Does Denmark have the reliable "renewable" electricity that eludes "Green" South Australia?

Someone below is not telling the whole story.  Unmentioned is the Skagerrak interconnector between Denmark and Norway -- which enables Denmark to import Nowegian hydro-power when the wind isn't blowing. There are also interconnecters to Sweden and Germany that import coal and nuclear power when the wind isn't blowing.  And sometimes the wind is so still that it provides virtually no power to Denmark.

And the statement that on "Samso, an island in Denmark, renewables provide 100 per cent of the electricity" is misleading.  On Samso, electricity is generated using a mix of wind, solar and straw-fired power plants.  If straw-fired power plants are renewable so are coal-fired plants.  There is no likelihood of running out of either straw or coal. 

Also unmentioned is the cost factor, but it is  known that Denmark has paid heavily for its wind plants and some 2010 figures suggest that  Denmark's wind industry is almost completely dependent on taxpayer subsidies, and Danes pay the highest electricity rates of any industrialised nation.

Further, when the wind does decide to blow, Denmark sends fully half of its very expensive, taxpayer-subsidized wind power to its neighbors at cut rates, in return for said neighbors dialing up or down its hydro power or nukes at other times (which, most of the time, means "up").

As ever, it's a very different story when you know the facts that the Green/Left leave out.  It's fake news below


THE man who helped create the world’s first 100 per cent renewable island, and who lives in a country that gets 50 per cent of its electricity from wind and other sources, says he has to travel to Australia for a blackout.

Soren Hermansen told news.com.au that blackouts are not common in Denmark, which gets about 50 per cent of its electricity from renewables. “I have to go to Australia to deal with a blackout, we never have blackouts, this is not bragging,” he said. “We have a very powerful grid — we don’t experience any failure.”

Denmark has managed to successfully integrate its renewables into its electricity system but it has also avoided some of the problems that Australia is experiencing by burying its distribution lines underground.

This helps avoid blackouts caused by severe weather, which led to South Australia’s statewide blackout in October.

While underground cabling would be very expensive to implement in Australia, taking out the storm factor, Mr Hermansen said Denmark’s system showed it was possible to successfully integrate renewable energy into the electricity network and create a stable system — without reliance on coal-fired power.

Debate has been raging in Australia about whether the country needs coal-fired power to provide a stable electricity system, in light of the a number of blackouts in South Australia, which gets about 40 per cent of it electricity from renewables.

But even on Samso, an island in Denmark where renewables provide 100 per cent of the electricity, Mr Hermansen said supply was very stable.

The island has a cable connecting it to the mainland but Mr Hermansen said it was used “rarely”, maybe two to three per cent of the time, at a maximum.

Most of the time, the island is a net exporter of electricity to the mainland.

Samso is an island of about 4000 people, and gets its electricity mainly from wind turbines, both on the island and offshore.

Five of the 10 offshore wind turbines are owned by the local government, three are privately owned mainly by local farmers who pooled their money to fund the project, and the last two are owned by a co-operative of small investors.

Mr Hermansen spoke at the national Community Energy Congress in Melbourne this week, and said local community support was one of the keys to creating a successful renewables grid.

“It requires people to be educated and informed, and to take responsibility for energy consumption and generation,” he said.

“(In the past) they were just consumers in a shop buying energy ... they got a bill every month, they paid it and that’s it.”

Nowadays electricity grids are becoming decentralised. Consumers can participate in the energy system, through things like installing rooftop solar panels that feed energy into the grid or by contributing to community electricity projects.

There are already community-funded solar projects in Australia, including an investor fund that raised $17,500 from 150 people to install a 29.9kW solar farm on the roof of Young Henry’s Brewery in Sydney.

It’s these types of community projects that are helping to generate electricity in Denmark.

Wind power alone produces about 40 per cent of Denmark’s electricity and the country aims to increase this by 100 per cent by 2050.

Power stations help generate the rest but instead of burning coal, many of them use local materials.

Power stations in forested areas are fed with wood chips, those in farming areas used manure and in the city, waste is incinerated.

The country is also innovative in its heating system, developing district heating networks to collect hot water or steam produced by power stations and transport this via water pipes to heat surrounding homes.

This supplies more than 60 per cent of homes in Denmark with heating and hot water. “It reduces our dependency on oil and also produces electricity,” Mr Hermansen said.

Denmark’s last coal fired power station has been decommissioned but is on standby mode until 2024. There is also some natural gas and LNG powered gas stations to help make up any shortfalls.

“The energy sector said this was not possible 10 to 15 years ago but it is happening now with no impact on industry or the security of the system,” Mr Hermansen said.

When asked whether Australia could follow Denmark’s lead, Mr Hermansen said while he didn’t know all the details of the system but it seemed viable.

“You have a lot of natural resources, there’s a lot of wind and other materials,” he said.

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"Green" SA faces more power woes after generator goes offline

They just don't have enough baseload capacity after they turned off their coal-fired stations.  Any unusual event can now throw them.  They have virtually no capacity in reserve.  So when bad things happen they struggle to cope.  They need those coal-fired generators. There is no alternative

South Australians have been asked to conserve electricity and consider turning off appliances to avoid potential load-shedding after three units at Torrens Island Power Station went offline following spot fires.

Four spot fires and a possible explosion at the power plant resulted in three units generating a combined 400 megawatts of power going offline at 3:33pm.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) also reported a loss of 200 megawatts of power from the nearby Pelican Point Power Station, which tripped as a result of the Torrens Island incident.

It has asked the market to respond, declaring there was a lack of reserve power available in SA.

There are fears this could lead to load-shedding — ordered by AEMO when power demand outstrips supply — and which most recently led to 90,000 Adelaide customers being switched off during a heatwave in February.

SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said South Australians should turn off all non-essential items when they go home tonight, such as dishwashers and washing machines.

"AEMO has requested as a precautionary measure to help avoid potential load-shedding that people conserve electricity and run air conditioners at a higher temperature of about 26 degrees," he said.

"To meet the drop in supply and manage risk within the system, AEMO has directed available additional generation to turn on."

A Metropolitan Fire Service spokesperson said they sent four appliances to the site and "on arrival found that on-site AGL personnel had extinguished a series of small spot fires using dry power fire extinguishes".

Torrens Island is the state's largest power generator, with a total of eight gas-fired units that generate up to 1,280 megawatts.

It was not clear how many units were in use at the time of the outage and the extent of the damage and time it will take to be repaired remains unknown.

The reliability of SA's power supply has been a controversial topic since September last year when wild weather resulted in a state-wide blackout.

Another blackout occurred in December, when an electrical fault on the Victorian side of the border prompted the failure of the Heywood Interconnector, which was contributing about 220 megawatts into SA's mix

SA Power Networks said the cause of the Torrens Island fires was being investigated and did not appear to be caused by its distribution network.

Mr Koutsantonis said the outage was not caused by "some inherent fragility of the system" but was due to fires and the close proximity of large generators to each other.

"The restart is occurring during a very high demand [period]," he said. "Is it frustrating? Yes absolutely.

"The important thing here now is rather than a blame game is to try and help people help the market operator manage the system for the next couple of hours by keeping the demand low."

Wholesale power prices in SA spiked and hit the maximum allowable limit of $14,000 per megawatt hour.

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Next populist showdown is all about immigration

The populist tide now surges towards a truly big target — Australia’s immigration intake, which was lauded by Donald Trump this week as a model — with the anti-immigration arguments based around city congestion, housing affordability, centralisation problems and the Muslim integration issue.

Tony Abbott has called for reduced immigration in recognition this is now the de facto stance of much of the conservative Right. Pauline Hanson wants a halt to further immigration. Liberal defector Cory Bernardi has called for the intake to be halved on economic grounds and expresses alarm about Muslim immigration. And Trump is invoked at nearly every stage of this political campaign.

There is a rich field of grievance for exploitation and Hanson is its most lethal manipulator. “High immigration is only beneficial to multinationals, banks and big business seeking a larger market while everyday Australians suffer from this massive intake,” she said in her maiden speech in the Senate. “Our city roads have become parking lots. Schools are bursting at the seams. Our aged and sick are left behind to fend for themselves. I call for a halt to further immigration and for government to look after our aged, the sick and the helpless.”

There is now intense competition between the Turnbull government and Shorten opposition over cracking down on the 457 visa system for temporary foreign workers. Bill Shorten flirts with his own version of Trump’s populist America-first mantra, saying he believes in “buy Australian, build Australian, employ Australian”.

Trump has made the attack on illegal migrants and Muslim immigration central to his presidency. In Britain, the absence of border controls was pivotal to the Brexit result, while migrant numbers and controls will be critical in the European elections, notably in France.

Australia’s situation is conspicuously different to that of both the US and Europe but it is idle to think such sentiments will not resound here. The immigrant issue or “big Australia” bogy lurks permanently below the surface, waiting to be unleashed.

Yet the foundations of Australia’s immigration policy, built over decades of trial and error, are far superior to that of nearly every other developed nation. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton tells Inquirer: “My approach as minister has been to return to and restore the Howard values and approach to immigration. This means we don’t have to apologise for seeking the best people from around the world to come to this country, and there are currently about 65 million people looking to migrate. We don’t need to be embarrassed about this.

