Australian Politics

Queensland opposition leader rules out $1.6bn Olympic stadium rebuild

Sanity at last

Queensland’s Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli has ruled out sinking $1.6bn of taxpayer money into a plan to rebuild a near 50-year-old stadium as the Brisbane Olympics main athletics hub.

Plans to rebuild The Gabba as Brisbane’s main stadium for the 2032 Games were dropped in March, with Labor Premier Steven Miles instead planning to upgrade the ageing Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre, previously known as QEII stadium.

Mr Crisafulli had previously hinted that an LNP government would drop QSAC as an option, but on Wednesday blasted it as a “horrendous plan” that’s prospects were “zilch”.

“I don’t think there is any scenario where any Queenslander looks at that plan and doesn’t see anything but cringe-worthiness from a desperate government,” he said.

“You can ask it a million ways, there is no one who believes that project is either value for money or provides a legacy option.”

The state opposition leader, who successive public polls suggest will win majority government at next month’s state election, said there was no Queenslander who believed QSAC was a “good deal”.

Mr Crisafulli has pledged to ask the Games infrastructure delivery agency to deliver a venue plan within the LNP government’s first 100 days if he wins the October 26 election.

“Whilst I look forward to the results of the 100-day review, if a project like that came out the other end at a time when Queenslanders are yearning to be proud of their government and their state on the world stage then I would be stunned, I would be stunned,” he said.

“You know as well as I do what has been proposed there, by anyone’s measure, is neither visionary nor cost effective,” he said.

“The idea of spending well north of a billion dollars on temporary facilities for something in the middle of the bush, it doesn’t make sense in anyone’s language.”

Mr Crisafulli said the LNP would deliver a venue plan that delivered “generational infrastructure, particularly focused on road and rail”.

A business case, initiated by the Labor government, is still underway and due to be completed early next year.

An independent review of options for Brisbane 2032, led by former lord mayor Graham Quirk, in March found revamping QSAC would be a waste of money.

On Mr Quirk’s numbers, $600m would be spent building 14,000 permanent seats at QSAC and a further $1bn to increase capacity to 40,000 with related infrastructure.

Mr Quirk previously told The Australian that costings used in the review came from a group made up of “a mix of state government officers and private sector specialists engaged by the state”.

The proposal to upgrade QSAC, which is not on a train line and might seat only 40,000 people, was first put forward by Olympic powerbroker John Coates.

Mr Coates, who is a director on the Brisbane organising committee, has said that independent analysis given to the International Olympic Committee of the cost of a refurbishment and upgrade at QSAC came in at around $600m and would allow for temporary seating to stretch capacity to 40,000 spectators.

Brisbane 2032 president Andrew Liveris said on Wednesday that the organising committee did not have a position on QSAC and was waiting for the project validation report, or business case, to be delivered after the October 26 election.

“I’ve been very, very clear that until we see numbers on QSAC, there is no position Brisbane 2032 is taking. We need to know the cost aspect of what would be an athletic stadium,” he said.

“Clearly, there’s a legacy aspect of that, but in terms of the Olympics and the delivery, we’re committed to a budget - $5 billion - and we’ve got to get that budget right.

And there’s a revenue side of that budget. I mean, you just have to be in the Stade de France watching the Sevens Rugby with 80,000 people providing revenue and top sponsors providing revenue, to understand the power of having a right-sized stadium for the Olympics.

Mr Liveris said there was still 2865 days until the Brisbane 2032 opening ceremony so “we’ve got time” to sort out the two major venues.

“Now, if QSAC ends up being the answer based on cost and revenue, then we will have to look at where we do events, but we’re waiting for the PVR on that, and we have no position on it until that PVR comes out,” he said.

‘Very conscious that that comes out after the election. So we’ll see what happens after the election.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/queensland-opposition-leader-has-rejected-plans-for-16bn-olympic-stadium-rebuild/news-story/cdbe63ffc8836bffd605b0f46adf032a

****************************************

Labor ‘digging us into a hole’: $131bn resources project pipeline ‘at risk’

Environmental lawfare, unproductive workplace policies and red tape are threatening a predicted $131bn wave of resources and energy projects, employers have warned, as mining unions demand yearly $10,000 retention bonuses for BHP’s Pilbara workforce on top of annual 5 per cent pay rises.

