Australian Politics
Special report: There has been a modernization of the financial system, which has already satisfied many citizens in Australia
This appears to be the latest scam. The site looks like it is a legit ABC site but is in fact from a one-page address in Spain. Definitely too good to be true
Aussies call this event a "revolution of their lives", but only 1% of them are familiar with the opportunities that modernization has brought and use it to pay off their debts.
The big banks are concerned, because the government has made a move against them with financial modernization. In addition to monetary reform, the parliament, having broad powers, made drastic changes, they decided to pay attention to the cryptocurrency and launched a project based on blockchain technology called "Immediate Edge". The goal of the launch was to support the economy, but this project also had an impact on the lives of citizens. Many people have "made money" due to the Immediate Edge project.
Immediate Edge is a governmental platform that automatically recoups on the fall of the currency by buying cryptocurrency at the most favorable rates. In simple words, it plays on the "cryptocurrency boom".
According to political experts, all members of parliament unanimously voted FOR this project, it will not only help the economy, but also replenish state reserves. While the project is completely under the control of the state, trial launches are currently underway about reduced requirements for participants for up to 90 days. Then a limited number of people will be able to participate in the project.
The requirements are very simple, the prospective applicant needs to make an initial deposit of A$ 390 to become a full-fledged participant of the project, the government considers it a very reduced tariff, it is assumed that it can grow. After making a deposit, the applicant becomes a full-fledged participant on the Immediate Edge platform
Immediate Edge is a program that has artificial intelligence, it analyzes the markets itself, self-learns, predicts to get to the exact time of the decline of bitcoin for its profitable purchase. It determines when to buy cheaper and sell more expensive. The user, as a third-party observer, observes the transactions and makes a profit from the transactions.
Financial experts are whispering behind their backs, saying that in Australia everyone can become a millionaire due to the Immediate Edge platform in 4 months, the forecasts are impressive! The banking sector is perplexed, because it may lose its customers. Banks have always known about the project, which the government put on ice, but the times have come when the state and its citizens need financial support.
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Australian judge apologises after claiming that colleagues are appointed regardless of merit
Too much truth
A federal and family court justice who planned to deliver a speech at an international conference claiming that progressive governments appointed diverse judges regardless of merit has been forced to apologise to his colleagues and told he can no longer attend the conference.
The speech by Justice Joshua Wilson had been uploaded on the court’s website before Justice William Alstergren, the chief justice of the family court and chief judge of the federal circuit court, was alerted to its contents and ordered that it be removed this week.
The speech was dated 17 April, and Wilson planned to deliver it in September at the International Association of Judges annual general meeting in Taiwan.
“Is it correct to say that the brightest and the best are appointed to judicial office, independent of political persuasion? The answer is in the negative in the case of the overwhelming majority of appointments,” Wilson, a division one judge, wrote in the speech.
“It sometimes occurs that a government appoints a person to judicial office who is aligned with the opposite party’s politics. That is a rarity.
“Occasionally, an attorney-general appoints a person as a judge who is wholly apolitical. Again, that is a rarity. Appointment to judicial office is a political activity.”
Wilson went on to say that appointments to state and territory courts were highly political, and that “progressive governments are more likely to appoint to benches based on gender and ethnic diversity, irrespective of merit or expertise”.
Alstergren said in a statement to the Guardian that he was alerted to the paper, which had been uploaded without his knowledge or permission, by a number of judges.
He said Wilson had been planning to attend the conference as a member of the association, not as a representative of the court.
He said that as soon as he was alerted to the paper it was immediately taken down from the website, and that a statement was made to all judges indicating that it did not reflect the views of the courts and that protocols were in place to make sure this could not happen again.
“Further, Justice Wilson will not be providing a paper at this conference nor will he be attending, and I have taken steps to ensure there is no further publication of the paper’s content,” Alstergren said.
“The judge has apologised to the judges of both courts for the comments.
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Labor’s coal-fired green dream
With cost-of-living pressures really starting to hurt Australians, Labor’s green dream would be a complete nightmare if it wasn’t for coal.
