Australian Politics
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Hindu/Sikh case breaks ground in NSW hate-speech law review
This is not really a complex case. It is clearly a religious matter but does have political implications. Sikhism and Hinduism are very different religions. Sikhs actually believe in one true God, which seems absurd to polytheistic Hindus. So many Sikhs want a State of their own so they can run their affairs in their own way. The divide is clearly religious.
About 76 percent of all Indian Sikhs live in the northern Indian state of Punjab, forming a majority of about 58 per cent of the state's population. So they want Punjab in whole or in part for their independent homeland
Modern India is however the result of coalescing many different ethnicities and language groups into a unitary State so making an exception for just one particular goup would be politically poisonous. Absent that context the Sikh request would be a reasonable one in line with modern customs of ethnic separatism but context is sadly very important here.
On the Hindu side, Indians are very much aware of examples such the former Yugoslavia, where a unitary State split into a number of smaller ethnic states amid much bloodshed. They know that the impulse to ethnic separatism is strong and are understandably wary of it
A 24-year-old western Sydney man has unwittingly become the litmus test for NSW’s “inoperable” hate-speech laws, with a judge saying that eyes would be watching the matter given its breaking of judicial ground.
Avon Kanwal, who is of the Hindu community and Indian descent, is attempting to overturn a 2023 conviction of publicly threatening violence on the grounds of race for his alleged involvement in a Hindu-on-Sikh violent 2020 brawl in western Sydney.
“This will involve the first determination under this section (93z),” judge Jane Culver told Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on Thursday.
Mr Kanwal’s appeal comes amid a rise in hate speech across NSW since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, an apparent inability by police to lay charges on Sydney clerics giving anti-Semitic sermons, and the provision that he’s charged under – section 93z – being currently subject to a Law Reform Commission review given “inoperability” concerns.
The matter could have broader implications given criticism of the state’s 93z provisions, which are narrow in scope, and there has been no successful prosecution under the act since its 2018 amendment to include race and religion.
Judge Culver said she had to ensure she was “deliberately” examining the two solicitors, and their arguments, to “flesh out the provision’s ambit”.
“There’s been no judicial determination in this … (I’ve) put you through the hoops to assist this section’s ambit,” she said.
“I’m really trying to finely draw attention to the different aspects of the provision and the definitions.”
The Australian revealed how, since October 7, police were unable to pursue a raft of anti-Semitic sermons by southwest Sydney clerics – including reciting parables about killing Jews and praying for their death – saying that each had not breached criminal legislation.
If Mr Kanwal’s appeal is successful it could amplify calls to strengthen or broaden 93z. If the court convicts him, questions could be asked why police were unable to do anything about anti-Semitic sermons, and whether the legislation is missing “incitement of hatred” in its drafting.
The defence argued that the brawl – instigated by a feud that played out on TikTok between Mr Kanwal and the co-accused – was of a “personal nature” that had nothing to do with race.
The prosecution, however, alleged that Mr Kanwal was reckless in his incitement to violence, which they said was based on his opposition to the Khalistan movement in India, spearheaded by a section of Sikhs for an independent homeland, which they say is ethno-religious and falls under the confines of 93z.
Mr Kanwal’s co-accused, Baljinder Thukral, appealed the same conviction in February, which was upheld by consent given “procedural issues”.
During their sentencing in the local court, magistrate Margaret Quinn found that, with a Khalistan expert giving evidence, Mr Kanwal’s alleged incitement that led to the brawl was on the grounds of race and that Khalistan itself would also meet its definition.
Defence solicitor Avinash Singh argued that Ms Quinn’s “broad” definition of race was “wrong”, and her application of it to his client’s case.
“On the grounds of race, this element (Mr Kanwal’s alleged violent threats) can’t be proved,” he said, arguing that defining Khalistan as a race-based movement was a “legal and factual error”.
“Our submission is that the specific definition of race in the act (is what) the magistrate should have relied on.”
The definition of race enclosed in 93z includes “ethno-religion” and “ethnicity” – the defence argues Khalistan falls within neither of these, but the prosecution contests that.
