From farms and coal mines to airports and water supplies: How China is buying up millions of acres of land, vital infrastructure and companies - as part of its 'disturbing' plan to exert greater influence and control over Australia

This is just racist paranoia. China is not particularly targeting Australia.  It is buying up assets wherever it can worldwide.  And what harm is there in it?  China can't just pick up Australian farms and take them back to China.  And if they don't manage their assets commercially, they will send them broke, which is hardly what they would want.  They are in the business of acquiring assets, not destroying them.

So why the worldwide buying frenzy?  It's simple.  They may be communists but they are following orthodox Western economics.  Most economists are freaked by the huge issue of new American dollars that began under Obama and is continuing under Trump.  Such actions normally lead to inflation and in a sense MUST lead to inflation.   The inflation has been inexplicably delayed but the longer the unfunded spending  goes on the more likely it becomes. And inflation means that any greenbhacks you possess become steadily worthless.

So what would you do if you owned a trillion of such unsafe greenbacks?  China sells so much to America that they have earned greenbacks by the billion.  But just saving it is out of the question.  Even the banks don't do that.  They lend it out. The bubble  in the value of the dollar could burst any time and leave China with nothing in return for all the stuff they have sent to Amerrica.  So they need to spend it NOW while they can get worthwhile things with it -- things that will tend to retain their value.

They have been doing it for years. They put their trust in real things, not bits of printed paper.  So they told their millions of keen businessmen to buy overseas and their government would give them the dollars.  And they really ramped that up in the Obama years.  And they mostly like what they have got: Assets with  both a future and a present that will be a reliable store of value.

So why is Trump continuing the Obama excess?  Because he can.  He has a distinguished economics degree so he can analyse the situation for himself.  And he obviously thinks he can use the bubble while it lasts.  Just printing money instead of raising it in taxes has a lot of appeal to any politician.  Conservative econmists are squawking but Trump is ahead of them.  Just look at how he has revitalized the economy


China is buying up Australian land, infrastructure and businesses at an alarming rate as it seeks to project power and influence beyond its shores.

The communist nation of 1.4billion people owns an airport in Western Australia, nine million hectares of Australian land, several Aussie coalmines and wind farms and even the Port of Darwin, a key strategic asset.

China is also the largest foreign owner of Australian water and has projected soft power Down Under by planting Communist Party-approved Mandarin teachers in schools and universities.

Last week 'disturbing' stories emerged that China tried to install a spy as a federal MP - and it is also suspected of carrying out major cyber attacks on Parliament.

In November 2015, the Northern Territory government decided to lease the Port of Darwin - now known as Darwin Port - to a Chinese company for 99 years.

Landbridge Australia, a subsidiary of Shandong Landbridge, won the lease with its bid of $506 million.

The territory's Country Liberal Party government decided to lease the port - a key strategic asset because of its location at the top of the country - because it was desperate for investment in the absence of federal funds.

Executive director of the Australia Defence Association (ADA), Neil James, called the leasing of the base a 'seriously dumb idea'. And Labor MP Nick Champion called for the lease to be scrapped so the port can be returned to Australian control.

Land

China is the second largest foreign owner of land in Australia with Chinese companies in control of 2.3 per cent of the nation's soil.

Investors from the the United Kingdom own more with 2.6 per cent and buyers from the US are third with 0.7 per cent, according to the 2018 Register Of Foreign Ownership.

Most of the foreign-owned land is in Western Australia and the Northern Territory and is used for cattle farming.  

When the land register report was released in December, federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that foreign investment was important for growth.

But he also warned: 'It is important to ensure that foreign investment is not contrary to the national interest'.

SOURCE  





Cuddle-a-koala charity event to raise money for farmers is cancelled after Animal Justice Party said animals shouldn't be used to raise money for industry that kills livestock

A charity event organised to raise funds for struggling farmers has been cancelled after outrage from animal rights activists. 

The Cuddle-a-koala event was organised by members of Shoalhaven Zoo, on the south coast of NSW, at Warrawong Plaza for Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The fundraiser would allow people to cuddle koalas and pat them while donating a gold coin for farmers suffering in drought conditions.

The money would go to the 'buy a bale' campaign to assist farmers in purchasing food for their animals.

Animal Justice Party Illawarra regional group leader Julie Power said the event would 'traumatise' the animals. 'Koalas are wild animals,' she told The Illawarra Mercury.  'They should not be wheeled out in front of large crowds to be touched, poked and prodded for profit, no matter the cause.

'It must also be recognised that this event promotes traumatising animals to raise money for the cruel animal agriculture industry, who we know abuse and slaughter animals on a daily basis.

'Events such as this don't provide meaningful or natural interaction.' 

On Friday, the zoo announced the event was cancelled due to 'unforeseen circumstances'. 'Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances we have had to cancel our Koala experience,' they wrote on Facebook.

'We are still holding our Buy a Bale fundraiser to raise money for our drought stricken farmers. 'So if you would like to donate and put your hay bale sticker on the wall visit Concierge this weekend.'

A spokeswoman would not confirm to the publication that the cancellation was due to the criticism from the animal rights activists.

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Qld graziers [ranchers] take coal mine fight to court

It sounds like they have got a case but Greenies are such liars that you cannot tell

Conservationists have launched a court battle against Clive Palmer's proposed Queensland coal mine, saying it will destroy wildlife and and impact graziers.

The owners of the 8000-hectare Bimblebox Nature Refuge in central Queensland filed an objection to Waratah Coal's proposed mining project in the Galilee Basin on Monday in the Land Court in Brisbane.

Co-owner Paola Cassoni says Mr Palmer wants to build a mine that will destroy a nature reserve where more than 150 bird species, including the endangered black-throated finch, and other wildlife have been observed.

She said contracts were signed with the Commonwealth and Queensland governments about 20 years ago enabling the development of the conservation-based grazing property.

"We will fight to save this invaluable island of remnant woodland," she said in a statement. "We cannot stand by and allow the trashing of nature for coal."

Environmental Defenders Office CEO David Morris, acting for the Bimblebox owners, said the project would destroy about half the nature refuge which also operates as a cattle station.

"The project consists of two open-cut pits and four underground mines that will totally destroy roughly 50 per cent of the nature refuge and cut underneath the remainder, leaving it in ruins," Mr Morris said.

"It will have a huge impact on local graziers and destroy a private conservation reserve that is one of the largest tracts of intact woodland in Queensland and home to hundreds of species, many of which are rare or endangered."

The matter will be heard in the Land Court at a later date.

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Australia is doing well at adaptation to the threat of climate change

It’s not surprising that the continuing drought, the driest ever for many parts of the country, record temperatures and the early and explosive start of the bushfire season have increased public concern about climate change and triggered accusations the government is failing to prepare communities for these growing hazards.

While it is true that government responses are lagging in Australia, as they are in most other countries, the Morrison government is doing more to build Australia’s climate resilience than its critics (or even the government itself) may realise. That’s because many of its initiatives are not branded as “climate change” and are embedded in the bureaucratic silos of government departments that have other mandates.

Some examples of this include the $5bn Future Drought Fund, the $4.5bn Roads of Strategic Importance Initiative, the $3.9bn Emergency Response Fund, the $1.5bn National Water Infrastructure Development Fund, the $130m National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, and the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrange­ments, each of which provides very significant funding for activities to strengthen resilience to floods, droughts and other climate-related hazards that climate change is amplifying.

The problem is that this lack of integration at whole-of-government level is creating inefficiencies that we can ill-afford in a rapidly changing climate.

The Department of Environment and Energy co-ordinates the National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy, but the strategy is not integrated with the Department of Home Affairs’ National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, even though more than 90 per cent of all disasters are from hazards, such as floods and droughts, that climate change is worsening.

Similarly, the $100bn National Infrastructure Investment Program in the Department of Transportation, Cities and Regional Development, could be better leveraged to build regional and local resilience to climate hazards.

The ADF and the Australian aid program should also be key elements of a coherent national approach.

As we are already seeing, our military will increasingly need to be called upon to support disaster response within Australia and to respond to regional disasters, territorial disputes, and people movements driven by food instability and other climate-related disruptions. Careful targeting of the aid program’s $665m of development assistance for resilience-building can support both our humanitarian and national security objectives, decreasing the need for ADF responses to some of these emerging challenges.

We must bring together this significant ongoing work more coherently.

