Australian Politics
Albanese government trying to put prices UP
If they make supermarkets pay more for what they supply, from whom do you think that extra money will come? Santa Claus?
Large Australian supermarkets could face fines of up to $10 million (US$6.57 million) for misconduct under a proposal to impose a mandatory code of conduct on the sector.
It comes as supermarkets bear the brunt of criticism for alleged price gouging amid the country’s cost of living crisis.
On April 8, the Labor government released its interim report (pdf) amid a review of the voluntary Food and Grocery Code of Conduct, which governs the relationship between supermarkets and suppliers.
Former Labor Minister Craig Emerson, who led the review, stated that the current code was ineffective in managing the behaviour of supermarkets.
“It contains no penalties for breaches, and supermarkets can opt out of important provisions by overriding them in their grocery supply agreements,” he said in the report.
Mr. Emerson then recommended the government impose a mandatory code on all supermarkets with annual turnovers of above $5 billion, effectively covering major companies such as Woolworths, Aldi, Coles, and wholesaler Metcash.
Under the mandatory code, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) would have the power to enforce penalties on entities that breach the code.
The interim report proposed lifting the maximum penalty to $10 million, three times the value of the benefit from the breach, or 10 percent of the annual turnover of the company for serious breaches and 600 penalty units (around $187,800) for lesser violations.
“I hope and expect that wouldn’t be activated as a matter of routine but it would really focus the attention of management,” Mr. Emerson told ABC Radio.
‘Code Mediators’ to Resolve Disputes Between Supermarkets and Suppliers
The proposed mandatory code will also grant new tools for the ACCC to enforce the rules while introducing a new mechanism–Code Mediators–to help resolve disputes between supermarkets and suppliers.
At the same time, the report said the mandatory code would enhance protection against retribution from supermarkets on suppliers who have complained about their business practices.
After the report was released, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government wanted “a fair go for families and a fair go for farmers.”
“This work is all about how do we make our supermarkets as competitive as they can be, so that Australians get the best deal possible, whether they be the providers or of course, the consumers at the checkout,” he said.
“What is happening at the moment is that the power of the supermarkets with just a voluntary code of conduct has seen a lack of confidence in the system.”
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Black ban this!
In a bid to help you get through the week without offending anyone’s sensitivities, no easy task I know, allow me to bring you up to speed on your use of pronouns as promoted by posters that have appeared around the University of Queensland campus heralding the arrival of the neopronoun.
Forget he/him, she/her and they/them and, enter the neopronouns. These, students are told, are a new category of pronoun such as “ze, hir, hirs, xe, xem and xyr”.
“Neopronouns,” they are told, “can be used by anyone.
“They don’t hold a specific meaning and are a way for someone to best represent themselves like they would through clothing or their name.”
Obviously, if someone introduces themselves to you as an “xe” or a “hirs”, there is always the chance that simple-minded souls such as us might presume that they are suffering from a speech impediment or have hosed down a couple of coldies before leaving home.
This confusion is understandable, but rather than muttering something about having left the iron on and hurrying away, the correct response is to listen carefully.
Did they say they were a “ze” or an “xe” or an “xem’” or an “xyr”?
If you make a mistake, the correct response is to “give a brief but genuine apology, then correct yourself and move on. If someone makes a mistake with other people’s pronouns, politely and without shaming, correct them”.
I’m tempted to say that in simpler times before victimhood and self-obsession took hold, things were more black and white, but that could cause offence and I wouldn’t want that.
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Thousands furious as popular holiday destination quietly bans cash
This is perhaps understandable. How do you get an Armaguard truck onto an island? But it is part of a very troubling process
Popular tourist hot spot Hamilton Island is facing scrutiny after it was revealed it has quietly banned the use of cash.
It comes as the nation’s biggest banks close down hundreds of branch locations, citing a rapid decline in cash withdrawal services and a preference for digital banking.
Members of the Facebook group Cash Is King Australia – which boasts almost 148,000 members – have expressed their anger once again this week after it was revealed one of the country’s most popular holiday destinations has decided to go completely cashless.
“No trips to Hamilton Island I’m afraid,” a member wrote in a post two weeks ago. “Thousands of people should share this!”
The island located in Queensland’s idyllic Whitsundays', near the Great Barrier Reef, has quietly kept in place a pandemic era decision to stop using cash on its island.
A short paragraph tucked away in the “Pre Arrival Information” page of the island’s website explains the island is now a “cashless environment”.
“We do not accept cash at any of our outlets,” the site reads.
“Cash deposits and withdrawals can be made using the Bank@Post service at the Australia Post office on Front Street, where cash can also be exchanged for prepaid or top-up Mastercards.
The decision has sparked a fury in the comments of the social media post, with members threatening to boycott the island.
“Crossing Hamilton Island off places to visit if they won’t accept cash,” one person wrote.
“If that’s the case then I won’t be going to Hamilton Island ever,” another said.
“If they want more visitors and to prosper they better return to cash. I personally would not go there until cash is used,” a third wrote.
The island joins a growing number of Australian businesses that have phased out cash in recent months.
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Some Questions Australia’s COVID-19 Inquiries Must Ask
The Australian Senate will soon release its report on the proper terms of reference for a COVID Royal Commission to be established in 2024.
During the inquiry, held by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, a large volume of submissions were submitted, while the government’s own COVID-19 Response Inquiry received over 2,000 submissions.
