$1 billion pumped hydro scheme would open up NSW grid, backers say

Another idea that is great in theory but big in cost and unreliable in output. Pumped hydro requires the building of TWO dams -- and we all know how much Greenies love dams.

And in the end it only works when there is a substantial flow in the river. What happens during one of our frequent droughts? It's a nonsense

The Berejiklian government has given accelerated approval status to a billion-dollar pumped hydro project that will unlock twice as much renewable energy investment and reduce grid congestion.

The venture, backed by Alinta Energy, would generate as much as 600 megawatts of electricity by releasing water between two reservoirs near the Macleay River between Armidale and Kempsey.

Developed by the same consultancy EMM that is working on the larger Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme, the Oven Mountain energy storage project is expected to support a further $2 billion in new solar and wind farms in the New England Renewable Energy Zone.

The closed-loop or off-river system would could also boost the water security of Kempsey, located about 75 kilometres to the south-east of the freehold site.

Among the benefits would be the displacement of some 876,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, and a reduction of load-shedding risk to some 770,000 customers as coal-fired plants shut, according to an accompanying document seeking government fast-track approval for the project.

The new plant is within the New England Renewable Energy zone, one of three designated regions for supporting clean energy in the state. Its development would enable more clean energy to be added to the grid.

"[T]he current capacity to [can] host only 300 MW due to insufficient network infrastructure," the document says. "The project’s 12 hours of flexible and fast=acting
storage will directly help to overcome this challenge and accelerate the implementation of the [zone]."

Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean said that pumped hydro was "essential for the state’s energy future", using off-peak power to pump water to the higher dam and releasing it went prices rise.

“The Australian Energy Market Operator says that NSW needs more than twice the energy storage of Snowy 2.0 again by the mid-2030s and projects like Oven Mountain can help us reach that goal,” Mr Kean said in a statement.

“It can take about eight years to deliver massive pumped hydro projects and we need to get going now to create jobs and improve the reliability of the energy grid.”

Adam Marshall, Agriculture Minister and the MP for the Northern Tablelands, said regional NSW had some of the best pumped hydro resources in the world. It would also support the local economy by creating some 600 new jobs during construction alone.

“This project is the jewel in our region’s renewable energy crown and cements the New England as the renewable energy powerhouse of Australia," Mr Marshall said.

“We’re already home to the two largest wind farms in NSW and the largest solar farm in Australia is about to start construction, so this project is the cherry on top of us.”

The government is providing about $2.5 million to support the Oven Mountain project's feasibility study from its $75million Emerging Energy Program.

The program is supporting investigations into the prospects for three pumped hydro projects in NSW.

The proponent will still need to request assessment requirements for the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement Once received, the EIS will then on exhibition for community feedback and detailed assessment by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment before a final decision is made, the government said.

SOURCE

'We may slip sometimes': WA university leaders talk free speech after whistleblower saga

The leader of a Perth university which sued a whistleblower for speaking out about questionable international student intake practices says “we may slip sometimes” but freedom of information was taken very seriously.

WA university vice chancellors were questioned in September about transparency and freedom of speech policies at a Committee for Economic Development Australia panel where Murdoch vice chancellor Professor Eeva Leinonen said she “absolutely” believed in academic freedom and freedom of speech.

It comes about three months after Murdoch withdrew all its legal claims against Associate Professor Gerd Schröder-Turk who blew the whistle over “moral concerns” about international student recruitment practices at the WA university in ABC’s Four Corners segment titled ‘Cash Cows’ in May 2019.

The university refuted Mr Schröder-Turk's claims and later sued the mathematics academic for what could potentially have been millions of dollars.

In June, Dr Schröder-Turk said he and the university had decided to drop all legal claims against each other as part of an agreed resolution.

Associate Professor Schröder-Turk had been supported by more than 50 Laureate professors around the country, who signed an open letter calling for the university to drop its case against him months before the institution did.

At the CEDA event, Professor Leinonen said universities had academic freedom and freedom of speech constrained in their policies, strategies and enterprise agreements.

“We also have a national model code for freedom of speech and academic freedom that universities are currently considering whether to adopt or adapt that code and that is a requirement by the current government that we consider that code,” she said.

“So we are taking it very seriously and, you know, we may slip sometimes, but it actually is not intentional. We absolutely believe in academic freedom and freedom of speech.”

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Leftist judge wants more controls on the media

A High Court judge has come out swinging at the freedom of the press but his comments reek of a misunderstanding to the media’s role and his words should not go unchallenged, writes Des Houghton.

High Court judge Pat Keane has savaged the media, and suggested new laws to curb its powers.

And he has taken a swipe at the media industry’s Right-to-Know campaign, following the Australian Federal Police raid on journalist Annika Smethurst, cynically suggesting the crusade was motivated by “dollar signs”.

Keane goes further, saying that “it would not be surprising” if the High Court accepted a tort (a civil wrong) of invasion of privacy. He quotes from records that show judges favour protecting an individual’s private life “free from the prying eyes, ears and publications of others”.

His outspoken comments came in his Griffith Law School Michael Whincop memorial lecture. It was a scholarly, entertaining and dangerous speech in which he quoted some of civilisation’s greatest thinkers including Plato, Socrates, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Jefferson, and jurists like Louis D Brandeis, one of the great figures of the United States Supreme Court.

Keane said the electronic and print media cared little for the private lives of citizens.

“Should the law aid individuals to profit from the commercialisation of their intimate moments?” he asked.

Keane said drawing “satisfactory boundaries” between our private and public lives is one of the great challenges of Western civilisation.

Really?

He added: “The position taken by the media in Smethurst is a reminder, if one were needed, that, when the owners of the media are faced with a choice between the right to know and the right to privacy, they can be expected to favour the right with the dollar signs attached - and that will be so wherever one might think the balance of the public interests lies. The legitimate self-interest whose energy we need to harness is the interest that all of us have as citizens.

“It is definitely not the interest of media outlets, such as Fox News, which lies in pandering to the prejudices of its audience and stoking their distrust and disapproval of their fellow citizens.”

And others will see Fox as a bulwark against the increasingly left-wing media bias in the US led by the New York Times that routinely stokes distrust and disapproval against Republicans.

I could say that the ABC also stokes distrust and disapproval as it panders to the green-left.

Keane says laws to protect privacy had been “hit and miss”.

For me, his comments reek of a misunderstanding to the media’s role. His words should not go unchallenged.

True, the media sometimes does intrude. But it does not do so unless there is a strong public interest.

Much of the reporting of the intimate affairs of celebrities comes from the stage and screen and sporting luminaries themselves. They crave the limelight.

They frequently leak to the media because publicity feeds their egos and their bank balance.

Those of us who lead comparatively humdrum lives may find their trivialities an entertaining distraction. There is no crime in that. Not everyone spends their days off reading Plato, Your Honour.

While the media should not pander to the basest of instincts, nor should it be expected to change human nature and stifle an inquiring mind.

Paradoxically, much of the salacious gossip and scandal Keane seems to be complaining about comes directly from juicy court cases presided over by his fellow judges. There is an especially rich serving of the most intimate detail delivered weekly by Appeal Court judges of the Supreme Court as they forensically analyse the evidence.

More scandal, spice, humiliation and shame is delivered in Parliament in the time-honoured ritual of bucket-tipping.

In journalism, muckraking is a most noble art.

Keane puts a persuasive intellectual case, but an impractical one.

This is odd for a man who obviously has a brain the size of a planet.

He grew up in dreary, working-class Wilston in inner-city Brisbane and attended St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace where he was (of course) dux of the college. At the University of Queensland he won the university medal and then a scholarship to Oxford where he won the Vinerian prize for outstanding scholarship.

Later he was appointed Queensland Solicitor-General then a judge of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court.

Next he was appointed Chief Justice of the Federal court of Australia before ascending to the High Court in 2012.

The Australian reported in November 2012 that he was “a Labor man” and a friend of Kevin Rudd, although his appointments met with bipartisan support.

Keane spoke just as Crime and Corruption Chief Alan MacSporran ludicrously suggested that the media be gagged from reporting on matters he was investigating. I found his comments astonishing and arrogant.

Are MacSporran and Keane suggesting we curtail free speech, and therefore your right to know? I’ll quote Jefferson back at them: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

MacSporran already has extraordinary powers of investigation. He can drag innocent people from the street and compel them to give evidence in a so-called Star Chamber court that the media is forbidden from covering. What would life be like without a free press? Perhaps we should go to China or Russia to find out.

