Australian Politics
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Co-ed schools ‘healthy’ for teens asserts Anthony Albanese amid elite private schools’ battle of the sexes
This is an old, old debate but there is no denying that single sex schools have produced many notable graduates. There is some argument that single-sex schools are better for girls but not for boys. That would pose quite a policy conundrum
Mr Albanese praised his old boys’ high school, St Mary’s Cathedral College in Sydney, for its decision to admit girls from Years 1 to 7, from 2025. “It’s a good thing they’ve made that decision,’’ he said.
“I think there’s something healthy about boys and girls not being separated until they hit uni is my own personal view.
“My son went to a co-ed school, went through the entire system at Dully and what’s now known as Sydney Secondary College, but to me as Leichardt High and Glebe High.
“From my recollection, I remember that there would be a bit of craziness when we’d have school dances with St Bridget’s at Marrickville or Holy Cross at Woollahra, and that probably wasn’t the ideal.‘’
Mr Albanese’s comments came after two elite private schools began a war of the sexes, over plans for Newington College to become a coeducational school after a girls’ headmaster decreed his students would never play sport with girls from a rival college.
Presbyterian Ladies’ College (PLC) Sydney principal Dr Paul Burgis has cautioned that girls in coeducational schools risk being distracted by boys showing off, or joining in popularity contests to impress male classmates.
In a note to PLC parents this month, Dr Burgis gave an assurance that their daughters would never take part in any sporting, public speaking or musical collaboration with the soon-to-be coeducational Newington College.
“Pubescent girls benefit from being able to practice (sic) and play hard and freely, without an awareness of watching eyes,’’ he wrote.
“No coeducational school is allowed to compete in the sport, speech or cultural programs with IGSA (Independent Girls’ Schools Association) schools.
“I note this because if Newington is to become a coeducational school, it will need to look much further afield than the IGSA schools for its sport, public speaking and musical collaboration.’’
The February 8 email refers parents to a link to a longer missive Dr Burgis wrote in 2022, when Newington College announced its divisive plan to become a coeducational school.
Plans by the 161-year-old Uniting Church boys’ school to admit girls has upset an influential “old boys’’ network.
Some “Old Newingtonians’’ have even withdrawn their bequests to the school in protest.
Dr Burgis’s original missive – which was circulated among Old Newingtonians yesterday – noted that a successful co-ed school “needs to have a majority female population’’.
“I hold this view because in your average group of boys, some will be likely to take on the role of gaining attention by acting counter to what it is the class is trying to achieve,’’ he wrote.
“This may be outwardly disruptive behaviour, or it may be attention-seeking behaviour.
“It could have the purpose of creating laughter or fun.
“Girls are more likely to support the cultural project of the classroom, and would prefer to settle quickly, to be able to listen well, and to talk through any difficulties they might have.
“The needs of girls can easily be set aside in a coeducational setting.’’
The principal of PLC – which charges $42,000 a year in tuition fees for senior students – wrote that “girls learn better in single sex schools’’.
He said the “toughest school for girls’’ is one with a “male-oriented culture’’.
“Is it ethically a good idea to introduce girls because it could benefit boys?’’ he wrote.
“Why … would a highly successful school for boys, with long waiting lists, choose to go coeducational?
“They must have arrived at the belief that something in the culture of the boys is better if girls are about.
“The change is being driven by a perception about boys, rather than the needs of girls.’’
Dr Burgis wrote that “having boys about is an opportunity for distraction’’. “Some girls will seek to be ‘popular’ with the boys. “Others will feel the need to respond to this.’’
Dr Burgis wrote that “it is easy for some of us males, when relaxing, to take up quite a bit of room on the lounge’’.
“On average, we will take up more lounge space more often than our sisters,’’ he wrote. “The effect is that they will have to accommodate us. “In a girls school, girls get a comfortable seat on the lounge without even having to ask.’’
Dr Burgis yesterday told The Australian that his memos to parents should not be mistaken for “us seeking to tell a different independent school what they should do’’.
“Of course as a school which believes wholeheartedly in the education of girls in a single sex environment, PLC Sydney will communicate strongly and positively about the advantages of a girls only education to our families and the broader community,’’ he said.
“We will also explain how girls only sporting programs work.’’
A Newington College spokeswoman declined to comment on the rival school’s critique.
