How one in three child sex offenders don't spend a DAY behind bars - as the Government prepares tough new laws to jail paedophiles for LIFE

For two years, Leftist quibbles have delayed the legislation.  The Left has a long history of being sympathetic to criminals

Child sex offenders could face life behind bars under laws to be re-introduced to federal parliament next week, as it's revealed one in three don't spend a day in jail. 

The draft bill means paedophiles face mandatory minimum sentences, while repeat offenders would find it much harder to get bail.

Attorney-General Christian Porter said sentencing of paedophiles needed an urgent overhaul.

'It simply beggars belief that 28 per cent of all offenders sentenced last year (for federal crimes) were not required to spend a single day behind bars,' he said.  'And when jail terms were handed out, the average length of time that offenders spent in custody was just 18 months.'

Of nearly 300 paedophiles convicted for Commonwealth offences last year, almost 100 walked free.

'These changes will ensure that a jail term becomes the starting point for all child sex offenders, including a new life term for the worst offenders,' Mr Porter added.

Sonya Ryan, the mother of murdered schoolgirl Holly Ryan, is calling for an even tougher crackdown.

'We remain concerned the mandatory minimums in this bill won't result in the harshest of penalties, especially when a guilty plea is entered which reduces the minimum,' she said.

Under current laws, offenders face between seven and 24 years behind bars for using the internet to groom a child or teenager, having sex with a child outside Australia and transmitting child exploitation material online.

Communicating indecently with a child online, importing child exploitation material into Australia and operating a child exploitation website also carries the same sentence guideline.   

Home Minister Peter Dutton said the number of exploitation reports, involving Australian children or sex offenders has almost doubled to 18,000 last year compared to the year before. 

'The message we are sending to paedophiles is that it won't matter how good their lawyer is, a prison cell will be waiting for them when they are convicted,' Mr Dutton told The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Dutton said once the legislation is passed, judges will be able to impose cumulative sentences for multiple offences.

The new laws would also stop juries and judges from taking someone's good character into account. 

The coalition tried to pass similar legislation in 2017, but it was knocked back after Labor baulked at the inflexible nature of the mandatory sanctions included in the bill. 

Labor argued juries would be less likely to convict if they knew judges had no discretion on sentencing.

But Mr Dutton was perplexed by Labor's stance, saying the Opposition has supported mandatory sentencing in other areas of the law in the past.  

'The message we are sending to paedophiles is that it won't matter how good their lawyer is, a prison cell will be waiting for them when they are convicted,' he said.

'We need to be realistic about the threat and we need to lock up those people that are doing the wrong thing.'

The legislation will be introduced to parliament next Wednesday.

SOURCE  






The value of history

I heartily agree with the points below but would point out that a lot depends on WHICH history is taught.  Leftist teachers routinely leave out anything that is a credit to Western society

At last night's Annual History Lecture in Sydney, Dr Stephen Gapps of the History Council of NSW launched a statement in New South Wales about the Value of History and called for its endorsement.  This follows the national announcement by the four History Councils of NSW, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria at the annual meeting of the Australian Historical Association held in Toowoomba on July 11.

The statement emphasises the value of studying the past and telling its stories.

The Value of History statement focuses on seven ways in which history is essential, by:

*      shaping our identities,

*      engaging us as citizens,

*      creating inclusive communities,

*      contributing to our economic well-being,

*      teaching us to think critically and creatively,

*      inspiring our leaders, and

*      providing a foundation for future generations.

The History Councils call on individuals and organisations in Australia to endorse, share, and use this statement about the value of history in contemporary life. The ideas expressed in the statement can be incorporated into projects, funding applications, training materials, mission statements, websites, marketing materials, submissions and other organisational outlets.

Dr Stephen Gapps said: ‘With common agreement, commitment, and open conversation about why history is important, we believe the historical community can change perceptions of the value of history and articulate its important role in the public sphere.’

Each History Council is the peak body for organisations focused on history and heritage in their respective states. The four Australian History Councils have worked cooperatively to create the Value of History statement for all Australians to use.

Press release






ABC ridicules sound science about the Great Barrier Reef

Media Watch is everything that is wrong with the ABC, squeezed into 15 insufferable minutes. Smug, elitist and, above all, awash with the misguided idea that commercial media outlets are not to be trusted and that the only place where honest news can be found is in Aunty’s warm, state-sponsored embrace.

The program is usually best ignored, but its segment this week on the saga of Peter Ridd is worth calling out for its breathless hypocrisy.

For the uninitiated, Ridd is a marine geophysicist who, until recently, was professor of physics at James Cook University in Townsville. Ridd is also an expert on the Great Barrier Reef and disputes the view that it is being killed by climate change.

Earlier this year the Federal Circuit Court found that his dismissal was unlawful.

Fast forward to this week’s Media Watch in which host Paul Barry spent a fair chunk of taxpayer-funded time bemoaning the attention from The Australian and other outlets to Ridd’s perspective on reef science.

The coverage, according to Barry, was “a real free kick” and “a free platform, with no opposing viewpoints”.

That the ABC could complain about a lack of opposing viewpoints is staggering.

When it comes to climate change in particular, the ABC is hopelessly predisposed towards climate alarmism. That may explain why up until Monday night, the ABC has shown less interest in the Ridd affair.

Ridd’s sacking, legal appeal and eventual victory in court attracted such strong public interest that eventually even the federal Attorney-General weighed in when the subject was raised by numerous colleagues in a recent partyroom meeting. But coverage from our “trusted” public broadcaster?

Not much. A search of the ABC’s website returns just a handful of reports on what was the most significant case on academic freedom in many years.

If the ABC had bothered, they would know that Ridd’s beef isn’t just with popular notions of doom and gloom surrounding the Great Barrier Reef but also with the quality of the underlying science.

Much of it, according to Ridd, is not being properly checked, tested or replicated.

As a result, governments are spending billions of dollars and jeopardising whole industries to “save” the reef when it probably doesn’t need saving.

It should be noted as well that throughout the extensive disciplinary process against Ridd, James Cook University never once addressed his complaints about the poor quality of climate science coming out of the univer­sity, a fact highlighted by the judge himself during Ridd’s case.

But far be it for the ABC to let poor science get in the way of a good story. Naturally, the segment included an article from The Guardian citing a handful of scientists who are adamant the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble and that Ridd should be ignored.

Media Watch even repeated hysterical comparisons between Ridd’s research and anti-vaxxer campaigns.

Interestingly, one scientist cited by the ABC was Terry ­Hughes. Like Ridd, Hughes is based at James Cook, and arguably triggered the whole saga when, according to court documents, he lodged a complaint about some relatively mild comments Ridd made in relation to reef science on Sky News. This connection was apparently missed by the Media Watch team.

What the ABC doesn’t understand is that the Ridd saga is about much more than the Great Barrier Reef or even climate science.

It raises serious questions about academic freedom, about the right of a university professor to voice dissenting views without being hounded out of his tenure, as Ridd was by James Cook.

This is why Ridd was supported by a large section of the community. Many of his university colleagues defended him and one resigned in disgust.

He even received support from the National Tertiary Education Union — not exactly a bastion of right-wing views. But of course, on the ABC, all of that complexity is lost, reduced to a tired pantomime about right-wing commentators pushing the views of one scientist to advance their own murky climate agenda.

Now, if the ABC were a private organisation it could take whatever editorial line it wanted — and would be far from the only outlet in Australia to sympathise with climate evangelism. But the ABC receives $1.1 billion of our money each year for news coverage that, by law, must be balanced.

Maybe the ABC should comply with its charter and make way for alternative views rather than taking juvenile pot shots at its rivals.

SOURCE  








Unjust police practices in Sydney

Sniffer dogs are as much part of Sydney life today as overpriced brunches and sudden public transport breakdowns.

We’re not just talking about the entrances to music festivals such as Defqon1 and Psyfari — the government has already pulled the plug on those events.

Take a wander through Sydney’s Central station during peak hour and you may well find yourself stopped by police, taken behind a semipublic barricade and stripsearched — even though, statistically, your pockets will probably yield nothing more illicit than a set of house keys.

In an especially baffling case last year, high school leavers had a dozen officers with sniffer dogs swoop in on their year 12 formal.

A report released last week found the number of strip-searches conducted in NSW has increased almost 20-fold in the past 12 years.

Research suggests the overwhelming majority of drug dog searches are fruitless; more often than not, no drugs are found, yet those stopped are still made to endure procedures such as strip searches and “squat and cough” tests many have described as “traumatic” and “dehumanising”.

Police and the NSW Government maintain, however, that searches are necessary to keep the community safe.

This week, news.com.au spoke to more than a dozen young people who had been stripsearched by police on suspicion of being in possession of illicit drugs.

Most requested anonymity, saying they feared reputational damage despite doing nothing wrong.

Here’s what they had to say.

‘THIS ABUSE OF POWER NEEDS TO STOP’

Lucy Moore knows from experience how traumatic strip-searches can be.

In March, the 19-year-old was stopped by a drug dog at Hidden Festival in Sydney. She said she had just one drink at her hotel before arriving, and had neither consumed nor carried any illegal drugs with her to the event.

A police officer told her she had been detected by a sniffer dog, and she was taken away to be stripsearched in a semi-private space.

“Not only did I see other people being searched, during my search the door was left half open and only blocked by the small female cop. I could easily see outside, which means that attendees and the male cops outside could have easily seen in as well,” Ms Moore said.

