Australian Politics
Greenie antisemitism
Police were called to a Sydney council chambers on Tuesday night after a Greens-led pro-Palestine protest turned ugly, forcing the abandonment of the meeting amid safety concerns after Jewish speakers were targeted, before officers escorted out staff and councillors.
The protest, co-organised by Inner West Greens councillor Dylan Griffiths, had been weeks in the making and designed to whip up frenzied support for his Boycott, Divest, Sanction motion, described previously as a “campaign ploy” before September’s local government elections.
It comes after Anthony Albanese’s criticism of the party’s inflammatory rhetoric, and The Australian’s special report, ‘Greens Extremes’ which revealed how its grassroots members had prioritised “revolution” over rates, roads and rubbish at a council level.
About 100 protesters took to the Inner West council’s final pre-election meeting on Tuesday in Ashfield, which was adjourned three times due to the partisan crowd, before eventually being abandoned.
Decked in keffiyehs, speakers – all of whom were allowed to speak by Labor mayor Darcy Byrne, a break in protocol in an olive-branch move – included those behind the Prime Minister’s electorate office picket, and hurled epithets including “baby killers” and “Nazis” toward Labor councillors, and claimed that they were paid “blood money” and had “sold their soul to Zionists”.
The mayor was forced to abandon the five-hour-long meeting about 11pm after the motion, which sought to investigate cutting council’s ties companies or products associated with Israel, was voted down, prompting pro-Palestine chanting of “river to the sea”, shouts of “shame”, and swear words.
Labor’s eight councillors, including the mayor, who voted against the motion, were forced to stay in chambers – as were council staff and elected colleagues – before the police arrived and escorted them out to their cars, given safety concerns with the large and angry crowd.
One pro-Palestine activist rubbished concerns and the experience of anti-Semitism described by one Jewish resident who spoke against the motion, before she then evoked the mayor’s deceased parents, which drew an emotional call to order by a taken aback Mr Byrne.
The few speakers who spoke against the motion, understood to all be Jewish residents, were booed by members of the gallery and one was called “Ms Netanyahu” for saying that while she supported Palestine she felt a BDS policy would worsen local social cohesion.
Others waved Palestine flags in the faces of Jewish residents speaking against the motion while some gallery members made a triangle symbol with their hands, eyewitnesses alleged, which is often associated with Hamas’ inverted triangle symbol.
On Wednesday, Mr Byrne said the actions and behaviour of the gallery, and organising group Inner West 4 Palestine, were “extreme”.
“The intimidating and abusive conduct of this group was unsafe, dangerous and undemocratic,” he said.
“The harassment and abuse of Jewish citizens who attended the meeting was appalling and completely unacceptable.
“There is no place for racism or religious vilification of any group in the Inner West.
“Overrunning the council chamber and preventing democratic decision making from taking place is not a political tactic that should be normalised in Australia.”
It had been the longest public gallery in the history of the council and the BDS motion meant council’s anti-racism strategy was unable to be discussed or voted on.
The Greens’ new slate of candidates for September’s election were also involved, pictured seated in the front row as activists hurled abuse at councillors.
ALP insiders have previously said the Greens would routinely stoke tensions and encourage targeting of electorate offices and other forums, like seen at Inner West Council, before wiping their hands clean of any responsibility.
“They go ‘That’s nothing to do with us, we had no idea’,” one Labor source said.
It was a full-circle moment for the Inner West after Marrickville Council, which now makes up part of the Local Government Area, introduced its own BDS policy in 2011, but later revoked it after uproar.
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Epic fail: NAPLAN reveals one in three students below standard
At least 400,000 Australian children have fallen so far behind at school they require catch-up tutoring, as governments squabble over the reforms and funding required to reverse decades of educational decline.
In “shocking” results that spell trouble for struggling students, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) – has identified one in 10 children who “need additional support to progress satisfactorily’’.
In addition, nearly a quarter of the 1.3 million children from 9431 schools who sat the tests for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 this year are deemed to be “developing’’ and “working towards expectations at the time of testing’’ – educational jargon for failing to pass minimum standards.