The Newington College website shows that it never intended to join the girls’-only IGSA sporting contests, but plans for girls to compete in the Independent Sporting Association (ISA) contests with co-ed schools Barker, Redlands and St Andrews.
Newington College, which charges up to $42,000 a year, will admit the first girls to preparatory and Year 5 students in 2026, but will wait until 2028 to admit the first female high school students to Years 7 and 11 until 2028.
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Inquiry Ponders How Government Can Legislate Against Climate Change Health Risks
The government is hearing testimony on whether to require lawmakers to consider the ‘health and wellbeing of children in Australia’ when approving mines.
Questions remain over how exactly the federal Australian government can define, and legislate, a climate change risk to the “health and wellbeing” of children.
A Senate Committee is examining an amendment to the Albanese government’s Climate Change Act 2022 to require legislators to consider the health of children when making significant decisions.
The Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2023 would also restrict approvals for mining activities related to coal, oil, and natural resources if they pose a “material risk of harm” to children.
While medical bodies like the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), as well as several climate change activist groups, shared their views on the health risks caused by climate change, the issue of how exactly the government would legislate against this, was largely left unanswered.
“How would you expect decision-makers to correctly identify a project-specific impact on health, in a context where the cumulative impact of emissions over many years is causing climate change? How would you see that point of identification?” said Labor Senator Karen Grogan on the morning of Feb. 22.
In response, Dr. Catherine Pendrey, chair of the Climate and Environmental Medicine Specific Interest Group at RACGP, said her organisation would not “specifically comment on the functions of the court.”
“I believe it’s the young people in Australia that have been taking these issues to court, rather than members of the medical profession,” she told the Senate Environment, Communications Legislation Committee.
Senator Grogan said that she had no argument with climate change science, but was concerned about the impact of how the law would operate on the ground.
“Will it have the intended impact? Or will it ... have unintended consequences, and limit the ability of the structures—that the Labor government’s put in place over the last 18 months—to try and ramp up action on climate change?”
She further added, “I’m asking how you would believe an administrative decision maker would make that assessment [on the health impact of climate change?]”
Dr. Michael Bonning, chair of the Public Health Committee at the Australian Medical Association, said there was evidence of legislators coming to conclusions based on available evidence and “utilising that going forward.”
“As for internal administrative procedures, we obviously aren’t able to comment on that.”
When asked the same question, Anjali Sharma, a young climate change activist, conceded it was difficult to quantify the impact of a fossil fuel project, but added that the “cumulative impact of all these decisions is what we young people will face down the road.”
“I know that 50 years down the road—in a world that potentially has seen warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius—we will not be able to look back and point to that one specific decision that was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said.
‘Health Impact Assessments’ Mentioned
Dr. Kate Wylie, from Doctors for the Environment Australia, provided, what she termed “the beginning of an answer” to the senator’s question.
“We have Health Impact Assessments for various projects ... and they do not consider climate change impacts. We could broaden the scope of the Health Impact Assessments to include climate change, and how that impacts on children’s health.”
Heath Darrant, national coordinator of the Australian Medical Students’ Association, concurred, saying Australia could adopt the United Nation’s Child Rights Impact Assessment Model.
“And I know Wales used that in their [Wellbeing of Future Generation Act] that they implemented, which is a similar bill that’s being discussed here today. And New Zealand also uses the same model to come up with criteria on what constitutes an impact on health.”
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IR rule changes are about union power, not helping workers
In six months, on or around September 1 depending on the date the parliamentary-approved legislation receives royal assent, employing casuals in most Australian enterprises will be extremely hazardous.
There are currently around 2.6 million Australians who take up their entitlement to casual work usually as a second family income.
By Christmas this number will be slashed, resulting in a nightmare for family enterprises and a 25 per cent reduction in pay in the pocket for a vast number of Australians struggling with rent and mortgage stress.
Australian family businesses thrive on the flexibility of casual labour, and vast numbers of people under mortgage and rent stress use casual labour as a second job to help make ends meet.
In my view, this new legislation shows a callous disregard by the Prime Minister for this segment of his fellow Australians.
I emphasise casual labour has not been banned, but control over whether an enterprise is entitled to employ casual labour will be determined not by the employees or the enterprise but rather by the Fair Work Commission.