“Not only this, a girl in the cubicle next to me was also searched with her door still open with a couple cops entering and leaving at will.”

Ms Moore said she was made to “squat and cough” — a practice that entails bending over and coughing under the eye of officers to see if drugs are concealed in the rectal area.

Experts say the practice is legally questionable due to restrictions on anyone but a medical practitioner conducting a body cavity search.

At the end of her “humiliating and embarrassing” ordeal, Ms Moore said she was interrogated, held for over an hour and ultimately still kicked out of the festival — all despite no drugs being found on her.

Legal experts tell news.com.au there have been several cases in recent years of festival-goers being denied entry into events, even though they were not found to be carrying drugs and paid for valid tickets.

“It makes me feel disgusted, for police to constantly be breaching laws and taking advantage of young people who don’t know better. It’s terrifying,” Ms Moore told news.com.au.

A status she posted about the incident in March went viral, with more than 2000 shares and 12,000 reactions on Facebook.

Ms Moore never received an apology from police and her ban from Sydney Olympic Park is still in place.

“I’m hoping we can get reform. Change is obviously needed to keep people’s privacy,” she said.

“Only 30 per cent of people will be charged and almost all of them being for very small amounts of drugs for personal use — leaving those 70 per cent with a humiliating and traumatic experience for absolutely no reason. It has to change.”

It’s not just festivals and dance parties where people are targeted. Police dogs are increasingly frequenting train stations, street corners, small pubs and restaurants.

One Sydneysider, who declined to be named, said he was stripsearched a few years ago at Marrickville Bowling Club, a lawn bowls centre in Sydney’s inner west.

“I was violently grabbed by the arms by the police and ma

ARE STRIP-SEARCHES LEGAL?

It is legal for police to request a drug search if they have reasonable suspicion to do so.

But aspects of this process — such as what constitutes “reasonable suspicion” and the validity of the “squat and cough” method — fall into a grey area.

NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge, who runs the anti-drug dog initiative Sniff Off, has long advocated against the practice.

“Often you’re surrounded by six or seven police officers with dogs nearby. It can be very intimidating,” Mr Shoebridge said.

“If nothing is found in that first search, what they should do is apologise and let people go on their way,” he said.

But statistics show this is not the case, with people increasingly being taken away for full strip-searches.

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

A wonderful Brisbane afternoon in winter

For people who like warm weather -- as I do -- Brisbane is a great place.  Even our winter afternoons are almost always warm.  But yesterday Brisbane really excelled itself.  The midafternoon temperature was 34C -- which is a normal SUMMER temperature for Brisbane.

Warmists would regard that as a global catastrophe but for Brisbane people it is just a part of normal variations.  And if Brisbane people carry on regardless in such temperatures, does anyone need to fear the one or two degees of warming that the climate fanatics foam about?





Where many countries are experiencing negative economic growth, Australia is still growing -- But that's not good enough for the Left

Considering that Australia has also just had the first positive balance of payments for many years, you would think that a decent Left would rise to some sort of congratulations -- but no such luck

Australia’s economic growth has fallen to the lowest level since the global financial crisis but Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he “can’t see” the country falling into recession.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released on Wednesday confirmed gross domestic product grew by 0.5 per cent in the June quarter, dragging year-on-year growth to 1.4 per cent.

The result was slightly better than some predictions of as low as 0.2 per cent, or 1.1 per cent year-on-year. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the result was “a repudiation to all those who sought to talk it down”.

Addressing a media conference in Canberra, Mr Frydenberg was hit with a particularly brutal question. “Are you saying you’re happy with the worst economic growth in a decade because you thought it might have been worse?” a journalist asked.

Mr Frydenberg responded that it was “a challenging environment”. “People were speculating in the media about a negative growth number in the quarter,” he said.

The Treasurer stressed that “significantly, these numbers do not incorporate the passage through parliament of the most significant tax cuts in more than 20 years and the full impact of the RBA’s decision to reduce interest rates by 50 basis points”.

“As of today, the ATO has issued more than 5.5 million refunds totalling more than $14 billion. This money is flowing through to households and will be reflected in the September quarter,” he said.

Mr Frydenberg said the combination of tax and interest rate cuts, the stabilisation of the housing market, continued spending on infrastructure and a more positive outlook for investment in the resources sector had “led the RBA governor to say there are signs the economy may have reached a ‘gentle turning point’”.

The GDP figure “shows the Australian economy continues to grow in the face of significant headwinds”. “It’s a difficult time for global economies, with Singapore, Sweden, Germany and the UK all having negative economic growth in their June quarters,” he said.

“The IMF and the OECD have both downgraded their global economic growth forecasts. In the face of these challenges and the uncertainty created by increasing trade tensions between China and the US, the Australian economy has again proven its remarkable resilience.”

Mr Frydenberg added that “the only people who are disappointed with today’s national accounts” were Labor leader Anthony Albanese and Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers “because their efforts to talk down the Australian economy have not succeeded”.

“New national accounts data shows slowest annual economic growth in a decade on the Liberals’ watch and yet still no plan to turn things around,” Mr Chalmers earlier wrote on Twitter.

It came after Mr Morrison defended his government’s economic management, telling 3AW’s Neil Mitchell conditions had “softened” but that Australia was doing better than many other developed countries.

Asked if Australia was facing a recession, Mr Morrison said he “can’t see us going into that territory”. “Let’s remember, Germany just had a negative quarter of growth, the UK just had a negative quarter of growth. Australia hasn’t,” he said.

“Today’s growth figures will show over the year a softness … what we will see is that in a tough climate we are actually battling away quite well. I’m not surprised by the difficulties we’re seeing globally at the moment. When we put the budget together in May I said we should cut taxes, we should spend more on infrastructure, I said we should invest more in skills transitioning.”

The Morrison government is banking on tax refunds and low interest rates to bolster the economy.

The current account surplus revealed on Tuesday — the first in 44 years on the back of strong export volumes of coal, iron ore and liquid natural gas — is set to contribute about 0.6 per cent to GDP growth.

“I was pretty pleased with the current account numbers that came out yesterday,” Mr Morrison said on 3AW. “That’s the first current account surplus that we’ve had since 1975, I mean Skyhooks were leading the charts back then. Our export performance today has been quite extraordinary. That’s been building up over many years. The work we’ve done to build our export markets over the last five years is really paying dividends now and we’re going to keep expanding those, both with the European Union and the UK.”

HSBC, however, sees the current account surplus as “more of a negative than a positive development”. “The current account surplus implies net foreign capital outflow rather than inflow and a lack of investment relative to local saving,” the bank said in a research note.

“Australia’s current account deficits, which it has had for almost all of its history, reflect that the country has good growth prospects, but insufficient local saving — partly due to a small population — to fund all of the investment that should be done.”

A current account surplus “thereby could imply that growth prospects do not appear as strong or that there is less investment happening than would be ideal”, HSBC said.

Meanwhile, Mr Morrison rejected suggestions the tax cuts had failed to stimulate the economy. “That’s a ridiculous comment,” he told 3AW. “The figures that are coming out today are for the June quarter. The tax cuts were passed in the September quarter. Of course I am (confident they’ll work).”

The weak growth figure — on top of Tuesday’s weak retail trade results — will be seized on by Labor as a sign of a government which has no plan for the economy.

However, Mr Frydenberg believes trade deals, a $100 billion infrastructure plan, funding for training and skills, record low interest rates and income tax cuts will deliver better results in the final part of the year.

The Australian Taxation Office told AAP it had now received over 7.8 million individual 2019 tax return lodgements — a 15 per cent increase on the previous year.

“We have issued over 5.5 million individual 2019 income tax refunds with a total value of over $14.2 billion,” an ATO spokeswoman said.

Retail spending fell by an unexpected 0.1 per cent in July, missing forecasts of a 0.2 per cent rise. The biggest fall was in spending on cafes, restaurants and takeaway services.

The Reserve Bank, which kept the cash rate on hold at 1 per cent on Tuesday, flagged it would ease rates further “if needed to support sustainable growth”.

The outlook for the global economy remained “reasonable”, the RBA said, although the risks were tilted to the downside. “A further gradual lift in wages growth would be a welcome development,” RBA Governor Philip Lowe said in a statement.

SOURCE  






Tanya Day inquest: officer denies ‘false stories’ about extremely drunk woman

Drunks can be extremely hard to handle -- and Aborigines particularly so.  But when an Aborigine dies, the police are always suspected

The police officer responsible for making welfare checks on an Aboriginal grandmother who died after banging her head in police custody has denied he told paramedics “false stories”.

Leading Senior Constable Danny Wolters denied to an inquiry into the 2017 death of Tanya Day that he had been misleading when he told paramedics the Yorta Yorta woman had hit her head just once.

“I don’t believe I put together any false stories,” he said in response to questioning by Peter Morrissey SC, who is representing Day’s family. “I referred to observations.”

Sen Con Wolters said he went up to Day's cells at 4.51pm and asked her if she was OK and she replied that she was.

Footage played to the inquest on Tuesday shows Day, who was heavily intoxicated, lying on her cell bed during checks at 4.17pm and 4.50pm. At 4.51pm she tumbled over the cell bench and smashed her forehead against a wall. The inquest heard the fall was ­ultimately fatal.

