Australian Politics
Doctors are calling for tougher regulation of the chemical BPA amid health harms
They are not looking at what the Florey researchers themselves said. I quote:
“I do want to stress it’s not the cause of autism,”
etc.
Detailed debunking of the Florey-based claims here:
https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2024/08/bpa-plastic-chemicals-in-womb-have-been.html
The nation’s top doctors’ group has called for an overhaul of plastics regulation in Australia as growing evidence indicates that neuroendocrine-disrupting chemicals found in disposable water bottles, food containers, canned food packaging and cosmetics are linked with the development of autism.
Groundbreaking research published by Melbourne’s Florey Institute this week found children with low levels of a key brain enzyme who were born to mothers with higher levels of plastic chemicals in their wombs were six times more likely to develop autism by the time they were a teenager.
The study is the most extensive undertaken on the connection between prenatal exposure to the plastic chemical bisphenol A and the development of autism in children worldwide, and for the first time established a biological pathway between the substance and autism spectrum disorder.
BPA can disrupt the body’s hormonal balance and spark epigenetic changes that may be associated with a wide range of diseases, including cancer.
The study found that BPA suppresses a brain enzyme called aromatase – particularly important for boys’ development – and is associated with anatomical, neurological and behavioural changes in male mice that may be consistent with autism spectrum disorder.
The Florey study has prompted scrutiny on Australia’s regulation of BPA, which is significantly more lax than tough revised European limits recommended following a scientific review by the European Food Safety Authority that declared BPA “a health concern for consumers across all age groups”.
The EFSA said in February that its review considered “a vast quantity of scientific publications, including over 800 new studies published since January 2013”.
The European regulator slashed the tolerable daily intake of BPA in February this year to 0.2 nanograms per kg of body weight, and in June a European Commission member states expert committee voted in support of a proposal to ban some bisphenols, including BPA, in food contact materials.
The ban would cover plastic and coated packaging and other types of products like food processing equipment. Australia does not have a mandated TDI for BPA or maximum levels in the Food Standards Code.
Australian regulator Food Standards Australia New Zealand says there are no safety concerns regarding BPA at the levels people are exposed to. In 2010, it initiated a voluntary industry code to remove BPA from baby bottles.
The Australian Medical Association along with leading Australian fertility experts and endocrinologists are calling for a review of Australia’s regulation of BPA in the light of the Florey research and the revised position in Europe.
“In Europe, authorities are considering banning BPAs in any surfaces that contact our food – that should shock all of us in Australia,” said AMA president Steve Robson, an obstetrician-gynaecologist and fertility specialist.
“FSANZ needs to have a good hard look at the protections proposed for Europeans. In view of the data it’s time that FSANZ considers stricter regulation to bring us in line with European standards.
“BPAs are so ubiquitous now that it’s difficult for us to find people who haven’t been exposed – that makes studies difficult. But the absence of evidence doesn’t mean there’s an absence of evidence of their effects.”
“BPAs disrupt the healthy function of our hormonal systems and that should be a huge concern. We have lines of evidence that they may reduce our fertility and with one child in every 18 in Australia an IVF baby, we absolutely have to take this very seriously. Links have also been drawn with breast cancer, which so often is hormone-dependent.”
The chair of the Division of Medicine at Austin Health, endocrinologist Jeffrey Zajac, also called for a review of Australia’s regulatory position. “It is clear some chemicals … do affect endocrine function, particularly in regards to fertility,” said Professor Zajac. “The link is difficult to prove, but one potential explanation is these chemicals. If there is evidence a particular level of chemical exposure has been shown rigorously to influence endocrine function, that’s a reason for regulating it.
“If our rules are different from Europe, it’s possible EU rules are something we ought to consider.”
Australia’s food regulator said it established mandated maximum levels for contaminants only when it had been determined there was a potential risk to public health that should be managed by a standard. “Since no public health and safety concerns have been established for Australian consumers, FSANZ has not established an maximum level,” a spokesperson said.
“While FSANZ will continue to monitor the emerging situation with respect to BPA, surveys undertaken in Australia have shown that very few foods contain detectable levels of BPA, and that the levels do not present a human health and safety concern.”
Responding to doctors’ concerns, the regulator noted that EFSA assessment included a significant number of human studies that investigated neurotoxicity and developmental neurotoxicity.
“EFSA concluded that the evidence examining children with exposure during pregnancy or post-natally did not suggest any endpoints related to neurodevelopment as critical for risk assessment,” the FSANZ spokesperson said. “Further where an association was observed it did not occur in more than one study and subsequent research failed to replicate the results.