“The objectives of our program are to employ Australians first but commit to skilled migration based on integrity and public confidence in the scheme. That means a hard-nosed approach. The immigration program is not some feel-good exercise. Our goal is to bring to this country people who will work, earn, contribute, educate their children and learn English.”

The principles are entrenched: strong border protection based on zero tolerance for asylum-seekers by boat; a lawful entry program geared heavily to the economy and labour market; separate principles for permanent and temporary entry; and a settlement philosophy geared to integration and embrace of Australian norms despite the radical wing of the multicultural lobby seeking to undermine this.

The test, however, is surely coming. In his speech nine days ago, Abbott drew the nexus between immigration and housing affordability, saying: “If we end the ‘big is best’ thinking of the federal Treasury and scaled back immigration (at least until housing starts and infrastructure have caught up), we can take the pressure off home prices.”

He warned that Australia had “land in abundance” but “Sydney’s house prices are close to Hong Kong’s”. The risk is obvious: linking house prices and immigration will become a media fashion and populist cause.

It is idle to pretend there is no relationship between immigra­tion, as it fuels demand, and house prices, but to justify major changes to the migrant intake on the basis of housing prices (as opposed to other demand and supply factors) lacks any sense of proportion.

The anti-immigration wave moves in cycles. Recall that when Julia Gillard became prime minister she launched a cynical Hansonite assault, exploiting Kevin Rudd’s blunder in calling for a big Australia. Gillard repudiated this notion, saying it was “time to reconsider whether our growth model was right” and declaring that our “clean beaches and precious open spaces” must be protected. It was a focus group project.

As part of his current tactics to fight for Australian workers, Shorten accuses some companies of exploitation and says nurses, carpenters, cooks, childhood educators, electricians and motor mechanics are missing out because “too many work visas are being used as a low-cost substitute for employing an Australian”. It slots perfectly into the crackdown demanded by the trade unions.

For Hanson, lower immigration is a crusade. She has generated huge support for immigration cuts from the conservative media bandwagon that promotes her. In her maiden speech Hanson said: “We have reached a population of 24 million this year, 17 years ahead of prediction. Governments have continually brought in high levels of immigration, so they say, to stimulate the economy. This is rubbish. The only stimulation that is happening is welfare handouts — many going to migrants unable to get jobs.”

Hanson’s campaign has a heavy religious bias. There is no doubt that Australia, like other Western nations, has a Muslim integration problem. But Hanson pushes this to intolerable extremes, saying: “Now we are in danger of being swamped by ­Muslims who bear a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own.”

There is no point simply condemning Hanson. She has a misconceived response to one of the challenges of the age. Political progressives seem clueless about the extent to which ordinary Australians are worried about the ability of Muslims to integrate. The issue needs to be confronted, not denied, but banning Muslim immigration cannot be an answer for Australia.

In relation to the economic and housing impact of immigration, Reserve Bank governor Phil Lowe said recently: “I am fond of telling visitors 40 per cent of Australians were either born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas. I wouldn’t want to give up that kind of advantage just for property ­prices.”

It may be elitist but the point is valid. Immigration is pivotal to Australia’s economic and social success during the age of globalisation (and it’s not going to disappear despite Trump).

The relatively good news is that Australia is buttressed to some extent to meet the coming political onslaught. Our immigration program is even more geared than normal to economic and labour market needs. Net migration numbers (permanents plus temporaries) have been slashed by more than a third from their record high under Rudd. The 457 temporary worker visa program has been reduced and tightened under the Coalition.

Net overseas migration peaked at a huge 305,900 in the 12 months to March 2009. It became the zenith of the big Australia beloved by Rudd, who had genuine ambitions to build up Australia’s global weight. Since then, no prime minister has used the phrase, as the implications are too electorally risky.

In the current climate, any figure beyond 300,000 annually would be untenable in both economic and political terms. Officials looking back on that period are apt to use the phrase “out of control”. The peak was driven by student visa programs in which an education and migrant package could, in effect, be purchased together. Labor subsequently removed these concessions.

The net overseas migration figure (which counts people if they are onshore for 12 out of the previous 16 months) has fallen on a sustained basis to around 170,000 in 2014-15 with the current government using the working assumption of a 1 per cent annual increase to labour force growth, meaning numbers in the 160,000 to 2000,000 range.

Looking at the main component, the permanent immigration intake, the story has been a model of stability for a number of years. It sits at a 190,000 annual cap, extending from Labor’s final year through the entire Abbott-Turnbull period. This intake is high by our historical norms and high in per capita terms judged against other developed nations. To a large extent, this reflects Australia’s superior economic growth performance. Scott Morrison reminded us this week that Australia is growing faster than any of the G7 countries.

In his recent speech to the Australia-Canada Forum, Lowe said both nations had strong population growth for advanced industrial economies but that over the past decade Australia’s population growth had averaged 1.7 per cent compared with Canada at 1.1 per cent, though these rates were now coming closer together.

In relation to 457 visas, there has been a sharp downward trend since the peak that reflected Labor-initiated ambitions for foreign workers. Under Labor, the program expanded from about 70,000 to 110,000 in September 2013. Now Malcolm Turnbull and Dutton are hammering Shorten for his hypocrisy.

The current 457 numbers are running at 81,000.

“We are cleaning it (the 457 program) up because Labor made a mess of this migration program when they were in government,” Dutton says. “During the glory years of Rudd-Gillard-Rudd during which the Leader of the Opposition was the employment minister, the number of 457 visa, primary visa holders, went from 68,0000 to 110,000 people. This was at the time the Leader of the Opposition, the then employment minister, was saying to Australians that he was putting workers first.”

Shorten, in reply, has pointed to the resources boom as justification. The bigger point is that the politics are now pointing one way — limiting the number of 457 visas while still trying to cater for the demands of the economy.

Dutton says the government will run migration policy according “to the settings that are most effective”. This means “we can’t take people that don’t have the required skills or that can’t make the economic contribution we want”.

The feature of the program these days is the heavy bias to skills over family reunion compared with the pre-Howard era. For instance, in 2015-16 the family numbers were 57,400, compared with the skilled component running at 128,550.

“It was the Howard government that rightly set in place the fundamentals that exist today,” Dutton says. “They were abandoned during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd period. But we have now returned to those principles.”

In the debate about immigration there are four benchmarks: the program has been a vital driver for economic growth; new migrants lower the age profile of the population; without ­migrants, the worker-retiree ratio would be worse; and migrants are vital in a connected world assisting our global networks.

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Prejudice against Tasmanians?

Interstate rivalry is mostly a jocular affair in Australia but Tasmanians do seem to have a tendency to be more bothered by it than they should

INFERIORITY complex? Has political correctness spread from race, colour and gender to geography?  Yes, I choked on my organic, certified GM-free muesli with soy last week when I saw the front-page headline in the River City press: “Bullied for being Tasmanian”.

It was the story of an accountant working in Perth who was given a bad time for being from Tasmania.  “I was regularly the butt of office jokes,” he was reported as saying. “Jokes right to my face about me buying lunch from Subway, that I liked Hungry Jack’s, [about] my jumper, my mug [and] that I came from Tasmania.”

Well, in that order, initially I wondered if the bullying might have been more to do with his diet, the jumper and the mug, rather than state of origin.

Anyway he sued his accounting firm, one of the nation’s largest, and it stumped up $120,000 in damages, which should easily cover the cost of his relocation to the gentler confines of Tasmania.

I don’t know how bad the bullying was but I do know that if I had $120,000 for every time in my long career on the big island someone made a joke about me coming from Tasmania, I would now be spending winters in my beachside mansion at Byron.

As one of my bosses once told me when I was pitching a story about my home state: “Charlie, no one gives a rat’s about your crumb-bum, two-headed, inbred little island. There’s not a ratings point in the place.” I didn’t invoke section 18C but I did look annoyed.

“Maaate,” he cajoled. “Don’t go spiralling off with your nightie on fire back down to your rellies in Black Bob’s Country. Why don’t you just get a seat up the front on the next plane to New York? You can interview Hugh Jackman and stay at the Ritz Carlton.”

Well, that must have been $120,000 worth. Tassie was defended and honour was satisfied.

Maybe we are a touch thin-skinned in Tasmania. We grow up in a remote and protected little green bubble where bad things rarely happen – unless you are a marsupial. But when they happen to us, boy, do we remember them.

During recent reminiscing about the 1967 bushfires, a local historian worried that publishing too much detail might be traumatic for those who survived the ordeal.

Very down-home Tasmanian, I thought. Even historians are anxious about bringing up the past.

More than 40 years after the ship hit the span, we still close down the Tasman Bridge whenever a carrier sails under it.

Actuaries tell me the chance of it happening again is a more remote chance than winning a TattsLotto jackpot. But where optimists might say, “Well, someone’s got to win”, Tasmanians will likely say, “Well, someone’s got to lose.”