Day, 55, was arrested for being drunk on a train on December 5 in 2017. The coronial inquiry is examining the role systemic racism played in her death.

The inquest heard on Tuesday Sen Con Wolters asked to alter the timing of physical checks on Day from every 20 minutes to every 40 minutes, saying the physical checks were disturbing her.

The inquest heard he checked on her alternatively through the cell window and using CCTV, partly because of staffing issues due to Castlemaine police holding their Christmas party that day.

SOURCE  






Fair Work Commission upholds BP sacking of worker over Hitler  parody

No free speech for extreme abuse

BP’s sacking of a technician for sharing a Downfall parody video the company said compared its managers to Nazis has been upheld by the Fair Work Commission.

Process technician Scott Tracey said the video was intended to be a humorous parody of long-running enterprise bargaining negotiations at the BP’s Kwinana refinery in Western Australia.

The video is an extract from the German language film Downfall which portrays the final days of Adolf Hitler’s life. Hitler responds in a highly agitated and aggressive manner to advice from his generals that the Nazis have lost the Second World War.

Mr Tracey said his wife used the Caption website to create the “Hitler Parody EA Negotiations”, adding subtitles that referenced comments made by BP management during the negotiations.

Mr Tracey shared the video with a private Facebook group whose members included refinery employees and also showed it to BP nightshift employees.

A BP investigation found Mr Tracey had been “involved in creating, and made available, shared and distributed an offensive and inappropriate video depicting BP representatives involved in the current …. negotiations as Nazis”. He was sacked and paid four weeks’ notice.

Rejecting his unfair dismissal claim, commission deputy president Melanie Binet said she was satisfied the video was “objectively inappropriate, offensive and “did cause offence to a number of BP employees”.

“The Hitler Video had the potential to undermine, demean and denigrate the BP senior management team amongst an audience which they were charged to lead,’’ she said.

SOURCE  





Melbourne council bans residents from putting glass in recycling bin

This is recycling that has lost the plot.  Glass is one thing that can easily be recycled. So glass recycling should be made easy, not hard

A Melbourne council has banned residents from putting glass in their recycling bins, forcing them to either travel to recycle the items or to let them go into landfill.

Macedon Ranges Shire Council has warned residents that if they place glass in their yellow bin then its whole contents will have to be thrown in landfill.

The council was forced to implement the sudden ban after the company behind Victoria’s largest recycling processor went bust.

Recycling giant SKM collapsed owing more than $100 million to creditors, and after a series of factory fires and government shutdowns because of stockpiling safety risks.

The shutdown affected more than 32 councils across the state, with Macedon Ranges Shire Council being one of them.

“Council has identified a recycling company which will process the shire’s recycling going forward as long as glass is removed and the other recyclables are not contaminated,” the Council said.

“Shards and small pieces of glass can become embedded in paper and cardboard in recycling bins and contaminate the other recyclables.”

In the coming weeks the council plans to install public skip bins around the area which residents can use to dispose of their glass.

But until then people that want to recycle their glass items will be forced to travel to one of three transfer stations in Kyneton, Woodend or Romsey.

For those residents that can’t make the trip or simply refuse, the council had one final suggestion. “As a last resort, glass can be placed in general rubbish bins,” the Council said.

The plan to remove glass from the mixed recycling bins was endorsed at an Ordinary Council Meeting last Wednesday.

A decision was also made to investigate whether to introduce a fourth bin that would be used for glass only.

Some people living in Lancefield are exempt from travelling to dispose of their glass as they have been provided with a special glass only bin as part of the trial.

Along with installing the public bins and introducing the glass bin trial, the Council also announced is allocated funds over temporary higher landfill costs and cover additional required staff and resources.

The Council will meet again in October to consider long-term options for recycling, like rolling out the fourth glass only bin across the shire.

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

Australian Medical Association declares climate change a health emergency

Warmists have been pushing this claim for years but it was always nonsense.  The bottom line is that winter is the great time of dying, not summer.  On balance, warming is good for you

 AMA president Tony Bartone says climate change will affect health by increasing the spread of infectious diseases and through more extreme weather. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
The Australian Medical Association has formally declared climate change a health emergency, pointing to “clear scientific evidence indicating severe impacts for our patients and communities now and into the future”.

The AMA’s landmark shift, delivered by a motion of the body’s federal council, brings the organisation into line with forward-leaning positions taken by the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association and Doctors for the Environment Australia.

The American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians recognised climate change as a health emergency in June 2019, and the British Medical Association the following month declared a climate emergency and committed to campaign for carbon neutrality by 2030.

The World Health Organisation has recognised since 2015 that climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century, and argued the scientific evidence for that assessment is “overwhelming”.

The AMA has recognised the health risks of climate change since 2004. Having now formally recognised that climate change is a health emergency, the peak organisation representing doctors in Australia is calling on the Morrison government to promote an active transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; adopt mitigation targets within an Australian carbon budget; promote the health benefits of addressing climate change; and develop a national strategy for health and climate change.

The AMA president, Tony Bartone, argues the scientific evidence is clear. “There is no doubt that climate change is a health emergency. The AMA accepts the scientific evidence on climate change and its impact on human health and human wellbeing,” he says.

Bartone says the climate science suggests warming will affect human health and wellbeing “by increasing the environment and situations in which infectious diseases can be transmitted, and through more extreme weather events, particularly heatwaves”.

“Climate change will cause higher mortality and morbidity from heat stress,” the AMA president says. “Climate change will cause injury and mortality from increasingly severe weather events. Climate change will cause increases in the transmission of vector-borne diseases. Climate change will cause food insecurity resulting from declines in agricultural outputs. Climate change will cause a higher incidence of mental ill-health.

“These effects are already being observed internationally and in Australia.”

Bartone told Guardian Australia the motion adopted by the federal council had followed an ongoing discussion among stakeholders, and medical practitioners within the AMA membership.

Health and medical groups, including Doctors for the Environment, the Climate and Health Alliance, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, and the Australian Medical Students’ Association wrote an open letter to all political parties in April pointing out the “significant and profound impacts climate change has on the health of people and our health system”.

The AMA president said the decision to pass the motion followed on from those events both domestically and internationally, and was “pretty much unanimous” internally. “I don’t recall anyone speaking against it,” he said.

Asked whether the current government was pursuing ambitious enough policy action to combat the risks of climate change, whichthe Morrison government argues it is, Bartone said “it’s really difficult to say because this issue is clouded in conjecture and conflicting reports”.

He said all of the political groups in the Australian parliament had a responsibility to move past the toxic partisan politics that had characterised the debate and find durable solutions to a difficult public policy challenge.

Bartone said the AMA would continue to assess the evidence about climate change as it emerged and update its stance to reflect the science.

The latest official data released last week confirms that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in Australia. National emissions increased by 3.1m tonnes in the year to March to reach 538.9m tonnes, a 0.6% jump on the previous year.

Emissions in Australia have increased every year since the Abbott government repealed a national carbon price after taking office in 2013.

SOURCE  







Father's Day no longer promoted in some schools

The Father's Day stall and gifts for Dad crafted by little hands are increasingly a thing of the past in some Melbourne schools and kindergartens.

The growing diversity in the forms that families take, and a lack of interest in the occasion from kids themselves, have seen it pass without a mention in many classes this year.

Some kids have two mums, some have no dad and some are from cultures where Father’s Day isn’t really a thing.

Annie Dennis Children’s Centre in Northcote recognises the diversity in children’s family situations. For the past 20 years, child-guided programs have formed a fundamental part of its philosophy.

Assistant director Anna Chiera said they did not celebrate Father’s Day this year because kids simply weren’t interested.

“We don’t bring up Father’s Day because there are children with single and same-sex parents here, but if it’s an issue for them, we encourage them to let us know,” Ms Chiera said.

“We don’t like to put pressure on the children to make a present if it isn’t going to mean something and they don’t have a father or their families don’t celebrate it.”

“We acknowledge that it’s an important celebration though.”

Helen Darcey, a kindergarten teacher at Annie Dennis, said the centre had a list of celebrations from different religions and cultures they encouraged kids to learn about and contribute to.

In the past they’ve celebrated everything from Orthodox Easter to Harmony Day, but typically not Father’s Day.

Ms Chiera conceded they did get the occasional parent who asked why they didn't make a card, but for the most part they were supportive.

“It’s sometimes harder for the wider community to accept it especially,” Ms Chiera said.

An objection to the commercialisation of Father’s Day – a day of socks, jocks and power tools – has also contributed to it falling out of favour.

Australian Primary Principals Association president Malcolm Elliott said Father’s and Mother’s Day had been linked to the “implicit buying of gifts” thanks to advertising.

“It can place a burden on children who are short on resources,” Mr Elliot said.

But not all Melbourne kinders and primary schools have completely ditched Father’s Day festivities.

Carlton North Primary School ran things a bit differently, with a Father’s Day stall organised by parents selling gifts donated from families for students to buy their dads or other special people.

A grade one pupil bought her dad, a teacher at the school, a hamper filled with chocolate and socks. “I got him new socks because his ones are very stinky,” she said.

SOURCE  







Petty officer Kristina Keneally is all at sea on illegal boat arrivals

Kristina Keneally is all at sea on illegal boat arrivals and lost in the Biblical wilderness on raising Scott Morrison’s Christian beliefs.

What’s more, as the alternative home affairs minister, the former NSW Premier is opening the prospect of immigration and border protection changes of policy and practice which could further confuse and damage Labor’s public standing on immigration.

