Australian Politics
Left-led Qantas gets a reward
Qatar is a low price carrier
The Albanese Federal Government’s decision to refuse Qatar Airways’ application to land another 21 flights a week into Australian airports because “it’s not in the national interest” raises some serious questions.
Qantas is the major economic winner from this decision.
This at a time when we need to see more tourists coming into this country and spending their money at small Australian tourism businesses that are recovering from the pandemic.
One has to wonder why this airline, which is not Government owned - yet is increasingly politically active in pushing the social causes that CEO Alan Joyce holds so dear - keeps getting given so many free kicks by this Government?
Qantas under Alan Joyce, is a major cheer leader for the YES campaign in the upcoming Voice Referendum. So much so that they are redecorating 3 planes to advocate the YES vote.
Qantas is also providing free airline travel to key members of the Yes23 campaign and the Uluru Dialogue to help them spread the message in the regions.
The blurring of the lines between the Federal Government, its politics and major Australian corporates poses an existential threat to our democracy.
With support for the YES vote tanking across Australia - what other favours will be exchanged between companies like Qantas and the Albanese Government for ongoing and increasing mutual support?
Meanwhile Australian tourism businesses and the Australian travelling public will suffer, while Qantas is shielded from extra competition in our skies.
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How Big Tech tried to silence my voice
Peta Credlin
There are many reasons to vote against the voice but here are two more. First, the fact that Anthony Albanese is not across the detail of the change to our Constitution and system of government that he’s proposing; and, second, in shades of Brave New World, Big Tech’s increasing censorship of just one side of this national debate.
When a prime minister claims that voters are falling for conspiracy theories, you know he’s getting desperate, but to admit he hasn’t bothered to actually read any of the Uluru Statement beyond the first page – despite committing his government to implement it in full – says a lot about the sort of leader he is.
As suggested by his difficulties with economic statistics during the election campaign, Albanese has never been a details man. This week he copped a lengthy grilling about the voice from Melbourne radio legend Neil Mitchell, who asked him whether he agreed with the longer version of the Uluru Statement that he’d earlier described as “misinformation”.
In response, there was this bombshell: “I haven’t read it.”
Then he added: “Why would I? I know what the conclusion is.” Yet he continued to deny that the Uluru Statement had anything to do with treaty and reparations, even though “Voice, Treaty, Truth” has always been the Uluru activists’ mantra or, to directly quote the document, “the culmination of our agenda”.
A fortnight back in this column, I pointed out that the Uluru Statement from the Heart is not just the one-page poster, which the Prime Minister admits he has got up on his wall. It’s actually a 26-page document that, among other things, calls for reparations to be paid by the Australian taxpayer to Aboriginal people, seeking “a percentage of GDP”, to atone for the “invasion” that began in 1788 and which constitutes their “fundamental grievance” against the Crown.
My evidence for this was a previously unnoticed 112-page Freedom of Information release from the National Indigenous Australians Agency, which comprised records from the regional meetings that led to the 2017 Uluru Convention, and culminated in a 26-page document entitled “Uluru Statement from the Heart”.
This “Document 14” corresponded almost exactly with 16 highlighted pages in the Referendum Council’s final report that were described as “extracts from the Uluru Statement from the Heart”. Except, the council’s report omitted the crucial reference to reparations as a percentage of GDP, which emerged only thanks to the FOI.
Hence my claim that the PM wasn’t being honest with voters about all the ramifications of his voice, and – if it gets up – what comes next.
Since those revelations, the PM has been in overdrive insisting that the voice is just a benign one-page statement inviting the Australian people on a journey of reconciliation.
He told parliament last week that my revelations were a “conspiracy worthy of QAnon”; continuing this week with a claim on Sydney radio that “no serious person” thinks that the Uluru Statement is anything other than one page. Even though one of its principal authors, Megan Davis, had declared on at least six separate occasions, prior to last week, that it is more than just a one-page document. Pat Anderson – who co-chaired the Referendum Council which published 16 pages of extracts from the Uluru Statement – had also said that it was more than one page.