However, tensions between the media and the judiciary may not be a bad thing.

For all their legal smarts, I have a hunch that Keane and MacSporran know very little about journalism or the million wrongs we right every year.

Any more restrictions on the press would kill investigative journalism. A shackled press would not have uncovered the Watergate case that toppled Richard Nixon. Senator Ted Kennedy would not have been exposed as the Chappaquiddick Island coward who fled the scene and tried to cover up his part in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

Without intrusive journalism, The Sunday Times in England would not have exposed the cover-up of the thalidomide children who were born with shocking deformities.

Without dangerous and meddling journalism, The Courier-Mail would not have exposed the corruption in the Bjelke-Petersen era that forced the Fitzgerald Inquiry which led to the Police Commissioner and several Cabinet ministers being sent to jail.

But MacSporran and Keane ought to reflect on what they are suggesting. They want to edit our papers, just as bureaucrats do in China.

Could MacSporran’s gag proposal be in breach of the new Human Rights Act that guarantees my freedom of thought and freedom of expression?

As irksome as it might sound to the MacSporran and Keane, they are often in the same boat as journalists. This is because journalists, judges and police ultimately strive to serve the same ideals.

If the press is seen to have too much power, so are the courts.

There is dangerous, totalitarian thinking in the belief that the media can somehow be “managed”.

The independence of the judiciary is paramount, as is the independence of journalism.

In protecting the citizenry from wrongdoing and injustice, may I humbly suggest, Your Honour, that the intrusive media quite often does a better job than your courts.

SOURCE

Closures undermined education

New CIS research confirms the breadth of educational damage of school closures — especially troubling for Victorian students finally returning to class next week.

The analysis paper Parents’ perspectives on home-based learning in the covid-19 pandemic revealed that around 1.25 million students (over 40% ) across NSW, Victoria, and Queensland may have fallen behind while learning at home. It’s estimated Victoria’s disadvantaged students may have gone backward up to six weeks in their progress over the extended period of closures.

The new research makes clear that the quality of schools’ support to children and parents is decisive in how students fared with their learning — and that the quality of this support was mixed.

The secrets to success with home-based learning are sophisticatedly simple: students need regular interaction online with teachers, and parents need regular contact with schools.

Yet, a concerning number of students — as high as 30% in Queensland — didn’t have regular contact online with their teachers. Instead, they were relegated to completing worksheets and working independently. It comes as no surprise that these students were much more likely to have fallen behind.

Parents who were regularly contacted by teachers felt more informed and confident helping supervise learning. However, while many parents were contacted daily or most days, some weren’t contacted at all. Over 50% of parents who weren’t regularly contacted by schools say their child fell behind.

The better equipped parents are, the more effective support they can provide for their child’s learning — a fact that’s as true during the pandemic as it is in more normal times.

It’s clear that the school closures experience will leave lasting impressions to schooling; for students, teachers, and parents.

In households where the home-based learning wheels were well-oiled, parents gained more positive opinions about teachers’ work and schools’ education standards, compared to pre-covid. That’s evidence that parents appreciate the lengths many teachers and schools went to under such difficult circumstances.

It also shows there’s goodwill to be tapped in order to forge more constructive relationships going forward. Capitalising upon this would better support the work of schools, see parents as informed participants in schooling, and ultimately be more conducive for students’ learning.

The pandemic has been an unwelcome disruption to students, teachers, and parents.

Not only is there students’ learning loss for schools to now contend with, but also an imperative that lessons are learnt so that more effective schooling may yet be a silver lining.

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

Covid-19 facts now clear – let’s shout them out

Recent polls that show a majority of Australians support tough restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 may well reflect public perceptions of the risks associated with the disease.

Those perceptions were formed when the disease first emerged, with the dramatic scenes in Wuhan and the agony of the passengers stranded on cruise ships giving them tangible form. As hospital systems struggled to cope, terrifying images of overrun intensive-care units made the estimates of devastating death rates all too salient.

The strong — indeed, unprecedented — reaction of governments, in Australia and overseas, can only have confirmed the public’s fears, transforming vague impressions into deeply held convictions.

It has, however, become increasingly clear that while COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that can be extremely dangerous for the elderly and for patients with extensive comorbidities, it can be effectively managed. And it is also clear that as the management of the disease has improved, infection fatality rates — that is, the proportion of cases resulting in death — have fallen steeply.

So have the best estimates of the IFR, with Stanford University professor John Ioannidis, in a paper soon to be published by the World Health Organisation, pointing out that the initial studies focused mainly on the epicentres of the pandemic with the highest death tolls, rather than looking at the full range of countries the disease had affected.

Correcting for that bias, Ioannidis concludes that the global IFR from COVID-19 is 0.24 per cent, while that in countries such as Australia is as low as 0.1 per cent.

The contrast with the IFRs used in the modelling that informed our successive lockdowns could not be starker: those IFRs were at least three times Ioannidis’s global estimate, and exceeded his estimate for Australian conditions six times over, as did that used in the modelling Premier Daniel Andrews relied on to justify the most recent Victorian lockdown.

But although it is widely recognised that fatality rates are far lower than initially thought, public perceptions have remained frozen in time. That is, in some respects, unsurprising. Ever since systematic studies of public attitudes to risk began in the 1950s, researchers have found that new threats are judged to be far more menacing than those that are longstanding, regardless of underlying differences in probabilities of occurrence.

Moreover, the greater the extent to which risks are viewed as being incurred involuntarily, and as affecting large groups rather than single individuals, the more likely they will be considered more dangerous than they are.

All those biases have been compounded by today’s media environment. Already in the mid-1980s, Roger Kasperson and his colleagues stressed the “social amplification” of risk that occurs through the media’s focus on catastrophic outcomes at the expense of those instances of a phenomenon that are managed successfully. Now, as the media competes frantically for attention, that process magnifies perceived risks more surely and swiftly than ever.

It is, for instance, a fact that 92,000 Australians have died since the virus first hit our shores; but although COVID-19 accounts for only some 890 of those deaths, and for an even lower share of the total years of life lost, every new case leads the evening news, reinforcing its image as the grim reaper. One might have hoped that the experts would set the picture straight. Perhaps because they see their goal as being to frighten the public into compliance, they have, more often than not, done the opposite.

Never was that clearer than when Jeannette Young, Queensland’s Chief Health Officer, grievously misinterpreting a simulation undertaken at the University of Glasgow, claimed that “on average, people who died from COVID-19 lost 10 years of life”.

Since the average age of the disease’s victims in Australia is more than 85, Young’s claim implies that those lost to COVID-19 would otherwise have survived into their mid-90s, despite multiple comorbidities. In other words, were it not for the virus, they would have died a decade after their cohort’s modal age at death — a claim that taxes the credulity of the credulous.

In reality, the best and most recent study — undertaken by France’s National Institute of Demography, drawing on the actual outcomes of France’s first wave — finds that the vast majority of the virus’s victims were already close to the end of life.

Overall, the disease reduced French life expectancy by one-tenth of a year for women and two-tenths of a year for men, which, while by no means trivial, is a smaller reduction than influenza caused in 2008, 2012 and 2015.

None of that means that COVID-19 should be viewed as no more serious than the flu. On the contrary, until a vaccine or a cure become available, the case for prudence remains compelling, as does the need for effective control measures. There is, however, a vast difference between prudence, which rationally weighs likelihoods, and panic.

Getting that balance right is no easy task, with plenty of scope for error either way. But if exaggerated perceptions of the dangers have dominated, it is not merely because of human fallibility; rather, it is also because they accord so readily with the catastrophic zeitgeist of the age.

Fuelled by an apocalypse industry that feeds off the fear it spreads, every threat — from bushfires and droughts to viruses such as Zika — portends the end of life as we know it. With nature unleashing its final revenge on mankind, the moment one drama recedes, another rushes in to sustain the sense of impending doom.

The result is a world view in which the chasms that yawn beneath us are invariably deeper and more menacing than the peaks that beckon us are high and inviting. Lost — or at least badly damaged — is the axiom of progress, the assumption, dynamic in its self-evidence, that although there are terrible setbacks, detours and blind alleys, humanity ultimately moves forward, with Australia advancing more than most.

But no society can live by dread alone. And a society that stands quaking in the antechamber of its own extinction is condemned to a stagnation that no amount of stimulus spending can cure. Eternally “keeping a-hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse”, it inevitably saps the ambition, aspiration and self-reliance on which sustained growth relies, replacing them with dependence and the desperate search for security. That, and not the staggering debt and unemployment the lockdowns have wreaked, is the greatest threat we face.

