Tuesday, February 07, 2023



Face of Australia's rental crisis as SINGLE mum-of-three resorts to sleeping in her car with kids after being rejected from 75 properties in six months

Any competent property manager would reject her. With 3 kids and only her own basic income, how is she going to be able to pay the current asking price for rentals rent on top of her other costs?

With 3 young kids she has clearly been in a long-term relationship. Where is the man in this? The government is not a husband substitute


A single mother has resorted to sleeping in her car with her three children as Australia's rental crisis leaves thousands without a home.

Kristin Vandenbosch and her three boys, the youngest who is only four months old, were forced out of their Perth home when their landlord decided to sell up.

Ms Vandenbosch has applied for, and been rejected from, 75 rental properties over the past six months.

Her family have been sleeping in their car beside a park as they face a three-year wait for public housing.

'I feel like I'm a mother who's failed her kids because she cannot put a roof over their head,' she told 9News. 'This is not something the government should be allowing, a three-year wait for three children on the streets.'

Ms Vandenbosch added that she 'felt for everyone' stuck in a similar predicament.

The state government has blamed the rental crisis on a huge influx of Australians moving to the state after Western Australia's pandemic hard border was scrapped.

Western Australia housing minister John Carey says the government has pledged to build 3,300 new properties, 943 of which have already been 'delivered'. There are a further 1,000 that have been scheduled for construction.

But shadow minister for housing Steve Martin says the state of the housing crisis in Western Australia looks bleak. 'It's almost impossible for someone like Kristin and many Western Australians to find somewhere to live,' he said.

The average wait time for public housing in Western Australia is two years. The wait is even longer for those looking in Perth's north and south, and slightly shorter in Perth's east.

Across Australia, the wait times for public housing are relatively similar.

The problem has been compounded by consecutive interest rate rises, forcing property owners to hike rent costs and price out many low-income Aussies from the limited supply of rental stock.

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Trying to brand Alice Springs problems on "racism"

Most of the offenders ARE young black males but everybody has been careful not to mention that. And the claim that Brooke Boney is Aboriginal is hokey. She is as white as I am. See below

image from https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/02/06/22/67393259-11719953-image-a-45_1675723332504.jpg

Brooke Boney has clashed with an Alice Springs business owner who founded a social media movement documenting the crime wave gripping the outback town.

Visiting the central Australian community for a Today show segment, Ms Boney spoke to Darren Clark, who is behind the Action for Alice Facebook page.

The page and Mr Clark have played a large role in spotlighting the crime crises plaguing the community - with Anthony Albanese's Labor government forced to reinstate alcohol bans after removing them last year.

But extreme racial views are also often aired on the page from some members of the community targeting Indigenous youths.

'I'm an Aboriginal woman. So then sometimes when I see people saying things like that, some of those comments, it stings,' Ms Boney said.

Mr Clark argued if the situation isn't properly addressed, 'someone's going to die here soon.' 'I'm the only one that's shown the truth in this town, and if I want to show even more truth, no one would live here,' he told Ms Boney.

The Action for Alice page highlights the crime the town is dealing with every day. 'Commercial break-ins have risen by 55 per cent, alcohol-related assault also up 55 per cent and domestic violence assault is up by 53 per cent,' Ms Boney said.

'The shocking figures that paint a dire picture of a once thriving town.'

Mr Clark said many of the highly charged comments on the Action for Alice page complaining of the crime were from Aboriginal community members.

'Do you know all the people on there?' he asked Ms Boney.

'Because some of them comments are actually coming from indigenous people that live in this town. 'We are a community here. We are black and white, and the black fellas of this town, they are p***ed as well.'

The ABC issued a grovelling apology admitting it provided 'incomplete' coverage of the Save Alice Springs meeting held on Monday which alleged some of those attending were 'white extremists'.

Some 3,000 terrified residents had turned up to discuss their concerns over the out-of-control youth crime wave spreading throughout their community.

Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson, who is a former ABC reporter and once presented 7.30 in Victoria, slammed her ex-employer for issuing an apology only after copping backlash for its coverage.

The ABC was accused of bias after interviewing people who slammed the meeting as 'racist'.

ABC Indigenous Affairs correspondent Carly Williams' live cross on TV of the meeting said many people had left the meeting early and that 'a non-indigenous person' had described the meeting as 'a disgusting display of white supremacy'.

The public broadcaster was threatened with an official investigation over its coverage that was aired on its flagship current affairs show AM and in another TV report.

Senator Henderson added that her complaint against the ABC to the Australian Communications and Media Authority would be 'proceeding'. 'The ABC needs to be held to account. They have been reckless in trying to invent a narrative,' as one person on Twitter put it.

The ABC released a statement on Saturday apologising to its audience. 'We acknowledge that one report on AM was incomplete, and did not adequately cover the full context of the meeting or the range of perspectives expressed at it,' it read. 'ABC News apologises to audiences for providing an incomplete picture of the event in this instance.'

The public broadcaster went on to say it had 'reportedly accurately' on the views of 'some people who attended the community meeting'.

'However, this report should have included a broader range of perspectives expressed at the meeting and further information about what was discussed, to provide additional context,' the statement read. 'Following this report, ABC News published additional coverage of the issue which included a broader range of perspectives and context.'

From next week, the Northern Territory government will introduce legislation to return some areas to 'temporary dry zones', Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said on Monday.

'We've heard loudly and clearly that the matter and decision of alcohol on community needs to be one that is made by the entire community,' Ms Fyles told reporters.

'This is why we're creating a circuit breaker... until communities can develop and vote on the alcohol management plans they want to see.'