The recent Independent Review of the Australian Public Service, submitted to the Prime Minister last September, suggests a useful way forward. The review highlighted the key role of the APS Secretaries Board in driving policy across portfolios and explored options to strengthen the governance and resourcing of the board to drive delivery of whole-of-government outcomes. Building Australia’s resilience in the face of our changing climate is exactly the sort of cross-departmental challenge that would benefit from the board’s leadership.

Preparing a more coherent national approach would also make it easier to identify gaps that need to be addressed. A few already stand out. The federal government has no legislated authority ­defining its role, powers and responsibilities in responding to catastrophic natural disasters. This will become increasingly problematic in a rapidly warming climate. Governments in Canada and the US have this authority, even though they too have federal systems that vest the primary responsibility for responding to natural disasters at a state level.

Greater attention should also be devoted to mainstreaming disaster risk reduction across all of the commonwealth’s investments and we need to begin thinking more deeply about the implications for communities that are, or will soon be, in chronic crisis, including options such as managed retreats, land swaps and financial incentives for farmers to transition to other livelihoods.

Notwithstanding the polarising political rhetoric, there is strong bipartisan support for initiatives to build Australia’s resilience to climate hazards. Both major parties, for example, supported passage of the Future Drought and Emergency Response funds.

Given the increasing impact disasters are having on Australian communities, it is in our national interest for this bipartisan approach to become stronger, more visible and explicit. As this happens, it may also help to unlock opportunities for bipartisan efforts in other, more politically challenging, but fundamentally important areas, such as climate change mitigation.

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

Expert reveals why the private health insurance sector is in a DEATH SPIRAL - as young Australians are smashed by rising costs

It is not a death spiral.  It is an exclusivity spiral.  Public hospital care is so deficient that those who can afford to go private will always do so -- even if they have to pay steep insurance premiums. But as medical and hospital costs rise that will be fewer and fewer people.

The idea behind public hospitals was to give everyone the sort of health care that only the rich could once afford. That has already been stymied by rising costs and is only going to get worse no matter what governments do

There is a constant flow of beneficial innovations but the new procedures generally cost big.  Already, it is mostly the rich who can afford many of them.  Trying to make them generally available would require huge tax hikes, which is not going to happen.  Healthcare already takes a huge bite out of the budget

Scrapping some of the more absurd defence expenditures -- such as the submarine program -- would  probably enable more public support for costly procedures, however.  I am all in favour of defence but the money given to it has to be usefully spent. The submarine project was an initiative of the Gillard Labor Party government.  You will find any number of critics of it online



Young Australians are avoiding private health insurance due to the exorbitant costs, sending the entire sector into what some experts have labelled a 'death spiral'.

As millennials turn their backs on private healthcare, the industry is finding it increasingly difficult to cover the cost of subsidising older and sicker members.

Grattan Institute health economist Stephen Duckett said the private system is in the midst of a 'death spiral' and needs urgent reforms to repair it.

The amount of people aged between 20 and 34 with private health cover has plunged 11 per cent in the last five years.

Most experts blame rising costs in hospital treatments for forcing the increase in health insurance premiums - which young people in particular can't afford.

But with the young and the healthy abandoning their policies, the sector is finding it less profitable because those that remain are often the old and the unwell - and likely to cash in on their policies more frequently.

Premiums are already increasing faster than inflation or wage growth, the Grattan Institute study found.

Duckett concluded 'Australians are increasingly unhappy with the private health insurance' on offer in the country.

As more people turn their backs on private care, pressure on the public health system mounts.

Extended waiting periods and customer dissatisfaction are predicted to continue getting worse if more people rely on the general, public sector.

Australia currently runs on a two-tier health system.

The first care being the universal public health insurance scheme, known as Medicare, which gives all Australians access to taxpayer-funded health care.

The second is the voluntary private health insurance system. About 45 per cent of Australians have private healthcare.

Private health insurance should offer members more variety when it comes to choosing practitioners, expedited treatments and a place within private hospitals.

Duckett's study also discussed the 'adverse selection spiral', in which higher-risk people continue purchasing private insurance while low risk people choose to leave to avoid subsidising costs for high-risk patients.

In turn, the average risk profile for the insurer rises, meaning they boost premiums to reflect the change and even more healthy people drop their cover as a result.

SOURCE  






Unchecked rise of democracy deniers

They simply will not learn. They refuse to admit error, concede defeat or offer the crucial loser’s consent on which democracy hinges. Political opposition and public protest are fundamental in democracy. But there is a balance to be struck between such rights and the will of the majority as exercised through the ballot box.

That balance is out of kilter now. There are phonies in parliament, on campuses, all over social media and spewing erroneous groupthink from our public broadcasters. When facts don’t suit or reality confounds them, they console each other in the carefully constructed safe zones of university seminars or public radio forums. This cohort, for all its errors and misjudgments, dominates the public discussion; largely because of the heft of the taxpayer-funded media, university and quango sectors. They dominate now just as they did before this year’s election, before Don­ald Trump won and before Brexit.

On the ABC’s Insiders last week all three panellists agreed with the assertion Malcolm Turnbull had put forward that he would have won the election. Could they make such assessments if they understood what had transpired at the polls?

Having misjudged the electoral dynamic, you would expect a recalibration of perspectives might be unavoidable. Perhaps there would be a realisation from the media/political class that they had over-estimated the public appetite for climate action, underestimated resistance to increased taxation or missed anxiety about a return to ambivalent border security.

But no. There are no lessons. The ideological and policy settings of the media/political class remain unadjusted. They wander right up to the cheese again, take another bite, and get jolted again by the electoral shock.

They are the democracy deniers. Their version of public debate is one of virtual reality; their views are constantly reaffirmed, it is only the voters who get it wrong. For VR goggles, they can blinker themselves by watching the ABC, perhaps SBS for variety, reading Guardian Australia and discussing events at the Wheeler Centre or on Q&A.

The real world is kept at bay. When elections confound them, as conservative victories invari­ably do, they can blame strangers from the suburbs and the regions, demonise the barbarians at the commercial end of the broadcast spectrum or invoke that hardy perennial of the defeated leftist, the Murdoch conspiracy theory (as we have heard from Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and others). Anything but confront the truth. Ultimately this is futile, as Winston Churchill suggested: “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

So, at the May election the Coali­tion picked up an extra seat, won more than 41 per cent of the primary vote and generated a 1 per cent swing towards it on a two-party-preferred basis, crushing Labor’s 33 per cent primary vote and snaring another term of government. Given the damage the government had inflicted on itself over the term, and the fracturing of the right-of-centre vote by One Nation and Clive Palmer, this result is full of foreboding for Labor. It is understandable that this would disappoint and dismay many people. But it is fundamental that they accept it.

Denial started on day one. The Ten Network’s Lisa Wilkinson wrote a strained open letter to Scott Morrison, apparently not comprehending that many people, most in fact, felt the country had dodged a bullet.

“Prime Minister, you may have noticed we’re all feeling just a little broken right now — broken-hearted in fact, at how toxic the Australian body politic has become — and a return to basic civility in public discourse would be a great start to that healing,” she wrote, apparently not sensing that the Prime Minister’s mainstream views and the way he had weathered attacks based on his religion might have been seen as a repudiation of the green-left, Twitter-fuel­led politics of abuse.

After a fiercely contested “climate election” Wilkinson seemed to want the losing party’s policies to prevail: “We know, too, that the climate is sick and tired. And things are getting worse.”

The campaigning to ignore the election result and adopt the defeated green-left agenda has only escalated. Politicians, activists and journalists have exaggerated, embellished and fabricated climate hysteria to justify the kinds of extreme climate policies rejected at the election.

Extinction Rebellion protesters have superglued themselves to roadways in Brisbane, children have skipped school, and local and state government workers have been given time off to “strike” for the sorts of climate policies federal voters avoided.

The Senate has rejected union integrity measures taken to the election, and medivac laws, passed against the government’s wishes by a coalition of Greens, independents and Labor before the election, still may not be repealed despite the government’s renewed mandate and strong border security record. What would voters know?

Undeniably, Energy Minister Angus Taylor used grossly erron­eous figures in a charged letter to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. But given the letter was inconsequential and the figures were a misquote of the mayor’s own figures back to her, it is difficult to interpret the hysterical reaction from Labor and the media except as an exercise in retaliation: Taylor must be punished for winning a climate election.