As the Coalition flagged unwinding Labor’s same job, same pay laws that target BHP and Qantas, new analysis by the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association predicts 107 major resources and energy projects worth $131bn are expected to enter production by the end of 2029, generating 26,810 new production-related jobs.

In the latest salvo by the mining lobby against Labor after weeks of political tension, AREEA chief executive Steve Knott warned that the strength of Australia’s major project investment pipeline was threatened by the Albanese government’s workplace and environmental agenda. Mr Knott said the first back-to-back commonwealth surpluses in 16 years were not delivered by a magic turnaround in the nation’s economic management, but through $70bn in royalties and taxes paid by the resources and energy sector.

“Without the contribution of Australia’s mining and energy projects, vital services such as Medicare, the NDIS, hospitals, schools and aged care would be deprived of critical investment,” he said.

“Yet Australia is on the threshold of a bizarre new era, where regulatory red tape, activism and unproductive workplace relations policies threaten the next wave of revenue and job-creating resources and energy projects.“

He said several multi-billion-dollar LNG projects, offering much-needed domestic gas supply and further export earnings were being “frustrated by continuous environmental and cultural heritage lawfare”.

“Despite the Albanese government suggesting the sector wouldn’t be impacted, miners are being dragged into multi-employer bargaining and face the risk of industry-wide strikes,” he said.

“Thousands of workers will soon be paid according to bargained terms and conditions of other businesses, and unions have been given a legislated leg-up to force themselves into workplaces and entire industries that have long since left them behind.”

Capitalising on federal Labor’s workplace laws to force BHP to start negotiating the first union collective agreement in the Pilbara for almost a decade, unions are pushing for hundreds of workers at the company’s large Area C and South Flank iron ore mines to get guaranteed annual 5 per cent wage rises, higher wages for long-serving tradesmen and improved rosters.

Their log of claims includes “guaranteed” annual pay increases of 5 per cent, superannuation paid at 13.5 per cent, 2 per cent above the legislated rate, and annual retention bonuses of $10,000 paid every February.

Unions will also seek pay equity clauses where a tradesperson or operator with the same experience, skills and similar qualifications are paid the same base rate as a minimum.

Australian Workers Union West Australian secretary Brad Gandy said Pilbara employees worked in an inherently dangerous industry on shifts “between 12 and 14 hours, that go on for weeks on end”. “They work most of the year in extreme heat, in dust bowls a long way from their family and friends,” he said. “They are pivotal to delivering BHP its multi-billion-dollar profits year in, year out. Wanting decent rosters and fair pay and conditions is not too much to ask.

“Today’s iron ore prices are $US92 a tonne, and BHP says it gets its iron ore to port for under $US30 a tonne. Given BHP produces and exports over 330 million tonnes of iron ore a year, it’s hard to believe BHP management when they cry poor and threaten to pack up and leave the Pilbara.”

Mr Knott said Labor’s industrial relations changes allowed a union to make a log of claims on an employer, even if they only covered a minority of the workforce, and then wait out nine months and apply to the Fair Work Commission for a determination.

“For decades, post centralised wage fixing in the 70s and 80s, many employers have been setting their wages and conditions commensurate with what they need to do to attract, retain and motivate employees,” he said. “Having unions, often representing a minority of the workforce, having their log of claims determined by FWC and applying to the entire workforce, is reverting to a system that failed Australian employers & employees 40 years ago.”

The government and the ACTU on Sunday attacked the Coalition after opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said the same job, same pay laws would be reviewed if Peter Dutton won the next election.

Senator Hume said Labor’s multi-employer bargaining provisions, definition of casual employment and right-to-disconnect laws would be reviewed.

Asked if the same job, same pay laws would be scrapped, she told the ABC’s Insiders that “there will be elements of that, that we will certainly have to consider”.

Asked if a worker employed by a labour hire firm should get the same pay as a directly employed worker doing the same job, she said: “I’m not going to get into the details of industrial relations, that’s not my portfolio.