And that is why tackling the fearmongers is so important. The facts, as far as COVID-19 is concerned, are becoming clear; it’s time our governments and their advisers proclaimed them from the rooftops.

SOURCE

Strange but true … Donald Trump is better for Australia than Joe Biden

A Donald Trump victory would be better for Australia than a Joe Biden presidency. This counter­intuitive view is widely, if semi-­secretly, held in Australian national security circles, and it is ­almost certainly right.

On foreign policy, despite the crazy tweets, frantic and destabilising turnover of key administration personnel, frequent bouts of boorish personal behaviour from Trump, and numerous outright mistakes, the Trump presidency has been significantly more successful than Barack Obama’s. And much better for Australia.

A Biden presidency would likely reprise Obama, but in a weaker and more woke fashion.

These judgments are provisional, on-balance judgments. Either Trump 2 or Biden 1 could go in several different ways.

The question might seem academic, given how far ahead Biden is. But don’t write Trump off quite yet. The election still depends on turnout, and Trump voters are more enthusiastic than Biden voters. The Republicans have been registering more new voters than the Democrats. RealClearPolitics still has Trump a fraction closer in key battleground states than he was to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

And consider this: at this point four years ago, the Access Hollywood tapes were disclosed revealing shocking remarks by Trump regarding his private behaviour. In reaction, there was hardly a cricket team’s worth of people in the whole of the US who thought Trump would become president.

Yet he won. That doesn’t mean he’ll win this time, but don’t count your chickens too early.

On Trump versus Biden, the arguments are strong that Biden would be more problematic for Australia. On bilateral issues, Trump has been a very good president for Australia. There is not a single issue where Canberra could have asked for much more. This reflects well on Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, the two PMs who have dealt with Trump, and on our diplomacy. It also reflects well on Trump, and the standing Australia has within the US system. Congress and the US bureaucracy supported Australia throughout Trump’s term.

Trump honoured Obama’s deal to take asylum seekers from Manus Island, even though he hated it. He levied tariffs, including on steel and aluminium, on many nations including US allies, but not on Australia. Intelligence co-operation could not be closer. Trump went to great lengths to be a lavish host for Scott Morrison’s visit last year. Such gestures inform the US bureaucracy, and political community, about a relationship’s standing. Military co-operation has increased. Though it started off under Obama, the US marine rotations in the Northern Territory continued to grow.

OK, Trump critics would concede he has been pretty good to Australia bilaterally but has trashed US standing internationally and hurt multilateral institutions. This ultimately damages Australia’s interests. But this is not quite true, or at least there are two sides to it. Trump has done much better in Asia than in Europe. Much of what is labelled global disgust with Trump is actually ­European hostility, plus The New York Times and Hollywood. But a global outlook that doesn’t include Asia isn’t a global outlook at all.

The Trump administration, though it prefers deals to institutions and unilateralism to multilateralism, will build institutions, especially in Asia, where it’s useful. This week in Tokyo, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue had its second foreign ministers’ meeting. Foreign ministers of the US, Australia, India and Japan convened. This is a significant stage in the Quad’s evolution. It is the first time an Indian foreign minister has travelled overseas specifically for a Quad meeting, rather than a Quad gathering on the sidelines of a big multilateral meeting. It was important in bedding down the strategic identity of the government led by Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. And it was the umpteenth visit to the region by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who held a long bilateral meeting with ­Aus­tralia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, the night ­before the Quad.

This development of the Quad owes a great deal to the statecraft of Pompeo and US diplomacy. As ever, Asia prefers a Republican administration in Washington rather than a Democrat administration. The Republicans are the party of the Pacific, the Democrats the party of the Atlantic.

Many of Trump’s most ardent critics in Australia demonstrate the narrowly derivative and inadequate nature of their inter­national outlook by slavishly replicating the trans-Atlantic critique of Trump, while displaying no appreciation of the Asian view.

Of course, within Asia the ­Chinese don’t like Trump at all. But the five Asian nations that have stood most strongly for their national interests and against Chinese hegemonic tendencies in the region — Japan, India, Vietnam, Singapore and Australia — have all had a pretty productive experience of Trump.

Asian nations are, like Trump, characteristically much more concerned with results than with process. Trump himself is concerned with what nations do more than with what they say. Australia, partly because of our increased defence effort and our straight­forward political style, has achieved a unique closeness to the Trump administration — certainly much greater closeness than we ever achieved with Obama. This is most unlikely to be repeated under Biden. That is important, because we would ­likely have less influence with a Biden administration than we do with a Trump administration.

Southeast Asia, too, has generally found the Trump administration quite OK to deal with. It is true that Trump withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership, but Hillary Clinton had promised to do likewise and Obama had never submitted the TPP to Congress.

The other area where Trump has manifestly done much better than Obama is the Middle East. Trump has midwifed two new peace treaties between Israel and Arab nations. Everything Obama touched in the Middle East turned to absolute dust. Trump has been a force for stability in the Middle East, while Obama was a force for chaos — as in the fallout of the Libyan intervention and, earlier, the Arab Spring. Biden would re-adopt all the destructive elements of the old-think Obama paradigm in the Middle East, including ­recommitting to the plainly in­adequate Iran deal.

On China, Trump has been ahead of the US political leadership class. He has been erratic at times, and has certainly made some serious missteps, but he has understood the profound ways in which Beijing flouts international norms, and the depth of the challenge it poses to the US and its ­allies. If these issues are now more widely understood, this is partly because of Trump’s advocacy, even as Trump has not been able to make a comprehensive and ­coherent case.

What about Biden?

In some ways, the future trajectory of a Biden presidency is unknowable. There are at least three separate foreign policy traditions in the Democratic Party. One is the hard-headed Democrats associated with Kurt Campbell, the former Assistant Secretary of State and author of the Obama pivot to Asia, which promised more than it delivered but was better than nothing; and Michelle Flournoy, who if we are lucky, might become Biden’s ­Defence Secretary.

These are muscular Democrats, particularly realistic in their views of China.

Then there are the Obama-era global engagers and multilateral institution types, associated with John Kerry, the former secretary of state; Susan Rice, who could well become Biden’s secretary of state; and Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser.

This group tends to believe that engagement itself is the objective of foreign policy. It is preoccupied with global institutions and global issues. It is deeply conventional — indeed solidly and anachronistically old-fashioned in its analyses. It suffers acute paradigm paralysis. It is drawn to the lyric poetry of foreign affairs as a kind of spiritual substitute for religion. It is perennially preoccupied with climate change and with sweeping, grandiloquent declarations on such issues. And it is very uncomfortable with, and ineffective in, the use of power.

The Chinese have learned to play this group like the strings of a harp. Thus Xi Jinping recently ­declared that China would be carbon neutral by 2060. This earned Beijing worldwide good publicity, but only a very few commentators stopped to ask how you could square this alleged commitment with the fact that Beijing has approved the construction of more new coal-fired power stations this year than in the past two years; that it is financing new coal-fired power stations all over the developing world; and that a vast ­proportion of its Belt and Road ­initiative projects are fossil fuel projects.

The reconciliation is actually simple. The year 2060 is science fiction territory for any government commitment. Beijing can make these announcements and not be impeded or constrained by them in any way, do just what it likes at home, and gullible ­Western opinion — European opinion, especially — will fall for it every time.

Biden gives every sign that he will be a dithering and weak president. He often tells friends that all politics is personal. Kam­ala Harris said at the vice-presidential debate that Biden told her foreign affairs is not complex, it’s just relationships.

In this, Biden betrays the same conceptual confusion as both Trump and Obama, to think that personality will seriously influence geopolitics. But it is surely London to a brick that Beijing will seduce Biden with some nonsensical falderal on climate change, and in return face significantly ­reduced geostrategic pressure from Washington.

The third Democratic Party foreign policy tradition is the “new left” wave of woke activism, which is where all the energy in the contemporary Democratic Party resides. That will merge with the second tradition to almost certainly make climate change the centrepiece of Biden foreign policy — a priority he has already announced anyway.

Biden and Harris are both committed to cutting US defence spending, which means probably an inferior US presence in Asia.

Taken altogether, this all likely means trouble down the track for Australia. Obama sandbagged former prime minister Tony ­Abbott with a viciously partisan speech at the G20 summit in Brisbane. It was the most blatant US interference in our domestic politics in decades, and it was done without notice or consideration for Washington’s Australia ally.

The hyper-partisan Democrat activists who produced that monstrosity, on fire with self righteous zeal for their pet causes, are influential in Biden’s camp today.

