Kerry White: Indigenous No campaigner describes the Stolen Generation as a 'mistruth'

That white social workers took abused black and mixed-race children out of their abusive families and fostered them to caring white families does NOT create a stolen generation. A rescued generation, more like it The families of origin sometimes wanted their children back but the social workers were rightly cautious about that. They would have been slow to return children of any colour to an abusive family. There is a high incidence of child abuse among Aborigines to this day

An indigenous No campaigner says use of the term Stolen Generation is among the 'mistruths' being raised in the debate over the Voice referendum.

Narungga woman Kerry White, who stood as a One Nation candidate in the last South Australian election and is scheduled to speak at a 'Freedom Rally' in Adelaide this weekend, made the comments at a No event in June.

This weekend's event is part of a series of No rallies across Australia standing against what it bills as 'hidden agendas of the Voice and other unlawful forms of tyranny'.

The protest also targets vaccine mandates and a bill to censor online 'misinformation' which has been proposed by Labor.

At a previous referendum event held in Adelaide in June, Ms White rationalised the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families - known as the Stolen Generation - as sometimes necessary.

'Back in the early 1950s and 1960s, mixed race children were being removed and placed in institutions for their own safety,' she said. 'Mixed race children were not accepted by blacks or white, and were being abused.

'The problem is in rural and remote communities we are so far away from mainstream that a lot of things go unnoticed.'

Ms White is a board member for Recognise A Better Way, one of two prominent No campaigns rallying against the Voice.

Former Labor MP Gary Johns is another prominent member of the group, who was recently criticised for advocating for genetic testing to determine whether someone can be regarded as Aboriginal and be eligible for services and positions reserved for Indigenous people.

Dr Johns' comments sparked outrage from politicians and officials committed to the Yes vote.

Ms White has previously said things must change if Australia seeks to 'improve outcomes for Aboriginal people in rural and remote Australia' - but she does not think the Voice is the solution.

'What is clear is we need transparency, productivity and accountability for all the taxpayer dollars spent by organisations and the government.

'What we don't need is more of the same BS that for generations ... has been built on untruths, half-truths and fiction.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12543279/stolen-generation-mistruth.html

******************************************

Racists under every bed

Cancel culture is about to get interesting and happening right here on Australian campuses. Get your popcorn and tune in!

But be warned: the first episode – the cancelling of Alfred Deakin through the push to rename Deakin University – is dreadfully dull and predictable. It is episode two and three where it gets juicy, where the cancellers cannot escape the undeniable analogies between the deemed offences of Deakin and those of left-wing heroes, John Curtin and (gasp) Gough Whitlam. The cancellers just haven’t realised this yet, which makes it particularly engaging.

Before getting too far ahead of ourselves, let’s recap on developments from earlier in the month which set the scene.

As reported in the Age newspaper, academics and students at Deakin University have decided that the university’s name needs to change, because Alfred Deakin, a founding father and our second prime minister, was apparently – you guessed it – a racist.

The university leadership is resisting the change for the moment, but have established a truth-telling process to document Deakin’s record, which will inevitably add further pressure for a name change.

On what basis do they argue that Deakin was a racist? As it turns out, on the basis of some quite racist policies and statements, as viewed from today’s perspective. In particular, he supported the introduction of the White Australia policy when he was Australia’s first attorney general and continued this support in his times as prime minster.

According to the activists, one of his greatest sins was predicting that Australia would remain a white country in decades to come.

Deakin’s views on race would not be acceptable in Australia today, and I don’t know of a single parliamentarian who would hold such views. Today, we are the most successful multi-racial country and this is a great source of pride to the vast majority of us.

But at the time, Deakin’s views were mainstream. In fact, every political party, including the Labor party, supported the White Australia Policy and nearly the entire population tended to view people through a racial lens. As the federal Parliamentary Library notes, there was ‘almost universal support’ for restricting non-Europeans and the extensive parliamentary debate of the policy concerned the method of exclusion, rather than whether it should occur.

So why single out Alfred Deakin from the entire political class and population of the time? Particularly when Deakin is broadly regarded as an important figure in the development of modern Australia, including being critical in the creation of our federation.

I suspect because he is seen as a figure of the right. The National Union of Students’ Xavier Dupe is clear on this: ‘The University should be renamed, just like other institutions named after right-wingers,’ he is reported as saying.

The problem for left-wing activists, like Dupe, who want to reassess historical figures through the values of today is that their own heroes are likely to be caught up in the revisionism.

And this is certainly the case here with two of the giants of the left, John Curtin and Gough Whitlam. Both were substantial figures in Australia’s history; both have universities or university institutions named after them (Curtin University, the Whitlam Institute) and both said similarly objectionable things to Deakin.

Consider John Curtin’s position on the White Australia policy. He was an ardent supporter, telling the federal parliament in late 1941 that, ‘Our laws have proclaimed the standard of a White Australia…. It was devised for economic and sound humane reasons. It was not challenged for 40 years. We intend to keep it because we know it to be desirable.’

Gough Whitlam’s statements are not as directly analogous. After all, Australia’s discriminatory immigration policy had already been abolished for six years by the time he became prime minister.

However, his position on the south Vietnamese was arguably as appalling. When Saigon fell in April 1975, Whitlam overruled his Foreign Minister’s willingness to admit significant numbers of South Vietnamese refugees, famously telling Foreign Minister Willesee that he didn’t want an influx of ‘f-cking Vietnamese Balts’.

No Labor figure today tries to justify Whitlam’s position. Because it can’t be justified. But if cancel culture activists on campuses are consistent, then surely Curtin University and the Whitlam Institute are also targets for renaming?