“FSANZ has not yet had an opportunity to review the Florey paper but will consider the conclusions as part of the overall weight of evidence with respect to neurodevelopment as a critical endpoint for BPA risk assessment. FSANZ will undertake a review if new evidence indicates it is warranted.”
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Award-winning playwright Andrew Bovell calls for rethink on trigger warnings in wake of ‘cannibalism’ claim
Leading playwright Andrew Bovell felt “upset”, “confused” and “physically shocked” when he went to a production of his internationally acclaimed play, When The Rain Stops Falling, and heard a recorded trigger warning state the work portrayed cannibalism.
“I object to my work being depicted as something it isn’t,’’ Bovell said. He added that he found the warning – which revealed “all of the play’s secrets and reveals” just as the show was starting “absurd” and “extreme”.
The Edge of Darkness and Lantana screenwriter joked ruefully: “Maybe they should have issued a trigger warning about the trigger warnings.’’
Yet when the award-winning South Australian writer raised his concerns with the Flinders University Performing Arts Society, which staged his play in July, it “stood by (its) choice to associate the play with cannibalism’’.
The controversy concerns a scene in which a grieving character mixes the dead ashes of her lover into her soup and consumes them. In the foreground, a mother learns about the death of her son.
Bovell said that scene “is a beautiful image and speaks to the poetics of the moment’’ and symbolises the lover’s deep grief.
“All the more worrying, then, that this moment is now described as an act of cannibalism.’’
The Weekend Australian revealed to a startled Bovell that the same cannibalism content warning was used by Brisbane community theatre company Brisbane Arts Theatre, which also staged When The Rain Stops Falling this year.
Brisbane Arts Theatre describes itself as an “iconic, independent theatre company” and its warning about the drama said: “This play contains sensitive and disturbing themes including murder, cannibalism, and child sexual abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.’’
Bovell was told it was likely the Flinders University production copied that content warning, despite the fact that murder and child sex abuse are not directly depicted in the play.
When The Rain Stops Falling, a multi-generational family saga about secrets, betrayal and forgiveness, premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2008. It toured nationally and to London and New York, where it won five off-Broadway excellence awards and Time magazine named it the best new play of 2010.
Bovell said that despite the claims of the two content warnings, “we don’t see an act of child abuse (in the play). A key character is revealed as being a pedophile. We don’t see any child murdered but there is an insinuation that a child was killed. This (the recorded Flinders University warning) was a premature reveal of a shocking moment and its warnings went on (with) themes of child abandonment and so on … it was so absurd.’’
Bovell stressed he was otherwise happy with the Flinders production and has no interest in pursuing a generational dispute with younger theatre workers.
However, he felt it was time for theatre writers to “push back” against the escalating trigger warning trend in theatre, because such warnings were often inaccurate, contained spoilers and could damage a play’s reputation.
Bovell’s objections come as leading arts figures have spoken out about the escalating trend in Australian and UK theatre. The Weekend Australian recently reported how trigger warnings have been slapped on everything from a fake moth dying on stage to the Nazism theme in the family musical The Sound of Music.
Leading director Neil Armfield said they were a “pet hate’’, while Australian Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett said the growth of such warnings reflected “a lack of mutual respect” between artists and their audiences.
Bovell said he feared such warnings would “infantilise” audiences. He said that in future he may have to “check the trigger warnings before I agree to issuing the rights’’ to theatre companies.
The man who wrote The Secret River stage script was “heartened” by the overwhelmingly supportive response he received to a Facebook post outlining the dispute. On Facebook, actor and writer Noel Hodda said trigger warnings were “anti-theatre” while Rachel Healy, former co-director of the Adelaide Festival, told him: “I would definitely encourage you to push back (against the two content warnings).”
Director Merrilee Mills, who has directed When The Rain Stops Falling, said she was “horrified” by Bovell’s experience, while singer Bernadette Robinson asked: “What’s the point of going to theatre if not to be exhilarated … shocked, challenged? Really, I’m against (trigger warnings).’’
But Brisbane Arts Theatre president Paje Battilana said the drama company puts it content warning on its website and on signs in their venue because “we, like all businesses in our current world climate, do everything we can to ensure the safety of our audiences; this includes mental and emotional safety.”
Asked if the company consulted playwrights about content warnings to ensure they were accurate, Battilana replied: “Unfortunately we rarely have access to playwrights, as plays’ rights are acquired through distributors.’’
Even though The Weekend Australian informed the company about Bovell’s concerns on Thursday, the contentious content warning remained on its website on Friday.
