Australian Politics
Thursday, August 05, 2021
Coalition argues over farm regulations to boost Great Barrier Reef health
This is another area in which the Greenies have panicked governments into doing stupid things. Run-off of sediment from farms seldom reaches the outer Great Barrier Reef, or areas where the vast majority of corals live, the head of the Australian Institute of Marine Science Paul Hardisty has said. So farm runoff could affect corals living close inshore but the vast majority of the reef is in no danger
Furthermore, the levels of pesticides and fertilizer in farm runoff would have been heavily diluted in the rivers before they reached the oceans and I have seen no evidence that such extreme dilutions are any problem to anybody
It may also be noted that coral bleaching is almost all in the Northern section of the reef, alongside Cape York peninsula. But soils on the peninsula are very poor so there is almost no farming there. And no farming means no farm runoff. So once again have a non-existent problem.
Coral bleaching is mostly caused by fluctuation in water levels
Divisions have emerged in the federal government over farming rules to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef, as the Coalition’s Special Envoy for Northern Australia slams regulations targeting harmful farm water runoff that has been endorsed by the Environment Minister.
Australia successfully lobbied last month to delay a decision on listing the reef as “in danger” of losing World Heritage status at a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation hearing.
A key to Australia’s pitch was its $3 billion investment to improve water quality, which is backed by Queensland government laws that mandate standards on fertiliser use for sugar cane growers to limit nitrogen runoff and for maintenance of ground cover on grazing country to reduce sediment washing into the ocean.
Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley said in July Australia is “on track to meet our 2025 Reef water quality improvement targets” and cited projections that factored in Queensland’s reef regulations, showing a rapid improvement in runoff to the reef.
UNESCO’s scientific advisors said poor water quality due to runoff from agricultural and urban areas and coral loss caused by mass bleaching events induced by global warming were the two key risk factors.
Queensland Senator and Special Envoy for Northern Australia Susan McDonald said Queensland’s regulations were “unnecessary overreach” and said she would “support a drastic scaling back” of the regime.
State regulations were unnecessary because farmers were already taking sufficient action, Ms McDonald said, and “improving land use methods without the need for draconian new laws”.
“[The reef regulation] applies a big stick approach to landowners to browbeat them into obeying the law rather than working with them to achieve balanced land management that helps productivity and reduces environmental impact.”
Ms Ley secured the backing of 12 of 21 countries on the committee to delay a vote on the ruling, and has until February next year to convince UNESCO its efforts to improve water quality and reduce global warming are sufficient.
Ms Ley told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age she had “seen first-hand the commitment and effort made by sugar cane, banana and cattle producers up and down the reef catchments” and regulators should work constructively with farmers.
“This isn’t the time for finger pointing – we need landholders and governments working together to achieve our 2025 targets and there are already some outstanding examples of that taking place,” Ms Ley said.
The Queensland government said penalties for non-compliance were a “last resort” and it was assisting farmers to get their practices into line with the regulations. The regulations will be implemented progressively across northern Queensland until the end of next year.
World Wide Fund for Nature Australia head of oceans Richard Leck said it would be a “terrible idea to scrap the regulations if we want to give the Great Barrier Reef a future”.
The latest Reef water quality report card produced by the Queensland government showed gains needed by 2025 outstrip the rate of progress that has occurred over the past 10 years of measurement.
“[In that time] nutrient pollution has been reduced by 25 per cent towards a 60 per cent target, and sediment by 14 per cent towards a target of 25 per cent,” Mr Leck said. “The regulations are not punitive, they implement a minimum standard that all good farms should be able to exceed.”
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Bondi Residents call for ban on leaf blowers
These noisy things are one of the worst extremes of modernity. What can they do that a good old-fashioned straw broom cannot do twice as fast? I know of nothing
A push by eastern suburbs residents to ban leaf blowers is likely to fail after Waverley Council distanced itself from their campaign and one councillor called the idea “nanny state gone mad”.
The community-based Bondi Beach Precinct asked the council to consider banning gas-powered leaf blowers, which it said inflicted psychological and health damage on residents forced to stay at home because of COVID-19 restrictions.
A precinct spokeswoman said noisy leaf blowers were a significant community concern. “With current lockdown orders in place and many residents in our high-density area spending more time indoors,” she said.
“The intrusive and environmentally unfriendly leaf blowers are a significant irritant, so we feel this conversation is worth having with the aim of transitioning to better alternatives.”
The council voted in favour of a motion from Greens councillor Dominic Wy Kanak to “liaise” with the precinct about the adverse effects of leaf blowers including excessive noise and low frequency vibrations.
But Waverley’s Labor mayor Paula Masselos said the council had not called for a ban on the use of leaf blowers. She said she supported the motion because “it is our role as elected officials to listen to concerns of residents when raised with council”.
The precinct passed its own motion detailing the impact of leaf blowers, which also said residents were disturbed by leaf blowers up to 15 times a day “often at extremely disturbing noise levels”.
“Most residents agree that gas powered leaf blowers achieve nothing,” the motion said. “One operator blows it from one property to the next or onto the road, and another operator comes along and blows it right back.”
The precinct’s resolution suggested gardeners could use electric versions of most power tools or “old school manual gardening methods”.
“Regardless of the alleged productivity loss, the psychological, environmental and economic arguments for banning gas powered leaf blowers are so overwhelming,” it said.
Neighbouring Woollahra Municipal Council received six complaints about leaf blowers in the past year, while Ku-ring-gai Council on Sydney’s north shore had 13 complaints.