Anthony Albanese, Greens leader Richard Di Natale, Turnbull and Australian Republic Movement chairman Peter FitzSimons pushed this week to rid our Constitution of the monarchy — as if voters had not just passed judgment on Labor, and its election promise of another republic referendum within three years.

Labor went to the election criticising the Coalition’s economic plans and promising remedies that included almost $400bn in additional tax revenue. Yet to abandon those tax grabs, it still critiques the Coalition’s economic management but proposes additional fiscal stimulus now.

It all smacks of an election result denied. It replicates the politics of the US and Britain, where not for a single moment have members of the media/political class accepted the will of the people as expressed through the election of Trump or the referendum vote for Brexit.

In this manifestation of democracy denial by the green left, elections are reduced to markers that deliver no lessons and in which the losers refuse to concede a point. Opposition merely morphs, through electoral rejection, into resistance.

Sure, we recognise the checks and balances. In Australia we have a bicameral system in which the government, typically, does not carry a majority in the Senate.

A narrow election win does not mean a government rules unencumbered. But for democracy to operate effectively, people such as Wilkinson and her fellow travellers must comprehend some sense of mandate. There must be some element of loser’s consent. Instead we see loser’s bitterness and loser’s revenge.

No party or individual should be expected to surrender their entire agenda because of electoral admonishment. But somewhere a lesson must be learned; the will of the voters must endorse or reject something.

Otherwise what is an election other than a well-funded and formulaic phase in a perpetual saga of toxic politicking? Besides, mainstream voters will not change their minds based on the bloody-mindedness of Senate crossbenchers or Extinction Rebellion stunt masters, the agendas run by media or tub-thumping of protest parties such as the Greens.

For Labor, a party of government, there is a crucial balance to be struck between causing mischief and learning lessons, between accepting democracy and standing on principle, between advocating an agenda and listening to constituents. Because if the will of the people is thwarted, disregarded and ignored between elections, voters might be more emphatic next time.

SOURCE  






University of Western Australia partnership with fossil fuel companies

The University of Western Australia is facing criticism over a partnership with fossil fuel companies that promises to help the gas industry expand into remote fields that have so far been too costly to develop.

Western Australian premier Mark McGowan praised the creation of what is known as the Centre for Long Subsea Tiebacks, a partnership between the university and Chevron and Woodside, which are contributing $600,000 a year.

A statement posted on the state government and the university’s websites says the centre will focus on how to improve “tiebacks” – connections between new oil and gas fields and existing production facilities – in hostile deep-sea conditions.

It follows the establishment of other recent university-industry partnerships designed to help the state’s liquified natural gas (LNG) operations, which have grown rapidly over the past five years to be a significant employer and major export industry.

Launching the centre, McGowan said bringing more oil and gas projects online would position the state as a global energy leader. It would also mean more jobs for Western Australians. “That’s my government’s number one priority,” he said.

Alex Gardner, a professor and environmental lawyer at the University of Western Australia, said the centre was just part of what was broad backing from the university sector for the petroleum industry. He said he acknowledged universities and academics should be free to research and teach according to their choices.

But he said there did not seem to be a discussion about how the continuing expansion of the LNG industry fit within Australia’s emissions budget if it was to play its part in meeting the goals set at the UN Paris conference in 2015.

The announcement of the centre comes as Woodside leads plans to develop the long mooted Scarborough and Browse gas projects in northern WA.

Announcing the centre, Dawn Freshwater, the university’s vice-chancellor, said it fulfilled the institution’s aim of serving the community and improving people’s lives. “Not only will it enhance Perth and WA as a centre of offshore engineering excellence, it aligns with [the university’s] plans to expand and strengthen global partnerships,” she said.

Woodside’s chief executive, Peter Coleman, said: “We believe this partnership will play a crucial role in unlocking new gas resources off Western Australia’s north coast in support of our growth activities.”

Chevron’s managing director, Al Williams, said the company was proud to partner with the university on the centre.

In August, Williams announced that a carbon capture and storage project at Chevron’s Gorgon LNG development had begun operating after repeated delays stretching back to 2016. The company has previously estimated between 3.4m and 4m tonnes of carbon dioxide, about 40% of the emissions at Gorgon, could be buried each year.

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The rise of solar power is jeopardising the WA energy grid, and it's a lesson for all of Australia

In Western Australia, one of the sunniest landscapes in the world, rooftop solar power has been a runaway success.

On the state's main grid, which covers Perth and the populated south-west corner of the continent, almost one in every three houses has a solar installation.

Combined, the capacity of rooftop solar on the system far exceeds the single biggest generator — an ageing 854 megawatt coal-fired power station.

But there is now so much renewable solar power being generated on the grid that those responsible for keeping the lights on warn the stability of the entire system could soon be in jeopardy.

It is a cautionary tale for the rest of the country of how the delicate balancing act that is power grid management can be severely destabilised by what experts refer to as a "dumb solar" approach.

"We talk about 'smart' this and 'smart' that these days," said energy expert Adam McHugh, an honorary research associate at Perth's Murdoch University. "Well, solar at the moment is 'dumb' in Western Australia. We need to make it smart."

An isolated solar frontier

Mr McHugh's remarks come at a time of profound change in the energy industry across the globe.

But nowhere is the change being more acutely felt than in Western Australia. Stuck out on its own at the edge of the continent, he said WA had become "a laboratory experiment in the uptake of rooftop solar". "We're at the front of the curve, the bleeding edge," Mr McHugh said.

"The technology that we're seeing being developed rapidly around the world is flowing into Western Australia at a more rapid rate, potentially … than anywhere else on the planet."

While much of the debate about the intersection of climate and energy policy is focused on the eastern states — and its national electricity market (NEM) — WA is hurtling towards a tipping point.

At heart of the state's problem is its isolation.

Unlike states such as South Australia, which has even higher levels of renewable energy, WA cannot rely on any other markets to prop it up during times of disruption to supply or demand.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which runs WA's wholesale electricity market (WEM), said the islanded nature of the grid in WA made it particularly exposed to the technical challenges posed by solar.

AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman said these challenges tended to be most acute when high levels of solar output coincided with low levels of demand — typically on mild, sunny days in spring or autumn when people were not using air conditioners.

On those days, excess solar power from households and businesses spilled uncontrolled on to the system, pushing the amount of power needed from the grid to increasingly low levels.

Ms Zibelman said WA's isolation amplified this trend because the relative concentration of its solar resources meant fluctuations in supply caused by the weather had an outsized effect.

Low-power days become a big problem

The only way to manage the solar was to scale back or switch off the coal- and gas-fired power stations that were supposed to be the bedrock of the electricity system.

The problem was coal-fired plants were not designed to be quickly ramped up or down in such a way, meaning they were ill-equipped to respond to sudden fluctuations in solar production.

"What's changing in the WEM is the fact that rooftop solar is now our single largest generator," Ms Zibelman said. "That has really made a huge difference in terms of how we think about the power system.

"The concern we have for the first time in probably the history of this industry is you start thinking about sunny days during the spring or [autumn] when you don't have a lot of demand, because you don't have a lot of cooling going on.

"And that becomes an interesting issue because you have lots and lots of solar and very little demand. "We've never worried about a system around low demand. You're always worried about the highest periods of the summer.

"What we're recognising now is that the flexibility we need in the system is one [issue] that we have to think about — how do we integrate solar and storage better? And these are new problems that we have to solve."

Rolling blackouts possible within three years

In a "clarion call" earlier this year, AEMO said that if nothing was done to safeguard the grid, there was a credible danger of rolling blackouts from as early as 2022 as soaring levels of renewable energy periodically overwhelmed the system.

At worst, AEMO warned there was a "real risk" of a system-wide blackout.

It said 700MW of demand was the floor below which it would struggle to ensure that voltage and frequency levels stayed within acceptable limits. "At that point, we worry about the voltage," Ms Zibelman said.

"But also it's that [point] we worry about the other generators, because below that level you actually have demand that's smaller than the smallest generator. "So if something trips off, it's very hard to respond."

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

Education Minister will tell universities to stop adjudicating rape

Bettina Arndt

Red letter day! Our Education Minister Dan Tehan will today tell TEQSA, the university regulator, that universities need to stop adjudicating rape on campuses.