At the Sydney Peace Prize last year, not only did Davis say the Uluru statement was “actually 18 pages”, she also said it was “very important” for Australians to read all of it. Previously, she’d written in this newspaper that “the Uluru Statement from the Heart is occasionally mistaken as merely a one-page document when … in totality (it’s) closer to 18 pages and includes … a lengthy narrative called Our Story”. Yet this week, not only did the PM admit to not reading what voice supporters insist everyone should know; he also said that “Peta Credlin is a smart person … (but) she is saying things that she knows (are) not true”.
But the PM is not the only voice advocate now afflicted with reality denial. To help him out of this hole of his own making, Davis last week insisted the voice was really just one page, despite asserting otherwise for at least five years. And Anderson likewise chimed in, telling ABC’s 7.30 Report last week that it was just 439 words, despite telling a seminar at the University of Melbourne in 2022 that the “Uluru Statement is in fact 18 pages long”.
But this is now much more sinister than just a chorus of voice advocates trying to retrofit the facts to their current political needs.
On August 3, Sky News posted my night’s editorial on Facebook, substantiating the argument that the Uluru Statement is a lot more than just the PM’s one-page poster. A week later, the Big Tech censors blanked it out, plastering this statement where the video used to be – “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers” – and a link to a document from a hardly unbiased partnership between the RMIT and the ABC.
In the document, the RMIT-ABC “fact-checkers” simply asserted that the Prime Minister, the Uluru Statement’s authors and the NIAA had denied my claim. They were completely oblivious to six years of previous statements by the authors who said otherwise, and disregarded the NIAA’s earlier written confirmation, from its FOI legal team, that Document 14 was indeed the full Uluru Statement.
A clear case of fact-checkers ignoring inconvenient but relevant facts, and Big Tech then blocking anything that’s doesn’t pass the RMIT-ABC test of political correctness.
This is not the first time Big Tech has censored arguments against the voice. Facebook has previously blocked an Institute of Public Affairs discussion featuring senators Jacinta Price and James McGrath. It’s also blocked a post from Advance Australia stating that the voice conferred “special rights” on Indigenous people, again citing RMIT-ABC fact-checkers, despite former judges making the very same point.
It’s wrong for Facebook to cancel views it doesn’t like, rather than be the platform for free speech that it used to claim to be, and letting people judge for themselves.
But think just how much worse this will get if the Albanese government’s proposed bill against misinformation and disinformation passes. Politically correct censorship will become routine if Big Tech faces multimillion-dollar fines for posting material that faceless government officials think is misleading or false. Especially with formerly free speech that the PM himself claims is “misinformation” because it doesn’t fit the political case he’s trying to make.
So far, there’s no suggestion that Big Tech has blocked any pro-voice advocacy, notwithstanding any number of social media posts that it’s racist to vote No or false claims that the official No campaign was using AI to fake Indigenous opposition to the voice.
This voice debate has become quite a dangerous moment for our country. There’s the PM committed to implementing “in full” a statement that he hasn’t fully read, in a bad case of endorsing the cover but not the contents.
There’s the risk Australians may be pressured by moral intimidation and weight of advertising into abandoning our historic commitment to being, in Bob Hawke’s words, a country with “no hierarchy of descent” and “no privilege of origin”. And then there’s the threat to free speech, justified on the grounds that any dissent from the Big Government, Big Business, Big Sport and Big Tech line is somehow “misinformation”.
As a newspaper columnist with my own TV show, I’m not after sympathy. And it’s hard to defend the more extreme statements that difficult subjects always elicit. Yet if free speech is not for everyone, ultimately, it is for no one.
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Construction Qld: Insiders claim costs up, productivity down as a result of ‘CFMEU tax’ govt policy
Whistleblowers have claimed multi-millions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted due to the government’s Best Practice Industry Conditions policy – which forces contractors and unions to negotiate agreements on state civil construction projects worth more than $100m – pointing the blame at Public Works and Procurement Minister Mick de Brenni.
Under the union-centric conditions – dubbed the “CFMEU tax” – the industry warns state-funded projects were being driven up as much as 30 per cent, with traffic controllers and labourers paid up to $200,000 on some sites.