I get it. Growing up here, I too am a glass-half-empty kind of bloke. I expect the worst. That way, I am rarely disappointed.

I hardly dare mention Port Arthur, except that it so well represents the Tasmanian quandary of whether to remember or forget. I think there is good reason to forever consign the random half-witted maniac killer of April 1996 into outer-darkness and never again mention his name.

On the other hand, there is every reason for remembering the stark horrors of the penal settlement. It is a vital part of our history and the convict system has defined who we are, and is still in play in the high-handed attitude of the authorities in our daily lives.

By the 1880s, there was a movement abroad to destroy all trace of the place and so remove the “convict stain”.

When it comes to the inconvenient past, we could take advice from grand old Persian poet Omar Khayyam;

“The moving finger writes, and having writ,

Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line

Nor all they tears wash out a Word of it.”

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Australia’s record-breaking summer heat linked to climate change (?)

This is just modelling:  Games with numbers.  There has been no statistically significant change for decades anyway.  So there is nothing to link to.  Big fraud!

The record-breaking heat seen across southeast Australia in the last few months was made 50 times more likely by climate change, according to new analysis that links the heat directly to global warming.

Southeast Australia was struck by three major heatwaves in January and February, with temperatures climbing as high as 113°F (45°C) in some places. On February 10, Sydney Airport recorded its hottest February day on record, with temperatures hitting 109°F (42°C). The heat was also uncharacteristically persistent — Observatory Hill in Sydney saw temperatures reach above 95°F (35°C) for nine consecutive days in January, breaking a 120-year old record. Elsewhere, the consistent heat was even more extreme: in Moore, New South Wales, there were 52 consecutive days with temperatures above 95°F (35°C).

The study, conducted by the World Weather Attribution Program at Climate Central, used climate model simulations and observational data analysis to understand how climate change, caused by an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, might have made these heat events more likely. They found that climate change made the average temperatures seen this summer in Australia 50 times more likely, and made the maximum summer temperatures 10 times more likely.

“In the past, a summer as hot as 2016–2017 was a roughly 1 in 500-year event,” the researchers wrote. “Today, climate change has increased the odds to roughly 1 in 50 years — a 10-fold increase in frequency.”

The analysis also warns that heat events like these — both punctuated heatwaves and long stretches of above-average temperatures — are likely to become more frequent as climate change continues. In the future, according to the study, heat events like the one this summer could happen as frequently as every five years — and will likely be more intense, with temperatures averaging at least 1.8ºF (1°C) warmer than they were in the past.

The connection between heat waves and climate change has strong scientific support. In 2015, eight papers published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s attribution report — an annual report that explains extreme weather events from a climate perspective — all linked climate change to heatwaves, showing that climate change clearly made heatwaves either more likely, more intense, or both.

According to data from NASA and NOAA, 2016 was the hottest year on record. Before that, both 2015 and 2014 held that distinction. In fact, 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001.

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Trump effect coming in country Australia?

Conservative politician George Christensen sees different attitudes in his regional electorate

Mr Christensen, 38, is channelling deepening backbench disaffection with the Prime Minister and his leadership team, his seat of Dawson is in the eye of a wider storm for Australian politics: the re-emergence of Senator’s Hanson’s party of protest.

One Nation is thriving in the fault line between voters in the prosperous inner cities and the country, as detailed this week by The Australian’s Regions in Revolt series. Dawson is emblematic of the political and socio-economic rift. Anchored in sugar farming, coalmining and tourism, economic growth in the electorate ­consistently outstripped that of the Queensland and national economies until mining con­struction fell over in 2012-13. ­Exclusive modelling for The Weekend ­Australian by Price­waterhouseCoopers shows than unemployment in the Dawson ­region doubled between that time and December 2015, from 3.6 per cent to 8.4 per cent. Reflecting this, take-up of the dole increased by 98.61 per cent in postcode 4740, in the heart of Mackay, in the three years to 2016, government data reveals.

Peter McFarlane, of the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, said the average home price in Mackay had slumped from $411,000 to $318,000 in five years. While there are signs of “green shoots” in the property and job markets, it’s not before time.

Mr Christensen wants to tell this story of Australia’s haves and have lesses. The outspoken backbencher this week threw in his job as the Nationals’ chief whip, sacrificing pay of $26,000 a year, to ­become an even greater headache for Mr Turnbull in his self-­appointed role as a straight-­talking advocate for regional Australia and his far-flung ­electorate. While some of his colleagues complain that Mr Christensen is embittered about missing out on a spot in the ministry he claims to have been promised after the election last July reduced the Coalition government’s ­majority to a single seat, the man of the moment is having none of it.

“It had just become completely and utterly not workable for me,” he said of his position as whip.

“You could not have someone who was supposed to enforce party unity and discipline and do what I was doing. I was actually having to hold back most of the time when I was … speaking out. Relinquishing the role makes me feel a lot more free in terms of ­articulating the concerns of the electorate and where I think the government has gone into the wrong area.”

Mr Christensen is convinced that it’s a mistake for the government to support the decision by the Fair Work Commission to reduce weekend penalty rates. In parliament, Mr Turnbull was pursued by Labor over the impact on low-paid workers — even though the industrial umpire had been set up by Labor and the review of penalty entitlements was commissioned by Bill Shorten when he was industrial relations minister.

By week’s end, Coalition backbenchers were “despondent”, Mr Christensen said. “There is no way we can win an argument when you are telling people they can make do with less money.”

The government needed to cut its losses. Mr Christensen backs a proposal by Tony Abbott loyalist Eric Abetz for existing workers’ penalty rates to be protected and for the cuts to be applied only to small business, where cost relief was needed most. He had texted Mr Turnbull and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce to outline his concern about the government’s position, but was given short shrift.

“Let’s just say I gave my view and they gave their views back, and it was not the same view,” he said. “But blind Freddy can see the trouble we are in … this argument is so big we should be doing something to head it off at the pass. It (the FWC decision) was not our decision. We should not be ­wearing it. But we are wearing it.”

Mr Christensen said his apprehension was shared on the government backbench: “I have talked to other MPs who agree with me, yes.”

Asked if the issue could ­threaten Mr Turnbull’s leadership, he said: “I don’t know about that. Leadership speculation is a matter for the Liberal Party and not the National Party, to be honest. I think we are going to have to make decisions which may be political, but the reality is it is in line with what people think.”

Newspoll showed this week that support for One Nation had doubled over summer to 10 per cent nationally, as its leader sought to channel President ­Donald Trump’s appeal to conservative-minded voters in the US. A ReachTEL poll in Dawson conducted for the Left-leaning Australia Institute showed that One Nation and the merged Liberal National Party in Queensland were level-pegging on 30 per cent apiece of the primary vote, a finding Mr Christensen yesterday described as credible. This suggests that his re-election would be dependent on Labor preferences.

He will tell a crisis meeting today in Bundaberg of federal and state MPs and senators for regional Queensland called by state LNP leader Tim Nicholls that a “de-branding” of the amalgam­ated conservative party could be the way forward. Contrary to ­reports in Fairfax Media, however, he remains a supporter of the LNP.

“There is some merit to the ­argument that we (regional MPs) should stand under the brand of the Nationals … do I think it would be better federally? Probably it would be,” he told The Weekend Australian.

State LNP frontbencher Jason Costigan, whose ultra-marginal seat of Whitsunday takes in Mackay’s northern suburbs, won’t be attending the Bundaberg meeting, highlighting the problems One Nation is causing for the LNP. Mr Costigan has portfolio responsibilities for north Queensland. But he said he had other commitments and Bundaberg “was a long way from north Queensland”.

“One of the things in our party is that we have lacked the ability to sell our vision and our policies to the people of Queensland,” Mr Costigan said.

Mr Christensen said Senator Hanson had been able to a “fill a void over values”, especially in regional areas. “People are angry,” he said of the quality of political leadership. “In the regions … we are more conservative, we are more patriotic. People can laugh in the cities that it’s a bit jingoistic, but that’s the reality. Kids stand up at school looking at the flag, they sing the national anthem and some even have a school prayer. Things are done differently here.”

Mr Christensen said he would not accept a promotion to the ministry before the next federal election, due in 2019. Queenslanders are tipped to go to the polls to elect a state government later this year or early in 2018.

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Punchbowl Boys High School having Muslim problems

The Punchbowl Boys High School principal and deputy principal have been dumped amid a backlash over the exclusion of female teachers from taking part in ­official events at the largely Muslim public school.

The NSW Education Department confirmed yesterday that principal Chris Griffiths and deputy principal Joumana Dennaoiu had been removed from their roles, following an investi­gation into the school in Sydney’s southwest.

The school’s treatment of its ­female staff is understood to be one of a multitude of issues that have led to the decision. While the department said it was unaware of any official policy at the school that concerned the role of female teachers, The Australian understands a decision was made last year to exclude them from taking official roles in the Year 12 graduation ceremony and the annual presentation day.

Senior female teachers, who expected to play official roles as they had in the past, were upset by the move, for which no explanation had been provided by ­management.