He’s set to speak at  the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency annual conference in Melbourne where he will announce that the criminal justice system, not a university discipline process, is the right place to deal with ­alleged crimes that take place on campus or in the student commun­ity.

“Universities have a duty of care to their students and that ­includes ensuring processes around the enforcement of any codes of conduct are legal, fair and transparent," he will tell the conference.

“If a student alleges they are the victim of a crime then our criminal justice system is the ­appropriate authority to deal with it," Mr Tehan says.

Tim Dodd, the Higher Education editor for The Australian who has been given access to Tehan’s planned TEQSA speech, writes today that Tehan’s speech follows a decision by a Queensland Supreme Court judge last week that barred the University of Queensland from holding a discip­linary hearing into allegations that a final-year male ­medical student sexually ­assault­ed a female student last year.

Dodd summarised that ruling as follows: “Justice Ann Lyons ruled last week that the university was ­restrained from going ahead with the hearing on the basis that the allegations against the ­student “were in fact allegations of crim­inal offences of a sexual nature". “This is not just an action by the university about breaches of its rules, policies and procedures," Justice Lyons said. “It would indeed­ be a startling result if a committee comprised of academics and students who are not required to have any legal training could decide allegations of a most serious kind without any of the protections of the criminal law."

Dan Tehan will announce that education providers “need to take great care when considering disciplinary action in relation to allegations of criminal conduct, to ensure that the protections afforded to indiv­iduals responding to those allegations are not infringed. These are complex matters and there is substantia­l legislation, case law and legal precedent available to anyone accused of a crime."

Isn’t this wonderful? Finally we have an education minister willing to take on the small but noisy group of activists who managed to bully the entire higher education sector into pursuing this path, which has had such disastrous consequences for colleges in America, with over 200 successful legal cases of young men suing over the universities' failure to protect their legal rights, and thousands of accused young men being thrown out of colleges after biased, “believe-the victim" judgements by college tribunals.

Let's see if university administrators will now come to their senses. Not much sign  of that from USyd’s Vice Chancellor Michael Spence. His letter on the matter below. How does this man, who received a salary package of 1.53 million last year, get away with being so blinkered and inept?  Why are the University's academic lawyers silent about this dangerous nonsense?

We need to put pressure on universities to get real and realise feminist activists need to relinquish control of the sector and allow universities to get on with providing education rather than controlling people’s private lives. Please talk to any academics and administrators you know, or write letters to your local university. The activists are bound to be fighting fiercely against this advice from Tehan. Universities need to know the silent majority demands they get their act together. And Tehan needs your support. 

That’s  it for now. I’m off on two weeks’ holiday so I would be grateful if you saved up any correspondence until I return mid-December. I’ll check emails occasionally but will only deal with urgent matters.

Email from Bettina Arndt: Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au





Police take the lead in investigating campus allegations

Weaselly letter from Michael Spence, vice-chancellor, University of Sydney, NSW. He apologises for nothing and gives no undertakings

Attending university is not a right, it’s a privilege that can be forfeited (“It’s time we culled kangaroo courts", 27/11). Some behaviour appropriately deprives people of this privilege.

Universities do not try to determine criminal culpability in sexual assault cases.

The University of Sydney reports information about serious indictable offences to the NSW Police, and co-ordinates with them before commencing our own processes or investigations. A police investigation always takes precedence.

Our investigations seek to determine breaches of our own codes of conduct or policies, and we apply the “balance of probabilities" test, which is the standard of proof to be satisfied in civil proceedings.

We always take into account the nature and seriousness of the allegations when deciding whether the standard of proof is met. Always, our priority is to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, staff and broader community, and we take great care to ensure a fair process for all involved.

SOURCE  





Preschool cancels Christmas pageant because 'ONE non-Christian parent complained it wasn't culturally sensitive'

A preschool has cancelled its yearly Christmas pageant over 'cultural sensitivities' after one parent complained, a radio station has confirmed.

The preschool in Wheelers Hill, southeast Melbourne, called off the Christmas pageant after a parent 'of a different faith' complained, according to the father of a person who works there.

The man, known only as Felix, revealed the extraordinary cancellation to Radio 3AW host Neil Mitchell on Friday, who confirmed it with the unnamed centre after obtaining the contact details off-air.

'They normally have their annual Christmas pageant at the end of the year,' Felix told Radio 3AW. 'Everything was planned and has been called off now just because one parent of a different faith has objected to it, and that is disappointing.'

Felix said about 30 children attend the preschool.

Later in the same show another caller told Radio 3AW off air that Yarra Trams, which runs Melbourne's tram network, had been rebranded the 'Thankyou party'.

Yarra Trams re-named its Christmas staff party last year in part to counteract outrage over a scantily-clad fat-o-gram scandal from 2017 which resulted in the sacking of three workers, media reported at the time.

A Yarra Trams spokesperson said they changed the name to a 'Thank You Event' for inclusiveness.

'We changed the name to a Thank You Event to acknowledge the valuable contribution our employees have made throughout the year and to ensure that our employees from many different cultural backgrounds feel included in our end-of-year event,' the spokesperson said via email.

Australian Catholic University research fellow Kevin Donnelly, a critic of political correctness, said the surge in multicultural authoritarianism was not about politeness but came from the cultural left - who were trying to force people to think along party lines by controlling their language.

'If you want to change society you take the long march,' he told Mitchell on 3AW. 'You  get into schools, the universities, the media, trade unions and impose your ideology on other people.'

Dr Donnelly said most Australians thought political correctness had gone too far with more than two thirds of respondents surveyed by the Australia Talks National Survey, or 68 percent, saying they thought people were too easily offended, the ABC reported. 'You have to be careful with what you say,' he told 3AW.

'All the universities have got diversity tool kits, trigger warnings, safe spaces - you really can't say boo to a goose without somebody getting upset.'

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Priests across the country will be forced to report child sex abuse admitted at confession or could face charges themselves under strict new laws

What stupidity.  It will achieve nothing.  All it will do is victimize a few faithful priests.  And how will they prove what is said in the confessional booth?

Australia's chief legal officers have agreed to standardise laws making it mandatory for priests to report child abuse revealed to them during confession.

Federal and state attorneys-general meeting in Adelaide on Friday agreed to three principles for the laws, which were recommended following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Those principles say that 'confessional privilege' can't be relied upon to avoid a child protection or criminal obligation to report beliefs, suspicions or knowledge of child abuse.

They also dictate that clergy would not be able to use that defence to avoid giving evidence against a third party in criminal or civil proceedings.

Work on such laws is already well under way in most states and territories, but legal expert Luke Beck said the agreement will implement a nationwide standard.

'Some states are already in compliance with this and they don't have to do anything else,' said Mr Beck, an associate professor at Monash University. 'Now, all have signed up and said 'yes, we're going to do it'.'

In June 2018, the ACT was the first state to introduce laws which forced priests to admit any sexual abuse confessions.

The Victorian Labor government promised to push the law through in November last year.

Up until now, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia have protected priests.   

Teachers, police and medical practitioners are already legally required to report child physical and sexual abuse allegations.

The Catholic Church has insisted priests would be obliged to defy the laws, with Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli previously stating he was prepared to go to jail rather than break the confessional seal.

'For Catholics, confession is a religious encounter of a deeply personal nature. It deserves confidentiality,' he said in August.

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Australia to fight Europe on climate demands in free-trade deal

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has described France's push to force Australia to adopt climate change targets in a planned trade deal with European Union as "unprecedented", declaring he will only accept terms that are in the best interests of the nation.

Senator Birmingham wants to clinch a free-trade agreement (FTA) with the EU by the end of next year, followed by Britain in early 2021, after Parliament this week ticked off on deals with Indonesia, Hong Kong and Peru.

In a week when Australia-China relations soured over allegations of a plot to install a Chinese agent in federal Parliament, Senator Birmingham stressed the benefits of diversifying Australia's trading interests around the world through the new FTAs, but said China would remain a major trading partner with Australia for years to come.

He also declared he wouldn't "capitulate" to Europe's claim for exclusive use of key food names including feta, Parmesan and Gorgonzola cheeses.

Climate change targets are shaping to be a major sticking point in trade negotiations with Europe - already Australia's second-biggest trading partner - after France publicly tied Australia's domestic action on climate change to the proposed FTA.

Ahead of a speech in Sydney on Thursday night to the European Australian Business Council, Senator Birmingham told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he believed trade agreements were "overwhelmingly commercial undertakings between countries" and they should "focus on commercial realities".

