Australian Politics
Wednesday, August 16, 2023
What if there’s a simple way to close the gap?
It is one of the ironies of life that those who need high quality education the least are also the ones most likely to get it. Private schools undoubtedly help kids to learn and develop more effectively than do government schools. Yet the kids in private schools usually come from wealthy homes where talent is passed on both genetically and via a more learning-oriented environment
So it is a rather obvious idea to turn that on its head and give a quality education for the bottom rather than the top end of the social scale. And the example below would seemto have reaped rich rewards from that approach. It is likely however that the kids selected to benefit from the program were a carefully selected bunch and you can always get better reults from selective admissions. The success of the strategy might in other words be limited to a small subset of poor students who were capable of using expanded opportunities. Poor students can in some cases be quite bright. I was one myself
Andrew Penfold’s ears pricked up last week when he heard federal Education Minister Jason Clare observing young Indigenous men are more likely to go to jail than university.
Clare said university costs taxpayers about $11,000 per year on average, per student. Jail costs taxpayers $148,000 per prisoner, per year. For juvenile justice, it‘s $1 million a year, per kid.
Penfold got out his calculator.
To send an Indigenous child to one of the nation’s most prestigious schools costs his Australian Indigenous Education Foundation approximately $150,000.
That’s for six years – the entirety of high school.
And the 1200 students who’ve won an AIEF scholarship over the organisation’s 15-year history have an average 90 per cent school completion rate. This year it’s 93 per cent, with 50 bright young things to be celebrated at a graduation celebration on Monday night.
“Every single kid who goes to school, completes Year 12 and goes on to do something productive with their life, they then become an incredible role model in their family. And each time you change your family one by one, you change your whole community. The ripple effect of that is you actually are changing the country,” Penfold says.
That brings Penfold – who has a gift for making big things seem simple – to some intimidating numbers.
The Closing The Gap targets for education are that by 2031, 96 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people should have completed Year 12, and 70 per cent should have a tertiary qualification.
“We know from evidence that where Indigenous people are well-educated, including university and 12 completion, there really is no gap,” says Penfold, who with his wife Michelle quit a finance career in the late 2000s to devote himself to Indigenous education.
But, he says, “there needs to be an upstream supply”.
“If you don‘t have more kids completing year 12, you’re not going to be having the kids to go to university. Some years ago I saw some data that said to achieve the Year 12 Closing The Gap target only involves educating to Year 12 an additional 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids.
“So when you move away from talking in percentages and start talking about the number of students, it actually feels quite achievable. Of course we (AIEF) can’t do 10,000 on our own. But collectively there’s enough organisations out there that have got the track record to demonstrate that if there was further investment given, they would be able to close that gap.
“And literally the only thing holding that back is the funding.”
Indigenous graduates are now working as police officers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and academics.
And, like Brianna Dennis, community leaders. Now 36, Dennis left Walgett, in NSW’s central west, in 1999 for St Scholastica’s in Sydney‘s Glebe.
“I was really, really excited, actually, for this new opportunity. I was only 11 years old.
“If I’d stayed back home – our family really struggled. I was lucky enough to grow up in a loving home. But the exposure from the educational opportunities presented to me have been critical.”
Dennis went to university and travelled the world after school – and was the first in her family to buy a home. She now lives in Dubbo as the district manager for MacKillop Family Service.
Dennis takes immense pride in seeing opportunity light up her girls Orani, eight and Nhalara, three.
“Both my daughters participate in gymnastics, something I always wanted to do as a child but didn’t have the opportunity locally, plus my family wouldn’t have been able to afford it. I am glad my children get to experience what I never could.”
Dennis knows sometimes parents are reluctant to let children leave home, for fear they may never return, but firmly believes connection to country cannot be extinguished.
“These educational opportunities are not something for communities to fear.
“Some kids will go away and then come back, and some will stay home and take other opportunities. And both are now enriching community life – in their own ways.”
Kodie Mason is one AIEF grad who has come home.
After St Vincent’s College in Sydney’s Potts Point, and a degree at UNSW, Mason is back in the vibrant Dharawal community around La Perouse, on Botany Bay’s northern edge.
