We trust the police. But the court system? Not so much

I have previously shown via survey researh that the public thinks most sentences handed down are too light

http://jonjayray.com/prisent.html

Just 30 per cent of Australians have faith in the country’s courts and justice system according to a new poll, but more than double that figure trust the police and feel safe in their homes and suburbs.

A whopping 47 per cent of people in the recent Resolve Political Monitor survey said they did not have faith in the judiciary, with another 23 per cent declaring they were either undecided or neutral.

The lack of faith in Australia’s court system follows a series of high profile trials in recent years. Bruce Lehrmann and decorated former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith had findings made against them in defamation cases but not in criminal proceedings – Lehrmann for rape and Roberts-Smith for war crimes.

In contrast to people’s lack of faith in the courts, the survey of 1603 people, taken earlier this month, found 69 per cent trusted the police; 13 per cent said they did not and 18 per cent were undecided.

A total of 82 per cent agreed they felt safe in their own home, with 9 per cent disagreeing and 9 per cent undecided, while 67 per cent agreed they felt safe in their local area or suburb, with 19 per cent disagreeing and 15 per cent neutral or undecided (some figures add up to more than 100 per cent due to rounding).

Social media was also marked down, with 59 per cent agreeing with the statement they felt safe on the internet and social media, while 21 per cent were undecided and 21 per cent disagreed.

The exclusive findings are contained in the most recent Resolve Political Monitor survey of 1603 people, conducted from July 10 to 13 by pollsters Resolve Strategic. The results have a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

Resolve pollster Jim Reed said while most people trusted the police, “less than a third trust the justice system to deliver, which is hardly surprising given the conga line of mis-trials, appeals, resignations, scandals and inconsistent results we’re seeing in high profile cases like the Lehrmann prosecution”.

The finding was important to the legal profession but also for social cohesion, he said.

“We can only operate as a society if we all agree to certain shared values, behaviours, rights and responsibilities, and if those administering the rules lose our collective trust the whole show is at risk.”

Voters were asked during the survey to nominate three types of crime they thought authorities should tackle as a priority in Australia right now. An almost equal number of men (64 per cent) and women (67 per cent) nominated ending violent attacks, including rape and murder, as their top priority. Tackling domestic violence and stalking came in second, with 59 per cent, but far fewer men (52 per cent) than women (66 per cent) nominated this as a priority.

Child abuse (38 per cent) was the third most-nominated priority, with men (30 per cent) and women (46 per cent) split over how much of a priority it should be.

Voters want Labor to allow MPs more freedom to break ranks
Men were more likely to prioritise tackling scams and fraud (36 per cent) and stopping the physical theft of vehicles, mugging and burglary (34 per cent) than child abuse, whereas 32 per cent of women nominated scams as a priority and 25 per cent nominated physical theft.

People failing to pick up dog poo was nominated by just 2 per cent of people, while cracking down on vapes and e-cigarettes (5 per cent) and on vandalism (5 per cent) were low on people’s priorities.

A total of 12 per cent of those surveyed said they’d witnessed a crime in the last 12 months, while 8 per cent said they’d been the victim of a crime. Surprisingly, just 51 per cent of people who’d experienced a crime said they had reported it, while 38 per cent said they had not done so.

Reed said crime statistics suggest Australia is becoming a safer place.

“But when one-in-12 are telling us they’ve been a victim of crime in the last year, and only around half of them reported it, we are not perfect - and neither are the statistics we rely on to judge that,” he said.

“It’s encouraging that most people believe crimes endangering people should be prioritised. At the end of the day, you will recover from a stolen car, a scam or graffiti on your fence, but the loss and trauma stemming from violence stays with us.”

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/we-trust-the-police-but-the-court-system-not-so-much-20240723-p5jvu7.html

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Universities need to look closely at how they are perceived

Australia is not the only place in the world where universities are on the nose among a significant proportion of the population. For a sample of feeling in the US, see the speech by Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance that is getting new attention since Donald Trump chose him as his running mate.

The Universities are the Enemy is its unequivocal title, and it comes from a man whose arts degree from Ohio State and law degree from Yale were stepping stones in his journey from a dysfunctional, drug-ridden community in the post-industrial midwest to where he is now.

The anti-university feeling in Australia is not close to the level of sheer venom felt by Trump supporters in the US. But here it’s real enough, both at the level of the general population and in the political arena. Universities’ ability to directly influence political decision-making is minimal. The evidence is there in the casual ease with which the Albanese government has ransacked the international education industry this year without pushback from any political party. The fact that international education earned nearly $50bn in export revenue last year seemingly counted for nothing.

Yet Universities Australia has estimated that the government’s first action last December to restrict the issuance of student visas will cost universities $500m in revenue this year. If the government’s legislation for student caps passes parliament then universities and other international education providers will be hit with a second round of pain when Education Minister Jason Clare puts caps on student numbers with powers that enable him to control numbers down to course level and by geographic location.

How did universities arrive in this invidious position? There are two parts to the story. One is universities’ own blinkered journey to the precipice. The other is the lack of general awareness – both among the public and in political and business circles – as to what universities actually do and why it has importance.

Starting with the former: universities’ mishandling of their relation­ship with the public reached a peak in their handling of two issues.

One was vice-chancellors’ million-dollar salaries. University governing bodies, and vice-chancellors themselves, acted as if this issue – ­ perceived by the public as an example of the gross indifference of the elites – didn’t matter.

But it did and does matter, and badly damages universities’ ability to be taken seriously by the public when they argue for more resources. Australian university leaders’ salaries are well above those in comparable countries. This was abundantly clear when Brian Schmidt, one of the few university leaders who have acted sensibly in this matter, became vice-chancellor of the Australian National University in 2016. He asked that his salary be pegged to international benchmarks and he accepted a package worth two-thirds the amount received by his predecessor. No other vice-chancellor is known to have followed his example.

There was another telling moment. When Michael Spence chose to leave the vice-chancellorship of the University of Sydney in 2020 to become head of University College London, a university of greater prestige, he halved his $1.5m salary package. What more needs to be said?

The other key issue on which universities have lost public trust is international students. For more than three decades they have been a growing source of revenue for most universities, filling the ever widening gap in research funding.

There has always been an underlying level of public disquiet about international students. There are fears that they take Australian students’ places – they don’t – and more well-founded evidence that too many international students have poor English skills and that some courses are overwhelmed by international students to the detriment of locals. Universities responded to this in the wrong way.

Yes they had a valid reasons to enrol international students. In reasonable numbers they enrich campus life and offer wider benefits to the nation by boosting exports and building strong ties in the region. But most universities reacted to the public disquiet by being secretive about how many international students were enrolled, how they were distributed across various degree courses, and how many came from each student source country.

In the absence of information, speculation and partial truths filled the gap. Parents heard only what their children told them about classes overcrowded with international students with poor English.

What if universities, 10 years ago, had collectively decided to put limits on the total number of international students (say at one-third of enrolments), and limited the proportion of international students enrolled in each course and the proportion from each source country? And then reported each year on these figures and also shared with the public more details of what they were doing to secure housing, part-time jobs and other necessities for international students?

If they had, they would be in a far better position to withstand the heavy pressure today to cut international student numbers. Such self-regulation would have required a revenue sacrifice from the big five universities – Melbourne, Monash, Queensland, NSW and particularly Sydney – which have benefited enormously from the wave of Chinese students coming to Australia. But it probably would have avoided the financial pain universities now are facing, let alone the damage being done to Australia’s reputation among international students.

But let’s be fair to universities. There really is a lack of appreciation of the importance of their role. Even those who buy the extreme Vance line that universities are so dangerously woke they pose a threat to Western civilisation (which I don’t) still have to acknowledge what universities do on a day-to-day basis. They make critical research breakthroughs, they invent new technology and they train the next generation of engineers, teachers, tech workers, nurses and specialists in countless disciplines that modern society is utterly dependent on. All of this has very little to do with woke students, freedom of speech controversies or disputes over Gaza and anti-Semitism.

I’ve come to the end of my nearly seven years as higher education editor at The Australian. It’s 21 years since I first covered the university sector and much has changed in that time. But universities are facing a more difficult outlook now than any I have seen.

What’s the solution? It’s up to universities to take a clear eyed look at what they do and how they do it. It’s not enough for them to cite their achievements. They need to look at their weaknesses and where the public isn’t buying their story.

And it’s up to the rest of us to acknowledge the critical benefits universities produce and ensure that they can continue.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/universities-need-to-look-closely-at-how-they-are-perceived-by-the-populace/news-story/bebe52417ac8306f4f66655778c9757c

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Specialist disability schools won’t be phased out, government says

The federal and state governments won’t move to phase out specialist disability schools and have kicked the future of disabled group homes and segregated employment programs down the road in their response to the $600m disability royal commission.

The Albanese government also put a new disability rights act on the backburner, along with a federal watchdog to protect disabled people’s rights, and knocked back a proposal for a new federal minister for disability inclusion.

The commonwealth and state governments outlined their initial response to the 222 recommendations in the final report of the royal commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability on Wednesday, an inquiry that ran for more than four years.

Of the 172 recommendations for which it has primary or shared responsibility with the states, the federal government accepted 13 recommendations and another 117 in principle, while a further 36 were under consideration. Six were “noted”, an indication the government is unlikely to act on them, including the recommendations on segregated education.

The government’s response noted the split among the six commissioners on education, with three calling for special schools to be phased out by 2051 and the others saying they remained a viable option.

Developing Australians Communities Co-founder River Night has weighed in on whether or not the National Disability Insurance Scheme [NDIS] is costing Australians too much.