He said Australia "had a good environmental story to tell" and was happy to discuss any proposed terms with the EU referencing the Paris climate agreement, but would push back on provisions that included sanctions for not meeting climate targets.

"We're completely committed to meeting our [Paris climate] targets and we've always met and exceeded our targets, but I think it would be unprecedented to see those type of provisions proposed in an agreement," Senator Birmingham said.

The Trade Minister said he didn't want to prejudge the negotiations, but Australia would put up a "strong defence" to some of the 172 foods and 236 spirits the EU wants protected under the geographical indication (GI) system.

"The areas of greater industry concern are those that have been publicly speculated on such as feta, Parmesan and Gorgonzola," he said. "The EU shouldn't expect that Australia is about to agree to every term that they've requested."

Australia is one of the first countries UK Trade Secretary Liz Truss has visited, to lay the groundwork for post Brexit trade deals.

He said there were significant agricultural opportunities in the EU, including increasing the 20,000-tonne quota for sheep meat, as well as creating more opportunities to export professional services as well as financial and regulatory technologies.

FTAs have gone from covering about 26 per cent of Australia's two-way trade five years ago to about 70 per cent today and this would increase to about 80 per cent under deals with the EU and Britain.

At a time when the United States was blocking appointments of appellate judges to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) amid a trade war with China, Senator Birmingham said it was up to middle powers like Australia to stand up for the "rules-based order" and drive reform of the WTO.

He said a trade working group had already been established to begin talking with Britain, and talks would ramp up assuming Brexit took place on January 31, 2020.

With China making up almost 40 per cent of Australia's export market, Senator Birmingham said Australia's trade would be more evenly spread "in an ideal world".

In its relationship with China, Senator Birmingham said it was important for Australia to hold true to its values, raise legitimate concerns and protect its interests as a democracy. But he said Australia must continue to pursue commercial opportunities with China because that was what gave the government avenues to address any problems with Beijing.

He said the new trade deals with Indonesia, Hong Kong and Peru provided "big new opportunities", but it was up to Australian businesses to "walk through that door instead of China, or as well as China".

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<

Jason Murphy launches another attack on the elderly

This time he makes it clear that it is only home-owners who are in his sights. But he also loathes superannuants.

Some people scrimp and save to pay off their own home. It usually takes them many years.  Other spend all their spare cash on beer and cigarettes (etc.).  Which group should we encourage? Neither, seems to be Jason's answer. Yet the savers take a huge burden off the taxpayer.  They get reduced pensions and no housing allowance.  In a rational world the savers would be praised but Murphy is clearly a Leftist envier.

He is right that a small number of homeowners and superannuants live more comfortable lives in retirement than others do but that is so throughout a capitalist system.  Some people are better at using their opportunities and may be envied for it,  but the alternative -- communism -- just makes everyone poor, the nomenklatura excepted, of course.

It's the whole capitalist system that Jason dislikes.  Capitalism runs on incentives and incentives produce very uneven results. Because of that unevenness in results Jason wants to take the incentives away.  He apparently wants, for instance, to abolish the tax concessions to superannuation. 

But those incentives are there for a good reason.  They were put in place to encourage more people to save for their own retirement and not depend on the pension.  And they do exactly that.  That the concessions benefit some people more than others is what Jason dislikes.  He wants a Soviet-like system for us  -- with enforced equality.  I will not be alone in saying "no thanks" to that.


Part way down page 17 in a long report released last week, Treasury boffins buried a landmine.

“Where one generation is required to fund their own retirement as well as the retirement of a previous or future generation they may view this as inequitable,” they wrote.

No kidding, Treasury. No kidding.

This line comes from the consultation paper on a retirement income review the government is doing. The review has promised to recommend no changes, lest the powerful be disturbed.

Nevertheless my former colleagues at Treasury, perched in their modernist office block on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin ought to be careful.

Last week, I wrote a story about the immense privileges being provided by our system to the boomer generation, and the backlash was strong.

People contacted me in droves to tell me they knew someone who was struggling. I called the boomers a “luxury generation” and the response I got was #NotAllBoomers.

You know what, fair enough. I should have been more specific. If you’re 65, renting a place to live and reliant on the pension, you’re having a bloody hard time. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be unkind to you.

Poverty among people aged 65 and over who don’t own their own home is extremely high. It’s a genuine issue; but, of course, they are not the only ones doing it tough. The type of household with the worst rates of poverty is the sole parent. There are more children in those households living in poverty (230,000 children) than there are people over 65 renting and living in poverty (135,000 over 65s).

Anyway, that’s beside the point. Because the point of the boomer wars is not to focus on people in poverty, it’s to focus on people who have many millions and are getting more.

The boomers I don’t mind niggling a little are the ones who point to the two million dollar home they bought for $50,000 and say “we earned this!”.

The ones who strolled out of school into a labour market with 2 per cent unemployment and found jobs with no degree.

The ones who like to chirp about how they endured 17 per cent interest rates without ever mentioning that, in 1974, average weekly ordinary time earnings rose 28 per cent in one year alone (and then rose 20 per cent the next year, and 13 per cent the year after).

The ones who feel, when they structure their financial affairs in order to maximise the tax breaks available through superannuation and home ownership, that these are the product of a universe where all is suitable, appropriate, just and correct.

People in the top 1 per cent of the income distribution get a very handy $700,000 helping hand from the government in preparing for their retirement. That compares very generously to people at the middle of the income distribution who get $250,000.

The biggest helping hand for lower income earners is the pension. That’s not available at the top. But what they lose on the swings, they gain on the roundabouts, because the superannuation earning tax concessions really start to kick in.

When your super investments earn income (eg, dividends), they are taxed. But unlike income from working and other income earned outside the super system, this income is treated differently. It gets tax concessions. Earnings inside super get taxed at 15 per cent.

Superannuation contribution tax concessions also help. Money you put into super is taxed on the way in too, at 15 per cent, which is potentially a lot lower than your marginal tax rate. These contribution tax concessions are not quite so powerful at the top of the scale thanks to some recent changes that double the tax rate on contributions for people earning more than $250,000.

It certainly causes a person to wonder if the taxes on superannuation are designed to help those that need help in getting ready for retirement. Treasury is calling for comments on its retirement income review. It is sure to be besieged by furious people calling for the benefits to be retained.

But there’s a trap here for any young person who wants to play the intergenerational equity game. Any push for fairness here will probably be introduced gradually. Which is to say that it will be staged and scheduled in such a way that it hits not the retirees currently floating off the Whitsundays, but the ones who intend to give up work in two or three decades time. That is, you and me.

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Advance Australia’s new boss Liz Storer says political correctness is alien to Australian culture

If Bob Hawke was an early career politician today, the plain-talking larrikin would’ve inevitably offended a certain cohort on Twitter and become a victim of “cancel culture”.

That’s the view of Liz Storer, who’s settling into her new role as the boss of Advance Australia – the right’s version of left-wing activist group GetUp.

The 36-year-old former political adviser believes there are “millions more of us” than what she describes as the “radical left”.

It’s just that her potential supporters – quiet Australians, to borrow a phrase from Scott Morrison – haven’t felt a sense of urgency to get involved in “boots on the ground” activism.

Until recently, that is.

“You know what I think the vast majority of mainstream Australians miss? The straight-talking Aussies of the past. I know I do,” Ms Storer told new.com.au.

“This political correctness rubbish has absolutely undermined our culture – our larrikinism, our very heritage. What we’ve become … this is not us.”

Ms Storer claims the broader community has been paralysed by fear – a fear of saying the wrong thing, being shamed, having their businesses boycotted or being “bullied” online.

“I used to love watching political clips of Paul Keating, (Bob) Hawke – those guys were straight shooters before political correctness rotted the way we talk, the way we relate to each other, the way we do business, the way we conduct politics.

“These days, they would’ve absolutely been de-platformed.

“It’s why politicians now are having to dumb down their speech, to try to say things in a way that ticks the PC box.”

She believes many figures in Canberra – of all ilks – are a shadow of what they used to be – not saying or doing much out of fear of losing votes.

“Say it like it is, call it like it is. If you want to be respected by the Australian public, that’s what you’ll do. So far, the only role political correctness has played is to eat away at our heritage, our very culture as Aussies.”

It might come as no surprise who she blames for the trend.

