Australian Politics
Monday, July 31, 2023
Andrew Bolt: ‘This Aboriginal identity craze is too much’
Brittany Higgins is now Aboriginal, too? And even got a job from Victoria’s version of Labor’s Aboriginal-only Voice?
Dear God. This Aboriginal identity craze is just too much.
And wait until I tell you about the latest very senior “Aboriginal” academic.
But let’s start with Higgins, whose story helps to explain why so many academics in particular say they’re Aboriginal when they’re not.
Higgins, you’ll know, controversially claimed she’d been raped in Parliament House by a Liberal colleague. He denied it, but she still won up to $3 million in compensation.
It was extraordinary. Higgins didn’t have to prove either the rape or the nasty treatment she claimed she’d got from the Morrison Liberal Government before the Albanese Labor Government gave this fortune to the woman who’d help them to smash the Liberals.
But Higgins had meanwhile hit a problem. Where could she find another job?
No problem! A friend working at Victoria’s First Peoples Assembly told her to apply there to be a media adviser, and apparently told her bosses Higgins had Aboriginal ancestry.
Text messages uncovered by the Daily Mail show that friend, Emma Webster, then asking Higgins what “mob” she was, adding the Assembly’s “co-chair and CEO are curious”.
Higgins replied that her grandfather was connected “to either the Nyawigi or Gugu Badhun people”. But “we’re not entirely sure which one” and her grandfather “didn’t want to progress any further” with inquiries after reconnecting with his “siblings from the orphanage”.
Higgins added: “We’ve all collectively as a family respected his wishes”, but “my grandma has all the documentation if you’d like”.
Be clear: I’m NOT calling Higgins a fake. Her grandfather may indeed have Aboriginal ancestry, but I wonder how anyone could claim Higgins is in any meaningful way Aboriginal herself, based on such uncertain connections.
Higgins got the job, but many other Australians who get jobs after claiming to be Aboriginal can’t even wave at any documents to supposedly prove it.
I’ve given examples before: author Bruce Pascoe, of course, now Professor of “Indigenous Agriculture” at Melbourne University; and Professor Kerrie Doyle of the non-existent “Winninninii” tribe. Both won’t explain why their genealogies show no Aboriginal ancestors.
But let me now introduce you to yet another academic who has longed claimed to be Aboriginal.
Margo Neale is an Australian National University adjunct professor, and head of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges at the National Museum of Australia.
She’s been one of the gatekeepers of Aboriginal culture, organising exhibitions of Aboriginal art and working at the National Gallery of Australia and the state galleries of NSW and Queensland.
She’s big. She’s shared in seven Australian Research Council grants, and her many books include the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture.
Part of Neale’s influence comes from claiming she’s Aboriginal herself – descended on her mother’s side from the “Mirning-language speakers of the Albany region, Western Australia”.
She’s also claimed she’s “Aboriginal descent, from Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections”, and even “clan-affiliated” with the Wiradjuri of NSW.
The trouble is that Neale’s family tree – now assembled by professional genealogists at dark-emu-exposed.org – suggests she’s actually 100 per cent of Irish, Welsh and English stock.
The researchers couldn’t find a single Aborigine among Neale’s ancestors, after consulting birth records, death records, newspaper clippings of family events, and the family trees and photographs posted on ancestry.com by two of Neale’s very close relatives.
Dark-emu-exposed.org wrote to Neale asking her if they’d overlooked something, but got no answer.
Then I wrote, asking Neale to identify her Aboriginal ancestor. I eventually received a response offering no name or evidence: “Aboriginal histories, as you know, can indeed be tricky particularly if one relies on western records during the long period of disruption and displacement …
“Aboriginal births, deaths and marriages were largely unrecorded outside missions and pastoral properties in earlier days at least, or inaccurately recorded for spurious purposes or surnames changed for legitimacy reasons.”
I’ve since asked Neale again which ancestor was Aboriginal and had their birth record inaccurately recorded.