Action by the department comes as Education Minister Rob Stokes seeks legal advice over a protocol implemented at the Hurstville Boys School in Sydney’s south that permits students to decline to shake hands with women in accordance with an ­ancient Islamic hadith.

While Mr Stokes labelled the protocol “sexist” in a radio interview earlier this week, it is understood there are concerns within the government that such a protocol could potentially contravene federal anti-discrimination laws.

Legal advice, when received, is expected to be shared with all principals.

Tensions at Punchbowl have been building since Mr Griffiths took over the top job from Jihad Dib in late 2015. Mr Dib, now the state Labor MP for Lakemba, had a celebrated teaching career and is credited with turning around a school that was once notorious for gangs, drugs and violent crime.

Sources close to the school claim that the broader school community has been gradually shut out. Large community dinners previously hosted by the school, often with 700 people in attendance, have been scrapped and replaced by small invitation-only events.

In the meantime, former students have been barred from visiting the campus.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the Education Department and the school is understood to have soured, with the school understood to have resisted ­numerous requests to provide ­information.

A spokesman for the Education Department said yesterday that Punchbowl Boys High School underwent the department’s regular cyclical auditing process in 2016, which covered a range of ­internal programs and practices, including supervision of prayer groups.

“As a result of a recent ­appraisal of Punchbowl Boys High School, there has been a change in the leadership of the school,” said the spokesman. “A new principal and deputy principal will commence work at the school tomorrow.” He declined to name the new principal.

Mr Stokes, who has been in the role just weeks, has requested regular briefings from the department on the situation.

“Decisive action has been taken by the department to remove the principal and deputy principal from the school,” he told The Australian last night.

“A new principal with great ­experience has been appointed, effective immediately.”

SOURCE




"Aboriginal" woman has $250,000 racial discrimination case against three uni students dismissed for the second time after judge rules they have 'suffered enough'

An aboriginal woman who claimed she was racially abused on Facebook by three university students has lost her appeal to restart legal proceedings against them.

Cindy Prior, an administration officer at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), filed a $250,000 lawsuit against Alex Wood, Calum Thwaites and Jackson Powell after they allegedly posted racist comments about her online in 2013.

She claimed she had been racially abused by the trio after asking Mr Wood to leave an indigenous-only computer room at the university in Brisbane.

Her lawsuit under the Racial Discrimination Act's controversial section 18C was thrown out of court last year and a judge has now ruled that she cannot appeal.

Ms Prior's lawsuit was originally dismissed by the Federal Court after a judge ruled she did not reasonable prospects of bringing a successful case against the three men.

Justice John Dowsett has now dismissed the case for a second time, saying the students had 'suffered more from legal proceedings than any other young person would have suffered in a lifetime'.

The QUT worker, who has been on stress leave since filing the lawsuit, has been ordered to pay more than $200,000 in costs and the legal fees of the three men, The Australian reported.

Ms Prior had argued she was unable to work face-to-face with white people following the incident in a computer lab at the QUT in 2013.

Mr Wood allegedly made a series of Facebook posts after Ms Prior told him to leave the room, which was reserved for indigenous people only. 'Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation,' he wrote.

The post attracted a number of responses, including one from Mr Powell who wrote: 'I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is.' Mr Thwaites is alleged to have written 'ITT N***ers', however he denied being responsible for the post.

Justice Dowsett's judgement appeared to criticise 18C as he said Mr Powell's comments were clearly ironic. 'To suggest that humour or irony cannot blunt the most outrageous of statements overlooks the history of such devices, and the extremes to which comedians, authors and speakers commonly use them today,' the judge said.

'No reasonably intelligent person would have understood Mr Powell's posts as other than humour or irony.'

The case has been a rallying point for opponents of 18C, which makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people.

Many Coalition MPs have argued the words 'insult' and 'offend' in section 18C of the act hinder free speech and have called them to be removed.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Donald Trump's speech to the joint session of Congress spoke highly of Australia's immigration rules

Donald Trump's interest in adopting Australia's so-called "merit-based" immigration system and switching away from low-skilled  foreign workers appears to be the culmination of 12 months of private talks between his advisers and Australian officials.

Mr Trump's senior policy adviser, immigration hardliner Stephen Miller, first met Australian diplomats last March at the Washington residence of Ambassador Joe Hockey.

At the time Mr Trump was leading the Republican primary elections and championing a tough stance against Muslims and illegal Mexican immigrants he labelled "rapists" and "murderers".

The ultra-conservative Mr Miller showed interest in better understanding Australia's immigration system - which prioritises higher-skilled workers in demand from business and blocks people who arrive illegally by boat - according to people familiar with the discussions.

Australian officials briefed Mr Miller on Canberra's targeted immigration rules and points system.

Visas are granted predominantly to skilled workers on their likely contribution to society based on factors such as age, education and work experience.

In contrast, the US residency rules are heavily skewed towards family reunions.

A series of exchanges over policy, including immigration, between Australian officials in Washington and Canberra and the Trump team continued over the past year, sources said.

On Tuesday night in Washington in his first speech to a joint sitting of Congress, President Trump hailed Australia's immigration rules and signalled he wanted to adopt a similar approach.

"The current, outdated [US] system depresses wages for our poorest workers, and puts great pressure on taxpayers," Mr Trump said.

"Nations around the world - like Canada, Australia and many others - have a merit-based immigration system.

"It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially."

Mr Miller was reportedly a major contributor to Mr Trump's speech.

The President's statement was ironic given that weeks earlier he lashed out on social media at a "dumb" deal he inherited from predecessor Barack Obama to accept 1250 refugees from Australian offshore processing centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

During a late January phone call, Mr Trump told Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull "this is the worst deal ever", complained that he was "going to get killed" politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the "next Boston bomber", The Washington Post originally reported.

In another twist, Mr Miller is understood to have been one of Mr Trump's advisers most sceptical of honouring the Obama-Turnbull refugee deal.

The referencing of Australia by Mr Trump this week in Congress may be interpreted as a nod to Mr Turnbull; that while the administration loathes the refugee deal, the President respects Australia's targeted immigration laws.

Mr Hockey last month visited the White House to smooth over relations with chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen Bannon after the fiery phone call. Ambassador Hockey was on the floor of the Congress for the speech yesterday.

In the US, about 70 per cent of the approximate 1 million people granted permanent residency each year are approved on family-based migration.

About 15 per cent are employment-oriented and 15 per cent humanitarian, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Australia accepted 262,170 permanent immigrants last year, including many already living in Australia on temporary visas, according to government data. About 57 per cent were skilled, 34 per cent came through the family migration scheme and 9 per cent were part of Australia's humanitarian stream.

Under strict rules, asylum-seekers who attempt to illegally enter Australia by boat are dispatched to foreign detention centres.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton last October proposed a lifetime ban on adults who attempt to come to Australia illegally by boat.

In the United Kingdom, Australia's points-based immigration system was last year championed by Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson to "take back control of a system that is, at the moment, completely out of control" and to "neutralise the extremists".

A review of past presidential speeches shows that the last time Australia was mentioned in a president's inaugural address to a joint sitting of Congress was in 2001 when George W. Bush thanked Australia "mourning" the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks that killed about 3000 people.

SOURCE






Australia’s energy mess to spark our own Trump revolt

Global markets last night declared the looming Trump-driven US boom back on track. For Australia to duplicate such a boom would require four elements:

First, there needs to be a willingness to slash government administrative waste. The Washington reductions (“draining the swamp”) are monumental. Our waste is worse than that in the US. The Abbott government was elected in 2013 on a promise to slash the waste but it didn’t go through with it. There is no political will.

Second, we would need to raise tariffs or introduce an import tax, which means a return to protectionism. Australia says ‘no’.

Third, an ability to run up a huge deficit in the expectation that the tax cuts and infrastructure spending will create a boom. We certainly run big US-style deficits but by via government spending and waste not tax cuts. A mindset change is required which is not in our political DNA.

Finally, and most important of all, Trump is fostering massive energy developments in oil, gas and coal to drive his job creation and middle class income increases (Trump talks to the believers, March 1).

Here we can do the same thing and do it in a way that slashes our carbon emissions. But our politicians, particularly in states like NSW and Victoria, have no concept of the link between employment and gas usage, so we are actually facing a domestic gas shortage and skyrocketing energy prices.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs are linked to gas. Worse still, we have invested in renewable electricity generation but have not invested in base load power generation or energy storage systems like pumped hydro, so NSW and Victoria face blackouts in coming summers when the Hazelwood brown coal generator is shut down. You can’t have an investment-led recovery like the US when there are energy shortages.

Of the four US elements, energy goes to the core of why the Australian domestic economy will struggle and requires savings run-downs or borrowing for houses to maintain domestic momentum.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the Origin and Santos consortiums in the Gladstone LNG projects are seriously short of gas from the Surat basin and surrounding areas in Queensland, so they are going to continue sucking gas out of the Cooper Basin and Bass Strait that supply NSW and Victoria — exactly as the chief of BlueScope, Paul O’Malley warned.

How do we solve this problem? We have the gas but state politics is preventing its development

On the surface the most straight forward way would be to bring in a third political party in New South Wales and/or Victoria (either to the right or to the left) who understands the link between gas and jobs

But that’s hard work and there are no obvious candidates at this stage, although one might emerge.

