Australian Politics
Monday, January 02, 2023
How Teal eco warriors fuel hypocrisy
If the radical parties pushing climate alarmism believed in their own messaging, they would lead by example, not by marketing novelty merchandise destined for landfills, shipped from Bangladeshi factories to Port Botany on polluting mega-carriers.
However, Climate 200 and the Greens were flogging novelty trinkets, such as shirts and water bottles, hoping recipients would parade them at their local gym to show how enlightened they are.
All the while, the Teals were bringing in a Bill to rush changes in Australian fuel standards which would see the end of cheap E10 as we know it, for highly refined European-standard fuel, capable of working only in hi-tech engines and which relies on a chemical so foul that it is illegal on our shores.
Climate 200’s North Sydney MP Kylea Tinks’ fuel Bill proposes keeping Australian standards in lock-step with Europe’s madness in perpetuity.
What does it matter to her if people can barely afford the rising living costs, let alone new cars with engines fitted with technology to use European-standard fuel by 2024 and the additional cost of refining imported crude oil to service them?
She doesn’t have to pay for fuel or her car — the taxpayer covers it for her.
The Bill wants to copy Europe. The problem is that European fuel uses a chemical, MTBE, which is banned in Australia. MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether) may reduce pollution emissions in fuel, but it is highly pollutant in water, fouling it so it is unpalatable.
You would think so-called environmentalists from the second-driest continent on Earth after Antarctica would be across that.
Tink’s Bill claims there would be no financial impact, but every driver who doesn’t own an engine that can cope with European-standard fuel would need a new car to use it – and manufacturers still make cars that don’t. Flogging ill-considered proposals stands to drive people further into poverty and fails to address the big emitters.
Shipping emits three times as much as our entire country. So why are Australians who are just trying to get to school, the doctors and shops the focus for Climate 200?
These enormous ships are already taking Greens and, presumably, Climate 200 merch, along with 99 per cent of our trade, to Australia, creating three times the emissions our entire country does.
Instead of telling people to buy new cars, why not push for enormous cargo ships to adopt nuclear instead of heavy fuel oil? Nuclear on ocean vessels is not new. It’s already on submarines and naval ships.
Tink’s Bill stands to kick a massive own goal, forcing pensioners and families into unaffordable debt to take on a Climate 200-approved car.
The reality of this policy will be that people hold on to their old second-hand vehicles for longer because a new Mercedes is slightly out of their reach.
The coming safeguard mechanism will put more pressure on our last two oil refineries. If they shut down, we will rely entirely on imported fuel.
If our trade routes were shut down, our entire fleet would be zero-emission because none of them would be able to go anywhere.
Why not focus on expanding our Australian-made biofuel industry instead of vehicles that can only run on refined crude oil imported from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and shipped through waters with an expanding Chinese military presence?
If you want to have any conversation about fuel, we should be brutally honest about how exposed we are.
We cannot only see this issue through the prism of European cleanliness when we have our own homegrown opportunities, such as the biofuels industry — worth just 1.1 per cent of our national pool but worth $3.5 billion to the US and booming in South American nations.
Is total reliance on imports where you want to be? Europe is paying the price for outsourcing its energy sources to other countries.
We could have less international dependence if we grew our biofuel industry – which is recyclable and renewable.
You would think the Climate 200-funded independents who campaigned on reducing emissions would want to actually reduce emissions.
Yet for Climate 200, their “happy holidays” message centred on urging its donors to purchase merch in the form of gift cards to spend on “last-minute Teal coloured gifts”, including water bottles, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia that didn’t grow on trees.
This is the disconnect between Teals, who campaign against fossil fuel use, mining and exploration, yet use fossil fuels to manufacture and ship merchandise to foster the consumerist need to acquire more material possessions.
Teal voters will again fall prey to a marketing machine — and not even an original one. Their key shirt slogan, “A woman’s place is in the House”, takes directly from an Australian Greens Party shirt with the same etching of Parliament House with: “A woman’s place is in the House. And the Senate. And the Cabinet.”
Funny, they don’t think Senator Jacinta Price’s place is in the House.
Why is Climate 200 merchandise unnecessary waste serving no real purpose but to temporarily satisfy a desire for novelty from a community which wishes to be seen as environmental warriors while contributing to the ecological degradation they profess to rail against?
The Greens’ merch bearing slogans such as “This is a Climate Emergency” and “Big Green Power” are made in a part of Bangladesh powered by heavy fuel oil and doubling its coal-fired power stations to feed our desire for cheap clothes.
