Australian Politics
P-plater loses license over little-known rule
A P-plater has lost her licence after being fined for using her mobile phone as a GPS.
Chiqui Eseque was pulled over by NSW Police on May 20, 2022, after officers noticed her car's headlights were not turned on. Officers noticed her phone was placed on a hands free phone holder inside her car showing a map on the screen.
Learner and provisional licence holders under NSW law, are not permitted to use their phone at all while driving - even if it's just for directions.
The law catches many drivers out because there are no restrictions on L and P-plate drivers using a dash board GPS device.
Eseque was charged with using a mobile phone while she was driving.
However she fought the charge arguing she was just using it for directions and that there was no SIM card in the phone. Magistrate Hugh Donnelly found Eseque not guilty of the charge as the phone could not make or receive calls because it wasn't connected to a mobile network.
'I find in this case that I am to accept that the definition of a mobile phone just cannot be anything, there has to be some limitation to what the expression means,' Magistrate Donnelly said. 'This is a case where the phone itself, there was evidence of having no SIM card.'
The ruling however was overturned after the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) appealed against the decision and brought the case before the NSW Supreme Court in December.
Justice Monica Schmidt ruled last week that Eseque broke the law despite the phone not having a SIM card.
'A communicative capacity is not required in order for a user to look at everything that can be displayed on such a phone, as the rules recognise,' Justice Schmidt said.
'It cannot sensibly be concluded that a mobile phone only becomes one when a SIM card is placed into it and ceases being one, whenever such a card is removed.'
Eseque was ordered to pay the DPP's costs.
Learner, P1 and P2 drivers are not permitted to use a mobile phone under any circumstances in most states and territories.
Motorists can only use a mobile phone if it's mounted to a phone holder or can be used hands free.
Drivers in NSW who have a full license can only use a mobile phone if it's hand free or in a phone holder.
Motorists in Victoria face a $545 fine and a loss of four demerit points for illegally using a mobile phone.
Those in Queensland face a massive $1,161 and a loss of four demerit points. Learner and P1 drivers under the age of 25 in the sunshine state are not permitted to use a mobile phone under any circumstances.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12900583/P-plater-mobile-phone-GPS.html
*******************************************After my mum’s death, I couldn’t believe what the bank did to my 93-year-old dad
My mother died recently, leaving my 93-year-old father, who had relied on her to do his internet banking, all alone. It’s not like he could easily pop into the bank either. His local branch has closed, and his nearest one is 38 kilometres away, and opens only on weekday mornings.
What’s more, without Mum to drive him to the station, the train journey is nigh-on impossible.
But Dad, ever keen to do the right thing, went all the way to the bank to tell them his wife had died. And what did they do as a result? A day later, without any warning, they locked him out of his online account.
There’ve been many people, over the years, who’ve described Australian banks as bastards. Today, they make it absolutely impossible not to agree.
We all know about the big four’s cash earnings hitting a record $32.5 billion this year. Meanwhile, staff cutbacks have reached a new high and phone helplines, the only route left to many customers, have extended to incredible wait times. I sat for two hours listening to dismal music on repeat before finally giving up on the attempt to have his access unlocked.
Indeed, the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association found just in August that the performance of the bank call centres of our main retail banks was less than 26.7 per cent effective – the worst result of any business sector.
All this has a huge human cost. Go to any remaining bank branch in Australia, and the scene will be exactly the same: queues of forlorn elderly people, who haven’t been brought up with computers, waiting gloomily in line in understaffed offices to see stressed-out, overworked and impatient tellers.
As the banks race zealously towards a cut-price, online future, a big tranche of their loyal – yet not so technologically literate customers – are left behind; out-of-touch, voiceless and, as a result, often utterly stripped of power, confidence and the capacity for self-determination.
Dad is careful with his money, as people of that generation are, and he looks after it closely. But he paid dearly for his conscientiousness in telling the bank his joint account holder was no more.
Now, distressed that he can no longer have us show him his account on the internet, check the money going out and coming back in, he has no idea what to do. Hours on the helplines eventually yielded the advice that I should go physically into a bank branch.
So I went into the city, as my nearest branch has also closed, only to be told they couldn’t talk to me because my father wasn’t there – despite all my power of attorney documents. I explained he didn’t live in Sydney, but that also fell on deaf ears.
I was told to phone another number. When that was finally answered, I was told they couldn’t speak to me because my father’s account was private – forget those POA papers.
So what to do next? Who knows? Do we just wait and see and hope that one day they might sort out the mess and miraculously unlock his account, so he can reclaim a semblance of his independence?
Or do we keep bashing our heads against a brick wall in the hope that the sight of all the blood might stir someone, anyone, to action?