“But what I will say is that if we don’t have a more flexible industrial relations system, we are going to see productivity continue to go backwards.”

ACTU secretary Sally McManus said the Coalition was “revealing what we know is in their core DNA: a desire to always keep wages rises permanently low”. “They will try to take back these hard won same job same pay wage rises from workers out in mining and on Qantas flights and that’s just for starters,” she said.

“It is not as though Qantas or mining billionaires like Gina Rinehart, whose net worth is over $30bn, can’t afford to simply pay people the same wages for performing the same work.”

Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt said Senator Hume had confirmed the Coalition was “planning to take a sledgehammer to wages”, but would not make the detail public until after the election.

“When Australians are facing cost of living pressures, the worst thing you could do is cut their wages,” Senator Watt said.

“But every day, it becomes clearer that pay cuts are on Peter Dutton’s agenda, if he wins the next election.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/green-lawfare-ir-threatening-projects-jobs/news-story/6525e725a956c286760d333399bedac4

**********************************************************

Most of August’s criminal roll call in the Northern Territory Supreme Court concerned domestic abuse by Aboriginal men inflicting extreme violence on Aboriginal women

Thirty-four people were sentenced in the Northern Territory Supreme Court in August, an unexceptional month except in one respect: the crimes of one defendant were so depraved that Chief Justice Michael Grant excused his court officers from the room and warned others that what he was about to say could cause psychological shock.

Adam Britton’s 63 offences against animals, involving torture, bestiality and the savage deaths of 39 dogs, some filmed in a shipping container in the rural area of Darwin and posted on the dark web, were so aberrant they are instructive to no one but Clarice Starling-types seeking insights into the darkest impulses of the sickest minds.

Most of August’s criminal roll call, like the month before it and every month going back decades, also contained scenes of such graphic violence they might too have attracted a warning were they not so depressingly mundane: adult Aboriginal men inflicting extreme violence on Aboriginal women.

As the Northern Territory welcomes in a new government that has promised to get tough on crime, the focus is on urban Aboriginal youths – the gangs of crims breaking through shop windows, stealing cars and threatening with weapons.

The Country Liberals promise to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 to make kids answer for the over-size damage they cause, to reintroduce spithoods and to reinstate truancy officers to make sure Aboriginal kids attend school.

It raises questions about a more problematic cohort: Aboriginal men aged in their 20s, 30s and 40s, who were kids not so long ago, now being told by judges they are beyond repair as worthwhile members of society.

Perhaps new Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro understands this, which is why she’s focused on youth crime. It’s a case of saving what you can. But the recidivist nature of adult Aboriginal offending and the extreme violence, usually fired by alcohol, creates each new generation of lost children.

These men bash and maim repeatedly. They have long records. Spells in prison are not correcting them. They have kids and those kids are charting the same course.

Anthony Albanese announced after last week’s national cabinet a $4.7bn plan to tackle gender-based violence proposes action in four areas. “Supporting the critical work of frontline services,” the Prime Minister said. “Turning our eyes on perpetrators to stop violence from escalating. Providing more support for children and young people who’ve experienced violence. And tackling the impacts of alcohol on violence.”

Most of the money, $3.9bn, will go on frontline legal services. Within the smallest portion, $169m, only a smaller amount of that goes to dealing with men, with trials of “innovative models to prevent intimate partner violence and homicide”, and establishing national standards for men’s behaviour change.

There’s nothing in the announcement about teaching boys respect for women – though $80m of the $169m will go to “enhance and expand child-centric trauma-informed supports for children and young people”. That looks like an industry built around a bolted horse.

In the Territory courts, where there is a swinging door of repeat offenders, there is a sense that help cannot come soon enough but, even if it did, it would make no difference anyway. Chief Justice Grant said he needed to apply a value of deterrence when sentencing dog sadist Adam Britton to 10 years and five months in prison, with a non-parole period of six years. But it’s not as if the public needs to be reminded not to rape and kill dogs. As for telling Aboriginal men not to harm women and children, judges have been yelling into that void for decades.