When then Treasurer Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal into the House of Representatives, the left-leaning media were quick to respond:
‘What a bunch of clowns, hamming it up – while out in the real world an ominous and oppressive heat just won’t let up.’
Fast forward to 2023 and Labor’s budget surplus has little to do with sound economic management, and much to do with unexpectedly high prices for exports of fossil fuels. And this is despite Labor’s running mates, the Greens, doing everything to demonise coal and gas.
In the real world, it takes more than just dreams to power the nation.
But the economic bonus provided by plentiful coal and gas reserves is only the most obvious benefit. Our ability to provide coal and gas to Korea and Japan provides energy security for our strategic partners. This is important for the energy sector in Korea and Japan if they are to avoid Germany’s fate. The disruption of supply in coal and gas in Europe resulting from the war in Ukraine should be proof enough that Australian exports of coal and gas are more important than ever.
The government’s approval of a new coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin has barely raised an eyebrow from the major news media players. Nor should it. This is good news for the economy but confirms that Labor is facing up to the reality of its green energy dream.
Countries that pursued carbon emissions strategies by relying heavily on wind and solar farms are now changing tack. Nuclear is back on the agenda everywhere except for Germany and Australia it seems. The green dream is also impacting European farmers who are protesting against tax burdens created by ‘radical environmentalists far away from farms’. This trend is now starting to impact farmers in Australia.
Australian farmers make a major contribution to our budget bottom line, with wheat production reaching record levels in 2022-23. Although next year’s crop is expected to remain steady (a bit below record levels), Labor was quick to dip into farmers’ profits with a new ‘biosecurity tax’. It makes no sense for farmers to pay a tax to ensure imports from their offshore competitors do not create a biohazard. What’s worse, the levy will ultimately increase the price of fresh food at the checkout when the cost of living is already biting struggling families.
Europeans are starting to turn against Net Zero policies, led by French President Emmanuel Macron with his call for a ‘“pause” of more EU environmental red-tape’. The UK, however, appears to be pushing beyond the EU’s aspirations with goals to end internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030 compared with the EU’s later and less stringent vehicle laws lobbied for by the likes of German manufacturers BMW, Audi, VW, and Mercedes-Benz.
Labor’s push for increased fuel efficiency standards for vehicles is another area where the green dream can easily turn into a gas-guzzling nightmare. Fuel efficiency standards are meant to encourage smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles. The reality or indeed the perverse outcome of such policies is that vehicles are becoming bigger and more powerful.
The idea that consumers can’t wait to get their hands on an EV is not reflected in Australian vehicle sales, with the Ford Ranger currently the biggest selling vehicle, followed closely by the Toyota Hilux. Woke city folk forget that many Australians can’t get around in regional and remote communities on an electric scooter or in the best-selling EV that has a range of barely 500km.
The big problem at the moment is that there might not be enough electricity to live the green dream where everything is powered by renewables. With no Plan B, Australia’s energy security is at risk should Labor’s ‘crash through or crash’ approach to energy policy fail.
Energy industry leaders such as Dr Kerry Schott have cautioned against demonising coal and gas as part of the energy transition to renewables. And former head of Snowy Hydro Paul Broad recently called BS on the 80 per cent renewables energy target. But Warren Mundine summed it up most succinctly on Spectator TV last week, when he said ‘if you believe in climate change and you don’t believe in nuclear power, then you don’t believe in climate change’.
But Labor is pushing a certain type of green dream without facing up to the reality that Europeans are now realising – renewables alone can’t do the job. With some of the largest reserves of uranium in the world, it’s a no-brainer for Australia to embrace nuclear energy now rather than waiting to learn Europe’s lessons.
The Albanese government is happy to claim the glory for a budget surplus due to responsible economic management while minimising the importance of coal for the nation’s continuing prosperity.
In the meantime, without coal there is no green dream.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/labors-coal-fired-green-dream/
***********************************************Political and corporate defeatism
Charles Mackay’s 1841, titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds has enduringly served to refute claims of collective wisdom. He described events like Dutch tulip mania and the 1711-22 South Sea Bubble as frenzies of collective investment hysteria.