The Federal Government also announced it would invest $250 million in community safety and services, with funding going towards job creation, youth engagement and support for domestic violence services.

The decision comes after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Alice Springs last month amid growing frustration over alcohol-fuelled violence and theft in the town.

Ms Fyles said the new restrictions were based on the recommendations of the newly appointed central Australian regional controller Dorrelle Anderson.

Ms Anderson, who was appointed after the prime minister's visit, reviewed the territory's opt-in alcohol restrictions, that replaced expired Intervention-inspired liquor bans last year.

Under the new legislation, communities can apply to opt out of the ban, as long as 60 per cent of residents support the decision and they have an alcohol management plan.

'Alcohol-related harm is still the NT's biggest social challenge,' Ms Fyles said. 'But it is a legal product, and we need to manage the complexities of that product.'

Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro said the measures were not enough. 'There was no promise today of additional police or sending Australian Federal Police into Alice Springs, which would make an immediate impact on the ground today.'

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Sunshine Coast coral reefs thriving as COVID dive project uncovers 'enormous amount of coral'

This gives the lie to Warmist claims that Northern GBR coral is threatened by runoff from the land on Cape York Peninsula. There is very little development on most of the peninsula. Yet we read below that a very heavily developed part of the Southern Queensland coast supports thriving corals. So which is it? Does development along the coastline damage coral or not? It's actually arguable that development BENEFITS coral growth

Researchers have uncovered an abundance of healthy, thriving coral along a heavily developed coastline — far beyond what the team expected when they first pitched the project.

University of Queensland researchers and dive club volunteers wanted a project to focus on as COVID restrictions took hold and limited their ability to work and travel.

A pitch was made to re-examine 11 reefs off Queensland's Sunshine Coast, particularly around Mudjimba Island and the popular tourist destination of Mooloolaba.

Associate Professor Chris Roelfsema brought together researchers and 50 volunteers from the UQ dive club to help.

Dr Roelfsema said what they found was incredible.

"We looked at so many different sites — every time we put our heads underwater, the volunteers went down and they did surveys," he said. "And they saw coral, and every time it was a significant amount of coral, and we didn't expect it.

"We noticed that there was an enormous amount of coral there that we didn't realise was there — and not in a couple of spots but in the 11 spots we visited.

"And that's a big deal that there's so much coral so close to a major urban area."

The project involved 8,000 hours of training, collecting, and analysing data obtained from the underwater landscapes.

Beyond simply the amount of coral revealed by the two-year survey, the team also found little sign of crown-of-thorns starfish — which prey on coral — and almost no hint of coral bleaching.

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Must not praise Cardinal Pell

An associate professor of criminal justice says he was subjected to “abuse and vitriol” and cast aside from a victim support service after a personal social media post was viewed as being supportive of Cardinal George Pell.

Terry Goldsworthy, a Bond University academic whose fields of expertise include miscarriages of justice, has hit out at the stifling of freedom of speech and the “shutting down of public debate on contentious issues”.

He says it’s just the latest instance in which he has been targeted for voicing an opinion, and warns future generations are at risk of being denied fearless, independent views that run counter to those of “the baying mob”.

Dr Goldsworthy’s post on LinkedIn stated that anyone who studied miscarriages of justice should examine Pell’s case “to see how we can improve the criminal justice system”.

The former Queensland Police Service detective inspector included in the post a link to the High Court’s unanimous judgment quashing Pell’s child sexual abuse convictions.

“Vale Cardinal George Pell,” Dr Goldsworthy wrote in his post.

“His pursuit by the Victorian police on historical child abuse charges highlighted how poorly our justice system performs in certain cases where emotions run high. To quote the High Court of Australia, who overturned his convictions 7-0, there was, consistently … ‘a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof’.”

The post ended with a series of hashtags including #crime #justice #miscarriageofjustice and #wrongfulconviction. Dr Goldsworthy said a high-profile person, whom he declined to name, attacked him online in response.

He was also told his post did not align with the values of the victim support service he has helped for the past decade. The issue was due to be raised by the support service at a meeting in his absence, so he resigned as a committee member out of principle.

Pell, who died in Rome in January at the age of 81 after complications from hip surgery, spent 404 days in custody on charges of assaulting two teenage choirboys in the late 1990s when he was archbishop of Melbourne. He constantly maintained his innocence and was acquitted by the nation’s highest court in 2020.

At his funeral last week, he was described by former prime minister Tony Abbott as “the greatest man I’ve ever known” and a scapegoat for the Catholic Church, while protesters clashed with worshippers outside.

Dr Goldsworthy said he commented on Pell “as an aside” as someone who taught in the area of criminal justice. “I thought it was pertinent. It just struck me that there was a real intolerance around dealing with factual debates.

“The High Court ruled 7-0 in this case, and identified that it had been problematic. Yet there seem to be topics now where you can’t point to those facts, or if you do, you’re shouted down. In my field of criminal justice, there’s a number of contentious issues now where if you try to argue one point of the argument there’s almost this demand that you cease.

“People engage in personal attacks, rather than engaging in critical inquiry looking at the scholarly or scientific evidence you’re putting forward, and allowing some kind of public discourse to take place without fear or favour.”

Writing in The Australian, Dr Goldsworthy says that as a Catholic he is reminded in the Pell debate of the denial of Jesus by his disciple Peter.

“The message here is that you must stand by your convictions and beliefs, to fail to do so is a betrayal of the contest of ideas and a surrender to the absolutism of populist narratives where only one viewpoint is acceptable.”

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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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