Australian Politics
Monday, July 22, 2024
The Pell case is another one that should never have even been prosecuted
An even shakier case than in the Brittany Higgins debacle. Higgins was a beneficiary of pro-feminist prejudices. Pell was a victim of anti-Catholic prejudice
The Pell case was a serious miscarriage of justice. So far there has been no inquiry into the actions of the police or how the legal system managed to get this so wrong, and worst of all there seems to be no mood in Victoria for a serious inquiry into Pell’s case.
However, as Daniel Andrews made pretty clear, the presumption of innocence didn’t even seem to apply in cases such as the cardinal’s, with the then Victorian premier’s “we hear you and believe you” remark after the High Court judgment, meaning all complainants are “victims”.
Nevertheless, many commentators and distinguished legal experts have called for such an inquiry, not the least of whom is former High Court justice Michael Kirby, who has said basic evidence in the case showed “a very serious doubt was raised as to cardinal Pell’s guilt”, adding: “Effective protections against miscarriages of justice must be there for all serious cases, even for a cardinal.”
So, what do the shenanigans in Rome have to do with any of this? Good question. The charges against the cardinal occurred close to the time he had alleged that corrupt forces within the Vatican had sought to stop his work in reforming the Catholic Church’s finances. Shortly afterwards, some of the people he had brought in from outside were sacked.
I saw him just after the police interviewed him in Rome and he was simply incredulous about the obvious attempts to fit him up, including about things that supposedly happened in Australia when he was overseas. He frankly dismissed the whole thing and told me he had more to worry about in Rome than those “clowns” in Victoria because he had “great faith in the Australian justice system”.
Nevertheless, Pell was found guilty in 2018. The Victorian Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in August 2019. While all this was happening the vast irregularities of the Vatican finances began to emerge. Archbishop Angelo Becciu fell under suspicion and has since been found guilty of embezzlement, complete with a telephone recording that emerged later saying after Pell’s conviction, “the way is now open for you”. So it seems there could have been a link between the prosecution of the cardinal and the financial misdeeds of clerics close to the Pope.
Or could there? What does any of this really matter to us?
There are several strands in modern-day Catholicism. There is the nominal Catholic, the everyday practising type (me) and then there are the real ultraconservatives. At that end of the spectrum are a growing number of Catholics who have been disappointed with the current papacy and the Pope’s pronouncements on everything from marriage to war and the calibre of candidates for the priesthood in seminaries. Pell was not a fan of the current papacy, so it is not hard to see how a conspiracy theory about Pell has flourished in some conservative milieus.
However, the fact remains for all Australians that the case against Pell should not have been prosecuted. The Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions rejected it three times. Even the magistrate in the committal hearing noted: “If a jury accepted the evidence of the Monsignor (Charles Portelli) and Mr Potter (Max Potter, the sacristan) … then a jury could not convict”. Pell was convicted on the say of one accuser with no corroborating evidence. The High Court went as far as stating that no jury acting “rationally” would not have found reasonable doubt. So why didn’t the jury act “rationally”?
Obviously, the main reason was the huge campaign instigated by the Victoria Police in concert with the ABC to denigrate the cardinal as a covert sexual predator. He was subject to a relentless campaign of persecution by the public broadcaster whose minions, Louise Milligan and Sarah Ferguson, were desperate to pin something, anything, on that man, even after the High Court had exonerated him: bizarre accusations about swimming pools, a libellous book, even nasty songs – all of it was aimed at the public.
The injustice Pell had to face in Victoria, not Rome, is where the focus should lie. Each time I met the cardinal and even after he was convicted and had to go to prison, he said he had great faith in the Australian legal system. It is a great pity that faith was so sorely tested and that some of the powers that be did not have the same faith.
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Why some parents have swapped school for homeschooling
Heidi Ryan says it took until her eldest child reached year 11 to realise mainstream school was doing her three children more harm than good.
So she turned to homeschooling.
Like her two older children, now 24 and 20, her youngest daughter, 16, is autistic. Each struggled with the teaching style at school and so, six years ago, Ryan decided to become both teacher and mother.
“It was the best thing we ever did,” she said. “For their mental health, us as a family and for their understanding of who they are and how they learn.”
She is one of a growing number of “accidental homeschoolers” who now account for about 85 per cent of the sector, according to Queensland University of Technology education researcher Dr Rebecca English.
“These are families who never intended to homeschool but for reasons such as school refusal, neurodivergence, bullying or just having kids who are different prompted parents to look for alternatives,” she said.
A speech therapist, Ryan said not having to follow standardised assessments took the pressure off and allowed activities and subjects to be child-led. A fan of cosplay, Ryan has included wig styling in their lessons.
“We don’t do any formal assessment, I don’t quiz them on things. I can see and acknowledge their learning is happening in subtle ways.”
