Australian Politics
Drumgold: The rise and fall of the boy from Mt Druitt
Shane Drumgold was born into welfare housing in Mt Druitt, a poor and often violent suburb of Sydney. Unlike most Senior Counsel, he never we went to private school but slowly made his way upwards via a a range of less prestigious paths. And I think his downfall can be attributed to that background
One thing that a private school background instils in its pupils is self confidence and that is an important trait if you are going to go against the flow. And that is what Drumgold failed to do. There was tremendous media pressure to believe Brittany Higgins and discredit Bruce Lehrmann. You had to go along with that to be on the side of the angels. Drumgold didn't have the mental fortitude to resist that. He was so desperate to be among the good guys that he lied in an effort to support the mob belief. He had none of the confidence that would have enabled him to go against the flow
His gaunt visage never did look right under a barrister's wig and he was in the end unfit for that distinction
ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold has resigned in the wake of the damning findings of the Sofronoff Inquiry and is expected to retire.
On Sunday ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury confirmed that he had spoken to Mr Drumgold last Thursday and “in light of the commentary in the report” the pair had “agreed that his position as Director of Public Prosecutions was no longer tenable”.
“On Friday, Mr Drumgold sent a letter advising me that he would be vacating his position as ACT Director of Public Prosecutions,” Mr Rattenbury said.
The Sofronoff Inquiry found Mr Drumgold knowingly lied to the Supreme Court, engaged in serious malpractice and grossly unethical conduct, “preyed on a junior lawyer’s inexperience”, betrayed that junior lawyer who trusted him, and treated criminal litigation as “a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards”.
In the report, Mr Sofronoff found that Mr Drumgold had lost objectivity during the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins and “did not act with fairness and detachment as was required by his role”.
Those findings were considered by legal experts as certain to end Mr Drumgold’s career as DPP and may lead to criminal prosecution against him for perverting the course of justice.
Inquiry head Walter Sofronoff KC ruled that every one of the allegations made by Mr Drumgold that sparked the inquiry was baseless.
The ACT government had earlier said it would not release the report until the end of August but back-flipped last week following publication of the findings in The Australian.
Mr Rattenbury said on Sunday the government would make a detailed statement in response to the Sofronoff Report early in the coming week.
The government is under growing pressure to conduct an inquiry into previous criminal cases prosecuted by Mr Drumgold.
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Albanese still issuing Covid permits to facilitate immigration
Almost 66,000 international students and temporary workers are having their stays in Australia extended under a special Covid-era permit, fuelling claims that the surge in visa approvals is creating a “Big Australia” by stealth.
The Australian can reveal new figures showing Labor has granted more pandemic event visas in its first 10 months than were given when international borders were shut.
The Albanese government has processed more Covid-19 special work visas than the Coalition granted over the 20 months before international borders began reopening in November 2021.
Visa processing data provided by the Department of Home Affairs to Liberal senator James Paterson shows a surge in Labor’s use of the pandemic event visa to the end of March.
Despite calls from the international education industry to end the pandemic permit, the government issued 65,859 special Covid-19 visas between June and March – including almost 27,000 in the first three months of 2023.
Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the jump in arrivals was “worsening housing shortages, driving record rent increases, adding to congestion, putting upward pressure on interest rates and impacting the environment”.
“The Covid-19 pandemic event visa is still open despite the fact the pandemic is over,” Mr Tehan told The Australian.
“Labor claim they don’t want a big Australia but judge them by their actions, not their words. Labor is bringing 1.5 million people to Australia over five years and they have no answers for where they will live, what this will do to congestion or how it will impact the environment and quality of life.”
About 23,900 Covid work visas were granted to international students by the government, eclipsing the 11,885 permits approved by the Coalition during the pandemic.
In February and March this year, more than 10,700 pandemic event visas for international students were processed. Since the special Covid working permit was established in April 2020, almost 160,000 pandemic event visas have been approved.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said Labor had inherited a migration system “with backlog after backlog, delays and waitlists” and the government “hadn’t wasted a day in cleaning up the mess left by the former Liberal government”.
“Under the Liberals, our migration system wasn’t working for anyone,” Mr Giles said.
“We had a pile of almost one million visa applications left in the in tray and no plan to deal with workforce shortages when the borders reopened.
“We’ve brought wait times down, and we’re working to make sure our migration system is working again for all Australians after a decade of mess and mismanagement under the Liberals.”