In the TikTok videos, Mr Kanwal said that he had “no issue” with Sikhism or Khalistan.
Prosecutor Caroline Ervin, however, noted that he ended each with “hail Hariana”, a state in northern India.
“It wasn’t accepted by the expert that Khalistan was just a political movement,” she said, noting Mr Kanwal allegedly encouraged the co-accused to bring followers, and set a time and place for what turned into the brawl.
“There is a religious divide as part of Khalistan … each video is spewing derision for Khalistan.”
The matter will resume in June. Mr Kanwal is charged with publicly threatening violence on race-grounds, but also inciting the commission of a crime.
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Heavy-handed Leftist government oppressing workers
A billionaire coal baron will run an anti-Labor campaign in crucial regional electorates ahead of the October Queensland election, in a backlash against rushed and “secret” laws he insists discriminate against his workers.
QCoal founder Chris Wallin is director, secretary and ultimate shareholder of Energy Resources Queensland, which has newly registered with the Electoral Commission of Queensland as an official third party organisation for the October 26 poll, enabling it to spend $1m on a statewide campaign.
The Weekend Australian can reveal that the political intervention by the reclusive rich-lister was prompted by the Queensland Labor government changing the law in August last year, requiring QCoal’s Byerwen mine to shut down its miners’ camp and shift all workers to the nearby town of Glenden by 2029.
Billionaire coal baron Chris Wallin will sponsor an anti-Labor campaign in regional marginal seats ahead of the…
A “Save Glenden” campaign by then-Isaac Regional Council mayor Anne Baker and the tiny town triggered the shock legislative amendments, which were tacked on to the end of an unrelated child protection bill and not foreshadowed with QCoal.
Glenden, about two hours’ drive west of Mackay on the central Queensland coast and home to about 500 people, was built in the 1980s to house workers at the Glencore-owned Newlands coalmine, but the Swiss mining giant is closing Newlands, and Labor mayor Ms Baker – who retired at the recent council election – called the government approval of the Byerwen mining camp the “catalyst for the final demise of the community”.
A court had earlier ruled QCoal should house its workers in Glenden.
Mr Wallin and QCoal say the August legislation is unfair because Glencore’s Hail Creek mine, which is about the same distance from Glenden as Byerwen, is allowed to keep its miners’ camp open with no requirement for workers to live in the town.
They also claim there is not enough available housing in Glenden, and that 55 per cent of Byerwen’s 800 workers live within two hours’ drive of the mine and 90 per cent live in regional Queensland. It would take up to an hour by bus to transport workers from the Byerwen mine back to Glenden, adding an extra two hours on to a standard 12.5-hour shift, QCoal says.
QCoal group executive James Black said the law meant workers had been “denied the basic human choice of where they live” and the government had “played favourites” between Queensland-owned and operated QCoal and the Swiss-based multinational Glencore.
“Of course we and our workers are the losers,” Mr Black said.
The Energy Resources Queensland television, radio, social media and billboard campaign will target Labor-held regional seats – including that of Resources Minister Scott Stewart’s in Townsville, held by 3.1 per cent – with a high proportion of drive-in, drive-out and fly-in, fly-out mine workers.
In one advertisement, a Byerwen worker named Tammy said she had lived in Glenden for 40 years. “People should not be forced to live somewhere that they don’t want to live,” she said.
There are two more marginal Labor electorates in Townsville (Thuringowa and Mundingburra, both with margins of about 3 per cent), and ads will also be aimed at Labor’s marginal electorates in Cairns, the Sunshine Coast and Mackay.
Under Queensland’s electoral laws, parties can spend only $95,964 in each electorate they contest during the official election period, while third-parties can spend up to $1m statewide. Already, four Labor-aligned unions have registered, as well as Mr Wallin’s company and the Queensland Resources Council.
