Australian Politics

A brainless government

In 1984, Anthony Albanese graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Economics. In an ironic juxtaposition, this is the same year that US President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech pithily observing that, ‘Government does not solve problems; it subsidises them.’ Ironic because government subsidies seem to be the default policy response to every economic and social challenge before the Albanese government.

Cost of living too high? Provide cost-of-living subsidies. Manufacturing declining? Provide production subsidies. Energy costs too high? Provide energy subsidies. Salaries too low? Provide wage subsidies. Childcare costs too high? Enhance middle-class-welfare subsidies. Housing unaffordable? Increase rental subsidies.

Within the Albanese government it seems that there is a belief that no problem can withstand an assault from buckets of other peoples’ money; debt and inflationary consequences be damned. Actual policy development, reform, and advocacy to promote productivity, prosperity and tranquility is apparently for others not distracted by the in-flight movies on Toto 1.

Prime Minister Albanese’s partner in profligacy is his esteemed Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers. David Pearl recently wrote, unfavourably comparing Chalmers to a Labor treasurer of an earlier time, that, ‘Chalmers is unmistakably a modern-day Jim Cairns, only without the PhD in economics. Both are dreamers, wishing the laws of economics and sound public finance were otherwise than what they are.’ Such comparisons are unfair. Unfair on Cairns.

Misguided as Cairns may have been, he at least had an economic vision for Australia. A vision shaped by his socialist beliefs of a fairer society delivered through government intervention and wealth redistribution. Chalmers’ vision, on the other hand, seems no more sophisticated than being there.

Unlike Cairns, Chalmers’ doctoral thesis was not on economics but on political science and specifically on the prime ministership of ‘Brawler Statesman’ Paul Keating. Perhaps portending his own treasurership, Chalmers’ thesis focused on the style rather than the substance of Keating’s leadership, ignoring Keating’s rich economic policy record, instead studying how Keating managed and exercised prime ministerial power.

In the first two years of his treasurership, Keating drove several important economic reforms including floating of the Australian dollar and financial deregulation. In Chalmers’ first two years, he championed two tax increases and a restructure of the RBA.

The first tax increase was a poorly considered and ill-designed tax on superannuation balances greater than $3 million. A particularly egregious reform which breaks an election commitment, introduces a tax on unrealised gains, and also privileges bureaucrats and politicians in legacy defined benefit pension schemes. Even Chalmer’s thesis subject Keating described key elements of this tax as ‘unconscionable’.

The second tax increase, and one Chalmers claims to be most proud of, was to increase taxes on middle and higher earners to finance a tax cut for low earners. And in doing so, he waged a direct assault on aspirational Australians. Financing tax cuts for all earners through cutting government spending would have been anathematic for Chalmers.

As Rome’s economy burns, Chalmers fiddles and diddles. Instead of investing his energies into reducing inflation and promoting economic growth, Chalmers pens indulgent essays on redesigning capitalism. Instead of championing economic reforms, Chalmers theatrically performs, criticising anyone who refuses to engage with the government’s right-speak.

All the while, Australia’s economy is facing significant challenges. Although not technically in recession, Australia is in a secular stagnation with the longest per-capita recession in over 50 years and sluggish aggregate economic growth. Inflation remains high and persistent, while productivity declines.

Chalmers would have Australians believe that the essence of Australia’s economic troubles is the nasty RBA and its interest rate policies. Oh, and overseas factors too. And the previous government. And climate change. And the dog eating his briefing book.

If Chalmers were to be believed, Australia’s economic malaise has nothing to do with record government spending and taxing, and certainly not with the multiple anti-prosperity and anti-productivity policies implemented by the government of which he is a senior member.

Commenting following the most recent disappointing economic growth data, Chalmers said, ‘Without government spending, there’d be no growth in the economy at all.’ The idea an ever-growing public sector was crowding out the private sector seems foreign to Chalmers. However, if all that is required to improve economic growth is increasing government spending, then why not just double or triple spending and make Australia the fastest-growing economy in the world?

Earlier this year, feigning reform zeal, Chalmers initiated discussions with the ACCC around launching an inquiry into alleged price-gouging by business. Perhaps more urgent inquiry is required into price-gouging by government.

The true measure of taxation is government spending because it is financed by taxes collected today or collected tomorrow. Under Chalmers’ stewardship, Commonwealth government spending has increased from 24.5 per cent of GDP to 26.4 per cent of GDP, an extra $100 billion per annum gouged from Australians. Where are the inquiries into this?

In the 1979 film Being There, the main character, Chance the gardener, becomes Chauncey Gardiner, a potential candidate for US President. Due to a series of misunderstandings, Gardiner’s simple comments about gardening are misinterpreted as deep insights. No better example being his remark that, ‘There will be growth in the spring’ being seen as a metaphor for an imminent economic recovery.

