Australian Politics
Sydney University abandons maths prerequisites in diversity push
I think this is a step in the right direction. I was always bad at maths at school but became a capable computer programmer using a demanding language called FORTRAN, which literally means "formula translation". A line of FORTRAN code looks very much like a line of algebra. And I did write programs requiring up to 5-dimensional matrices.
So I was good at something maths-related that would normally have required a maths prerequisite. But I would have been blocked by such a prerequisite these days. Prerequisites are simply too rigid to account for varying patterns of abiity in students
The University of Sydney is ditching the advanced mathematics prerequisites for scores of degrees in response to the declining number of HSC students taking the subject.
Vice chancellor Mark Scott said maths teacher shortages meant too many students could not study the subject in year 12, providing a barrier for diverse students to study at the university.
“Mathematical skills and knowledge are vital for students to succeed at university and thrive in the workplaces of the future,” he said.
“Yet through no fault of their own, many students don’t have the opportunity to take advanced mathematics at school, a situation exacerbated by ongoing maths teacher shortages that affect some schools more than others.”
The prerequisite change, to begin next year, is a reversal of much of the changes brought into effect in 2019 that introduced two unit maths prerequisites for 62 degrees.
That was supposed to address falling enrolments in maths and lift academic standards at the university.
However, the latest data from the NSW Education Standards Authority shows there were almost 10 per cent fewer students taking advanced maths in 2023 compared to 2018.
Scott, a former NSW Education secretary, said the university would provide “bespoke mathematics support” which would include tailored assistance and advice, preparatory workshops and bridging courses to catch students up.
The change will mean degrees including commerce, science, medicine, psychology, veterinary science and economics will no longer require students to have undertaken advanced maths in year 12.
Degrees in engineering, advanced computing and pharmacy will retain the mathematics prerequisite.
From next year, year 12 students who achieve a Band 3 or higher in advanced mathematics will also be eligible to receive an additional point towards their selection rank under the university’s Academic Excellence Scheme.
University of Canberra University associate professor Philip Roberts, a rural education specialist, said a lack of access to advanced mathematics was a huge issue, particularly in regional and low SES areas.
“Our research shows that schools which have larger numbers of low SES students are not studying advanced maths at the same rate as schools which have higher SES students,” he said.
He said teacher shortages were making the issue worse, but that it was also driven by a perception by students they would score better in general maths.
Roberts said even when universities did not have calculus-based mathematics prerequisites, students who did not take HSC advanced maths were still behind their peers who had once they started their degrees.
“Advanced maths also contributes more to their overall ATAR, so a lack of access limits their opportunities of getting into uni,” he said.
University of Sydney deputy vice chancellor (education) Professor Joanne Wright said it was clear it was harder for some students to access higher-level mathematics simply because of where they are from.
“Schools in regional and remote locations are significantly less likely to offer advanced and extension mathematics,” she said.
“Our new approach responds to these realities of the student experience today and ensures we’re better equipping students for their university studies and careers.”
She said new tools were being developed to identify gaps in students’ knowledge, including a pilot of a diagnostic tool designed to match students with the most appropriate learning support services when they enrol.
“Regardless of their starting point, all our students will have the opportunity to complete their studies with the same level of mathematics skills and knowledge,” Professor Wright said
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Government silencing Australians in the name of human rights
The Australian Human Rights Commission wants to hear your views on dangerous male sex offenders being allowed to identify as women and be held in women’s prisons. But only if you’re in favour of it…
Our highly paid, taxpayer-funded Human Rights Commission would love to hear your thoughts on males demanding to be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Providing you’re all for it, obviously.
Many would argue that bureaucrats in Canberra have long given the impression that they don’t want to interact with the general public who pay their salaries, but rarely has it been so explicitly spelled out by the bureaucracy.
‘Please note that only subject-matter experts are invited to submit,’ the AHRC specifies in its new consultation about ‘threats to trans and gender diverse human rights’.
‘Please note that we are unable to accept submissions from non-specialists in this area.’
The ‘expert’ category, says the AHRC, includes activists and academics. The AHRC’s ‘non-specialists’ covers women, girls, parents, and anyone not inside the elitist bubble who decided that it’s ‘progressive’ to undermine sex-based rights and the reality of sex.
The effect of this anti-democratic pronouncement is that more than 22 million Australians are being told by the Human Rights Commission we’re neither qualified nor welcome to be involved in their consultation. Never mind that the Commission has a legislated duty to ensure it acts with regard for ‘the indivisibility and universality of human rights’ and ‘the principle that every person is free and equal in dignity and rights’.
Which brings us to the key question: What are these ‘trans and gender diverse human rights’ that the AHRC says are under threat? Do they mean the asserted right for a male to enter women’s spaces or facilities without consent? The AHRC can’t, or won’t, say. They’re asking for a select group of people to tell them about the supposed opposition to human rights, despite not being able to specify what these human rights are. That reveals the activist agenda that is really at play here.