Also, at a time when Labor’s strongest critique of the Morrison government is the stagnant economy and Labor’s best-performing shadow minister is treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers, Keneally’s emotional distraction over the Prime Minister’s Christianity and a family being refused refugee status by the High Court is making the ALP’s job harder.

Keneally’s decision to press ahead and amplify her campaign for the Tamil family to remain in Australia on the ABC on Tuesday was bad politics and bad policy.

While pointing to her own Catholic faith, Keneally harked back to the election campaign and photographs of Morrison in his local church as justification for demanding he exercise his Christian beliefs and use discretionary power to allow the Tamil family to remain.

It was a low act and a mistake for Labor — including Keneally — to use Morrison’s Christian beliefs in a political fight then. It is a lower act and a bigger mistake to do it now as religious freedoms and discrimination will be debated in the coming weeks.

The real damage Keneally’s confusion and downright ignorance about immigration and border protection is that she has raised the option that as home affairs minister she would be open to letting the family stay after every court has found they are not refugees.

This continues to raise the prospect that Labor would change border protection policy, despite her contradictory claims that she supports border security policies based on the circumstances of prolonged court battles, attachment to the community and Australian-born children.

Previous Labor governments, immigration ministers and oppositions have all recognised the error of Labor’s ways in weakening laws introduced by both previous Labor and Coalition governments and accepted that children drowning at sea is a greater evil than sending back children who are not refugees.

The real problem for this family is that the parents arrived illegally, were placed in detention by a Labor government, were encouraged to appeal for years despite being advised they were not refugees and then being hauled into a glaring public political brawl which ensured there could be no discretion applied even if it was sustainable.

All of this is taking place a week before the government starts to finalise its reforms to border security laws — forced on it by Labor, Greens and independents before the election — and ahead of a tough parliamentary debate where Keneally’s confusion could be lethal.

Not to mention poor old Chalmers trying to talk about the real issue of the economy, wages growth, interest rates and the national accounts.

SOURCE  





The incorrectness of attractive women

Boxing promoter Dean Lonergan has reacted to concern about the presence of ring girls at Saturday night's fight between Jeff Horn and Michael Zerafa by replacing them with men.

A local councillor objected to the planned use of ring girls at the event in Bendigo, saying it was "not respectful of women."

Lonergan responded by saying the women had applied for and been given the job, but were now being prevented from working.

The promoter said he would be employing "fight progress managers" in the role instead.

Come fight night, various men stepped in to the ring to hold the round cards, with announcer Dan Hennessey discussing the change with the fans in Bendigo.

"In reference to rings girls, these roles will now be known as 'fight progress managers'," Hennessey said.

"Secondly, the women who applied and were selected to be fight progress managers will be replaced by men, notwithstanding, the three ladies have been paid."

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

Morrison warns of influx if Tamils stay

Australia risks being swamped by a new wave of boat people if it lets a Tamil asylum seeker family remain in the country, the prime minister says.

Scott Morrison says people smugglers will again hit high gear if the government responds to "a public reaction" in support of a family that had been found not to be refugees.

"Now - at a time when there are increasing push factors come out of Sri Lanka - the worst possible thing you can do is to ... send a message which says: 'You know what, if you come illegally to Australia and the courts say you don't have a claim and the government say you don't have a claim, then the government just might make an exception because there's been a public reaction," he said on Monday.

"That's not how you run strong borders.

"I know what happens when you send those messages back into those communities whether it's in Sri Lanka or the more than 10,000 people sitting in Indonesia right now who would get on a boat tomorrow if they thought this government was changing its position."

Mr Morrison said he could not understand why Australians might be cynical about the government's decision on the weekend to release details about the interception of a sixth asylum-seeker vessel from Sri Lanka since May.

"It's just a simple fact. It's a fact," he said, saying it was the government's habit of announcing turn-backs only after the fact.

He said he would never allow a return to the tragic scenes of people dying at sea while trying to reach Australia illegally.

"That's not something that I, in good conscience, can allow to happen and nor can my ministers.

"I need to be very clear to those who might be sitting in Indonesia or Sri Lanka, or anywhere else, my government's policy has not changed."

SOURCE  






Flaws in education system ignored as journos plunge into class warfare

The sources quoted by journalists can tell media consumers a lot about the politics of a newspaper or electronic network but sometimes not much about the truth of the story.

Look at the reaction to the release last Wednesday of preliminary results of this year’s National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy tests. Journalists at Nine Entertainment’s newspapers, the ABC and Guardian Australia were likelier to quote teachers, teacher unions and politicians continuing their long criticism of national testing. Media on the right often quoted education researchers who have argued Australia is not getting value for its spending on schools.

Many teachers hate NAPLAN and anything that makes them accountable for student performance. But here’s the thing: the media should not care. The $57.8 billion we spent across all levels of government and school systems in 2016-17 is not for the edification of teachers. It’s to educate our children. Some tweets last Wednesday highlight personal attitudes among media types.

Former teacher and Sydney Daily Telegraph education writer Maralyn Parker tweeted: “Oh FFS, #NAPLAN has failed. The constant testing and huge scammy $$$$$ industry around teaching and preparing for the tests is stuffing up Australian children.” Nine newspapers cartoonist Cathy Wilcox tweeted: “What if, now bear with me, just as an experiment, we properly funded public schools (crazy I know), then compared NAPLAN results to see if it made a difference?” Unbelievable that a highly paid cartoonist whose work is published in The Sydney Morning Herald did not already know the figures.

Australia has increased funding across all school systems from $36.4bn to $57.8bn in the nine years since the Gillard government committed to the first round of Gonski funding rises. The Turnbull government committed an extra $18.6bn across four years in Gonski 2.0 funding in 2017. All that money has bought some improvement in primary school NAPLAN results, flatlining overall in literacy and numeracy and disappointing Year 9 results.

Remember NAPLAN was not a plot by a conservative government to hurt political enemies in the teacher unions. It was introduced in 2008 by then education minister Julia Gillard in the first Rudd government.

The most sensible reactions to NAPLAN numbers each year usually came from long-time critics of educational standards such as Kevin Donnelly, from the Australian Catholic University, and Centre for Independent Studies researchers Jennifer Buckingham and Blaise Joseph.

Progressives tend to deny there is a problem and want the test scrapped or its standards lowered. Funny thing is we have known for many years why Australia lags in international tests. Admission standards for teaching are too low, more than half of university education degree entrants being accepted with an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of less than 50.

Better paid and more qualified teachers with proper mentoring in the job seem to work in systems that continually outperform ours, particularly in Shanghai, Singapore and Finland. Education reformers in the US and Canada have proved better quality headmasters with more independence in hiring and firing staff — usually backed by activist parents bodies — can lift results in even the most underprivileged areas.

Unfortunately state education departments here have used headmaster independence to load the role with managerialist tasks to defend schools against lawsuits rather than to lift education outcomes.

The Australian under former education writer Justine Ferrari in the noughties highlighted the role of curriculum in letting down children. This has only worsened as teachers have been required since 2012 to overlay all their work with three mandated cross-curriculum priorities: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures; Asia and Australia’s engagement with it; and sustainability. In a worst-case hypothetical, maths teachers with fairly poor HSC results who did no maths to Year 12 and none in their education degrees are now burdened with these three overlays in trying to teach kids struggling to understand mathematics.

Teachers often complain about lack of student discipline and lack of parental support for schools trying to impose such discipline.

Technology and the rise of social media, smartphones and iPad use in education have had a perverse effect. Some schools have now banned mobile phone use. I have heard of parent-teacher nights when parents themselves did not put away their phones and Facebook feeds while teachers were giving individual feedback about children.

Auto-correction software on devices is having an adverse effect on spelling ability while teachers talk of students coming to school, often with no breakfast, having been up past midnight on devices.

The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday raised another important issue with screen use. University of Sydney cognitive psychology professor Sally Andrews said poor grammar skills “could be the result of skim reading on screens”. “That means they’re not picking up on the subtleties of sentence construction and punctuation marks that occur when you read a book on paper,” she said. Many parents no longer read books to their kids.

Like The Australian, the News Corp tabloids last Wednesday also quoted Donnelly and Joseph, who discussed these issues. The Sydney Morning Herald chose the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, which runs NAPLAN, and federal Education Minister Dan Tehan to defend the test. It quoted Australian Education Union acting federal president Meredith Peace and NSW Primary Principals Association president Phil Seymour bagging it. ABC 7.30 interviewed Tehan but host Leigh Sales seemed to think the testing should be scrapped.

It is instructive the left media did not question teaching methods or curriculum, discipline and electronic learning approaches. Nor did most media go to the core philosophical question: what is our education system for? Do we want world-class students or do we want to reshape the world?

Some quotes from educators suggest more of the latter. Former Victorian premier and education minister Joan Kirner: “Education has to be reshaped so it is part of the socialist struggle for equality.”

Former Griffith University education lecturer Gregory Martin: “A major task for leftist academics is to connect education with community struggles for social justice.”

Former head of the Australian Education Union Pat Byrne: “We have succeeded in influencing curriculum development … conservatives have a lot of work to do to undo the progressive curriculum.”

Media consumers are grateful when journalists shine a light on such areas. Parents marvel at children’s lack of numeracy and literacy skills, things taken for granted in previous generations. Maybe modern “child-centred learning” needs a rethink.