“This culture of pandering to the radical left, can’t be seen to call a spade a spade, dance around it, we want everyone’s votes come the next election, it has such far-reaching effects,” Ms Storer said.

Ms Storer points to the recent decision by Inner West Council in Sydney to cancel Australia Day festivities on January 26 out of respect to Indigenous peoples – a decision reportedly based on just 37 survey responses.

“Whether it’s climate alarmism, cancelling Australia Day, threatening free speech … it’s this squeaky wheel getting the oil. But the radical left are not the majority.

“It’s a small contingent getting upset about what the majority of us mainstream Australians are up to.”

She also attacked the “de-platforming” of Australian tennis great Margaret Court and rugby union star Israel Folau over their religious views and homophobic remarks.

“This constant bullying by the left – you’re not allowed to have a dissenting opinion,” Ms Storer said. “People cop it because they won’t bow a knee to the PC authoritarian rubbish.

“I do believe mainstream Australians are well and truly waking up to this. They’re sick and tired of the tripe.”

While she wouldn’t be drawn on whether she accepted some of Ms Court and Mr Folau’s remarks were offensive to the LGBT community, Ms Storer said it was unfair for anyone to suffer because of their personal beliefs.

“There’s no mainstream Australian who’ll look at that and think it’s fair and it’s OK,” she said. “Once again, it’s the radical left.”

Advance Australia launched about a year ago in a bid to mobilise the centre right to champion its own issues of importance.

“The centre right is best known for our thought leadership,” she said. “There are lots of groups out there doing good work, but we’re lacking in boots on the ground.”

Ms Storer, who has worked as an adviser to Liberal MPs at a state and federal level, was herself a local councillor in Perth for two years. Her efforts now will be focused on expanding Advance Australia’s membership base and campaigning efforts.

In Ms Storer’s view, “there’s no end of work to do”, but she identified free speech, climate change “alarmism” and national sovereignty as major concerns.

Advance Australia has 45,000 members across the country, she says, and they call the shots, deciding what campaigns are rolled out.

While the group might be on the right, Ms Storer isn’t shy to criticise her own side when the need arises.

“We (recently) saw our PM give $1 billion more, taxpayer dollars, to the CEFC (Clean Energy Finance Corporation). For what? These guys started back in 2012 as a Labor-created, snot wad of a useless body,” she said.

“They sunk $11 billion into it at the time. It’s done absolutely nothing, except ruin our grid with a pile of unreliable renewables.

“We’ve heard en masse from our supporters saying they elected a Liberal Government that have just enacted a Labor Party.

“I don’t care whether you’re in opposition or in government, Advance Australia is here to speak for the mainstream. Whether you’re blue team or red team, we will fight you if you’re not representing us.

“We will be speaking up and calling out hypocrisy. You certainly cannot be elected saying one thing and less than six months, change and do another. You’re not going to get away with it.”

Despite some of her pointed language when discussing “the left”, Ms Storer doesn’t believe Australians are any more divided now than they have been.

She even claimed to champion a respect for differing opinions and political views.

“We can respectfully disagree with each other – we live in a representative democracy,” she said.

“Australia is the land of opportunity. That is the best thing about this place. We (can be) a lot better than we are now.

“I’m optimistic about the future because Australia, in my humble opinion, and I’ve travelled the world, is the best country on earth.”

But Ms Storer then added: “But are the radical left undermining that? Absolutely.”

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A politically correct but mostly imaginative rewrite of Aboriginal history

If indigenous author Bruce Pascoe is correct, most of what we were taught of how Aboriginals lived prior to the arrival of Europeans was based on a combination of ignorance, omissions and lies.

In his landmark book Dark Emu, Pascoe claims indigenous Australians were not hunter-gatherers but were sophisticated in the ways of food production, aquaculture, and land management. They were not nomads but lived in large towns in permanent dwellings. Their civilisation was, he wrote last year, “one that invented bread, society, language and the ability to live as 350 neighbouring nations without land war, not without rancour … but without a lust for land and power, without religious war, without slaves, without poverty but with a profound sense of responsibility for the health of Mother Earth for more than 120,000 years.” According to him they also invented democracy and government.

The book won the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Award and has sold over 100,000 copies. The ABC and Screen Australia have provided funding for a documentary series written by Pascoe. According to the head of ABC Indigenous, Kelrick Martin, the book “offers a revelatory context for future generations of Australians and ABC Indigenous is proud to work alongside Bruce Pascoe … to correct these stereotypes.” A children’s version, “Young Dark Emu: A Truer History”, is now part of school curriculums.

Much of Dark Emu’s positive reception has to do with Pascoe’s masterful presentation skills, for he is naturally telegenic. Showing a knack for reading his audience, he can be avuncular, affable, disarming, reserved, and even melancholic. He is articulate, an orator, persuasive and endearing. Complementing this is his disdain for modernity and his claim that we can control climate change by using the techniques of the “old people”, as he refers to them, thus “calming the bush down”.

He has admirers aplenty. Such is their effusiveness, you could say Pascoe is the Tom Jones of historians. To his detractors, he is a revisionist and fantasist. Writing for the Weekend Australian Magazine in May this year, journalist Richard Guilliatt observed “many academic experts also believe Dark Emu romanticises pre-contact indigenous society as an Eden of harmony and pacifism, when in fact it was often a brutally tough survivalist way of life”. But as Guilliatt also noted, there is a reluctance in academia to make public these criticisms given the author’s popularity and aboriginality.

If you think that is too much of a stretch, remember that this year the University of NSW’s science faculty distributed guidelines to lecturers, warning them that it was “inappropriate” to specify an estimate of when the first human migration to Australia occurred. Instead, staff were told it was “more appropriate” to say Aboriginals have been here “since the beginning of the Dreaming/s”, as this “reflects the beliefs of many Indigenous Australians that they have always been in Australia, from the beginning of time, and came from the land’’.

That a science faculty would resort to this is ridiculous. While some studies estimate that Aboriginals have been here for as long as 65,000 years, the conservative estimate is 50,000 years ago. You would think then that any public figure who claimed it took place 120,000 years ago would be asked to justify that estimate. Yet I know of at least three occasions this year when Pascoe has repeated that claim when interviewed by an ABC presenter, none of whom even so much as sought clarification.

The ABC’s political correspondent, Andrew Probyn wrote this month that Dark Emu “demolish(es) the myth that Australia at the time of white settlement was a wilderness occupied by merely hunter gatherers”. ABC presenter Wendy Harmer referred to Pascoe as an “oracle”, and chief political writer Annabel Crabb tweeted admiringly regarding Dark Emu: “I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much from one slim volume”. Another ABC presenter, Benjamin Law, said “reading it should be a prerequisite to non-Indigenous citizenship”. Just this month RN Drive host Patricia Karvelas concluded an interview with Pascoe with a fawning endorsement of the book, urging listeners to buy it. “Just do it now,” she stated.

If scholarly authenticity in the fields of history and anthropology were determined by the number of “oohs” and “aahs” uttered into an ABC microphone, Dark Emu would be nothing short of magisterial. In reality, such recognition is properly realised only through sources that are both primary and verifiable. Even then, the mere inclusion of this material is nothing more than window dressing if the analysis and conclusions are far removed from those sources. The “feel-good” factor should never be a criterion in such evaluations.

Those giving accolades to Pascoe seem oblivious to the many instances, particularly on the website Dark Emu Exposed, where readers have highlighted stark inconsistencies regarding what appears in his claims and what is outlined in the respective primary source. Peter O’Brien, a Quadrant magazine contributor and retired military officer, has written a book “Bitter Harvest: The Illusion of Aboriginal Agriculture in Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu” highlighting what he claims are Pascoe’s omissions, mischaracterisations, and distortions.

The stoush has been described as a resumption of the history wars, a term I think unhelpful, for it leads to much distraction in fruitlessly arguing solely about the motives of historians. If anything, and for once I am not being facetious, the modern historian’s role is in one way analogous to that of today’s comedian. Both professions now operate according to the woke expectation that practitioners must always “punch up”, never down. A historian can be sure of at least a favourable reception, as in Pascoe’s case, if he or she promotes and defends the wretched at the expense of a so-called privileged demographic.

