Australian Politics
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Sydney statue defaced in Anzac Day protest
So much hate. Why does something that happened in 1826 still matter? Leftists are just using it to keep their hate alive
The article below closes with a reference to the Appin massacre, which was part of a war between Aborigines and settlers. Unmentioned is that Governor Macquarie was initially a peacemaker and that his orders were to capture, not kill Aborigines. The campaign he ordered was out of frustration with attacks on settlers
A community in Sydney’s north-west is angry after a statue was defaced with red paint ahead of a local Anzac Day dawn service.
The Lachlan Macquarie statue in Windsor’s McQuade Park was doused in red paint and handprints alongside the phrases “here stands a mass murderer who ordered the genocide” and “no pride in genocide”.
Mayor Sarah McMahon said she was alerted to the incident after the dawn service and said upon inspection, the paint was still “significantly wet”.
“To me, it had been done quite recently,” she said. “I am really saddened there are members of our community out there that think this is the appropriate way to get their message across.”
McMahon arranged for council staff to clean the statue and police were also called to the scene.
“We are a military community here in the Hawkesbury and to have this done on a day of such national and local significance to me is appalling,” she said. “I expect the police will do their job thoroughly.”
Local resident Tim Kelly took to Facebook to share an image of the defaced statue, receiving hundreds of horrified comments in response.
“The day was about our servicemen, not about any other agenda,” he said. “Everyone is absolutely disgusted.”
The statue has been the target of protests before. In 2017, the statue was graffitied with the words “murderer” as part of an Australia Day protest.
Monument Australia, an organisation that records monuments throughout Australia, states on their website the statue was commissioned during the bicentenary celebrations in 1994 of European settlement in the Hawkesbury.
“There is controversy around Macquarie’s treatment of Indigenous people,” the website states.
“In April 1816, Macquarie ordered soldiers under his command to kill or capture any Aboriginal people they encountered during a military operation aimed at creating a sense of terror. At least 14 men, women and children were brutally killed, some shot, others driven over a cliff.”
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Queensland to decriminalise sex work as review recommends new advertising rules
Queensland will decriminalise sex work after a long-awaited review recommended sweeping changes to the industry to combat violence, discrimination and exploitation.
A landmark review into sex work by the Queensland Law Reform Commission has made 47 recommendations, including scrapping the Prostitution Licensing Authority, repealing some police powers and allowing services to be advertised on radio and TV.
The QLRC also recommended that sex workers not be singled out for public soliciting or street-based sex work, and said planning rules should allow services to operate away from industrial zones.
While sex work is under a licensing framework in Queensland, about 90% of sex workers are in the “unlawful sector” privately or at unlicensed businesses.
Sex workers have long rallied against the laws that prohibit them from employing a receptionist, working with others or texting other sex workers before and after a booking to make sure they’re safe.
In Queensland, police can currently also pose as clients and entrap workers by pressuring them to offer blacklisted services.
The attorney-general, Shannon Fentiman, said the government was “broadly supportive” of recommendations and supported decriminalising sex work.
Fentiman said decriminalisation of sex work would “ensure that some of the most vulnerable people in our community have legal protections at work”.
She confirmed this would mean abolishing the Prostitution Licensing Authority, which regulates the state’s 20 brothels.
“The sex-work industry will be regulated by workplace health and safety laws, planning laws, advertising codes and standards, and public amenity and public nuisance laws,” she told reporters on Monday.
Fentiman said the government hoped to introduce legislation before the end of the year after consulting key stakeholders.
“We will need to work through each of the recommendations to work out how best to implement the intent of the law reform commission,” she said.
The report found the current framework undermined the health, safety and justice of sex workers. Those interviewed said they were reluctant to report crimes to police for fear of arrest or not being believed.
The QLRC said the law should respond to “reality, not myths”.
“Stereotypes about most sex workers being street workers, victims of exploitation or trafficking, or ‘vectors of disease’ are not supported by the evidence or reflected in the diversity of the sex-work industry,” the report said.