Having watched direct instruction in action at Noel Pearson’s Hope Vale school north of Cooktown last month I can only concur with Donnelly in Friday’s Tele: “The most effective way to learn stresses … ‘automaticity’ — essential knowledge and skills like times tables and learning to read have to be automatic before students complete more complex tasks.”

SOURCE  






How a Belgian saved the recent Federal election for Australia's conservatives

(Mathias Cormann came to Australia from Belgium in 1994)

It’s just over 100 days since the Coali­tion’s crushing victory over Labor at the federal election in May. Speaking on the occasion of Scott Morrison’s first anniversary as Prime Minister last Saturday, John Howard told The Australian’s Simon Benson that the parliamentary Liberal Party “is in better shape than it has been since 2007”.

That’s true. It’s also correct to say that, at the leadership level, the Liberal Party is more united than it has been at any time since the days of prime minister Robert Menzies and his deputy Harold Holt more than a half-century ago.

Certainly the relationship between Morrison and his deputy, Josh Frydenberg, is remarkably close. This is something rare on either side of mainstream politics, since promotion is invariably gained by beating your colleagues to attain high office.

In the period between Tuesday, August 21, and Friday, August 24, the Liberal Party was in real crisis mode. The matter had to be resolved that week, otherwise the party might have found itself facing a genuinely unwinnable election before the end of last year because of internal divisions.

There has been much criticism of Cormann’s actions at the time of the leadership change, particularly among members of the Canberra press gallery, quite a few of whom were Turnbull supporters. But there is a strong case that Cormann saved the Liberal Party, in the short term at least.

As the government leader in the Senate, Cormann did not have a conflict of interest with respect to the leadership. Whoever prevailed would come from the House of Representatives — not the Senate. His only interest was to remain a minister in the government and ensure that Labor remained in ­opposition.

When Cormann decided that Turnbull’s self-inflicted political wounds made it impossible for him to hang on as prime minister, he brought two Senate ministerial colleagues with him — Mitch ­Fifield and Michaelia Cash.

The Coalition’s win in May endorsed Cormann’s political judgment. Since Abbott’s victory over Kevin Rudd in 2013, Cormann had been running a consistent line proclaiming the Coalition’s economic agenda and accusing Labor of big-spending, high-taxing socialism. This can be traced in six keynote speeches delivered to the Sydney Institute between 2014 and this week.

It was Cormann who maintained the Coalition’s economic line following Turnbull’s successful challenge against Abbott in September 2015. And it was Cormann who did the same as Turnbull’s leadership fell apart following his near loss in 2016.

After the leadership changed, Morrison and Frydenberg (as Treasurer), with a little help from backbencher Tim Wilson, joined Cormann in making the economic case against Labor. Morrison proved to be a first-rate communicator and an extremely hard worker on the campaign.

In his speech to the Sydney Institute last Tuesday, Cormann arg­ued that at the federal election this year “Australians voted for policies supporting opportunity and aspiration and they voted against the economy-harming, opportunity-lowering politics of envy and division”.

He praised the record of the Labor governments led by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating and blamed Wayne Swan, who became treasurer in 2007, for moving Labor’s economic policy to the left.

Many commentators, especially on the ABC and in Nine newspapers, misunderstood the Coalition’s tactics in the lead-up to the election.

After becoming Prime Minister a year ago, Morrison targeted some seats that Turnbull had lost in 2016 — in northern Tasmania, parts of NSW and parts of southern and northern Queensland. The aim was to hold as many seats as possible in the remaining states, and to win back seats held by independents in Melbourne (Chisholm) and Sydney (Wentworth).

There were two prongs to this tactic: appeal to aspirational Australians along with social conservatives. The Coalition succeeded on both counts.

In 2004, after Howard’s fourth victory, Bill Shorten was interviewed on the ABC television Insiders program. At the time he was secretary of the Australian Workers Union.

In this interview, Shorten spoke about the need for Labor to advocate an agenda beyond “progressive left-wing views”. And he argued that Labor should “send a clear message to people who live in the outer suburbs and provincial cities, that if you have a dream to have an intact marriage, to go to church on Sunday, to have a mortgage, to want to send your kids to a private school — then the Labor Party of the inner city does not look at your disdainfully”.

Shorten understood the problem Labor faced before the 2004 election.

However, when opposition leader on the eve of the election this year, he lost contact with ­aspirational and socially conservative Australians in suburbs and towns.

After the election, Labor front­bencher Chris Bowen expressed concern at the flight of believers away from Labor to the Coalition.

Cormann’s economic and social conservatism was mocked by some commentators. However, his approach to the Liberal leadership contest a year ago was correct. And most Australians supported Morrison and his colleagues at the subsequent election.

SOURCE  






Real solutions for Indigenous problems

The vast majority of Australians — including many Australians of Aboriginal descent — know very little of the reality of the situation on remote communities and the extent to which aspects of traditional culture play a significant role in the acceptance of interpersonal violence which in turn perpetuates the crisis.

Nor are Aboriginal people who struggle with poor education and live within the confines of traditional culture capable of articulating to the wider Australian community the contrasting differences between traditional culture and the functions of a modern Australian society — based on democracy and the upholding of individual human rights.

What has become increasingly apparent to me is that there is one standard for the majority of Australians — and then there is a lowered standard for Indigenous Australians, which is aggressively driven by the left.

This lowered expectation for Indigenous Australians works to keep disadvantage in place — to entrench it. Rather than it giving us an ‘easier path’ — as some people claim they are trying to do — it prevents us from realising our personal and community agency in our own futures.

We are in a time where common sense is needed now more than ever. Ideology is driving the current politically correct narrative that Indigenous Australians require continual placation in order to close the gap.

The current narrative demands that symbolic gestures take priority over the implementation of practical solutions in order that marginalized Indigenous Australians may overcome their disadvantage.

We live in an era of smoke and mirrors where an industry has arisen that purports to be helping Indigenous Australia — and yet while increasing sums are spent, the promised outcomes are nowhere in sight.

Why has this happened? Because somewhere within our country’s consciousness, a shift has taken place, which has triggered an obsession with our country’s historical injustices toward Indigenous Australians — and a blindness about the real problems that abound today.

I believe it all accelerated after Rudd’s great act of symbolism with the apology. The apology focused on the Stolen Generation but failed to acknowledge those who were left behind… Left ‘on country’ with no jobs, but access to welfare and alcohol — and out of sight and out of mind for the rest of Australia.

It was the Aboriginal Ordinance of 1954 all over again, where people of mixed heritage could apply to be exempt from Ordinance but Aboriginal people of full descent continue to remain in poverty — without education, without jobs, without normal access to services — and continually told by those without traditional culture that it is their culture that will save them.

My mission — CIS’s mission — is to change the narrative. The current narrative ensures the misery of the most marginalised Aboriginal Australians continues.

As long as we continue to be sidelined by arguments for the need of more symbolism — changing the date, replacing the anthem, finding racism where it does not exist — the real issues will not be solved.

The new Indigenous Program at CIS will build on the research by the late and eminent scholar, Helen Hughes.

Building on Helen’s previous research in the area of education will be one of our first tasks. Remote Australian children have the lowest attendance rates in the nation and the lowest educational outcomes compared to the rest of Australia.

Indigenous Incarceration and its relationship with family violence is another priority the program will address.

We will also research which institutions and processes are hindering economic development — and whether the Land Rights Act should be reviewed in order that traditional owners can actually take real ownership of their land to enable economic prosperity.

The common sense that has been a hallmark of CIS policy research, and the commitment to bettering the lives of all Australians —including Indigenous Australians — means we will focus on practical and real solutions for problems that have been ignored for far too long.

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 questions that linger after Cardinal Pell’s appeal

It has always seemed clear to me that His Eminence was railroaded -- convicted for the sins of his church, not for anything he personally did.  And for those who are concerned about such things, I am an atheist of Protestant background --  JR

By Gerard Bradley

The Court of Appeal of the state of Victoria dismissed George Cardinal Pell’s appeal on Wednesday 21 August in Australia from his sexual abuse conviction.

That conviction came at the end of a second trial on five counts of indecency with a minor, after a first jury could not agree on a verdict.

He was sentenced to six years, without the possibility of parole until November, 2022. Cardinal Pell’s lawyers are yet to decide a further appeal to the Australian High Court. That process is likely to take up to a year. During the interim, the cardinal will remain in a Victorian prison.

Because the trials were conducted in closed sessions and under a press “gag” order, accounts of the evidence against the cardinal have been incomplete and even sketchy. Until now.

It was long widely known that the case involved allegations of assaults on two choirboys, both aged 13 when the crimes supposedly occurred in late 1996.

The setting was said to be just after then-Archbishop Pell celebrated Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne.

One of the boys died accidentally a few years ago. The surviving complainant said nothing to anyone of his horrendous story until 2015. (The other boy died without ever claiming to have been abused; in fact, he expressly denied that any such thing happened to him when his mother in 2001 pointedly asked him.)

Improbable allegations

It has long been apparent, too, that the allegations against Cardinal Pell were so inherently improbable as to be, on their face, almost fantastic. Nonetheless, the prosecutors pressed on. They finally got a jury to return the verdict they wanted.

Knowing the cardinal as I do, and evaluating the evidence reported in light of my years as a Manhattan trial prosecutor, I have always confidently believed that Cardinal Pell is innocent.

