Australian Politics
Jewish students have safety fears over campus support for Hamas
Jewish students say anti-Israel material being distributed on university campuses following the Hamas attacks is deeply distressing and has led to students hiding their Jewish identity, as one of Australia’s biggest student bodies declared it “stands in solidarity with Palestine”.
The University of Sydney Student Representative Council on Wednesday urged students to “stand against oppression … until Palestine is free”.
Earlier this week, the SRC promoted the Sydney Rally for a Free Palestine, where protesters marched on the Sydney Opera House as it was lit in the national colours of Israel, chanting violent anti-Semitic slogans.
“The Israeli state has waged a war on Palestinians for 75 years,” the SRC said in a statement.
“Palestinians have faced ethnic cleansing, torture, bombing and violence against civilians.
Gaza has been under a blockade for 16 years and all Palestinians live under an occupied apartheid state, which is the root cause of violence.
“The movement for Free Palestine is not anti-Semitic, and rally organisers strongly share this belief,” the SRC added.
A spokesperson for the University of Sydney said the vice-chancellor had written to staff and students “acknowledging many hold strong views on this conflict and encouraging them to express themselves in a way that considers the impact on other members of our campus community”.
Paris Enten, a Monash University student who is vice-president of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, said many students had family in Israel and felt the impact of the attacks very strongly. “Whilst we in no way want to limit anyone’s freedom of speech, walking through campus and seeing people celebrating the attacks that have impacted them so personally is really upsetting,” Ms Enten said.
“We’ve heard of students who are avoiding campus out of concern for their safety,” she said, adding other students were deeply angry at seeing support for Hamas on campus.
“They’re saying ‘How dare you talk about my dead relatives that way’,” she said.
Association being handed out this week says the Hamas attack was an “attempt to reclaim Palestinian land”. The flyer, which was also distributed at Macquarie University, does not mention the many innocent civilians – including babies and young children – killed or wounded by Hamas, nor the civilian hostages who were forcibly removed to Gaza.
Since Saturday, the AUJS has helped submit more than 400 special consideration requests for students who have fallen behind in their studies because of the stress brought on by the recent events.
Federal opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson called on the Albanese government and universities to take steps to protect Jewish students on university campuses.
She pointed to a recent survey of Jewish students which found 64 per cent had experienced anti-Semitism on campus and 57 per cent had hidden their Jewish identity in order to avoid it.
Senator Henderson said she had written to Education Minister Jason Clare asking him to say how the government would protect Jewish students in universities and schools. She has also written to umbrella body Universities Australia urging universities “to have much better measures in place so that student safety and wellbeing is of the highest priority”.
Universities Australia CEO Catriona Jackson said there was no place for racism or any form of discrimination on campus. She said universities had “zero tolerance for attitudes and behaviours which create unsafe learning and working environments”.
The Palestine Action Group, which was behind Monday’s rally in Sydney, has organised another rally in Canberra on Friday, which office bearers from the Student Association of Australian National University spruiked through their council agenda.
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Darwin to become major freight port
Offering faster shipping times for goods to and from China and Japan. The Adelaide to Darwin railway may be not such a white elephant after all. John Howard's vision may pay off
Aurizon managing director Andrew Harding told the company’s annual general meeting in Brisbane that the $1.4bn acquisition of the 2200km Tarcoola to Darwin railway in 2021 would allow it to tap into the closest port to Australia’s largest trading partners in Asia. Aurizon said the “landbridge” strategy outlined this year would allow the company to diversify away from its mainstay coal haulage business.
“Aurizon will leverage these new assets as we look to develop land bridging solutions for customers,” Mr Harding said. “The cranes we are installing at Darwin Port represent a significant milestone in realising land bridging solutions for customers.”
Aurizon is banking on new ways to carry cargo, including investments in the freight “landbridge” to offset reliance on transporting coal wagons to east-coast ports.
Brisbane-based Aurizon reported a 37 per cent drop in profit to $324m in the year to June 30 as its coal business was hit by wet weather.
The investment in rolling stock includes more than 30 new heavy-haul locomotives, more than 500 container wagons as well as mobile harbour cranes and reach stackers for the movement of stackers. Aurizon has a long-term lease through to 2054 at the Port of Darwin and is now able to offer stevedoring services. Aurizon shares rose 0.5 per cent to $3.69 on Thursday.
“Our initial target is 100,000 TEUs – 20-foot equivalent containers – per year,” Mr Harding said. “That’s within a market of some eight million TEUs of throughputs at Australian ports annually.”
He said the landbridge route would be up to 40 per cent quicker compared to key shipping routes into Australia.