A Woollahra Council spokesman said no council had the power to ban or restrict the use of leaf blowers, but legislation limited when they could be used.
“We use both petrol and battery-operated leaf blowers,” he said. “As battery-operated blowers are quieter, our staff use these versions in high-density residential areas and business centres.”
Bondi Beach landscape gardener Wojtek Skibowski said he was surprised by the campaign to ban gas-powered leaf blowers given other equipment such as lawn mowers and whipper snippers made a similar level of noise. “To be honest, in six years I’ve never heard anyone complain,” he said.
Mr Skibowski also uses electric leaf blowers but he said they were not as efficient. He said leaf blowers were used for more than just getting rid of fallen leaves.
“I also use it for blowing dust and rubbish that’s left over,” he said. “To do a clean up job, it’s almost impossible without a leaf blower.”
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Labor finally dumps hated negative gearing policy after disastrous election loss and backs tax cuts for well-off Australians
Federal Labor has scrapped its disastrous negative gearing policy and decided to back tax cuts for well-off Australians.
Leader Anthony Albanese wants the next election, which is due before May, to be all about Scott Morrison's 'failure to manage the pandemic' instead of tax policy.
Former Labor leader Bill Shorten wanted to scrap the negative gearing policy which allowed property investors to deduct rental losses from their income tax.
But the plan went down like a lead balloon with landlords and aspiring investors - and contributed to his shock election defeat to Mr Morrison in 2019.
Labor has also declared it will not seek to overthrow the Coalition's stage-three tax cuts which come into play on July 1, 2024.
The cuts abolish 37 per cent income tax rate which kicks in at $120,001 and lift the upper threshold of the 32.5 per cent rate to $200,000.
Labor was previously divided on the cuts because they will benefit higher earners. The average full-time income in Australia is $89,000.
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers even allegedly called the cuts 'offensive' during a shadow cabinet meeting in June 2019.
Mr Albanese has also ditched Mr Shorten's plan to halve the 50 per cent capital gains tax deduction for assets held for over 12 months.
The move brings Labor in line with the Coalition on tax policy, therefore avoiding an argument about it at the next election.
Mr Albanese announced his policies on Monday after a meeting with Labor MPs and senators.
He said: 'Our focus is on making sure Australia emerges from this crisis stronger and more resilient – with an economy that works for working families not the other way around.
'When it comes to the economy, the next election will be about the Prime Minister's dangerous and costly failures to manage the pandemic.
'His failures on vaccines and quarantines have caused lockdowns 18 months into this pandemic, and those lockdowns are causing billions of dollars in damage to the economy.'
Mr Albanese, who has represented Grayndler in Sydney's inner west since 1996, said he wanted to provide 'certainty and clarity to Australian working families after a difficult two years for our country and the world.'
Minister for Housing Michael Sukkar said voters should not trust Labor on tax and housing policies.
'In a cynical move that is unashamedly motivated by the pursuit of power, Anthony Albanese is now trying to convince voters that Labor doesn't want to abolish negative gearing or raise taxes on capital gains,' he said.
'Ending negative gearing is an issue that senior Labor figures are deeply committed to.'
Mr Albanese already ditched Mr Shorten's unpopular franking credits policy in January.
The policy would have stopped non taxpayers - mostly retirees - claiming money back from the government for tax paid on shareholder dividends.
It was branded the 'retiree tax' by the Coalition during the 2019 election campaign.
Mr Morrison is under huge pressure over the nation's stunted Covid-19 vaccination program which has only jabbed 16.13 per cent of over 16s, leaving millions in lockdowns across three states.
'His failures on vaccines and quarantines have caused lockdowns 18 months into this pandemic, and those lockdowns are causing billions of dollars in damage to the economy,' Mr Albanese said.
'Over eight long years in government, the Coalition's record is clear in the lives of everyday Australians: stagnant wages, insecure jobs, increased costs for health care and childcare, longer waits to see a GP, and a trillion dollars in debt
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
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Wednesday, August 04, 2021
Official photo of Ben Roberts-Smith was altered to hide Crusader’s cross
Former special forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith displayed a contentious Crusader’s cross on his uniform while on duty in Afghanistan, with the symbol later digitally removed by the Department of Defence in a widely distributed photo of the decorated war veteran.
The photo released by Defence at some time near January 2011 shows Mr Roberts-Smith wearing a blank patch on the front of his uniform after exiting a helicopter.
But The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age has obtained the original photo, which was taken on April 6, 2010, revealing Mr Roberts-Smith was in fact bearing the Crusader’s Cross.
Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James said displaying the symbol was “wrong morally” and “counterproductive”.
The symbol dates back to the 11th and 12th centuries when the Crusaders captured parts of the Middle East from Muslim control. Many Muslims find the cross to be offensive, particularly when displayed by western soldiers in their country.
A spokesperson for Defence said it “does not condone or permit the use, display or adoption of symbols, emblems and iconography that are at odds with Defence values”.
Mr James said wearing a Crusader’s cross was “simply unprofessional” and part of the poor cultural standards that were unearthed by the long-running Brereton inquiry.
“We know from the Brereton report that a lot of the things that were allegedly done were due to unprofessional actions,” he said.
“You’re fighting people motivated by Islamist extremism, and you’re in effect kicking an own goal by providing them with propaganda. That’s exceptionally dumb to do in a counter-insurgency war.”
