negative effect on children,' she said.
Sixty-three countries around the world have made physical punishment against children illegal including Scotland, Sweden and Korea.
Prof Havighurst said the law change hadn't led to an increase in prosecution of parents who hit their kids in any of those countries. She said banning the behaviour would lead to a cultural and attitude change among Aussie parents.
The expert sympathised with Stefanovic's concerns parents would be charged for smacking their children, but said discussion around the topic was important. 'We all have times when we lose it ... but in New Zealand when they changed the law in 2007, they didn't get an increase in what you're fearful of,' she said.
'We don't want the government and police having more involvement in our family lives but we do know that law change can guide us to use other ways of parenting and that's really important.'
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth also weighed in on the matter, saying the bottom line was that parents should not smack their kids - but that making the behaviour illegal wasn't necessary.
'My view is that governments should do their best to educate and make sure kids are safe,' he said. 'Criminalising aspects of parenting, even those aspects that are wrong, shouldn't be the direction the government should be going in, in my view.'
In Australia it's currently legal for parents to smack their kids but varying states have specific rules on the matter.
In NSW, the physical punishment should not be painful for more than a brief moment, and kids can't be hit on their heads or necks.
In Victoria, there is no legislation surrounding parents applying physical punishment to their kids while in various other states it must be considered 'reasonable under the circumstances'.
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Pronoun confusion
The word ‘they’ has two legitimate uses and one illegitimate use. The first proper and legitimate use is as the subjective case of the third person plural pronoun – that is, to refer to a bunch of people. The second is as a singular pronoun in cases where it is impossible to know the gender of the person referred to, for example: ‘If someone wins the lottery they should…’ In such cases, and only in such cases, it is proper to use ‘they’ just as ‘you’ has been employed for centuries – covering both singular and plural.
However, it is improper, illegitimate and totally appalling to use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun when the gender is known. This has been done, apparently, by Northlakes High School in NSW. At that school, the boys’ toilet has a sign saying ‘He/They’ and the girls’ toilet one saying ‘She/They.’ This is wrong on so many fronts it’s hard to know where to begin. For a start, toilets are not normally labelled with pronouns – they are labelled ‘mens’ (or ‘gents’) and ‘womens’ (or ‘ladies’). In a school context this becomes ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Switching to a pronoun for labelling is nonsense.
Worse, the gender is known. Males go to boys’ toilets and females go to girls’ toilets – so the use of ‘they’ to be gender neutral is a bit of hard-left Marxist ideological madness. And third, this is dangerous. Mark Latham has pointed out that these lunatic woke signs may encourage boys to use the girls’ toilets – meaning little 12- and 13-year-old girls could find themselves in a toilet with perving 17- and 18-year-old boys. It is outrageous that a principal could assume the power to impose politically correct stupidity on a whole school (without – as it happens – telling parents or seeking their permission). Madness. Dangerous madness.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/language-31/
********************************************************Methane emissions pledge a blow for farmers
Multiple sources close to discussions between the government and industry say an announcement to commit to the global methane pledge is imminent, possibly as early as next week.
They said the government was eager to head to next month’s UN COP27 climate change conference in Egypt with a solid commitment to meet the pledge, which the Morrison government rejected at COP26 in Glasgow last year.
The livestock sector, mainly due to the digestive functions of cattle and sheep, is responsible for about 48 per cent of the country’s methane emissions, which make up about 25 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday flagged plans to tax from 2025 greenhouse gases produced by farm animals through burping and urinating, outraging producers. The industry’s main lobby group Federated Farmers warned the plan would “rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand’’.
Australia’s livestock sector, which aims to be carbon neutral by 2030, has argued against legislated methane targets and says it is voluntarily headed in that direction.
National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Maher fired a warning shot last Friday amid concerns from farmers that Australia would sign up to the global methane pledge. He cited street protests by Dutch farmers over their government’s plan to tackle nitrogen emissions, which locals said would lead to a loss in livestock numbers and farm closures.
“We won’t support any outcome that would lead to a reduction in livestock numbers, and we’ve had assurances from government on that front,” Mr Maher said.
“Ultimately, punitive regulatory measures in isolation only serve to provide perverse and weaker outcomes for everyone, and we do not want to see farmers protesting because they were not adequately consulted prior to the announcements of schemes that challenge their very existence.”
Tougher methane emissions targets would also capture gas companies and landfill operators, with nearly 30 per cent of methane emissions coming from the extraction, distribution and combustion of fossil fuels and more than 10 per cent from waste management services. The European Union and Quad nations have linked their strategies to slash methane with fast-tracking lower emissions across the oil and gas sectors.
Research into methane-suppressing supplements has ramped up in recent years to tackle the problem, but farmers say they are not yet commercially viable.