Mr Stewart said he made “no apologies for backing regional Queensland”
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What’s lacking from today’s schooling? Any grounding in the New Testament
TONY ABBOTT
Years ago, I was still playing rugby football, in Oxford, England, and there were lineout calls, requiring the recognition of particular letters. If the captain called a word starting with the letter “t”, the ball went to the back. If he called a word starting with “s”, it went to the front. But on this occasion, the captain called “Tchaikovsky”. The resulting chaos among the students of a great university highlighted the need for a well-rounded classical education, even for those who took their sport as seriously as their studies.
What’s mostly lacking from today’s schooling is any grounding in the New Testament, even though it’s at the heart of our culture. There’s an absence of narrative history: our story from Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, our fathers in faith, through the ancient Greeks and Romans, to Alfred the Great, Magna Carta, the Provisions of Oxford, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Glorious Revolution, an American Revolution for the rights of Englishmen in the New World and a French one based on worthy abstractions that ultimately descended into tyranny, and through the struggles of the 20th century to our own times with the illusory ascendancy of market liberalism because man does not live by bread alone. There is, of course, an abundance of critical theory that’s turned great literature and the triumphs of the human spirit into a fantasy of oppressors and oppressed and regards the modern Anglosphere as irredeemably tainted.
Above all, contemporary schooling hardly conveys a spirit of progress, even though there’s still much to be grateful for. In 1990, for instance, more than 30 per cent of the world’s population lacked access to safe drinking water; by 2020, that figure was under 10 per cent. Likewise, in 1990, more than 30 per cent of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty; that too, had declined to under 10 per cent by 2020. And in 2020, more wealth had been created, at least in dollar terms, over the previous 25 years than in the prior 2500.
Prior to the pandemic, the world at large was more free, more fair, more safe, and more rich, for more people than at any previous time in human history, largely thanks to the long Pax Americana, based on a preference for whatever makes societies freer, fairer and more prosperous under a rules-based global order. But while the Western world has never been more materially rich, it’s rarely been more spiritually bereft. Relieved of the need to build its strength and assert its values against the old Soviet Union, like a retired sportsman it has become economically, militarily and culturally flabby.
The pandemic was a largely self-inflicted wound, with the policies to deal with it more destructive than the disease itself. For years, we will face the corrosive legacy of mental illness, other diseases that were comparatively neglected, economic dislocation, the surrender to authoritarian experts; and worst of all, two years of stopping living from fear of dying.
And now there’s the ferocious assault on Ukraine; the renewed challenge of apocalyptic Islamism, especially against Israel; and Beijing’s push to be the world’s dominant power by mid-century, with all that means for free and democratic Taiwan, for the rest of East Asia and for the continued flourishing of the liberal order that has produced the best times in history so far.
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In the face of an intensifying military challenge from dictatorships on the march, militarist, Islamist and communist, it might seem trivial, almost escapist, to stress the life of the mind but, in the end, this is a battle of ideas: the power of the liberal humanist dream of men and women, created with inherently equal rights and responsibilities, free to make the most of themselves, individually and in community; versus various forms of might is right, based on national glory, death to the infidel, or the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In most Western countries, people’s faith in democracy is shrinking. Mental illness, especially among young people, is a new epidemic. And while this may or may not be related to the waning of the Christian belief in the God-given dignity and worth of each person, which incubated liberal democracy, and that armoured its adherents against pride and despair, it’s noteworthy that the Christianity that was professed by some 90 per cent of Australians just a few decades back is now acknowledged in the Census by well under half.
Politics, it’s often said, is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of religion. It’s the coarsening of our culture, exacerbated by “the long march through the institutions”, that’s at least partly to blame for the feeble or embarrassing leadership from which we now suffer, and for the triumph of prudence over courage, and weakness over judgment, that has produced virtue-signalling businesses, propaganda pretending to be learning, the elevation of every kind of diversity except intellectual diversity, eruptions of anti-Semitism, out-of-control social spending and a drug culture in parts of Western cities that can only be the product of moral anarchy.
In the long run, the antidote to this is to rediscover all that’s given meaning to most people in every previous generation: a knowledge of our history, an appreciation of our literature, and an acquaintance with the faith stories that might not inspire every individual but have collectively moved mountains over millennia.