Every teller and phoneline person I’ve so far spoken to, always expresses their sympathy and regret that my mother, and his wife, has passed away. I struggle not to tell them, however, that we don’t want their sympathy. We just want them to stop being such bastards.
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Treasury’s 2023 report card leaves little to boast about
Needless to say, the year has been a challenging one for many Australians, particularly those with large mortgages.
The Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the cash rate on five occasions, taking the cash rate to 4.35 per cent. This figure is still low compared with most developed economies. Note also that our cash rate is lower than the current inflation rate, which is 5.4 per cent – another international point of difference.
Notwithstanding the restrictive action of the RBA, there was no recorded recession affecting the Australian economy, defined as consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Having said this, there were three quarters of negative per capita GDP growth, which in turn reflected the relative anaemic growth in combination with strong population growth. Real retail sales also have been sluggish, recording three quarters of negative growth.
The extraordinarily high growth in the population, spurred almost entirely by migration, was a key element of economic developments this year. Annual net overseas migration to the year ending in June exceeded 500,000, with the net result being a population growth rate of 2.4 per cent. The actual NOM exceeded Treasury’s revised estimate by more than 100,000.
Parallels have been drawn with the post-war years of “populate or perish”, in particular the large migrant intakes that occurred during the 1950s. The truth is there is really no comparison because all the migrants in that earlier period were permanent and many of them initially were settled in already built migrant hostels. The vast bulk of these migrants were from Britain and Europe.
Most of the migrant intake now is made up of temporary entrants, mainly international students. The most common source countries are China and India, but recent rapid growth has come from Nepal, The Philippines and Colombia. The most common courses undertaken by international students are business and IT.
The failure of Treasury to anticipate this surge in the population is unforgivable. After the hiatus of the pandemic, there was always going to be a catch-up, with migrant arrivals vastly exceeding migrant departures. The modelling should have picked this up.
The pressures on the housing sector, in particular, and other infrastructure were easy to predict.
It was incumbent on Treasury to recommend action to ensure the migrant intake was manageable. Its ideological adherence to a big Australia and the supposed fiscal and demographic benefits of a large migrant intake seemingly prevented officials from offering this sage advice.
The fact is that Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil dithered about the stance of migration policy for most of the year, swinging from endorsing the historically high migrant intake to finally taking some very modest measures to rein in arrivals. In particular, the delay in ditching the Covid visa was inexcusable.
One defining feature of the Australian economy during the year has been the strength and resilience of the labour market. By every measure – the unemployment rate, the rate of underemployment, the employment-to-population ratio, the participation rate – the labour market was extraordinarily buoyant.
Reflecting in part the financial pressures many households encountered, there was a leap in the first half of the year in the number of multiple jobholders. In September, 6.6 per cent of employed people were multiple jobholders, higher than the long-term average of between 5 and 6 per cent.
Another defining economic event of 2023 was the ongoing slump in productivity. It hasn’t been simply a case of slow growth; there have been actual falls in observed labour and multifactor productivity. In the year ending in the September quarter, for instance, labour productivity fell by 2 per cent across the year.
We are now back to levels of productivity experienced well before the pandemic.
The point is often made that poor productivity is an international phenomenon, with global factors the likely explanation. The remarkable growth in work from home often is cited as a common reason. The reality is more complex, with the US, in particular, experiencing quite strong growth in productivity whereas Australia has gone backwards.
According to research undertaken by the Reserve Bank, labour productivity in the US this year was nearly 5 per cent higher than in December 2019, whereas in Australia it was 3 per cent lower.
Indeed, the only other country to experience such poor productivity performance was Canada, which incidentally has a similar large migrant intake and rapid population growth.
The argument is that the influx of relatively unskilled migrants, given the dominance of international students, has allowed businesses to take on available staff rather than make labour-saving investments. Weak business investment seems to be a key factor holding back productivity in both countries.
Another defining event of the year was the blowout in the cost of major infrastructure projects, with higher labour and material costs putting paid to the original estimates.
This has been a significant issue in Victoria with the cost of the government’s so-called Big Build program increasing by between 30 and 50 per cent from the initial estimates. Just one project, the North East Link, has gone from its original cost estimate of $10bn to $26bn.
The Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project also has been dogged by huge cost overruns and delays. The same applies to the construction of the transmission lines that are needed to connect this project to the main grid.
This development has significant implications for the economy as well as the energy grid. It’s now clear that the proposed timeline for new renewable energy projects and transmission lines is way behind schedule and the costs have exploded.
Given the tight labour market, the completion of these enormously expensive infrastructure projects is draining workers from the more prosaic task of building new homes that are needed to accommodate the expanding population courtesy of migration.