“We are taking a staged approach to land-bridging to effectively manage business and investment risk,” he said. “Limited additional rolling stock is required for stage one and it is the exact same rolling stock that we currently use across our other freight lines.”
Aurizon has already signed its largest ever non-coal contract – an 11-year agreement with Team Global Express (TGE) for national linehaul services.
Aurizon chairman Tim Poole said the move into bulk and containerised freight created greater growth opportunities for Aurizon that its traditional haulage commodities, where growth could be more muted.
“We are seeing increasing demand for high-quality Australian food and agricultural products for export such as grains and phosphates,” Mr Poole said.
Aurizon says it can deliver a container from Shanghai to Melbourne quicker via the Darwin rail link than traditional shipping to metropolitan ports. Aurizon’s landbridge strategy could more than double the company’s shipping container business by the end of the decade, reducing Aurizon’s reliance on coal haulage in Queensland and NSW.
Mr Poole said that although he was confident the new business would perform well, in the eventuality that things do not go to plan, the new rolling stock and other equipment could be used elsewhere across the company’s network.
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Qld housing crisis: Red tape cut for new developments
Some sanity at last
It will be easier to build homes in Queensland as the state government moves to cut red tape for new developments.
In sweeping reforms, the government will seek new powers to access land for housing and incentivise developers to build affordable homes by overhauling the state’s planning framework.
The legislative changes are aimed at making it easier and faster for developers to build affordable homes as the state battles a housing crisis.
The Courier-Mail can reveal exclusive details of the revamp of planning laws, which will boost the planning minister’s powers to approve building homes on under-utilised land and cut barriers to provide affordable housing.
The proposed laws, to be introduced to parliament on Wednesday, will include the creation of a new zone – dubbed the urban investigation zone – to allow councils to deliver infrastructure earlier by streamlining development in growth areas.
It will also establish a new assessment pathway for developers, where building on infill areas and boosting affordable housing stock will be classified as a state priority.
Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Steven Miles said the legislative reform was aimed at ensuring the planning system was working as efficiently as possible.
Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Steven Miles in parliament on Tuesday. Picture: Tertius Pickard/NCA NewsWire
Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Steven Miles in parliament on Tuesday. Picture: Tertius Pickard/NCA NewsWire
“As the fastest-growing state, we need to be able to pull new levers in the planning and development system to deliver more homes, faster,” he said.
“This Bill will support the implementation of ShapingSEQ 2023 – our blueprint for delivering 900,000 new homes needed in the southeast corner by 2046 to accommodate 2.2 million new residents.
“To address housing supply constraints, the new laws will give the state powers to manage fragmented land holdings, approve affordable developments and take control of easements for water, power and sewerage.”
The housing availability and affordability bill, which amends the planning act, will give the state power to acquire or purchase land or create an easement to build critical infrastructure to unlock development, such as water infrastructure, transport infrastructure and parks.
Meanwhile, the creation of the development assessment pathway will allow building on previously undeveloped land to benefit the state by providing increased housing options.
Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon said the proposed reforms will allow more homes to get off the ground sooner.
“Nobody can tackle the housing challenges alone, and that’s why we have been listening to stakeholders on what changes we can make to deliver more housing in the private market,” she said. “We can ensure our planning system is responsive, efficient and effective in unlocking development, with quick and targeted intervention where needed.
“It marks a critical step in a future where available and affordable housing is not beyond any Queenslander’s reach.”
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Dutton should copy Poilievre: Learn from the re-booted Conservatives in Canada
Historically Canada’s main right-of-centre political party, the Conservative party, has been pretty electorally woeful. The left-wing Liberal party was in power for 70 years of the 20th century and Justin Trudeau has been the Liberal Prime Minister now for the past eight years. (And yep, in Canada the Liberals have always been an overtly left-of-centre party; an alignment many of our Australian Liberal MPs, especially at the state level, are clearly aiming to ape.) In the Great White North it’s not inapt to describe the Conservatives as ‘incompetent’ throughout much of my native Canada’s history.
But things have changed of late and the party up there offers big lessons to the mori-bund Liberals here in Australia. So what has the Conservative party done in Canada? Well, some years ago, after a series of mergers and splits, the party got rid of the word ‘progressive’ from its name. No longer were they the ‘Progressive Conservatives’; instead they became just the ‘Conservatives’. Then they changed the way in which the party leaders were chosen.
I know. I know. There is a widespread view here in Australia that this ‘who should be leader?’ decision should rest with the parliamentary wing of the party, with the elected MPs in the party room. Maybe that was true forty years ago when politicians tended to have real-life experience before entering parliament but Canada shows that view to be seriously open to doubt today.