I was lucky enough to be schooled under Brigidine nuns, and then under Jesuit priests, and the lay teachers who took inspiration from them: fine, selfless people, who saw teaching as a calling more than a career, encouraging their charges at every turn to be their best selves. Their lives were about our fulfilment, not theirs, as reflected in the Jesuit injunction of those days to be “a man for others”, because it’s only in giving that we truly receive.
Later, at Sydney University, and especially at Oxford, I had teachers who valued their students’ ability to assimilate the authorities and to create strong arguments for a distinctive position, rather that regurgitate lecture notes and conform to some orthodoxy. Indeed, this is the genius of Western civilisation: a respect for the best of what is, combined with a restless curiosity for more; a constant willingness to learn, because no one has the last word in knowledge and wisdom. The whole point of a good education is not to “unlearn”, as Sydney University has recently put it, but to assimilate all the disciplines, intellectual and personal, that make us truly free “to have life and have it to the full”.
The Oxford tutorial system, where twice a week you had to front up to someone who was a genuine expert in his field, with an essay demonstrating familiarity with the main texts and the main arguments on a particular topic, plus a considered position of your own, was the perfect preparation for any form of advocacy, especially politics, where you always have to be ready to apply good values to hard facts.
These days, as a board member of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, I’m conscious of the many elements of the Western canon that I’ve largely missed, in over-focusing on politics, with only a smattering of philosophy and theology, from a brief pursuit of the priesthood; but am still immensely grateful for an intellectual, cultural and spiritual inheritance that I’ve now been drawing down over 40 years of advocacy, journalism, and public life. I have few claims to specific expertise, save in political decision-making, and certainly no claims to personal virtue because an inevitably imperfectly and incompletely practised Christianity doesn’t guarantee goodness – but it does make us better than we’d otherwise be, this constant spur to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.
Still, example and experience are often the best teachers of all. A mother who welcomed everyone into our family home. A late father who urged me to look for the good that’s present in almost everyone. An inspirational teacher, the late Father Emmet Costello, who encouraged me to set no limits on what could be achieved. A boon friend, the late Father Paul Mankowski, my Oxford sparring partner, a kind of internal exile within the Jesuit order, who showed that a celibate priest could also be a real man. And the luminous George Cardinal Pell, of blessed memory, who endured a modern martyrdom, a form of living crucifixion, and whose prison diaries deserve to become modern classics. One day, I hope again to enjoy the communion of these saints.
I was lucky to have a reasonably broad experience beyond the classroom and beyond the confines of political life. Coaching football teams was an early introduction into managing egos. Running a concrete batching plant was a great antidote to pure economic theory, and to corporate flim-flam, and a goad to unconventional problem solving. Plus serving in a local volunteer fire brigade for more than two decades has been a wonderful lesson in grassroots community service.
My Jesuit mentor, Father Costello, had a favourite phrase – “genus humanum vivit paucis” – which he translated as “the human race lives by a few”.
Of course, there’s no discredit to being among the many who largely follow, because no one can lead unless others fall in behind. And whatever our individual role, large or small, public or private, sung or unsung, our calling is to be as good as we can be, because even small things, done well or badly, make a difference for better or for worse. Everyone’s duty, indeed, is to strive to leave the world that much better for our time here: our families, our neighbourhoods, our workplaces, our classrooms, our churches, everything we do should be for the better, as best we can make it.
Still, some are called to more; more than worthily performing all the things that are expected of us. Leaders are those who go beyond what might be expected; who don’t just fill the job, but expand it, even transcend it; who aren’t just competent but brilliant. To paraphrase the younger Kennedy, they don’t look at what is and ask why; but ponder what should be, and try to make that happen.