So we’re really left with only one alternative — the Bowen Basin in Queensland although there is gas in the Northern Territory but that too is being blocked by the Northern Territory administration.

The gas in the Bowen Basin is owned by Shell and Petro China. The Bowen Basin gas was originally owned by BHP and then AGL. Shell and Petro China bought the gas field for $3.5 billion and have since invested large sums in it.

There are huge reserves but they are deeper than the Surat basin further south and much more complex. Shell and Petro China drilled a series of some 20 pilot wells but not all of these flowed as well as Shell had hoped, so more work is required to extract the gas economically.

It will therefore take some years to bring Bowen gas to market and the outlays will be large. Probably the best alternative is to pump the gas 250 kilometres to the Wallumbilla gas hub where it can be piped to Sydney and Melbourne.

Alternatively, it can be pumped 500km to Gladstone to reduce the Santos and Origin shortfalls so that they’ll no longer require gas from the Cooper or Bass Strait.

When Shell purchased British Gas in 2015, it acquired the BG LNG project in Gladstone, which is now owned in a consortium with a different Chinese partner. Shell has sufficient Gladstone gas so it doesn’t need to suck gas from the Cooper and Bass Strait to honour its commitments.

Given the costs and complexity of developing the Bowen Basin, it’s probably not at the top of Shell’s agenda. More importantly, Shell needs to make sure it continues to drill in the old British gas areas in the Surat, so that there continues to be enough gas to supply its LNG requirements.

To develop Bowen gas will not only require more development work but the buyers of gas in Victoria and New South Wales will need to come together and offer an iron clad contract to take the gas.

In the past, because we had abundant gas in the Cooper Basin and Bass Strait, Australian gas buyers have never had to secure their supplies. But now they do and the gas will not be cheap but at least it will be available. Of course, the frustrating part of this is that our governments/oppositions in Victoria and NSW are stopping the development the reserves of gas in their states.

These are the sort policies that in the US created the Trump presidency. If the market is right and the US booms, then watch Trumpism spread to Australia on the back of our energy mess.

SOURCE






Australia cracks down on visas for fast food industry

Since 2012, more than 500 foreign staff have been granted a visa - known as 457 - to work at businesses including McDonald's, KFC and Hungry Jack's.

The skilled worker visa, designed to fill Australian shortages, also extends to family members. "Australian workers, particularly young Australians, must be given priority," Mr Dutton said in explaining the change. He said visas would still be granted under exceptional circumstances.

Why Australia's temporary workers' scheme is under fire
According to government statistics, 95,758 people were living in Australia on 457 visas in September last year, compared with 103,862 in 2015. The highest proportion came from India (24.6%), the UK (19.5%) and China (5.8%).

What is the 457 visa?

A four-year business visa which allows people to live in Australia with their immediate family. It is designed to staff industries where there are gaps in skilled labour. Employers must sponsor 457 holders, and only if they "cannot find an Australian or permanent resident"

Successful applicants can freely travel in and out of Australia
In 2016, the most 457s were granted to cooks, developers, programmers and medical workers. Foreign workers had been able to apply for fast-food industry jobs since an agreement in 2012, when the opposition Labor Party was in power.

McDonalds employed more than half the people given 457 visas since 2012

But Labor's employment spokesman Brendan O'Connor queried the new decision, saying the visa did not apply to unskilled workers. "The notion that 457s can take jobs of flipping burgers means either Peter Dutton is lying or they are misapplying the 457 visa," he said.

Mr Dutton conceded the change mostly affected managerial staff, but said the current arrangement did not put Australian workers first. "Genuine business needs for overseas workers which contribute to economic growth will still be considered," he said.

Mr Dutton in December ordered a review of Australia's Consolidated Sponsored Occupational List, which lists more than 650 professions, to ensure that overseas workers "supplement rather than provide a substitute" for Australians.

SOURCE





GDP: Australian economy rebounds 1.1 per cent, beating expectations

Australia has avoided a second consecutive quarter of negative economic growth, rising by 1.1 per cent in the December quarter and beating market expectations.

Overall, the economy grew by 2.4 per cent in the 12 months to December, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

All states and territories grow as the latest GDP figures show Australia has avoided a technical recession.

In the September quarter it had shrunk 0.5 per cent, posting the second-worst result in 25 years as both private and government investment contracted and bad weather disrupted construction.

Ahead of the release of the December quarter figures, Treasury secretary John Fraser told a Senate hearing there was "no denying" the September quarter had been very weak.

A second consecutive quarter of negative growth would have raised the prospect of a so-called technical recession of the kind Australia hadn't experienced since the early 1990s.

Market economists were expecting growth of 0.8 per cent in the December quarter and 2 per cent over the year.

Strong increases in export prices pushed up nominal gross domestic product 3 per cent in the quarter and 6.1 per cent over the year.

The Bureau believes the terms of trade surged 9.1 per cent in the quarter, the most since 2010.

"The decent rebound in doesn't just dash any lingering fears that Australia was in a recession, but it also boosts hopes that the surge in commodity prices will trigger a rapid recovery," said Capital Economics chief economist Paul Dales. "The income recession of 2015 has given way to a mini income boom."

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

The crisis for conservatism

Paul Kelly reminds us below that Australia's great conservative Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, had a message similar to Trump.  That does suggest that an Australian version of Trumpism might be very successful today

The fragmentation in Australian politics that sees the fracturing of the voting base of the Turnbull-led Coalition parties highlights a phenomenon evident around many Western democracies including Australia — the crisis of conservatism.

This varies from nation to ­nation but is most convulsive in the US, where Donald Trump has energised the conservative base yet shattered its unity, leading to the question: what does conservatism stand for in the world of 2017?

This question and its competing answers lie at the heart of the contemporary upheavals in the West. Is true conservatism dying in an age of disruption and globalisation where habits of life, work and family are radically shifting?

Will Trumpism save conservatism through populism or herald its intellectual collapse?

The crisis of conservatism is just part of a bigger story in the West: the weakening of the political centre. The tearing apart of the centre is a universal trend, seen in the Brexit vote (against both the Tory and Labour parties), the victory of Trump (against first the Republican and then the Democratic establishment), the rise of the European populists (often at the expense of mainstream parties) and in Australia, albeit to a much lesser extent, the decline of the primary vote for the main parties (the last Newspoll shows the Coalition on 35 per cent and Labor on 36 per cent, not far from a ­split nearly three equal ways).

Around the globe, conservative and progressive/labour parties are in the gun. Their meaning and support base are under extreme pressures. But in Australia, greater damage is being done to the ­Coalition as the governing party during a time of popular grievance with the existing order.

It was in 1994 when John Howard, from the wilderness, first enunciated what became the central organising principle of his success in office: that the Liberal Party was best seen as embodying the two great classical political traditions, liberalism and conservatism. While Malcolm Turnbull admires Howard as a role model, he declines to operate on the same strategy.

In Australian today, there is no leadership figure accepted as the authoritative voice of conservatism. Turnbull does not occupy such a role. Tony Abbott aspires to this position but suffers from the problem that his declarations of conservative belief cannot be separated from the leadership issue. Howard has been retired a decade. Pauline Hanson and Cory Bernardi have made their claims but neither is a high-profile mainstream figure.

This week Abbott unveiled his full mission as he launched a struggle for the soul of the Liberal Party. Abbott’s charge is that Turnbull does not understand the nature of the party he leads because he cannot grasp the essence of conservatism and, as a result, he is doomed to fail. While Abbott is unpopular in the country, he purports to be the more authentic voice of Liberal conservatism in an age of Trump-inspired upheaval on the centre-right.

The first question for Australian conservatives is whether Trump is their ally or a false prophet. Should Australian conservatives follow in Trump’s footsteps? “No, I don’t agree with that,” Howard tells Inquirer. “It’s misreading the political landscape for conservative commentators in Australia to see Donald Trump as the embodiment of modern conservatism.

“Trump is not my idea of a conservative. He is very hard to label and it’s far too early to make a judgment. He may turn out to be a very good president. But it’s a mistake to see him as part of the continuous conservative tradition in the US. Trump is no Reagan or Thatcher and they are the two conservative lodestars in my lived political experience.”

Howard points to Trump’s “apparent abandonment” of trade liberalisation as proof he does not fit the conservative model. His behavioural differences are apparent. Howard says Margaret Thatcher did not publicly ­attack the British intelligence services, nor would Ronald Reagan have ­attacked the family of a US soldier killed in action.

“My argument is that Trump does not fit the Reagan-Thatcher model of a conservative,” Howard says. “Now, of course he doesn’t have to. I think it’s too early to identify where you can locate him philosophically.”

Trump is also far removed from the Howard model of conservatism though Howard says there are overlaps, notably on Trump’s rejection of political correctness, a Howard trait as well.

Yet Howard’s rejection of “Trump as model” is furiously disputed by conservative populists, notably Hanson and Bernardi and many conservative commentators. The lesson Abbott draws from Trump is that without stronger conservative policies, the Coalition will “drift to defeat”.