“The Australian government recognises the ongoing role of specialist settings in service provision for students with disability and providing choice for students with disability and their families,” the federal response notes.

“State and territory governments will continue to be responsible for making decisions about registration of schools in their jurisdictions, with the intent to strengthen inclusive education over time.”

To facilitate some of the recommendations, the federal government said it was committing an additional $117m on programs including improving community attitudes to disability and supporting advocacy.

This was on top of more than $225m previously announced for a new disability employment program and $3bn over the last three budgets to drive greater safety and inclusion for people with disability, social services minister Amanda Rishworth said.

Ms Rishworth said the government was committed to the disability royal commission’s vision “where people with disability are free from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.”

She said many of the recommendations were accepted in principle, meaning more work was required to flesh out the detail, and there would be a six monthly report delivered to monitor progress.

Around 5.5 million Australians have some form of disability, and 600,000 are on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The royal commission reported in September after more than four years of hearings. While it laid out a broad road map for disability reform, the commissioners were split on key policy areas such as group homes, education and segregated employment.

The commission called for a response from government by March 31, but this was delayed to allow for more consultation with the sector.

The government’s response noted more work would be done on disability housing within the NDIS review framework before a final view was taken on the future of group homes

“The Australian Government and state and territory governments support the development of a diverse range of inclusive housing options for people with disability that support them to exercise choice and control over their living arrangements,” the government’s response said.

It said any consideration of a new disability rights act should be done in conjunction with ongoing work around whether Australia should establish a new federal Human Rights Act.

And it said there was already sufficient representation in cabinet on disability issues through the social services and NDIS ministers in “noting” the recommendation for a new Minister for Disability Inclusion.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/specialist-disability-schools-wont-be-phased-out-government-says/news-story/123d7ff0d56fa727b689c3e24f433941

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The Queenslander hand-picked by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to clean up the CFMEU has put his home state’s militant branch on notice for its “really worrying conduct”

New Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt, a Queensland senator, said he didn’t believe the bad behaviour of the CFMEU was limited to Victoria and New South Wales.

It comes after the federal government, in light of allegations of criminal conduct in CFMEU construction branches in Victoria and New South Wales, made an unprecedented request for the Fair Work Commission to put the union’s east coast arms into administration.

This is yet to occur, with Fair Work Commission head Murray Furlong seeking advice on making an application to the Federal Court.

Senator Watt said ultimately the scope of the application would be a matter for the regulator.

“Reform of the CFMEU is a very high priority for me … we’re serious about cleaning up this union,” Senator Watt said.

“My role would be as the lead within the government to deliver the intervention that’s required into the CFMEU.

“And if that takes legislation, then that’s my job to deliver that.”

Allegations of links to the bikie underworld or corrupt behaviour have not been levelled against the Queensland branch of the CFMEU, though the union has continued to be a thorn in the side of government and developers across major project sites in the state.

Senator Watt said it was a matter of record that there had been “really worrying conduct” led by the CFMEU in Queensland for some time.

“Our government thinks it’s in the interests of construction workers and members of the CFMEU to clean this up. I think all union members want to be part of a clean union who is putting the interests of its members first,” he said.

“And I think sadly the CFMEU doesn’t fall into that category.”

Senator Watt confirmed his first briefing in his new portfolio was the progress on the administration process and signalled the government was working what legislative levers it needed to pull to ensure it happened.

He indicated the government was conscious the CFMEU was “cashed up” and had a history of very long-running litigation.

“If any application made by the general manager of the Fair Work Commission is opposed, or if there are barriers to that, then we will remove those barriers through legislation,” he said.

CFMEU Queensland secretary Michael Ravbar recently told members the union would not support any administrator appointment over “unproven media allegations”.

“The last week-and-a-half has been tough, because at the end of the day your union has done nothing wrong,” Mr Ravbar said.

“Why is the CFMEU being talked to be put in administration? If you’re going to have a look about criminality and corruption in the industry, you start from the top of the food chain, you don’t start down the bottom.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/qld-senator-murray-watt-to-take-on-cfmeu-as-workplace-relations-minister/news-story/c2b32e879d8ca81afb69f209cb61a1c1

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Adelaide woman Brooke Robran exposes issue her generation faces



I do feel sorry for this woman. She is up against it. But where were her parents? By the time she got to university, they should have had enough to pay the fees for her. Parents have been saving for their children's education since the 19th century.

It's cheaper to pay HECS in advance anyway. I paid all my son's fees in advance so he entered the workforce with zero debt and now in midlife has significant assets

And she is attractive so why does she not get a bloke to help share the costs? Everything does not have to be paid for by the government. Too much is already paid -- mostly for nonsense such as windmills. Better spend it on education than superfluous "renewables"

A young Aussie has sparked a fierce debate after calling out older generations and saying they have ruined the possibility for younger generations of buying their own homes.

Adelaide influencer Brooke Robran explained young Aussies were struggling to move out of home due to soaring HECS debts and unattainable property prices.

'How the f**k are people in their early 20s meant to move out of home now?,' Ms Robran asked in a video posted to social media.

'Generations before us have really f***ed us over here.

'When people used to go to uni it was free. Now the people that go to uni have $26,000 on average HECS debt.

'People like me aren't moving out of home until they're thirty now because they can't afford it. I swear you need four different jobs to make the amount you need to buy a house now.'

University was once free for students under Australia's 21st Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.

During his brief four-year term, Mr Whitlam famously abolished tuition fees in 1974 and introduced a living allowance for full-time students.

Mandated payments returned in 1989 under Bob Hawke's Labor government, which also introduced the HECS programme.

Initially, all degrees had a uniform annual fee of $1,800. This changed in 1996 when the Howard coalition government introduced a three-tiered fee system.

The fees increased from a flat rate of $2,454 to $3,300 for Band One degrees, such as education and humanities, and $5,500 for Band Three degrees, including law and accounting.

Both sides of Australian politics have since agreed students should continue to pay the cost of higher education.

Data from comparison website Finder shows the average HECS debt sits at $40,000 with 21 per cent owing between $40,000 and $100,000 and just over one per cent owing more than $100,000

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13685825/Adelaide-woman-Brooke-Robran-exposes-issue-generation-faces.html

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The secret probe into university facing foreign student allegations

There have long been allegtions that lots of Indian students get into Australia via fake docements and it is true that many cannot cope with their studies when they get here. But they generally become productive members of the workforce anyway so it is no great grief. Where do you think all the Indian restaurants come from?

The country’s higher education watchdog is probing an Australian university accused of aggressively poaching foreign students from other institutions and for having lax recruitment practices and low English standards for admissions.

Documents obtained by this masthead reveal Torrens University is under scrutiny from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency after the agency became concerned by the university’s recruitment of international students and a rapid increase in its enrolments.

The correspondence also reveals multiple Australian universities enrolled students who were later found to have provided fake documents in their applications, as part of systemic fraud occurring in Haryana state in northern India.

The documents, released under freedom of information laws, show TEQSA has launched a compliance assessment into Torrens to determine whether the university is still meeting the standards required to remain registered.

Torrens, which has campuses in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, has been the subject of 12 complaints since 2022. The watchdog said this was a “large number” for one institution.

Elite unis lower ATARs in favour of special entry schemes
Among the allegations made by complainants was that Torrens pushes education agents to poach from other providers, offering a 35 per cent fee discount for onshore international students.

Separately, an unnamed NSW public university alleged Torrens’ agents had been involved in unethical behaviour and were actively encouraged to poach its students by promising large discounts and other incentives.

Another complainant alleged high visa refusal rates were driven by “corrupt behaviour” in markets such as India, and that Torrens sales staff had made decisions related to student admissions.

The documents also revealed allegations that staff who raised concerns about the practices were forced to resign or had their employment terminated.

A Torrens spokesman said staff were bound by its code of conduct and undertook regular mandatory compliance training, while recruitment agents were also bound by stringent requirements.

“We would terminate – and have done so – any contract where an agent was found to be in breach,” he said.

The ongoing probe into the university’s practices comes as the federal government pushes ahead with a major crackdown on foreign student numbers. Education Minister Jason Clare said “shonks and crooks” were undermining the international education sector.

The government late last year changed its visa processing system to prioritise higher education providers deemed the least risk of recruiting “non-genuine” students, those who come to Australia primarily to work, not study.

University risk ratings from the Department of Home Affairs were updated in April. Federation University, the University of New England and the University of Tasmania were all given level 3 grade, the lowest category. Torrens University remained a level 2 provider.

‘Sudden and significant’ increase in enrolments

The watchdog wrote to Torrens in January last year concerned about its “sudden and significant increase” in international students

“TEQSA is concerned about the risk that students may lack the academic preparation and proficiency in English required to participate in their intended study,” the letter reads.

“The significant increases, particularly from new and existing source countries such as Laos, Kenya, Ghana and Nepal, also raises concerns about the measures taken by [Torrens] to ensure that student agents are only recruiting genuine students.

“In addition, we have identified a number of agents engaged by [the university] who had high visa refusal rates in 2022 and in previous years. This raises material concerns about the efficacy of the agent monitoring framework.”

In July 2023, TEQSA was concerned enough about the university’s practices that it moved to launch a compliance assessment, which is still under way.

It also wrote to at least one other university in 2023, expressing concern over its recruitment practices and formally requesting further information, the documents reveal.

Former TEQSA chief commissioner Professor Peter Coaldrake wrote to universities and colleges in August, warning them of their obligations when recruiting, admitting and supporting overseas students. He revealed the regulator was investigating several institutions’ risk of non-compliance.

However, TEQSA has refused to reveal if those investigations led to compliance assessments into other universities’ practices. Compliance assessments can begin only when the regulator identifies “serious compliance risks”.