Amid severe labour shortages and employers struggling to find workers, the Covid-19 pandemic event visa (subclass 408) allows people to work if employed or if they have an offer of employment in any sector of the economy.
The Home Affairs website says temporary graduate visa holders can “apply for and be granted a pandemic event visa with a two-year period of stay”.
The pandemic event visa allows holders to remain in Australia for 12 months and include “members of the family unit in your application”.
In March, The Australian revealed that the international education industry was urging the government to end special pandemic work visas over fears it was being rorted by people who were in Australia to find a job rather than study.
International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood said the temporary visa must be abolished as it was being exploited as a backroom way for international students to get full work rights.
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Australia's woke-ready students: Affirmative action dressed up as higher education reform
Education Minister Jason Clare began well earlier this year when he made it compulsory for universities when training teachers to teach reading, writing and mathematics using evidence-based practices.
However, his foray into the teaching wars has, unsurprisingly, culminated in a series of policies focused on improving equity while seriously compromising academic standards. Worse still, the federal government has turned its back on racial equality by implementing recommendations designed to usher in a new age of identity politics at our universities.
As part of the higher education shake-up, all academically qualified indigenous students will be guaranteed a Commonwealth-funded place at university and the 50 per cent pass rule for students to continue to receive funding will be abolished.
The Minister for Education claims this is ‘not about lowering standards’. However, continuing to fund students who fail more than half their courses will, by definition, do exactly that. Needless to say, the Minister provided no evidence to back up his statement. While nine Australian universities are among the top 100 globally, the Productivity Commission’s five-year inquiry found highly variable and poor-quality teaching was failing students who entered the workplace unequipped to meet real world demands.
Academic standards in Australian universities are already in crisis. Students finish their degrees woke-ready rather than work-ready. Yet the federal government’s response to the interim review into higher education does nothing to arrest this decline. In fact, the removal of the 50 per cent pass rule will further exacerbate falling standards by transferring responsibility for student performance from the student to the university.
The Minister for Education stated, ‘Instead of forcing them to quit, we should be helping them to pass,’ adding that universities will be required ‘to improve support to students who need it and to report on the outcomes for the student following that intervention’. This effectively relieves the student of any obligation to take personal responsibility for their performance.
Under the guise of helping disadvantaged students, the government is now throwing money at universities. While such largesse may benefit minority groups, it ultimately betrays the interests of hardworking Australians who must fund the exercise but derive no benefit from it.
The core purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and to hone the mind through the development, consideration and the contest of ideas. A tertiary education means nothing if universities discourage debate and intellectual challenge. And suppressing freedom of thought has a knock-on effect; the contest of ideas is not only the essence of university life, but the essence of a flourishing liberal democracy.
Instead of pursuing academic excellence and free speech, the federal government seems committed to making our universities a further arm of Australia’s already extensive social welfare program.
While there is merit in implementing policies to help disadvantaged groups and reduce poverty, this should not be done at the expense of tertiary education standards. Perhaps there are far greater returns for governments to be found in funding programs that encourage school attendance rather than boosting university enrolments. Without a secondary education, disadvantaged students will never attain a university qualification.
Embracing affirmative action in university admissions undermines the principle of equality of opportunity. This was the finding of the US Supreme Court which declared in June that race-based preferencing in admissions violated the constitution. US Chief Justice John Roberts said universities had ‘concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.’
Australia is running in the opposite direction, moving to permanently embed identity politics in our university admissions processes.
There is already a widespread and growing tendency for Australian universities to adopt formal ideological positions, contributing to a culture of censorship on campus. Every Australian university has signed up to one or more policies or strategic commitments which pledge their institution to woke ideologies. These generally fall into three categories: indigenous issues, gender inequality, and sustainability. The rise of the ‘social justice university’ signals a new focus on activism over education.
The University Accord reforms as they stand will entrench these woke priorities while exacerbating the fundamental failure of our academic institutions to be places of open learning and intellectual freedom.
Worryingly, the interim review will do nothing to address the erosion of free speech on campus. Forthcoming IPA research shows 90 per cent of Australian universities have policies that are hostile to free speech. The total hostility score across all institutions, as measured by the number and severity of university policies which are hostile to free speech, increased by 117 per cent between 2016 and 2023.
Previous IPA research has shown that the culture of censorship on campus has already been advanced by university policies that purport to protect free speech on campus. In 2020, the federal government introduced a new requirement forcing universities to develop free speech policies based on the French Model Code – a template written by former Australian chief justice Robert French. However, analysis shows only a third adopted the six essential pro-free speech criteria.