John Nelson, 44, from Yuendumu, faced sentencing in August for striking a female relative in the head with a machete in Alice Springs in 2022, resulting in the woman’s skull being fractured.

Chief Justice Grant considered Nelson “a recidivist offender and a man of extremely poor character” whose prospects of rehabilitation were “practically non-existent”. Nelson went on to assault another female with a weapon while on bail for the machete attack.

Nelson’s history of criminality included six prior convictions of aggravated assaults on females, multiple convictions for assaulting police, deprivation of liberty, threatening behaviour, disorderly behaviour, unlawful entry, stealing and sexual intercourse with a child under 16.

Nelson, who at one stage was a chronic petrol sniffer, has spent most of his adult life in prison. Faced with Nelson’s schizophrenia and anti-social personality disorder, the judge was unable to establish a relationship between his mental illness and the machete attack. He found Nelson was just drunk and aggressive.

When Nelson was very young, his father died from a heart attack and he was raised by an uncle who died when he was nine. He was then raised by an aunt and attempts to reconnect with his birth mother never worked out – she’d started a new family. That kind of background may in some cases activate the High Court’s 2013 Bugmy principles, which hold that if evidence of a severely deprived childhood can be established with repeat adult offenders, it must be given weight in sentencing.

Chief Justice Grant declined to find that the childhood bereavement Nelson experienced constituted profound deprivation or disadvantage. The Bugmy principles were not enlivened. That is to say: the judge found Nelson responsible for his own actions, though the price was not high. Nelson was given a three-year non-parole period.

In August, the Chief Justice also sentenced Lazarus Green, 25, another Aboriginal man whose prospects of rehabilitation the judge said “must be seen as marginal at best”.

Green’s partner was taken by ambulance to hospital with a fracture to her right forearm, a deep laceration to her head and multiple blunt force injuries to the back, arms and legs after suffering sustained and brutal beating with a heavy stick. The attack came on top of Green’s “appalling criminal history dating back 10 years” including multiple convictions for aggravated assaults on females, breaching domestic violence orders, unlawful entry, property damage and stealing.

Green’s parents both did repeated spells in prison when he was growing up in an itinerant lifestyle, moving about the communities and town camps of central Australia. He became a polysubstance abuser and welfare had trouble finding anyone who could take responsibility for him.

Green has never had a job.

Chief Justice Grant found in Green’s case the Bugmy principle had a mitigating effect but that had to be weighed against his propensity for hurting women, meaning that Bugmy effectively cancelled itself out.

Green was sentenced to a non-parole period of 20 months.

Herron Nawirridj, aged 30, was out on bail for belting his partner with an “animal bone” in the top end community of Gunbalanya when he followed that up with a sustained pummelling to the same woman in October last year.

Both were intoxicated and arguing when Nawirridj followed her into Uncle Sam’s 24/7 takeaway in Darwin. She tried to stop him entering the store. He pulled off her shirt and dragged her by the hair outside. He choked her until she was unconscious and fell to the ground. He stomped on her head four times.

She regained consciousness and tried to protect herself. Nawirridj stepped back and kicked her hard in the face, sending her head into a concrete wall. She pleaded with him to stop. Once again, he stepped back and kicked her in the face. He wandered off.

She went into Uncle Sam’s where staff called emergency services. She left before help arrived. Nawirridj found her on the street and they started arguing again. He chased her back into Uncle Sam’s. He swung her to the ground and kicked her to the head five times, then stomped her head four times.

Judge Meredith Day Huntingford said Nawirridj was a teenager sniffed petrol, drank alcohol and lived a transient lifestyle between Gunbalanya, Maningrida and Darwin. His education was limited. His father abused alcohol and was violent. His mother died when he was 14.

Nawirridj, who has seven priors for violent assault, has been in and out of youth and adult prison since he was a teenager. He has been assessed to have a neurological deficit. Justice Huntingford sentenced him to a three-year non-parole period.

As prison doors shut on Nelson, Green and Nawirridj, all for short sentences given the profound repeated violence they have inflicted, it is notable that each man has the same story – differing only in the nature of the assaults.