A second Trump administration, on the other hand, would likely be a somewhat moderated version of the past four years. Trump has much more experience now. He will still be constrained by the fear of im­peachment and all the normal checks and balances of the US ­system, plus the normal loss of authority a president experiences in his second term.

Anchored as we are in Asia, not Europe — even less Manhattan, Hollywood or Silicon Valley — Trump Mark II would likely be better for Australia than Biden.

Strange, but true.

SOURCE

Queensland Fisheries Minister Mark Furner labels Greenie plan to replace shark nets as 'pure madness'

Conservationists have sent a report to Queensland Fisheries Minister Mark Furner outlining a $33 million plan to replace shark nets and drumlines with non-lethal alternatives.

Biologist with the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), Dr Leo Guida, said their report offered non-lethal shark mitigation methods that "modernise and improve beach safety".

"The current methods are 60 years old, and there's nowhere else in our daily lives that we would accept safety standards that are 60 years old."

"The wildlife cost is too high and quite literally for no safety benefit whatsoever," he said.

But Mr Furner has described suggestions to remove drumlines and shark nets as "pure madness".

The renewed call for the replacement of shark nets comes as hundreds of images of marine life caught in nets and drumlines off Queensland's coast are released under a right to information request made by a documentary film crew that is associated with AMCS.

What are the alternatives?

There have been two fatal shark attacks at Queensland beaches with nets or drumlines in place since 1962, including at Greenmount Beach in September.

Alternative shark mitigation measures recommended by the report include the use of drones to monitor beaches and eco-shark barriers.

Eco shark barriers are made of plastic with 25 to 30-centimetre-wide gaps, aimed at deterring marine life from entering an area, without entangling them like nets do.

SMART (Shark Management Alert in Real Time) drumlines, which alert a Department of Fisheries contractor when a shark has been caught so it can be tagged and relocated, have not been recommended as a replacement to nets or traditional drumlines in the report.

The report, co-signed by AMCS, Humane Society International, Sea Shepherd, No Shark Cull QLD, Ocean Impact, and the documentary Envoy: Shark Cull, has called for both major parties to provide a timeframe for the removal of shark nets and drumlines.

The conservation groups have estimated that replacing nets and drumlines would cost $33.4 million, with ongoing costs of $4.1 million per year — based on a 2019 review of the shark control program and the market price of the suggested alternatives.

However, eco-barriers have had mixed success, with a trial in northern New South Wales showing they have a minimal impact on marine life but can be damaged in strong surf conditions, posing a moderate risk to surfers.

Call for more immediate action

The State Government removed drumlines from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park after a 2019 Federal Court ruling found that killing sharks did nothing to reduce the risk of unprovoked attacks.

The State Opposition has since committed $15 million to replace drumlines in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park with SMART drumlines.

Dr Guida said "it's great to see" both parties taking steps toward more modern methods, but more immediate, state-wide action is needed.

"We don't want to see our wildlife destroyed."

But Fisheries Minister Mark Furner said the State Government had allocated $1 million per year towards shark control innovation, including the use of drones along some Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast beaches.

"Their proposal to remove shark drumlines and also nets from the waters is just pure madness," he said.

But Mr Furner said drones could not be used along beaches close to airports, making drumlines and nets necessary.

"You would leave swimmers, surfers, beachgoers, unsafe by not having that protection."

According to data from Queensland Fisheries, at least 3,400 turtle, mammal and other bycatch species have been caught in nets or drumlines since 2001.

But Mr Furner said the state's shark control program has "served Queenslanders well in both persuasions of government".

"I'm convinced that the officers of Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol and contractors do their very best to make sure bycatch is released live."

State Government to re-visit potential trial

Mr Furner said the cost of replacing all nets and drumlines in Queensland had not been calculated by the State Government.

"We're looking at trialling different measures first and then coming up with a suitable alternative," he said.

In March, a Department of Fisheries Shark Control Program Scientific Working Group voiced its support for a trial that would see some nets replaced by traditional drumlines during the 2020 whale migration season.

"Shark drumlines aren't ones that you can go into Bunnings and purchase. It's something you need to manage and provide for." "We'll revisit that next year," he said.

The State Opposition's spokesperson for Fisheries, Tony Perrett has been contacted for comment.

SOURCE

Sarah Holland-Batt reveals horrific story of father Tony’s time in aged care home

Your regulators will NOT protect you

A Gold Coast man, much loved by his family, was sent to one of the city’s best aged care homes after developing Parkinson’s. But before long trouble started, and his daughter discovered a horrifying secret.

Set among lush tropical gardens in the heart of the Gold Coast, the aged care home seemed an oasis of peace in a desert of decline.

But appearances can be deceiving. While the facility’s fountain splashed prettily in the courtyard – just like in the brochure, there was abuse occurring behind its closed doors.

The horrible secret was uncovered by award-winning poet and academic Sarah Holland-Batt, who discovered that her father, retired mining engineer Tony, was not only being deliberately targeted by a carer, but was also the subject of catastrophic failures of our aged care system.

In August last year, Sarah was called to testify at the Royal Commission into Aged Care, to detail the five years of maltreatment her father suffered after leaving the family’s Sorrento home due to the progression of his Parkinson’s Disease.

Despite searching for the best aged care address on the Coast, Sarah describes her father’s experience as a “drumbeat of failure” – from being left in soiled clothes, to being given the wrong drugs, to suffering repeated injury and not being treated for serious infections and even broken bones.

In March this year, just one week before Australia’s aged care accommodations were forced into lockdown, Tony died after contracting pneumonia. Surrounded by his family, and at last away from his nursing home nightmare, he passed away peacefully in hospital.

While she misses her father every day, Sarah says she is so grateful his battle is over – that he never again need fight against Parkinson’s, the pandemic, or his aged care provider.

And even though his funeral was held virtually, thanks to Covid restrictions, Tony’s legacy may be greater than he ever imagined, with his daughter being hailed a crusader who is both hoping and helping to overhaul the ailing aged care industry.

With a glittering literary career behind her at the age of just 37 – including winning the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, as well as being a critic, editor, poetry columnist for The Australian and an Associate Professor at QUT (and holding a few Masters degrees and a PhD), Sarah is now finding herself increasingly absorbed in her voluntary work to reform aged care.

“When all of this happened to my dad, I thought surely his case had to be an anomaly. Then I started reading and researching and really following the Royal Commission – as well as giving evidence to it – and I’ve ended up with a very good sense of just how badly the system works,” says Sarah, who was born and raised on the Gold Coast but now lives in Brisbane.

“What happened to my dad is actually frighteningly common. The failures that he experienced are emblematic of the industry, not an anomaly at all.

“What is really terrifying is knowing how extremely hard it was to fight against that system for any sort of care, let alone justice, for my dad. And I’m well-educated and relatively young. I have the time and resources to do it, but I barely could. How does anyone stand a chance?”

Sarah says she and her mother noticed the first signs of neglect within weeks of her father moving into the aged care home in 2015.

She said despite fighting for better care, and even after referring issues to police, they continued to battle for his safety and wellbeing throughout those last years of his life.

“Even after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s, Dad was able to stay at home for the next 15 years, but ultimately he had to move for safety’s sake,” she says.

“So Mum and I did all the inspections, we were extremely diligent and we chose the aged care provider that appeared to have the nicest environment … we didn’t just pick any old one, and it was not cheap.

“But almost immediately we noticed these small things started happening, little things were not being tended to. He had a cold sore that no one had noticed – but how could you not notice when you’re brushing his teeth?

“These small things were really bothering me. I’d come in and he’d be wearing clothes with dried food on them, but they weren’t breakfast foods. Did they dress him in dirty clothes?

“The first big thing we realised was that he wasn’t getting his medication on time. Madopar is extremely important for Parkinson’s patients as it stops the tremors, which then prevents falls, but it must be delivered at an exact time so that it’s an uninterrupted coverage.

“They were missing the window by hours and hours, so he was experiencing huge troughs of no medication and he was repeatedly falling.

“Then he was prescribed medication which actually cancelled out the Madopar altogether, and as a result he fell and broke his hip. That is a catastrophic injury for someone of his age, let alone with Parkinson’s. He never walked again.

“Then no one would come when he called to go to the toilet so he’d try to get there without his wheelchair and fall again … it was a constant drumbeat of failure.”

While these systematic failures were shocking in both their regularity and damage, it was the next injury which up-ended the lives of the Holland-Batts.

