Albo’s gas cap folly

If the threat of gas rationing and blackouts on the first day of winter this year taught us anything it is that maximising the supply of reliable and baseload power is the only way to ensure the lights stay on, right?

Australia is currently facing multiple economic crises on a number of fronts.

However, there are three that the federal government is seemingly determined to exacerbate, namely Australia’s gas supply shortage, rapid rises in the cost of living, and our record low private business investment as a percentage of the economy.

The cost of living crisis is a handicap on the quality of everyday Australian life, and if private businesses are not investing in the Australian economy, then that minimises the opportunities available to Australians to help offset cost of living pressures.

These three crises are all linked to the policy of Net Zero emissions by 2050, introduced by the former Morrison government in 2021 and legislated by the Albanese government in 2022. Net Zero, by design, requires the removal of gas from the national energy market to make way for ‘green’ energy such as wind and solar.

One of the first acts of the Albanese government, when elected in May, was to legislate the Net Zero target. This has accelerated the closure of coal projects across the country, expanded the scope of green activist lawfare against critical resource projects, increased power prices, and localised a global gas supply shortage, even though Australia is one of the most energy resource-rich countries on Earth.

The consequences wrought by the policy of Net Zero emissions by 2050 fuelled the energy crisis that the east coast continues to suffer through.

And the depths of this crisis cannot be underestimated. In the year 2022, how can it be that on the first day of winter this year, the Australian Energy Market Operator warned that gas rationing may be necessary to ensure that Australians could keep their lights and heaters on? This lack of supply made electricity prices surge.

In response, the Prime Minister recently floated imposing price caps on energy companies. This was a reactionary and short-sighted response. The proposal is also evidence the federal government does not have a cogent plan to get us out of the energy wilderness that is biting into the hip pockets of mainstream Australians.

Price caps will act as a direct deterrent for companies wanting to do business in Australia’s already over-regulated energy market, with Woodside Energy indicating they will no longer invest in projects along Australia’s east coast if this policy was adopted.

Woodside’s threat of withholding new gas investment on Australia’s east coast in response to the proposed price caps would worsen Australia’s record low private business investment and exacerbate Australia’s gas supply issues.

The vacuum created by private businesses deciding that investing in the Australian energy market is all too hard, opens the door for government agencies to fill the gap. You only have to look at the proposal to re-introduce the State Electricity Commission in Victoria, which is pursuing a renewable energy target of 95 per cent by 2035. It means instead of baseload power coming back into the market, even more taxpayer dollars will be used to push the ideological obsession with unreliable and experimental solar and wind energy, proven time and time again that it cannot deliver the power we need on scale.

The federal government should be fostering policies that increase the supply of gas. Increasing the supply of gas (and coal) is the only way to meet demand, and to drive down record energy prices.

These policies include repealing the Climate Change Act 2022, saying no to Net Zero, and exiting the Paris Climate Agreement.

Unfortunately, the far more likely outcome is that baseload power will continue to be forced off the national energy market in favour of unreliable solar and wind power leaving Australians with higher energy bills, insecure supply of power, and lower levels of employment.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/albos-gas-cap-folly/

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Environmenta vandalism

A ‘lawfare’-laced New Year as activism reaps its rewards from environmentalist judges: that is what last month’s three ground-breaking judicial decisions that rejected fossil fuel developments on environmental and social grounds, have ensured for Australia’s major export industries – coal and gas. ‘There is now the risk of more delays and obstacles in the progression of important energy projects, postponing new supply that is needed to deliver energy security, emissions reductions and substantial economic returns for Australians’, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association CEO Samantha McCulloch told the media.

Upheaval across Australia’s oil and gas industry is expected after Santos’ loss of a Federal Court appeal against a decision to cancel its $5.3 billion development approval due to inadequate consultation with local indigenous people; coal projects are under a cloud following both the Queensland Land and Environment Court knocking back a huge Galilee Basin development on the basis of overseas customers’ emissions and, incredibly, human rights and the NSW Independent Planning Commission’s heritage-based decision against Glencore’s plans to extend its operations.