I’m still waiting, but someone did meanwhile send me one university document which helps to explain why so many academics are now Aborigines about as pale as Higgins.
It was a Queensland University advertisement, seeking a lecturer in maths and physics, but insisting “the occupant must be of Aboriginal and / or Torres Strait Islander descent”. I’ve since found many more such racist ads.
How mad. No wonder a great race circus overwhelms even our universities and all common sense
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Queensland Government Slashes Fishing Quotas, Fish Prices Set to Rise
On July 1, Fisheries Queensland cut the amount of Spanish mackerel allowed to be caught.
For professional anglers, the amount dipped by approximately two-thirds from 578 tonnes to 165 tonnes.
Recreational fishers’ possession limits have also changed from three to one fish per person or from six to two fish per boat with two or more recreational fishers on board. Further, the extended charter limit has been removed, stopping recreational fishers from taking twice the in-possession limit for trips over 48 hours.
These changes were made based on fish stock modelling. The government’s stock assessment estimated that Spanish mackerel could be down to 17 percent of its unfished biomass which has an accepted sustainable level of 60 percent or more.
However, Allan Bobbermen, Chief Executive of the Queensland Seafood Industries Association (QSIA) said this data must be re-examined.
He told the ABC that the modelling did not match what fishing businesses were experiencing in the field.
“If there was less to catch, we’d be catching less, but we’re not catching less,” Mr. Bobbermen said.
Simon Hoyle and Alistair Dunn, experienced fisheries scientists with expertise in mackerel management, are also concerned after they conducted an independent report on the government’s modelling.
They said that the model showed “signs of misspecification, with bias apparent in the estimated growth curve, and instability in model fits.” They argued that before this model was used to recommend any management advice, it needed to be fixed.
“What Fisheries Queensland has relied upon in reaching decisions about future Spanish mackerel catches simply should not be used in its current form for management of the fishery,” said Mr. Bobbermen.
He has asked Fisheries Minister, Mark Furner, to withdraw the new East Coast Spanish mackerel Total Allowable Commercial Catch (TACC) because of the information being questioned in the independent report.
According to Bobbermen, the TACC could lead to severe economic hardship for many coastal Queensland communities such as Ingham, Halifax, Lucinda, and Cardwell. It will also affect more than 200 commercial fishermen.
He said, “We did not get any warning, and in fact, we’re quite dismayed at the lack of due process and the lack of engagement by governments in relation to this whole matter.”
No Heads Up
This is not the only issue the fishing industry is facing in Queensland. Commercial fishers have said that Queensland’s wild-caught industry will be crippled by a surprise reform to ban gillnets from the Great Barrier Reef by 2027.
Gillnets are used to catch fish in a moving tide and have been shown to be a threat to much sea life, including dolphins.
The government has allocated $160 million (US$107 million) to reduce net fishing and other fishing activities affecting the reef.
Licences (N2 and N4) that cover Thursday Island to Maryborough will be bought out by the end of 2023. While Cape Bedford to the tip of Cape York will also become net-free, with N1 licences phased out by June 30, 2027.
Additionally, there are around 240 gillnet licences that will eventually be cancelled, and the government will also mandate the use of independent data validation on commercial fishing vessels.
Dermot O’Gorman, CEO of WWF-Australia, said that the decision was a significant moment for ocean conservation.
“This announcement is shaping up as a globally significant moment for ocean conservation, fisheries management and the Great Barrier Reef—one of the natural wonders of the world,” he said.
“The commitment to mandate the use of independent data validation on commercial fishing vessels is also welcome and long overdue.
“It means we’ll have a much better understanding of what’s happening out on the water, including how many threatened species are being accidentally caught.”
Federal Minister for the Environment Tanya Plibersek said in a media release that the removal of the gillnets will help boost populations.
“The removal of gillnets in net-free zones on the reef has already helped boost local fish populations. We want to see this happen right across the reef,” Ms. Plibersek said.