Displaying symbols such as the Crusader’s cross or Spartan-style insignia was widespread within the ADF at the time the photo was taken. In 2018, then-Chief of Army General Angus Campbell issued a directive to commanders that they should stamp out all instances of “death symbology and iconography”.
Under Defence policy, the department can make minor alterations to images for reasons related to operational security or privacy concerns. According to Defence, it has been unable to identify at what stage in the approval process the image was modified and whether this occurred in Afghanistan or Australia.
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils executive member Mohammed Berjauoi said Western forces should not invoke the Crusades when conducting military activity in the Middle East.
“Whoever uses that symbol provokes Muslims and increases anger against the West. It is the wrong thing to do,” he said.
“It undermines the Australian policy, which calls for peace in the world. We know it’s not the policy of the Australian government – but one mistake like this upsets a lot of people and makes them really think about the role of the Australian government in the Middle East.”
The altered image of the former SAS corporal was among several that were publicly released to coincide with the presentation of the Victoria Cross to Mr Roberts-Smith in 2011 and was published on the Defence image gallery. It has been published by multiple media outlets over the past decade, including News Corp papers and The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, as well as the Australian War Memorial.
A spokesperson for the AWM said the image with the blank patch was “supplied by the Department of Defence to the Australian War Memorial and is the only version held by the Australian War Memorial”.
“The photo was available to view on the Memorial webpage soon after the accession date in February 2011 and remained online until it was removed on 01/04/2021 when its status was changed as part of an internal collection management process,” the AWM spokesperson said.
The Australian Federal Police is currently investigating Mr Roberts-Smith over allegations he committed war crimes and intimidated war crimes witnesses. Mr Roberts-Smith has denied all wrongdoing and launched a defamation action against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald over reports that he allegedly committed murder on deployments to Afghanistan.
The Brereton inquiry, which last year found credible evidence of 39 unlawful killings of Afghan civilians or prisoners by Australian soldiers who were not named, raised the alarm about a “warrior culture” within Australia’s special forces and “the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it”.
“Special Forces operators should pride themselves on being model professional soldiers, not on being ‘warrior heroes’,” Justice Paul Brereton said.
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Alan Jones column pulled from The Daily Telegraph amid anti-lockdown, COVID-19 controversies
News Corp’s Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph will stop publishing columns from controversial broadcaster Alan Jones after weeks of anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown commentary.
Sources said The Daily Telegraph’s editor Ben English has informed Jones his column will no longer appear in the Sydney-based publication. The sources said the decision was made on the basis that the column failed to resonate with readers, a claim that Jones rejects.
Jones publishes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph (which appears in The Gold Coast Bulletin and Courier Mail), and also writes a column for The Australian’s sports pages. He has not published a column in The Daily Telegraph since last Thursday. His column in The Australian usually appears on Friday.
News Corp declined to comment.
Jones confirmed he was no longer publishing the column, but denied that it wasn’t resonating with readers.
“If the argument has been it’s not resonating, I don’t have to defend myself,” Jones told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“Have a look at Sky News YouTube, Sky News Facebook and Alan Jones Facebook and you can see. The same column that I write for the Tele goes up on my Facebook page.
“The public can check it for themselves. Thirty-five years at top of the radio and I don’t resonate with the public? Honestly.”
The end of Jones’ column follows another period of intense scrutinyon the veteran radio broadcaster, including fierce criticism from his former colleagues such as Ray Hadley and the ABC’s Media Watch program.
Hadley, 2GB’s mornings host who worked with Jones for decades, stepped up his war against the veteran broadcaster this week, describing his conduct as “scurrilous, contemptible and undignified”. 2GB is owned by Nine, the owner of this masthead.
“On Sky News every night Alan Jones is an apologist for these thugs,” Hadley said. “Let me tell you something, half of what Alan says is very well researched. The other half is bullshit.”
Earlier this month, Hadley said Jones was doing himself, Sky News and the Australian public “a great disservice” after he used British data to suggest the Delta strain of COVID-19 was far less dangerous than the original virus. Sky News was forced to correct the record after a Media Watch episode exposed Jones and Craig Kelly’s misleading information about COVID-19, vaccination safety and the Delta strain.
When Jones appeared on air with KIIS FM’s Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson, the radio company beeped out some of his claims about the coronavirus pandemic after he used the opportunity to rail against the current NSW lockdowns.
Jones says he does not believe his comments are controversial and argues that he removes himself from the topic and only cites experts. Jones has received the first dose of AstraZeneca.
Sources familiar with English’s decision said he had been considering replacing the column for some time, as it was not resonating with readers. But others indicated Jones’ commentary in recent weeks had contradicted News Corp’s pro-vaccination news coverage, and that was likely the reason for the change of heart.
The end of the column also coincides with Jones’ contract negotiations with Sky News. Jones began a four-night-a-week program on Sky News following his exit from 2GB breakfast radio last July. The Australian has reported his contract will expire in November. The negotiations are expected to begin next week.
Jones has spoken about the possibility of a return to radio multiple times in recent weeks. He floated the idea with KIIS FM breakfast stars Sandilands and Henderson, and more recently his former colleague, John Laws, who runs a show on 2SM. Jones also told The Australian he would consider a comeback. However, it is unlikely that such a move would result in him running a breakfast show against his 2GB replacement, Ben Fordham.
The likelihood of a return would also depend on whether a company believes it can still get support from advertisers with Jones back on air.