To do the reverse, however, is taboo. Many of you will remember the furore that erupted in 2002 following the release of historian and now Quadrant editor-in-chief Keith Windschuttle’s book “The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Van Diemen’s Land 1803-1847”. Taking issue with many historians, Windschuttle disputed the theory that indigenous Tasmanians were the subject of genocide, arguing they had succumbed largely through introduced diseases. He also dismissed the romantic theory that the original inhabitants had engaged in “guerrilla warfare” against Europeans, stating their attacks were motivated by a desire for tea, sugar and flour.

To question the narrative was unforgivable, but what made it worse in the eyes of leftist academics was that Windschuttle both exposed and embarrassed many a historian by forensically analysing their footnotes. What he demonstrated was both revelatory and disconcerting. Historians had inflated the figures of killings, misquoted colonial administrators to give the appearance of malevolent intent towards Aboriginals, and even listed as sources local newspapers that had not yet existed at the time of the historical incidents in question.

The response from the historical establishment was both defensive and risible. As reported by The Australian’s Ean Higgins in 2004, the Australian Historical Association even discussed enacting a code of ethics to prevent historians from criticising their peers’ integrity in public. One academic described his astonishment at the “pack mentality” of his fellow historians. “It was like ‘let’s get a group of people together to ambush Windschuttle’,” he stated.

The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen wrote nearly 10 years ago to this day of visiting the National Gallery of Victoria and seeing an exhibition surrounded by a fence. In the confines pasted individually on the floor were the 472 pages of Windschuttle’s book. The work, by artist Julie Gough, was designed for visitors to walk over the exhibition and thus, in her words, “blacken and erase this text”. As Albrechtsen states, this was an example of “the Left’s addiction to emotion, feel-good symbolism and an infantile rejection of facts as heresy”.

Despite the many misgiving concerning Pascoe’s research and findings, Dark Emu shows every sign of being regarded as the most authoritative text in its field. Whether it be apathy or pusillanimity, our public institutions accept without question his conclusions, irrespective of the anomalies, or how ludicrous his premises. Only last year Pascoe wrote “Almost no Australians know anything about the Aboriginal civilisation because our educators, emboldened by historians, politicians and the clergy, have refused to mention it for 230 years” – a claim that can only be described as a conspiracy theory.

Indigenous and non-indigenous Australian students alike are entitled to a history curriculum based on fact, whether the subject matter is triumphs, tragedies or atrocities. To have it any other way is a politicisation of the discipline. It is time Pascoe responded to his critics. Only then can readers decide whether Dark Emu is historical fact or a flight of fancy.

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ASX200 hits new all-time high

PM Morrison take a bow

The Australian share market has hit a fresh intraday all-time high in early trading before fading a bit in the afternoon.

The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index traded as high as 6,869.5 points before closing on Thursday at 6,864, up 13.4 points, or 0.2 per cent, from Wednesday.

The broader All Ordinaries was up 15 points, or 0.22 per cent, to 6,965.6 points - also a record.

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NSW Labor Leader: Shorten Daylight Saving Time To Fight Climate Change

Labor leader Jodi McKay has lobbied the NSW government to consider a request made by one of her constituents that daylight saving be shortened to help combat climate change.

In the letter sent by the Strathfield MP to Energy Minister Matt Kean, Ms McKay writes that her constituent "advises that daylight saving time in NSW had made last summer too hot for walking in Hammond Park, her local park, at 8pm as the temperature at that time remained at the 40°C mark".

"[The constituent] has requested the duration of the daylight saving period in NSW be shortened as it has a significant impact on climate change," Ms McKay wrote on October 11. "I await your consideration and response on this matter."

Daylight saving has been a fraught issue since being introduced in 1971, with multiple referendums in Queensland and Western Australia rejecting the arrangement.

Over the years, critics have attributed the change of time to a fall in robberies, increased petrol sales, a jump in heart attacks, less milk being produced by cows and faster fading curtains.

There are also various studies that show the change in time leads to higher or lower energy use.

A spokesman for Ms McKay said it was not her view that daylight saving should be changed. "Strathfield has a diverse community with a wide variety of views," he said. "It is the job of the local member to represent those views to government without judgment ... she will never apologise for making sure that members of her community have their concerns heard."

Mr Kean, who is in London, declined to comment.

Without daylight saving, which begins on the first Sunday of October and continues until the first Sunday in April, the sun would rise in Sydney between 4.30am in summer and 7am in winter.

Ms McKay's constituent is not alone in calling for the daylight saving period to be shortened. Adam Marshall, now the Agriculture Minister, told the Moree Champion in 2015 that he would propose cutting the first and last months of the daylight saving period.

"While it's not in my top two or three burning issues, it's an old chestnut, but it's a real burr in the saddle and it grates for many of my constituents," he said at the time.

Despite the Strathfield electorate resident's concern, and numerous university studies, there appears to be no strong connection between daylight saving and climate change.

A 2011 study published in The Review of Economics and Statistics found daylight saving time increased the social cost of pollution emissions by up to $US5.5 million that year. Another paper, published in the journal Energy Policy in the same year, found energy had been saved in southern Norway and Sweden.

Earlier research by two University of California, Berkeley, academics — which focused on Sydney during the 2000 Olympics — decided there was no effect on energy consumption whatsoever.

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 fails on early childhood education

We read below: "The report shows children who attend early learning services are as much as 33 per cent less likely to be developmentally vulnerable when they start school "

But why?  Does it mean that mothers who do all the caring are harming their kids?  Is the contrast with care-by-mother?  Probably not.  The report below admits that Aborigines and the poor tend not to send their kids to kindergarten.  So the comparision is between the poor and the rest. 

The results below are NOT a comparison between mothers of equal status, some of whom use kindergartens and others who do not.  There is no evidence that going to kindergarten is of itself better for the child


The percentage of Australian families with two parents in the workforce is increasing, as new data shows the number of couples with both adults employed full time doubling.

Data from the latest snapshot of early learning in Australia shows in 2013 the number of couple families in which both parents worked full time was 16 per cent. By 2017, the number was 33 per cent.

The Early Childhood Australia report, to be released on Monday, shows women remain more likely to be the primary carer for children, and  the proportion of families with a single earning father, whose partner is not in the labour force, decreased from 36 per cent in 2013 to 31 per cent in 2017.

Australia's upward trajectory in rates of female workforce participation — up by 1.5 percentage points in the past decade — aligns with trends in OCED countries, and brings the economy closer to Sweden, often viewed as an international leader in gender equity in the workforce.

The report shows children who attend early learning services are as much as 33 per cent less likely to be developmentally vulnerable when they start school than those who do not attend early learning services.

Disparities in access to early learning persist, however.

While nearly 45 per cent of children used early learning services in 2018, those living in remote areas, children from Indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds and those with a disability are under-represented in early learning services.

For preschool programs in the year before full time schooling, enrolment levels are over 90 per cent. But actual attendance at preschool varies widely across the states and territories and economically disadvantaged and Indigenous children are less likely to attend.

Indigenous children are more likely to be developmentally vulnerable when they start school than non-Indigenous children. States where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are provided free or near-free access to preschool from age three tend to achieve the national Closing the Gap target of 95 per cent enrolment in the year before school.

Low-income families  spend a higher proportion of their income on early learning services, despite subsidies from government.

The report shows those on the lowest incomes pay almost double the proportion of their income after subsidies, at 8 per cent, compared with those on high incomes, who spend 4.7 per cent.

Australia falls below average the average investment levels for OECD countries, 0.7 per cent of GDP, and ranks 11th among the 21 member countries.

"While the headline figures indicate strong national progress in early childhood education and care provision and quality, closer examination highlights significant pockets of unmet need, and problems of affordability and workforce planning," the report said.

"The picture also differs between states and territories, where differences in the early childhood education and care landscape combine with varying policy settings to produce inconsistent results for children and families.

"The goal of fully realising the benefits of early learning for all children in Australia has not yet been reached."

The report will be released at federal Parliament. It notes a decline in investment in early learning per child occurred under the Turnbull and Morrison governments.

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Bunnings' iconic sausage sizzle raises $600k for bushfire victims after hardcore vegans demanded the hardware giant CANCEL the fundraiser

I have no objection against people believing anything they like.  They can believe the moon is made of green cheese as far as I care.  It is when they want to impose their beliefs on others that I object

Bunnings raised more than half a million dollars for bushfire victims with a national sausage sizzle, despite a flock of irate herbivores campaigning for the fundraiser to be cancelled.