You see in Canada the ‘who will be the leader’ decision now rests with the party members. Join the party. Wait three months. And you have an equal say in picking the leader to everyone else, MPs included. Remembering that Canada has about 50 per cent more population than Australia consider this: the Canadian Conservative party today has well over 700,000 party members. They pick the leader. They also pick who runs in their constituency. No Michael Photios-types with outsized influence.
By contrast the Liberal party here in Australia has somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 members, the exact numbers are not released for obvious reasons. Quite a massive difference to Canada isn’t it? Ask yourself what say you get in today’s Liberal party if you join. If you are in NSW the answer rhymes with the fifth Roman Emperor, the pyromaniac. These are catastrophically low numbers for a political party.
And notice that in Canada the party membership picks leaders that the party room, the elected MPs, would never choose in a million years. In Alberta last year, with the party trailing in the polls, the party membership even chose a woman who was not even in the provincial legislature. She was the most right-wing candidate and she went on to win a by-election and then won this year’s provincial election with a comfortable majority. The party membership does not buy the ‘park yourself an inch to the right of the lefties’ mantra.
Meanwhile at the federal level the Conservative party membership chose what by Canadian standards is an actual, real conservative, Pierre Poilievre. As I said, most of the party MPs would have opted to walk over broken glass before picking an actual values-based solid conservative like this man. Poilievre has been opposition leader for just over a year now.
When he was chosen the CBC and the usual left-leaning legacy media said he was unelectable. (The same sort of press talking heads, you’ll recall, who said Tony Abbott was unelectable until he won a massive majority, only for his own MPs to roll him and set the party on a downwards trajectory it’s still on.)
Poilievre then set out an actual set of policies – supporting the oil and gas industry; real scepticism on net zero and an unwillingness to do much of anything on that front; a pledge to cut (yes cut) one billion dollars from the CBC’s (Canada’s equivalent to our ABC) annual budget – yes, you read that correctly; restore the military to its Nato-promised level of funding; the list goes on.
You can imagine what the usual suspects in Canada’s equivalent of our Fairfax press and ABC think of him. Know what? The party room cannot remove Poilievre because only the party membership can do that. And notice that when the public broadcaster attacks him (because they always attack all conservative politicians) he can put it down to raw monetary self-interest.
How has this worked out? Well, Poilievre and the Conservatives are currently up in the polls somewhere between 10 and 14 points. Poilievre has gone from being far less popular than Justin Trudeau to being 15 points ahead in the preferred PM stakes. And get this result from the latest Angus Reid poll: Poilievre is now by far the most popular politician in Canada amongst young people (18 to 27 years old). In fact, he’s far more popular with the young than with the over-60 crowd. I would never have imagined that possibility in Canada, a country with a political centre of gravity a good deal to the left of Australia.
You see Poilievre ignores all the usual platitudes about how conservatives have to hoe to the middle and appease the Teal-type voters and try to win inner-city seats. He argues based on convictions. Heck, he was asked if he knew what a woman was and he did, giving the sort of non-woke answer 80 per cent of the population was dying to hear from a politician. Think of it this way. When the Albanese pledge to hold the Voice referendum was first announced the Yes side was polling upwards of 70 per cent. If you only decide what to do as a party based on focus groups you cave in from the start. But if you have values and principles (so we’re ruling out ScoMo) you argue for your views and aim to win over the punters – the polls now showing the No side has every chance of garnering 60-plus per cent of the national vote.
In a way Poilievre is reminiscent of Florida’s Ron DeSantis (and not just because Poilievre also disliked the government thuggery, heavy-handedness and regulatory over-reach of the Covid years). You see Poilievre knows the bureaucratic caste, as a whole, is not particularly sympathetic to right-of-centre views. So he learns his brief. He can defend his values and positions in an articulate way. He is prepared, regularly, to call out the legacy press for its patent left-leaning bias. And he is optimistic about the future. The next Canadian election need not be for almost two years. But if an election were held today it would likely deliver a big Conservative majority.
You might think that all of this would be a powerful lesson to our Liberal party in this country. But it hasn’t been. At the state level the Liberal brand is in total disarray because its elected MPs are barely distinguishable from Labor and hold the party membership in seeming contempt. And federally that appears to be true too of a good-sized chunk of the partyroom (aka ‘the moderates’).
The received wisdom that the best strategy is for the Libs to park themselves a centimetre to the right of Labor has failed repeatedly. Were it not for our virtually unique preferential voting system (that forces voters at some point to pick between the two established parties and that only one other country in the world mimics) this dessicated strategy would long ago have been exposed for its worthlessness.
Come on, Liberal party. Cast an eye on what’s going on in Canada and start to make some changes.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/dutts-should-copy-poilievre/
************************************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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