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Why this document could change racial identity politics at Aussie universities forever - as Aboriginal Australians are forced to PROVE they are Indigenous
A regional Australian university will demand more proof that students are Aboriginal if they want to claim places meant for Indigenous candidates.
Newcastle University in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has introduced new measures to ensure Indigenous resources are going to those who need them.
The university already requires students to provide documentary proof of their Indigenous ancestry if they apply to access particular programs and services.
They must now also produce written evidence they are accepted by the community to which they claim to belong and have their identity assessed by a panel of experts.
Newcastle University has one of the nation's most stringent vetting processes to reduce the number of so-called 'box-tickers' who falsely claim to be Indigenous.
It also has one of the the highest Indigenous enrolments of any Australian tertiary institution, with more than 1,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
Associate Professor Kathleen Butler, head of the university's Wollotuka Institute, said further procedures were introduced this year to meet demands from the Indigenous community.
'There's an expectation that we're going to be the guardians of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander money and make sure that it's going to genuine students that are in need,' Associate Professor Butler said.
'I think that there's a broader community expectation as well that people who are receiving the funding are genuine.'
The move comes as the number of Australians who identify as Aboriginal continues to soar and amid concerns over what has been labelled Indigenous identity fraud.
More Australians self-identify as Indigenous in each successive Census than can be accounted for by birth rates, in a phenomenon also known as 'race-shifting', which distorts official records.
Daily Mail Australia has reported some 'race-shifters' are taking positions meant for Indigenous Australians and that the practice is particularly prevalent in academia and the public service.
According to federal government guidelines, a person is considered Indigenous if he or she is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, identifies as such, and is accepted by their community.
Associate Professor Butler said Newcastle University was putting a greater focus on that third 'community' criteria.
'It's really about not just biologically do you have an Aboriginal heritage but it's about do you live it,' she said.
'The core value has always been it's not enough to just be of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, you also have to have that lived experience in community and the acceptance by your community.
'That's always at the heart of the government's three-point definition but it's not how it has always been implemented in practice, nationally.'
A spokesman for the Department of Education, Skills and Employment told Daily Mail Australia: 'Verifying student and staff identities are matters for individual universities.'
Associate Professor Butler said Newcastle University's procedures for verifying identity had been refined over the years.
'I think for some universities they accept a statutory declaration,' she said. 'We have never accepted a statutory declaration.
'At every turn we've asked for something external to the individual but I don't think it would be fair to say that we've ever centralised it.'
Newcastle University's identity requirements apply to any applicant seeking access to study programs, student services or other opportunities specifically available to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australians.
They also apply to 'identified positions' for staff roles set aside for applicants who are Indigenous.
All applicants have to complete an 'Establishing Aboriginality and/or Torres Strait Islander Status Form'.
To prove they are of Indigenous descent an applicant can provide original or certified copies of birth records and/or evidence of an immediate family member's confirmed Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander status.
Immediate family members are parents, siblings or grandparents. Birth records need to show the relationship between an applicant and a relative recognised as Indigenous.
Alternatively, an applicant can produce a letter confirming their Indigenous status signed by an executive leader of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander organisation, such as a local land council.
The applicant must then prove they are accepted by the community in which they live or have lived, with a letter signed by a prominent member of an incorporated Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander organisation.
'Not just anyone can write it,' Associate Professor Butler said. 'To have that institutional letterhead you have to be recognised with some standing in the community.'
Where any doubt remains, the onus will be on the applicant to prove their Indigenous status.
'Of course it's quite bureaucratic and some people say, "I shouldn't have to provide that level of proof" and we understand people's feelings,' Associate Professor Butler said.
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Australia Is the Canary in the Coal Mine of Eroding Liberty
Over the weekend, Australians protested against a new round of lockdowns imposed to curtail the spread of the latest COVID-19 variant. Police arrested dozens of participants, vowed to hunt down more, and threatened mass arrests in the event of future acts of dissent. It was a chilling reminder of how far a nominally free country can fall when the public panics and officials see opportunity to expand power.
"Anger is growing in Australia as 13 million people – about half the population – endure fresh lockdowns to quash Covid outbreaks," the BBC reported last week. "A third state went into lockdown on Tuesday. Stay-at-home orders are now in place in South Australia, Victoria and parts of New South Wales."
"You must stay home," the government of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, starkly commands residents of the city. "Only leave your home if you have a reasonable excuse."
Unsurprisingly, those exhausted by a year-and-a half of restrictions on travel, commerce, and other forms of human activity took to the streets. Thousands of protesters flooded into Sydney to express their dissatisfaction with restrictive government policies. They were met with a heavy police presence and dozens of arrests—and threats to round up anybody who returns.
"There is some information on the internet at the moment about a potential protest this Saturday," huffed Michael Fuller, the Police Commissioner of New South Wales. "You will be arrested and prosecuted. The community has spoken about that behavior. The Premier has spoken about that behavior and it won't be tolerated again."
While the protest featured some violence (as did similar demonstrations elsewhere in the world) officials made clear that the behavior they won't tolerate is public dissent. Civil liberties may have a place, the powers-that-be suggest, but they must give way to more important concerns.
"Covid-19 has given rise to extraordinary emergency powers that would previously have been unacceptable to Australians," Lydia Shelley and John Coyne of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warned earlier this month about the need to better balance civil liberties with security priorities. "Australia is already conducting secret trials behind closed doors and allowing law enforcement raids on journalists' homes and on our national broadcaster," they added about developments predating COVID.