She has started her own business, Malima, teaching traditional weaving techniques passed down in her family’s direct descent from the Dharawal people who first came into contact with the Endeavour‘s crew.
Through her community work, Mason was invited to write the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for her distant great-grandmother Biyarung ‘Biddy’ Giles, an expert fisherwoman and hunter who also founded her own business.
“She had a couple of boats, she was running fishing and hunting tours around Botany Bay, having her own business at a time when Aboriginal people were thought incapable.
“So looking at my life – I’ve got my own business, practising my culture, and sharing my knowledge.”
Between these two lives, two centuries apart, came the NSW Aborigines Protection Act, which allowed wholesale child removal and the dislocation of communities from traditional lands.
“We still feel those impacts today,” Mason says. “So to be able to go out and get a great education, and finish high school, go to university; I just feel so privileged.”
Mason is excited about the possibility of an Indigenous voice to parliament, and recently got to meet Anthony Albanese at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land.
“Our grandparents and great-grandparents; they’ve all been fighting to have a say in what happens and how they’re treated. I definitely think it will make a huge impact in Aboriginal communities across Australia, and we’ll start to see more positive outcomes for our people.”
If Andrew Penfold is the father of AIEF, Paul Hough is its godfather. The Marist brother was strongly influenced by Shirley ‘Mum Shirl’ Smith, the famous Redfern matriarch and prisoner advocate who raised scores of children in her own home, and reconciliation activist and priest Ted Kennedy.
In the 1970s Kennedy asked Hough to come and work with him in Redfern. “I remember one night Father Ted looked across the table at me and said: ‘Why don’t you give all that (teaching) stuff away and come and work with us?’ “And I said ‘Ted, I appreciate your confidence but as Marists, we do it through education.”
That remark rang through Hough’s career for the next five decades as he pioneered Indigenous education programs from St Augustine’s in Cairns to St Gregory’s in Campbelltown.
He was leading St Joseph’s in Sydney’s Hunters Hill in the 2000s when Andrew Penfold, a Joey’s old boy, approached him with the wild idea to give up his job and volunteer at St Joseph’s in a bid to grow Indigenous enrolment.
“He came up with the idea of setting up a fund which would be $8 million,” Hough says. “We thought that was probably the last we’d see of him for a while. Anyway, he came back in about 15 months’ time and said: ‘Guess what? I’ve got it.’ He went straight to the big end of town. “He’s got the business brain, and he’s got the head that knows how to work it.”
Penfold is confident AIEF, which presently takes 350 students per annum, could grow to take 1000 a year on its present model of seeking Government funding which is matched dollar-for-dollar by fundraising.
Penfold is unashamedly “interested in scale”. “It’s not because we are trying to be famous,“ Penfold says. The more students we have, the more impact we make on changing the country.“
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Environment can’t afford cost to save the planet
JUDITH SLOAN
It is slowly dawning on more people that destroying the environment to save the environment doesn’t really make any sense. The people living in rural and regional Australia have known this for some time, but more city folk are waking up to the fact that the process of decarbonisation imposes some hefty costs that are not evenly distributed.
Absent any zealous devotion to net zero by 2050, and recognising that the world’s top emitters are not on board – think here particularly China, but there are others – it’s hard to warm to the vision of Alan Finkel, former chief scientist. “Think forests of wind farms carpeting hills and cliffs from sea to sky. Think endless arrays of solar panels disappearing like a mirage into the desert. What we have now has to be scaled up by a factor of 20.”
While we might forgive him for his flowery prose – he is a scientist, after all – the harsh reality is that many of us are not keen to see our landscapes plundered and ruined by the intrusion of monstrous turbines measuring up to 250 metres in height (nearly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty) and fields of unattractive solar panels generating unwanted ambient heat for the surrounding district.
Would the residents of the seats of Kooyong, Warringah or Wentworth be happy to have their parks, empty land and adjoining water ways – perhaps some big backyards? – handed over to mainly overseas-owned renewable energy developers to construct intrusive and sometimes noisy installations in the quest of decarbonisation?