Overall, one in three students who failed baseline standards for reading and maths in this year’s NAPLAN tests.
Migrant kids are leapfrogging Australian-born students, while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are failing at four times the rate of non-Indigenous classmates.
Boys are almost twice as likely as girls to start high school functionally illiterate. By year 7, one in eight boys requires remedial reading lessons.
Trapped in a circle of intergenerational disadvantage, teenagers whose parents dropped out of high school are reading and writing at a level two years behind their classmates with university-educated parents.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will use the dire results to strongarm stubborn state governments to commit to “practical reforms” such as phonics checks and numeracy checks, evidence-based teaching and catch-up tutoring’, in return for $16bn in bonus commonwealth cash over the next decade.
“Your chances in life shouldn’t depend on your parents’ pay packet or the colour of your skin, but these results again show that’s still the case,’’ Mr Clare said.
“These (NAPLAN) results show why serious reform is needed and why we need to tie additional funding to reforms that will help students catch up, keep up and finish school.’’
Ninety per cent of Indigenous children in remote communities have failed to reach minimum standards of literacy and numeracy this year, with three out of four requiring remedial intervention.
Across Australia, the average Indigenous teenager in year 9 has the reading ability of a non-Indigenous 10-year-old in year 5.
The NAPLAN data reveals strong links between children’s academic success and parental education and income.
By the time they finish primary school, students with a university-educated parent are typically reading at year 9 level. But year 9 students whose parents failed to finish year 12 have the reading ability of a primary school student in year 5, on average.
The children of migrant parents who speak a foreign language have twice the chance of excelling in year 9 maths, and even outperform their classmates in English.
Overall, one in three students has fallen below the standard expected, averaged across test results in all years for reading, writing, numeracy, spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Extrapolated across the nation’s 4.09 million students, the NAPLAN results reveal that one million students fall below the baseline for literacy and numeracy, including 420,000 who require intervention to catch up.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which administers the annual NAPLAN tests, said this year’s results were “stable’’ compared with 2023 but could not be compared to previous results, due to a change in scaling and proficiency levels last year.
“The 2024 results continue to show strong performance from Australian students in literacy and numeracy,’’ said ACARA’s new chief executive, Stephen Gniel.
“The challenges remain with supporting those students identified in the ‘needs additional support’ category and tackling the ongoing educational disparities for students from non-urban areas, First Nations Australian heritage and those with low socio-economic backgrounds.’’
Federal opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the results were “shocking’’ and demanded a “back-to-basics education sharply focused on literacy and numeracy, underpinned by explicit teaching and a knowledge-rich, commonsense curriculum’’.
“Getting back to basics also means ridding the classroom of indoctrination and other activist causes,’’ she said. “Every child deserves to reach his or her best potential – that is why it is vital to support our nation’s hardworking educators with evidence-based teaching resources so they can excel in the classroom.’’
The NAPLAN data, to be made public on Wednesday, exposes the Northern Territory and Queensland as the worst performers for Year 9 literacy. Six out of 10 teenagers in the Territory, which has the largest proportion of First Nations students, failed to meet the year 9 baseline reading standard.
Queensland, which insists on teaching an outdated version of the national curriculum, was the worst-performing state, with 36.8 per cent of year 3 students struggling to read properly, 37 per cent of year 7 students below-par at the start of high school, and 42.2 per cent of year 9 students reading at a level below the national standard.
The national curriculum was revised in 2022 but Queensland has given schools to 2027 to adopt the changes, which focus on phonics-based reading. Despite the poor results, Education Minister Di Farmer said that after extensive discussions with teachers, principals, and education unions, Queensland was taking a “phased approach” to implementing version nine of the curriculum “allowing greater flexibility for schools to manage workload’’.
Queensland has also been late to adopt a national “phonics check’’ to test whether year 1 students can sound out the alphabet and letter combinations of words.