In my time as prime minister there were decisions to be made every day, expected and unexpected. Ultimately, the job of a national leader is to try to make sense of all the most difficult issues, and to offer people a better way forward. Inevitably, there’s much that can only be managed, not resolved, because much is more-or-less intractable, at least in the short term. The challenge is to keep pushing in the right direction so that things are better, even though they may never be perfect or even especially satisfactory. No matter how many changes you make, and how much leadership you try to provide, economic reform, for instance, or Indigenous wellbeing, is always going to be a work in progress. There’s no doubt leadership can be more or less effective depending on the character, conviction, and courage of the leader. This is the human factor in history that’s so often decisive, such as when the British Conservative Party chose Winston Churchill rather than Lord Halifax to invigorate the war effort against Nazism. In the end, leadership is less about being right or wrong than about being able to make decisions and get things done.
In providing leadership, what matters is the judgment and the set of values brought to decision-making, at least as much as technical knowledge. The same set of facts, for instance, namely the surrender of France and the evacuation from Dunkirk, would have produced different leadership from Halifax than from Churchill. It would hardly be fair to claim that Churchill’s education at Sandhurst was better than Halifax’s at Oxford. It was their character, disposition and judgment that differed. Just as the respective characters and judgment of presidents Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky so sharply differed when one offered an expedient escape from Kyiv, and the other resolutely refused it.
Still, there’s no doubt that education can help to shape character, and that judgment can be enhanced by the knowledge of history and the appreciation of the human condition that a good education should provide.
I’m sometimes asked by young people with an interest in politics what they should do to be more effective, and my answer is never to join a faction, to consult polling, or to seek any particular office. It’s to immerse yourself in the best that’s been thought and said, so that whatever you do will be better for familiarity with the wisdom of the ages.
In particular to read and re-read the New Testament, the foundation document of our culture, that’s shaped our moral and mental universe, in ways we can hardly begin to grasp, and which speaks to the best instincts of human nature.
And to bury yourself in history, especially a history that’s alive to the difference individuals make, and to the importance of ideas, of which a riveting example is Churchill’s magnificent four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples, that’s also pretty much a global history, given that so much of the modern world has been made in English. And which Andrew Roberts has brought more or less up to date with his History of the English-Speaking Peoples in the 20th century.
More here:
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Fact is, Dick Smith has revealed the lies about renewables
The RMIT ABC Fact Check own goal against Dick Smith exposed not only the green-left bias and deceit of the national broadcaster and the so-called “fact-checking” outfit, but also the central lie at the heart of the national climate and energy debate. The renewables-plus-storage experiment that Australia has embarked upon is not only unprecedented but impossible with current technology.
This is an inconvenient fact that is denied daily by the Australian Labor Party, the Greens, the ABC, the climate lobby, and the so-called elites of our national debate. We are undermining our national economic security by chasing a mirage, and our taxpayer-funded media deliberately misleads us down this dead-end path.
In an age when most of us were analogue, Smith made an electronic fortune then turned his attention back to the organic and irreplaceable, focusing on conservation and adventure.
The Australian Geographic founder epitomises the admirable qualities of initiative, innovation, and environmental stewardship.
Which makes it confounding that the RMIT ABC nexus targeted him. It seems he committed the mortal sin in their eyes of supporting the only reliable, weather-independent, emissions-free electricity generation available – nuclear.
It is an energy source increasingly embraced by green activists and leftists in Europe and the US. But not here. Whether it is due to intellectual rigidity or partisan positioning, the left in Australia are stuck in an old-fashioned, Cold War mindset of nuclear fearmongering and denial.
The ideological blinkers are so strong at RMIT ABC Fact Check that when the renewables enthusiast and environmentalist Smith made perfectly sensible and apolitical comments about the inability of renewables alone to power a country, he made himself their public enemy. The fact checkers decided to take him down, even though he was right.
This is an example of all that is wrong in our public square. Facts do not matter so much as perceived motives or ideological side.
Anyone who has spoken with Smith, listened to him being interviewed or read his comments would be in no doubt that he would favour an all-renewable energy system if it could work. (For that matter, who would not?)
But with his technical nous, environmental bent, and practical mindset, Smith asks the obvious question: if renewables alone cannot give us an emissions-free world, what is the most efficient and effective way to deliver that goal?