It is then shipped on a cargo carrier with more heavy fuel oil.
If you want to campaign for the environment, get Queensland to lift its uranium mining ban, refit massive transport ships with their own nuclear propulsion, and address the need for an Australian-made alternative to crude oil.
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Labor still botching Qld youth crime after eight years
The Palaszczuk government has had almost eight years – a dream run in political life – to action reform and yet: It. Still. Does. Not. Get. It.
The Premier had to be dragged to the table – under yet another harsh media spotlight – to address public outrage over the senseless stabbing death of mother-of-two Emma Lovell on Boxing Day.
Three days after the horrific incident, Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a handful of supposedly tougher measures to tackle youth crime.
She seemed serious about it too. “A lot of people aren’t going to like some of these announcements today, but I’m going to stand by them,” she told a press conference.
Not sure to which people she is referring – young criminals? – but the amendments are farcical, cosmetic and will not work.
No surprises there. This is a government that has consistently placed public image above practical solutions as it lurches from one crisis to the next.
I’m not the only one who thinks Ms Palaszczuk’s grandstanding on Thursday was offensive.
Waiting so very long – years – to even begin to address inadequate laws is an insult to families who have lost loved ones in crimes that could, and should, have been prevented.
And it provides zero comfort to the rest of us who, so far by a stroke of luck, have not had our lives wrecked by repeat juvenile offenders.
One of the laughably “bold” moves to stop young criminals in their tracks is to increase the maximum penalty for stealing a car from seven to 10 years. You can just see them mulling this over, can’t you, as they stand beside a Porsche nervously debating if should they risk it.
Another genius idea by Team Too-Little-Too-Late is to require courts to take into account bail history and previous criminal activity when sentencing.
Courts already do this so it’s hardly worth mentioning. The problem is left-leaning magistrates (which are in the majority as judicial officers are government appointed) have the power to release repeat offenders anyway – and they do.
In more ridiculous news, Palaszczuk has announced engine immobiliser trials. Fat lot of good that will do if someone breaks into your house and steals your car keys. But hey, let’s throw money at trials and make it seem like we’re doing something positive.
Palaszczuk and her pack of underperformers have missed yet another golden opportunity to make a dent in youth crime – which has reached epidemic proportions on their watch. At the very least, making breach of bail a crime needs to happen – not in February when Parliament resumes but right now.
And minimum sentences must be mandated so recidivist offenders are removed from our streets.
Following my column on Thursday when I said decisive action was missing, Judy Lindsay got in touch. Not a day goes by when she doesn’t miss her only child, Hayley Russell, who was killed by a drink-driver in 2009.
Ms Lindsay is now an ambassador for CARS (Citizens Against Road Slaughter) and somewhat of a thorn in the government’s side.
She is also the person who started the petition Clean up Queensland’s Youth Justice Act in January 2021 following the deaths of Matt Field, Kate Leadbetter and their unborn baby Miles. They were killed on Australia Day by a 17-year-old male who was out on bail and driving a stolen car.
That petition garnered more than 200,000 signatures in a matter of days and prompted a police taskforce to target criminal gangs.
Ms Lindsay, like the rest of us, is sick of political stunts and go-softly tactics. “We asked for a taskforce last year but nothing has come out of it,” she says. “The Premier has allowed youth crime to escalate to where it is now – she is accountable and she is wrong.”
Ms Lindsay says this week’s measures are “nowhere near hard enough”. “I think once you get caught for something, you don’t get let out at all, there is no bail,” she says.
“Yes, that will require the building of more facilities if they refuse to use Wellcamp, but it will save lives.
“The minimum sentencing for any serious crime, including stealing cars, should be at least seven years – and if you do the crime, you do the full time.
“If 16-year-olds are legally able to drive they should be sentenced as adults, and they don’t get out on good behaviour. “This generation has proved we can’t give them anything; they don’t show any respect for the law.”
Ms Lindsay is spot on when she says: “If we don’t take action now, we won’t be safe anywhere we go.”
Queenslanders deserve so much better than this band-aid rubbish from a tired government that is wholly reactionary and embarrassingly clueless.
Instead of telling the courts to “do their jobs”, Ms Palaszczuk should start doing hers.
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Andrew Bolt: Plans for ‘Voice’ is dangerous and dumb
ABC host Phillip Adams swears he’s no racist because – look! – his white-complexioned wife, former model Patrice Newell, is actually Aboriginal.