The debate at the centre of gender ideology is a very important public policy matter. Women have long had access to single-sex sports and certain services or facilities that are necessary to protect privacy, dignity and safety. Advocates of self-ID policies argue that males who identify as women must be allowed to access these female spaces, whether or not the women who rely on those spaces consent. Extraordinarily, many of our elites have decided to go along with the fringe idea that women’s consent doesn’t matter in this context.
Since human rights are indivisible, universal, and equally available to all, the AHRC cannot seriously suggest that there is a human right for a specific group of males to enter a space or sport designed specifically for females. So why hasn’t the AHRC made clear in its terms of reference that opposition to males demanding that right is in no way a ‘threat’ to human rights, but in fact a majority-held position that Australians are perfectly free to advocate in a democracy?
The AHRC is a taxpayer-funded body with significant powers and authority. Yet this consultation is straight out of the playbook of hard-left activist groups and media platforms that have actively targeted women for abuse. I’m one of millions of Australians who believes that women and girls should be entitled to single-sex sports and spaces. Because activists and virtue-signalling elites can’t mount a rational argument against this position, they simply scream that anyone supporting single-sex sports is ‘anti-trans’ or an ‘extremist’, or campaigning against ‘trans rights’. It’s a laughably misleading tactic, or at least it would be if it hadn’t been adopted by much of the media and bureaucracy, and in doing so given abusive men the green light to unleash hideous abuse and threats against women. There’s no excuse for the AHRC not to be aware of this, yet now they are adopting the exact same tactics by setting up a witch hunt against Australian women who have stood up for women’s sex-based rights.
Let’s be very clear here: the AHRC is actively seeking input from male activists who have campaigned for the rights of dangerous male offenders like ‘Lisa Jones’. And they are asking for these men to complain how women are a ‘threat to trans and gender diverse human rights’ for pointing out Lisa Jones is actually a dangerous paedophile and repeat sex offender who should never be referred to as a woman by media or placed in a women’s prison.
Worse, the AHRC are actively preventing women from putting in a submission to point out this is exactly what has happened in Australia under the banner of ‘trans rights’. Their terms of reference makes clear that a submission from a female prisoner about the dangers of placing male sex offenders in women’s prisons would not be accepted by the AHRC.
Once again under the Albanese government, the tropes of ‘dis- and misinformation’ are being used to shut down legitimate debate and free speech. When seeking the votes of the Australian people, Albanese himself conceded that a woman is an adult, human female. It is his government’s subsequent efforts to silence Australians, for holding that same position, which is extremist, radical, and a danger to democracy.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/03/government-silencing-australians-in-the-name-of-human-rights/
*****************************************************Why new green jobs are at risk if old industries die
All the post-pandemic talk of resurrecting Australia’s manufacturing sector and securing local supply chains seems like a lifetime away, amid talk that yet another manufacturer could go quietly into the night this year.
The fate of Qenos’s Melbourne and Sydney manufacturing plants is not yet set in stone, and the fact that the company – owned by China National Chemical – has recently spent money rebuilding a cooling tower at its Botany Bay plastics plant offers hope not all of its Australian facilities will be closed.
But if one or both of the plants are shuttered, they will join a raft of major plant closures since all the hullabaloo about securing domestic supply chains during the pandemic – including Incitec Pivot’s Gibson Island fertiliser plant in Brisbane, Exxon’s oil refinery in Melbourne’s Altona, a similar facility owned by BP in Kwinana, south of Perth, and Alcoa’s alumina refinery also in Kwinana. Similar threats hang over BHP’s nickel smelter in Kalgoorlie and refinery in Kwinana.
All of these plants are old, sub-scale by global standards, and suffer – compared to international competitors – from higher labour, gas and energy costs, and from rising pressure to comply with environmental standards.
But the threat to Qenos’s local facilities is also a timely reminder of the knock-on effects of the closure of manufacturing plants.
Tight gas markets have played a part in Qenos’s troubles – its gas bills reportedly doubled in 2023. But the major cause of its most recent problems was the shuttering in 2021 of Exxon’s Altona refinery, which supplied the LPG used as a feedstock for Qenos’s plastics production lines.
That happened under the previous Morrison government – and amid plenty of warnings about the downstream effects of its closure, including from Qenos, which was forced to close half the lines of its own production facility in the wake of the exit of the Exxon plant.
Any decision by BHP to close its Kalgoorlie nickel smelter will also ripple through the broader WA mining industry. The smelter supplies sulphuric acid, a by-product of its operations, to other parts of the state’s mining industry – and, in particular, to Lynas’s new cracking and leaching plant outside of Kalgoorlie.