In his recent John Curtin Oration, Chalmers referred to a ‘new generation of opportunity in a new fourth economy for Australia and its people’. Whatever may be a new fourth economy, this vacuous comment was perhaps meant to also be a metaphor for economic recovery.

Australia is in dire need of economic leadership. Without it, there won’t be economic growth in the spring. Or in the summer, autumn, or winter.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/being-chauncey-chalmers/

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Lies, damned lies – and a total lack of accountability

Gemma Tognini

What makes a person believe lies, in the face of truth? We’ve all done it at one point or another, haven’t we? The pain of facing unwelcome truths is a staple of the human condition, however one sign of a mature intellect is a willingness to be wrong for the right reasons.

Some, though – a concerning number of folk in fact – appear afflicted with a sickness of the mind. One that violently says black is white, up is down and night is day. They refuse to move, angry and belligerent in their defiance of fact.

Why, though? And how?

There are still people who think the earth is flat, for example. Who believe that chem trails are polluting the sky. There are people who firmly believe the government controls the clouds. That green smoothies and good vibes will cure a terminal disease.

There are people, I’ve learned sadly, who believe rape is resistance. Who believe the bullshit, fabricated narrative of a proscribed terror organisation over the documented fact of a functioning democracy. Who are so ill of intellect they believed something as questionable as the Hamas Health Ministry when it said Israel had bombed a hospital. Until, of course, it swiftly emerged that no such thing had happened.

There are those who believe Israel is a coloniser. I mean, in fairness they’d have to be the worst colonisers on earth given the population of Israel, just 7.2 million, is surrounded by 481 million people spread across the 22-member states of the Arab League. But sure, let’s play pretend. God knows, most of the Western media has been.

There are those who believe that Israel is an apartheid state. It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Young people you can excuse to a degree, but adults using that word about the most liberal, pluralistic country in the region is an insult.

For those who’ve lost touch with South Africa’s attempt to sue Israel in the International Court of Justice for committing genocide, the South African government has just this week asked for more time to submit evidence to support the claim, which is due at the end of October.

The reason for this request? It can’t find any evidence. But still, the cretins among us parrot the lie in the face of truth. The Australian Greens, stablemates of Australian Labor, purveyors of violence, discord and havoc, perpetuate this lie more than any other.

So, what makes someone believe lies in the face of truth? Is it fear, or is it laziness? Does it happen swiftly, or over time? Is a person born that way, or formed? Nurture, or nature?

This awful war that Israel didn’t start, but has been left alone to fight and finish, has exposed the best and worst of us. The worst, though, is very bad indeed. Sobering, frightening and telling.

This past week, with the permission of their families, the Israel Defence Forces released footage of the fetid, dank tunnels in which six hostages were kept and, as freedom and rescue knocked, were summarily executed. It’s suffocating to watch it, if that’s even possible. For me it was the mundane and familiar among the blood and filth and bottles of what looked like urine. A hairbrush. Shopping bags. The execution of these hostages represents a war that presents the most significant, present threat to Western freedoms and values since 9/11 and, just a week later, it feels like people have already moved on. God, awful, yes, terrible okay, what’s for dinner?

Israel’s military has released footage of a grim tunnel in Gaza, where six hostages, held by Hamas for 330 days, were executed just hours before a rescue attempt. The victims—Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel…

Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution. It wants what its masters in Tehran and Qatar want: the eradication of Israel. The establishment of a caliphate across the region and beyond. You want colonisation? Look no further. Yet in the face of documented fact, things like population data, things like the stated political aims of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the face of these and many other things some still choose to believe the lies.

If someone could explain the how, I’d be grateful. Perhaps it’s like some kind of weird, psychosomatic exercise in self-soothing? There is no greater representation of what I’m talking about than Queers for Palestine. Nobody is gay in the Middle East and thinking, I know, sharia law will be a great umbrella under which to shelter. Might go live my life in peace in Ramallah and start touring my one-woman show on how I came out as a teenager.

Ahmad Abu Marhia was a 25-year-old gay Palestinian. He had sought asylum in Israel after fleeing the West Bank. He was decapitated, his severed head and torso dumped near his family’s home. There are many stories like his. I found them, reading just one report of the European parliament that spoke of the murder of Palestinians for being gay, and how those who can, flee to Israel for asylum.

Staring facts in the face and blithely remaining cocooned in lies.

How many in our society have decided to go for the bad guys staggers me. Defeats me, in some ways. I received an email this week from a reader who made the following lament-filled observation: “Our politicians and university chancellors are appeasing people who place evil over good, wrong over right and it makes no sense.”

Is it because, for what seems like the longest while, there are no consequences to anything, ever?