Widespread fraudulent applications

The documents separately reveal multiple universities – who were not identified – were in contact with TEQSA in 2022 and 2023, concerned about admissions fraud in Haryana state.

One university informed TEQSA in October it had determined there was systemic fraud in applications coming out of the region. It said students had been using fake academic documents and fake employment records.

It discovered the fraud only after the students were enrolled. This was after it was known that too many applicants from the region were “non-genuine” temporary entrants.

Former Department of Immigration deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said that while smaller operators had been the target of much of the government’s visa crackdown, larger Group of Eight institutions, such as the University of Sydney, needed more scrutiny.

He believes the increase in foreign student admissions has affected universities’ ability to deliver high-quality degrees.

“If I was sending my child to another country to get an overseas education, the last thing I’d want was for my child to be studying in a class full of students from the same country,” he said.

The Torrens spokesman said it closely managed its recruitment of international students, who make up 48 per cent of its cohort, and that it was proud to have maintained a level 2 risk rating.

“Our offshore international student enrolments grew in 2022 compared to 2019 – as borders re-opened post the COVID pandemic. However, this was substantially offset by a decline in onshore international student enrolments,” he said.

“We believe in student choice, and Torrens University works hard to offer a highly competitive and high-quality educational experience with small class sizes, individualised support and an innovative curriculum, that is competitively priced for international students.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-secret-probe-into-university-facing-foreign-student-allegations-20240624-p5jo9p.html

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Hydrogen nonsense

Mining magnate Andrew ‘‘Twiggy’’ Forrest surprised many in the media on July 17 when he announced he was scaling back his green hydrogen commitments.

Yet, journalists following the global energy debate should have known this holy grail of power storage and pollution-free fuel was running into trouble around the world — even as Forrest continued to make multibillion-dollar announcements with state and federal leaders here and with governments overseas.

This is why politicians should not try to pick winners: the rush of capital looking for taxpayer-guaranteed returns is no measure of a technology’s viability. Nor does history show Australian politicians are any good at making decisions properly left to investment market professionals.

This column has long been sceptical of various firming technologies for variable wind and solar power. Back on October 17, 2022, I wrote: “Perhaps the most important question (in this area) that journalists should be asking relates to the feasibility of green hydrogen, being spruiked around the world … by Forrest.”

It quoted climate campaigner and engineer Saul Griffith estimating Forrest’s hydrogen would be between five and six times more expensive than using wind and solar only for power. Griffith said power would need to be priced at 2c per kilowatt hour to produce hydrogen for the then-new Albanese government’s $2 per kilogram target price.

Most states at the time were charging between 25c and 40c per kilowatt hour.

The week before the latest federal budget this column had a crack at Jim Chalmers for pinning so much of his government’s “Future Made in Australia” ambition on green hydrogen. The piece pointed out industry was expecting more taxpayer funds for green hydrogen in the budget the following week, but even the green evangelist Grattan Institute warned in December optimism about hydrogen was overblown.

Grattan energy specialist Tony Wood said government and industry would be wise to limit hydrogen expectations to green ammonia for fertiliser, green steel and green alumina.

Wood said even confining hydrogen ambitions to these sectors would “require more than 30 gigawatts of electricity, 60 per cent more than we have in the National Electricity Market today”.

Yet, on budget night, May 14, the Treasurer announced a further $19.7bn over 10 years under the “renewable energy super power banner”. Green hydrogen support was extended to $6.7bn over a decade.

Forrest, Chalmers and Anthony Albanese all claimed last week they remained committed to green hydrogen despite Forrest’s lay-off of 700 workers and his scaling back of several projects. He did remain committed to five hydrogen projects here and overseas.

Yet, had Chalmers and the Prime Minister read Saul Griffith’s testimony before the federal parliament last year, they might have been more cautious.

The Renew Economy website on April 6 last year quoted Griffith, also co-founder of Rewiring Australia, telling a parliamentary inquiry committing taxpayer funds to hydrogen would be a costly economic mistake.

“The idea that hydrogen will play a large role in the energy future does not make economic or thermodynamic sense,” Griffith’s written submission to the joint standing committee on the energy transition says. Griffith, like Wood, believes hydrogen will play a role in certain hard-to-abate sectors.

Griffith said people with a strong vested interest had “a heavy hand on the tiller of the hydrogen conversation”.

Forrest’s climb-down from the hydrogen pulpit came as the EU sounded a warning about hydrogen.

The Brussels-based European Court of Auditors said on July 17 — the same day as Forrest’s announcement — the EU’s hydrogen goals were unrealistic, despite the billions of euros already invested.

The EU had committed €18.8bn ($31bn) to make 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030 and to import a further 10 million tonnes by 2030. Forrest alone claimed he could make 15 million tonnes by 2030.

The following night on ABC’s 7.30, host Sarah Ferguson gave Forrest a rare, almost interruption-free, 11 minutes to obfuscate on the central question: has hydrogen been over-hyped?

It was an interview in stark contrast with her latest nuclear power exchange with opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien. Ferguson talked over the top of him throughout and interrupted during most of the points O’Brien tried to make.

Yet, nuclear power is tried, tested and reliable while green hydrogen is in early development stages and may not be viable at scale.

A paper by the conservative Manhattan Institute released on February 1 this year, Green Hydrogen: A Multibillion-Dollar Energy Boondoggle, gets to the heart of the hydrogen problem. Hydrogen creates less energy than is used to make it.

The study examines various hydrogen technologies and homes in on EROI: energy return on investment.

The EROI of green hydrogen via electrolysis is 0.5. It releases half as much energy as is invested in making it.

The EROIs of traditional power sources are 28 for natural gas, 30 for coal and 75 for nuclear power. This is the science; it’s not about climate denial but the reality of physics and chemistry.

The point of the hydrogen story for a column on journalism? Scepticism is a key quality needed for good and accurate reporting. Journalists need to be especially sceptical in testing claims in-line with their own personal biases.

In the energy transition, conservative-leaning journalists who favour nuclear power have been unable to accept the Coalition’s plan to build nuclear reactors will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions until 2040.

Therefore, unless a Coalition government were to scrap its emissions reduction targets, it would not markedly slow the rollout of wind and solar technology which, for all its problems, will reduce emissions.

Remember, too, the Coalition plan calls for nuclear as a dispatchable backup rather than a whole-of-system power source. As O’Brien has said, it would eventually operate in tandem with wind and solar.

Similarly, left-leaning journalists like those who dominate the ABC need to test their inherent biases in favour of anything claimed to reduce emissions.

Ferguson has been a prime example in recent weeks. Why the soft approach to Forrest while applying attack tactics in her nuclear interview with O’Brien in March?

Similarly, ABC Media Watch has for decades been on the hunt for any stories it thinks might hide secret climate denial.

Last Monday, July 22, it was again on its favourite hobby horse: bollocking Sky News Australia. This time it targeted the network’s coverage of EVs.

It did acknowledge what has been clear for over a year: while Australian buyers were late to the EV party, buyers in Europe and North America have been walking away from the technology.

Why? The problems reporters at this paper have been describing for almost a decade: range anxiety, price, increasing insurance premiums, fears about battery fires, the cost of battery repair and the high cost of smash repair. The latest EV hot-button issue has been deep price discounting by Tesla which has left recent former buyers out of pocket compared with new buyers.

Media Watch ignored most of these issues and failed to make the central point. Most EVs in Australia, unless powered by a home battery connected to rooftop solar, receive electricity from a power grid still largely fired by burning coal.

Now, that should make any thinking journalist a bit sceptical.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/scepticism-a-crucial-element-in-energy-mix/news-story/0cd1ee4d06038b39a0883fbd09bd0358

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Former ABC chair Ita Buttrose says journalists at the broadcaster are too sensitive to criticism

Some interviewers at the ABC are reluctant to tell both sides of the story and the public broadcaster needs to improve the quality of its journalism, the taxpayer-funded organisation’s recently-departed chairwoman Ita Buttrose has declared.

In extraordinary comments just four months after she stepped down from the ABC board, Ms Buttrose warned the ABC was too sensitive to criticism and its reporters should just give up if they cannot handle scrutiny.

Ms Buttrose’s comments were the media doyenne’s most strident criticism of the broadcaster she once led and have been backed by another recently departed ABC board member, businessman Joe Gersh.

Speaking to ABC radio on Monday, Ms Buttrose said that having both sides of the story was “much better” for the broadcaster’s audience and blasted un-named presenters for not doing so.

“I think there’s no harm in presenting both sides of an argument, and I don’t understand the reluctance of some of our interviewers not to do that,” she said.

“Have both sides of the story, it’s much better for the viewer or the listener.”

Former ABC board member Joe Gersh – who was on the board alongside Ms Buttrose before his tenure ended in 2023 – said he agreed with Ms Buttrose’s comments.

The Jewish businessman said the ABC could have done a much better job at reporting on anti-Semitism during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“As a member of the Jewish community, a supporter of the ABC and a former director, I’ve been extremely troubled by the ABC’s apparent lack of concern at the alarming and unprecedented rise of anti Semitism in Australia,” Mr Gersh said.

“The failure of the ABC to meet its impartiality obligation in respect of the Israel-Hamas conflict means that in some respects it is part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

“The ABC has an obligation of impartiality and it’s of concern of when it falls short of meeting that obligation.”

Ms Buttrose finished her five-year term at the ABC in March and was replaced by Kim Williams.

The Australian asked Mr Williams on Monday if he agreed with Ms Buttrose’s remarks but he would not comment.

Mr Williams said in March: “If you don’t want to reflect a view that aspires to impartiality, don’t work at the ABC.”