Yes, that’s his excuse for mocking Malaysian-born singer Kamahl as an “Honorary White”. An Uncle Tom.
“Adams a racist?” Adams tweeted after even fans complained. “I doubt my Aboriginal wife and youngest daughter would agree.”
That’s our race politics today. Adams insists the black Kamahl is white and his white wife is black. And uses that to excuse being cruel to Kamahl.
But I should thank the old fraud. Adams shows why the Albanese government’s plan for a referendum this year to create a “Voice” – a kind of Aboriginal-only parliament, enshrined in our Constitution – is dangerous and dumb.
This fuss with Kamahl blew up when a letter emerged, in which cricket legend Sir Donald Bradman congratulated then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser two days after Fraser’s Liberals crushed Gough Whitlam’s Labor.
This infuriated Adams, a Labor tribalist who tweeted Bradman was “a RWNJ [right-wing nutjob]”, prompting Kamahl to defend Bradman, a friend for 13 years.
Adams turned savage: “Clearly, Kamahl, he made you an Honorary White. Whereas one of the most towering political figures of the 20th century [Nelson Mandela] was deemed unworthy of Bradman’s approval.”
Adams was not just vicious but wrong. Bradman certainly approved of Mandela, exchanging letters and inscribing a bat: “To Nelson Mandela. In recognition of a great unfinished innings.”
But Adams wouldn’t apologise, insisting instead he couldn’t be racist because his wife was Aboriginal.
Yet Adams’ pathetic excuse exposes some of the idiocy behind Labor’s planned “Voice”. He hasn’t just shown that the most avid backers of the Voice can be very cruel, more into dividing us than uniting. More importantly, who exactly is this Voice meant to represent? Adams’ wife?
Newell discovered only late in life her birth mother had Aboriginal ancestry, and Newell now calls herself a “proud Gundijtmara woman”, even though she was adopted by a white family and lived as a white woman for most of her life.
Why does she now need additional political rights as an Aborigine?
Indeed, the last two census collections show 130,000 Australians decided to identify as Aboriginal when they hadn’t the census before.
So Adams makes me ask again: shouldn’t the Albanese government sort out who really is Aboriginal before creating this extra parliament?
Even better, why not call off this madness and just ask everyone to be polite? Adams especially.
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Labor’s stage three tax cut plan ‘hasn’t changed’
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has reaffirmed Labor’s commitment to stage three tax cuts in the new year as the nation’s cost of living crisis continues.
Mr Chalmers flagged the Albanese government’s position on the tax plan remained firm.
“Our position on the tax cuts hasn’t changed,” he told reporters on Monday.
The tax cuts, due to come into effect in July 2024, are part of changes to the tax regime implemented by the Morrison government. Stage three involves abolishing the 37 per cent marginal tax bracket for those earning $120,000 to $180,000.
The threshold for the highest marginal tax bracket of 45 per cent will be raised to those earning above $200,000.
Stage three also involves placing everyone earning between $45,001 and $200,000 on the same tax rate of 30 per cent, with the majority of people in that bracket currently being taxed at a rate of 32.5 per cent.
Labor supported the plans when they were put to parliament in 2019 and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese went to the 2022 election promising no changes would be made to the scheme.
Australia’s current tax brackets look like this:
Up to $18,200 – no tax
$18,201 – $45,000: 19% tax rate
$45,001 – $120,000: 32.5% tax rate
$120,001 – $180,000: 37% tax rate
$180,001 and above: 45% tax rate
After Stage Three:
$18,200 – no tax
$18,201 – $45,000: 19% tax rate
$45,001 – $200,000: 30% tax rate
$200,001 and above: 45% tax rate
The changes were implemented by the previous government in an attempt to eliminate bracket creep, when inflation causes people to have more of their income lost to tax as they “creep” into higher brackets over time.
Critics of the cuts claim the measures only stop bracket creep for the highest-paid workers, as those earning up to $120,000 – approximately 90 per cent of Australians – will only see an adjustment of 2.5 per cent.
Mr Chalmers flagged the upcoming Budget will see more opportunities for cost of living relief for Australians.
“There will be cost-of-living relief in the budget, of course, because we’re working with the states and territories on some assistance for energy bills in particular,” he said.
“We will always do what we can to support people dealing with high inflation and provide responsible cost of living relief, as we did in October, as we will in May, if we can afford it.”
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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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