“The assumption that decriminalising sex work will increase the size of the industry is also unsupported.”
Sex worker and state coordinator of Respect Inc, Lulu Holiday, said decriminalisation will be a “life-changing policy shift”.
“Decriminalisation would mean I wouldn’t have to worry every time a client contacts me that it might be a police officer. I’d be able to work in a way that feels safe for me without being worried that I’m at risk of arrest,” Holiday told Guardian Australia.
“While it’s going to have a huge impact for us, it’s really not going to have any noticeable impact on the rest of the Queensland community.”
The chief executive of the Scarlet Alliance, Mish Pony, said the announcement “brings Queensland in line with domestic and international best practice”.
“Decriminalisation is a cost-effective, high compliance model for government and supports workplace health, safety and rights for sex workers,” Pony said.
The Queensland government confirmed last month it will also move to scrap an exemption of the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act which allows employers to discriminate against sex workers and gender-diverse and transgender people when working with children.
The exemption will be repealed, along with another clause that allows accommodation providers to lawfully discriminate against sex workers if there is a “reasonable belief” that they are engaging in sex work on the premises.
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$400 a week for a flat that smells of old milk: The tsunami coming for renters
When are governments going to twig that they need to stop persecuting landlords and start encouraging them?
The six months Emersyn Wood spent searching for a home was a period of chronic stress.
Her search started in Sydney’s inner west but later widened out, and she was forced to lift her budget from $250 to $350 a week. Even then, the options were limited, and terrible.
“Most of them were very gross,” the 21-year-old says. “Even if it was like $400 … you would go to an inspection and it smells like old milk or smells like pee.”
“I was like, ‘OK, this is kind of disgusting.’ But I got to a point where [I thought] maybe I would have to put up with it.”
Being a renter in Australia has never been more difficult, thanks to record low vacancy rates and skyrocketing rents.
The entire rental market is in serious trouble, and that’s also because it is increasingly difficult to be an investor. But without more “mum and dad” investors or an influx of larger institutional funding, as well as improvements to rental security, the rental crisis will only get worse and continue to fuel class divides.
“The gap between rich and poor is going to grow, and it’s largely going to grow between those who have a home and those who don’t,” says the Grattan Institute’s director of economic policy, Brendan Coates.
About a third of Australian households rent, and the number is growing. Renters are also becoming older and wealthier as the great Australian dream of home ownership moves further from reach.
Gianni la Cava, research director for think tank e61, says renting is seen as a perfectly acceptable way to live in many countries, but not here. “Renting seems to be seen as something inferior in Australia. There’s just a real focus on owning a house,” he says.
That might be because for many people, renting is inferior. A recent report by online property settlement platform PEXA and property business Longview found Australia is one of the worst countries in the developed world to be a renter, due to insecure tenure and an inability for renters to make the house a home, through having pets or making minor alterations.
Renting is not just insecure and unaffordable – for many, just finding a property to lease is increasingly difficult. Even some federal politicians, despite their salaries and clout, are not immune to those struggles.
Kylea Tink, the independent federal member for North Sydney, has been searching for a rental home for herself and her three children all over her electorate, but says there are few properties on the market and the ones that are available are eye-wateringly expensive.
“It’s pretty soul-destroying,” she says. “I’ve been looking from Chatswood, to Longueville, to Greenwich, you name it. I’m very open to the opportunities of where to go, but there just doesn’t seem to be the market supply there.
“And it’s not just me, there are tens of families lining up, going through these properties, trying to see if they’re going to be places that they want to help continue to raise their family.”
The proportion of households that rent is growing, and it is growing across all age groups, according to the last census, while the proportion of people buying homes falls.
Nearly 28 per cent of people aged 45 to 54 rent today, compared with fewer than 20 per cent in 2001. Among those aged 55 to 64, 21.6 per cent are renters, compared with 15.7 per cent more than two decades ago.
The proportion of renters is swelling because more people are being priced out of home ownership, while fewer people can access social and affordable housing.
While the PEXA and Longview report focuses on private rentals, it notes the chronic shortage of social housing is adding to pressures.