During the interview Karvelas claimed News Corp, which includes mastheads such as The Australian, “have gone after ABC frontline reporters and presenters pretty hard, including me.”

“Is that something that you think is concerning and does it have a chilling kind of impact,” Karvelas asked.

Ms Buttrose dismissed the claims put to her.

“No, look, quite frankly I think you are all too sensitive about News Corp; let them do what they want to do, it doesn’t really matter,” she said.

“When Kerry Packer was alive he didn’t like the ABC either and I used to have vehement arguments with him about the role of the ABC, because I was brought up on the ABC because of my father (journalist Charles Oswald).

“I used to have big arguments with Kerry about the role of the ABC and why it was important, and News Corp seems to share Kerry’s feelings about the ABC.

“If the ABC can’t take the criticism then it should just give up. It doesn’t matter what they say, it doesn’t matter, don’t keep worrying about what they say. Just keep doing your own job, which you have to do, just do it.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/former-abc-chair-ita-buttrose-said-journalists-at-the-broadcaster-too-sensitive-when-they-cop-criticism/news-story/7957d062f51f444ed34dea2a152f2e59

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Court rules in favour of Roundup over cancer query

A great relief. The Greenie jihad against glyphosate has been relentless

Australian farmers are relieved by a Federal Court ruling that the commonly used herbicide Roundup does not cause cancer.

Regarded as a key tool for controlling weeds in agricultural crops, Roundup’s manufacturer Monsanto has been hit by a barrage of legal action across the world in recent years.

A landmark class action in the Federal Court against Monsanto’s Australian offshoot, Huntsman Chemical Company, was filed by 800 on-Hodgkin lymphoma patients in 2020, but judge ­ Michael Lee late on Thursday found the evidence did not prove the glyphosate based herbicide was carcinogenic.

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals company Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, is facing multiple lawsuits in the US and has in some cases been found liable by juries for causing cancer.

National agencies, including the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, which last considered glyphosate in 2016, European Food Agency and European Chemicals Agency and the US Environmental Protection Agency have all approved use of glyphosate as a weed killer, subject to conditions, after strict safety assessments.

Justice Lee found there was not enough evidence to prove Roundup caused the non-Hodgkin lymphoma of 41-year-old Kelvin McNickle, who was diagnosed with the cancer six years ago after two decades of using the chemical on his family’s property.

The National Farmers Federation said Justice Lee’s decision was reassuring, given the widespread use of the product in the agriculture sector.

“As a farmers and stewards of the land, it’s important we use products that are safe for ­humans and the environment,” the NFF said after the verdict.

“Glyphosate is one of the most common products farmers and home gardeners use all over the world to combat invasive weeds. It allows us to be more productive and sustainable, often being associated with no or minimal till farming, which preserves soil structure.

“The decision from the Federal Court today reinforces that our regulator is doing its job to ensure the health and safety of our farmers, communities and environment.”

Describing glyphosate as “a critical component of modern and sustainable agricultural production”, NSW Farmers Ag Science Committee chair Alan Brown said Australian farmers were “well aware of how to use this chemical correctly to protect the health of their families and communities”.

“Without access to the chemical, farmers would have to resort to cultivation to manage weeds – degrading our landscape and making it harder than ever to maintain productivity” Mr Brown said.

Bayer said the decision was consistent with worldwide regulatory and scientific assessments and “remains committed to supporting Australian farmers by ensuring safe-for-use and effective products such as Roundup continue to be available”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/court-rules-in-favour-of-roundup-over-cancer-query/news-story/4786be27bbf3dbf6fc2b0e12a24d0c12

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COVID effect to cause 'excess' deaths for years to come

Death rates in Australia could be impacted for years by the lingering effects of COVID-19. (Steven Saphore/AAP PHOTOS)
Australia could continue to feel the tail effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for years as more people die because of the virus and its impacts.

Some 8400 more people died in 2023 than would have been expected under pre-pandemic conditions, an Actuaries Institute report, released on Monday, found.

The figure was down from the 20,000 "excess" deaths recorded in 2022.

Of the extra deaths logged in 2023, 4600 were directly because of COVID-19 while another 1500 were linked to the virus.

The institute's mortality working group said the substantial drop in excess deaths between the two years had not prevented the 2023 rate sitting higher than it had during bad flu years before the pandemic.

"We think COVID-19 is likely to cause some excess mortality for several years to come, either as a direct cause of death or a contributing factor to other causes such as heart disease," actuary Karen Cutter said.

"In our view, the 'new normal' level of mortality is likely to be higher than it would have been if we hadn't had the pandemic."

A higher death rate could remain as things such as vaccination rates and jabs' efficacy continued to be managed, Australian National University epidemiology lecturer Rezanur Rahaman said.

"It could be said that the excess deaths will continue for some time as it is a highly contagious respiratory pathogen that will not die out anytime soon," he told AAP.

But University of Technology Sydney bio-statistics professor Andrew Hayen noted the report found the age-standardised death rate in 2023 was almost the same as in 2019.

"We've already witnessed a considerable decline in excess deaths as measured by the Actuaries Institute (and) we are likely to see a continued decline in mortality, particularly due to COVID," he said.

It was difficult to attribute deaths specifically to post-COVID effects, rather than reduced health care during the pandemic, Professor Hayen said.

"Many of the deaths in 2022 were probably due to mortality displacement and there may also be issues relating to pressures on emergency services and delays in standard care, like elective surgery rates," he said.

"However, it's not possible to attribute exactly what proportion is attributable to putative causes."

Comparing Australia's experience with 40 other countries, the actuaries' report found the local excess death rate of five per cent between 2020 and 2023 was low by global standards, which averaged 11 per cent.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8710518/covid-effect-to-cause-excess-deaths-for-years-to-come/

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Aussie Olympics star says Paris Games are so woke they're ruining athletes' chances of setting world records

Retired Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has taken a swipe at the Paris Olympics, saying they are so eco-friendly that they're ruining athletes’ chances of setting world records.

Magnussen won gold, silver, and bronze medals at the Olympic Games in 2012 and 2016. He also secured the title of 100m freestyle world champion in 2011 and 2013. Magnussen retired from competitive swimming in 2019.

He believes that the pinnacle sporting event in the world has an eco-friendly, vegan-first mentality that is damaging performance.

'There’s multiple factors that make village life far from ideal,' the dual Olympian wrote in his News Corp column.

'It’s the cardboard beds, which can’t give you optimal sleep.

'It’s the no airconditioning, which is going to play a bigger factor as the week goes. It was 20 degrees and raining yesterday. It’s going to be mid 30s in the coming days.

'That’s going to play a factor and the Australian team having their own portable air conditioners will be a welcome relief.

'It’s the crowded buses with no air flow. It’s all of the walking everywhere. The one thing we noticed in London was I was getting up to 6000-7000 steps a day, going from my room, to the food hall, to the bus stop, to the pool.'

Organisers of the Paris Games have been aggressive with their green approach, billing the event as the most sustainable ever.

Magnussen however believes they've gone overboard and that the environment that has been created for the athletes might be the toughest ever to produce world record swims.

'The lack of world records boils down to this whole eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality rather than high performance,' he said.

'They had a charter that said 60 per cent of food in the village had to be vegan friendly and the day before the opening ceremony they ran out of meat and dairy options in the village because they hadn’t anticipated so many athletes would be choosing the meat and dairy options over the vegan friendly ones.

'The caterer had to rejig their numbers and bring in more of those products because surprise, surprise — world class athletes don’t have vegan diets.

'They must have watched the Netflix doco Game Changers and assumed everyone was the same. But let me tell you, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer — none of those guys are on a vegan diet.'

Conditions in the athletes village have already raised eyebrows among the Aussie contingent.

The 'anti-sex' cardboard beds went down like a lead balloon with water polo star Tilly Kearns and her teammate Gabi Palm, who said 'my back is about to fall off' after their first night.

Tennis star Daria Saville revealed the village is nothing like being in a hotel in a social media post on Tuesday.

'We don't really have hotel-like housekeeping here in the Olympic Village, so you have to get your own toilet paper,' she wrote in a caption alongside video of herself grabbing several rolls.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-13682595/James-Magnussen-Paris-Olympics-Games-2024-woke-world-records-eco-friendly-vegan-vegetarian.html

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State’s ‘old school’ switch offers a template for the nation

When a starry-eyed Paul Martin launched his teaching career at a western Sydney high school, he was shocked that so many of his teenage students struggled to read. Thirty-five years later, he has just produced a new primary school teaching syllabus that will revolutionise learning for nearly 1.3 million students in one of the world’s biggest schooling systems.

In a startling confession, the chief executive of the NSW Education Standards Authority now says that for a half-century education systems have been doing a lot of things wrong.

“I started teaching in 1989,” Martin recalls. “I walked into a year 7 class where more than a third of the kids couldn’t read. And I had no idea how to teach them to read because all I knew how to do was what the syllabus said – and it had nothing in it. By the time I’d finished classroom teaching, I had the desire to change all of that.”

The new primary school curriculum for NSW, launched on Wednesday, is a clear and concise document that focuses on phonics and facts, erasing the gobbledygook and feel-good theories that still clutter curriculum documents across the nation. NSW is returning to the old-school method of teaching children vital facts, in sequence. It is based on cutting-edge research that proves children learn best when they are explicitly taught facts and given practice to embed them in long-term memory.

For decades, children’s learning has been sabotaged by left-wing ideologies that regard schooling as an opportunity for indoctrination and social engineering under the cover of “critical thinking and creativity”. Phonics and facts were dirty words for the “child-centred” groupthink.