"A good 18 months into the pandemic, the nation is still trapped in April 2020," agrees James Morrow, federal political editor for Sydney's Daily Telegraph. "Australians need permission from the federal government to leave the country—applications succeed about half the time—and Australia's states throw up their borders against one another at the slightest hint of trouble."
What's remarkable is how quickly Australia has fallen. Just months ago, as reports from The Economist, Freedom House, and the University of Gothenburg's V-Dem Institute tracked the eroding health of liberal democracies in recent years, accelerated by authoritarian pandemic policies, Australia seemed to be holding on more effectively than countries including France and the United States. Admittedly, it wasn't so much swimming upstream as losing ground more slowly, but that was something.
Recently, though, Australia's decline has accelerated with remarkably little opposition. The Sydney Morning Herald even ran a piece headlined: "'Missing in action': What happened to the civil liberties movement?" about the tepid pushback against pandemic restrictions.
"We don't have much of a human rights culture, unlike, for example, Canada and America and Europe," Sarah Joseph, a professor of human rights law at Griffith University, told the newspaper in explanation.
"Australia also has no tradition of liberty in a sense Americans might understand, and appeals to freedom are looked at suspiciously," confirms Morrow.
One problem is that Australia has no Bill of Rights to which a liberty-concerned minority can turn when politicians push restrictions on freedom that enjoy at least temporary popular support, as they have in the United States as well as Australia. Some Australians even boast about that absence.
"The essence of my objection to a Bill of Rights is that, contrary to its very description, it reduces the rights of citizens to determine matters over which they should continue to exercise control," former Prime Minister John Howard told an audience in 2009. "I also reject a Bill of Rights framework because it elevates rights to the detriment of responsibilities."
True, constitutional protections for rights shield individuals from majority preferences—which is their whole purpose. In the U.S. during the pandemic, that has meant courts invalidate lockdowns, eviction moratoriums, and restrictions on private schools, even when a panicked public latches on to promises of safety. That's important partially because authoritarian dictates make trade-offs that many people wouldn't choose for themselves, and also because such impositions often prove to be ineffective.
Nor is this the first time protections for liberty have taken a turn for the worse in the land down under. As mentioned by Shelly and Coyne, Australian Federal Police raided media offices in 2019 after a series of embarrassing stories about military misconduct and domestic surveillance. The government also holds some trials in secret under the cloak of national security.
In 2018, the country's government gained the power to force access to encrypted communications and even to compel private companies to build in back doors. Anybody planning a new anti-lockdown protest via email or text messages should keep in mind that Big Brother might be watching.
"The truth is that, without constitutional guarantees, the measure of our freedom of expression has become that which remains after all the laws that restrict the right have been taken into account," Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, noted during a 2014 Free Speech Symposium.
None of this should be taken as grounds for complacency on the part of Americans who want to pretend that liberty is more secure here. The United States might have stronger constitutional protections for liberty, but that only slows the decline if the culture embraces authoritarianism—it's not an absolute barrier. Pandemic restrictions are popular with much of the public here, too. The surveillance state is alive and well in America. And the health of liberal democracy in our country has eroded in recent years as Americans turn against each other.
Australia is suffering a surge of authoritarianism, in part because of its lack of constitutional protections for liberty. But developments down under may be showing where America is going.
https://reason.com/2021/07/28/australia-is-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-of-eroding-liberty/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
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Tuesday, August 03, 2021
Pauline Hanson launches a blistering attack on Scott Morrison labelling him a 'fool' who has 'lost control' of Australia in epic tirade about Queensland's lockdown
At 4pm on Saturday, the local government areas of Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan City, Moreton Bay, Redlands, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Noosa, Somerset, Lockyer Valley and Scenic Rim faced the harshest restrictions the state has seen.
Residents in the affected areas can only leave home for essential work, study or child care, to exercise, buy food and supplies - and to receive healthcare, including being tested for COVID-19 or vaccinated against it.
Any non-essential travel must be within 10km from home, everyone must wear a mask when they are outside their home - and people doing exercise can do so with one person who does not live with them.
The lockdown, which Deputy Premier Steven Miles labelled the 'strictest we've seen', infuriated the One Nation Party founder.
'Like a lot of Aussies I was out enjoying my weekend but now we are going to have to be locked down,' Senator Hanson said in a video shared on Saturday.
'It is bloody ridiculous for only six cases of delta. I'm sorry this is over the top.'
'The prime minister said yesterday it would get no worse than what it is at this point, he's supposed to guide us through this with the premiers.
'As I've said all along the prime minister has lost control of the country and the premiers are doing whatever they want to do. I feel sorry for small businesses.'
A fuming Ms Hanson said premiers and chief health officers were calling lockdowns 'at the drop of a hat' and claimed Mr Morrison was 'foolish' for allowing them to do so.
'Give people clear direction and what's going on,' she said.
The new cases in Queensland are confirmed as the highly contagious Indian delta strain of the virus.
Deputy Premier Miles said the state had no choice but to impose the harsh restrictions.
'We have seen from the experience in other states that the only way to beat the Delta strain is to move quickly, to be fast, and to be strong,' he said. 'This will be the strictest lockdown that we have had.'
Funerals and weddings will be reduced to ten people and hospitality venues will be limited to takeaway only.
The restrictions apply to anybody who has been in any of the 11 LGAs from 1am on Saturday regardless if they've since left the area.
Masks will be required for both students and staff at high schools.