The Prime Minister may deny he is deliberately attacking family business and those struggling with mortgage and rent stress – so let me go through, step by step, how he and the relevant minister engineered the legislation and the looming chaos.
Remember, currently whether a person is to be employed as a casual, at least initially, is determined by the enterprise. Many employees love casual work because of the extra cash and the fact they can determine when they work, so work can be fitted into family and base job obligations.
There is no job security or holidays, but in a an economy where there is a labour shortage this is not seen as a problem by many Australians.
Family and other businesses can relate their labour requirements to the flexibility of customer demand. Casual labour is one of Australia’s greatest boosts to productivity and employee wellbeing. But Albanese, via his Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke, and the loopholes in the so-called industrial relations legislation has set new rules.
Accordingly, from the start of spring 2024, an employee will be a casual employee of an employer only if “the employment relationship is characterised by an absence of a firm advanced commitment to continuing and indefinite work”.
What this means will be determined by Fair Work and involves looking into the minds of both the casual person and the employer.
It is complete parliamentary nonsense, with no regard to how business and ordinary Australians operate. But the Albanese legislation gets worse.
The above definition is then subject to further interpretation, and the ability to hire casuals must also be anchored on “the basis of the real substance, practical reality and true nature of the employment relationship … having regard to, but not limited to, the following considerations (which may indicate the presence, rather than an absence, of such a commitment):
(i) whether there is an inability of the employer to elect to offer, or not offer, work;
(ii) whether, having regard to the nature of the employer’s enterprise, it is reasonably likely that there will be future availability of continuing work …”
I invite Albanese to go down to the Stanmore fish and chip shop in his electorate to explain what this means.
But there is one chilling criteria in the Albanese legislation which actually has a clear meaning and will be used by the required union delegate, or delegates, in all enterprises to report to their union. That is: “whether there are full‑time employees or part‑time employees performing the same kind of work”.
My layperson interpretation of this sentence is if an enterprise has a part-time or full-time employees doing “the same kind of work” as a casual employee, then the casual must be forced to take a pay cut and be employed full or part time.
Under the legislation it seems the penalties for employing casuals do not apply until Fair Work has declared the enterprise is not entitled to employ casuals. If the enterprise continues to do so, the penalties are harsh and can total close to $100,000.
This leaves the enterprise being forced to employ permanent part-time employees, which usually requires the rigidity of a roster. And contacting the employee out of hours to change the roster may be hazardous.
It’s a totally different relationship, which robs both the family business and the employees of the flexibility which benefits both in the modern world.
Of course, in some situations the predictability of a roster may help an employee, which is why when the ACTU originally suggested after a designated period of casual employment, an employee should be able choose part-time employment.
It was a reasonable suggestion, but few would have changed because of the pay cut and lack of flexibility. Now they have no choice.
The ACTU is now suggesting the casual premium be increased from 25 to 35 per cent (the cost differential is about 20 per cent) to “mop up” any enterprise Fair Work allows to employ casuals.
The reason the ACTU and the unions want all people working in an enterprise to be full or part-time employees is it they are more likely to become union members, delivering the union more income plus a relationship with employees – which gives the union influence over the running of the business.
It’s all about money and power, not worker protection
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‘Good’ girls, ‘bad’ boys? That’s no way to make progress
Nikki Gemmell says boys in the West are angry. They want power and control, she says, pointing to a Gallup poll that apparently shows young men “flinching into conservatism” while young women are embracing and facilitating social reform.
The impetus for girls is fairness and equality, she says, a natural step for the educated. It’s why “the Taliban wants to stop females from being educated”, she wrote on the weekend.
The impetus for boys, says Gemmell, is to preserve what they had. She claims they are hurting, raging and lost.
Let’s put the Taliban to one side, given that in Australia girls are educated, they work, dress as they wish, vote, run companies, and become prime minister.
Lumping girls in the good column and boys in a bad one is not helpful. The world can’t be summed up so simply. Let’s dissect two claims – one about politics, the other about gender, at the centre of Gemmell’s thesis.
Having followed politics for a long time, I can safely say the world is more complicated than saying that conservative equals bad and progressive equals good.
If “progressive” meant only good things, we would do away with elections right now, and make Adam Bandt leader for life. In fact, the Greens are not genuinely progressive. For starters, they harbour anti-Semites.