According to Mr. Bobbermen, these bans were made without any consultation or discussion with the fishing industry.
“We are shocked by these unnecessary bans and the lack of empathy shown to fishers, their families, and the communities that rely on the commercial fishing industry in the joint announcement by the state and federal governments,” Mr. Bobbermen.
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Why our energy transition needs a price tag
On the ABC’s 7.30 earlier this month, presenter Sarah Ferguson asked Energy Minister Chris Bowen to forecast a time when power prices would come down.
After name-checking the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bowen answered: “very clearly, the policy agenda indicates getting more renewables into the system, backed up by storage and by firming … (that) is the best way of seeing the cheapest possible energy prices”.
But is it? This is the multibillion-dollar question Australia’s future hinges on.
Bowen’s view that an ever-increasing share of renewables will lead to a reduction in power prices largely rests on one document: the CSIRO’s GenCost report. Updated on a yearly basis, this document is produced by a small team led by energy economist Paul Graham.
Although the document is treated as gospel by many, it has received surprisingly little scrutiny in the public arena. Given it is the most important document in Australia’s energy transition this lack of scrutiny may lead to policy disaster. One problem is that describing the problems with the report in accessible terms is no easy task.
Understanding the report requires a technical nous, and even those with industry expertise have found parts of it confounding.
Nevertheless, some experts do not hold back in their criticism. Stephen Wilson, from the School of Mechanical & Mining Engineering at the University of Queensland, told me in an email that the GenCost report is “inaccurate and misleading on total system costs”.
In a submission to Treasury earlier this year, energy economist David Carland points out that the report says nothing about the cost of “firming” of renewables and instead estimates the cost of “integrated” renewables from 2030 onwards – relying on the flawed assumption that firming has already taken place. But the most pointed criticism of GenCost has emerged this week from a Sydney-based data scientist.
Writing in the Fresh Economic Thinking publication, Aidan Morrison points out that the CSIRO’s claim that renewables are the “cheapest” form of energy rests almost entirely on a misapplication of the “sunk cost” assumption.
A “sunk cost” is economics jargon for money already spent. The sunk cost fallacy applies when you have already spent dollars and you try to recover them after they are gone. Say you buy a cake and put it in the fridge. You come to it later in the week but it has gone stale. You tell yourself you should eat it because you have spent money on it. In that situation – if you ate it – you would be committing the sunk cost fallacy. It would be better to just chuck it in the bin and reach for an apple.
In many situations, it makes sense to account for sunk costs. But the concept should always apply to money spent in the past, not in the future. By definition, costs that have not been incurred yet are avoidable, and are not yet sunk. This is common sense but, in the GenCost report, the CSIRO treats future spending on renewables as sunk – even before the spending has occurred – allowing the analysis to exclude this expenditure from the total cost of renewables.
This creative accounting method is how the GenCost report arrives at the conclusion that “integrated renewables” are the cheapest form of energy by 2030 onwards.
“By use of a bizarre ‘sunk-cost’ assumption in their modelling, CSIRO cleaves the cost of infrastructure built prior to 2030 (when we would supposedly already have reached over 50 per cent renewable penetration) from any solar and wind generators built thereafter that might depend on that infrastructure,” Morrison writes in Fresh Economic Thinking.
The CSIRO lists the projects that are written off as sunk: “Snowy 2.0 and the battery of the nation pumped hydro projects … various transmission expansion projects … New South Wales gas peaking plants at Kurri Kurri and Illawarra … The NSW target for an additional 2GW of at least eight hours duration storage is assumed to be met by 2030.” In response to this list, Morrison quips: “I’m losing count of the billions.”
“Every economist, politician, and policymaker relying on this report simply must hear about this,” he writes.
Morrison argues that a circular logic has taken root: “Politicians build transmission and storage because they think solar and wind are cheap because science says so. Science (ie, CSIRO) says solar and wind are cheap because high transmission and storage costs required to facilitate these renewable generators are an already built ‘sunk cost’ and ignored in their calculations.”