One small mercy of this unwelcome appellate setback is that I am now certain that Cardinal Pell is innocent.

After the appeal: how things look

Another consolation is that the appellate decision supplies reasonable grounds to hope that the High Court will finally correct this awful miscarriage of justice if the Cardinal seeks leave to appeal. The basis for affirming Cardinal Pell’s innocence lies in the evidence now recounted in extraordinary detail across the 325 pages of the appellate corpus.

The court split 2-1. The dissenting judge — an Oxford-educated lawyer named Mark Weinberg — never quite said that he believed that Cardinal Pell was innocent.

The closest Weinberg J came to saying so might be this sentence: “[T]o my mind, [there is] a ‘significant possibility’ that the applicant in this case may not have committed these offences.”

Reading between the lines

Perhaps Weinberg J came closer when he addressed the second of the two assaults alleged by the surviving claimant:

“The complainant’s account of the second incident seems to me to take brazenness to new heights, the like of which, I have not seen … I would have thought that any prosecutor would be wary of bringing a charge of this gravity against anyone, based upon the implausible notion that a sexual assault of this kind would take place in public, and in the presence of numerous potential witnesses.

“Had the incident occurred in the way that the complainant alleged, it seems to me highly unlikely that none of those many persons present would have seen what was happening, or reported it in some way.”  None did. Weinberg J directed the reader to the next logical inference: If the complainant made up (for reasons we shall likely never know, or at least not ever fully understand) one of the two assaults, then no reasonable person should credit just on his say-so that the first incident ever occurred, either.

Yet that is exactly what the prosecutors maintained.

Justice Weinberg wrote, quite accurately, that the “prosecution relied entirely upon the evidence of the complainant to establish guilt, and nothing more.

“There was no supporting evidence of any kind from any other witness. Indeed, there was no supporting evidence of any kind at all. These convictions were based upon the jury’s assessment of the complainant as a witness, and nothing more.”

“Indeed,” Weinberg J added, the prosecutor not only “did not shrink” from making it his whole case at trial. The prosecutor “invited the members of this Court to approach this ground of appeal in exactly the same way.”

A strong dissenting voice

Justice Weinberg’s opinion is masterful and cogent. It supplies (though he did not expressly say it) overwhelming proof that George Pell is an innocent man.

There is another encouraging thought: The path to reversal on further appeal if pursued is now in view.

According to Australian procedure, much of the appellate judges’ job in a case such as Cardinal Pell’s (where the gravamen of the appeal is the sufficiency of the evidence to convict at the trial) is to simply use common sense to weigh the evidence presented to the jury.

This the three jurists did; the entire trial was videotaped and transcribed as well. Two members of the court said that they agreed with the jury’s verdict. So they voted to affirm the conviction.

Their common sense is obviously poor and their practical judgment, worse.

A simple mistake of this sort would probably not, however, warrant reversal by the High Court.

Legal error?

But they made a specifically legal error as well. On this ground at least one may reasonably hope that sometime within the next 12 months George Pell will be again a free man.

Justice Weinberg identified the majority’s mistake. Their error rested upon the two judges’ acceptance of the prosecutor’s invitation to decide first and in isolation — that is, without regard for all the other evidence, notably including the cogent exculpatory evidence offered by the Cardinal’s lawyers — whether the complainant’s testimony was “compelling.”

The term is not spot-on apt in this context. Hamlet is “compelling.” It is nonetheless fiction.

The majority judges seem to have adopted the term anyway as a synonym for not only believable, but for true, accurate.

Then these judges compounded the error: they used their isolated (and, in that sense, totally uncritical) validation of the complainant’s testimony as the criterion by which they rejected, as ineffectual or just plain false, the abundant evidence of Pell’s innocence.

They seemed to have reasoned thus: because the complainant’s story is true (we have concluded by, according to their own account, its apparent sincerity and drama), the evidence offered by the defendant which contradicts the complainant’s allegations must therefore be false.

Or, at a minimum, they judged that because the defence evidence did not demonstrate that the claimant’s story was simply impossible, it did not for that reason raise a reasonable doubt.

Justice Weinberg saw the mistake.

Weighing up witnesses

The complainant’s credibility and thus the accuracy of his story must instead be evaluated in light of the competing evidence of Cardinal Pell’s innocence.

He wrote that it “is, of course, entirely legitimate for the prosecution to [rely upon the complainant’s allegations] in answer to the challenge to these convictions.

“They must be weighed in the scale, but they must also be considered in the light of the evidence as a whole. That includes the body of clearly exculpatory material elicited from the various witnesses called by the prosecution.

“And one should not ignore the applicant’s own strong denials of any wrongdoing, as alleged, in his record of interview.”

In other words, a reasonable juror (and appellate judge!) would have to conclude that the defence case made the complainant’s story so implausible that a reasonable doubt was inescapably present.

A conscientious juror (or appellate judge sitting in review) must not conclude that a complainant is speaking truthfully until after he or she critically compares what that witness says to what the other witnesses say.

The critical evaluation incumbent on jurors is not the majority’s sequence — if looking only at the complainant’s testimony, it seems true, then all the evidence exonerating the Cardinal must be false — but rather Justice Weinberg’s dialectic (if you will), where the juror tacks back and forth across the evidence, using this bit to test the veracity of that, and that bit to evaluate the truthfulness of this.

That is simply what looking “at all the evidence” means. And herein is the majority’s legal mistake.

Put differently: The key issue on appeal was whether the jury’s verdict of guilty was reasonable.

Because the standard of proof in criminal cases in Australia is (as it is in America) “beyond a reasonable doubt,” there is some danger of confounding readers by using too many cognates of the word seeking definition — reason.

The plainest way to put the matter is probably this: Would a sensible, intelligent, conscientious juror who considered with an unbiased mind all of the evidence have to have a “reasonable doubt” about the Cardinal’s guilt?

Sufficient doubt

That doubt would be sufficient to require an acquittal if it attached to even just one essential element of the offenses charged.

Justice Weinberg concluded that, “in my respectful opinion, these convictions cannot be permitted to stand. The only order that can properly be made is that the applicant be acquitted on each charge.”

Indeed. And so one hopes, and perhaps dares to expect, the Australian High Court to conclude as well, some months from now.

SOURCE  






Most coral ‘far from sediment danger’

Run-off of sediment from farms seldom reaches the outer Great Barrier Reef, or areas where the vast majority of corals live, the head of the Australian Institute of Marine Science has said.

However, AIMS chief executive Paul Hardisty said increased nutrients were a problem for some areas and long-term monitoring showed the Great Barrier Reef was under stress.

Water quality on the outer reef has been a central issue raised by scientist Peter Ridd, who is undertaking a controversial speaking tour through Queensland sugarcane growing areas.

Dr Ridd is calling for better quality assurance checks for reef science before new laws are introduced that affect farmers along the Queensland coast.

Dr Hardisty said the reef was a complex ecosystem of 3000 reefs, including near-shore reefs, mid-shelf reefs 20km to 40km offshore, and outer-shelf reefs 100km to 200km offshore. He said there was a natural improvement in water quality from inshore to offshore reefs.

“Mid-shelf and offshore reefs typically have better water quality as these regions are flushed more frequently with waters from the Coral Sea,” he said.

“When it comes to water quality on the Great Barrier Reef, ­researchers agree it is uncommon for sediment plumes to regularly reach outer-shelf reefs.

“The inner-shelf and mid-shelf reefs, particularly those close to large rivers in the wet tropics, experience more frequent exposure to flood plumes of dissolved and suspended material.”

Extra nutrients can come from many conditions, including river outflows which can be enhanced by agricultural or industrial ­activity.

Dr Hardisty said studies had shown fine particles of nutrient-enriched and organic-rich sediment could settle on inshore and mid-shelf reefs during calm ­periods and had the potential to kill young corals within 48 hours and adult corals in three to seven days, depending on species.

An AIMS spokeswoman said inshore reefs included popular tourist destinations such as Green Island and Fitzroy Islands off Cairns, Magnetic Island off Townsville, and Hayman and Hook islands in the Whitsundays.

She said about 80 per cent of the reefs were platform reefs on the mid- and outer-continental shelf, while about 600 reefs (20 per cent) were near-shore, ­either as fringing reefs around continental islands and along the mainland coast, or as small ­detached platform reefs.

Dr Ridd said Dr Hardisty’s comments supported his claim that there was “almost no land-derived sediment on the Great Barrier Reef where 99 per cent of corals live”.

“Nutrients are not measurably different on the Great Barrier Reef to the Pacific Ocean and farm fertilisers are almost irrelevant,” he said. “For years AIMS and others have been going on about the inshore reefs and the term implies to the unsuspecting layman that it is a third or maybe even a half of the coral (inshore vs offshore). They have never come clean about what fraction the ­inshore reefs are.”

Dr Ridd is midway through a lecture tour along the Queensland coast promoted by sugarcane and farm groups concerned about water quality legislation before the Queensland parliament. The tour has provoked strong criticism from environment and reef groups.

The Australian Coral Reef ­Society said Dr Ridd ignored inshore reefs, as if they were not an important component of the World Heritage Area and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

“This is convenient for his ­argument that there are no water-quality problems for the Great Barrier Reef, discounting the hundreds of published papers investigating and reporting on these problems,” the society said.