“Without being too condemnatory of the past, some of the earlier syllabuses were written at a high point of what I would call progressivist ideology – the ‘choose your own adventure’ of education,” Martin says. “Some things were potentially wrong, like whole-language reading, and we took grammar out of syllabuses. Beforehand, some of the syllabuses expected kids to do things in, say, history, in terms of writing expectations, that they hadn’t yet learned in English.”

The flaws in the previous curriculum have produced a generation of children who often struggle with basic reading and mathematics, and have a poor general knowledge.

The “long tail of disadvantage” described in 2009 by Julia Gillard, the former federal Labor education minister and prime minister, has grown ever longer. In last year’s NAPLAN tests, one in three children starting high school failed to meet the minimum standard expected for reading, writing and mathematics.

Australian students are twice as likely to fail than excel in English and maths, despite taxpayers pouring $72bn a year into schools. By 15, one in three teenagers can’t read to the level required for year 9. Is it any wonder so many drop out of school, sucked into street crime and a life of dysfunction?

Martin, 60, worked as a teacher in some of Sydney’s poorest communities and was an education policy adviser for the NSW and federal governments before taking the helm at NESA in 2019, when he initiated a clean-up of what he regarded as a “cluttered curriculum”. A new syllabus for English and mathematics was released last year and this week he delivered teaching materials across all subjects – the bipartisan policy love child of former Coalition NSW education minister Sarah Mitchell and her successor, Labor’s Prue Car.

Car, who also is NSW Deputy Premier, insists teachers must rely on evidence of “what works” to help children learn, just as doctors perform operations based on proven and best-practice surgical techniques. “It’s the bleeding obvious,” she says. “We would never tell a surgeon, ‘Do what works for you, see how you feel on the day and it’s up to you, here is the scaffold.’ No! We say, ‘This is how you do it based on the evidence of what works.’ ”

As the mother of a teenage son, Car has seen first-hand the failures in longstanding teaching techniques. “When my son was learning to read I, like so many other parents, was obsessively reading books to him constantly,” she recalls. “A lot of the conversation at that time was about the use of sight words, and looking at pictures next to the words they’re learning to read.

“Now when I’m in classrooms, I can see that teachers are using a combination of that plus phonics. The kids can actually make the sounds out because that’s the building blocks on which they learn how to read and write and understand. So I think every parent – me included – can see that would have been very useful to us back then. Being able to read changes lives.”

Australia has a national curriculum that was streamlined and updated in 2022 to Version 9. In Queensland, schools have until 2027 to adopt the changes, so many children will go through most of primary school being taught a defunct curriculum.

NSW, Victoria and Western Australia have written their own syllabus materials, which give more detail and guidance to put flesh on the bones of the national curriculum, which is confusing to comprehend given its “three-dimensional” nature with layers of online documents that must be cross-referenced.

The differences across Australia are stark: in NSW, a year 2 student will be taught to locate the seven continents and five oceans of the world, read ancient Greek legends and identify significant Aboriginal sites across NSW.

In Queensland, the year 2 syllabus based on the old national curriculum confuses teachers with vague and rambling explanations. “Continuity and change are not only key concepts in history but ones that challenge students to move from simplistic notions of history as a series of events, to powerfully complex understandings about change and continuity,” it states.

“Changes occurs at different rates simultaneously, linking forward and backward in time.”

This is why hardworking teachers are constantly complaining about late nights wasted trying to interpret the curriculum and devise practical plans for the next day’s lessons.

WA’s year 2 naval-gazing history lessons focus on a child’s own family, in line with the national curriculum. While NSW kids will listen in wonder about Roman gods and Dreamtime legends, yawning seven-year-olds in WA will learn about their own name, what they look like and what objects are familiar to them.

Young children who have not learned to read and write fluently are being expected to “analyse and explain” concepts in history or science.

Victoria updated its syllabus last month, mandating that from next year schools explicitly teach children up to year 2 to read using structured phonics – the sounding out of letters and letter combinations to form words. The Australian Education Union’s Victorian branch blasted this change as a “burden” and instructed teachers to ignore the mandate.

In NSW, the Minns government consulted 200 expert teachers and involved the NSW Teachers Federation, which has given a lukewarm endorsement that “curriculum with high levels of subject knowledge and rigour can be positive”. The union secured a compromise that while teachers can start using the new syllabus this week, it won’t be compulsory until 2027.

The NSW reforms are based on a two-year review by Australian Council for Educational Research chief executive Geoff Masters, who insists teachers and students need a clear “pathway” for learning.

“It’s important that it’s clear to teachers what they should be teaching and what students should be learning,” he says. “You need a high-quality curriculum and a clear sequence of learning. The curriculum has to be a pathway that all students will follow.”

Masters says schools must ensure children don’t fall behind on the learning pathway but also let them race ahead if they’re ready.

“We have many students in our schools who are being taught things currently that they’re not ready to learn because they lack the prerequisites,” he says. “The curriculum has moved too far ahead for them. And we have other students who are being taught things they already know, when they need to be stretched.”

Small gaps in basic facts taught to children in primary school can grow into a chasm of ignorance in high school. No one would expect a teenager to become a violin virtuoso without having been taught how to hold the violin and bow, read music and practise musical scales. Yet somehow we expect kids to master algebra even if they haven’t learned their times tables or fractions first.

Young children who have not learned to read and write fluently are being expected to “analyse and explain” concepts in history or science. They end up stressed and struggling. Children who are bored or anxious are likelier to muck up in class or drop out of school.

“Many kids are getting well into their school life before anybody has recognised that they’ve missed some really basic things,” says Masters. “Right at the beginning of schooling, whether it’s reading or mathematics, the curriculum has marched on. Everything is so time-bound currently, where students are required to move on whether or not they’ve mastered what they’ve just been taught.

The consequence of that is many students lack the prerequisite for what they’re to be taught next, and they struggle and fall further behind as the next year-level curriculum gets further and further beyond their reach.”

Knowledge Society chief executive Elena Douglas, who has been driving reforms to teaching methods and curriculum content, hopes NSW has “broken a stalemate” over the best way to teach.

“This is how we get smart and creative citizens,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what postcode, we need the same formula of calm and orderly classrooms, teacher-led instruction, a well-sequenced and ambitious curriculum and lesson plans, and evidence-based reading instruction. I hope this starts a race to the top.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/states-old-school-switch-offers-a-template-for-thenation/news-story/b0320684d93ada8cc318ca4ac6824e84

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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COVID left us poorer, sicker and with a big financial headache, inquiry told

COVID-19 has left Australians with poorer physical and mental health, helped fuel inflation because of too many government handouts and encouraged people into the black economy, the first wide-ranging inquiry into the pandemic has heard.

Businesses, unions, health experts and the education sector have told the inquiry, due to report in weeks, that Australia needs to prepare for future pandemics to avoid repeating mistakes made across all levels of government that are still being felt in some parts of the nation.

The inquiry, promised by Anthony Albanese ahead of the 2022 federal election, is being headed by former senior public servant Robyn Kruk plus economist Angela Jackson and infectious diseases expert Professor Catherine Bennett.

Established last year, the 12-month inquiry is due to report by September. It has been given a wide remit to look at joint Commonwealth-state actions, although its terms of reference preclude examining unilateral actions taken by states and territories or international programs.

Across a series of roundtables, the inquiry has been told of major shortcomings with elements of the federal and state governments’ responses to COVID-19 and the long-term problems these have caused.

Health experts said border closures had a “significant” impact on healthcare provision, particularly in rural, remote and border communities, arguing health workers should be exempt from such restrictions.

Australia’s average age fell last year while the country experienced a record number of deaths in 2022.

Chronic disease monitoring and cancer screening were disrupted, the sector said, noting a nationally co-ordinated effort was now required to clear the backlog of tests.

“People are currently waiting longer for care than before the pandemic, are often sicker and [are] finding it less affordable,” the sector said.

Experts said the mental health system was in crisis before the pandemic, and COVID-19 had exacerbated problems that had only worsened since.

Anthony Albanese announces inquiry into COVID-19 pandemic

An inquiry into how Australia dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic has been announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“Australian communities are experiencing a process of rolling recoveries from one emergency to the next (extreme weather events and the pandemic), with resulting cumulative trauma,” they told the inquiry.

“More emphasis is needed on community resilience and on strengthening the system ahead of the next emergency.”

Economists from academia and the private sector said original government spending was important in supporting households and businesses, but the speed at which it was rolled out meant “compromises” in policy design that should be avoided in future pandemics.

However, the ongoing financial support proved too much for the economy, they said.

“The scale of the initial fiscal and monetary support was likely warranted during a period of uncertainty. However, the winding back of these measures as the pandemic progressed was too slow,” they said.

The small business sector said differences in public health orders between the states and territories caused significant problems for many companies.

This, coupled with confusion over the definition of essential services and essential workers, encouraged some businesses to participate in the black economy.

“The lack of clarity and consistency around important definitions and public health orders resulted in an increase in the number of sole traders operating in the cash economy in some sectors, such as hairdressing,” it told the inquiry.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/covid-left-us-poorer-sicker-and-with-a-big-financial-headache-inquiry-told-20240725-p5jwer.html

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Facts at a premium in blustery climate debate

We think we are so clever. The conceit of contemporary humankind is often unbearable.

Yet this modern self-regard has generated a collective idiocy, an inane confusion between feelings and facts, and an inability to distinguish between noble aims and hard reality.

This preference for virtue signalling over practical action can be explained only by intellectual vanity, a smugness that over-estimates humankind’s ability to shape the world it inhabits.

Moonshot? Old news. Supersonic global travel? Been there, done that. Contraceptive pill, heart medication, painkillers, Viagra and antidepressants? Pharmacies are goldmines. Computers, video cameras, internet access to all knowledge of all history, audiovisual communication and electronic transactions? All in the palm of our hands.