In the modern era, every decade or so we have seen more such investment delirium, including the build-up to the 1929 Wall Street crash with lesser events like the 1970s Poseidon mining boom/bust and the 2007 collapse of US leveraged housing funds.
In all cases, investment frenzies ramped up share prices to stratospheric levels. Lessons have not been learned. The next debacle will centre on puncturing the carbuncle of funds focused on virtue signalling their Environment, Social, and Governance credentials (ESG), the apogee for which is fossil-fuel-phobia and renewable-energy-philia.
Collective madness is not confined to money markets. Even before media control hid reality, huge majorities of Germans, Russians, and Chinese willingly supported leaders who were promoters of violence and destroyers of economic stability.
The antidote to unsound business investments is that an accumulation of investors recognises them and sells them. For political malfeasance, such a cleansing is more difficult. Thus, even with an independent media and Parliamentary accountability, a likely majority of US citizens support the obviously corrupt and incompetent President Biden. More parochially, Victorians have sequentially re-elected a Premier who has squandered public funds, including by increasing public service employees by twice as much as other states.
Modern vulnerabilities to political turmoil stem from political hubris in claiming expertise in where the economy’s structure should be heading. Previously, politicians could not credibly claim expertise in the innovations and investments necessary to drive economic growth. The developments that have created the modern economy’s wealth – in transport, automation, energy, health, and communications – took place with little direct political input.
But today’s electorate seems to accept politicians’ claimed expertise in controlling the vital area of energy policy. The genesis of this control started with confected concerns about global warming. These are easily dismissed – there has been no increase in climate emergencies, no increase in hurricanes, no loss of coral, no rise in the oceans, no loss of ice cover, and so on. Blind to such evidence, political measures have been assembled to counteract the phantom threats.
Political leaders ranging from UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to our very own John Pesutto say they concluded they must act after listening to climate sermons from their teenage daughters, which were canalised from teachers in their private schools. This, a fractured thread from climate science to political action, is representative of a broader march of the green left through educational institutions as well as those of media and the civil service.
The susceptibility of politicians to climate hyperbole is heightened as a result of their assigned role to combating it. For the first time outside of war-like conditions, they have an issue that offers them a hero’s role, one far more attractive than buying support by addressing mundane local matter and balancing budgets.
The theme’s potency is much enhanced by the numerous, much publicised international meetings which place the seal of approval to proposals crafted by hand-picked bureaucrats..
Hence, outside of the US there are few politicians who have not bought the narrative. Even Britain’s Conservative Party’s leader-in-waiting, Lord Frost, argues that current policies are ‘hurtling towards Net Zero at any cost’, instead of recognising the energy ‘transition’ to wind/solar as a constantly receding mirage. He says he believes that the UK is simply proceeding towards the renewables ‘transition’ too quickly. For his part, Mr Albanese is linking his own policy to a reinforcement of the American alliance alongside access to US subsidies.
And the thread wends its way throughout national fabrics. Authorities and sloganeers alike are almost unanimous in seeing the elimination of coal as one essential building block of future economic sustainable prosperity.
Even coal company representatives seem to feel obliged to denounce their product, much like terrorised Chinese ‘capitalist roaders’ facing Red Guards and wearing dunces caps. In its Annual Report the coal miner Whitehaven acquiesces in the death of coal, claiming it supports the Paris Agreement’s aims of limiting global temperature rises to well below 2 degrees, the corollary of which is the elimination of coal. Similarly, Yancoal, in its 64-page ESG report, claims to be ‘demonstrating its commitment to renewable energy opportunities’ and support for the Paris Agreement.
New Hope, however simply says, ‘Achievable emissions abatement opportunities with positive value will be the first to be considered for implementation’.