This indicates high public interest in getting to the truth of what happened, why particular decisions were made, and what the right lessons for the future.
This is especially important so Australia can be better prepared next time and also to put the WHO’s new pandemic accords in perspective.
Contrary to dire warnings, there have been only five pandemics in the last 105 years: the Spanish, Asian, Hong Kong, swine flus, and COVID-19.
In that time, great strides in medical knowledge, training, and technology have expanded disease response toolkits along the spectrum of prevention, treatment, and palliative care.
Average life expectancy has improved dramatically as a result. Countries have exchanged best practices on disease prevention and management.
Despite these gains in understanding and treatment protocols, when COVID-19 struck, many countries including Australia abandoned existing well-prepared plans to deal with pandemics, and instead, reacted with panic.
This is never a good basis on which to make either individual or public policy decisions.
Yet the public health messaging deliberately tried to spread panic to the population to increase compliance with pandemic management measures.
The herd panic of early 2020 led to an abandonment of good process, an abandonment of preparedness plans, and a centralisation of decision-making in a narrow circle of heads of government, ministers, and health experts.
The damage to physical health, mental health, social, educational, and economic problems will continue to impact public life for many years into the future.
Did Australia’s COVID-19 policy interventions represent the greatest triumph of public policy, with an unprecedentedly high number of lives saved as a result of timely, decisive, and appropriate measures instituted by governments acting on the science- and evidence-based advice of experts?
Or will they prove to be the biggest public policy disaster of all time?
Why Were Established Practices Swept Aside?
These are big questions that deserve a rigorous, independent, and impartial inquiry.
The first question is: why exactly were the existing pandemic preparedness plans and medical decision-making practices abandoned?
Suspect data from one city, Wuhan, in one country should not have been deemed sufficient to overturn a century of data, experience, and scientific research.
In particular, rather than responding to herd panic elsewhere to order mass house arrests for the entire population, did Australian scientists and public health officials test overseas claims against hard data locally on the extent, virulence, and lethality (the infection and case fatality rates) of the new virus?
Until these facts, as they apply to Australia, are authoritatively and credibly elucidated by a duly-empowered independent inquiry, public trust in health experts and institutions is unlikely to be restored to pre-pandemic levels.
How Was the Threat Level Assessed?
Another set of questions is about assessing the threat of a disease outbreak against other killer diseases, and the opportunity costs of allocating human, financial, and hospital resources to the different health risks.
The standard metric used to assess one side of this equation is the quality-adjusted life years (QALY) measure that, logically and sensibly, holds that the death of a healthy child, adolescent or young person is a greater tragedy and loss to society than that of someone above the average life expectancy.
From the start, it was known that the average death of those dying with COVID was higher than the average life expectancy.
That being the case, were standard cost-benefit analyses undertaken of the different policy interventions, including the risks of side effects and collateral harms?
If so, why were they not published? If not, why not?
What About the Use of Medicines?
Another area of investigation is the lack of treatment in the period between being infected and severe illness requiring in-patient hospital and ICU care.
In particular, why did Australian authorities not undertake high-quality randomised control trials of repurposed drugs, with well-established safety profiles, like ivermectin?
A group of doctors who wanted the freedom to be able to prescribe ivermectin to their COVID patients have recently won their case against the FDA that had banned them from doing so.
Related to this, the doctor-patient relationship in Western societies has long been governed by four important principles:
(i) the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship;
(ii) first, do no harm or, alternatively, avoid doing more harm than good;
(iii) informed consent; and
(iv) prioritising the health outcomes of the patient over that of any collective group.
Why did professional colleges and regulators insist that this should be overturned in favour of directives from a centralised bureaucracy with no knowledge of individual patients? Does this mean they do not trust the existing training, knowledge, and skills of Australian doctors?
The resort to coercion to enforce compliance with public health was especially egregious against established science that had never accepted their effectiveness.
Almost certainly, this contributed to rising public distrust of public institutions and cross-vaccine hesitancy.
The inquiries should demand the science, data (including quality and reliability), and decision-making behind universal mask and vaccine mandates, especially in the context of the steep age gradient of people at risk of severe and fatal infection.
Bearing in mind the history of false claims of benefits and concealment of risks and harms in the pharmaceutical industry, why did the Australian regulator(s) not require local trials to establish safety and efficacy?
Have Harms Exceeded Benefits?
Finally, of course, we need an authoritative answer to the most critically important question of all: on balance, did the totality of Australian pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions to manage COVID-19 as a public health challenge, do more good than harm?
On balance, it seems likely that over the long term, the harms to health, society, and the economy from the radical experiments of mass lockdowns, population-wide mask mandates, and the push for compulsory universal vaccination will exceed the benefits claimed using dubious assumptions and flawed modelling.
In the United States, Scott Atlas and Steve Hanke estimate that “The number of lockdowns and societal-disruption deaths since 2020 is likely around 400,000, as much as 100 times the number of COVID deaths the lockdowns prevented.”
What lessons must be drawn for courses of action that are recommended and not recommended? Was the national cabinet helpful or harmful as the central coordinating body? Do we need a sharper delineation of responsibilities between the federal and state governments?
What principles, procedures, structures, and institutional safeguards must be put in place firstly to ensure optimal health and public policy outcomes in future pandemic outbreaks, and secondly to act as effective checks against abuses of power by those given the solemn responsibility to balance all relevant considerations in public policy?
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/some-questions-australias-covid-19-inquiries-must-ask-5623457
************************************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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