University of Sydney professor Sujatha Fernandes told first-year students that Hamas’s mass rape and sexual violence on and after October 7 was “fake news” and a “hoax” concocted by Western media to shore up Israel’s position. What do you think happened to her? The university won’t say but she’s still employed, still teaching students, avoiding any serious punishment.

Even the UN, who any sober-minded person can see is mostly corrupt, complicit and captured, found thousands of pieces of evidence in relation to October 7.

Special envoy Palmilla Pratten documented the horrendous evidence, and it has been accepted by the UN unchallenged.

But Fernandes is allowed to keep her job and keep teaching students. Imagine if she had said to her students “the whole idea of being trans is a hoax? It’s just a thing to prop up the political left.” We all know how that would have been dealt with.

I’ve heard some people say, what does it matter? Who cares? Why should a conflict on the other side of the world affect us? Because it is already affecting us.

Just look at the violent chaos in Melbourne on Thursday and Friday, driven by the anti-Israel mob ably supported by the Greens. They are the River to the Sea collective. The “peaceful protesters” who assault horses and throw acid at police.

What emboldens people to act this way? A lack of consequences. A knowing that the worst that will come their way is a half-hearted scolding.

It didn’t start on the night of October 9, when that feral mob was allowed to roam unchecked on the steps of the Opera House behaving in a way no Australian wants to see. But that was definitely a catalyst for escalation to a frightening and unseen level of consistent lawlessness enacted by the pro-Palestinian camp. And why wouldn’t they? There were no consequences.

The obvious question is how to turn the tide. I mean, just imagine if the federal government was in a position to do something about this. Just imagine, for example, if they made our embarrassing tertiary education sector accountable for outcomes not just bums on seats. Imagine if back on October 9, 2023, that angry mob had been dealt with, first time. A message sent. Just imagine

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/lies-damned-lies-and-a-total-lack-of-accountability/news-story/32e26163b566fdf4e40e06be8e613966

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University to end in-person lectures for 'most' students

Should be OK if face-to-face tutorials continue

A decision by an Australian university to ditch face-to-face lectures with students will mark 'the death of campus life', furious staff members have said.

Adelaide University announced this week it will ditch in-person lectures for 'most students' when the campus launches in January 2026.

Traditional face-to-face lectures will be replaced 'by rich digital learning activities' which will be 'self-paced' and 'self-directed'.

Courses will have a 'common digital baseline' and digital learning is expected to make up a large portion of coursework by 2034.

'These activities will deliver an equivalent learning volume to traditional lectures and will form a common baseline for digital learning across courses, providing a consistent experience for students,' the University of Adelaide said in a statement.

'These asynchronous activities will be self-paced and self-directed, utilising high-quality digital resources that students can engage with anytime and anywhere.'

Activities such as tutorials and workshops however, 'may be delivered on-campus to create a rich cohort experience, or in instances where digital delivery provides the best outcomes for students, through the online learning space'.

Adelaide University is a merger of the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, combining the state's two largest universities.

Division secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union's (NTEU) South Australia branch, Dr Andrew Miller, said moving lectures online has made staff 'furious'.

'We were promised the new university would be co-created with staff, students and community stakeholders,' Dr Miller told The Guardian.

'This decision sidestepped that commitment. Co-creation means giving agency and empowerment to collectively build the university.'

Dr Miller claims staff were not properly consulted on the decision and that tutors should be allowed input on learning programs.

He said flexibility between online learning and face-to-face learning was better for students, some of whom benefit more from one or the other.

National president of the NTEU, Dr Alison Barnes, told the publication that the decision will mark the 'death of campus life'.

Dr Barnes said students could miss out on critical feedback that they could normally ask staff in person about after face-to-face lectures.

Online learning does not facilitate the same kind of easy access, she added.

Some students who are currently studying at the University of Adelaide said they felt uncomfortable with the change.

'Face-to-face lectures are a really good motivation to get people out and at uni [and to] have that separation of home and school,' one first-year student told The Advertiser.

'It's good to be there, you can ask questions to the lecturers, you can go up to the lectures. You don’t have to email and wait six days for an email back.'

An Adelaide University spokesperson said modern students required flexibility and that online learning is the best provider of that.

'Universities have been increasingly responding to student needs for flexible delivery over the years,' the spokesperson told Honi Soit, the University of Sydney's student newspaper.

'Lectures are passive learning activities that can be delivered online to maximise flexibility for students without impacting learning quality.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13849245/Adelaide-university-ditches-campus-lectures.html

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"Dying” Coral Reefs

Coral reefs are some of creation’s most strikingly beautiful places. Clean and clear blue water, graceful whales and sea turtles, swarms of dazzling fishes, and amazing coral. We can’t get enough of coral reefs, so we adorn our walls with paintings and photos. Saltwater aquariums abound in households, restaurants and businesses around the world.