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Leftist racism undimmed
Neil Brown
This is the story of the column I almost wrote, but which was overtaken by events. It all started a few weeks ago with a well-placed leak that the Albanese government was moving on from the disastrous result of its failed referendum on the racist Voice. The Voice was, of course, only Plan A of its triple-headed monster of Voice, Makarrata and Treaty. The entire plan was to elevate one race above all others, denigrate European settlement, vastly expand government spending on bureaucracy, consultants and conferences and give us a dose of enforced wallowing in grief and guilt about being born or having migrated here.
The leak, then, was that the government was going to move on to Plan B: the Makarrata, otherwise known as truth-telling. That should have given us due warning by itself. When governments and their lackies – in the Aboriginal industry and anywhere else – start talking about truth-telling, we know that what they actually mean is lying. As with the eponymous Department of Truth immortalised in George Orwell’s 1984, the plan was to set up another bureaucracy whose only role was to rewrite history, paint a story of false oppression and deny the immense value of settlement that has been given to Australia’s Aboriginals since its foundation.
My response to this proposed twaddle, in the column I was going to write, was to issue a challenge to oppose the Makarrata: to get ready to fight against this unwarranted expansion of the powers of the federal government; get ready to argue against the coming waste of vast sums of money and, above all; to reignite the argument that had been so successful in the anti-Voice campaign, that we simply do not want our public policy based on race, we do not want more power being given to unelected officials and we do not want any more denigration of non-Aboriginal Australians.
But, lo and behold, the leak has miraculously faded away and it is now clear that Albanese has got cold feet about setting up a Makarrata as the next step on from the Voice. How ironic it is that his foray into truth-telling should begin with a lie! His cringe-making speech to the Garma festival tells us that after all the hype, after all the promises to implement the whole Uluru Statement word for word, as he promised on the very night of his election, we are not going to have one Makarrata, or at least not yet, and that what we will have instead is a series of little ones, mini-Makarratas, where there will be lots of coming together, broad concepts and lots of dialogue. Or, as one of his more trenchant Aboriginal critics put it, a ‘vague vibe (and) casual conversations’. The vibe, apparently, is Albanese’s next big thing.
This new proposal is a threat that has to be opposed and defeated. In fact, it is a far more substantial threat than the Voice, as it will be set up simply by government fiat and will not be subject to approval by the people at a referendum, which saved us from the Voice. Moreover, at least with the Makarrata, there was going to be a body that you could identify and where the wild allegations and re-writing of history that would inevitably be made would be open to cross-examination and competing evidence. But the mini-Makarattas will not be subject to any such restraints. They will essentially be private meetings where federal officials will agree to newly funded programs, new powers for so-called representatives of the Aboriginal people and more symbols and ceremonies, if there could possibly be any more than we already have, and where we will continually be reminded that we live under a justly deserved cloud of guilt and shame.
And when you get down to the details that Albanese has condescended to give us, it is even more ludicrous. And closer to being a giant fraud. He says, first, that corporate Australia will have to step up and link arms with the Aboriginal movement. We all know what that means: compulsory and tokenistic appointments of Aboriginal directors and shareholders who will force companies into making decisions that favour only one race.
Next, Aboriginal enhancement will magically be advanced, he claims, by the government’s policies on climate change and the environment, policies that are in reality designed to stop industrial progress and development. First up, you can kiss good-bye to any hope of ever getting Woodside’s Browse gas field up and running.
Thirdly, we are told, the new mini-Makarratas will have to work in with the government’s new Nirvana of ‘Made in Australia’; surely every Australian would want to buy Australian, but what on earth will be the Aboriginal contribution to quantum computers, solar panels and AI and why, like everything that Albanese touches, does it have to be defined by race?
What, then, would be a better policy on Aboriginal affairs than Albanese’s racism? Here are a few policies that are not only based on sound principle, but (Liberal party, take notice!) would be very popular with the electorate:
– a National Declaration that we are one nation, not a collection of rival camps and tribes;
– the sole objective of Aboriginal policy will be better outcomes and results;
– an end to race-based policies and funding;
– no treaties between the nation and its own citizens;
– no more empty gestures like comedic public welcome to country and smoking ceremonies;
– we will celebrate Australia Day on 26 January;
– one Australian national flag, the one we already have;
– the ABC will use the real and official names of cities and regions, not Dreamtime fantasies, as the source of news;
– and the one guiding principle that will influence all government decisions from now on will be to encourage the strength of individual Australians of whatever race or colour, and provide them with real incentives to improve their standard of living. And their happiness.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/brown-study-294/
*************************************************Alice Springs police arrest the whistle-blower
Principal Gavin Morris warned of cops’ inaction, days before his shock arrest
A week before his shock arrest on Thursday for allegedly physically assaulting five young children, Gavin Morris recorded an interview in which he did not hold back.