Social housing made up 6 per cent of all homes in 1996, but now makes up 4 per cent, according to the Give Me Shelter report from business-led advocacy group Housing All Australians.
The group says this lack of affordable housing could cost taxpayers $25 billion a year through increased spending on health, policing and lost education and productivity because critical workers will not be able to find adequate accommodation anywhere near work.
The lack of social housing has forced more people into the private rental market, leading to a rapid rise in rents and a dramatic constriction of supply as renters compete for properties. Over 2022 rents grew by 4 per cent, the biggest rate in a decade.
This year, rental inflation has reached 4.8 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics measure, and skyrocketing increases in asking rents – Domain data shows that over the year to March, asking rents for units have jumped by 24 per cent in Sydney and 23.1 per cent in Melbourne – mean renters will face higher prices for some time to come.
This is also pushing more renters into rental stress, spending 30 per cent or more of their income on housing. According to the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, more than a third of renting households – about 331,000 households – are now at that crisis point.
For low-income renters, the problem is even worse. Two-thirds of those households spend 30 per cent or more of their income on rent, according to PEXA and Longview.
Despite the soaring rental prices, the market is also dysfunctional for the ordinary Australians who make up the bulk of the country’s landlords. Most of them only own one or two properties, says Pexa chief economist Julie Toth.
“They’re not particularly experienced, and it’s not necessarily their main income or profession; it’s a hobby or sideline,” she says.
There is a cultural perception that property will always be safe, Toth says, but the return on investment is not as bulletproof or guaranteed as investors generally think.
That feeds into the insecurity inherent in renting. If those investors need access to money for something else, Toth says, their funds are not liquid and they would need to sell the investment property to get cash, creating more turnover and uncertainty in the rental market.
“Half of all investment properties are taken in or out of the rental market within five years. So that’s another source of insecurity,” Toth says.
Again, Australia is unusual here. In other countries, institutional investors such as retirement funds make up the bulk of landlords, says Housing Industry Association chief economist Tim Reardon.
“If we look overseas, in France, around about 97 per cent of rental accommodation is provided by institutional investors such as superannuation companies. In the US that figure is about 87 per cent. In Australia, we’re very close to zero,” he says.
“It’s evident that there is a problem there that we’re not attracting enough investment into building residential homes.”
Institutional investors such as super funds might be dissuaded from investing in rentals due to the poor returns and minimal incentives on offer.
PEXA and Longview’s recent research also found that the rental market was not functioning very well for landlords and most of them would get better returns if they put their money into superannuation.
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Call for national approach to phone ban by federal Education Minister
Rules around mobile phone use in schools could be implemented in every state in Australia with growing calls for a national policy.
Queensland is the only state not to have implemented phone rules for state schools, with other jurisdictions either imposing a ban or asking students to turn them off.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare says that he will meet with his state and territory counterparts in the coming months to discuss implementing a national policy.
“I think the time has come for a national approach to the banning or the restriction, the use of mobile phones by students in schools,” he told ABC Radio Brisbane.
“I think there is a good argument that we should be moving to a national best practice approach. And I’m intending to put this on the agenda when education ministers meet again in the middle of this year.
“But also not make the decision on our own, talk to parents, talk to principals, talk to teachers about what‘s the best approach to take.”
NSW is the latest state to introduce rules around mobile phones, banning their use in public secondary schools from Term 4 2023 with the ban was already in place in NSW public primary schools.
The ban will apply during class, as well as during recess and lunch times.
“I know many parents who are anxious about the pervasiveness of phones and technology in our children’s learning environments,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said.
“It’s time to clear our classrooms of unnecessary distractions and create better environments for learning.”
There are also blanket bans for phones in public schools in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania.
South Australia is trailing phone restrictions with a ban in place in 44 government schools, while mobiles aren’t allowed at Northern Territory primary schools and high school students must turn them off during the day.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said that her state would “step up to the plate” if Mr Clare’s desire for a national phone policy comes into place.
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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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