The Australian understands growing pressure from the Biden administration and South Pacific nations for Australia to embrace stronger climate change action on the world stage has influenced the Albanese government’s global methane pledge position.
Ten South Pacific nations, including Fiji, PNG and Samoa, are among 122 nations who have signed the non-binding pledge. While China, India and Russia are not backing the target, Egypt, Oman, Qatar and Uzbekistan have recently committed.
A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the pledge was an “aspirational, global goal rather than a binding domestic target”, which was why so many countries had “joined the effort”.
Mr Bowen – who will lead Australia’s delegation at the COP27 Sharm El-Sheikh conference alongside Assistant Climate Change Minister Jenny McAllister — previously said that as the world’s 12th largest methane-emitting country “we want to see concrete plans to work with farmers”.
“The Australian government is currently consulting across resources and agricultural sectors about signing up to the global methane pledge,” the spokeswoman said.
“The government’s reforms to the safeguard mechanism mean that our largest emitters, many of which release methane, will be required to reduce their emissions – and the Safeguard Crediting Bill … will incentivise facilities that overachieve on their reductions”.
Mr Bowen’s spokeswoman said the $15bn National Reconstruction Fund would be used to help farmers adopt new livestock feed technologies. The government has committed $8m to fast-track commercialisation of seaweed as a low-emissions feed supplement.
Anthony Lee, the head of vertically integrated beef company Australian Country Choice, urged against binding legislation and said the government must support methane-reduction technology.
“There’s a lot of people in the industry, its allied agencies, in the industry RDCs (research and development corporations) and peak bodies, who are working on methane emission reduction,” Mr Lee said.
“There’s a few major projects that, if commercialised, will see significant reductions to these target levels and beyond.
“I don’t support legislation to limit emissions. What we need is government supporting and helping the industry to invest in technology. We need the government working with us, not taxing us.”
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More censorship in Australia
Big Tech companies are not at all hesitant about being openly biased in how they operate as publishers of online content.
This month the Institute of Public Affairs attempted to promote a research video featuring Senators James McGrath and Jacinta Price and leading intellectual Dr Anthony Dillon, explaining why establishing a voice in the constitution would permanently divide Australia by race.
When the IPA attempted to pay a fee to Facebook to promote this research to a wider audience it was rejected on the basis that it would breach Facebook’s policies about social issues, elections or politics.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, asserts that ‘any advertiser running ads about social issues, elections or politics’ must include a ‘paid for by’ disclaimer on these ‘ads’. How the research video discussing racial equality violated Facebook’s policies was never mentioned. The farce was at least acknowledged by Facebook when it removed its ban – only to reimpose it a few hours later.
Attempting to cover its tracks, Facebook leaked their version of events to the Guardian, which defended the censorship: ‘The IPA warriors might have saved their outrage for another day if they had just read the fine print. It was not the content of their ad that was the problem. Facebook’s rules require ads which have political content to carry a “disclaimer, disclosure, and ad labelling”’, they wrote. Except, three days later in a story published in the Australian Facebook again changed their version of events.
Facebook finally came clean and admitted they were wrong to have removed the ban on the promotion of the IPA’s video, although they wrongly continue to maintain that the content of the IPA’s video required a disclaimer to begin with. A Facebook spokeswoman said: ‘The ad was live for a short period of time in error, but was removed as soon as we realised it was missing the disclaimer.’
Facebook’s admission of error is significant, because if even Facebook cannot figure out how their vague rules work, how can they be trusted to control what people say in the digital public square? It also reinforces the perception of millions of Australians that Big Tech companies are putting their fingers on the scales on the likely forthcoming Voice referendum, which raises questions about the integrity of that referendum.
Behaviour like this from Facebook has been encouraged by governments. In recent years a consensus has emerged among political leaders that Big Tech companies should be given more power and responsibility to undermine freedom of speech online. Former Liberal federal minister for communications Paul Fletcher’s misinformation and disinformation laws, announced just before the May federal election, would have given regulators extraordinary new powers to force digital platforms to crack down on ‘harmful’ disinformation.
Similarly, the not so Conservative government in the UK is pressing ahead with its Online Safety bill, which will force digital platforms to censor ‘lawful but harmful’ content. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has even likened online speech to ‘weapons of war’. In an address to the UN General Assembly, Ardern called on parties to take the ‘collective will’ to ‘bring us back to order’. One could be forgiven for thinking the type of order Ardern has in mind is one in which mainstream voters aren’t allowed to disagree with her government.
What happened to the IPA’s research video is an exemplar of what is one of the most significant challenges to freedom in our time. At a time when Australians are being asked to permanently enshrine race in the constitution, foreign-owned Big Tech mega corporations are asserting their power to control how that debate will be held, or if there will be a debate at all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/owning-science/
************************************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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More 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
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