This word, “progressive”, is often a crock. The progressive Greens are economic dunces; they’d wreck the economy overnight with their taxation and spending policies. We know from experience that being progressive on immigration – in other words, handing over control of our borders to people-smugglers – led to thousands of deaths at sea for desperate people.
So-called progressive policies can be wickedly regressive. When a bunch of elites thought that granting special rights to one group of Australians was such a good idea it should be enshrined in the Constitution, the response from Australians was an overwhelming “no”.
That No vote was the height of social and political equality: it was progressive and liberal.
When I hear claims that “progressive” is all sweetness and light, and comes in the shade of teal, it pains me to point out that most of the teals are frauds.
For all their kvetching about the need for more integrity in politics, and attacking low-hanging fruit such as pork-barrelling, they haven’t shown any interest, on behalf of taxpayers, in getting to the bottom of why the federal government handed over $2.4m to Brittany Higgins. Not a single injured veteran is able to secure that amount of money, no questions asked. How’s that for political integrity.
Nice-sounding words can’t hide poor outcomes. When diversity translates into discriminating against men, the result is neither fair nor equal.
Earlier this year, Caroline Overington reported on a bookshop owner in Melbourne who was concerned that while she had shelves of great women’s fiction writing, “positive stories with men and boys are almost missing from the mix”. We reported that women filled seven of the top 10 places in fiction writing last year. It was the same internationally.
Women coming out on top is great news, so long as it’s not manufactured by booting men out of the mix. Sadly, it’s seen as “progressive” to do precisely that.
Gender quotas are routinely used to fill board seats, sidelining merit. It’s easy to predict what flows: boards end up reflecting a political monoculture comprising people who think quotas make sense. That’s not genuine diversity.
When I wrote extensively many years ago about the importance of phonics when teaching young kids to read, I discovered phonics was described by its opponents as a conservative plot to entrench the political status quo. What on Earth? We’re talking about giving the kids the building blocks to read, a necessary step so they can learn, expand their horizons, think for themselves.
Back then, progressives believed kids learned to read by osmosis, by being exposed to words, and most schools bought their magic pudding. The steady stream of poor literacy results for Australian students reveals how regressive that progressive project has been for kids. Talk about being mugged by reality.
According to a piece in The Financial Times about the Gallop survey, the #MeToo movement is the trigger for women moving to the progressive side of politics. Gemmell repeated the claim. So, let’s look a little closer at this recent progressive movement.
The #MeToo movement has helped women feel empowered to report sexual assault and call out bad behaviour that falls short of assault. But not everything about #MeToo is positive. For example, the oft-repeated mantra that we must “believe all women” can only serve to undermine the presumption of innocence. That’s a dangerous path for a society committed to fairness, let alone fair trials.
There are other, less serious, but equally boneheaded responses to the #MeToo movement. One of Sydney’s most prestigious boys schools told boys in an assembly not to use the word “moist” because it offends girls. That school and others are going co-ed because apparently boys will become civilised human beings by sharing a classroom with girls.
The boys I know aren’t angry about sharing power, let alone classrooms. They’re not hurting, or raging, or lost, as Gemmell suggests. They weren’t born to be at the top of the tree. Nor are they hankering for cosy arrangements to continue. If I had to guess, what annoys both boys and girls – along with some of their parents – are evidence-free anti-male messages that go unchallenged.
Sky News contributor Daisy Cousens says the MeToo movement’s celebrity activists do not actually care about…
Young men and women in Gen Z are entering a world where labels and slogans are routinely used to dumb down society. Just as people are complex, so too are political philosophies.
For those interested in learning about conservatism as a political philosophy, there are plenty of books I could suggest. But let’s cut to the chase: being conservative means looking at what people did before us, holding on to what works and, yes, changing what doesn’t work.
Conservatism is rooted in lived experience, to coin a phrase from the progressive zeitgeist, not crossing your fingers, closing your eyes and saying a little prayer that good intentions will translate into good outcomes.
Now to another point about boys and girls. Gemmell claims Gen Z is “split” and living in “two separate worlds”. I looked at the Gallop results. In the US, Gallop’s news website says “a widening of the ideological gaps between men and women over time has been due to women becoming more liberal at a faster rate than men, rather than women and men moving in different ideological directions”. So, let’s take a breather.