Of course, there may be good reasons why the CSIRO uses the sunk cost assumption for future and not past spending, and Morrison’s critique itself is worthy of scrutiny. But the problem is that we do not have a balanced conversation in this country about the true cost of our energy transition, and engineers who have expertise in alternative clean energy sources – such as nuclear – are frozen out of the conversation.
There is also a growing awareness internationally that when the full cost of firming renewables is incorporated into cost-of-generation metrics, the analysis looks rather different from what the CSIRO produces.
In a paper published in the journal Energy, German-American energy economist Robert Idel finds that when taking into account the full cost of renewables to an energy system, solar is 14 times more costly than nuclear energy, and wind is 4.7 times more costly.
In Texas, his methodology calculates that solar is 3.3 times more costly than nuclear, and wind is 2.3 times more costly. Such information is crucial for a balanced conversation about Australia’s energy transition. Especially in the context of power prices that just keep on rising.
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Australia's easing inflation has given the government hope – but there's a long way to go until victory can be declared
"Pleasing" and "welcome". It's a long while since the treasurer has been able to use those words when talking about inflation. Yesterday they were his go-to descriptors.
The slightly better than expected fall in inflation from 7 per cent to 6 per cent in the June quarter was certainly a big relief for the government. "There's still a long way to go," Jim Chalmers acknowledged, but "we're heading in the right direction."
Inflation falls faster than expected. Has the Reserve Bank already increased interest rates too far?
Inflation has slowed down again, with consumer prices up 6 per cent over the year to June, below most economists' forecasts.
Recent opinion polls have shown some softening in Labor's (still dominant) levels of support. And the LNP's win in the Fadden by-election, while downplayed by Labor, suggested Peter Dutton is gaining more traction on cost-of-living issues than he was a few months ago.
The great fear within the government has been "sticky" inflation persisting in the economy, overwhelming its agenda for the remainder of this term, and dragging down its political fortunes and re-election prospects.
The June quarter figure gives Labor hope the cost-of-living crisis will be in the rear-view mirror by the time voters go to the polls in 2025.
There's still a risk of stickiness, however. The more problematic "services inflation" is now broad based in the economy, according to the Bureau of Statistics, and overtaking "goods inflation" for the first time since the end of COVID lockdowns.
The best news in this week's figures
Over the 12 months to the end of June, while goods inflation fell, services inflation rose faster than at any time since the introduction of the GST more than 20 years ago. Those services include both the discretionary and the unavoidable, which both present political challenges for the government.
Insurance premiums, for example, are through the roof, up more than 14 per cent over the year, raising fears households might drop their cover, leaving them exposed heading into a potentially difficult summer. Jim Chalmers says the government is looking at what it can do to help but admits there's no simple solution.
Who should pay for an increase in home insurance claims?
One in 25 Australians have lodged an insurance claim because of extreme weather since 2020, but should the remaining policyholders be responsible for sharing the cost of increased premiums?
Rents are an unavoidable expense for many. They've risen 6.7 per cent over the year, the largest annual rise since 2009. The treasurer points to the increase in Commonwealth Rent Assistance announced in the budget and the government's battle in the Senate to establish a new housing fund, but the pressure for more help, stirred on by the Greens, will only grow.
The best news in yesterday's figures was the fall in goods inflation. No one will be cheering at the checkout just yet but the rate of inflation for a range of basic food, clothing and furniture goods has eased considerably.
While economists will debate what all this means for next week's interest rate decision, it's also worth considering what the June quarter result tells us about the decisions made to date by both the Reserve Bank and the government.
For all the criticism of Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe and the blunt tool of hiking interest rates, the 12 increases to date have clearly had an impact in gradually lowering inflation without destroying the jobs market.
There's been undeniable pain along the way for all those hit by higher rates, but the unemployment rate, remarkably, remains at near record lows of 3.5 per cent.
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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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