The hardware giant hosted the fundraising event last Friday with all stores across Australia raising money for those affected by bushfires that ravaged the eastern states.

The sausage sizzle raised more than $580,000 and Bunnings contributed an extra $20,000.

But the event drew criticism from the vegan community.

'Why oh why are people selling sausages to raise money when it's known that meat is a contributing factor to climate change? Which is a contributing factor to these fires!', one woman wrote on a vegan Facebook page.

'It honestly baffles my mind and makes me so sad. It's a heartbreaking cycle.'

The post went viral and has since been deleted, but dozens agreed with the woman's notion. 'They can shove their sausage where the sun don't shine,' one said.

But others believed they were looking at the fundraiser in the wrong light. 'Right now, helping those fighting the fires is more dire than fighting the meat industry for climate change,' one user posted.

'Sorry what? There is nothing they can do about the sausages already produced but they can sell them to raise funds for fire fighters who are actually facing the real fires happening right now,' another comment reads.

Despite the uproar, Bunnings Chief Operating Officer Debbie Poole thanked the thousands of people who supported the cause.

'We are so grateful that people from across Australia dropped by their local Bunnings' on Friday to buy a snag and donate to help those in need. The result would not have been possible without their generosity,' she said.

Hardware store employees in fire-affected communities helped support evacuation centres.

The funds will be donated to GIVIT - a charity that assists communities during disaster. GIVIT CEO Sarah Tennant said the money will be used to to buy items for farmers and communities in drought-affected regions, and supporting households and communities affected by bushfires.

'We will be working closely with our charity and community service partners on the ground to ensure people are getting what they require, whether that be a fridge, a table, school uniforms, or fuel and grocery vouchers.'

Four people died in unprecedented fire conditions across the eastern seaboard. 

More than 600 homes were destroyed in New South Wales since bushfire season began on October 1.

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Insane wages for buiding workers proposed

A new Queensland Government plan could reportedly see lollipop workers earn close to $180,000 a year. The massive wage would apply to jobs on regional construction projects under minimum conditions being considered by the Labor Government.

The Government is trialling minimum requirements for major state-funded projects, similar to a Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union’s industry agreement.

It will force builders to ensure subcontractors apply the rates, but builders claim the move will drive up costs by at least 30 per cent.

They also say it will put principal contractors at risk of breaching workplace laws on adverse action and coercion in relation to subcontractors.

The requirements would apply to projects worth more than $100 million, the first understood to be the $130 million expansion of the Cairns Convention Centre.

The project’s 122 pages of minimum conditions, sent out to tenderers in October, include five per cent annual pay increases, requirements to pay weekend hours at overtime rates of 200 per cent and 12 per cent superannuation contributions, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Under the plan carpenters would earn $198,000 a year on a 46-hour week and traffic controllers about $178,000, according to calculations from the Master Builders Association.

MBA Queensland chief executive Grant Galvin attacked the policy as “Orwellian”. “They’re not minimum conditions – they’re maximum conditions,” he told AFR.

“The fact that the state government would even trial a policy which ensures that the most expensive and restrictive work practices in Australia are applied to all major government jobs across the state, is beyond comprehension.”

Mr Galvin said that money represented less the government had to spend on teachers, nurses or other public infrastructure. “We have strongly requested that they review this policy approach in the knowledge that these conditions don’t improve quality, safety or productivity,” he said.

“They just increase costs, particularly for regional areas and undermine the government’s ‘buy local’ policy.”

Queensland Major Contractors Association chief executive John Davies said the minimum conditions were 75 per cent higher than current market rates for civil construction.

The policy could result in breaches of the Fair Work Act, which could see employers banned from federally funded building work.

CFMEU Queensland secretary Michael Ravbar argued that the minimum conditions were “nothing like” the union’s agreement.

He said the government was trying to ensure that taxpayer money filtered down to the workers.

He said traffic controllers wouldn’t earn $180,000 a year because they “were lucky to get permanent employment for three to four weeks”.

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"Green" Victoria is locking up almost all publicly-owned land from any use

Victoria is the vanguard of states in major struggles over the control and use of public lands.  These comprise around 35 per cent of the state, the majority of which is in parks and reserves that aim to minimise human impact. Such areas have long been seen as under-managed and infested with exotic flora and fauna. They are increasingly recognised as perilous host to ferocious and destructive fires.

The rest of the public land is state forest, traditionally available for forestry, grazing, mining and a whole range of leisure activities such car rallies, hunting, horse riding, camping and dog walking, none of which are generally permitted in National Parks.

Two developments are changing the nature of Victoria’s public lands. The first is increasing restrictions on the activities allowed in the state forests. Over the past 30 years governments have progressively constrained the use of the forests for timber harvesting and grazing.  Grazing has been all but eliminated and only 6 per cent of Victoria’s public forests are available for timber production, the annual harvesting area having been reduced from 25,000 hectares 40 years ago to just 3,000 hectares today.  Last week, the Andrews government announced a 2030 phase-out of all timber-getting in the state forests.

The second change is the conversion of state forest to national park and other conservation reserve categories.  This not only imposes restrictions on use but is also an essential step to converting the land to Aboriginal title, which unlike Native title, grants beneficial-use and veto rights over the activities and intentions of others.  Even within the remaining state forest, the government is moving to enhance designated Aboriginal groups’ influence by granting them controls over exploration licences.

To effect the transfer the title of the land to National Parks or similar classifications, the government funds the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC), an environmental bureaucracy comprised largely of former eco-activists, to sequentially investigate regional areas. Under the guise of community engagement, VEAC acts largely at the behest of environmental activists and Aboriginal groups (see, for example, the latest annual report).  The latter are paid to rediscover long-dormant attachments to the area under investigation and, with the prospect of title and financial support for management, are quite naturally all in favour of a change.

VEAC also hires economic consultants, who over the course of several investigations have demonstrated a skill for divining how much people supposedly value land being redesignated as being exclusively for conservation. In their most recent investigation, applying an alchemistic methodology called “contingent valuation” VEAC’s consultants have estimated that the Victorian public would be willing to pay $247 million in order to convert 60,000 hectares of state forest in the Victorian Goldfields (the Central West) into National Park.

The valuation ($4600 per hectare) of restraining public use of public land is not based on some marginal change to land use.  It would be equally applicable to the whole of the state. Its logic means people would be willing to sterilise all of the 3,100,00 hectares of state forest from commercial and most leisure uses and consider themselves to be $14 billion better off as a result!  It would mean that, if half the state’s agricultural land were to be surrendered to non-uses, we, the people, would be better off! In addition, the consultants place a trivial value on the loss from preventing car rallies, hunting, horse riding and camping. They do so with little evidence of usages.

In the case of forestry, there has been a steady, politically-driven erosion of the area permitted to be harvested.  The Regional Forest Agreements at the turn of the century were supposed to have settled the conservation/harvesting split, but harvesting has since been reduced by three quarters.  The latest proposals envisage further reductions on the road to the total embargo.

VEAC’s consultants also argue against mining and prospecting and claim that future mineral discoveries are well-nigh impossible. This view about minerals is remarkable since the Geological Survey of Victoria estimates that half the state’s gold is yet to be found, and the area has hosted much mineral production in the past.  In relatively recent times, two major gold mines have been opened near the area – one of which, Fosterville, actually has the second-richest gold concentrations of any mine in the world and is presently producing at over one billion dollars per annum.  Moreover, entrepreneurs risking their own money take a different view to VEAC – expenditure in the 42 exploration licenses current in the area is around $9 million a year. A recent discovery in the area of a nugget worth $160,000 by an amateur prospector is further evidence of the region’s prospectivity. Uncovering any further hidden wealth would be foreclosed by reclassifying the land as National Park which VEAC have recommended.

So, we have a double whammy.  First, policies are being pursued to banish commercial and much leisure-use activities that have proven to be perfectly compatible with forest conservation.  Secondly, requiring the cessation of commercial forestry also means eliminating many of the roads, and thereby heavy machinery, essential to fight fires. It would be hard to devise a more destructive set of policies.

Several hundred regional forest workers have held a rally outside Parliament House to protest the new measures that will bring needless and counterproductive job losses.  Coalition MPs showed their solidarity, but with green philosophies dominating the bureaucracy and a state government  determined to court inner-city votes, the march to transform Victoria into an unproductive tinderbox continues apace.

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 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