Hot water when we want it, cool rooms when we need them, frozen meals, out-of-season fruits, self-driving cars, smart fridges and Uber deliveries. It is a wonder we bother getting out of bed.

As a result we have a tendency to believe we are masters of the universe, that we can control the climate and regulate natural disasters. Too lazy or spoiled to weigh facts and think things through, we are more susceptible than ever to mass delusion.

We have seen this tendency play out in deeply worrying ways, such as the irrational belief in the communal benefits of Covid vaccination despite the distinct lack of scientific evidence. Too many people just wanted to believe the vaccine had this thing beaten.

For that matter, we accepted draconian restrictions such as curfews and outdoor mask mandates when there was no medical evidence presented to support them. With most media operating hand-in-glove to generate fear and trepidation, our political and bureaucratic masters imposed frightening constraints on our freedom of expression, but most people seemed compliant because they wanted to believe we could control the virus and not vice versa.

Still, there is no area of public debate where rational thought is more readily cast aside than in the climate and energy debate. This is where alarmists demand that people “follow the science” while they deploy rhetoric, scare campaigns and policies that turn reality and science on their heads.

This nonsense is so widespread and amplified by so many authoritative figures that we have become inured to it. Teachers and children break from school to draw attention to what the UN calls a “climate emergency” as the world lives through its most populous and prosperous period in history, when people are shielded from the ill-effects of weather events better than they ever have been previously.

Politicians tell us in the same breath that producing clean energy is the most urgent and important task for the planet and reject nuclear energy, the only reliable form of emissions-free energy. The activists argue that reducing emissions is so imperative it is worth lowering living standards, alienating farmland, scarring forests and destroying industries, but it is not worth the challenge of boiling water to create energy-generating steam by using the tried and tested technology of nuclear fission.

Our acceptance of idiocy, unchecked and unchallenged, struck me in one interview this week given by teal MP Zali Steggall. In many ways it was an unexceptional interview; there are politicians and activists saying this sort of thing every day somewhere, usually unchallenged.

Steggall was preoccupied with Australia’s emissions reduction targets.

“If we are going to be aligned to a science-based target and keep temperatures as close to 1.5 degrees as we can, we must have a minimum reduction of 75 per cent by 2035 as an interim target,” she said.

Steggall then patronised her audience by comparing meeting emissions targets to paying down a mortgage. The claim about controlling global temperatures is hard to take seriously, but to be fair it is merely aping the lines of the UN, which argues the increase in global average temperatures can be held to 1.5 degrees with emissions reductions of that size – globally.

We could talk all day about the imprecise nature of these calculations, the contested scientific debate about the role of other natural variabilities in climate, and the presumption that humankind, through policy imposed by a supranational authority, can control global climate as if with a thermostat. The simplistic relaying of this agenda as central to Australian policy decisions was not the worst aspect of Steggall’s presentation.

“The Coalition has no policy, so let’s be really clear, they are taking Australia out of the Paris Agreement if they fail to nominate an improvement with a 2035 target,” Steggall lectured, disingenuously.

“The Labor government, they need to do better, we are currently not on track to keeping temperatures within sound boundaries from a climate risk point of view.”

This was Steggall promulgating the central lie of the national climate debate – that Australia’s emissions reduction policies can alter the climate. It is a fallacy embraced and advocated by Labor, the Greens and the teals, and which the Coalition is loath to challenge for fear of being tagged into a “climate denialism” argument.

It is arrant nonsense to suggest our policies can have any discernible effect on the climate or “climate risk”. Any politician suggesting so, directly or by implication, is part of a contemporary, fake-news-driven dumbing down of the public square, and injecting an urgency into our policy considerations that is hurting citizens already with high electricity prices, diminished reliability and a damaged economy.

Steggall went on to claim we were feeling the consequences of global warming already. “And for people wondering ‘How does that affect me?’, just look at your insurance premiums, our insurance premiums around Australia are going through the roof,” she extrapolated, claiming insurance costs were keeping people out of home ownership. “This is not a problem for the future,” Steggall stressed, “it is problem for now.”

It is a problem all right – it is unmitigated garbage masquerading as a policy debate. Taking it to its logical conclusion, Steggall claims if Australia reduced its emissions further we would lower the risk of natural disasters, leading to lower insurance premiums and improved housing affordability – it is surprising that world peace did not get a mention.

Mind you, these activists do like to talk about global warming as a security issue. They will say anything that heightens fears, escalates the problem and supports their push for more radical deindustrialisation.

Our national contribution to global emissions is now just over 1 per cent and shrinking. Australia’s annual emissions total less than 400 megatonnes while China’s are rising by more than that total each year and are now at 10,700Mt or about 30 times Australia’s. While our emissions reduce, global emissions are increasing. We could shut down our country, eliminating our emissions completely, and China’s increase would replace ours in less than a year.

So, whatever we are doing, it is not changing and cannot change the global climate. Our national chief scientist, Alan Finkel, clearly admitted this point in 2018, even though he was embarrassed by its implications in the political debate. Yet the pretence continues.

And before critics suggest I am arguing for inaction, I am not. But clearly, the logical and sensible baseline for our policy consideration should be a recognition that our national actions cannot change the weather. Therefore we should carefully consider adaptation to measured and verified climate change, while we involve ourselves as a responsible nation in global negotiations and action.

Obviously, we should not be leading that action but acting cautiously to protect our own interests and prosperity.

It is madness for us to undermine our cheap energy advantage to embark on a renewables-plus-storage experiment that no other country has dared to even try, when we know it cannot shift the global climate one iota. It is all pain for no gain.

Yet that is what this nation has done. So my question today is what has happened to our media, academia, political class and wider population so that it allows this debate and policy response to occur in a manner that is so divorced from reality?

Are we so complacent and overindulged that we accept post-rational debate to address our post-material concerns? Even when it is delivering material hardship to so many Australians and jeopardising our long-term economic security?

Should public debate accept absurd baseline propositions such as the idea that our energy transition sacrifice will improve the weather and reduce natural disasters, simply because they are being argued by major political groupings or the UN? Or should we not try to impose a dose of reality and stick to the facts?

This feebleness of our public debate has telling ramifications – there is no way this country could have embarked on the risky, expensive and doomed renewables-plus-storage experiment if policies and prognostications had been subject to proper scrutiny and debate.

Our media is now so polarised that the climate activists of Labor, the Greens and the teals are able to ensure their nonsensical advocacy is never challenged, and the green-left media, led by the publicly funded ABC, leads the charge in spreading misinformation.

Clearly, we are not as clever as we think. Our children need us to wise up.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/facts-at-a-premium-in-blustery-climate-debate/news-story/cc9e6f52afd7f611e431ab98b3b4a19b

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Who cares about the sisterhood when you look cute in a keffiyeh!

Gemma Tognini

A lot can happen in nine months. In some countries (definitely not Australia) you could build a small house. A baby can go from crawling and curious to teetering around on two small feet, suddenly and terrifyingly mobile. A gangly teenage boy can become, seemingly before his parents’ eyes, a young man.

And, the most obvious of all, a woman can become pregnant and give birth.

There are five young Israeli women in their late teens who have been hostage for this length of time.

I want to remind you that in a highly disturbing video released a few months ago, their captors were filmed saying these chilling words: “These are the women who can get pregnant. These are the Zionists.” And then: “You are very beautiful.”

We don’t know if these young women are pregnant but people fear that is what has happened.

Don’t like to think about it? Neither do their parents. Neither do their siblings and friends. Neither do I. But I’m going to insist we do because somehow it feels like much of Australia and the world has become shamefully comfortable with the fact these young women are still being held hostage.

We’ve been comfortable with the obfuscation and the whataboutism that says look the other way. Well, I’m not comfortable with it. And I want to make you as uncomfortable as I can.

We know if any of these young women were an Australian citizen they’d be collateral damage. That much is clear. If Australian women were being kept hostage in Gaza, being sexually abused and paraded around for the world to see like bargaining chips, Hamas would be in receipt of a very stern word salad.

Australia’s current government wouldn’t have the international clout or the ticker to rescue our own. It’s easy indeed to call for calm and suggest a two-state solution (that is, a reward for effort to the terrorists) when you’re safe and uninvested on the other side of the planet.

Few here outside the Jewish community speak of these young women and the other hostages any more. In the context of the ongoing dialogue about women’s safety and broader gendered violence, the most complicit in their silence are Australia’s feminists.

They’ve lost their tongue when it comes to these young women. When it comes to the sexual violence of October 7 last year, the weaponisation of sex during this conflict, they’ve had nothing to say except attempting to legitimise the regime that perpetrated this evil.

Is modern feminism dead? And if not yet, why not? Surely it’s time to end the charade that is third-wave feminism. It is nothing but a frenemy at best to women.

Modern feminists in Australia and elsewhere are, by their silence and invisibility, OK with young female hostages in Gaza. They are, for the most part, invisible on Iran.

They shout “From the river to the sea” without so much of a word about what life is like for women under Hamas’s strict sharia law.

I wrote about those inconvenient truths back in December. Under sharia, and in Gaza under Hamas, a woman’s testimony is legally worth half a man’s. If she can get a divorce, she has to pay her ex-husband for it. Intra-family sexual violence is legal and justified.

As I said back then: feminists, when you’re throwing your fist in the air and yelling “From the river to the sea”, you’re championing a regime that says it’s OK for a father to rape or beat his daughter. A son is legally permitted to abuse his mother.

But none of this matters if you look cute in a keffiyeh.

