Australian Politics
Nazi salutes, memes and assaults: Jewish students say state schools unsafe
The article below is careful not to mention it but this would almost certainly be the Muslim influence at work. "Mein Kampf" still sells well in Turkey and such places. The problem is exacerbated in Melbourbne because Melbourne has a substantial Jewish population. Unlike Europe, Antisemitism is not a part of traditional Australian culture
Every day for five weeks at school, a 13-year-old boy says he was greeted with abuse, including heil Hitlers and being called a “dirty Jew” – a reminder that members of his family were murdered by Nazis.
He’s one of three students at three separate Melbourne public schools who say they have experienced antisemitic bullying that was so extreme their parents are pulling them out. They encountered swastikas, Nazi salutes and even physical assaults and were called “Jewboy” or “dirty Jew” and sent memes involving Hitler.
Two of the students became withdrawn, refused to go to school and couldn’t get out of bed. Another said he no longer told people about his Jewish background.
Their families say the response from both the schools and Education Department did not go far enough to stamp out the behaviour, or treat the matters as seriously as they should have. One family decided to go to the police because they felt the school was not responding quickly enough.
Adi Rozen, the mother of 14-year-old Jewish student Jackie, who went to Brighton Secondary College and was in its Select Entry Accelerated Learning program, said the bullying was so bad her daughter sometimes would not get out of bed.
Jackie was in a STEM class with five girls and 15 boys and had planned to do the International Baccalaureate program earlier this year.
Rozen said Jackie had a swastika drawn on her desk, had a note thrown at her that said “Jewish Rat” and was sent memes showing Hitler as the shark in Jaws.
A copy of Anne Frank’s novel, The Diary of a Young Girl, which documents the life of a young Jewish girl in hiding under Nazi persecution, was held aloft in the school library by a girl asking when the Nazis were comings.
Rozen was also concerned that other students were passive bystanders and wanted the school to show a zero tolerance to antisemitism.
“ I wanted the kids to know it happened, not names, but something that happened to the point a child has felt compelled to leave the school and seriously and emotionally damaged.”
When contacted for a response, the three schools referred The Sunday Age to the Education Department, which was sent a list of questions about its responses, including what policies were in place to combat antisemitism and what support was in place for the targets of such bullying.
A Department of Education spokesperson said any antisemitic behaviour in schools was “distressing and disturbing and taken extremely seriously”.
“We work closely with the Victorian Jewish community to strengthen our zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism,” he said.
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abromovich said he heard concerns “almost daily” about incidents of antisemitic harassment and abuse in Victorian schools.
“These cases are just the tip of the iceberg and are symptomatic of something very troubling that is taking place in Victoria,” he said.
“For too many Jewish students, attending a public school is nothing short of a nightmare, as lives have been ruined because schools have failed us all.”
In unrelated incidents, Brighton Secondary College and the Education Department are awaiting a Federal Court judgment on a case against the state in which five former students alleged the school did not protect them from antisemitic discrimination and bullying.
A former Brunswick Secondary College student, 13, who asked not to be identified to avoid further harassment, claims he was subject to a five-week “campaign” of antisemitic bullying.
The year 7 student said the bullying began just three weeks into the first term this year after a group discussion about cultural backgrounds during which he said he had Jewish heritage.
He said he was confronted with heil Hitlers, a student drawing swastikas on a desk and at one point was held down, hit and kicked while another student tried to draw a swastika on his leg. The boy, who can speak German, said a student used Google to translate “all Jews should be exterminated” and “go back to the camps” into that language.
Most of it happened in the classroom, he said, but he would also get “sly tackled” on the sports field.
“It was constant every day, he was drawing the same thing [swastikas] on the table ... saluting me [the heil Hitler] the entire time,” he said.
“They never said my normal name. My nickname was ‘dirty Jew’ or ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewboy’. ”
The student was worried that going to the teachers about the bullying would make him a stronger target, but after five weeks his parents found out.