Ryan has used open university courses, online apps and programs from support organisations like the Home Education Network, and has tapped into parent-run groups, which organise excursions and other learning opportunities.
She made sure her children kept in contact with existing school friends and encouraged them to form new friendships through their homeschooling network and extracurricular activities, such as volleyball, archery, pottery, cosplay and tennis.
Once the domain of libertarians and Christian families, English said the impact of COVID restrictions on schools had proved a tipping point for many families.
“It was like a risk-free trial,” English said of enforced homeschooling under COVID restrictions. “People got a taste of how family life could be organised, and once they tried it many didn’t go back.”
Department of Education data shows the number of students being homeschooled jumped 112 per cent from 5333 in 2018 to more than 11,332 students in 2022.
As of June last year, there were 10,481 students registered. While it represents an 8 per cent decrease on 2022’s COVID-induced spike, data shows registrations have grown steadily since 2018.
“The numbers were tracking up anyway but COVID was a real shot in the arm,” English said.
Last year 59 per cent of homeschooled students were aged under 12, with the remainder aged 13 and over.
Families who chose to homeschool need to register with the Victorian Registrations and Qualifications Authority, which audits 10 per cent of homeschooling households a year. Parents are not required to follow a prescribed curriculum or provide progress reports, but they do need to submit lesson plans covering eight key learning areas.
If requirements of homeschooling are not met, the authority can cancel the homeschooling registration.
Kirsty James from the Home Education Network said homeschooling suited a range of students, particularly neurodiverse, disabled and high-performing students and those unable to attend mainstream schools.
“Some children with sensory issues can’t deal with noise or uniforms that are uncomfortable or scratchy, or they struggle with bright lighting,” James said. “When a child is in their home they are in an environment that is comfortable to them.”
Asked what she would have done if homeschooling wasn’t an option, Ryan pauses.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think we would have just pushed through because we wouldn’t have had a choice. We would’ve come out of the other end with a dislike of school and learning. Which is a bit sad.”
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Nuclear experts have refuted Labor’s claims about nuclear energy water use
ALL power stations vaporize a lot of water for cooling purposes
Leading nuclear experts have rejected Agriculture Minister Murray Watt’s claims that nuclear power stations would take water from farmers and put cropping and grazing land at risk of accidents.
State and territory agriculture ministers from around the country raised concerns on Thursday about potential effects of proposed nuclear power stations on farming land.
A joint statement issued ahead of the quarterly meeting of agriculture ministers called on the opposition to outline plans to protect land used for cropping and raising livestock in the event of an emergency.
Agriculture ministers or government representatives from Labor states endorsed the joint statement, but Tasmania, a Liberal state that is not home to a proposed nuclear reactor, was not included.
Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, speaking at The Australian’s Global Food Forum in Brisbane on Wednesday, said the Coalition’s plan to build nuclear plants on seven coal-fired power station sites in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia would take water from farmers.
Senator Watt on Thursday rejected Coalition claims that Labor was running a scare campaign, and cited parliamentary research showing there were 11,955 farms located within an 80km radius of the selected sites, requiring “expensive” risk mitigation plans.
“I think it’s about time the federal opposition provided some answers to Australia’s farmers and our ag sector, about where the water will come from, what would happen in the event of a nuclear accident, and what preparations they would be making with the agriculture sector to prepare for such an event,” he said.
“What are those 12,000 farmers going to be expected to do if we do have an accident, and what steps would they need to take to ensure that the food and fibre that they produce is safe?”
The claims have been refuted by nuclear engineering experts and Nationals leader David Littleproud, who accused Senator Watt of misunderstanding the science of nuclear energy production and the comparable rate of water usage between coal and nuclear power plants.
Nuclear engineer and advocate Tony Irwin, an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University, said new technologies meant reactors were safer than ever and could be set up for use with significantly less cooling water.
“Solar and wind farms have far more effects on farming in Australia than nuclear will ever have,” Dr Irwin told The Australian. “There’s far less impact from nuclear plants because they are on existing industrial sites … using existing cooling water supplies.
“I think Labor are getting a bit desperate … Wind and solar have definitely a part to play … but when you start taking farmland for solar and wind, that’s a bad idea.”
Dr Irwin said the concerns around nuclear accidents on farmland were unfounded.
“There’s always fallback plans for any sort of disaster,” he said.
Nationals MP Keith Pitt, a former water and resources minister, said Australians wanted a nuclear energy debate based on facts. “Nuclear reactors in Europe have been operational for decades in agricultural environments and coal-fired power stations already have significant water allocations and storage,” he said.
Minerals Council of Australia CEO Tania Constable said it was disappointing “misinformation” was being used to stir fear in regional communities.
“For decades, operating nuclear power stations have coexisted with productive agricultural regions throughout Europe and North America without any negative impact,” she said.