Added to this is the uncertainty generated at the federal level by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in responding to an environmental activist request by implementing reviews of 18 of the previous government’s approvals of proposed new coal and gas projects which include major companies like Woodside, ConocoPhillips, Whitehaven and Glencore. The Australian newspaper reports that resource analysts fear that there will be a new front opened in Australia as these 18, of which 13 are coal projects in Queensland and four in NSW, with a gas project in WA, covering $100 billion in investments and 175,000 jobs, could face legal action to block progress.

November’s three negative decisions follow repeated examples of the damaging economic consequences of judges usurping the role of elected parliaments by imposing their own activist versions of environmental law. The consequences include increased sovereign risk that puts in doubt the foreign investment essential for Australia’s future, uncertainty over the supply of vital funding for affordable and reliable energy, denial of mining approvals on grounds unsupported by legislation, and the costly delays to billions of dollars of projects through the lawfare encouraged by so many anti-mining judgements.

The Queensland Land and Environment Court’s rejection last month of a proposal by Waratah Coal to build the biggest thermal coal mine in Australia in the Galilee Basin aimed at producing almost four times as much as its neighbouring Adani mine (which is at last operational after years of legal obstructionism), prompted little public outcry beyond a perceptive article in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail under the heading ‘Is this the death warrant for the coal industry?’ and describing the judgement as reading like ‘a green manifesto that will have major ramifications for Queensland’.

But the mining industry kept shtum. The reason? Waratah’s owner is the combative Clive Palmer; instead of the much-needed principled assault on this destructive anti-mining precedent, there was an overwhelming reluctance to be seen to be effectively supporting such a divisive figure.

Yet the court’s recommendation to the state government is untenable. Its president, and former climate activist, Judge Fleur Kingham, asserted not only that climate change was a key issue but that the project’s climate impact would limit human rights. This is the first time a Queensland judge has recommended rejecting a mine based on the climate impacts of coal burnt overseas. ‘Wherever the coal is burnt the emissions will contribute to environmental harm, including in Queensland.’ It is also the first time Queensland’s Human Rights Act has been used to object to a mining project on climate change and Indigenous cultural rights grounds.

But this is not the first time that courts or tribunals have falsely asserted that Australia’s Paris obligations, its state and federal emission reduction and net-zero targets mean that no new mines or major extensions of existing ones can be accommodated. That parliaments, whose responsibility it is, have not passed laws imposing that prohibition means that there is no legislative basis for this judge-created assertion and, on the contrary, governments, which stress the word ‘net’ before ‘zero’, are involved in projects offsetting CO2 emissions so that there is no automatic link between a new coal mine or gas field and the volume of emissions.

Even more controversial is Judge Kingham’s conclusion that, ‘In relation to climate change, I have found that the following rights of certain groups of people in Queensland would be limited: the right to life, the cultural rights of First Nations peoples, the rights of children, the right to property and to privacy and home, and the right to enjoy human rights equally’, all would be threatened by the consequences of emissions-induced climate change. ‘For each right, considered individually, I have decided the importance of preserving the right, given the nature and extent of the limitation, weighs more heavily in the balance than the economic benefits of the mine and the benefit of contributing to energy security for Southeast Asia.’ This is at odds with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who, while aiming at net zero by 2050, has a stated position that Queensland coal exports will continue for ‘as long as the market dictates’.

The NSW anti-coal judgement reflects a different problem. On top of its criticism of the outcome, the mining industry expressed serious concern about the process, in which the state government has delegated decision-making to a three-person panel with no accountability either to the government or the public. But at least the NSW Independent Planning Commission did acknowledge that the proposal, which it rejected on (questionable?) heritage grounds, was, in the absence of any clear governmental policy guidance, not inconsistent with net zero or Paris obligations or Australia’s varied emissions targets and so could not be denied on that ground.