“He also incorrectly suggests areas like the Whitsundays are not important parts of the Great Barrier Reef, despite the huge tourism industry in such areas.’’

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What you should do instead of university

Jobs are changing so fast nowadays that heading to university for three years may no longer be the best way of getting work.

Young people are struggling to find jobs after they finish uni and a recent report from the Grattan Institute showed doing a degree could leave some people $30,000 worse off.

TAFE or other vocational education is often seen as the only alternative but technology firm WithYouWithMe (WYWM) hopes one day to provide another lifelong learning model.

Tom Larter, the chief executive officer of the Australia and New Zealand operation, said while education and learning from university could be valuable, it was more important to get into the workforce as quickly as possible.

“Jobs are changing so fast, you need to get into your first job and then use lifelong learning to build out your skills,” he said.

“We’ve got to speed up the rate that we learn new skills.”

A WYWM report recently found Australia’s education system had not been designed to respond to changes in the labour market and many students were enrolling in studies where job prospects were expected to be low.

“When up to 80 per cent of students will not find a job in their field after graduation, you have to wonder what exactly degrees are equipping them for,” WYWM co-founder Luke Rix said.

WYWM focuses its efforts on skilling people for jobs in the technology sector where there is increasing demand.

Under its model, the focus is on getting people into work as quickly as possible, in industries where there is increasing demand, through doing short online courses. Once they have a job they continue to do courses over two to three years.

“Find out what you’re good at, make yourself competitive quickly by learning in-demand skills, get into the workforce as fast as you can and then continually learn through your career as you go,” Mr Larter said.

At the moment WYWM works mainly with military veterans to help them get jobs after they retire from service, but non-military personnel can still do their testing and courses.

The program is free for veterans and this year 1178 have got jobs through the course.

Mr Larter told news.com.au that many of their clients don’t have a university degree. “Our speciality is that we can take any veteran regardless of their background and show them how to reach their full potential,” he said.

“Even if they are a truck driver they don’t have to be a truck driver when they leave, we can upskill you in a high-demand job, particularly in tech, so you can have an ongoing career.”

Veterans first do testing, which others can also do for free online, to identify what they are good at.

“Job seekers often don’t put any data behind decisions they make about their career,” he said.

Another common mistake was not considering that they could be good at one of the many new emerging jobs. “This holds them back but the testing opens their eyes,” Mr Larter said.

“We’ve had bus drivers and junior sailors with no experience in cybersecurity do a 12-week training course and get jobs.

“Those candidates had never considered, before receiving their match, that they could actually achieve this, and it’s really inspiring for them.”

The courses at the WYWM Academy take about 100 hours and generally take about six to 12 weeks to complete part-time. There is training for things like cybersecurity, software automation and data analytics.

Veterans can complete the courses for free but they cost between $3000 to $5000 for non-military jobseekers. Once candidates are trained up WYWM helps to match them with jobs at organisations they partner with.

Sydney resident Sheldon Rogers, 26, did not have a degree but got a job through WYWM after retiring from the Royal Australian Navy. He was previously a maritime warfare officer — responsible for navigation and he generally acted as the captain’s representatives on the bridge.

After serving for six years he had no idea what he was going to do after leaving the military but the testing at WYWM suggested he would be good at sales, something that surprised him.

“It was not something that I had thought about but when they explained the parameters the testing captured, what they had identified in my personality and my background and experience, it made a lot of sense in the end,” he said.

Mr Rogers worked as a recruitment provider earning $70,000 plus commission for 14 months but has recently moved on from the company. He is working at WYWM temporarily while he looks for another job.

He said he would probably stick with sales and recommended the WYWM program.

“It’s not so much for the content itself but more about the way it’s delivered,” he told news.com.au.

“You are made to feel genuinely engaged and cared for. You are being supported and they were a sounding board to bounce off my problems and issues. People here relate to my experiences, I think that’s the best part of the course.”

Mr Larter said WYWM eventually hoped to expand its services beyond its current focus on military personnel.

“We care about solving underemployment through helping people reach their potential and achieve better paying or new jobs.”

SOURCE  






Cyclists group demands 'appalling' AAMI commercial be taken off screens immediately - even though there's NOT a bicycle in the ad

A new term:  Cycling is now "active transport"

An Australian cyclist group has slammed an AAMI Insurance advertisement and demand it be taken down, even though there are no bikes in the video.

Members of the Australian Cycle Alliance (ACAi) say the advertisement is 'appalling' and are calling for the insurance company to take it off screens immediately.

The video shows a family who have to use scooters - a form of active transport - to get to school as their car is in the repair shop.

While the father is eager to use scooters as a mode of transport, the children are reluctant as they are humiliated by what their friends may think.

The ad then suggests AAMI Comprehensive Car Insurance will provide a hire car for families while their car is out of action.

President of ACAi, Edward Hore, told Daily Mail Australia the alliance finds the video discouraging as it makes active transport look like a last resort.

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 downgrades outlook for Great Barrier Reef to 'very poor'

OK.  I guess I should say something about this rubbish, as nobody else is stepping up to the plate so far.  For a start, note that this is prophecy, not a factual report.  They are prophesying that the reef will deteriorate.  Given the erratic influences on the reef (unpredictable cyclones, unpredictable starfish attacks, sea-level oscillations etc), this is simply a stab in the dark. Many things could happen and nobody knows which will.

Secondly this is not a report of any objective measurements. It is "based on a qualitative assessment of the available evidence."  Note: qualitative, not quantitative.  It is in short simply an expression of opinion from people with a vested interest in alarm

And pointing the skinger of forn at global warming is the silliest thing of all.  Where does the reef flourish best?  Where does it display the greatest biodiversity?  In the far tropics.  In the WARMEST parts of the reef waters. Corals LIKE warmth.  Global warming would be GOOD for the reef.  We live among madmen


Australia downgraded the Great Barrier Reef's long-term outlook to "very poor" for the first time on Friday, as the world heritage site struggles with "escalating" climate change.

In its latest five-yearly report on the health of the world's largest coral reef system, the government's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority singled out rising sea temperatures as the biggest threat to the giant organism.

"The significant and large-scale impacts from record-breaking sea surface temperatures have resulted in coral reef habitat transitioning from poor to very poor condition," the government agency said.

"Climate change is escalating and is the most significant threat to the Region's long-term outlook.

"Significant global action to address climate change is critical to slowing deterioration of the Reef's ecosystem and heritage values and supporting recovery," it said.

But the agency added that the threats to the 2,300-kilometre (1,400-mile) reef were "multiple, cumulative and increasing" and, in addition to warming seas, included agricultural run-off and coral-eating crown of thorns starfish.

The agency said the outlook downgrade from "poor" in 2014 to "very poor" now reflected the greater expanse of coral deterioration across the massive reef, notably following back-to-back coral bleaching events caused by sea temperature spikes in 2016 and 2017.

"The window of opportunity to improve the reef's long-term future is now," it said.

The conservative Australian government has faced criticism from environmentalists for favouring an expansion of its massive coal mining and export industry over action to curb climate change.

The United Nations had asked to receive the latest update on the reef's health by December so that it can determine whether the site can retain its world heritage status when UNESCO next considers the issue in 2020.

The reef is estimated to be worth at least $4 billion (£3.3 bn) a year to the Australian economy - serving as a magnet for tourists and emblem of the country. 

SOURCE 






The Great Barrier Reef is not dead ... long live the reef

By Sussan Ley (Sussan Ley is the Australian federal Minister for the Environment)

A fortnight ago I was on the reef, not with climate sceptics but with scientists, the country’s lead reef agencies, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Australian Institute of Marine Science and accredited master reef guides.

Their advice was clear: the Reef isn’t dead. It has vast areas of vibrant coral and teeming sea life, just as it has areas that have been damaged by coral bleaching, illegal fishing and crown of thorns outbreaks.

To help the reef, its wildlife and the 64,000 jobs it supports, we need to recognise both realities.

There are those who will not be happy unless we declare the reef dead in the name of climate change, just as there are those who want to claim that nothing out of the ordinary is taking place. As a minister who respects the science, who has consulted over many weeks with reef experts from the park authority, the Institute of Marine Science and the innovative Great Barrier Reef Foundation, I do not subscribe to either position.

We have the best managed reef ecosystem in the world. We have a massive job to do in protecting its future and we are getting on with that job.

The Great Barrier Reef covers some 346,000 square kilometres and the tourism experience you will find snorkelling from Cairns and other locations such as  the Whitsundays remains awe-inspiring.  The reef is showing us that it has the capacity to regenerate from impacts such as cyclones, bleaching and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks.

But it also faces enormous challenges if we do not take action. Reducing threats from rising sea temperatures, poor water quality and crown of thorns outbreaks are critical in protecting its future.

I trust the scientists who tell me that climate change is the biggest single threat to the reef, just as I trust those who tell me of the things we can do, and are doing, to make the reef more resilient.

The Morrison government is taking meaningful action to reduce global emissions. The $3.5 billion Climate Solutions Package will deliver the 328 million tonnes of abatement needed to meet our 2030 Paris target.

From an environment perspective, my focus is on the things we can do on the reef and in its catchment, from the work with farmers addressing water quality to the protection of marine park areas, the control of crown of thorns starfish, collaboration with local communities and traditional owners, and the investment in new technology to improve coral spawning success and adaptation to warmer environments.