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Immigration has become a potent issue that lies beyond the traditional political divisions
Buried away in the British election results is a huge warning for Australia, made all the more relevant by the Senator Fatima Payman saga. On the face of it, the election was a triumph for British Labour, of course. It won over 65 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. But in electoral terms, it won only 34 per cent of the vote.
The Conservatives saw their vote plummet from 44 per cent to 24 per cent in just five years. But behind the facade of that result lurked the toxic issue of immigration and multiculturalism. It’s what the Americans like to call a “third rail” issue.
Across the English Channel, the French election was also a huge warning for Australia. In that election, the anti-immigration party of Marine Le Pen won more votes than any other political party although the parties of the centre and the left by collaborating each won more seats. Le Pen’s party won 37.3 per cent of the vote while the coalition of the left won 26.9 per cent. This was a huge vote against immigration and multiculturalism.
This same trend has been seen over the past year in the Netherlands and Italy and more importantly helps explain the Trump phenomenon in the United States. For a long time, commentators argued this rise in support for these hitherto fringe political movements was caused by globalisation: the loss of manufacturing jobs to China, the decline in living standards in traditional industrial towns, and so on.
There may be some truth in this. After all, centre-left and centre-right governments believe heavy manufacturing should be closed down because of the CO2 emissions it generates. Better to transfer those emissions to China and India. A lot of punters may think that policy is not just damaging to them but intellectually absurd. But still, that isn’t the main reason many people are shifting away from traditional parties.
The fundamental cause of this drift away from traditional political parties of the centre left and centre right is the way immigration and multiculturalism have been handled. It would be a mistake to think that in Britain, France, the Netherlands, the US and Italy the public are opposed to immigration. It’s not that simple. And it’s not that they object to people because of their colour. Immigration is not so much the issue as two aspects of it. The first is unregulated immigration. Tens of thousands of migrants have been pouring into Europe and America without approval, normally courtesy of people-smugglers.
Unregulated immigration is deeply unpopular. And the second issue is those migrants who fail to integrate into society. Multiracialism is one thing but the term multiculturalism, which we all praise, denies the existence of cultural norms that bind a society together. That is resented and creates tensions and divisions.
In France and the UK, some migrants have congregated very heavily in particular suburbs of major cities, turning those suburbs into what appears to more traditional people little more than foreign enclaves.
The people within those enclaves are often alienated from the rest of society by virtue of their physical isolation. The enclaves have their own schools, religious institutions, shops and so on. In recent elections, these concentrations of migrants have had an alarming effect on electoral outcomes.
In the recent UK election, in constituencies where at least 40 per cent of people are Muslims, the Labour vote actually declined from the 2019 election by nearly 34 per cent! In constituencies where Muslims made up between 10 and 20 per cent of the vote, Labour’s vote fell by 6.8 per cent, whereas in constituencies where Muslims accounted for less than 10 per cent of the electorate, Labour increased its vote by an average of 3 per cent. In a general election that was a triumph for the Labour Party it nevertheless lost five seats to Muslim activist independents.
This recent practice of migrants or the descendants of migrants of a particular religious persuasion voting en bloc – in this case on the issue of the Hamas-induced war in Gaza – has alarmed not just the Labour Party but the broader British population. But for immigration and multiculturalism to be embraced, and for a country successfully to hold together as an entity, there have to be some binding principles and attitudes that define the nation. Without that, the nation will atomise.
As British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton wrote: “We, like everyone else, depend upon a shared culture for our security, our prosperity and our freedom … we can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside or against it.” Three days after the election, former Labour prime minister Tony Blair gave some stark advice to the new government. He said new Prime Minister Keir Starmer “needs a plan to control immigration” and made the very simple point: “If we don’t have rules, we get prejudices.” That’s exactly right.
In the US this issue is also very potent and one of the driving forces of former president Donald Trump’s popularity. It is claimed that some 10 million illegal migrants have entered the US since President Joe Biden was elected. That figure may be a bit of an exaggeration, but still, the problem of illegals pouring over the Mexican border is huge.
Within the US multiculturalism is embraced and accepted. In the main. But like anything, it can be taken too far. To use it as a tool by specific ethnic groups to denigrate the nation that has welcomed them, to pour scorn on its history and to appear supportive of its adversaries is politically inflammatory. It is also disrespectful of the country that has welcomed these people to its shores.
So what about our own country? We have to be careful. Senator Payman was elected on a Labor Party ticket and has resigned from that party over the issue of a foreign war in which Australia is not involved. If our politics is going to descend into this kind of ethnic conflict, then it’s going to be hard to keep our country together.
But don’t worry, the punters won’t tolerate that and will start voting with greater enthusiasm for fringe political movements if our two mainstream parties don’t just control immigration – the Howard government explained all that many years ago – but make sure there are core principles that hold our country together. We cannot afford to allow a hugely successful country to atomise.
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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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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
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