Chris Watson, Labor’s first prime minister, was also amongst the Labor luminaries who supported racist policies. In fact, while many unions and Labor people at the time were against non-European immigration for industrial reasons – fearing an undercutting of wages – Chris Watson made it clear that racial impurity was his primary concern, stating, ‘The objection I have to the mixing of these coloured people with the white people of Australia… lies in the main with the possibility and probability of racial contamination.’

Should Watson also be cancelled? Watson doesn’t have a university named after him, but there is a federal electorate and Canberra suburb named in his honour – just like Deakin. Should they be renamed? Tony Burke, who holds the seat of Watson doesn’t think so. Nor does Anthony Albanese who, in his 2015 ‘Light on the Hill’ address, praised Chris Watson as a ‘great leader’ whose record speaks to ‘our [Labor] ideals’.

The truth is that no person in the past would withstand the scrutiny of everything they said if they are judged from today’s moral values. No political leader from the earlier days of Australia’s modern history. And what about the past family members of the activists? Even their own grandparents?

So how should we judge people like Deakin and Watson?

We certainly shouldn’t let left-wing activists be the moral arbiters. Rather, we should assess them in their historical context. This means being honest about our past – the good and the bad.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/its-time-to-cancel-gough/

*****************************************************

Australian students shun education degrees as fears grow over ‘unprecedented’ teacher shortage

Their pay is pretty good. It just needs the government to make classroom conditions acceptable. Unruly students need to be controlled

Graduating high school students are continuing to turn away from teaching degrees in huge numbers, early application data shows, as concern grows over “unprecedented” workforce shortages.

The data, provided to Guardian Australia from the Universities Admissions Centre, showed education degrees received just 1,935 first preferences this year, a 19.24% decline compared with 2023 and the lowest rate since at least 2016, when public records became available.

Overall, education was ranked seventh out of 11 major areas of study.

Health received the highest number of first preferences (9,008), followed by society and culture (8,463) and management and commerce (5,277).

The education minister, Jason Clare, said in the past 10 years the number of young people going into teaching had gone backwards by about 12%.

“Of those who do start a teaching degree, only 50% finish,” he said. “And of those who finish it, 20% are leaving after less than three years.

“Teachers do one of the most important jobs in the world and we need more of them.”

Clare pointed to new $40,000 teacher scholarships rolling out in coming weeks as part of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan.

The scholarships will be available to 5,000 young people to become teachers provided they commit to the role for a number of years.

“In the next few weeks, we’re also launching a national campaign to promote the teaching profession, to encourage people to want to become a teacher by raising the status of the profession in the community,” Clare said.

“I want to change the way we as a country think about our teachers, and the way our teachers think our country thinks of them.”

The Australian Education Union federal president, Correna Haythorpe, said it was “vital” greater measures were taken to encourage students into teaching for public education to remain viable.

The federal government’s teacher workforce shortage paper, released last August, found schools were facing “unprecedented teacher supply and retention challenges”, with workforce shortages one of the “single biggest issues” facing teacher employers.

“We are concerned the status of teaching is not necessarily seen as an attractive option for students and that requires governments to invest in attraction and retention mechanisms,” Haythorpe said.

She pointed to teaching degree fees and the burden of unpaid placements placing pressure on students amid a cost of living crisis.

“Federal, state and territory governments must take bold and urgent action … governments at all levels should invest in paid placements for teaching students, proper mentoring programs and lowering the costs of teaching degrees.”

New South Wales and Victoria have both made significant announcements to address the workforce shortage this month.

Last week, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced students enrolled to become secondary school teachers would have their degrees paid by the state government, in an effort to fill “crippling” staff shortages in the sector.

It followed a deal sealed between the NSW deputy premier and education minister, Prue Car, and the teachers’ federation for starting salaries to rise from $75,791 to $85,000 and the highest salary from $113,042 to $122,100.

A submission by the former NSW government to the federal government’s Initial Teacher Education (ITE) review in 2021 acknowledged enrolments in the state had declined by almost 30% from 2014 to 2019.

“Many high achieving students are not choosing teaching as a career,” it read.

https://www.inkl.com/newsletters/morning-edition/news/australian-students-shun-education-degrees-as-fears-grow-over-unprecedented-teacher-shortage

**********************************************

Our moral guardians: Climate activists teach children to send cookie malware to skeptical grandparents

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) is asking supporters to send deceptive links out to friends and family that look like a cookie recipe but embed software cookies instead on the victim’s computer. The digital cookie then pushes green climate videos into their feeds, (as if the ABC news wasn’t loaded enough).

Look out for any links to oneminutecookie.com.

The AYCC gets about $3m in donations, and even visits schools, teaching children how to cheat and lie to save the planet, or something like that. What are good family relationships built on after all, if not deception? What is science if it is not propaganda?

These are all good questions to raise with the children in your life and the schools in your area. Don’t wait for an email to arrive, thank the AYCC for providing the opportunity to start the conversation now.

If the believers are so caring, ethical and moral why are they teaching children it’s OK to deceive family members? Is this the kind of “fair and just” world we want to live in?

Call up schools and the local P&C and ask if they are aware the AYCC — which runs programs in schools — teaches children to fool parents and grandparents and use malware. Are these the kind of family values that belong in our schools? Will the local school guarantee that they will not allow this group to manipulate children?

The Australian exposed their crooked game this week, and traffic to oneminutecookies.com has fallen to zero. So presumably the link trap will change. (The campaign has been put on hold).

https://joannenova.com.au/2023/09/our-moral-guardians-climate-activists-teach-children-to-send-cookie-malware-to-skeptical-grandparents/

************************************

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

***************************************