It comes a day after Indooroopilly State High School in Brisbane's inner west was forced to close for a specialist deep clean while Queensland Health performed contact tracing on a Covid positive 17-year-old schoolgirl and her family.
The six new cases recorded on Saturday are all linked to the teenager who is believed to have caught the virus from a medical science student and tutor from the University of Queensland.
The tutor was confirmed positive on Saturday and it's believed she contracted the virus from a returned traveller in hotel quarantine who was transported to hospital.
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The vindication of AstraZeneca: A vaccine trashed by Macron, politicised by Europe but quietly saving lives across the world
Last week research scotched claims the Oxford vaccine posed a blood clot risk. But the mixed messaging has caused lasting distrust
A new study of more than one million Covid-19 vaccine recipients has concluded a rare blood clotting side effect is as likely to occur from a Pfizer jab as the much-maligned AstraZeneca vaccine.
In a paper pre-released in The Lancet, researchers from the UK, Spain and the Netherlands said both jabs have a "similar" incident rate of thrombosis.
"In this study we have found the safety profiles of ChAdOx1 (AstraZeneca) and BNT162b2 (Pfizer), an mRNA-based vaccine, to be broadly similar," the paper explained.
The study of Spanish patients also found blood clots are more common in people who test positive for Covid-19 than those who have received either jab.
While the paper is not yet peer reviewed, it is an alarming development that will put into question the narrative around the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia, where confidence in the jab plummeted earlier in the year following the reporting of fatal cases of blood clotting.
Mixed messaging around the vaccine has led to hesitancy at a time when the nation, particularly NSW, needs to reach a high level of vaccination to fend off surging rates of the highly-infectious Delta variant.
While Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has repeatedly stressed the benefits of the AstraZeneca jab outweigh the risks, there has been conflicting advice from other health authorities, notably Queensland's Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young.
When Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged under 40s to seek advice on the AstraZeneca jab last month, Dr Young said she "genuinely did not understand" why Mr Morrison would make such an announcement.
"I do not want under-40s to get AstraZeneca," she stressed, saying there was minimal death in young Australians from Covid.
As cases of blood clotting arose earlier in the year, believed to be thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) advised against under 60s receiving the AstraZeneca jab.
Such mixed messaging has led to an increase in people eligible for the jab holding out for the scarce Pfizer vaccine, including those who have had one AstraZeneca jab.
Weighing up the heightened risk with Delta outbreaks, ATAGI has since changed its advice, telling over 18s they can seek GP advice on the AstraZeneca.
Experts fear lasting damage from mixed messaging
Professor Greg Dore, an infectious diseases expert at UNSW's Kirby Institute, told the Sydney Morning Herald Australia will "look back on anti-AstraZenecism as one of the greatest public health failings in many years".
“Even though we’ve seen many young people coming forward for AstraZeneca, many more older people are still ‘waiting for Pfizer’ due to irreparable damage by some in the medical profession and other commentators," he said.
Dame Sarah Gilbert, the vaccinologist who co-developed the AstraZeneca jab, told the publication she feared people are "too worried" after receiving mixed messages.
"I think the problem is the messaging around the vaccination, because if you’re telling people at some stage, ‘oh you shouldn’t have this vaccine, it’s probably not the best thing for you’ and then you want to change that message and say ‘oh, no we’ve changed our mind, it is good’, I think that makes it difficult for people who are considering whether to get vaccinated and when to get vaccinated," she said.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/shock-finding-covid-vaccine-study-pfizer-astrazeneca-004137574.html
*************************************Modern dating is a minefield at the best of times, let alone when you add QR codes, social distancing and face masks into the mix.
Rebekah Scanlan
It makes the already difficult task of finding a “good one” amid the sea of never ending red flags – and those who just want to get a leg over – even harder than it was before.
It is impossible to meet someone in a nightclub or a bar, and don’t get me started on the cesspool known as dating apps. Even when you score a date with someone who doesn’t appear to be anti-vax or a covid-conspiracist (I wish I was joking), the natural flow of meeting up with them has been completely disrupted.
You can’t meet someone for a drink and see how the night goes. Even going to dinner is difficult – it requires a booking and down payment which is a big ask considering the chance of being ghosted is very real.
Granted, none of this makes dating impossible, but it certainly steals spontaneity – a widely credited ingredient for romance.
Juggling those covid-dating rules has become a moot point in recent weeks with the return of the lengthy lockdown in Sydney – which, for a 35-year-old woman, is a big deal.
The reality for me is that covid, and the endless lockdowns, come at a time when my biological clock is ticking – fast – and could cost me a chance at motherhood.
I get that lockdowns are devastating for everyone – they kill small businesses, families across different states have been separated for months, and there are thousands of Australians stranded overseas, unable to get home. But for me, the crisis is very personal.
It’s this feeling of frustration that led me to bash out 140 characters on Twitter when news broke that Sydney’s lockdown was being extended by four weeks.
“I’m really mad. Lockdown extended another 4 weeks. This is a joke. We’re being robbed of our lives, time we will never get back,” my tweet began. “As a 35-year-old single woman who would like to have a family one day, these months dictate whether or not that can happen for me. Mad is an understatement.”
Boy, did those few words resonate with the masses – more than 12,000 ‘liked’ my tweet – but there was also an avalanche of people who thought the price I’m likely to pay wasn’t worthy of my public complaint.
Some of the nicer critics rightfully pointed out that I was single before the pandemic, so I couldn’t blame my situation on lockdown.