The boy’s father John, who asked not to include his surname to avoid his son being bullied again, said the boy’s great-grandmother and great-grandfather were murdered by Nazis during World War II. John’s own father escaped the Holocaust in 1938. He still has his father’s star-shaped Jewish badge.
After contacting the school and not getting a response for 24 hours, John decided to go to the police.
“Then the dialogue with the school just started after we sort of had to approach the police. It wasn’t just verbal or punchy and so on. It was physical. And it was abusive.”
The school set up a safety plan, but John said it was too late.
John decided not to go through with police charges to spare his son the trauma of the process.
“I did actually say to them in 35 years of experiencing schools in three different countries, this is the worst case of antisemitism I’ve come across,” he said.
Another student, 12, who attends Rowville Secondary Sports Academy, said antisemitic attacks began on the third week of February this year.
The boy’s father, who asked not to be named to protect his son’s identity – said his son was called a “filthy Jew” and told “all of you were supposed to die standing in a line and raising your hands up” and saw students doing the heil Hitler.
“It’s almost every day, every day it would have been something else,” he said.
The boy’s father said one teacher was aware of it from the first week and told the students to stop, which he believes had no impact. He claims he called the school for weeks before he had a response and felt the consequences and educative responses were not strong enough.
“Look this is racism. This is the worst. It’s not bullying,” he said.
“One time is one time too many. I don’t want other students to have deal with this the way my son did.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive officer Peter Wertheim said he did not think there were strong enough policies in Victorian state schools to support Jewish students. The number of antisemitic incidents reported across Australia in 2022 was the highest in a decade, with 478 incidents – a 6.9 per cent increase from 2021.
In June last year, Victoria became the first state to ban the public display of the Nazi symbol. Under proposed federal laws, people who display or trade Nazi hate symbols would also face up to 12 months in jail.
It is mandatory for Victorian government schools to teach students about the Holocaust as part of the level 9/10 history curriculum.
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Fiona Martin is a typical landlord – but she’s not what you expect
Fiona Martin and her children live in a rented home that she can’t afford to buy. Luckily, her rent is subsidised by income from a modest investment property she is paying off.
Martin, whose investment property is in Kew, Melbourne, works as a real estate vendor advocate, helping people sell property all over Victoria. But many of her clients are now selling their investment properties because they are no longer financially worthwhile due to rising interest rates and the time it takes to manage them is “just a pain”.
While Australian landlords are often portrayed as affluent aristocrats, Martin is more typical of the more than 80 per cent of the rental market owned by individuals, or “mum and dad investors”, says Australian Landlords Association president Andrew Kent.
Most landlords report a taxable income of less than $100,000 and there are more landlords in the $18,200 to $45,000 income bracket than the $120,000 to $180,000 range, recent tax data shows. More than 300,000 people who own rental property reported a taxable income below $18,200 in 2021.
“There’s an assumption that landlords are bad and tenants deserve more because they’re poorer, because they can’t afford to buy,” Martin says. “But the majority of landlords have single investment properties and they’re families.”
Her view is borne out by the data. Landlords are likely to be households with children: about four in 10 fit the family category and two-thirds have two incomes.
The top five landlord occupations by raw numbers are: general manager, school teacher, chief executive or managing director, registered nurse and accountant. Hospitality workers – including bartenders, baristas, waiters and fast-food cooks – are the least likely landlords at about 2 per cent.
The fact that most of Australia’s landlords are working families, or middle-income earners doesn’t fit the political narrative that the “top end of town” runs most of the rental market.
However, some professions do come closer to fitting the stereotype. Surgeons, school principals and mining engineers own rental properties at some of the highest rates in Australia. More than one in three people in these fields reported rental income in 2021.
Tax Office data back to 2012 shows a consistent pattern of people who work in jobs that pay close to an average income dominating the rental property landscape.
For example, the top 40 occupations of people who own rental properties include workers in childcare, the disability sector and aged care, motor mechanics, truck drivers, receptionists, sales assistants and police officers.