The federal government is investing $1.2billion in the reef, including $443 million through the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which will in turn attract significant private-sector investment in innovative reef protection partnerships. Already there are some significant gains in terms of crown of thorns control, partnerships with landholders and increased marine park compliance and surveillance.

The full benefit of many investments and management strategies already under way in the park are still to be realised through our monitoring systems.

We need to continue to accelerate our actions in these areas, as well as invest in steps to reduce plastic and waste in our waterways.

The Australian and Queensland governments’ Reef 2050 Plan – endorsed by the United Nations World Heritage Committee – is a world-leading strategy for a marine protected area. I hope to see it gain more momentum as we work in partnership with all tiers of government, the private sector, NGOs, traditional owners and the wider community.

The Australian and Queensland governments are investing $2 billion in the future of the reef, working with many partners including independent scientific panels, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the CSIRO.

Our investment in innovation through the foundation has enormous potential to deliver forward-looking conservation projects for the reef, with significant scope for private sector partnerships.

This is anything but a head-in-the-sand approach and it is in stark contrast to those who would rather rush to declare the reef dead than look at the steps we can take – and are taking – to preserve it into the future.

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Universities have lost their way as homes for free speech

In 2016, the Collins English Dictionary ranked “snowflake generation” as one of those annoying new phrases for the year. It is time to bury it. It’s a beat-up and, worse, it is an unfair slur on the current generation of students.

That is the good news from a forthcoming research report by the Institute of Public Affairs into the state of free speech on campus. Far from being snowflakes, it turns out kids are not the problem.

But the bad news is that there is, most definitely, a free speech crisis on campus. The results show that universities are failing students, boys in particular, and this institutional dereliction of duty raises questions about the relevance and sustainability of universities in the 21st century.

Instead of speaking to univer­sity administrators and academics, the IPA commissioned a survey from independent market research company Dynata, asking 500 students to agree or disagree with a series of statements about free speech, diversity of views and so on. Importantly, students joined the survey groups without knowing they would be asked about free speech on campus.

The first point to note is that 82 per cent of students said they should be exposed to different views even if they found them challenging or offensive. And free speech is not a political issue. Of those who said they should be exposed to different views, 86 per cent of Greens supporters were concerned and 82 per cent of Labor supporters were worried, as were 82 per of Coalition supporters.

And those noisy anti-free students who try to shut down views they don’t like? They are tiny in number. With only 2.2 per cent of students disagreeing with the statement that they should be exposed to different views, why on earth are university leaders so pusillanimous in dealing with them? After riot police had to be called, it took a nine-month investigation for the University of Sydney to discipline a student organ­iser of the protests that tried to stop Bettina Arndt from speaking at a function last year.

The next set of numbers point to a truly depressing state of free speech crisis on campus. A little more than 41 per cent of students said they sometimes were unable to express their opinions at university. Just under a third of students had been made to feel uncomfortable by a university teacher for expressing their opinion. And 59 per cent of students said they sometimes were prevented from expressing their opinions on con­troversial issues by other students.

This last figure should cause students to rethink their claimed commitment to a diversity of views. You can’t, on the one hand, say you support different views on campus, even if they are challenging and offensive, and on the other hand make students expressing different views feel uncomfortable. A genuine belief in free speech means defending the right of people you disagree with, even vehemently, to speak freely.

The other damning results show that students are going elsewhere to express their views and to learn about different ideas from others. More than 47 per cent of students said they felt more comfortable expressing their views on social media than at university, and 58 per cent of students said they were exposed to new ideas on social media more than they were at university. Almost 45 per cent said that social media played a bigger role in shaping their views than what they learned at university.

This raises serious questions about the diminishing relevance of universities for students who are keen to be exposed to diverse opinions, so keen that they are seeking out other platforms for different ideas.

The learning environment at universities is letting down young male students in particular. The survey results reveal a consistent gender gap between male and female students when it comes to feeling free to express views. Most concerning, 44 per cent of male students (compared with 23 per cent of female students) said they had been made to feel uncomfortable by their university teacher for expressing their views, and 47 per cent of young male students (compared with 38 per cent of young female students) said they sometimes felt unable to express their views at university.

Time to bury another myth, then: the one about boys hogging discussion in the lecture theatre and in the tutorial room. Maybe this sharp gender gap should be no surprise given a recent workshop at the University of Melbourne where organisers wanted white male students, and anyone who looked like a Liberal voter, to remain silent in tutorials. It turns out that the students wrapped in their identity politics on campus didn’t need to make that demand because many boys are self-censoring. It hardly needs pointing out — or maybe it does today — that this kind of self-censorship is not a healthy learning environment for male or female students.

The IPA’s survey also explains why Jordan Peterson is a cultural rock star among young men. The gender gap is pronounced when it comes to those students who feel more comfortable expressing their views on social media (56 per cent of male students compared with 41 per cent of female students), and those who say they are exposed to more new ideas on social media than at university (65 per cent of male students compared with 54 per cent of female students).

Young male students are disproportionately looking elsewhere for a more diverse range of opinions, and for a space where they can express their own views. Again, this should be no surprise given the phenomenal popularity of long-form podcasts and YouTube conversations, by left-liberals such as Dave Rubin to more conservative ones such as Peterson and Ben Shapiro.

The terrific news is that students don’t have short concentration spans when they are listening to views that challenge the orthodoxy. In fact, the next generation of leaders, teachers, lawyers, scientists and engineers want to learn; this survey shows they are hungry for ideas.

What an indictment on the university sector in this country that these students, especially young men on campus, rely on social media, not their own campus, to challenge their views and, ultim­ately, to form their opinions. And don’t imagine these findings are akin to a young conservative man feeling stifled in the audience of the ABC’s Q&A. The gender gap uncovered by this survey is reflected among young male students across all political persuasions. In other words, the lack of free speech on campus transcends politics.

It is also clear that open intellectual inquiry is unhealthy across university faculties, not just in arts and humanities. Among the 500 students, 234 students are studying science and technology, and 40 per cent of them said their teachers sometimes unnecessarily inserted political content into their courses. These areas should be the least political. But again, are we surprised? After all, James Cook University unlawfully sacked esteemed physics professor Peter Ridd for asking questions that challenged the climate change orth­odoxy on campus.

And these findings are only slightly below the percentage of all students, 45 per cent of whom said university teachers sometimes unnecessarily inserted political content into their courses.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday, federal Education Minister Dan Tehan announced his plan to work with the university sector to collect student feedback on diversity of opinions on campus and whether students felt empowered to voice nonconformist views. “I believe universities want to know if students and staff are afraid to discuss certain topics,” Tehan said. We can test that by watching how university vice-chancellors respond to the IPA’s findings.

Their reaction to the French report into the state of free speech released in April points to disheartening default settings: they told us they were committed to free speech; that any other suggestion would be ludicrous because they were universities after all; then they did nothing to explore what in fact was happening on campus. Worse, they turned their noses up at evidence collected by others. By not mentioning the French report they prayed it would go away and, when pushed to respond, they grabbed one titbit — a line from the report that said there was no free speech “crisis” — so they could quickly resume normal programming even though French made clear there were problems around free speech that universities must confront.

Like a recalcitrant child, some VCs eventually signalled they would consider adopting some version of French’s model code on free speech. Even then, as French noted, adopting a code is no substitute for changing the university’s culture.

For example, following a Senate estimates inquiry late last year, Sydney University vice-chancellor Michael Spence was reported as being “galled” that Liberal senator Amanda Stoker prised from federal education bureaucrats a new-found focus to hold univer­sities accountable for obligations they have under the law to be ­places of free intellectual inquiry.

This latest research by the IPA shows those laws are not working.

Yet, in response to Stoker’s line of questioning, Spence told one newspaper: “Have you ever heard of a more shocking waste of public funds?” Yes. Last year $17.5 billion was provided to universities by taxpayers, many of whom have not been to university. How extraordinary that it needs saying, let alone enforcing, that each university drawing on public funds should be an oasis of free intellectual inquiry, offering a range of diverse and challenging opinions, so that fee-paying students don’t need to go elsewhere to feel comfortable expressing their views.

The days of university vice-chancellors paying lip service to free speech are coming to an abrupt end. As evidence mounts, with more people, including students, contesting the ability of universities to be places of genuine learning, taxpayers should expect university funding to be strictly tied to their ability to foster diversity of opinions. That we need such measures at all, and given the history of intransigence among university VCs, we also need to start planning for the next phase of learning, offering new avenues for higher education and deciding whether universities should be publicly funded at all.

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Scott Morrison slams new transgender toilets in Prime Minister's office and orders them REMOVED - calling them 'over the top political correctness'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed a toilet sign encouraging staff to use the bathroom which 'best fits your gender identity'. The sign was installed at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's office in Canberra. 

'PM&C is committed to staff inclusion and diversity. Please use the bathroom that best fits your gender identity,' the sign read. 

Mr Morrison has slammed the sign as 'political correctness over the top'. 'Honestly this is why we call it the Canberra bubble, it's ridiculous ... It will be sorted out,' he told 2GB Radio.  

'I don't think this is necessary. I think people can work out which room to use, 'It is political correctness over the top.'

He has spoken to the department officials about the sign and said he expects the note to be taken down. It is unknown when the sign was put up.

The PM&C's website said 'promoting diversity and inclusion is critical' in order 'to achieve our goal of best supporting government and improving outcomes for all Australians'.

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