As Lynas boss Amanda Lacaze said, the manufacturing and processing industry in Australia is an ecosystem, not a collection of unrelated operations.
And perhaps more important is the loss of the technical know-how that comes with the closure of these type of facilities.
Much is made of the loss of blue-collar jobs in manufacturing. But workers in these types of plants need substantial technical skills to keep these plants open, along with the expertise of chemists and a host of other professionals. And, despite the hype around “green jobs” in energy, hydrogen, lithium and rare earths, it is difficult to build that kind of expertise from scratch.
Companies that rely on gas for power and as an input are caught between the pressure to ditch fossil fuel extraction and the political and commercial cost of requiring gas producers to reserve more production for the domestic market.
Those pressures may mean that Australia is destined to shed the remaining industries that are dependent on petrochemical products as a feedstock.
Saving Australia’s remaining manufacturing and chemicals industries – and building new ones – will take actual policy designed to attract investment, backed by long-term support from successive governments of both political persuasions.
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How I found myself agreeing with cash king Bob Katter
Caitlin Fitzsimmons
I’ve found myself in furious agreement with Queensland politician Bob Katter about one issue – that businesses should accept cash.
Last month Katter was fired up because a cafe in the Australian Parliament House initially refused to accept his $50 note, telling him it was a cashless business. Katter told them it was too bad for them because cash was legal tender, and they legally had to accept it.
He went on Sky News to explain himself. “If you have a cashless society, the banks control your life, you’re not able to buy a loaf of bread without permission from the banks,” Katter said. “It’s bad enough now but it will become infinitely worse.”
Like most Australians, I lost the cash habit at some point in the past decade, content to tap away to pay for everything from coffee to groceries. I often have no cash in my wallet.
Recently, though, I’ve been trying to change that. I started noticing that more and more retailers, especially cafes and small shops, were imposing surcharges for card payments. Being the former Money editor of this masthead, I knew how quickly little amounts can add up. I’ve also been finding that an increasing number of businesses no longer accept cash. I’ve encountered this several times in the month since Katter’s run-in at the Canberra cafe.
On the Saturday before last, I was unfortunately not at the second Taylor Swift concert, having failed to find tickets. Nor was I at the Bondi Beach Party, murdering the dance floor with Sophie Ellis-Bextor. But I was at the Capitol Theatre, seeing the entrancing Australian Ballet production of Alice with my daughter.
I was surprised to find that the bar at the theatre is cashless. The bartender informed me that this was stated in the terms and conditions of sale when I bought my tickets. The website confirms the policy but does not state a reason.
Earlier in February, I came across the same phenomenon at Spice Alley, off Broadway, where there is a collection of small food stalls and shared tables in a central courtyard. I wanted to give my teenagers cash, so they could go and choose their own meals, but the stalls were all cashless, forcing us to go one by one. One of the stallholders told me that Spice Alley management did not allow them to take cash, but customers could load currency onto a cashless payment card at a central cashier. The Spice Alley website says the policy is to improve “speed of service, safety and hygiene”.
Like Katter, I thought cash was legal tender and that businesses had to accept it. It turns out we were both wrong. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission website states that businesses can choose which payment types they accept, but consumers have to be informed before they make the purchase.
Informing customers can be as simple as a sign at the cash register, or a notice on a website, which feels like a loophole. There’s no doubt card payments are convenient, but we’re all paying the price, and we should have a choice.
A cashless society is not a globalist conspiracy, but it is a capitalist one because the banks and other financial institutions are making a fortune from card payment fees.
How much exactly? I’m glad you asked.
Reserve Bank figures show, in the year ended December 2023, there were about 3.6 billion credit and charge card transactions and 11 billion debit card transactions in Australia. The business is charged a merchant service fee every time someone pays with a card. Sometimes they have a package deal, but on average, it ranges from 0.35 per cent of the transaction for eftpos to 1.69 per cent for Diners Card. The merchant acquirer – the big four banks and newcomers such as Stripe – and the card issuer all get a cut.
Businesses are legally allowed to pass on the cost directly to consumers in the form of a surcharge. My hunch that surcharging is becoming more common was on the money: businesses passed on a surcharge to consumers on 7 per cent of transactions in 2022, up from 5 per cent in 2019. The median surcharge was 50c per transaction.
My rough and ready calculation is that Australian consumers are directly paying $511 million a year for the privilege of paying with a card. The rest of the time, the retailers pay instead – and consumers pay indirectly.
Lance Blockley, the managing director of The Initiatives Group, a payment consultancy, estimates that Australian businesses are charged $5.8 billion a year – $3.5 billion for credit and charge cards and $2.3 billion for debit cards.
In Katter’s Sky interview, he made a leap from talking about cash to warning against “intermittent power” aka renewable energy. At this point, he lost me. He’s wrong about renewables, but not about cash.
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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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