Simply setting targets for new home completions as the Albanese government has done – 1.2 million new homes across five years – achieves nothing much by itself.
Towards the end of the year there were some emerging signs of slight economic weakness, including sluggish retail sales and home approvals as well as subdued consumer sentiment. While commodity prices eased somewhat, the terms of trade remained at historically high levels through the year.
Given ongoing strong population growth, it seems likely that Australia will avoid a technical recession. But the collapse in real household disposable income, which takes into account tax and mortgage payments, means many Australians have felt worse off during the year.
A central issue is now the speed at which inflation declines, paving the way for lower interest rates. In the US and Britain, inflation has fallen sharply and, in both cases, is within their target range.
The fear here is that services sector inflation may prove sticky, which would prevent us following suit. At this point it’s premature to predict cuts to interest rates next year, particularly given some of the damaging developments noted in this column.
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‘No credibility’: Northern Territory Chief Minister Eva Lawler lashed over schools
Two of the Northern Territory’s most experienced educators are calling on new Chief Minister Eva Lawler to fix the schools crisis she failed to resolve when she led the Education Department, warning she was seen as a “same horse, different jockey” leader and had “no credibility” with Indigenous teachers and parents.
The former schoolteacher surprised Territorians last week when she was elected unanimously as Chief Minister by the Labor caucus, after Natasha Fyles quit over undisclosed shares in a mining company.
But The Australian previously revealed, during her time as education minister, one in five children was effectively unfunded, the majority of students failed to meet minimum standards of literacy and numeracy, and attendance rates were as low as 18.7 per cent.
Yipirinya School principal Gavin Morris said there was a “real danger” in the new NT leadership promoting the “same message” on education, particularly nine months before an election when the government’s focus tended to become shortsighted.
“It feels like we’ve got the same horse but a different jockey with Eva Lawler as Chief Minister,” said Dr Morris, also a councillor at Alice Springs Town Council. “Don’t just throw a different jockey on there and expect a change in results, it’s not going to happen.
“Given the state of education in the Territory, what’s the problem with the horse and why aren’t we addressing the underlying problems with the education system?”
The Australian’s NT Schools in Crisis series revealed an annual funding shortfall of $214.8m for Territory schools, with less than half of the NT Education Department’s $1.2bn budget going directly into school spending.
Dr Morris pointed to the “total ballsing up” of the $40.4m federal funding in the 2023-24 budget to improve Central Australian school attendance and education outcomes, of which, he said, they had “not seen a single cent”.
“The minister for education was totally left out of that conversation, and there’s been a disconnect between the NT government and the commonwealth, and we’ve had a huge fallout in terms of education … There’s no respect and recognition for the voice on the ground,” he said.
“Now that we’ve got an ex-school teacher and ex-minister for education in the top job, that whole sector needs to be held to higher standard … Ms Lawler needs to ensure that doesn’t happen again.”
Dr Morris said there needed to be more innovation in Central Australian schools to deal with disengagement, anti-social behaviour and youth crime. “Go and talk to people on frontlines who are innovating – Yipirinya is humbly one of those – and address the barriers to education and why kids are refusing to go to school in Central Australia,” he said.
“Also, resource schools appropriately to deal with that. One school councillor for every 500 students 20 years ago was acceptable, today that’s negligence.”
Gary Fry, who spent 23 years as a principal in the Northern Territory before he moved into academia in Queensland, said he didn’t hold much hope that Ms Lawler could turn around the “depressingly sad state of affairs” in education as Chief Minister.
“Labor has no depth if it’s seeking to elevate someone to Chief Minister of the most underperforming jurisdiction and the most educationally backward system in Australia, who denies that there’s even a problem in the education system,” he said. “Someone who has not acknowledged the true state of First Nations children in both urban and remote areas around the Territory.”
He referred to an interview on ABC Radio Darwin in September in which Ms Lawler, then education minister, said the Territory had a “very strong, very robust education system”. “Lawler doesn’t have any credibility for Aboriginal people in town, and people like me … She presided over the failed state of education and the economy,” Mr Fry said.
He said while one part of the story related to funding, the other was ideological. “How do you take children that are struggling and how can the education system liberate them so that they see the pathways in their life.”
Mr Fry, however, said appointing Mark Monaghan as Education Minister was positive and hoped he could “embark on an agenda of inclusive education, which means including Aboriginal people in decision-making, policy and program design”.
NT Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro said: “Eva Lawler’s mismanagement of the education system has resulted in an alarming decline in school attendance rates since 2016 under the Labor administration … The dire state of affairs continues with a concerning number of teacher injuries, unrecorded police callouts to schools, a high rate of student suspensions, and an alarming number of school break-ins.”
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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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