A case in point is Newcastle University’s Code for the Protection of Freedom and Academic Freedom, which states, ‘The principles outlined in this Code do not have overriding legal status nor overriding status to the University’s institutional values or strategic commitments.’ Newcastle University’s Strategic Plan 2020-2025 outlines ‘equity’ and ‘sustainability’ as key values, meaning the university could arguably prohibit speech in opposition to the proposed Voice to parliament or views not aligned with the zeitgeist on climate change.
According to Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at New York University, a social justice institution cannot also protect free speech. By promoting one side of an issue, universities attach a value judgment to it and suggest it is the superior position to hold. This closes debate and crushes viewpoint diversity.
Affirmative action is antithetical to the principles of individual liberty, equal opportunity and the pursuit of academic excellence – all cornerstones of strong democracies. Excellence in education and equity-based policies are mutually exclusive goals. Pursuing one will always come at the expense of the other.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/clares-woke-ready-students/ ?
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NSW gay conversion opponents may have to be careful what they say under new anti-discrimination law
Opponents of gay conversion practices may need to be careful about criticising its promoters under new anti-discrimination laws passed in New South Wales parliament on Thursday, legal experts have said.
The Minns government’s religious vilification bill, which with backing from the opposition, amended the existing Anti-Discrimination Act to make it unlawful to vilify people or organisations on the grounds of their religion.
Alistair Lawrie, an expert in anti-discrimination law at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, said he supported, in principle, reforms that protected people from vilification for their religious expression or affiliation.
But he said ahead of the bill being passed changes were broader than religious vilification laws enacted in other state and territories, leaving the door open to restrictions to freedom of speech.
“It would be disappointing if this bill passes in its current form,” he said.
Lawrie said this could see people or organisations who engage in gay conversion practices bring forward complaints of vilification if criticised for engaging in the activity.
The Minns government, with backing from the opposition, has vowed to ban gay conversion practices.
But Lawrie said religious people or groups who continued to engage in the activity after it was banned would still be protected from vilification under the laws, given it protects criticisms against unlawful religious practices.
Prof Simon Rice, a University of Sydney expert in anti-discrimination law, said the bill would not restrict people from advocating against the practice, but it draws the line at anything said or done that risks “engendering hatred towards promoters of gay therapy”.
“They’d have to be careful about what they said so that they didn’t incite hatred against that religious view, but they’re certainly still free to attack the [practice],” he said.
Labor promised to introduce the religious vilification bill in the lead-up to the election. But given the government recently referred the act for review under the NSW Law Reform Commission, Rice said the government should have waited to introduce the religious vilification laws until that review was complete.
“We’ve got an [anti-discrimination] act which is almost unworkable. It’s so old and dated and cobbled together,” he said. “And then we go and add another little bit to it at the same time that we’re acknowledging that it’s a problem and we’re going to review it, I just think that’s bad policy.”
Dr Haroon Kasim, of the Coalition Against Caste Discrimination, had also written to the NSW attorney general, Michael Daley, ahead of the bill passing calling for more protections for people who experience discrimination on the basis of their caste.
As migration from south Asia rises, Kasim said the communities were experiencing escalating discrimination on the basis of their caste – a hierarchical system assigned at birth that determines occupations and social status.
“It affects every part of a person’s life,” he said. “People of the so-called ‘lower caste’ are refused houses and jobs because of that status.”
Kasim said people deemed to be from “lower” castes who speak out about caste discrimination were often harassed by others deemed part of the “higher” caste groups. He was concerned the new laws would give licence to religious groups to accuse those who speak up about caste discrimination of religious vilification.
“We just want to be seen and heard,” he said.
An amendment to the bill proposed by the Greens spokesperson for anti-discrimination, Jenny Leong, that would have excluded protections for unlawful activity and organisations was rejected by the lower house on Thursday.
Leong said the government should prioritise holistic reforms to the bill rather than “putting protections first”.
“At a time when there has been a disturbing increase in anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+ aggression online and on the streets, what message does this send to the LGBTQIA+ community?,” she said.
The president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Josh Pallas, said the group also opposed the new laws. .
“We want an Anti-Discrimination Act that does not discriminate,” he said. “To move on one part without moving on other glaring deficiencies sends a bad message to the community about whose rights and interests are privileged over others.”
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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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