This leads to a pivotal test for the Liberals. Former Liberal federal director Brian Loughnane tells Inquirer that Trump threatens Coalition and Liberal Party unity in this country.

“The fracturing driven by Trump threatens to contaminate mainstream conservatism,” he says. “Preserving the best of conservatism to ensure it can offer a viable alternative to Trumpism will be a key challenge in the next few years.

“(Trump’s) success makes the political management of the centre-right in Australia more complex. This means there is a political precondition for the Coalition to govern effectively and that is keeping the disparate groups on the conservative side tied into the ­Coalition’s umbrella and not doing their own thing.”

Yet, as Loughnane knows, they are doing their own thing. Nobody can predict how far the Hanson breakout will extend but it has the potential to destroy the Turnbull government. This reinforces Loughnane’s most vital point, that governing well is not enough if the conservative base is fragmenting.

The Turnbull Coalition is being damaged not on the Left but on the Right. Its priority should be a strategy to hold conservative voters to the Liberal Party. Howard makes the same point yet admits the structural nature of the problem.

“This is a function of the generic fragmentation of the major party vote,” he says. “In a sense the fragmentation that afflicted the Labor Party via the Greens has begun to catch up with the ­Coalition on the Right. We saw a bit of this at the 2013 election with Clive Palmer and we saw a repeat at the last election. It’s now almost a detachable flank on both sides.

“There is a danger for the ­Coalition in losing people who are instinctively conservatives to parties like One Nation. The Liberal Party must be alive to that. People who vote for One Nation would be, in the main, cultural traditionalists and these people should find their natural home in the Liberal Party or the National Party. We’ve got to hold on to those people.”

Abbott agrees but goes further in a sustained indictment of Turnbull without naming him. He says disillusioned conservatives believe the government “has become Labor lite”. He wants a more muscular conservatism, an agenda to contest the Left’s “long march through the institutions”, and now offers a series of policies that he ­either dodged or ditched in office.

Abbott admits his own failures. But the real issue being raised by Howard, Loughnane and Abbott, each pivotal to recent Liberal history, is Turnbull’s ideological and philosophical leadership of the party. Turnbull, as a natural progressive, is a different Liberal leader — still evolving, but from a different mould.

This raises the critical question: what is the key to Liberal Party success? History points to a sustained theme, the ability to champion and hold together the liberal and conservative traditions. The remarkable individual and collective success of Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and Howard in office testifies to their mastery of this art. Each managed to hold the ­allegiance of conservatives and liberals, striking a balance between stability and progress. The experience of the Abbott-Turnbull era suggests this art is either lost or awaiting rediscovery.

It is astonishing, therefore, that perhaps the strongest media critique of Turnbull in his first year as PM, delivered on a virtual weekly basis, was that he should have moved decisively to the progressive side by sharply lifting the ­government’s climate change ambitions, authorising a free vote on same-sex marriage and even taking up the republican cause.

Anyone who thinks this was marrying the conservative and liberal traditions must live on another planet. It was doing the exact opposite. Such media critiques assumed, dubiously, these moves would lift Turnbull’s public standing while ignoring what would happen to his standing among his colleagues and voting base. The ensuing turmoil would have wrecked his government and jeopardised his leadership. Imagine the scale of the conservative voting haemorrhage today had Turnbull followed such advice, particularly on climate change.

The deeper point here is the sheer confusion and disputation about the essence of the Liberal Party and how it succeeds in power. Unsurprisingly, this confusion extends into the ranks of the party itself. The great folly in grappling with non-Labor politics is to assume the Liberal Party is primarily a liberal party or alternatively that it is a conservative party — a natural instinct, yet such interpretations merely shrink the scope of its broader appeal.

Much of this confusion arises from the endless debate about Menzies himself, his purpose and practice. Explaining the party’s name, a defining decision, he ­famously said: “We took the name Liberal because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise and rejecting the socialist panacea.”

This reflected three themes pivotal in the Liberal Party ethos, meaning and contemporary significance. First, Australia as a new-world society without any aristocracy, ruling class or established church and riven with a convict emancipist outlook that “one man was as good as another” was a polity where conservatism was weak.

There was no conservative ruling order and those who tried to pretend otherwise were usually mocked. Indeed, as historian John Hirst said, the word “conservative” was frequently used as a term of abuse. Europeans settled on this continent after the American and French revolutions and as the 19th century advanced, political liberalism was as potent in this country as at any place on earth.

In 1909, when the fusion took place and the party system was formed with the merger of Alfred Deakin’s Protectionists and the Free-Traders, previously led by George Reid, the new party became the Liberal Party. The separation between Australia and Britain was sharp: this nation has never had a Tory party.

The non-Labor side remade itself four times during the 20th century. After the 1916 Labor split, it became the Nationalist Party. During the Depression it became the United Australia Party. And in 1944 under Menzies it became the Liberal Party again. It was never called the Conservative Party.

The sustained historical impulse on the non-Labor side is unmistakable: that conservatism alone will never suffice in Australia. Stand-alone conservatism has never had a hope in this country and it never will. Promoted as a tradition and practice in its own right — witness many noisy advocates today — it will always fail at the ballot box. Menzies knew this.

The second theme is embedded in Menzies’ words. The new anti-Labor Party had to embrace a powerful set of positive ideas. As historian Judith Brett says, the non-Labor side in Australia was distinctive, operating in a young society, aware it must promote change as well as stability, and ­appealing not just to economic interests but to the moral virtues of the middle class.

The context was vital. Menzies saw the interwar years as a time of poisonous division and stagnant policy. His mission was not just to defeat socialism but to offer a more persuasive alternative. Convinced that non-Labor had made the mistake of being “the man who says no’”, Menzies said: “There is no room in Australia for a party of reaction. There is no useful place for a policy of negation.”

The Liberal Party he created would stand for a repudiation of class division, the espousal of savings, investment and reward. Individual freedom and enterprise was the heart of his philosophy. “Governments do not provide enterprise; they provide controls,” he said. “There cannot be rising living standards if all we propose to do is redistribute what we now have. We must produce more and produce it more cheaply.”

This view is as relevant today as it was in the 1940s.

Menzies believed in the battle of ideas and principles to combat Labor and, for most of his time, he won the battle of ideas, as did Fraser and Howard. If Liberal governments do not engage in the battle of ideas and do not win the battle of ideas, they fail. In short, good governing is not enough

The third theme is that Menzies also governed as a conservative, with the power of his conservatism originating in his “forgotten people” philosophy. In his immortal phrase, the middle class was “the backbone of the country” and the values of home and family became the invisible political current between himself and an expanding nation during the 50s.

Declaring the “real life” of the nation was found in homes of the “nameless and unadvertised”, Menzies located the national virtue in “homes material, homes human, homes spiritual”. For a long time, Menzies tapped into this current until, towards the end, the middle class outgrew him and left him behind.

The conclusion is unmistakable: the conservative tradition that tapped into the powerless and forgotten was indispensable to Liberal Party identity. Those who say the Liberal Party is essentially a party of liberalism and progressivism misread Menzies and the basis of his success. His credo was inclusive: the party must reach the hardworking, conservative but powerless “backbone” of the ­country.

When interviewed, Howard says his 1994 two traditions construct was based on “my lived experience” in the party. “I based that view on what I thought the Liberal Party had become,” he says. In reality, he offers fresh life to the Menzian philosophy. Coming after the fierce wet/dry internal conflicts of the 80s, this “broad church” construct was highly useful in providing “an umbrella under which the party could function”. In office, it became an instrument for electoral ­success.

In simplified terms, Howard deployed the liberal tradition of ideas (mainly policies to buttress economic growth and jobs) to hold the centre and resist voter defection to Labor while he used the conservative tradition to buttress defections to the Right and One Nation. Howard saw politics as a battle of ideas via the media.

He took positions in public debate to project his profile as a values politician with a mixture of liberal and conservative positions: tight gun laws, limiting native title, privatisations, budget surpluses, tax reform, work for the dole, anti-drug campaigns, support for traditional marriage, fighting Islamist terrorism, backing East Timor’s independence, initiating tough border protection, honouring the Anzac ethos and championing the fair go.

Operating 20 years before Trump’s victory, Howard was brazen in his use of populism, saying: “I am fairly mainstream. I can’t be, in any way, typecast as an establishment figure.”

He wanted the word “mateship” in the Constitution while protecting the monarchy. He hated the phrase “middle ground” as too weak. He used “mainstream Australians” as a parallel to Menzies’ “forgotten people” to appeal to those who felt sidelined by the elites.

Howard used his conservatism as a weapon of political attack, often confounding Labor and his media critics, just as he used his economic liberalism as a weapon of attack from his 1998 success with the GST-led tax reform to the 2007 epic failure with Work Choices. In office, he probably developed the clearest philosophy of any Liberal leader, summarised as economic liberalism and social conservatism.

Asked whether this philosophy remains relevant in the age of Trump and populist upheaval, Howard says: “Yes, I do think that, in some respects even more so.