Activist judges with a penchant for creating their own unlegislated rules with which to enforce their environmental agendas, please note.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/business-robbery-etc-105/ ?

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University Leftism is now hugely influential

I was recently pleased to hear Senator Alex Antic decrying the state of education in our schools, citing in his speech several horror stories from parents. The examples are endless, but what we may resolve with total assurance is this: radical ideologies have hijacked our schools, and our children’s futures are in grave peril – or so say conservative politicians.

Every radicalised school teacher, in addition to all those involved in administrating a school or implementing a primary or secondary curriculum, holds some kind of tertiary teaching degree – so where do you think their radicalism was sown and cemented?

It is not the schools but the universities that are responsible for the destructive political and socio-cultural crisis that plagues Australia today.

Everyone is going to university. At the end of 2021, a record 50.2 per cent of Australians aged between 15 and 74 held bachelor’s degrees. That is approximately a 500 per cent increase over the last twenty years. Moreover, 62 per cent of school-leavers intended to commence at university in 2021, whereas approximately only one-tenth were committed towards TAFE or college studies.

Therefore, if it is not already the case, we may conclude that it will not be long before the majority of eligible Australian voters hold a tertiary qualification.

Of course, this would be wholly inconsequential if universities were simply striving to teach and advance knowledge. But what was once the proud objective of the 11th century Bolognese, or the 12th century Oxonians, or the 13th century Parisians, is no longer the case. The overpowering priority in Australian universities seems to be this: disseminate radical sociological ideologies underpinned by, amongst other things, pseudo-morality, irresponsibility, hedonism, and victimhood as quickly as possible.

I could cite example after example until I turned blue in the face to justify this assertion; instead, it might be more revealing if we all simply seek out a relative or a friend and ask them for their worst university horror story. Because if ‘lived experiences’ are considered to be appropriate source material by today’s academic standards, then perhaps I should introduce into my argument that I am a recent graduate of several schools within the Arts faculty.

Nowhere is today’s radicalism more pervasive than in the Arts. Regrettably, this is another point that is often overlooked. The Arts are largely ignored by the political class – Tony Burke, who I must say went to this year’s federal election promising artists Nirvana Down Under, has even now begun to disappoint – when in fact it is the Arts that hold an incalculable influence over society. This is both a beautiful and terrifying reality. It is the Arts that brought us, for instance, Jane Eyre and To Kill a Mockingbird, but also Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto. More recently, whilst we might say that engineers did not conceptualise Black Lives Matter to the extent that Arts faculties did, they wasted no time in subscribing to the movement’s doctrine.

I clearly recall one of my undergraduate classes, which purported to concern English grammar. In this class, I was encouraged to submit my preferred pronouns, asked to cultivate a safe learning environment for my peers, asked whether I required any trigger warnings, permitted to allocate 10 per cent of my grade myself so long as I was honest, and assured that if my mental health were impaired one week I could consider some of the course’s assessment items as optional. When we finally did come to discussing semantics, one of the very first things the class was taught was that English grammar arose to separate the rich from the poor.

Thus, here are three summarised propositions I offer to readers:

* More than half the country, virtually, holds a university degree.

* Universities at large are teaching radical sociological ideologies.

* Tertiary graduates (particularly graduates of Arts faculties) more often than not hold the greatest influence over society, determining its popular trends.

In these propositions, I think, there lies a recipe for total political domination. And that’s why I’m worried. Because, just as Labor has institutionalised the unions, the Greens have taken for themselves the universities.

Radical ideologies and the Australian Greens go hand in hand. Here are just a few positions they took to the federal election:

Ban the construction of new coal, oil and gas infrastructure.

Ban all political donations from the mining and resources sector and ‘other dirty industries’.

Unpack ‘white privilege’ and ‘white fragility’.

$1.07 billion to build First Nations owned healing places.

Amend section 44 of the Constitution so that dual citizens can run for Federal office.

End offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru.

Reduce military spending to 1.5 per cent of GDP.

Introduce legislation that prohibits Australia exporting weapons.

Increase Australia’s humanitarian intake to 50,000 per year.

Appoint a Minister for Equality and an LGBTQ+ Human Rights Commissioner.

$15 million to facilitate transgender ‘surgical procedures’.

20 per cent of the Australian Public Service to be disabled by 2030, via quotas.

Cut $61 million for school chaplains (to ‘make schools safer’).

More importantly, though, these are, to me, the Greens’ most striking promises, and funnily enough they all have to do with education:

$19 billion for free childcare.

$49 billion for fully-free public schools.

$477 million to end rape culture in public schools.

Abolish student debt.

Lifelong free education for all.

Guarantee every student a liveable income.

10 per cent increase in university funding.

The Greens’ disproportionate prioritisation of the education sector, particularly the tertiary education sector, seems telling.

Moreover, in analysing the three Queensland seats that fell to the Greens – Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith – in accordance with 2021 Census data and themes previously discussed, we cement our argument further in fact.

Of the thirty Commonwealth divisions in Queensland, Brisbane, Ryan, and Griffith all have the highest populations of tertiary students. Brisbane leads the charge with 25,030 tertiary students. Griffith comes with 22,830 tertiary students and Ryan with 21,403 students. In comparison, the Queensland division with the smallest number of tertiary enrolees is Maranoa – but that’s still 5,302 students. Interestingly, Maranoa is the safest Liberal-National federal seat in Queensland.

Interestingly again, the five Queensland divisions with the smallest populations of tertiary students – Maranoa, Wide Bay (5,175), Kennedy (5,302), Flynn (5,456) and Hinkler (5,504), all saw first-preference swings to their respective Greens candidate between 1 per cent and 2 per cent; the exception is Wide Bay, which actually saw a first-preference swing against the Greens in the order of 0.5 per cent.

So, does correlation equal causation, or am I grasping at straws?

Of course, there is no way to be certain – but we’d be fools not to heed the warning laid bare before us. Australian politics is no longer organised within the framework of a two-party system, but rather a two-and-a-half-party system. The Greens function as a major political organisation, with the funds, media, manpower, and now universities as institutions to match. But they also masquerade as an insignificant, disorganised minor party that serves no other purpose than to facilitate protest votes or proxy votes for Labor. In the case of the latter, the Victorian state election in key seats like Glen Waverly and Ashwood demonstrates as much.

By my estimates, Labor’s short-term solution is to embrace a long-term catastrophe. Because the Victorian state election also shines a light on the former Labor seat of Richmond, a seat in which Labor’s first-preference vote decreased sharply by 11.6 per cent, and a seat that is now condemned to four years under the Green yoke.

If I could make two recommendations to my native Liberal Party, they would be this:

Look to the future of our country, and in so doing regard the Greens as the true Enemy. Labor is now the sparring partner.
Lay the groundwork to launch some sort of large-scale public inquiry, be it a Royal Commission or otherwise, into the ideological and commercial abuses of Australia’s tertiary institutions. Expose what goes on behind the closed doors of not all but so many lecture theatres..

https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/universities-are-the-new-green-unions/

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Sometimes being innocent is no protection from injustice

Bruce Lehrman is innocent but that has not protected him from what happened outside the courtroom

The golden thread rule running through criminal law in our common law system is that a person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This rule of law is crucial to the operation of a fair trial and a fair outcome.

The rule presupposes that the accused person who pleads not guilty to a crime for which they stand accused is as innocent as any other person inside or outside the courtroom. Even as innocent as the accuser.

In the recent ACT case of The Crown v Bruce Lehrmann, the accused man Lehrmann was charged with raping a woman known as Brittany Higgins in March 2019.

Lehrmann pleaded not guilty. There was a trial where a jury could not unanimously convict him, and the Prosecution subsequently dropped the charges.