I must live in a different part of Australia to my colleague. Having young men and women waft through our homes for many years, I can vouch for relationships forged above politics and social movements.
These young men and women befriend, work with, partner and marry people who have different views. The reason is simple: in most workplaces, pubs and homes, politics need not be a morality contest; ergo progressive doesn’t mean good, and conservative doesn’t mean bad. Or vice versa.
Perpetuating a myth that girls are progressive social reformers, while boys hanker for the good old days when men ruled the world, will only help to make the world more, not less, polarised.
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Warning over pipeline regulation review
APA Group has warned a review into the regulation of Australia’s gas pipelines threatens to delay much needed investment to boost capacity ahead of looming gas shortages on Australia’s east coast.
The industry was informed on Wednesday that the Australian Energy Regulator, under new powers over the regulation of Australia’s gas pipelines, would initiate the first in a series of reviews, starting with APA’s South West Queensland Pipeline (SWQP).
The pipeline, which links Wallumbilla in South East Queensland to Moomba in South Australia, is a key pipeline in the transmission network connecting Queensland with the southern states.
It is currently subject to light regulation, with an arbitration process in place to handle customer complaints, but the AER is considering whether to convert it to a “scheme pipeline”, which would subject it to full price regulation.
The AER on Wednesday said the SWQP was chosen as the first pipeline for review “due to its importance to the east coast gas system in transporting gas between northern and southern states”.
Speaking to The Australian after delivering the company’s half-year results on Thursday, APA Group chief executive Adam Watson criticised the “bizarre” timing of the review.
“They’ve actually called out the reason why they’re starting there is because of the significance of it in moving gas down, which is sort of bizarre and ironic that you’ve got a gas pipeline that is so critical to energy security, and pricing that’s functioning well,” he said. “We’ve never had a single customer complaint, it’s already lightly regulated so we’ve got full transparency of pricing and everything, and yet the government is giving the regulator power to look at that to see whether or not it should be heavily regulated.
“It is quite concerning that at a time where we need more flexibility in our energy supply, we need to be more nimble ... that they’re putting up barriers making it even harder for us to bring this transition to life.”
The AER was given the responsibility for determining the form of regulation of Australia’s gas pipelines last March as part of new National Gas Law rules introduced by the federal government at the time.
The review of the SWQP will be the first in a series of reviews the AER is planning to undertake over several years.
However with Australia facing a looming material shortfall of gas on Australia’s east coast from 2028, Mr Watson said the reviews undermined the need for further investment in new supplies and infrastructure.
“We’ve put about $700m of expansion capacity in that network at our own risk, ahead of market, to support energy security,” he said.
“If you go to a heavy form of regulation, that form of regulation is going to cause all sorts of problems in our energy transition.
“If we need to do an expansion, all of the decisions around that would be effectively determined by the regulator, and the regulatory processes are slow - it could take two, three, four, five years for them to determine whether or not we should bring an asset to market, by which time the problem’s already hit you in the face.
“You feel like the goal posts are being moved on you in the middle of a pretty important game, and we’ve got to be careful that we don’t have the umpires being the only ones left on the field trying to run the energy transition.”
APA’s underlying EBITDA grew by 5.8 per cent to $930m in the six months to December, underpinned by inflation-linked tariff increases, which resulted in a 3.4 per cent increase in revenue (excluding pass through revenue).
Recent acquisitions including the Basslink interconnector between Victoria and Tasmania, and the Pilbara Energy portfolio of renewable energy assets, lifted the result, and supports the company’s new full-year guidance for underlying EBITDA of $1.87bn to $1.91bn.
Statutory net profit after tax in the first half came in at $1.05bn.
The company reaffirmed full-year distribution guidance of 56c after declaring a 26.5c distribution for the first half.
Mr Watson described it a “solid” result, with the two recent acquisitions “in line with expectations and business cases”.
However he renewed concerns about the policy uncertainty surrounding the role of gas in the country’s energy transition, using last week’s blackouts in Victoria as an example of the important role gas will continue to play.
“Gas fired generation came on to save the day,” he said.
“We lost power to about half a million homes. By our high level estimates, we think that would have been more than a million homes without power if we didn’t have gas.
“We need to be able to bring more gas to market ... but the challenge we’ve got is when you look at things like excluding gas generation from capacity investment schemes, project approval processes, regulation.”
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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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