“Everything is a bit different after 10 years but I find in Australia today there are still a large number of people who see themselves as cultural traditionalists. For instance, just look at the positive response to the suggestion in NSW that the school curriculum is going back to basics. What’s disappointed me is an issue like Safe Schools. When that emerged it should have been hit on the head by centre-right governments at federal and state level. It should have been a simple and vigorous response. We need to understand that on cultural issues, symbols and attitudes are important.

“We have to explain — and I think Malcolm Turnbull is well ­positioned to do this — the global benefits of openness in trade and economics and how much better off the world is because of globalisation and the export of competitive capitalism to Asia.

“This is a moral argument. If you want a moral challenge for the world, it’s eliminating poverty. That’s a much greater challenge than eliminating climate change. In the last 15 to 20 years we’ve lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. This is a terrific story and it’s something the centre-right parties of the world should go on the ­attack over.

“The economic reform debate is still there. Yes, you have to look after the losers. But if people think the Liberal Party should retreat from economic reform, then they’re wrong.”

Howard, like Menzies, was not just a governing PM. He was an agent of populist and ideological attack, aware this was the only way to combat the Labor Party. This method arose, as in Menzies’ case, from the depth of his own understanding of the Liberal Party tradition and his confidence in seeking to reinterpret that tradition for his own time.

Turnbull, as Liberal leader, is yet to offer a fully matured and developed view of his own philosophy of the Liberal Party, the balance between liberalism and conservatism. Maybe he won’t. The past few weeks have seen a resurgent Turnbull, more aggressive, more ready to engage in political combat and the battle of ideas. The party desperately wants him to succeed. There is little support for Abbott and his widening assault on Turnbull threatens to isolate him further.

The historical record, however, cannot be ignored. The successful Liberal prime ministers, Menzies, Fraser and Howard, spent much time developing, outlining and projecting their philosophy and ideas. Fundamental to their success was putting the Labor Party of their time under challenge from core Liberal belief.

The Liberal Party waits on Turnbull. Its philosophical history is rich enough to meet the challenge of the Trumpian age. Under assault from the different brands of Bill Shorten’s populism and Pauline Hanson’s populism, Turnbull cannot keep delaying. He needs to ­articulate his inner core, expose his heart, address the dilemmas facing his party, offer his own version of liberalism and a credible reason why conservatives should remain within the tent.

SOURCE






Plea to fix ‘girl-friendly’ bias in NAPLAN testing

The headmaster of Australia’s oldest independent school, the King’s School, has called for an overhaul of the national numeracy and literacy tests, arguing the current assessment favours girls over boys.

Tim Hawkes said four of the five domains in NAPLAN, the ­National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy, were ­focused on literacy and the exam was “substantially a test of literacy and that’s a traditional area of strength with girls, who typically enjoy a word-rich learning style’’.

About 50 per cent of students sitting NAPLAN, he said, were ­typically stronger in STEM ­(science, technology, engineering and maths) than they were in literacy and, coupled with fewer numeracy questions, this was “massively ­disadvantaging boys’’.

“There would be very few ­serious educators who would not conclude that the existing ­NAPLAN exam is much more girl-friendly than it is boy-­friendly. It is time this bias was corrected,’’ Dr Hawkes said.

Last year’s NAPLAN results showed girls in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 outperformed boys in literacy but the tables were turned for all grades in numeracy.

Australia Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority chief executive Robert Randall said the NAPLAN tests were ­designed to be fair to boys and girls, and any difference in achievement could be the result of a range of factors, including levels of ­engagement or teaching.

“NAPLAN test development process and analysis includes checking all test items for gender bias and removing any items that appear to favour either gender from test analysis,’’ he said.

Dr Hawkes’ critique from the prestigious Parramatta school in Sydney’s west comes as another leading principal, Paul Browning from the co-educational St Paul’s School in Brisbane, warns Australia is in danger of losing sight of what an education worth having really is. He blames a highly politicised “culture of fear’’, which he says is forcing some schools to “teach to the test’’ instead of ­inspiring creativity and entrepreneurial skills.

“We’re not saying that testing isn’t important — students need to learn how to read and write — but this fixation on standardised testing as the ultimate measure of a ‘successful’ education is not healthy,’’ Dr Browning said.

“Nobody is talking about the correlation of when we started to report and create leagues tables of our schools’ performances and the decline in our international standing in the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) results.’’

Dr Hawkes, who backs ­NAPLAN as a diagnostic tool and believes results should be publicly reported, said “fortunately, our NAPLAN results at King’s are good, but I feel for boys’ schools in general because they are being compared with co-ed and girls’ schools who traditionally do very well in literacy-based tasks”.

Mr Randall said: “NAPLAN tests the important skills of literacy and numeracy. The assessment of these skills, through the NAPLAN domains or subjects of reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy. has been agreed by Education Council. Any changes to the domains assessed as part of NAPLAN would require approval of ministers.’’

SOURCE






18C: Gillian Triggs gets it wrong again

The lawyer for Bill Leak has accused Gillian Triggs of being “just wrong’’ over the origins of the 18C complaint against The Australian’s cartoonist.

In a radio interview this morning, the Australian Human Rights Commission president was at odds with key statements by Justin Quill, the lawyer representing Leak, who was subjected to an 18C case over a cartoon depicting indigenous disadvantage.

Professor Triggs told ABC Radio that she did not believe that Mr Quill had responded to the Human Rights Commission by offering a defence of his client under section 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Section 18D offers protection from rules making it unlawful to offend or insult somebody on the basis of their race if it has been done “reasonably and in good faith” as part of an artistic work or intended as a contribution to the public debate.

Professor Triggs yesterday claimed she would have immediately dismissed the complainants against Leak had she received a justification along these lines, arguing the Commission had twice requested one.

But Mr Quill told The Australian that he had responded, defending the cartoon as being “created in good faith and for a genuine purpose in the public interest in accordance with 18D.”

Professor Triggs sought to cast doubt over this claim. “That’s not my understanding of the matter,” she told ABC radio. “And as he’s raised that, that is directly contrary to my advice about this case.”

Mr Quill said: “Professor Triggs is just wrong’’.

“Rather than shifting blame to the ‘advice’ she was given I would suggest she read the correspondence herself before appearing before Senate estimates again. In particular, she should read the letter sent to the commission on October 21, 2016 (see below extract)”

Professor Triggs also said the proposed changes to section 18C as handed down yesterday in a parliamentary committee were “disappointing” because no new ground was traversed in terms of reform to racial vilification laws.

“It’s been extremely disappointing because we’ve really only had a consensus to list a series of options that were already on the table and already well known,” she said.

She also argued that replacing the words “insult” and “offend” with another term like “harass” would only achieve “very little” change.

“The point has been made that these are suggested solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist and we really don’t have a problem with 18C. The Australian public doesn’t really follow it very much, doesn’t really see it as an important on the agenda. And we know that it works extremely well.”

Professor Triggs also sought to tackle arguments that pushed for reform of the complaint making process to the Human Rights Commission amid suggestions too many “frivolous” complaints were being made.

She argued reform on this score would achieve only very minor changes.

“One of the very sensible recommendations is that the President should have the power not to proceed with a matter that’s not warranted,” Professor Triggs said. “The truth is ... that the matters we deal with in the main do have substance.”

Pressed on how many frivolous complaints came before the Commission each year, Professor Triggs said: “I think it would be minuscule (or) very tiny. There would be some.”

“Fortunately, the ones that are actually in the public arena, and they would be one in thousands ... they would probably be cases that would not be dismissed as frivolous.”

Professor Triggs also clarified the Leak case was not deemed as frivolous. She said that, even if reforms to weed out frivolous claims were implemented, this would not stop similar cases from proceeding in future.

“That case would almost have certainly have been one that we would have taken a preliminary view on. On the face of it, that cartoon is one that raised an 18C issue,” she said.

SOURCE






School testing "fixation" ruining creativity

This is an old cry.  But can creativity be taught?  I doubt it

A Brisbane school principal says the Federal Government is missing the point by launching an inquiry into Australia’s innovation challenge while refusing to look at the school system.

St Paul’s School principal Dr Paul Browning said the Federal Government’s inquiry into Innovation and Creativity: workforce for the new economy had laudable aims but was flawed while its terms of reference focused only on tertiary education.

“It is not merely the tertiary sector that should be examined from the perspective of growing the workforce’s creative capacity,” Dr Browning writes in St Paul’s School’s submission to the Federal inquiry.

“Western economies are going through a hollowing‐out process of middle‐class jobs. These jobs are being automated or off‐shored at an increasing rate. The emerging jobs require high levels of creativity and an entrepreneurial capacity.

“Furthermore, increasing amounts of research indicate a capability gap between the skills and mindsets of students emerging from our schools today, compared to those they will need to perform the jobs of tomorrow.

“It is imperative that we begin to regard creativity and entrepreneurial skills as part of what counts in education today. For this reason, we believe the terms of reference for this inquiry should be expanded to include primary and secondary schools.”

Dr Browning said it was disappointing that the office of Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham had reiterated recently that primary and secondary education would not be considered by the inquiry.