Naturally, we want to protect all this goodness and beauty. Stewardship is in our DNA. Our emotions can kick in when a threat is perceived. Unfortunately, nefarious people know this about us. People whose agenda has more to do with global power and control than with protecting coral reefs. They tap into our emotions by manufacturing threats, mixing nuggets of truth with futuristic doomsday scenarios designed to keep us in constant fear that we may lose what we love unless things change according to their plan.

Take for example the PBS News feature titled “Conservationists take drastic measures to save coral reefs from climate change.” Published earlier this year, the video begins by falsely claiming that coral reefs around the world are “slowly dying.” The video then shows members of the Coral Restoration Foundation in Florida scrambling to save a manmade coral nursery they had just planted. Members reportedly gave each other “space to grieve” the corals that died.

The truth nugget was that, indeed, the corals were dying and the water was hot. Optimum temperatures for coral are in the 73-84 °F range. At this point in July 2023, water temperatures in the coral nursery were in the low 90s.

But this truth nugget is embedded in a swarm of lies. Like the story’s title, for one. Or the narrator’s claims that in nearby Manatee Bay, waters reached 101 °F, stating this might be the “hottest ocean temperature ever recorded on Earth.” First of all, Manatee Bay is not an “ocean,” it’s a shallow, semi-enclosed body of water. Most likely, this temperature reading was measured one afternoon in a very shallow (like 6 inches deep) and stagnant part of the bay, nowhere near coral reef habitat.

Later in the story, the narrator quietly mentions that in October, the corals were returned to the nursery area. No mention is made of the “climate change” event that caused the waters to cool. Why was the natural summertime warming correlated with “climate change,” while the Fall cooling was not? To media outlets like PBS, cooling is not “climate change.” Only above average summer temperatures and fake 101 °F “ocean” temperature measurements fit the narrative.

With the “climate change” threat averted by Fall and Winter, the PBS story switches to an even more ferocious, and fake, threat: the total collapse of all coral reefs everywhere. IF something this cataclysmic actually happened, we would all be dead, too, but nevermind that minor detail.

Enter the Smithosonian’s Mary Hagedorn, who spearheads a coral cryopreservation project. Hagedorn works for the largely taxpayer funded Smithsonian on Coconut Island in Hawaii. She says she wants to preserve coral for future generations, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Throughout the world we have “seed banks” to preserve plant species. In a similar manner, Hagedorn hopes to develop a cheap and replicable system to create “coral banks” around the world.

While the reasons for storing coral fragments in liquid nitrogen may be the thing of science fantasy, the actual knowledge gleaned from projects like this could have benefits in other fields like medicine, or in real conservation work to help a reef recover more quickly after damage from a hurricane.

Oddly, the PBS video ends with a headline that there is a coral reef in 600-3,000 ft of water in the Atlantic that is 3 times the size of Yellowstone National Park! Wait, you just told us coral reefs are slowly dying, and now you are saying there is a massive, very alive coral reef in the deep and cold ocean?!

Normally, corals need sunlight to fuel the symbiotic zooxanthellae algae that live amongst them. These algae give corals their color, and will leave when stressed, turning the corals bright pink to white, hence the phrase “coral bleaching.” Apparently these deepwater corals survive just fine without the zooxanthellae.

Did you catch that about coral bleaching? It can be a stress indicator with shallow water corals, but it doesn’t mean they are dead. The PBS story quickly mentions this, and just as quickly moves on, because “coral bleaching” is a scary phrase that needs to stay tied to their false narrative of “climate change” resulting from fossil fuel generated CO2.

The misuses of naturally-occurring coral bleaching are legion among the doomsayers. A great example comes from John Brewer Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. A famous 2022 photo in The Guardian shows a mostly-bleached coral near the reef’s surface. “It’s depressing to think about,” says Dr. Terry Hughes, who in 2017 was lead author of a paper in the journal Nature that fits the “coral bleaching is global warming” false narrative.

Thankfully, facts still matter to some, like Dr. Jennifer Marohasy, a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne-based think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs. Just a year after The Guardian article, Marohasy took her 50 years of ocean experience out to John Brewer Reef to check on the now-famous coral patch. As you can see in this video she made, the coral patch is now doing just fine, as are most of the corals on John Brewer Reef.

Rather than get emotional about unprovable doomsday fantasies, real scientists like Marohasy verify the claims the doomsayers make by simply observing the real world. And the real world tells a different, and much more positive story! The real story is that coral lives in a harsh and highly variable environment, and can handle a lot of stresses. Yes, we can do very bad things to coral reefs, like these fools from China who allegedly poisoned a coral reef with cyanide just so fishermen from the Philippines couldn’t use it. We need to steward coral reefs well, constantly reevaluating our efforts to find the best balance between too much protection and not enough conservation

https://cornwallalliance.org/pbs-and-the-false-narrative-of-slowly-dying-coral-reefs/