Lehmann was therefore innocent before March 2019, after March 2019, and now is still innocent after December 2022. At no stage in this process is he anything other than innocent. He is as innocent as the prosecutors, as the judge, as the accuser Higgins, and every journalist, commentator, and politician who sought to presume him guilty.

I am not trying to defend Lehmann. He does not need defending. I am here to defend the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and the bedrock of our legal system which is continuously coming under attack.

The main problem is that the attacks on the law are coming from those who are sworn to uphold it.

The former Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese both made remarks which presupposed Lehrmann’s guilt by apologising to Higgins. The former Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister each take oaths upon accepting their office to uphold the laws of Australia and they each have shown that they had no respect for the presumption of innocence.

The Prosecutor Shane Drumgold, a lawyer who must have sworn to uphold the laws of the ACT, made the most extraordinary public statement, ‘In the light of the compelling independent medical opinion and balancing all factors, I have made the difficult decision that it is no longer in the public interest to pursue a prosecution at the risk of the complainants life.’ If a victim’s life was truly at risk, and the person who placed the victim’s life in that terrible state can be prosecuted for the crime, then it is precisely in the public’s interest that such a prosecution be mounted.

The truth is that there was not enough evidence to pursue the matter and find Lehrmann guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

No doubt, Mr Morrison, Mr Albanese, and Mr Drumgold were concerned of the media reaction when uttering their comments.

This is sadly not an isolated incident.

In February 2022, a six-week trial of a Northern Territory Police officer Zachary Rolfe took place. Rolfe was charged, inter alia with the murder of an Aboriginal man, Kumanjayi Walker, after being called to investigate a domestic violence incident in November 2019.

Rolfe pleaded not guilty, therefore prior to the trial he was innocent, during the trial he was innocent, and after being found not guilty by the jury he was still innocent.

After the verdict Adam Bandt, leader of the Greens Party and a member of Parliament in Melbourne, was most vociferous in alleging that justice was not achieved for Walker. His utterings, and the media commentary, contributed to an inquest being conducted in the Northern Territory about the shooting. Precisely who is on trial at the inquest, because it can’t be Rolfe, he has already been found not guilty. The rule of law is on trial in that inquiry.

In a recent case in Sydney a former footballer, Chris Dawson, was tried for the murder of his wife. He also pleaded not guilty. Therefore, he was innocent before the trial and during the trial. He was innocent until the judge sitting alone found him guilty of the crime. Now he is no longer innocent unless the conviction is overturned on appeal. The fact is he is guilty now.

In all three cases justice was served by the fact of an objective trial, where the media input is irrelevant, and the evidence is paramount.

The accused exercised a right to plead not guilty and therefore profess innocence. The verdict is the result of justice being played out.

Lehrmann could not be found guilty, and no further proceedings continued. He is therefore still innocent, and justice is served. Rolfe was found not guilty; he is still innocent, and justice has been served. Dawson was found guilty; he is, therefore, no longer innocent and justice is served.

Justice, the rule of law, and the presumption of innocence, has therefore worked in three completely different circumstances to present the correct outcome yet many sections of the media and political activists are committed to trying to change the system.

In the current system the prosecution has the resources of the state behind them, police powers of investigation, well-paid and always very competent lawyers, funds to use scientific evidence, and expert witnesses to present such evidence. Armed with all those resources if they can’t convince twelve people of the accused’s guilt then the accused is probably innocent. That is precisely why the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

No fair-minded person wants a guilty person to walk free. Nor do they want an innocent person to be imprisoned.

Laws change constantly both Federally and State-wide and usually for the better. The fundamentals of the common law system, such as the presumption of innocence have not changed over 120 years and for good reason, they work to preserve justice.

At the end of the trial process there can be degrees of guilt. The guilty person is always permitted to ask for lenience in sentencing. There is not however a degree of innocence.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/12/there-are-no-degrees-of-innocence/

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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