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Tasmanian court sentences environmental activist to jail for first time in more than a decade
An environmental activist has been sent to jail in Tasmania for the first time in more than a decade after protesting at logging and mining sites.
Colette Joan Harmsen, a 47-year-old veterinarian and seasoned “peaceful forest protester” with the Bob Brown Foundation, was sentenced to three months in prison for breaching a suspended sentence for protesting against a mine on the west coast of Tasmania.
Harmsen appeared in Hobart magistrates court on Friday after pleading guilty to four counts of trespassing, as well as other related offences.
It comes just a year after the Tasmanian government passed anti-protest legislation that was aimed at the Bob Brown Foundation and its blockades. Under the laws protesters can be fined up to $12,975 or jailed for 18 months for a first offence. Organisations can be fined up to $103,800 if they are judged to have obstructed workers or caused “a serious risk”.
The Bob Brown Foundation campaign manager, Jenny Weber, said police prosecutors had attempted to prosecute Harmsen under the anti-protest laws.
“We are grateful today that the judge threw out an appalling attempt by the police prosecutors to bring in the anti-protest laws,” she said from the courthouse steps.
Weber said it was the first time a woman in Tasmania had been sentenced to prison for environmental protesting.
In 2011, the protester Ali Alishah served five months in a Tasmanian prison after he breached a suspended sentence by continuing to protest against logging.
Harmsen’s charges relate to her involvement in a protest in 2021 where she locked herself on to an excavator at MMG’s mine on the state’s west coast and refused to leave when asked by police.
She was also charged with trespassing during a protest at a forestry site and Venture Minerals’ mine in the north-west, on three separate occasions from 2021 to 23.
In his sentencing remarks, Magistrate Chris Webster noted Harmsen had a long history of trespassing, dating back to 2010.
“The original penalty was to encourage [her] to stop her illegal protest activities,” he said.
“No doubt she will learn a lesson from her imprisonment.”
Speaking to her supporters on the courthouse steps prior to her conviction, Harmsen called out the Tasmanian premier, Jeremy Rockliff, for sanctioning “the destruction of the environment rather than protecting it”.
“The reason I commit these offences is because I am terrified of the worsening climate crisis. I am not a menace to society yet here I am facing a jail term,” she said.
“I am not giving a finger to the entire judicial system, I am standing up for the forests, for takayna, a safer planet and if that makes me a dangerous criminal then I think we are going to need bigger prisons.”
States introducing anti-protest laws to curtail environmental protesting has become a national trend, with Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and most recently South Australia introducing the laws.
The laws have been widely criticised as an affront to the core democratic right to protest.
In March, New South Wales climate protester, Deanna “Violet” Coco, was issued with a 12-month conditional release from jail after she was sentenced to 15 months in jail under the state’s anti-protest laws.
The district court judge Mark Williams, who issued the conditional release, said police had included a “false fact” and a “false assertion” in their case against Coco.
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Offshore wind: A perfect storm of costs
In the renewable energy industry hope ever springs eternal, with Australia and the US forging ahead with plans to build a host of offshore wind turbines just as the UK is realising its large offshore wind sector is only adding to its power woes.
After years of assurances from renewable energy advocates that the UK’s offshore wind farm sector will deliver cheap and plentiful power, with the equivalent of more than 15 gigawatts of capacity now installed, the country’s power prices are amongst the highest in all Europe.
A major reason for the increase is the price of gas, with wholesale power from gas plants three times more expensive than before the crisis, according to the UK media, but wind power is simply adding to the problem. By some estimates power from the offshore turbines is even more expensive than gas power during the crisis.
The costs of building wind turbines capable of surviving major storms well out to sea are immense and increasing, as are the costs of maintaining generators mounted at the top of 200-metre poles far from land. Despite subsidies and a system for allocating power contracts which greatly favours the industry, UK wind lobby groups have written to the government asking for a vast increase in assistance, including tilting the auction system for power contracts further in their favour.