The Minister’s office stated that a curriculum review was recently completed. However, Dr Browning says this misses the point.

“The issue isn’t the curriculum, it’s what we prioritise.  Schools and teachers are developing an unhealthy fixation on having to achieve improvements in literacy and numeracy at the detriment of creativity because a school will be named and shamed if they don't,” he said.

Dr Browning said schools could make changes while remaining within the bounds of the national curriculum. He said St Paul’s School was proactive in fostering creativity and innovation within its students, pioneering several programs including the design of a new subject in the Junior School called Immersion Studies Time.

“The truth is, it’s possible to foster creativity within the current curriculum. You can do this by releasing the pressure created by standardised testing and providing professional development for teachers to help them nurture and grow a person's natural creative abilities,” Dr Browning said.

“We’re not saying that testing isn’t important – students need to learn how to read and write – but this fixation on standardised testing as the ultimate measure of a ‘successful’ education is not healthy.”

Via email

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG says Turnbull is not conservative enough





Muslim fraudster caught but shows no remorse



We are just cattle to be exploited in her Muslim values

A millionaire Muslim woman who posed as a 'battling single mother' so she could live in public housing for 15 years has had her appeal thrown out of court.

Rebecca Khodragha, 44, appeared at Parramatta District Court on Wednesday to fight her three months home detention sentence, hoping for it to be lightened to community service.

The married mother-of-two, whose husband owns an electrical business which rakes in more than $1million each year, was given the sentence in 2016 when she was convicted of welfare fraud.

Rebecca Khodragha, 44, had her appeal thrown out in court on Wednesday and will now be kicked out of her housing commission apartment

The court was previously told that Ms Khodrangha's husband Khaled Sabsabi owned a lucerative electrical contracting business which was registered to the housing commission address.

At the same time Ms Khodrangha was claiming welfare benefits, the couple owned two other investment properties - in Lakemba and Greenacre - which they later sold for a significant profit.

Justice Martin Sides said mother-of-two had an 'absence of remorse' and 'complete lack of insight', and dismissed the appeal.

The court heard that despite the fraud conviction, Ms Khodragha is still living in public housing and receives Centrelink payments.

Ms Khodragha married husband Khaled in an Islamic ceremony in 1991 but their wedding was unregistered and the pair have been in a Punchbowl housing commission unit in the city's south-west since that year, 7News reported.

SOURCE





Must not refer to illegal immigrants as "fleas"

None of the "asylum-seeker" detainees are in fact refugees.  None of them came to Australia directly from their own countries.  So they already had refuge before they departed for Australia

LIBERAL Senator David Fawcett has clarified a statement where he appeared to describe asylum seekers as “fleas” while quizzing the Immigration Department over border protection.

The senator made the statement while responding to Employment Minister Michaelia Cash in a senate estimates hearing at Parliament House today. Minister Cash had defended the Turnbull Government’s track record on border protection by saying it was “still trying to clean up” a mess left by the former Labor government.

Senator Fawcett, a panel member of the estimates hearing, responded: “I’ll leave it there, I just question the ethics of nitpicking when your particular group brought the fleas in the first place.”

Senator Ian Macdonald, who made headlines this month by defending the Life Gold Pass for retired politicians, laughingly said “Nicely put.”

Senator Fawcett has since clarified his comment, saying he was describing the Labor Party’s dispute of a very small detail of processes at a time the Immigration Department was under great stress and that the stress was due to Labor policies at the time.

“If they were nitpicking they were responsible for the cause of the irritation,” he said.

Shadow Immigration Minister Shayne Neumann had called on the senators to apologise for their comments after they were initially made.

“It is beyond belief that a Turnbull Government senator would ever refer to vulnerable people seeking asylum as fleas, and even worse, to have other Coalition senators laugh, cheer and eagerly agree,” Mr Neumann told News Corp.

“Senators Fawcett and MacDonald should immediately apologise for their comments and start treating Australia’s humanitarian program with the respect and seriousness it deserves.”

SOURCE





Michaelia Cash nailed ABCC’s value by calling out building cartels

If you’ve been paying attention, you will know that this week people in the construction union and someone from academe have been jumping up and down, loudly catastrophising the impact of recent changes to the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation. Senator Derryn Hinch, who arranged to delay the implementation of the laws last year, reflected on his actions over the Christmas period. Now we have brought forward the key weapon in the fight against corporatised corruption in our building and construction sector: the implementation of an anti-corruption building code.

Hinch’s is a welcome move for consumers, employers and workers. It’s not so welcome for construction unions and the many businesses owned by them and operated in conjunction with employer groups. The rivers of dirty gold might dry up just a little.

Dave Noonan is the national secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union’s construction division. This week, this newspaper carried a picture of him, looking suitably forlorn, alongside terrifying predictions of industry Armageddon. Contributing to the prophecies was University of Adelaide law professor Andrew Stewart. He railed against the inconvenience to business and denounced the code as an “unholy mess” of the government’s making.

If we are to believe these chaps, now that the industry will be required to not act corruptly, chaos, confusion and business disruption will imminently be upon us. Five thousand businesses will be in turmoil; there will be demands by the union for more money, marches in the streets, protests involving the manufacturing and transport sectors and, more generally, hell to pay.

Now is the precise moment that every single person in the country must ignore Noonan and his grieving mates. This is the wail of the ditched boyfriend, the spurned lover. We are seeing the break-up to end all break-ups: tier-one construction firms are going to have to break up with their dearly beloved chums in the unions. They will have to stop forcing their subcontractors into union enterprise bargaining agreements, and deal ethically with the subcontractors instead.

Unions are going to have to break up with the corporates that support them. Can you imagine the golf days that will have to be cancelled? Now, unions will have to go back to raising money the old-fashioned way, by walking up to workers at building sites in their lunch hour and asking them to join the union.

Noonan wasn’t the only one sooking in recent times. A few executives were a bit put out too. You see, Employment Minister Michaelia Cash nailed them, really nailed them, in parliament.

For decades, the big players in the construction sector have had the rest of the community conned. They complain about the unions, but really, they have always been in business with them. There is more profit that way.

In government ranks the penny has dropped, and Cash blasted the “big end of town”. She said, “I am not going to blame the CFMEU here, because ... it takes two to tango … So I am going to lump Lendlease in there and I am going to lump Probuild in there, on Hansard. I am going to say to them: ‘The reason we are doing this is to stop your cartel-like behaviour.’ ’’

Cash told parliament how small and medium-sized building contractors, if they want to work on jobs managed by tier-one builders such as Lendlease and Probuild, have to sign union EBAs at the insistence of the builders. This behaviour is forbidden by the new code.

Contrary to the union line, the code does not prevent building companies from employing apprentices or casuals, nor does it inhibit the safety of workers.

The code does not apply to unions at all, it only applies to companies. Simply, the code prohibits large companies from forcing smaller companies into union EBAs.

The punishment for breaking the code is the tier-one in question would be denied federal government work. As Cash said, subcontractors “cannot stand up to the CFMEU, they cannot stand up to Lendlease, they cannot stand up to Probuild’’ and that “what the code is seeking to do is break — we admit it — the ­cartel-like behaviour between head contractors and unions.’’.

Lendlease rejected the Minister’s characterisation, saying it is not engaged in cartel-like behaviour. Australia is known as the most expensive construction destination on the planet. There is ample proof that cartel-like conduct by tier-one builders and the construction unions has led us to this point.

Recently, I spoke with a contractor who was phoned by a tier-one firm and asked to consider tendering for some work. Several days later, a complete stranger to their completely non-union workplace arrived: a union rep. He mentioned the tender, dropped a union EBA on the desk and waxed lyrical about the “benefits of a union relationship”, but made the contractor aware he would need to be “kept happy”.

The contractor emailed the tier-one to say he wanted to tender for work but wouldn’t be entering into an EBA with a union. He already had an EBA with his staff, and everyone was happy, would that do?

A reply came straight back, his tender wouldn’t be required, not now, not ever.

Ominously, the email was signed off with the words “Good luck”. This is how a company in a cartel behaves.

Long live the code, and good luck to all those who breach it.

SOURCE





International students studying in Australia reach record numbers, Education Department figures show

Figures from the federal Education Department show there were 554,179 full-fee paying international students in 2016, an increase of more than 10 per cent on the previous year.

The higher education sector had the largest share of Australia's international students, with 43 per cent.

Of those the largest numbers came from China and India.

The vocational education sector accounted for 26 per cent of international student enrolments with English Language Intensive Courses attracting 21 per cent.

The schools sector only attracted 3 per cent of the total figure.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the numbers showed the importance of attracting overseas students. "International education is now our third largest export sector generating more than $21 billion of economic activity in Australia, supporting many jobs and providing benefits to both Australian and international students," he said.

"There are real upsides in terms of the jobs that are created, the opportunities for Australian students to study alongside international students and to gain exposure to people from more than 200 different countries who are now studying in Australia."

As well as the data on enrolments, the Government has released the results of last year's International Student Survey.

The survey found 89 per cent of students were satisfied or very satisfied with their overall experience in Australia.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here