We all know the answer to that question. But the members for these seats (and others) are more than happy to impose the external costs on their country cousins and create unfortunate divisions within previously harmonious rural communities.
It is worth going through some facts here because facts are often missing in the emotional debate about saving the planet. The first thing to note is the large amount of land needed to accommodate renewable energy relative to high-energy-density fossil fuels and nuclear energy. For every megawatt hour produced, wind needs seven times more land than coal-fired plants and 10 times more than gas-fired plants, for example.
The second is the low-capacity efficiency of both wind and solar. The average output of wind installations is just over one-third of the nameplate capacities; it’s one-quarter for solar. This is an important point because the proponents of new renewable energy projects often quote the nameplate capacities and then spuriously claim they will power a given number of thousands of homes while ignoring the necessary and costly in-fill and back-up sources of electricity generation.
Another important point is the life cycles of renewable energy installations and how these compare with coal/gas plants and nuclear. The lifespan of onshore turbines ranges from 15 to 25 years; it’s shorter for offshore ones. Solar panels don’t generally last more than 20 years and their efficiency falls every year. There is virtually no scope to recycle either turbines or solar panels, which raises the tricky issue of their ultimate disposal. Coal, gas and nuclear plants can last five decades or longer.
One feature of the renewable energy landscape Finkel missed in his florid description is the kilometre upon kilometre of new transmission lines required to hook up wind and solar installations to the grid. Think here huge steel pylons up to 100 metres in height requiring easements of up to 50 metres on each side.
The point here is that no one would regard these unsightly new transmission lines weaving their way through agricultural land, national parks and regional communities as enhancing the environment. They may also constitute an extra fire risk. For those affected, it is a perfectly rational response to oppose their construction, to seek alternative paths or to advocate for underground transmission.
We know the good burghers of Kooyong, Warringah and Wentworth would do so. Attempting to bribe those affected with substantial annual annuities – they are currently more than $200,000 per kilometre – runs the risk of dividing communities as those who miss out on any compensation can still be adversely impacted.
The potential environmental damage caused by renewable energy projects has been highlighted by number of recent cases. A proposed wind farm north of Point Fairy in western Victoria has been approved subject to strict restrictions, including reducing the number of turbines from 59 to 18. This is because of the sensitive nature of the land for nesting brolgas and bent-wing bats. Construction will also be banned from July through to November. In all likelihood, this project will now not proceed.
A wind project on Robbins Island off the northwest coast of Tasmania has been approved to operate for only seven months of the year because of the threat to the orange-bellied parrots that live on the island. Again, this project is unlikely to go ahead.
Much controversy surrounds the Chalumbin wind farm development in far north Queensland where large tracts of land – up to 1200 hectares – will be cleared adjacent to a World Heritage-listed rainforest, west of Cairns. An earlier small-scale wind farm has resulted in a number of disused turbines simply rusting on the land. It’s hard to square this development with genuine concern for the environment, particularly as there are serious doubts about the windiness of the area.
Just in case you think offshore turbines are the solution to this dilemma, the reality is very different. Turbines as far out as 10 to 15 kilometres from the coast can still be seen from land. Again, the rational response from those who live nearby, including retired sea-changers, is to oppose these developments. Moreover, there is mounting evidence these turbines, which require enormous amounts of concrete to fix them in place, can interfere with marine life, including migrating whales.
The opposition to offshore wind farms may prove to be irrelevant as the economics of these projects massively deteriorate. The large Swedish renewable energy firm, Vattenfall, has recently stopped two major projects – one in the UK – citing higher inflation and capital costs. The huge losses incurred by the wind division of Siemen Energy are also noteworthy. The only way offshore projects will proceed in Australia is if the operators are given even more subsidies than are currently on the table, which will translate into even higher consumer prices.
It is now crunch time for Energy Minister Chris Bowen and a number of state governments. It’s clear the dream of more renewable energy, lower emissions and lower electricity prices is unattainable, if it ever was. The ditching of the Marinus Link between Tasmania and Victoria has finally put paid to the vision of the Apple Isle being the battery of the nation; indeed, it is now running short of power itself.