However, Australia and the US seem determined to repeat all the mistakes of their UK cousins and add a few of their own. In Australia, plans for offshore wind are still in the early stages. A wind farm zone has been designated in the relatively shallow waters off Victoria’s southern coast east of Melbourne which also happens to be within easy range of major transmission lines. Although considerable interest in building 300-metre tall towers (the same height as the Eiffel tower in Paris) has been reported, the project is not expected to deliver power until 2032. Other wind zones are still being discussed.
In the US, the country’s third offshore wind farm was given federal government permission in early July, with several more in the approvals pipeline. However, the latest project, including 100 turbines to be built within sight of the tourist havens of Atlantic City and Ocean City, has generated considerable opposition from community groups objecting to the beach view being spoiled.
All these proposals come with the usual blather about how cheap such power will be, despite the fact that in the UK the cost of the ruling Tory government’s obsession with wind farms is now becoming apparent.
As an example, the UK Telegraph states that the offshore wind farms Hornsea Two and Moray East were completed in 2022 with capital costs of about £2.75 billion ($A5.28 billion) per GW, or more than four times the cost of closed cycle gas turbine capacity. Estimates of maintenance costs, according to the Telegraph, are as high as £200 million per GW installed, per annum. That adds up to a nominal cost of offshore wind generation of £170/MWh, or about the same or somewhat higher than for gas turbines, even in these dire times of high gas prices.
On top of that figure must be added the costs of accommodating the variable output of such turbines. This includes keeping conventional, that is fossil-fuel, capacity on standby to fill the power gap when wind dies. In addition, in the UK, a large, and growing, contribution to these balancing costs involves paying a wind farm not to put power onto the grid when there is an excess, say when it is windy in the middle of the night. (In Australia, wind farms over a certain size are simply required to stay off the grid when directed by power grid managers.)
According to the energy news website Energy Live, in 2022 the UK grid spent more than £4 billion on balancing costs, or many times the costs of balancing the grid in the pre-wind era.
In addition to balancing costs the UK has a contracts for difference system which, details aside, guarantees prices paid to wind farms for power delivered. The subsidies required for this system are raised through a statutory levy on electricity suppliers and ultimately passed onto power consumers.
The wind industry is now saying that despite all that assistance offshore wind farms are not making enough to keep their own lights on. RenewableUK, the country’s trade association for renewable energy, announced in early July that the leading wind energy lobby groups have collectively written to the government saying that various projects are under threat unless they get more money, and the tendering system for contracts is changed.
The letter itself does not seem to be available and the mainstream media have largely ignored the story. But from RenewableUK statements and available commentary, it is apparent the wind industry is saying the budget for fixed-foundation offshore wind alone has to be at least two-and-a-half times higher than its current level. That means the industry has it’s hand out for more than £165 million.
In addition, the sub-sector of floating wind generators should be given its own budget pot and the auction rules changed. Winners are not determined by lowest bids but by an administrative decision that weights bids according to their ‘value’ in contributing towards the net-zero targets.
To justify all of this the wind industry points to a surge in supply chain costs pushing up the price of wind turbines, while increases in global interest rates have raised refinancing costs substantially. Those cost pressures have pushed several projects into the red just a year after they won government contracts. A widely reported winning bid in that round of contracts was for about £75 per MWh, as opposed to the Guardian newspaper’s estimated cost of £175 per MWh
Then there are the problems at Siemens Energy’s wind turbines division, Siemens Gamesa, which bills itself as a leader in renewable energy, particularly in offshore wind in which it holds 44GW worth of projects.
According to the latest quarterly report for Siemens Energy the division managed to lose £386 million on revenue of £2.44 billion for just the three months to the end of March, with the parent company warning of ‘deeper quality problems’. The quarter’s loss was blamed on inflation, supply chain challenges, the ramp-up of offshore activities and the effects of ‘onerous projects’.
Offshore wind, it seems, is not a solution to anything but a perfect storm of costs which governments in the US and Australia are doing their best to replicate.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/gone-with-the-wind
************************************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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