After questioning an enormous swelling the size of a tennis ball on Tony’s elbow, Sarah and her mother were pulled aside by another carer and told a horrible secret.

“We were trying to figure out how this infection had occurred, it had obviously been swelling for days, but no one had any answer,” she says.

“But then one carer pulled us aside and said the woman who had been showering Dad had been victimising him. That this woman had let this infection fester and didn’t report it because she didn’t like him.

“She was the night shift carer, she worked alone and she was in charge of showering, she just watched him suffer.

“The whistleblower told us she had seen the woman close the door on Dad, telling the other carers that he was sleeping when he was actually awake and sitting in a dirty incontinence pad, she’d heard this woman yell at him to get his ‘nappies’ in the hall – knowing he can’t walk.

“She’d seen her push his wheelchair away from the bed so that it was out of reach, and tell him that she was ‘sick of your sh**.

“Well, after we heard this, I hit the roof.

“Mum and I wrote to the facility manager demanding answers and insisting this woman be dismissed and asking for assurances that this would never happen again.

“Instead, the manager rang us up to organise a mediation between the carer, my father and ourselves. It just … it was beyond belief. There was nothing to ‘mediate’, she hurt my father when he was at his most vulnerable.”

NO FACT-FINDING, NO INVESTIGATION, NO EVIDENCE SOUGHT

Sarah says their concerns were never met with appropriate regard and the carer was simply moved to a different ward.

She says she then turned to police and the aged care regulator, but still no action was taken.

“When we finally met with the manager, he showed up wearing a St Patrick’s Day T-shirt and mardi gras necklaces. Just no respect for the seriousness of the situation. It was just a small detail but so indicative of the whole situation. It was profoundly inappropriate.

“The manager was not shocked or surprised or even interested in what had happened to Dad, just upset that we’d been told. He was only worried that the whistleblower hadn’t followed ‘protocol’.

“But as she said to us, she told us because she knew he’d sweep it under the rug.

“He said he couldn’t do anything unless the whisteblower came forward, which was frightening for her, and so I went to the police instead.

“They said it was a civil, not a criminal, matter – which is something that needs to be changed, elder abuse should be considered a criminal act – and so I contacted the aged care regulator.

“That was beyond a farce. There was no fact-finding, no investigation, no interviews, no evidence sought … just a flurry of letters, false statements and false promises – which were simply accepted at face value.”

Sarah says she felt physically ill during this time, worrying that the carer in question would abuse other residents or that she would sneak back to her father’s room.

Ultimately, she says all she could do was ask the whistleblower to come forward, which she eventually did.

“I was then called by the aged care manager who said the carer was no longer at the facility, effective immediately. But I later found out they just moved her to a different aged care home.

“I could not have done any more than I did, but I was never even able to affect any action. What hope do we have to protect our loved ones when the system prefers to protect its failures?”

ANOTHER DARK SECRET

Sarah says even after the carer left the facility, her father’s care was still sub-par.

She says he suffered another fall where he broke four ribs, but at the hospital they discovered another dark secret.

“They found two other broken ribs that were partially healed. So he’d broken bones and no one had noticed it, or reported it. He was given no pain relief, no treatment, not even any supervision.

“This was a man who was fiercely loved and cared for by his family, but he had years of neglect that we actually paid for. How is this happening? How are we not marching in the streets to change it?

“We should all be terrified of the future if we don’t change the present situation.”

Sarah says while her father’s battle is over, she will never stop fighting for change within the industry until it’s a place where not just basic care is guaranteed, but the best care is delivered.

She says she is eagerly awaiting the final recommendations of the Royal Commission, due to be delivered in February, but says she is concerned that the Federal Government will not commit to all of the changes.

“I initially wrote a submission to the Royal Commission and they called me up to testify, ever since then I’ve continued to write about it and speak about it.

“The commission’s final report will be handed down in February 2021, but the Government will no doubt just cherry pick what it wants to action. It has no appetite for the overhaul we need.

“Why even have the commission if we’re not going to commit to change?

“We need to see a change in staff-to-resident ratios and more stringent training and skill requirements for staff. Right now, you can work as a carer with absolutely no qualifications. None. This is hard physical, mental and emotional work for which you receive little pay and little support … add to it that anyone can do it, and it’s little wonder we’re not getting the best staff.

“Having said that, so many of the staff are wonderful people but they have way too much work and no support. They are breaking under the strain and when they do, it’s the residents who suffer.

“We also need to see financial accountability from aged care providers. They’re given enormous federal funding - resident fees make up only 20 per cent of the funding, and 80 per cent is contributed by the taxpayer - but there are no regulations on how they spend it. All they have to do is meet accreditation standards, which are ridiculously low, and then they get a pile of cash which they don’t have to account for.

“The provider can choose to spend that money on care, on their grounds, on staff or just keep it for profit.

“We need a national register of aged care workers so that if there is abuse, as with my father, that worker is not just quietly moved around like a Catholic priest. We need absolute transparency.

“And we absolutely need to overhaul the regulator so that it has teeth. We need someone to complain to and who will take action when we do. That was the most outrageous thing of my family’s journey.

“It felt like I was screaming into the abyss while my father was being ground down.”

Sarah says while the outcome of her fight to change aged care is yet to be determined, she’s confident that her father would be proud.

“Dad was a very private person and so I worry sometimes about sharing so much about his life,” she says.

“But above that, he was a very ethical person with a strong sense of justice. I believe that, on balance, he would want me to tell his story. He would want to serve the greater good.

“I just want to see some action come from this. I’m tired of hearing the government say they will ‘consider recommendations’ and yet do nothing. It’s about creating meaningful change, it’s not about paying lip service or keeping up appearances.”

Because as Sarah knows far too well, appearances can be deceiving.

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 is sailing into the eye of an unimaginable storm

We will not know whether we have blown the pandemic response — economically, medically and socially — until the worst of it is over. Yet 10 months in, early fears that we have opted for expensive and damaging temporary measures to stave off a permanent pest have only grown.

After a year of jobs axed, industries shut, schools closed, families separated, events cancelled, travel prevented and communities crushed, this week we saw the fiscal side of the equation; it broke our budget deficit record, smashing Wayne Swan’s 2009 and 2010 efforts four times over, and notched up our first trillion dollar debt forecast.

On budget day, the health crisis all this was aimed at tackling had fewer than 50 people in hospital and less than a handful in critical care. Measuring risks, costs, benefits and proportionate responses has never been more difficult. Obviously, the reason our medical toll has been so modest so far is, in large part, because of the intense response.

But with state borders closed, Melburnians chained to within 5km of their homes and many businesses and families stuck in financial cryogenics, we must strenuously interrogate the effectiveness of every measure. Melbourne’s curfew provides an exemplar of what to avoid — now scrapped, we know it was imposed without medical or law ­enforcement advice and that it had no beneficial impact on public health.

The people of our second-largest city were confined by law to their homes for more than 50 nights for no good reason. Avoiding or dismantling this sort of government overreach has obvious social and economic benefits, and carries no health costs. If only politicians took a Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm”.

We might never know what else was unnecessary. Should pubs and restaurants have stayed open with social distancing and customer registration (much as they operate in most of the country now)? The nation’s best medical advice said schools should have remained open all along.

How many extra jobs would have been saved, how many more outbreaks and deaths would have occurred, and how much less social dislocation would have been triggered with more modest restrictions? What we do know is that, with the notable exceptions of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, our politicians are more interested in competing for space under the doona than emerging, however tentatively, to confront the day.

Opposition politicians have toyed with pushing for greater freedoms and debating alternative approaches, but it is easier for them to seize on every infection or death as a gotcha government failure. The way we are responding is both a symptom and a cause of our long march down the bigger government road.

Given mindless faith in ever-expanding government has people blaming politicians for the weather, it is hardly surprising that they expect governments can control invisible and highly infectious viruses. (Not the ­Chinese government, mind you, they are the one government immune from COVID criticism — go figure.)

Elevated expectations of ­government drive the sort of responses we have seen; the draconian lockdowns and border belligerence of the states, and the eye-watering largesse from Canberra. After working hard in its early budgets to pull federal spending below 25 per cent of GDP, the Coalition blew it out to 29 per cent in the financial year just finished, even though the virus only arrived on our shores in January.

This year, federal spending will top 34 per cent of GDP. Government has gone viral. We are now talking about a two-year plan, with all this pain, aimed at protecting us from the worst of the pandemic until an effective vaccine is widely available late next year. We were told back in March that a vaccine might rescue us within six months. Morrison has been as frank as possible in changing circumstances. “I really want Australians to understand that we need to be in this for that haul,” the Prime Minister said in April. “It will be months. We need to make changes that we can live with and that we can implement day after day, week after week, month after month.”