Net Zero CO2 emissions is the clarion call but its costs are colossal. BloombergNEF, in promoting ‘investment opportunities’, estimates that to achieve Net Zero by 2050 Australia will need to spend $413 billion on renewables and their back-up, plus $300 billion on transmission. The existing coal-based supply would cost only $80 billion on plant plus maybe $30 billion on transmission!
Even adding in the coal input and operating costs means the system from which we are being transitioned provides energy with far greater reliability at one-third of the cost of the wind /solar system that our political elites favour.
Government regulations on mining and environment have brought electricity and gas price increases at double that of general inflation. This is notwithstanding Australia having the world’s lowest cost coal and gas resources. And the upward electricity price trajectory continues with a further increase of over 20 per cent in place for next month.
Widespread support for manipulating markets to achieve this dismal picture is testament to Charles Mackay’s recognition, nearly 300 years ago, that popular delusions sometimes replace human rationality. But the higher the delusions fly, the harder they fall.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/political-and-corporate-defeatism
*********************************************Why free speech and offensive expressions are too important to be left to legislation
Dachau concentration camp was established just outside the city of Munich in March 1933, less than two months after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor.
It has been preserved, along with some of the other later camps, as a reminder of the regime that ruled Germany from 1933 until 1945. Its location rebuts any suggestion that the German people were somehow unaware of their government’s policies over this period. In the early 1970s I visited Dachau with a small group of recent graduates from the University of Melbourne on a camping tour of Europe.
We didn’t spend much time in those days reflecting on history but our normally boisterous behaviour was replaced by complete silence as we walked past the barracks where the prisoners had been housed and contemplated what had happened to most of them. I have sometimes thought of that visit whenever there have been calls in recent months for legislation to prohibit the Nazi salute, particularly after it was used by some of the participants in a demonstration in Melbourne.
The salute was not in fact confined to Hitler’s administration but a similar version was used, for example, by the regimes of Francisco Franco in Spain and Benito Mussolini in Italy after they took power in the years before World War II.
Any public imitations of the Hitler period are, however, especially offensive to Jewish members of society in any country because of their enormous losses at the hands of the Germans.
It is not an especially popular position to raise questions about this kind of banning legislation but the problem about freedom of speech is, if it is accepted as an important value, it does not allow for picking and choosing between different kinds of speech, even those that may be offensive to almost all members of the community.
None of this is to say that incitements to violence against individuals or groups in the community should not be unlawful – and they have always been a crime under the common law. In addition, there are statutory provisions, for example, under the NSW Crimes Act, where it is an offence for a person by a public act to intentionally or recklessly to threaten or incite violence towards another person or group of persons on the ground of race, religious belief, sexual orientation or gender identity.
But it is the expression of utterly offensive views that provides the real test for a belief in freedom of speech. As American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes said in a judgment of the US Supreme Court in 1919: “All life is an experiment … while that experiment is part of our system I think we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.”
It is not as if the handful of persons in Australia who seem to have some affection for this period of German history are taken seriously by the general community. No regime in modern history is more discredited, and anyone displaying Nazi salutes or symbols would rightly be considered an embarrassment to himself or herself by almost every member of Australian society.
This kind of legislation also raises the question of how offensive a symbol has to be before its display should be prohibited by law. What about the hammer and sickle – the flag of the Soviet Union – a regime under which millions were killed or sent to gulags? Or what about the Confederate flag, the banner of the old south, in a war fought to preserve the institution of slavery? Should the music identified with these regimes, such as The Internationale and Dixie, be banned as well?
There have also been calls for those calling themselves Nazis to be declared by legislation as members of a terrorist organisation.
There is, of course, a large volume of legislation at both the federal and the state level in Australia on the subject of terrorism, but this is designed to deal with individuals or organisations who are dedicated to acts of carefully planned violence, often on a large scale that might result in the deaths of hundreds of individuals through bombs placed at public events or the sabotage of airline flights.
It is hardly suitable to apply to political agitators, however offensive and misguided. Dachau and its like should never be forgotten, but freedom of speech is an important legacy of Western civilisation and worth preserving, no matter how unworthy some of those who make use of 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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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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