Third-wave feminists have had nothing to say on the butchering of Christian women in the Plateau region of Nigeria. And, closer to home, where have they all gone since the voice to parliament was rejected by most Australians?

The plague of family and domestic violence. Terrible, systemic disadvantage that disproportionately affects Indigenous women hasn’t gone anywhere. It has not magically disappeared because the government threw its hands up after the failed referendum. The problems are still there. The lack of virtue to signal seems directly proportional to the silence of modern feminists when it comes to all of these issues.

They pick and choose their causes and their champions. The right kind of woman versus the wrong kind.

Melania Trump, for example, is fair game. Her choice in husband is none of my concern but the feminist, leftist narrative around her and her marriage is laughable. Compare this with how Hillary Clinton is feted and adored as some kind of icon for empowered women. As if her husband weren’t caught bonking the intern in the Oval Office behind his wife’s back, then lying about it to America and the world.

One of the worst things about that whole grubby situation was that Monica Lewinsky’s life suffered the most. Where were the feminists then? Talk about a power imbalance. Bill Clinton should never have been able to show his face again. Hillary was never judged for staying in that marriage.

Gosh, it must be exhausting being consistently caught in your own hypocrisy. I could write reams about this subject. Truly, I could.

I’ve shared before that the world I grew up in was gender blind. As a child, my Nonna worked full time. My Zia too. My mum went back to work when my brother and I were closer to high school, but that wasn’t a choice made out of victimhood, it was about purpose over preference. Nobody needed to tell me women could do anything. I saw it every day. Nobody needed to tell me that choosing to be a mum for a while, then go back to work (if the circumstances of life allowed it) was a beautiful and worthy sacrifice. I saw that in my mother.

That being said, I was well aware of the huge gender and opportunity pay disparity because we spoke about it at home and as a family more broadly.

I’ve experienced that too in my previous career and have shared openly about that. I say all of that by way of context and to say gently that, to me, modern feminism has lost sight of the sacrifices women in previous generations made. It has conveniently forgotten that we ladies today, of all ages, are standing on the shoulder pads of giants. Women who went before us and fought for things of substance.

That’s not to say, well gals, this is as good as it gets. What I am definitely saying is that we must not lose sight of the fact feminism was never about picking and choosing which women were supported, heard and fought for. It was always about women being empowered to live the lives of their choosing. About saying no woman should be taken and held hostage. Not being judged for the men they marry or divorce or choose not to marry. And I will say this until I’m blue in the face. Men are not the enemy. We are better together, always.

Those young women chained up in Gaza, suffering god knows what. They are being kept prisoner. They have been held for close to a year and modern feminists at the UN, in Australia and elsewhere have shamefully turned the other way. Have become OK with it. They can protest all they like but their silence betrays them.

Modern feminism is a cheap imitation of the real thing. It’s not about equality, it’s about revenge. It’s not about women for women. It’s what infatuation is to love, what a one-night stand is to a healthy marriage. If it’s not dead yet, the sooner and the significantly better off we’ll be.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/who-cares-about-the-sisterhood-when-you-look-cute-in-a-keffiyeh/news-story/8a2cc58f3347cc8f5e79b4383c276606

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Green feels chop over Labor deals: For New South Wales Labor, green morality trumps forestry

Last month, 15 timber harvesting operations were suspended by the NSW timber industry controller Forestry Corporation. The Environment Protection Authority changed the habitat protection rules for the endangered greater gliders, making timber harvesting illegal.

Environmental activists have deployed a Victorian-style lawfare in an effort to shut down native timber production. But no amount of marsupial propaganda masks the human toll inflicted by the government’s betrayal.

Despite the NSW timber industry having more teeth than its Victorian counterparts and some sharp operators like ex-Labor Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, there is limited political interest in the arguments for sustainable management, homes, and sovereign capacity.

Activist environmentalists are cunning; having crippled the Victorian timber industry, they have worked out a successful model and are now replicating it in NSW. They take legal action against government bodies that trigger ‘stop work’ orders. This forces businesses to suffer death by attrition – court actions take years to resolve, and even if they are successful, few businesses are left, and fewer financial institutions are willing to back them.

Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty barely rated a whimper when responding to the crisis, stating that her government was ‘committed to delivering the right balance between protecting the environment and sustaining our state forests’. As to what that means, who knows?!

The Australian Forestry Products Association CEO James Jooste called for an intervention into dispute resolution three months ago, likely knowing full well the impact of the strategy.

‘We need a better resolution-dispute mechanism so we’re not spending six months out of our forests where we have no environmental outcomes and no productive outcomes,’ he said.

This fell on deaf ears, with neither the Minister for Agriculture, Tara Moriarty, nor the Minister for Natural Resources, Courtney Houssos, offering a solution. A surprising betrayal considering Minister Houssos’ commitment prior to the NSW election, where she promised:

‘No net job losses and an independent skills audit to guide investment and incentives and encourage new economic opportunities in the forestry industry.’

The truth is Labor cannot be trusted on forestry. The party has been overrun by inner-city greens, while the political hard-heads of old Labor are too weak to stand up for their traditional base.

This should not be the story for native forestry. The government should ensure that environmental activists cannot abuse the court process. If regulations need to change, then do so in a consultative manner over a period of time. Anything less is a calculated betrayal.

If Labor wants to close the book on native forestry, they should do so with an industry transition over decades, not weeks. Chile and Uruguay fought deforestation by investing in hardwood plantations; today, they have a thriving industry exporting Australian timber species, Eucalyptus Grandis, to the world. The question NSW Labor should be asking is, why can’t we?

Political parties on the centre-left have become unreliable for industry, because the unions which founded them are no longer run by workers. And as a result Green morality has defined many industries as immoral and destructive.

Blaming environmental activists for the final nail in the industry’s coffin is easy, but frankly, the timber industry helped build the box. Over the past decade, industry groups and unions ignored the signposts. Emotive and targeted messaging changed public opinion against the forestry industry, such that ultimately, dead koalas became more powerful than thousands of jobs and millions of homes.

If the industry wants to survive in Queensland, South Australia, and Tasmania, it must make an ongoing effort to change its reputation. This requires sharp and consistent communication to make the case for the importance of timber products to our economy, a demonstration of genuine outcome-driven conservation, and a long-term plan for industry transition.

Several industry organisations are already seeing the light on this, but without the long-term bipartisan backing of government, it may all be too little too late.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/green-feels-chop-over-labor-deals/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Restoring the presumption of innocence -- particularly for men

Bettina Arndt

For a nation that used to pride itself on hosting festivals of ‘dangerous ideas’, there has certainly been a ridiculous amount of protest and outrage regarding the innocuous-sounding Restoring the Presumption of Innocence conference.

It seems no one is allowed to talk publicly about how a vital legal principle – the presumption of innocence – has been undermined by the sisterhood’s long and successful ideological effort to tilt the justice system in favour of alleged victims.

Bruce Lehrmann and his ‘trial by media’ was originally intended as the headline act, but this promoted a petition calling on the local council to prevent the discussion going forward ‘before it causes any further harm or damage to the victim survivor community’. A recent judgment against Lehrmann meant he had to withdraw from the event to continue his legal battle.

The conference lives on, having been moved to August 31.

If you believe in the presumption of innocence and would like to hear law professors, criminal lawyers, political commentators, and other experts speak to the issue, you can book your tickets here.

It will be held in Rushcutters Bay, but it says a great deal about the childish nature of progressive culture that the exact details of the location and the identities of some of the well-known speakers are being kept secret until closer to the event.

Welcome to Australia, where silence is guaranteed by the incessant harassment of cancel culture.

Considering Restoring the Presumption of Innocence will present evidence from eminently qualified academics, experts, statisticians, criminal lawyers, and doctors – it is absurd that activists would attempt to close it down.

Mind you, it’s easy to see why activists are nervous.

The truth about our justice system is a can of worms and there is plenty of evidence that something is going very wrong.

In the last year, six NSW District Court judges have spoken out about rape cases being pushed through to trial supported by insufficient evidence – leading to the Crown Prosecution office conducting an audit of all current sexual assault cases. In addition, there are plenty of outrageous stories that have made it to the press in recent years that do not pass ‘the pub test’ when it comes to public expectations of innocence, guilt, and evidence.

With the presumption of innocence under siege, it is the right time for a proper public discussion about what is going on here. Luckily there are many in the community concerned about the silencing of debate about these pivotal issues.

Restoring the Presumption of Innocence is being hosted by Australians for Science and Freedom, an organisation founded by concerned doctors, lawyers, and academics who objected to the government’s response to the pandemic. Readers may have been to other events hosted by them that centre around liberty and medical freedom. Now, they focus on broader goals, including encouraging ‘better institutions that embed respect for freedom and scientific approaches for society’s problems’.

The event is sponsored by Mothers of Sons, which is an organisation I helped to establish some years ago in which I brought together mothers wishing to expose the injustice suffered by their sons within the criminal and family courts. A number of the Mothers of Sons family members will be speaking at the conference, revealing the devastating impact that false allegations of sexual assault can have on the entire family – including a lasting financial and emotional cost.

There will also be some exciting mystery speakers – including a celebrity who has had his life destroyed by a #MeToo accusation.

False allegations are a key theme of this forum. A recent YouGov survey found that Australia has one of the highest rates of false allegations in the world, mostly related to family law disputes. Across the country, our police and our courts are drowning in unproven domestic violence accusations which, in NSW alone, take up 50-70 per cent of police time and 60 per cent of local court time.

Lawyers are now bracing for a tsunami of fresh allegations with the introduction of ‘coercive control’ into law for NSW (and Queensland to follow). Many lawyers believe this will open the floodgate for women to allege a partner has been emotionally controlling. Such an accusation may be enough to see him put in prison. Coercive control, as a criminal offence, is difficult to define, impossible to prove, and many believe it was designed as a weapon to be used against men.