Yet the states and the federal government are running policies that cannot be sustained month after month or year after year. Too much is predicated on a game-changing vaccine that might never arrive.

Those who happily cheer for this lockdown approach — this idea of getting to “the other side” — should think about how silly Donald Trump sounds every time he heralds another drug as the “game-changer” or announces how a “fantastic” vaccine is imminent. Many world leaders hold out the same false hope, with more prosaic language, basing policy settings on it.

We need to consider what we would be doing if we knew there was no hope of finding a vaccine. Policies that presume no vaccine would protect vulnerable communities while we prevent the virus running amok and get on with our lives to the greatest extent possible. A vaccine, if and when it comes, would be a bonus.

This would be prudent. It is why Sweden’s experience is so compelling and why we should not scoff at nations with higher mortality rates — we can’t remain closed off forever so, without a vaccine, our most difficult times might be ahead.

Something like the current NSW model should be our starting point. Those able to work from home do so, large outdoor crowds and smaller indoor crowds are banned, social distancing measures are in place in pubs and restaurants, along with customer registration. There will be cases and clusters for the foreseeable future, but they are quickly identified, publicised and, so far, touch wood, contained.

Other states are being far less sensible. Victoria has been an ­incompetent and authoritarian shambles, while the others are obsessively determined to keep the virus out — even if it kills them.

Given this virus does not harm most people, especially the young, and that we know who is vulnerable, the NSW measures are proportionate. As a nation, we set out to flatten the infection curve and ensure our health system was not overwhelmed, and the only significant breakout was in Melbourne — even then, less than 2 per cent of the nation’s critical care beds were required.

It is instructive to realise the COVID-19 restrictions have virtually killed our flu season. “This is virtually a non-­season,” is how Melbourne University professor of microbiology and immunology Ian Barr described it to CNN. “We have never seen numbers like this before.”

This means our coronavirus shutdowns have prevented anything up to 900 flu deaths — and many of them would have been children. If you truly cannot put a price on any life, why don’t we shut down like this every year?

We need to ease up and gain perspective. Whether you are frightened by a trillion dollars in debt, women arrested for going to the beach or young people losing their employment and educational opportunities, the need for proportionality is clear.

Our response needs to be ­sustainable for a year, or five. Whether or not the coronavirus would leave a historic imprint on our nation, we know the response will.

The budget papers told us “Australia’s population growth is expected to slow to its lowest rate in over one hundred years.” Over coming years, net annual migration will be negative for the first time since World War II (we saw more people leave than arrive during The Great Depression and World War I as well, so this COVID-19 era is in ignominious company).

The budget also assumes lower birthrates because of economic uncertainty, and lower internal migration because of the constricted economy and hard state borders. The very basis of our federation — free trade and movement between the states — and the central ingredient of our post-settlement prosperity — positive net migration — are being squandered.

Unlike the Great Depression or the two world wars, this ­trauma is one where we are in control. It is our own decisions about how to deal with the virus that are determining the balance between health, economic and social damage.

There will be decisions that save lives and protect livelihoods, and mistakes that harm people and burden generations with unnecessary debt. But we need a broader debate about the policy alternatives.

With these heady questions and vital discussions to be had, Labor’s main criticism of the budget was that it did not mention women enough. The bigger the governments, the smaller the minds.

SOURCE

The Black Summer bushfires that killed a billion animals and destroyed a fifth of the continent’s forests last summer were a normal outcome of fluctuating weather patterns, a new book has claimed

‘Climate Change: The Facts 2020’, written by biologists, atmospheric physicists and meteorologists, rejected the claim that climate change could be linked to the devastating fires between October 2019 and March 2020.

A number of scientists have blamed the changing weather patterns and drought for the fires but the book says there is ‘nothing unusual about the current rate or magnitude of climate change’.

Its authors state the earth regularly goes through cycles of dry and wet weather and that the fires were not unprecedented.

It claims the naturally occurring cycle was combined with poor hazard reduction burns and fire management which set the grounds for a catastrophic blaze.

Editor and Institute of Public Affairs senior research fellow Jennifer Marohasy said Australia had a history of bushfires that burned up large parts of the country as early as 1851.

Thirty-three people died directly from the fire while more than 400 are estimated to have lost their lives because of the smoke pollution.

More than 2,000 homes were burned almost 20 million hectares destroyed.

‘A similarly vast area of 21 million hectares was lost to unplanned fires as recently as 2012-13,’ Dr Marohasy told Daily Telegraph.

‘However, this is not the largest area burned by uncontrolled fires. In 1974–75, 117 million hectares burned.’

Dr Marohasy went on to dismantle a number of studies that showed a string of unseasonably dry years had contributed to the ferocity of the fires.

She noted that Australia had recorded its wettest summer since 1990 as early as 2010.

‘If anything, these official statistics suggest it is getting wetter, rainfall statistics for the entire Australian continent, available for download from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, also indicate that more recent years have been wetter, especially the past 50 years,’ she said.

University of Melbourne’s Andrew King conducted a study that looked at a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which has a direct effect on rainfall levels in Australia and elsewhere.

Since 2017 much of Australia has experienced widespread drought, something the study attributed to a relative lack of negative IOD events.

This sees warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the east Indian Ocean with cooler waters in the west.

These events tend to shift weather patterns and typically bring greater rainfall to southeast Australia, and are made less frequent as global sea temperatures warm.

Dr King and the team examined rainfall statistics and found that the winter of 2016 saw extremely heavy precipitation and a corresponding negative IOD event.

Since then, the Murray-Darling Basin has experienced 12 consecutive seasons with below-average rainfall, the longest period on record since 1900.

‘With climate change there have been projections that there will be more positive IOD events and fewer negative IOD events,’ King said.

‘This would mean that we’d expect more dry seasons in Australia and possibly worse droughts.’

A comment piece from two researchers, from the CERFACS in France, claim the fires are unequivocally related to climate change.

‘Mean warming levels are now sufficiently large that many high temperature extreme events would be impossible without anthropogenic influence,’ Dr Benjamin Sanderson and Dr Rosie Fisher wrote.

‘In the case of recent events in Australia, there is no doubt that the record temperatures of the past year would not be possible without anthropogenic influence, and that under a scenario where emissions continue to grow, such a year would be average by 2040 and exceptionally cool by 2060.’

Climate Change: The Facts 2020′ is now available for sale.

SOURCE

Parents say children’s education should be put first, not assessment ban

Queensland’s peak body for state school parents has hit out at the NAPLAN boycott, saying they’re disappointed the dispute over the controversial test has led to the ban and children’s education should be put first.

The Courier-Mail yesterday revealed that the Queensland Teachers’ Union would boycott any work associated with preparing for and administering NAPLAN in 2021.

P&Cs Qld chief executive Scott Wiseman said the organisation was disappointed the dispute over NAPLAN had reached this loggerhead, and hopes that all parties continue to put the children’s interests first.

“Every child deserves every chance at the best education possible and we hope the matter can be worked through and resolved constructively,” he said.

Mr Wiseman said P&Cs Qld held the view that NAPLAN provides useful information to parents about how their child performs in line with other students on a broader measure.

“P&Cs Qld feel parents should have as much information made available to them as possible to actively participate in their child’s education,” Mr Wiseman said.

“Our position is that parents must continue to have the ultimate say in their child’s involvement in the NAPLAN or not, and that it needs to be used as intended and not as a school versus school score sheet.”

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy program has been subject to numerous reviews and has been contentious since it was first introduced in 2008.

Queensland Teachers’ Union President Kevin Bates said the industrial action followed reviews which had shown “NAPLAN was broken” so governments needed to introduce an alternative replacement.

“We have a national review by four jurisdictions, the state review from the Queensland government, all saying the same thing, we now have widespread acceptance that the NAPLAN test is broken,” he said.

“You can’t keep having reviews that say it’s bad and then keep doing it.”

It comes as the Catholic sector and Independent schools continue to prepare for the testing to resume next year, ramping-up its online delivery.

Queensland Catholic Education Commission executive director Dr Lee-Anne Perry said NAPLAN provided teachers with important information for planning and to discuss each student’s progress with families.

“NAPLAN is an important part of a large array of data gathered by teachers to determine how students are learning,” she said.

“No one test can provide all the data needed to form a comprehensive picture of each student but what NAPLAN provides is a national benchmark in the key areas of literacy and numeracy with a test that’s based on the curriculum.”