Transport Minister Mark Bailey has also copped flack over his support of the policy, with major transport projects including the Coomera Connector, Gold Coast Light Rail and the Rockhampton Ring Road all impacted.
Multiple high-ranking industry insiders have told The Sunday Mail the policy was akin to the state government “interfering in the free market”, that it had crippled productivity and was having “gobsmacking ramifications” for smaller projects and subcontractors.
“We’re seeing our state government operating in spaces where they legitimately shouldn’t be,” one said, asking for anonymity due to potential backlash from the unions and the state government. “This is not value for money – it’s the opposite. We are very happy to pay our workers good wages, but these deals are so bad for productivity we are paying much more, for less.”
Another top insider said it would be disingenuous to blame all cost increases on state government projects on BPICs, but it was a case of the “state government interfering in the free market”.
The Best Practice Industry Conditions policy forces contractors and unions to negotiate agreements on state civil construction projects worth more than $100m.
WHAT’S THE ISSUE?
Construction industry insiders say the policy is designed to benefit unions and has driven up the cost of public projects by up to 30 per cent. They claim workers such as traffic controllers and labourers can be paid salaries of up to $200,000 on some state government projects.
PROJECTS ‘IMPACTED’
●Coomera Connector
●Gold Coast Light Rail
●Rockhampton Ring Road
“A big issue is on those major projects, $300m plus, because for every $100m added there’s an extra increase, about $5 to $7 per hour,” he said.
“That’s the reason why a project such as the Coomera Connector (about $600m more than first budgeted) will be under more cost pressure than what the economic conditions would have otherwise caused.”
The policy pushes contractors to the bargaining table with unions who had previously had little impact in the civil construction space – such as the CFMEU – who the industry fears is pushing to become the dominant union above the longstanding AWU.
“It’s clearly a push from inside cabinet of certain ministers giving the unions a leg up,” an insider said.
But the CFMEU pushed back, saying the alternative to BPICs was a “Hunger Games-style race to the bottom resulting in poor build quality, unsafe work practices and exploitation of workers”.
“It is pretty bloody rich for the executives of major private sector companies to whine about “competition” for a finite pool of labour,” a spokesman said.
“Is that not how ‘free enterprise’ and open markets are supposed to work?
“Find me this mythical traffic controller earning $200k a year. Yes, construction workers can earn good money. If you’re working 50-60 hours a week in an itinerant and intermittent industry and pulling weekend and night shifts in a dangerous job you deserve to be paid properly.”
Insiders said the claim BPICs were limited to the largest projects was “bull”.
“You cannot limit its effect to only projects over $100m, you’ve redirected the market to have to compete with those forces to attract labour – so the state government has moved the whole industry,” one said. “They’ve trampled the award – you cannot blame any worker for leaving a council job to earn twice as much on a BPIC job.”
Civil Contractors Federation Queensland chief Damian Long said “we have always said it is a bad policy”.
“I’ve never seen a situation where the client is involved in the enterprise bargaining,” he said.
“The state has stepped in and is doing the bidding on the behalf of the union – which is just bizarre.”
But Mr de Brenni backed the policy, and said “quality conditions are crucial to attracting quality tradies during what is nationally recognised as an ongoing infrastructure workforce shortage”. “Queenslanders expect their schools and hospitals to be built to the highest standards – by workers who are well-trained, fairly compensated, and safe while on the job,” he said.
Mr de Brenni did not answer questions about what the average cost implication of a BPIC was on a state-funded project.
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The Aboriginal reality
This week, Aboriginal children will walk into the store at Warburton in Western Australia and purchase the typical fare of an Aboriginal diet. On the same latitude as the border of Northern Territory and South Australia, Warburton is as remote as it gets. But cake, Coca-Cola, and energy bars are all available, and expensive. For adults, throw in smokes. These are typical purchases. Week in and week out. Eating and drinking junk foods, not working, and having no purpose in life other than consumption, is a death sentence.
And then there is the violence by children, women, and men.