Dead or dead drunk father, dead or drunk or disconnected mother, barely educated, wandering childhoods, substance abusers since teenagers, disregard for bail, disregard for jail, capable of committing extreme violence on women and each becoming fathers themselves during short-lived times of freedom.

Nawirridj has a four-year-old daughter. Green has three very young children to two partners. Nelson has three daughters of varying ages from three partners. They are fathers by paternity, not deed.

Judges always take a person’s background into consideration, although an explanation for the pitilessness of the violence in the cases of Nelson, Green and Nawirridj was absent — although it has become implicit since the 1992 NSW Court of Criminal Appeal ruling on Fernando, which was a forerunner to the Bugmy case.

In that case, judge James Wood said that alcohol did not excuse an offender’s conduct but found that Stanley Fernando, from an Aboriginal community near Walgett who had maliciously wounded his wife after a heavy drinking session, was a reflection of his environment.

If Tippett is right, neither the men’s own culture nor the prison system can assist with their rehabilitation – and the acceptance of the Bugmy principles means they are effectively written off from the time of their early childhood. If older repeat offenders are beyond help, that ought not mean there’s no hope at all. Tippett argues that the new federal money must focus on men, but especially boys. “It’s not scientific. Rather than breeding more perpetrators, and funding a whole new industry based on society’s failure, spend the money on young people prior to them get into trouble. And then work on them when they get out,” says Tippett.

“I think Lia Finocchiaro’s focus on the young is right. She can’t offer outcomes immediately, and it’s going to take us a couple of decades to extricate ourselves. But the only reasonable way is to continue to focus on young people.

“We’ve thrown kids into prison and we’ve done it thinking they’ll suddenly become good people. They have instead experienced further brutality and isolation. They’ve already grown up with that, and that’s the reason they’re in prison.

Tippett says it is time for brave people to try new things and to be stern. And to be prepared to fail, and to then try other things.

“It’s going to be a tough one,” he says. “Where there’s lack of parental control or parental interest, young people may have to be in prison. Ten-year-old kids may have to be put in an environment where they’re fed and schooled.

“It’s all very well for parents in Palmerston or out in communities to scream about their kids being taken away. But you, parents, are not sending them to school. You are not feeding them. You are not bathing them or clothing them. They have scabies. You are not engaging in their health care. They are below weight and their cognitive abilities have suffered because you are not looking after them.

“It’s a choice. Either you look after them, or somebody else will. We may do that reluctantly. But these children are entitled to an upbringing in a first-world country that gives them a crack at life. If you’re not going to do it, mum and dad, then we are.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/northern-territory-courts-a-revolving-door-for-evil-men/news-story/f947efe525964d61c5528baf1253e97d

*****************************************************

Indigenous jury plan an insult to justice

If you’re waiting for sensible analysis from law societies and bar associations about recent suggestions that Indigenous defendants should be heard by a jury that includes some – and possibly half – Indigenous members, take a seat in a very crowded waiting room.

Or read on, and we’ll do it. In a speech late last month former Queensland Supreme Court judge Roslyn Atkinson echoed findings of a 2023 report by the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration to overhaul who sits on juries.

It’s sensible to encourage more Indigenous people to sit on juries. In fact, we ought to find better ways to encourage all Australians to do so, because currently it’s easier to find someone who has escaped jury duty than someone who has taken on that onerous civic responsibility, often at great cost to themselves.

What’s not sensible is Atkinson’s implied endorsement of AIJA’s suggestion that jury selection be altered to “affirmatively include First Nations jurors”. AIJA researchers focus on a model called “juries de meditate linguae” – where a minority defendant is granted the right to be tried by a jury comprising half of people from that same minority. The report notes that this model originally entitled Jews in medieval England to special mixed juries, made up of half Jews and half Gentiles.

While justice in the United Kingdom has progressed from this Middle Ages model of special rights for certain minorities, these legal researchers under the auspices of senior Australian judges want to go backwards.

They draw comparisons with how women were once excluded from juries, so why not advance the jury system some more by including Indigenous people? Hold on a second while I find my trucker’s licence to drive through the hole in this argument.