SOURCE

You’ll be shocked at surgery wait times due to COVID-19 Hospital waiting lists were at record levels before the COVID surgery ban but now most Australians will have to wait years for their operations, experts warn

Inflexible public healthcare

Hospital waiting lists have skyrocketed by up to 40 per cent as a result of the COVID-19 surgery ban.

A News Corp investigation has found there were more than 260,000 people waiting for elective surgery in Australia’s public hospitals at the height of the pandemic in June.

And those needing cataract surgery, hip and knee replacements and tonsillectomies face some of the longest waits.

A further 280,000 surgeries were deferred in the private sector due to COVID, according to industry analyst Andrew Goodsall.

And he predicts it will take almost two years to address the pre-pandemic backlog.

The crisis comes as a Breast Cancer Network of Australia (BCNA) survey has found one in eight women had their breast cancer surgery delayed by the pandemic and four in 10 can’t get a breast reconstruction.

A further one in eight have missed out on being able to take part in a clinical trial of potentially life saving new treatments as a result of COVID-19.

BCNA CEO Kirsten Pilatti said she feared that because breast reconstruction is an eight-hour surgery it was being given less priority than other surgeries that use operating theatres for only an hour or so.

State and territory governments need to make more funding available for elective surgery to deal with the surgical backlog and consider contracting work to private hospitals, she said.

Adding further pressure to public hospital waiting lists is the fact that tens of thousands of people dumped their private health cover.

Cancer specialists are warning there is a backlog of undiagnosed cancer cases about to hit the health system, given people put off going to the doctor during COVID.

There was a 37 per cent drop in the number of breast cancer diagnoses and 145,000 fewer screening mammograms conducted in the first six months of this year.

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

No English, no visa – even if you’re married to an Aussie: Huge change brings in language test for loved ones who want to settle Down Under

Immigrants applying for a partner visa will be tested for ‘functional levels’ of English before they are granted permanent residency.

The government may require immigrants who do not speak English to have 500 hours of free class under the plan announced in Tuesday’s budget.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the new requirement would promote social and economic inclusion.

‘It’s a much more basic level of English language competency and we think this is important to just enable people to engage to access government services,’ Mr Morrison said on Wednesday.

‘For example, to engage with those who are seeking to assist to access and get the best possible medical treatment, to understand what teachers are saying at school at parent-teacher conferences, and to understand their rights.’

Partner visa are processed in two stages. First an applicant gets a temporary visa for about two years after which they can apply for permanent residency.

The English language requirements will need to be fulfilled at the second stage when the partner wants to become a permanent resident.

‘What this will mean is that we will require an applicant and a sponsor to have met functional level English or to have at least made reasonable efforts to learn English,’ said Immigration Minister Alan Tudge.

‘And by reasonable efforts we mean for most people that would be doing about 500 hours of free English language classes.’

Mr Tudge said the English test will be much simpler than the one needed to be met for economic migration.

Earlier this year the government made English classes free for migrants.

The policy will kick in from the middle of next year. The requirements will apply to applicants and their partners who are permanent residents not citizens.

Mr Tudge said about one million partners who are in Australia cannot speak English.

‘In some cases, the husband will not want his partner or wife to learn English. And in part that’s for control reasons,’ he said.

The announcement has been slammed by the Opposition, who claim the new rule ignores Australia’s multicultural values.

Andrew Giles, a Labor MP and the party’s spokesman for Multicultural Affairs and Assisting for Immigration and Citizenship, said the government needs to understand the impact of the new measure.

‘It’s come about without any context … and it seems to reflect an understanding of Australian society that’s anchored in the past, that doesn’t recognise the multicultural nation we are today,’ he told SBS.

People can apply for partner visa from inside or outside of Australia.

It can set applicants back about $8,000.

Applicants are often allowed a bridging visa while their visas are processed.

Other visa changes announced on Tuesday include waiving or refunding application charge for temporary visa holders affected by the COVID-19.

There is also a push on the Family Stream Visa, with a temporary application increase from 47,700 to 77,000.

SOURCE

Why an Australian company could be the world’s answer to ending the coronavirus pandemic after it won a $42million contract with the US – but our own government haven’t bought a SINGLE test

An Australian company is determined to bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic, creating tests that can give results back in just 15 minutes – but the government hasn’t bought a single unit.

Ellume, a Brisbane medical technology company received a $42million contract with the US government to roll out the testing kits, which are expected to be available in the country in the coming weeks.

The three COVID-19 tests can be used at home, by medical professionals and in areas with large crowds like airports and stadiums.

But while the tests are set to be available in America next month, the Australian government is yet to offer any interest, The Australian reported.

Ellume’s Chief executive and founder Sean Parsons said it was frustrating to receive no word about rolling out the tests locally.

‘We have been having discussions with the Queensland state government, which have largely fallen on deaf ears,’ Dr Parsons told newspaper.

‘I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating.

‘We have unique technology that has been hard fought over a decade and it is a little bit disappointing the Australian government hasn’t been interested and understood the value that could bring to COVID.’

The three tests under production by Ellume all involve devices that transmit patient samples digitally before the results appear on screen.

Ellume’s at home test requires patients to take their own sample from their nostril.

The test then uses an analyser that’s connected to their smartphone via Bluetooth which then digitally transmits the results onto the phone.

The second test allows for eight samples to be examined at the one time and will be a useful tool for laboratories.

The test is ran on Ellume’s ‘Access eHub’ which is a portable, digital device that can give results back in just 15 minutes, while in strong positive cases results can appear in just three minutes.

Experts believe faster testing would encourage more people to take part as they wouldn’t have to isolate for long while awaiting results.

The last test is designed for healthcare professionals and involves a handheld device that can be connected to a smartphone and can examine two samples simultaneously.

These kits are recommended for doctors and provide clear instructions on how to be used.

Dr Parsons is hopeful the tests could be used in conjunction with the coronavirus vaccine which is expected to be released at the start of next year at the earliest.

Ellume are aiming to have the tests ready by the end of November in the US.

America has been severely impacted by the global health crisis with more than 7.5 million coronavirus cases and 211,000 related deaths.

Currently, COVID-19 test results in Australia take up to 72 hours, as they need to be posted off to specialist labs.

SOURCE

The grim reality of Townsville’s childhood trauma battle

This is almost all an Aboriginal problem so is essentially intractable

Eskimo Pie to change its ‘derogatory’ name

An almost 100-year-old ice cream brand has settled on a new name for its Australian version saying “now is the time for change”.

Multiple brands have announced their decision to rebrand or rename products with “racist” or “offensive” packaging and labelling.
An iconic Australian ice cream brand is changing its name, saying it’s “committed to being a part of the solution on racial equality”.

Peters Ice Cream has told news.com.au it will change its name from Eskimo Pie to Polar Pie.

“Peters Ice Cream is committed to being a part of the solution on racial equality and we acknowledge that now is the time for change,” a spokesperson for Peters said in a statement.

“Eskimo Pie is a brand which has been within our portfolio for many decades and has a loyal consumer base who adore the product. We have chosen to rename the product ‘Polar Pie’ as this retains a strong association back to the original brand and product idea – a frozen treat you eat much like a pie – with your hands and hence the name Polar Pie!”

According to Peters website, Eskimo Pies are the oldest ice cream in the company’s range, and were introduced to Australia in 1923 by the Peters family.

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Mining giant BHP splits with Greens

Multinational resources giant BHP has split with the state’s powerful resource lobby after it urged Queenslanders to vote for anyone but the Greens.

Multinational resources giant BHP has split with the state’s powerful resource lobby over its foray into the state’s political campaign after it urged Queenslanders to vote for anyone but the Greens.

The company issued a statement in which it said it had given notice to the Queensland Resources Council that it was suspending its membership immediately after advertising that targeted a specific political party.

“BHP has expressed to the QRC on several occasions its opposition to this advertising approach and had formally requested that it be withdrawn,” the statement said.

“Unfortunately this has not occurred.”

BHP said it supported campaigns around policy issues that affected the mining industry and its workers, and the current approach was “not consistent with that contribution”.

It follows the QRC publicly calling for Queenslanders not to support the Greens party this October 31, and to preference them last.

QRC chief executive Ian Macfarlane said: “The Queensland Resources Council has made a decision in relation to the anti-jobs policies of the Greens that is in the best interests of Queensland mining and gas members and the 372,000 people and 14,400 businesses who rely on the resources sector for their livelihoods.