Plan B can’t come quickly enough, including the nuclear option – think of the environment.
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Tribal Aboriginal woman reveals why she hates Australia's Welcome to Country
A tribal Aboriginal woman has revealed why she hates Australia's 'Welcome to Country' acknowledgement being read out before public events.
Aunty Narelle McRobbie spoke about her view in a video question on ABC's Q+A program on Monday night, broadcast from the Garma Festival in the Northern Territory's Arnhem Land.
'I am a tribal Aboriginal woman and I hate the Welcome to Country,' she said.
'As a tribal person, why? Welcome every other b*****d on country when I, as an Aboriginal person have never felt welcomed on my ground. 'On my own dirt, never been felt welcomed.'
'Welcome everyone in to continue to take, take, take, take. What do you reckon?' she asked.
Indigenous journalist and writer, Ben Abbatangelo, who was one of the panelists on the show, noted that the acknowledgement has been embraced in Parliament.
'We see welcome to countries in Canberra for policymakers then to go and institute rations cards, or to finance fossil fuel companies against the wishes of Indigenous peoples,' he said.
He used an example of the Santos gas project, which has seen opposition from the Larrakia and Tiwi traditional owners in the Northern Territory.
'I love the way that she's reframed it and I think it causes paucity in the thinking. Maybe it's time we stopped being so welcoming,' he added.
Voice architect and Indigenous Studies professor, Marcia Langton, who was another panellist, referred to the discrimination Aboriginal people face.
'I think many Aboriginal people around the country who do not have their land rights and face the kind of racism that our interlocutor would face in North Queensland...I imagine she feel she can't welcome people to her country until she has formal rights in her own country,' she said.
Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said there was a 'much bigger message' in Aunty Narelle's question.
'If First Nations people do not wish to welcome, they have a choice to say no when invited or asked to do so,' she said.
Mr Abbatangelo agreed with the point that Indigenous people did not need to welcome if they did not wish to do so.
'I mean how undignifying is that, to think that you are obliged to provide safe passage, to welcome people, when you don't even feel safe or sound on your own soils, when you are trampled on?' he added.
A Welcome to Country can only be conducted by traditional owners or custodians of the land on which an event is taking place. In circumstances where a traditional owner is unavailable, an Acknowledgement of Country can instead be performed.
According to Reconciliation Australia, an Acknowledgement of Country 'should be delivered at significant/large internal meetings or meetings with external participants'.
It is intended to highlight the significance of the area for First Nations people.
There has been a significant uptick in Welcome to Country practices over the past decade, everywhere from the workplace and seminars to national sporting events
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Police careers destroyed by ACT DPP Shane Drumgold’s false claims
Many senior and junior police involved in the investigation of Brittany Higgins’s rape claims have lost their jobs or gone on long-term sick leave and will never return to policing in the wake of baseless accusations against them by ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold.
Thirteen Australian Federal Police officers involved in the investigation of the claims, including Detective Superintendent Scott Moller, have told The Australian of catastrophic damage to their lives and careers from the inquiry he demanded.
“It must not be understated exactly what harm these baseless allegations have caused to individual police officers,” said lawyer Calvin Gnech, on behalf of his clients. “Careers have been lost and reputations severely damaged, all of which was entirely unnecessary.”
The Sofronoff inquiry found that although mistakes were made by police, none had engaged in misconduct and investigators “performed their duties in absolute good faith, with great determination although faced with obstacles, and put together a sound case”.
The Australian understands there may be claims for compensation made by police arising from the psychological impact on them from the investigation and inquiry.
Mr Gnech said the 13 officers he represented, who include Detective Inspector Marcus Boorman and Commander Michael Chew, had never claimed to be perfect “but they certainly claimed to have conducted a comprehensive investigation without any element of corruption or conspiracy. Senior and junior police officers have accessed long-term sick leave directly because of this matter.”
Mr Gnech added: “Highly experienced career police officers involved in this matter are likely never going to return to policing directly because of this matter and there are also young aspiring officers who have now transferred out of sex crimes never to return.