It was, of course, wrong to deny women – and Indigenous people – the right to be jurors. But we don’t currently exclude Indigenous people from sitting on juries. Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, encouraging universal participation on juries and, on the other hand, mandating quotas for one group, in this case Indigenous people.

The suggestion that justice won’t be done, or be seen to be done, for an Indigenous defendant unless a jury includes some (unspecified) number of Indigenous jurors is impractical and offensive.

Impractical because it may be hard or even impossible to ensure the right number of people with the right racial characteristics are available for every single trial at every single venue, or even most of them.

Offensive because it suggests that a jury without the correct racial makeup won’t make the right decision. In other words, the real gripe with the current model is with the decisions by current juries.

If AIJA has the imprimatur of the nation’s judges, we should be very concerned. The output from this body reads like a Greens manifesto. Last year AIJA proposed juryless trials for sex offences – presumably to increase convictions. Its suggestion that we mandate Indigenous jury members for Indigenous defendants appears to come from a place of wanting fewer convictions.

If so, where are the empirical studies linking correctness of jury decisions with the racial makeup of jury members? That would be important news. Without rigorous evidence in support, AIJA’s attack on the current jury system is misguided, or worse.

There is a significant risk that even proposing these changes will encourage Indigenous defendants, who include violent men who maim and kill Indigenous women, to regard themselves, without any evidence, as victims of an oppressive justice system because the makeup of the jury didn’t match their race.

Uncovering other flaws is child’s play. Does this new jury structure imply some test of racial purity? If so, what percentage of Indigenous blood is enough to be fair to an Indigenous defendant?

At a wider level, the proposal to mandate racially composed juries is an example of the now ubiquitous – and completely bogus – notion that people of one background won’t sufficiently understand or treat fairly people from different backgrounds. This proposal is little more than a form of special pleading for your favourite minority.

Given that nobody can sensibly suggest a jury can reflect all groups in line with their percentage in society, some selection is required. How is that to be done? And for whom? If we ensure that groups A and B are included to reflect their numbers in society, or something close to it, but not groups C, D, E through to Z, is that an admission that only groups A and B will be fairly treated?

Should a jury be stacked to represent racial groups, women, and the indigent – but not the disabled, the sick or the neurologically diverse? Who chooses? Should some groups not be represented, and if so, why?

Indeed, the one attribute ignored by the legal activists behind the “representation theory” is good old-fashioned merit. Otherwise known as good judgment and sound intellect. Perhaps fans of representation theory think people in this group have been so historically overrepresented they need to be culled from juries.

Representation theory is a variant of two modern fads – critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion. Both emanate from the US and while openly contested in that country, we in Australia have been woefully slow to ask even basic questions.

Critical race theory holds that every aspect of society can only be understood through the lens of race, and more particularly racial oppression. Ergo we must reshape society from top to bottom to eliminate that oppression in ways demanded by the victims because who are the oppressors to judge their demands. This theory pollutes modern discourse to the point where so called “colour-blindness” – the notion we treat people according to their inherent merits rather than their race – is regarded as itself oppressive.

CRT wilts under the most cursory analysis because victim and oppressor labels don’t fit neatly to blacks or whites, respectively. Human nature is more nuanced than that, and laws and policies that ignore this glorious complexity do a disservice to all people, regardless of skin colour.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is also in retreat across America – on university campuses and within corporations. The US Supreme Court delivered the official rebuke in a 2023 judgment, informing the DEI-rich university sector that affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina breached the US constitution. The asserted rationales for discrimination by these universities – “training future leaders in the public and private sectors” and “producing new knowledge stemming from diverse outlooks” – sounded lovely. But the court found they were not “sufficiently coherent for purposes of strict scrutiny”.

In other words, bah humbug to a DEI policy that is divisive and easily debunked by common sense. Mandating certain numbers of Indigenous people on a jury falls into the same category.

While most Australians said no at last year’s voice referendum to special legal rights for some groups, some legal elites just won’t give up.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/indigenous-jury-plan-an-insult-to-justice/news-story/d398b5dcc6370cf945834267ba4efb70