Australian Politics
Football Australia takes action against Victory as pitch invaders identified
Nobody is mentioning this but I suspect that there were ethnic rivalries behind this riot. Some Melbourne clubs do have a substantial fan base of people from the former Yuogoslavia and the manager of Melbourne Victory is Tony Popovic, which is a Balkan surname. So was one side of this riot principally Croatians? Those of us who know Croatians will think of the Ustasha
UPDATE: My guess was right. Below see a photo of one of the rioters released by the police. The slogan on his shirt is in Cyrillic
Melbourne Victory have been hit with a 'show cause' notice by Football Australia after fans invaded the pitch on Saturday night and assaulted Melbourne City goalkeeper Tom Glover. The Victory are facing the prospect of a points deduction and playing games behind closed doors after the atrocious scenes.
The match was abandoned after spectators stormed the field and attacked Glover after he tossed a flare into the stands that had found its way onto the field. Glover was left with a cut on his face after being hit with a metal bucket, while referee Alex King and a Network 10 cameraman were also injured in the chaos.
It came after a week of outrage in Australian football after the men's and women's A-League grand finals were sold to Sydney for the next three years. Fans were expected to stage protests and walk-outs at last weekend's games, but not invade the pitch and turn violent.
On Monday, Football Australia officially slapped the Victory with a show cause notice. FA gave the club until 9am AEDT on Wednesday to show why they "should not face serious sanctions for bringing the game into disrepute through the conduct of its supporters".
FA said the possible sanctions could include "financial penalties, loss of competition points and/or playing matches behind closed doors, or on neutral territory". FA chief executive James Johnson said in a statement: "As we made clear on Saturday evening following the abandonment of the match, we will move quickly to properly investigate this matter and where appropriate, issue the strongest possible sanctions to the club and individuals involved. The show cause notice following our initial investigations is the next step in the process and will allow us to gather more crucial information."
The pitch invaders appear likely to receive lifetime bans. As of Sunday, two men had been identified after coming forward to police.
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Hundreds of public housing apartments empty as waiting list grows
Insane. When bureaucratic incompetence is more damaging than terrorism
Hundreds of public housing apartments at inner Melbourne’s high-rise towers remain empty as the waiting list blows out to 17 months for victims of family violence seeking permanent housing.
Government figures provided in response to questions from The Age confirmed 238 apartments were either empty or being upgraded in the Fitzroy and North Richmond estates alone, representing 5.8 per cent of available properties at Fitzroy, and 18.7 per cent at North Richmond.
The Age was taken on a tour of a building in an estate last week and saw many of these empty, and often newly refurbished, apartments.
In one tower on Fitzroy’s Atherton Gardens estate, half of the 10 apartments on the top floor were visibly empty on Friday. Other floors had at least one apartment empty and up to 40 per cent were visibly empty.
All the vacant apartments seen by The Age appeared to have been freshly painted, and had new carpets and intact appliances.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing acknowledged the “urgent” need for more social housing pointing to the state government’s $5.3 billion Big Housing Build policy as its response.
“Thanks to our unprecedented investment in housing, there are more than 7400 homes either underway or completed across Victoria,” the spokeswoman said.
In a statement, she said properties were rented “as soon as possible” once safety checks and repairs were completed.
The department spokeswoman said 60 properties at the Atherton Gardens estate had been upgraded with 14 still to be tenanted. A total of 47 properties at the 798-unit estate were vacant.
Works were underway to upgrade another 100 apartments at North Richmond, where a further 91 were without tenants out of the estate’s total 1020 units.
City of Yarra councillor Anab Mohamud, who lives on the Atherton Gardens estate, and fellow councillor Stephen Jolly were contacted by a young woman who said reported spending three months squatting in an apartment that had been empty for 18 months at the estate, before being threatened with eviction.
“To know that there’s that many houses available and people are homeless is an affront to us,” Mohamud said.
Mohamud said the department should act faster to get tenants in once works were completed. “These empty apartments are already upgraded, and they’ve been empty for too long.”