“The resources industry will continue to support the economy and jobs of Queenslanders despite the Greens wanting to shut the industry down.

“The current situation is so dire the QRC has to stand up for its industry, particularly people in regional areas.”

The council also put out a media statement welcoming Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s “promise of ‘no deals’, ruling out a power-sharing alliance with the Greens to stay in office”.

“Now is not the time to risk a single job in Queensland by voting for the Greens or by putting them anywhere but last on your ballot paper,” QRC chief executive Ian Macfarlane said.

“The Greens want to stop jobs in our sector and others.”

Mr Macfarlane said he would continue to warn Queenslanders about the risk to jobs of voting for or preferencing the Greens up until 6pm on election night.

Greens MP Michael Berkman issued a statement acknowledging BHP’s criticism.

“We know the vast majority of Queenslanders support raising mining royalties and it looks like BHP has acknowledged this by splitting from the QRC’s nasty campaign to attack the Greens,” he said.

“The Greens terrify the QRC because if we win, multinational mining corporations will have to pay more in royalties so we can invest in jobs, health and education.

“The ultimate question for this election is who benefits from Queensland’s enormous mineral wealth. The Greens are the only party who have proposed raising mining royalties so every Queenslander can benefit, so it’s no surprise the QRC has had a little meltdown.”

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Australian government cuts refugee places by thousands

The Morrison government has slashed the maximum humanitarian intake by thousands on the basis it is too difficult to bring refugees into Australia in the same numbers as before the coronavirus pandemic.

The humanitarian intake was reduced from 18,750 places to 13,750 over the next four years in Tuesday’s budget.

Asylum seeker advocates have slammed the move, which is expected to save almost $1 billion, saying the country should be accepting more refugees at a time when its net overseas migration will drop by hundreds of thousands a year.

But the government insists the number of humanitarian places had to be slashed because of international travel grinding to a halt and refugee services around the world being significantly impacted.

Most of Australia’s refugees are taken through the UNHCR’s resettlement program – meaning they have to fly here from other countries to get to Australia.

The humanitarian intake will still be reviewed every year, allowing the government to return the cap to pre-pandemic levels if the global situation improves.

The change will keep Australia as accepting the third-highest number of refugees via the United Nations resettlement program, behind the United States and Canada.

Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge said the new cap was in line with last year’s outcome of 13,171 and reflected the “global impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic”.

“The government will continue to focus on settlement and integration support for humanitarian entrants,” Mr Tudge said.

“This will include prioritising supporting people in work and improving English language skills.”

Opposition immigration spokesman Andrew Giles said the reduction in the humanitarian intake was a “very big change”.

“And while we are in very novel and uncertain circumstances it does require a proper explanation and then a very serious examination,” Mr Giles said.

“Who will be the next Frank Lowy, Majak Daw or Anh Do that Australia will miss out on due to the Morrison cuts to our humanitarian program?

“We can recover from COVID-19 and continue to provide a lifeline to people in need – like Frank, Majak and Anh who have contributed so much.”

Australia’s collapse in overseas migration and a falling fertility rate has forced Treasury to downgrade the nation’s population forecasts by about one million over the next two years, which is a long-term blow to economic growth.

Amnesty International campaigner Shankar Kasynathan said the government’s decision was “inhumane and makes no sense”.

“Throughout COVID-19, refugees across Australia have gone above and beyond to help their communities get through these difficult times,” he said.

“Instead of seeing these people as a financial burden, this government should be welcoming them with open arms.

“It’s the humane thing to do; it’s also, economically and for our communities, the most sensible thing to do. When refugees move to regional communities like Wagga Wagga and Armidale they restart their lives and in doing so support schools, infrastructure and businesses.”

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Universities welcome $1 billion research bailout package

Universities say their pleas have been answered after the federal budget contained a $1 billion research bailout package to help plug the hole caused by the collapse of the international student market.

The funding lifeline comes amid a horror year for the sector as many universities were forced to slash hundreds of jobs in response to a sudden decline in international student enrolments due to border closures.

The Group of Eight – which represents the eight institutions that account for 70 per cent of Australia’s university research – said the funding would “reverberate positively” through industry an security sectors which rely heavily on research advancements in technology and science.

“We have been quite desperate in past months as researchers were being stood down and research programs faltered or halted all because we were missing the International student fees which previously paid for Australia’s research” chief executive Vicki Thomson said.

“With no idea when or even if that market will ever recover, the silver lining is that Australia can once again claim it is funding its own research. That will be welcomed much further afield than our university campuses.”

The coronavirus pandemic has underlined the over-reliance of Australia’s universities on the high fees paid by international students which are used to cross-subsidies research programs.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education have estimated the shortfall in research funding could hit $7.6 billion over the next four years due to the loss of international student revenue.

The Rapid Research Information Forum, chaired by Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel, found universities job losses could hit 21,000 full time positions by the end of the year, of which up to 7,000 could be research-related academic staff.

In his budget speech on Tuesday evening, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the $1 billion injection for research over the next year was about “backing our best and brightest minds whose ideas will help drive our recovery.”

Peak body Universities Australia said the government had “heard the alarm bells” and the funding would stabilise research programs and jobs.

“This will ensure world-class research and discovery can continue on Australia’s universitycampuses,” Universities Australia chair Professor Deborah Terry said.

Higher education expert Andrew Norton, from the Australian National University, said lifeline was bigger than the sector had been expecting and would save some jobs in the firing line.

“This will give universities breathing space meaning they will have sack fewer people in the next few months,” Professor Norton said.

“It would’ve been much much better if they had announced it a few months ago because the universities have already set in motion some of these job cuts.”

National Tertiary Education Union president Alison Barnes criticised the announcement as insufficient, saying the funding represented only “a fraction” of the research shortfall universities were facing.

“The budget also fails to seriously address the funding and jobs crisis that universities are experiencing. Livelihoods and careers have been demolished in the past six months with 12,000 jobs lost and $3 billion in revenue disappearing,” Dr Barnes said.

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Australia’s Federal debt not a big problem

The federal government is spending roughly an extra $75 billion over the next two years to keep you and your boss happy and positive as we go through the deepest economic recession in living memory.

Yep, this is all about you and your job … because you are the economy. It’s that simple. Unemployment will peak at 8 per cent in December and take another two years to get back under 6 per cent.

That’s what is wreaking havoc with the economy. Jobs really are at the core of a healthy economy … and recovery from this recession.

If you’re in a job, you’re earning an income. Part of that income gets paid to the government in tax and by spending what’s left over keeps businesses open so they can pay tax (from profits) to the government and employ staff who, in turn, earn an income, pay their own tax and spend more.

What makes the economy go-round is pretty simple really. You earning an income from your job, spending it with a business so they can create jobs and everyone pays tax.

Yes the $213 billion Budget deficit and net government debt of over $700 billion looks scary but — and I know this may sound weird — don’t worry about it.

While the figures look huge, our economy is also huge by comparison and our debt as a proportion of the economy is much lower than virtually every other advanced economy in the world.

As a bonus, the government is paying less that one per cent interest on that debt … so it’s cheap money.

So what’s in the Federal Budget to make you feel good and positive?

• The tax cuts due to start in July 2022 will be brought forward two years to start last July. Yes that means you’ve been paying too much tax for the first four months of this financial year but it also means you’ll get a bigger tax refund and there will be less tax taken out of your wage from now on.

For most working Australians that’s an extra $3000-$5000 (depending on your tax bracket) a year extra to go out and spend.

• Aged pensioners will receive a $500 bonus in two equal payments in December and March.
• There are a raft of new job training programs, and billions being spent on infrastructure projects, all designed to create new job opportunities if you’re made redundant.

There will be new job training programs available.
There will be new job training programs available.
Now to your boss. What’s in this Budget to keep them positive, keep you in a job and create more jobs?

• As we know already, the $101 billion JobKeeper program keeps going until the end of March even though the amount is reduced and eligibility rules have been tightened.
• For businesses not on JobKeeper, they can receive a “hiring credit” of $200 a week if they add an eligible under 30-year-old to their staff and $100 a week for a 30-35 year old new employee.
• If their business makes a loss this financial year they can offset that loss against profits they’ve made in the past two years (usually they can only offset losses against future profits). While they’ve already paid tax on those past profits, they’ll get a refund back once the losses are offset against them.
• Any investment in new assets for the business can be written off against their tax immediately instead of over a few years. Less tax means more money to spend or hire more staff.

The Australian economy was in pretty good shape going into this pandemic. It’s fair to say, if you had to be in any country in the world to get through this recession it would be Australia.

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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