“There has been further unmeasurable personal and professional detriment caused which will never be undone and which, again, was all entirely unnecessary and needless.”
The ACT Bar Association said on Tuesday that Mr Drumgold’s certificate to practise law in the territory was valid only while he was working as DPP and would expire when he left office on September 1.
“The Bar Council notes with grave concern the findings of misconduct in the (Sofronoff) report regarding the person with primary carriage of the prosecution of Mr (Bruce) Lehrmann, Mr Shane Drumgold SC, the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions,” ACT Bar Council president Marcus Hassall said. “Those findings are patently serious and will receive careful consideration by the ACT Bar Council in the context of its role as the professional regulator of the ACT Bar.” The council said any application by Mr Drumgold for a new or unrestricted practising certificate would need the bar council’s approval.
Giving evidence to the Sofronoff inquiry, Superintendent Moller said many detectives went on stress leave because they were under so much pressure to progress the case, despite their having a professional belief that there was not enough evidence to charge Mr Lehrmann over the alleged rape of Ms Higgins.
Mr Lehrmann’s defence lawyer told the inquiry Inspector Boorman had said he would quit if the former Liberal staffer was found guilty and he appeared to be experiencing a “moral trauma” at the time.
Inspector Boorman seemed “anxious and agitated” when they arranged to meet, barrister Steven Whybrow said.
He was “quite distressed” about the prosecution, and thought Mr Lehrmann was innocent, Mr Whybrow said.
It is understood Inspector Boorman’s mental health has deteriorated to the point where he is unlikely ever to return to policing and those mental health issues explain why he did not give evidence in person at the inquiry.
The inquiry was sparked by a letter Mr Drumgold wrote to ACT police chief Neil Gaughan alleging “clear investigator interference in the criminal justice process” in the Lehrmann case.
He said Superintendent Moller had tried to persuade him that Mr Lehrmann should not be charged and that the policeman had prepared a document that “contained blatant misrepresentations of evidence”.
Giving evidence at the inquiry, Superintendent Moller rejected the claims, revealing at one point that he was himself a sexual assault survivor.
“I lived with that for 45 years, and that has driven my desire to work with police and to work with victims.”
He said he found it offensive that Mr Drumgold had alleged police held “rape myths” and outdated stereotypes about victim behaviour that made them reluctant to charge suspects “because I’ve lived with that, and it’s difficult”.
“The team that work on sexual assault investigations are a dedicated, professional group of investigators,” he said.
Mr Drumgold denigrated the police in court during the Lehrmann trial, remarking that the quality of the police interview with Ms Higgins “is determined by the skillsets of those police officers asking the questions … which in this case was not high.”
The Sofronoff inquiry heard that during a break in the trial, Mr Drumgold had called the investigating police “boofheads”.
Mr Drumgold claimed that Superintendent Moller, Inspector Boorman and a number of other current and former SACAT members had been attending key parts of the trial, and “I have noted they have also been regularly conferencing with the defence team during the breaks”.
Mr Sofronoff found that Mr Drumgold “advanced nothing resembling evidence to support the serious allegations of impropriety that he levelled against the police”.
“This inquiry has thoroughly examined the allegations in Mr Drumgold’s letter. Each allegation has been exposed to be baseless. Late in giving his oral evidence, Mr Drumgold finally resiled from his scandalous allegations.
“The frankly stated opinions of police to the DPP about the weakness of the prosecution case were incapable of supporting a conclusion that they had acted in breach of their duty,” Mr Sofronoff said.
“Their association with defence during the trial was capable of demonstrating nothing more than their strong antipathy towards the DPP, something that was not surprising given that the feeling was mutual. Mr Drumgold did not seem to appreciate that mutual trust is a two-way street.
“It was he who, at the first opportunity, formed the baseless opinion that the investigators were improperly trying to thwart a prosecution.
“The allegation of political interference was particularly wicked because it was an allegation that had a tendency to lessen community confidence in the system of administration of justice and was made without the slightest evidence to support 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
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My son Joe at ANU
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