Jolly wrote to Housing Minister Colin Brooks last Thursday urging him to intervene in the woman’s case, and by Friday morning housing officers were in contact and offered her a public housing property.
“It’s either gross incompetence or a conscious effort to empty out the towers despite thousands of people on the waiting list,” Jolly said.
But Brooks said managing and maintaining public housing stock was an “imperfect science”.
“We have a program rolling through public housing, upgrading and repairing stock, and so some of that involves having properties vacant so that we could get in and repair, or upgrade that facility,” he said.
“It’s always an imperfect science ... there’s always a number of properties that are vacant as we’re moving into repair and upgrade those facilities.”
Brooks said the public housing waiting list in Victoria had grown to 56,000 – up from 55,000 in March – including the standard and priority lists.
Waiting times on the priority list for public housing, which includes people experiencing homelessness and people aged over 55, reached 15 months – almost 45 per cent higher than the 10½ month target.
The waiting time for vulnerable people who have experienced family violence is even higher, reaching 17 months in the most recent financial year. “There are definitely challenges,” Brooks said.
He said global energy prices, interest rates rises and housing affordability had all impacted the waiting lists.
“It’s exactly why the government a couple of years ago kicked off the big housing build. It’s really good that we did do that because it means that, at the moment, we’ve got a pipeline of projects [and a] pipeline of houses right across the state to deliver social and affordable housing.”
Liberal candidate Lucas Moon, who spent more than six weeks doorknocking high-rise housing estates across the seat of Richmond before the November election, estimated 20 per cent of flats were empty, and another 10 per cent were tenanted but vacant, with mail piling up outside.
“It was pure mismanagement of the resources we’ve got available,” he said.
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Channel 10 BOYCOTTS Australia Day
How to lose friends and fail to influence people
Two top bosses at Channel 10 have told staff that the network will not be celebrating Australia Day saying that employees can come to work instead of taking the day off.
Parent company Paramount ANZ's chief content officer, Beverley McGarvey, and co-lead Jarrod Villani referred to Australia Day as 'January 26' only in an email sent to all editorial and programming staff last week.
The pair told staff it was 'not a day of celebration' for Indigenous people and said employees could decide whether they wished to take the day off as a public holiday or work if they preferred.
'At Paramount ANZ we aim to create a safe place to work where cultural differences are appreciated, understood and respected,' the pair wrote in the email, The Australian's Media Diary column reported.
'For our First Nations people, we as an organisation acknowledge that January 26 is not a day of celebration. 'We recognise that there has been a turbulent history, particularly around that date and the recognition of that date being Australia Day.'
The pair said staff could choose to work through the national holiday if they didn't feel comfortable celebrating it and could take another day of leave instead.
'We recognise that January 26 evokes different emotions for our employees across the business, and we are receptive to employees who do not feel comfortable taking this day as a public holiday,' the email read.
The network bosses were adamant that those who did wish to celebrate Australia Day 'reflect and respect the different perspectives and viewpoints of all Australians'.
Channel 10 was previously applauded for its use of traditional Indigenous names for capital cities during a weather report amid NAIDOC week in July.
Instead of Sydney, the presenter read out the forecast for Gadigal, and for Melbourne, the city was referred to by its traditional name of Naarm.
The network first changed its weather map to include traditional names last year, and was immediately commended on the choice by many Aussies.
Controversy has surrounded the celebration of Australia Day in recent years, with many calling for the date to be changed in respect of Indigenous Australians.
Various councils around the country have boycotted the holiday, saying it doesn't align with their views.
January 26, 1788 was the day the First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove, with Governor Arthur Phillip raising a Union Jack flag.
The date has become increasingly controversial, with many Indigenous people observing it as a day of mourning and instead labelling it 'Invasion Day'.
Just last week, Labor scrapped a controversial rule enforced by former prime minister Scott Morrison that forced councils to run citizenship ceremonies on January 26.
Councils can now hold the citizenship ceremonies any time from January 23 to 29.