Filmed on a phone on the grounds of Yipirinya School in Alice Springs, where Dr Morris has been the outspoken principal for the past three years, he told of his fears of an unfolding child protection crisis.
Dr Morris said he believed a man with access to some of the nation’s most vulnerable children needed to be thoroughly investigated over a raft of serious allegations raised by students and staff.
He had made a report to police about the man, an entrenched community figure, involving a number of children, and he and other staff and students were interviewed by detectives and gave statements.
“What we saw around that cluster of disclosures last year was a real spike in youth crime and anti-social behaviour targeted at our school,” Dr Morris said.
“The students involved, who stole buses, who drove around the community, put themselves at harm and the broader community in danger, they were trying to tell us something. They were saying ‘we want you to listen, you aren’t taking action, we shared our stories, we trusted you with our most vulnerable stories’.”
In the interview with The Weekend Australian on August 1, Dr Morris was frustrated by what he saw as a lack of action by Northern Territory police and the Territory Families department about the serious allegations.
?With inquiries still ongoing into the concerns, Dr Morris’s comments had not been aired when he was hauled into the Alice Springs police watch-house and charged.
NT education minister Mark Monaghan said Friday he was advised Dr Morris had been stood down on full pay by the school council.
Dr Morris’s registration as a teacher “won’t be a question at the moment … We will wait for any … processes to take place before we take any action, if we do indeed take any action.”
The former NRL referee with a PhD in Aboriginal trauma and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education has rarely been far from either the media spotlight or a fight in his time at Yipirinya.
His series of running battles have generally centred on dire living conditions in Aboriginal town camps in Alice Springs, which he says is a central cause of a crime wave that has led to two recent government-imposed curfews.
It has earned Dr Morris, 46, both powerful friends and powerful enemies, some of the latter suspecting him of political ambitions.
But in no battle have the stakes been personally higher than the one he now faces for his livelihood, career and reputation.
Allegations against Dr Morris are understood to revolve around incidents of vandalism or trouble at the school, where the 375 enrolled students are taught in English and four Aboriginal languages.
One incident allegedly involves Dr Morris restraining children after windows had been kicked in and smashed, and another is alleged to have happened after paint was smeared throughout a room. Police said they had started looking at him only in late June.
The arrest of the principal leaked out when he was still in the watch-house waiting to be charged.
It was followed by two media releases from police and led to a storm of publicity, including commentary from NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler, two weeks out from a Territory election that is expected to be dominated by crime.
In Alice Springs, break-ins, hold-ups, car thefts, armed robberies and assaults involving children as young as eight are being documented daily on mainstream and social media, and some residents are in fear in their own homes, workplaces and public spaces.
Police initially announced “six victims” of Dr Morris were aged between eight and 13 “at the time of the assaults”, which were alleged to have occurred on “multiple separate occasions in 2023”. A police statement later reduced that to five counts of aggravated assault.
Dr Morris serves on the Alice Springs Town Council and took leave from his job as a lecturer at Charles Darwin University to lead Yipirinya. He spent hours in a cell waiting to be processed before being bailed.
Around the same time, police in Alice Springs had moved against another man in the community, laying a charge that flew entirely under the radar.
On Wednesday, July 31, this second, longstanding member of the community was served by police with a notice to appear in court on a charge of aggravated assault against a 13-year-old girl.
The 73-year-old has been accused of grabbing the girl by the arm and trying to drag her out of a car after a Sunday church service at the Aboriginal town camp known as Old Timers in February last year. He was not arrested or taken to the watch-house, and there were no public police statements, political commentary or any media coverage, unlike in Dr Morris’s case.
The Weekend Australian discovered the charge only after coincidentally approaching the ageing community figure at his home later that day to ask him about concerns in Alice Springs over his interactions with children.
Before being told what the concerns involved, the man replied: “We take them out for bush trips. I never molest them. I never touch them.”
Asked if someone had raised allegations of that type with him before, he said: “No. I love the kids. It’d be false accusations.”
He then volunteered that two police officers arrived at his home that morning and gave him a notice to appear in court in September for aggravated assault.
The officers “didn’t think it was very serious at all” and he was confident nothing would come of the charge.