Western Australia, which mandates teaching through “explicit instruction’’, and has a focus on phonics, boasts the best results of any state, with 28.5 per cent of year 9 students reading below the minimum standard – on par with the ACT. WA Education Minister Tony Buti said the state had been the first to introduce a minimum standard of literacy and numeracy as part of the senior secondary certificate of education. Students miss out on a certificate unless they pass NAPLAN in year 9, or pass a similar test before leaving school.
At Mount Lawley Senior High School in Perth – where students performed above or well above the national average in every testing domain last year – principal Lesley Street fosters a culture of excellence, respect, learning and perseverance. “We focus on trying to meet each student’s needs and ensure they feel a sense of belonging,’’ she said. “We have strong links with our local primary feeder schools, where we liaise with them to identify students with weak literacy and numeracy for immediate intervention when they arrive in high school.’’
Students in years 7 and 8 are nurtured in a “middle school’’, where “every teacher views themselves as a teacher of literacy and numeracy, not only a subject specialist’’. Students struggling with reading, writing and numeracy are taken aside for catch-up tutoring during school hours, and the school provides a homework club in the library.
In NSW, which has banned mobile phones in schools, delivered teachers a pay rise and recently announced a fact-filled, simpler syllabus, 81 per cent of year 3 students recorded “strong” or “exceeding” results in writing. NSW Education Minister Prue Car is leading a state revolt against Mr Clare’s Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, which would see the commonwealth increase its share of spending on public schools from 20 per cent to 22.5 per cent of running costs in return for states hitting higher targets for literacy and numeracy, school attendance and Year 12 completion.
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Staggering number of migrants that have arrived in Australia since Anthony Albanese rose to power
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has allowed a record 1.15million migrants to enter the country since he came into power.
Labor has already exceeded its migration target for the last financial year, according to an analysis of migration patterns by parliamentary term.
The net migration intake from July 2023 to May 2024 was 445,510 - a figure that is well ahead of the 395,000 Labor committed to in the Budget.
In just 27 months, Mr Albanese has brought in more migrants than the entire Hawke-Keating years - which lasted five times longer at 156 months.
The data also revealed almost one-third of Australians - 31 per cent - were born overseas - a nine per cent increase to 1983 figures.
Albanese's government also recorded a whopping 62 per cent more migrants than the Rudd-Gillard term - who held the previous record with 1.04million people.
In the previous financial year - 2022 to 2023 - the countries representing the largest group of migrants were India with 92,940 (18 per cent), China with 64,320 (12 per cent) and the Philippines with 40,890 (8 per cent).
The top ten countries of migration to Australia included Nepal, Colombia, the UK, Vietnam, Pakistan, New Zealand and Thailand.
Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs Dr Kevin You accused the Albanese government of adding pressure to Australia's inflation and strained housing crisis.
'The Albanese government has no plan for economic growth, other than the shortsighted, lazy approach of bringing in record amounts of migrants, rather than doing the hard yards of real economic reform,' Dr You told the Daily Telegraph.
'The record surge to migration is taking place at the same time as housing and rental prices are at record highs and housing construction is at 1980s levels.
'Australians are suffering through cost-of-living crisis brought on by unplanned mass migration'.
Dr You slammed the prime minister for vowing to halve the annual migration intake in the next financial year, claiming the promise was 'not worth the paper it's written on'.
Four months ago, Mr Albanese promised Australia's net overseas intake would be slashed to just 250,000 in 2024-25.
'It's yet another broken promise from a government which is making it harder for mainstream Australians to get ahead,' Dr You said.
'The latest data reinforces that Australia's migration program is being run in the interests of big business and universities bureaucracy, not the Australian people.'
Dr You admitted that while migration has and will continue to play a critical role, the current migration intake was causing immense pressure on Australians.
'Record migration intake is placing immense pressure on housing and infrastructure, and has not solved our worker shortage crisis and is leaving Australians worse off,' he said.
Immigration and Citizenship shadow minister Dan Tehan said Labor had a 'Big Australia' policy by stealth, but no plan to deal with its impact.
'Labor claim they don't want a big Australia but judge them on the facts not their words,' he said.