The NSW government has launched a massive campaign on the topic, including publishing a list of those ‘most at risk’ from coercive control:

Funny that. This list cautions almost everyone, except ordinary, heterosexual blokes – ‘cisgender’ men, as the government literature calls them. Instead, these men are typecast as being overwhelmingly likely to be the perpetrators. Which is odd, considering the Australian Bureau of Statistics has acknowledged that men are just as likely as women to be victims of emotional abuse – defined using many of the same behaviours now listed as coercive control.

The government has released a flood of video material explaining coercive control where men are invariably featured as perpetrators. Yet the Restoring the Presumption of Innocence conference will hear from Australian men who have already fallen victim to coercive control within domestic relationships. These men were selected from nearly 1,000 local men who took part in the large international survey on male victims of coercive control run by the University of Central Lancashire. Their experiences represent the truth that our governments are so determined to bury.

There’ll be other truth-tellers at the conference, presenting evidence about all sorts of politically incorrect subjects – like research that shows false rape allegations are far more common than often claimed. And the international literature clearly demonstrating that most family violence involves both male and female perpetrators. And the data showing children are more at risk when dad is removed from the home.

Plenty to inform anyone with an interest in how social engineering is now unfairly targeting men and denying them fair treatment under the law. Yet conference organisers are keen to also attract parents of young men who are particularly vulnerable to false allegations. Many parents assume that they can keep their sons out of trouble by raising a good young man who treats women with respect and follows the rules on consent. It never occurs to them that he is still vulnerable if he is unlucky enough to get involved with a woman who becomes angry if he doesn’t want to become her boyfriend or has sex she later regrets.

This vital one-day conference will tell it as it is. Forewarned is forearmed.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/restoring-the-presumption-of-innocence/

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A pilot plant for Net Zero: Let’s use Canberra as the test case for green insanity

Viv Forbes

Both solar and wind energy have fatal flaws – solar stops when the sun goes down or if a cloud blocks the sun; wind fails if the wind is too strong or too weak. But every day we hear of some fantastic and expensive plan to keep the lights on when these unreliable energy twins stop working.

The latest thought bubble from Mr Bowen (the Australian Minister for Generating Blackouts) is for him to be able to drain the energy from electric car batteries to back up a failing grid. He suggests that batteries could also power the house or sell energy into the grid. (No doubt the government is already scheming on how to use smart technology to prevent homeowners from charging their own batteries when flicker power is fading.)

Bowen’s sole sensible comment was ‘electric cars are batteries on wheels’.

Batteries do not generate power. And when they are flat, they do not store power. Fancy trying to keep the lights on while recharging all those batteries with flicker-power; and imagine discovering your Tesla battery is flat when you need your car some frosty morning. You have just performed a public service – the power in your batteries was drained to cook suburban breakfasts and keep the early trains running!

People who bought an electric car for quiet mobility will suddenly find they were financing a cog in Bowen’s Blackout Insurance Plan.

Australia is an energy island – there are no handy extension cords to French nuclear power, Scandinavian hydro, Icelandic geothermal, or American natural gas. Maybe if we ever get that long extension cord from Darwin to Singapore we can organise a sub-station in Indonesia and import reliable coal-powered electricity from them?

Australia has abundant coal, gas, and uranium resources but exploiting these natural assets is demonised and blocked by red/green tape and law-fare. Most of our petroleum products are imported and we have a tiny stockpile of refined fuels. To undertake extensive oil and gas exploration in Australia we would need infinite patience, many lawyers, and very deep pockets.

So, like drunken teenagers in a stolen car on the wrong side of the road, we accelerate towards the green energy mirage – Net Zero by 2030.

We need to see a Net Zero pilot plant operating before we follow Pied Piper Bowen down this risky road. And we need to know the full cost.

Mr Bowen should declare Canberra the site of a Net Zero Pilot Plant. This city-state is ideally suited to host such a demonstration plant – it has well-defined boundaries with significant rural, urban, and industrial areas; its population and local politicians strongly support the green energy agenda; and every federal politician and Cabinet Minister visits regularly and can monitor progress of this important experiment.

Mr Bowen should be in charge and he should start by declaring a deadline of 2027 to stop all usage of coal, gas, and diesel electricity or heating within the Australian Capital Territory. To demonstrate the bona fides of this pilot plant it should be legislated now that all power lines bringing coal and gas power into the ACT should be cut no later than December 2026.

Most Canberra residents are well paid so he should mandate that the roof of every residence or factory must be covered with solar panels, with battery-powered cars in the garage and backup batteries on every veranda.

Canberra also has plenty of hills to host wind turbines – they could also replace that massive flagpole on Parliament House with a large wind turbine. (They should also insist that the wind companies fund a permanent veterinary station nearby to treat injured birds and bats.)

There is also a lot of green space and parkland in ACT – these can host their quota of solar panels, all angled correctly to maximise collections from the far northern sun. Moving the massive and controversial Wallaroo Solar Factory planned for the Yass Valley into nearby ACT will kick-start Canberra’s green revolution. Pet goats must be encouraged to keep the grass tidy under all those panels.

Burning gas or wood within ACT should be banned – Mr Bowen could get Twiggy to build a floating green hydrogen generator on Lake Burley Griffin. This will provide locally-generated green fuel to use in their cars, taxis, barbecues, and lawnmowers.

Greens blame cattle for global warming – so there should be no beef products on sale in ACT – loyal Canberrans will surely welcome the chance to test a diet of mealworms, grass-fed goat meat, sun-dried sourdough, and almond milk. This will bring a personal green focus to the Net Zero crusade.

Canberra will need to streamline their approvals processes for all this green land use change. With Net Zero at stake we cannot allow eternal objections such as those which caused a 13-year delay for extensions to the Acland Coal Mine in Queensland. Just a brief notice in the classified ads in the Canberra Times should suffice in this race to save the planet.

Any Canberra residents who are sceptical that this green energy pilot plant will operate successfully should be free to import a small modular nuclear reactor for their suburb. Or move to Queensland.

The whole Anglosphere has been led into a green energy swamp – our enemies cannot believe their luck.

Hopefully, the trio of Trump, Farage, and Dutton will lead us back to safe ground before the Bowen blackouts arrive.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/a-pilot-plant-for-net-zero/

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The VERY surprising name - once touted as a future Prime Minister - rumoured to be among exodus from Team Albo

Linda Burney and Brendan O'Connor to quit politics But Jason Clare has also been suspiciously quiet...

Anthony Albanese reshuffling his frontbench may be akin to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

While HMAS Labor isn't guaranteed to sink, plenty of its senior ministers are contemplating grabbing life rafts and bailing on their political careers.

Longtime Labor hands, Indigenous Affairs minister Linda Burney and skills minister Brendan O'Connor, both announced their retirement on Thursday morning.

But there is also speculation that education minister Jason Clare could make it a triumvirate of cabinet ministers who pull the pin.

Such pre-election announcements would force major changes to Albo's ministry, giving him the chance to also reshuffle the likes of Clare O'Neil and Andrew Giles out of the home affairs and immigration portfolios, where they have presided over bungles and failures.

Meanwhile those looking to fight on and contest the next election are already hitting the campaign hustings, in sharp contrast to some who are not - a lead indicator of who is staying and who is going.

Western Sydney MPs Tony Burke and Ed Husic have started posting examples of their local community work on social media, not something either Cabinet minister has done in recent months.

Clare's community presence remains visibly absent, adding to speculation that he might be a surprise departure at just 52 years of age.

The official Labor Party campaign spokesperson from the last election, Clare holds the seat of Blaxland once held by former PM Paul Keating.

Long touted as a future Labor leader himself, Clare’s political career hasn’t met the lofty expectations many had for him.

Sources close to Clare say that if he does leave politics now it is because he sees himself as still young enough to embark on a second career outside of politics. Perhaps in the private sector.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13669811/PETER-VAN-ONSELEN-surprising-touted-future-Prime-Minister-rumoured-quitting-Team-Albo-PM-plans-major-shake-up.html

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Fast-food plea: hold the penalties

The Australian Industry Group will use the Fair Work review of part-time employment to push for a new clause in the fast-food and retail awards that would remove automatic access to overtime payments if a part-timer worked more hours than initially agreed.

Under the proposal, the clause could only be activated by agreement between the employer and employee. Employers said the current restrictions in the two awards meant they often had to employ casuals or labour hire in place of part-timers, and the new clause would give extra pay to part-timers if they were happy to work additional hours.

Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said most awards contained clauses governing part-time employment that were far too complex and restrictive, with employers forced to engage staff as casual workers rather than on a permanent part-time basis.

“Ai Group has proposed that awards be varied to make it easier for employers to offer part-time workers additional hours without facing the need to pay penalty rates, where an employee agrees,” he told The Australian.

“The practical reality is that many part-time employees would value the opportunity to earn ­additional income from working extra hours from time to time, where an employer can offer it.”

He said the “sensible” change would greatly increase permanent employment opportunities across a range of industries.

“We can’t allow union mania for rigid workplace rules and regulation to undermine a legitimate form of employment that has worked well for employers and employees for decades,” he said.

“At a time of a cost-of-living crisis, the ability to provide ­additional work when it is available to the part-time workforce without major additional costs and restrictions should be a priority for the workplace relations system.”

ACTU president Michele O’Neil hit back at the employer claims, saying unions would ­oppose the business lobby push.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/fastfood-plea-hold-the-penalties/news-story/252912b87e1ae0733e1b828a7160c8cf

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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