He had “got angry” with a young girl who took other children away from town camp church services, he said. “I don’t think I ever touched her or anything. They’ve made a false accusation. She’s got some mental things. She’s caused trouble everywhere too,” he said.
Yipirinya School staff are among those who have been raising questions and concerns about the man, who has lived in Alice Springs and spent time in town camps for the past 40 years.
Dr Morris was talking to The Weekend Australian about these issues before his own arrest.
The principal said that in August last year, after a series of alleged disclosures at the school about the community figure, he spoke to staff and then phoned the acting commander of the Northern Territory police southern region, James Gray-Spence.
“He (Spence) was in the school 10 minutes later, and that night I had two detectives at my place interviewing me for a couple of hours,” Dr Morris said.
“They’ve subsequently come and interviewed staff and students. But nothing’s happened. Our community is crying out to find out what’s going on.”
The Weekend Australian put it to the community figure who Dr Morris had been talking about, that among other things he had been accused of hitting children.
“I’ve never done that. What I’ve done is, when they muck up in (his vehicle) I’ve got a wooden spoon, just a tap on the hand. Because they’re swearing or fighting. Once they see me waving it, they straighten up. Or if they are real naughty, they might hide under the seat,” the man said.
The man has a current Ochre Card from the government that clears him to work with children, he said. He denied he was ever alone with children, saying he always had another adult present.
‘I’m looking after the kids for them. I’m feeding them. He’s a neglected kid.’ – Accused community figure
?However, only a day earlier, two Alice Springs residents say they saw him driving around in his vehicle with a young boy who should have been at school, with no other passengers.
Staunchly supported by some in the community including Aboriginal families he helps, the man said the allegations were “the devil’s work” and that he was not guilty of anything.
For an unknown reason he was being slandered and targeted as “payback”, he said. His cars had been stolen and written off, his home vandalised and two weeks ago a young boy he knew turned up at his home with a wheel spanner and “tried to kill me”.
He confirmed he had many interactions with children, from taking them swimming at the town pool to long drives to the isolated Ilparpa Claypans and Simpsons Gap. Regularly taking kids to McDonald’s and Hungry Jack’s, purchasing frozen drinks for children had become “one of my biggest expenses”, he said.
“Every Saturday we go out somewhere. I’m looking after the kids for them. I’m feeding them.
“The reason I take kids out is because I feel for them. They’re bored at the camps and hungry. I’ll get (a mother) and we’ll take them out and give them a treat.”
The man could not think of a reason the children he said he was helping were targeting him with home invasions and robberies.
“I know who’s done it. They have nothing against me, it’s just the stuff that they do,” he said.
When pressed to answer why he insisted he was never alone with children, he became angry, saying: “Get out.”
Then he calmed down and decided to continue to talk.
“If I have kids, it’s for their welfare, to feed them, look after them,” he said. “They’re making it up to condemn me, to slander me, because I’m a man of god, standing up for truth. The devil’s working, the enemy’s working.”
Residents say that over the past two years they have made a series of reports to the Northern Territory government about the community figure.
In the Territory, it’s legally required to report incidents of suspected child harm or abuse.
But the efforts of authorities so far have not been able to assuage doubts in the community that he is fit to have access to highly at-risk children.
“My experience has been that you make a phone call to Territory Families, through mandatory reporting, and you don’t see immediate action,” Dr Morris said.
“You certainly don’t get any follow-up in terms of whether something has been followed through or not.
“A lot of my staff come back to me dismayed. In this instance, for example, there were many comments made from the Territory Families representative that this story is well known.”
At about the same time that police were called to Yipirinya about the community figure last year, students broke into their school three times.
One group entered the office block, smashed open a key safe, randomly vandalised equipment and stole a vehicle.
In a separate incident last August, five children aged 10 to 12 ploughed a stolen car into a tree at 80km/h, none of them wearing seatbelts. Local residents say it was the community figure’s car.
The children were wheeled into hospital in neck braces and with green whistles for pain relief. Medical staff said they were lucky to be alive, Dr Morris said.
“It’s not normal to have 10, 12, 14-year-olds breaking into businesses and homes because they’re trying to get a message across,” the principal said before his arrest.
“I wouldn’t put my name and my face on the line here, if I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced that there’s a very serious story here that needs to be, firstly, uncovered and secondly, actioned upon.”
In a statement on Friday, the school council said it was “deeply concerned” by the serious allegations levelled against Morris and that “the safety, wellbeing and education of our students is our highest priority”.
Both the principal and the separate community figure now face battles to clear their names.
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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