'There's no plan for where they will live, or how to deal with the impact on government services or the environment.
'This at a time Australians are either struggling to find a place to live or they're being hit with crippling rent increases.'
In April, Mr Albanese told Melbourne 3AW radio host Tom Elliott his government aimed to halve net overseas migration levels, after being pushed on a figure.
'Well, we're not going to just pluck a figure out of the sky, but what we are projecting is that the NOM, the net overseas migration, is projected to come down to 250,000 in the coming financial year in 2024-25,' he said.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in his May Budget reply speech promised to reduce the permanent intake to 140,000, down from 185,000.
But overall net overseas migration, which covers skilled migrants and international students, could still be above 200,000 - or double the levels of the late 1990s.
The consumer price index grew to 3.8 per cent in June, putting it even further above the Reserve Bank's 2 to 3 per cent target.
The latest headline inflation numbers, released in July, were worse than March quarter's 3.6 per and marked the first quarterly deterioration since 2022.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13740703/Migrants-Australia-Anthony-Albanese.html
**********************************************Chatbots ‘making things up’, education department warns parents
Artificial intelligence will be used to plan lessons and set homework tasks in more Australian schools, despite concerns it is failing complex maths questions and “making things up’’.
Western Australia will follow NSW and South Australia in trialling the use of a generative AI “chatbot’’ to save teachers time planning lessons, assignments and homework.
But a trial of a Microsoft chatbot in NSW public schools – known as NSWEduChat – this year has revealed the technology can “struggle with subjects that require specific answers’’.
The NSW Education Department has advised teachers to double-check the chatbot’s answers to questions – especially in maths.
“The app responds best to questions that could be answered in many ways rather than one specific answer,’’ it states in a summary of early trials.
“Therefore, it will struggle with subjects that require specific answers. Users should review every output produced using generative AI to ensure accuracy.’’
The department has identified subjects where “extra caution should be taken’’ using the chatbot. “Currently, those subjects are Maths Extensions 1 and 2,’’ it says.
SA – the first state to trail AI in schools last year – has warned parents about privacy and exposure to “inappropriate content’’ from commercially available AI such as ChatGPT and Quill.
“Every school determines how their teachers and students can use AI,’’ it states. “Chatbots sometimes provide answers that can’t be tracked back to the source information.
“They can produce false references to support answers. They can also make things up, which is known as an AI ‘hallucination’.
“AI responses shouldn’t be taken as a source of truth.’’
SA Education warns parents not to let children enter personal information into AI chatbots, or to use any images or videos of students, staff or family members.
“Chatbots may produce inappropriate content for students based on the questions asked, because they’re trained using large data sets and they’re not fully moderated,’’ it states in advice to parents. “AI responses may hold biases against individuals or groups in the data.
“Image and video generators could be used to create offensive or inappropriate content, which may not be intentional.
“They could also be used to produce copyrighted materials.
“You shouldn’t use images or videos of students, staff, schools, family members or members of the community.’’
SA still allows teachers to experiment with different forms of AI, even though it trialled a custom-built Microsoft bot aligned with the state curriculum.
The federal and WA governments will spend $4.7m building a customised bot that gathers its information from the curriculum, for trial in eight schools, including the WA School of Isolated and Distance Education.
WA Education Minister Tony Buti said AI would save teachers time in preparing lessons. “We want our teachers to be teaching our kids,’’ he said on Monday.
“To do this, unnecessary administrative burdens must be reduced, and we hope this new pilot program can support our teachers and ease their workload.’’
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the federal government was giving schools across Australia $30m in a “workload reduction fund’’ for teachers.
“AI will never replace a great teacher, but it can help cut down the time they spend doing admin so they can spend more time in the classroom,’’ he said.
NSW Education Minister Prue Car called on the federal government to also support her state’s trial of AI in classrooms.
The NSW chatbot only responds to questions that relate to education-related content.
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Sahara Ray is undoubtedly a good-looking woman. Since she is Australian-born there is even a possibility that we may be distantly related. I hope she recovers soon from her encounter with Guillain-Barré syndrome
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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