Merri-bek Council in Melbourne's north, recently announced it would cease hosting citizenship ceremonies on January 26, and will instead host a mourning ceremony to acknowledge the experiences of Indigenous Australians.
'The very idea that we celebrate, hold parties and welcome new people to this country on this day is pretty shameful,' Councillor James Conlan told a local council meeting earlier this month.
'In a deeply twisted irony... the council asks First Nations elders to conduct their culturally significant Welcome to Country ceremony on a day that signifies their own disposition.'
Merri-bek Council is the third Melbourne council to discontinue Australia Day citizenship ceremonies, after the Yarra and Darebin councils did the same in 2017.
Meanwhile, Channel 10 has been struggling in the ratings with questions now being raised about the station's viability.
Things are so bad the network was forced to cancel its annual Christmas Party, as first revealed by Daily Mail Australia.
The struggling organisation is now officially Australia's fourth free-to-air network after being placed behind the ABC in the ratings race.
10 has just recorded its lowest commercial share since OzTam ratings began with a network share of just 22.1 per cent, well behind its rivals at Nine and Seven.
While spin doctors sprout the network has a younger audience than its competitors, Nine and Seven both beat 10 in total people and their key under 50 demographic.
A string of failures has only added to its woes. Shows like The Real Love Boat, The Challenge Australia and The Traitors were all flops.
The Bachelor franchise has failed to fire over the past few years and the newest edition, The Bachelors, was considered so bad by programming bosses it has been bumped to January.
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Aboriginal elders criticize "Voice" and overuse of 'Welcome to Country'
An Aboriginal elder says constant Welcome to Country and Acknowledgment of Country rituals are not being used correctly and have become 'virtue signalling' for non-Indigenous people.
Narungga elder Kerry White, who stood as a One Nation candidate in the last South Australian election, said the Welcome to Country ceremony has been taken out of context by non-Aboriginal Australians.
'It's an attack on our culture because it is not being used correctly,' she told Sky News on Sunday night. 'It's just virtue signaling.'
According to advocacy group Reconciliation Australia a Welcome to Country should only be performed by a Traditional Owner of the ritual's location and if such a person is not available an Acknowledgment of Country is appropriate.
Ms White said the Acknowledgment of Country is really just a European adaptation of Welcome to Country, which is not being employed in the way Aborigines did.
'(It) was only used when Aboriginal elders welcomed other Aboriginals onto their land for negotiation talks,' Ms White said. 'They didn't use it every day, it was a ceremonial process.
'So, they've taken our ceremonial process and demeaned it by throwing it out there every day in every aspect of what Australian people do. 'And I think that is culturally wrong.'
Ms White also said she disliked terms such as Indigenous and First Nations when applied to Aboriginal people. 'They come up with all these politically correct things they keep calling us which is actually an insult to us and to our culture,' she said.
Ms White said calling Aboriginal people Indigenous was too generic a term. 'Indigenous actually means native to this country, so anyone born in Australia is indigenous to this country,' she said.
'So that creates problems when you are talking about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which means anybody born in Australia can go on that Voice, so they are not truly representing people like the Aboriginal people of Australia.'
Ms White, who has previously said 'mob' is the cultural term Aborigines use also criticised the term First Nations. 'The First Nation term they use for us, that is Canadian it is not Australian. It is not who we are as a people.'
Ms White, who has worked as a nurse and in numerous Aboriginal health capacities, told a recent issue of conservative magazine The Spectator that Aboriginal mobs were divided between those who lived in rural areas and urban dwellers.
She said that the Indigenous Voice to Parliament was the project of urban Aboriginals, who she labelled as 'tick-a-boxers' who had claimed Indigenous ancestry. ‘We, the Aboriginal people from rural and remote Australia do not want it (the Voice),' she told the magazine.
Her criticisms echoed those of Indigenous leader Nyunggai Warren Mundine who told Sky News 'The Voice isn't our voice'. 'It was dreamed up by a whole lot of people, Aboriginal people, in Sydney and Melbourne,' he said. 'The elites in academia.'
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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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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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