And his answer is nuclear.
Despite Smith aiming for the right goal and advocating the right outcome through the only indisputably effective means, his answer apparently is not what the woke want to hear.
Because in making his case, Smith dared to speak the truth about renewables.
“Look, I can tell you, this claim by the CSIRO that you can run a whole country on solar and wind is simply a lie,” Smith told 2GB.
“It is not true. They are telling lies. No country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables — that’s impossible.”
It is worth picking over this dispute because it is illuminating. Smith’s initial complaints to RMIT ABC Fact Check were ignored, until he appeared on my Sky News program threatening legal action and got his lawyers involved.
The eventual apology specifically retracted their claim that Smith opposes renewable energy. Little wonder, this is a bloke who charges his EV with renewable energy – Smith loves the technology, he is just realistic about its limitations.
Reworking their “fact check” after Smith’s threats, RMIT ABC included tortured and implausible arguments. They reported that the CSIRO denied ever having said you could run a whole country on renewables.
It is not difficult to find contradictory evidence. For instance, a 2017 article on the German “Energy Transition” website was headed “CSIRO says Australia can get to 100 per cent renewable energy”.
The article talked about a “toxic political debate about the level of renewable energy” that can be accommodated in the system.
“CSIRO energy division’s principal research scientist Paul Graham said there were no barriers to 100 per cent renewable energy, and lower levels could be easily absorbed.”
Years later, Graham doubled down on this, declaring; “The whole system is getting ready for renewables supported by storage.”
In 2020, on Australia’s “Renew Economy” site, we saw the headline “CSIRO embraces transition to net zero emissions ‘without derailing our economy’ ”.
And just last December, the CSIRO published an article titled “Rapid decarbonisation can steer Australia to net zero by 2050”,
There is no renewables scepticism or realism in those statements. It seems that Smith was right about the thrust of CSIRO analysis.
Yet now, via RMIT ABC Fact Check’s revised article, we learn the CSIRO has a more nuanced, and realistic stance: “Its position is that ‘renewables are a critical part, but not the only part, of the energy mix as Australia moves towards the government-legislated target of net-zero emissions by 2050’.”
Smith has flushed out an important concession to reality from the CSIRO. The “renewables are a critical part, but not the only part” formulation is exactly the point Smith was making when RMIT ABC tried to take him down.
Talk of a 100 per cent renewables-plus-storage model is fantasy for now. I wonder how long it will take the politicians to become similarly frank, and most of the media.
Perhaps even more deceitful was the RMIT ABC pretence that some countries are already powered entirely by renewables.
“There are four countries running 100 per cent on wind-water-solar (WWS) alone for their grid electricity,” reported RMIT ABC, quoting an academic report that cited Albania, Paraguay, Bhutan, and Nepal.
Right off the bat, these were ridiculous comparisons. These are not large, modern, or developed economies (why not compare our emissions challenge to the performance to subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa?). Australia’s GDP per capita is about eight times higher than Albania’s (which had to import electricity from neighbouring countries just two years ago anyway, thanks to a drought undercutting its hydro generation), 10 times higher than Paraguay’s, 20 times Bhutan’s and about 50 times higher than Nepal’s.
The comparisons are laughable on those grounds alone, but it gets worse. The so-called fact checkers were only accounting for the electricity grids in these nations, even though huge parts of their populations and economies are not connected to the grid, and there is heavy use of other fuels for heating, cooking, and transport.
The most pertinent figures, now included in the RMIT ABC updated article show that renewables account for only a third of Albanian energy, closer to 40 per cent in Paraguay and just 6 per cent in Nepal. A long way from their previously claimed 100 per cent.
Perhaps self-conscious about the absurdity of their claims about those small, poor nations, the fact checkers had also made reference to a comparable developed economy, choosing the US state of California.
Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson noted California had “been running on more than 100 per cent WWS for 10 out of the last 11 days for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day”.
Really? As little as 15 minutes on renewable energy and that proves a modern economy can thrive on renewables plus storage?!
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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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