My mate in Warburton texted this: –
8pm at night here and 6-year-olds are wandering the streets throwing fireworks into our and others yards. Why? Because the 6-year-olds today told us to Get F….d because we were F…..g white trash C…s. 6-years-olds. What hope is for them?
Another day in Paradise. Two women fist-fighting and hitting each other over the head with Coke bottles. Roll on my plane on Tuesday please.
Shop was open for an hour today, before a local man ran in with an iron bar, and started smashing the shelves and walls, calling us f…..g white trash c….s.
Closed now for the day. We fly out in an hour…
No Voice, no committee, no treaty, no ‘truth-telling’, no Makarrata can save these people.
Aboriginal people are a modern people. In Warburton, mobile phones are commonplace. Electricity keeps the food and drink cool. Without the paraphernalia of the modern world there would be no Warburton, it would have closed decades ago. Aboriginal people rely on modern means to survive. Most have no idea how it is made. This is cruel.
And yet, too many legal professional associations are for the Voice, medical professional associations are for the Voice, the Australian Academy of Science is for the Voice. Why is it that these professional associations would cast their lot with an industry that refuses to release its own most vulnerable people into the open society? What is it that keeps these poor souls locked into an ancient and ignorant world? The very antithesis of the professionals, the brilliant and trained minds, condemn their objects of concern to a life of ignorance and violence.
Not only professionals are being taken for a ride, but shareholders are also being taken for a ride, as are donors, trade unionists, sports fans and taxpayers. Egotistical professional leaders, CEOs, charity leaders, trade union leaders, sports administrators, and politicians, foolish enough to forsake their duty and send other people’s money to the referendum Yes case, are doing harm. A majority of their members and funders are against the proposition. They are not as foolish as their leaders.
Leaders who think that a solution to Aboriginal despair lies in permanent government intervention in the lives of those few Aborigines who are failing in this modern society should think again. It is not all about government. Changing the constitution does not change behaviour. Changing the constitution will not get children to attend school. Changing the constitution will not stop the grog, or the abuse, or the awful habits that cause early death.
The task of leaders is to have every child understand how it is that the mobile phone and electricity that makes their food and shelter available comes into being. Government may be the provider, but it is not the maker. Government makes nothing, it merely covers the indignity of woeful ignorance. Why do governments refuse to teach their citizens how their lives have been degraded to the point of begging? This referendum proposal is no gracious gift; it is stealing the future of these people. It is an abandonment of leadership. Recognition via the Voice is not reconciliation.
Aboriginal parents face an awful dilemma. To keep children ‘safe’ on country, away from the worst of modern life, grog and drugs, but in doing so, condemn their children to live restricted lives, with poor education, few prospects and a poor diet. The great lie of this referendum is that choices can be avoided. Somehow, 24 select delegates in Canberra will solve the parents’ dilemma. They will not. They will continue to mask the choice and, in default, make the choice for them. A slow death on country, rather than to break free, with the help of their families and guidance from outsiders on how to handle the wider world.
There is no love for Aborigines in this referendum proposal, just ego. The Aboriginal people at Warburton are radically disabled. They are self-determining alright, sitting on country, speaking language, and dying early. And CEOs and the Prime Minister think that this is a good idea. They must do, because their solution is to change nothing. Not to learn how to create value, not to adapt, but to wait. Government monies as a permanent way of life are poison.
Some thousands of naive supporters of the Yes campaign think it’s a good idea. Think again. Emotion and faux morality are no substitute for a steely focus on what a person needs to make it in this world. A world not of their making, but one they inherited. Wishing it were otherwise is no substitute for action. Would any leader in the eastern and southern capitals tolerate the behaviour tolerated in Warburton, and a hundred other failing communities in northern and Western Australia, in their backyard?
Leaders beware, this referendum has already failed, it has failed to unite Australia. A razor-thin win would be failure. A razor-thin loss would cause resentment. A huge loss, which is in prospect, will create an opportunity to reconsider known paths to success. Leaders, put your ego aside and think, what did it take to raise my child? You know the answer – mentoring, discipline and love. This referendum disdains all three.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/vote-yes-for-cake-and-coke/
************************************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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