I have been aware of the ticking of my biological clock for a while. It’s been shoved down my throat by society at every opportunity since turning 30, long before coronavirus became an everyday word in our vocabulary.
Dr Mikayla Couch, an obstetrics and gynaecology registrar at NSW Health, said many women feel this suffocating panic.
“The biological clock is a metaphor that society has created to describe the sensation of pressure many people feel when they are at the peak or past their peak of reproductive years,” she said.
She explained the average age of women having their first child had increased over time, largely because we are “seeking work and university studies before starting a family”.
In 2009, 27.9 years was the age women would, on average, have their first child. By 2019, that had risen to 29.4.
While men waiting until their 30s to settle down is often encouraged, for women it is seen by society as a “short-falling”.
This was evident in the backlash I received to the admission of my fertility fears.
I was called a “whining entitled adult” and told by many men I was well past my sell by date. Some even pleaded with me not to procreate, claiming a child born with my “wholly abhorrent selfishness” is something the world could do without.
Others tactfully told me to “get a grip”, labelling me a snowflake who was prioritising my own wants over the needs of the community.
These angry people were missing the point.
This isn’t a competition about who is getting screwed over the most by covid. Trust me, that’s a game no one wins.
Dr Couch is a single, 31-year-old Bundjalung woman who lives with anovulatory polycystic ovarian syndrome which means she doesn’t ovulate and has no chance of falling pregnant naturally. She’s also a fertility expert who informs me I’m not alone.
“We are now in the midst of the second year of the covid pandemic and for some women with lessening egg numbers, the fear of not having children is real,” she said.
“Everyone has their own priorities, but if starting a family or at least having the option of starting a family is your priority, these last two years will have impacted your fertility journey.”
This was echoed by women online, many sharing their own frustrations, including tales of fertility treatments being placed on hold and partners being stuck interstate or overseas – preventing them from starting their baby-making plans.
“It’s really hard when your biological clock is ticking & for (the) last 18 months all egg freezing & fertility treatments (& partner finding) disrupted. You can’t understand it unless you are living it,” one woman wrote.
Another stressed that the “indefinite revolving door of lockdowns impede the ability to create new relationships and build trust”.
The pandemic certainly isn’t to blame for anyone’s fertility or relationship struggles, but it certainly amplifies it.
Australia rightly has compassion for the countless small business owners who are on the brink and the couples who have lost thousands of dollars every time a lockdown forces their wedding plans into chaos — but it appears there’s a real lack of empathy and understanding for someone worried their dream of having a family is slipping away from them.
It certainly seems my tweet made people squirm. Dr Couch suspects it is down to the fact fertility and pregnancy issues are “prohibited topics”.
But fertility is a dire covid crisis, one no one is talking about, and I’ve got no problem being the “entitled” millennial who brings it to attention.
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‘Fox News of Australia’ temporarily suspended from YouTube for allegedly spreading coronavirus misinformation
Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News Australia has been banned from posting new videos and live-streaming on YouTube for a week after violating the platform’s policies by sharing clips that allegedly spread misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.
The ban comes amid growing concern among some Australian political and media commentators about the way in which the once-niche pay TV station, which some have called the “Fox News of Australia,” has expanded its reach on social media by adopting methods that have helped make the Murdoch-controlled Fox News successful in the United States.
These include featuring some right-wing personalities that discourage viewers from taking the coronavirus threat seriously.
A YouTube spokeswoman said the company has “clear and established COVID-19 medical misinformation policies based on local and global health authority guidance, to prevent the spread of COVID-19 misinformation that could cause real-world harm.”
“We apply our policies equally for everyone regardless of uploader, and in accordance with these policies and our long-standing strikes system, removed videos from and issued a strike to Sky News Australia’s channel,” the spokeswoman told The Washington Post in an email.
YouTube didn’t disclose which videos violated its regulations and many remained visible on Sky News Australia’s channel Monday, including clips discussing potentially risky or unproven covid-19 treatments with limited context.
In October, Sky News produced a video in which Alan Jones, a high-profile Australian commentator, expressed doubts about mask-wearing and lockdowns, citing U.S. skeptics. Another video by Jones, titled: “Australians must know the truth — this virus is not a pandemic,” posted in September, garnered millions of views on Facebook. It isn’t clear if these videos were shared on YouTube.
(After having warded off the pandemic through a mix of geographical isolation and tight borders, Australia is facing a delta variant wave that it has struggled to quash.)
Sky News, which is no longer related to its better known British namesake, said in a statement Monday that it “expressly rejects that any host has ever denied the existence of COVID-19 as was implied, and no such videos were ever published or removed.”
Jack Houghton, an editor at Sky News, described the suspension as a “disturbing attack on the ability to think freely.” In a column posted Sunday, he wrote that “Holodomor, Auschwitz and Mao, are just three historical examples” where the “freedom to engage in debate and challenge conventional thinking and wisdoms were not always accepted as human rights.”
The Murdoch family took full control of Sky News Australia in 2016, through the local arm of News Corp. Its executives deepened the lineup of right-wing opinion shows that focused on hot-button topics such as immigration, climate change and, more recently, the pandemic.
News Corp didn’t respond to a request for comment. Fox News, which is owned by another Murdoch company, has also made a public service announcement featuring its anchors and correspondents encouraging vaccination. A Sky News Australia spokeswoman said the broadcaster supports “broad discussion and debate on a wide range of topics and perspectives which is vital to any democracy.”
Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of the center-left Labor party, on Monday accused the broadcaster of “following the Fox News model” and “deliberately cultivating an anti-fact, non-science base of support around Australia.”
Sky News’s YouTube channel has grown rapidly in recent years from fewer than 100,000 to 1.85 million subscribers. These are relatively modest numbers by global standards, but it is more than the news platform of the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corp. commands and sizable enough to give it large political sway, critics say.
“There’s a belief among Australian elites that nobody watches Murdoch’s Sky, but they’re wrong. Nine million Australians — that’s one in three of us — already do, and mostly online through YouTube and Facebook,” Rudd wrote in an email to The Post. “This is creating an alternative media ecosystem that encourages viewers to disbelieve science, disbelieve facts because Murdoch gets to make a boatload of money out of it.”
Rudd last year launched a petition calling for an inquiry into the political influence wielded by Murdoch’s Australian media empire, which he and at least one other prime minister have blamed for their political fall. The petition has garnered more than half a million signatures.
Murdoch, who was born in Australia and started building his empire there, has repeatedly played down his purported political influence in public over the years.
Sky News says it has published more than 20,000 videos on its YouTube channel over the past year. The clips draw viewers globally, including in the United States.
“Sky’s Australian stories get tiny audiences, but stories about the United States get vastly bigger ones, suggesting Sky has developed a following in the United States,” Denis Muller, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, wrote in an article in the Conversation earlier this year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/02/australia-fox-covid-murdoch/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
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Friday, July 23, 2021
How white Aussies who pretend to be Aboriginal are taking over universities and stealing high-paid jobs meant for real Indigenous Australians
Andrew Bolt blew the whistle on this some years back and was prosecuted for it
Aboriginal academic Victoria Grieve-Williams remembers the first time a white female acquaintance asked if she would support her claim to be Indigenous.
The woman was working in what was then the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and it would help her career if she was actually Aboriginal.
Dr Grieve-Williams, a Warraimaay woman from the mid-north coast of NSW and now adjunct professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, refused the woman's request.
'She actually called me and asked if I would support her in her claim to be an Aboriginal person,' Dr Grieve-Williams told Daily Mail Australia.
'I said to her that I couldn't do that because I didn't know anything about it. I'd always known her as a non-Aboriginal person.'
Ten years earlier the woman's mother, who worked at a university with Dr Grieve-Williams, had made a point of saying her daughter was not Aboriginal when they were discussing a particular course.
'Other people filled in the story with what was going on with her and why she wanted to be Aboriginal,' Dr Grieve-Williams said.
'A big reason was that she was working within ATSIC and they'd reclassified a job to be a position held by an Indigenous person. She told me that on the phone.'
The woman then sought to claim membership of an Aboriginal family group but they rejected her. A second mob did the same and she has since sought to identify with a third group that has not accepted her as one of their own.
The woman is now a professor at an Australian university where at least on paper she is considered Aboriginal.
Dr Grieve-Williams says the woman is one of growing number of Australians who claim to be Indigenous when they have no such ancestry.
These people are sometimes called 'box-tickers' - because they literally tick a box to say they are Aboriginal - but are known in Canada as Pretendians and in the United States as race-shifters.
Dr Grieve-Williams describes what they do as 'Indigenous identify fraud'.
'Aboriginal people are actually very badly affected by this,' she said. 'Universities and governments are employing so-called Aboriginal people without due diligence. 'High-level positions, huge salaries, great opportunities through Indigenous Business Australia, all of that's being gobbled up.
'There's no penalties, or checks and balances. These numbers are increasing.'
There is no way of knowing how many box-tickers there are in Australia but the practice seems particularly prevalent in academia and sectors of the public service where Aboriginality is sought and sometimes rewarded.
'It's a huge problem but the figures are difficult to assess,' Dr Grieve-Williams said.
Dr Grieve-Williams said Australian universities employed bogus Aboriginal academics as professors and right up to pro and deputy vice-chancellors.
How the government accepts Aboriginality
The federal government has applied a three-part test of Indigeneity since the 1980s. A person is considered Indigenous if he or she:
a) Is of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent
b) Identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and
c) Is accepted as such by the Indigenous community in which he or she resides or has resided.
When accessing services intended to address the social, health and educational issues that Indigenous people often face, proof of Indigeneity is required to ensure the intention of the assistance is honoured.
Most individuals seeking government assistance are required to provide a certified statement from an appropriately qualified individual or organisation (such as a local land council) to prove their identity and eligibility to receive services.
'The interesting thing I'm finding with my research is that Aboriginal people always recognise them, they always know they're not Aboriginal,' Dr Grieve-Williams said. 'Aboriginal people have been saying, "Hold on, that person isn't one of us" and nobody takes any notice.
'It's not only Aboriginal people who recognise it. It's non-Aboriginal people too.'
Box-tickers, who are concentrated in major east coast cities, are appropriating a culture that is not theirs and taking jobs and resources meant for Aboriginal Australians.
'It's very surreal, particularly to a person my age because when I grew up the worst thing you could be was Aboriginal,' Dr Grieve-Williams said.
'Aboriginal people were so scorned and vilified. There were these nasty "Abo" jokes. I couldn't begin to tell you the depths of racism that I experienced.
'We were always made to feel in deficit. And now the tables have turned right around but it's not the real Aboriginal people who are getting the benefit from all of this.'
There are particular benefits for box-tickers within academia who falsely claim to be Aboriginal.
'The benefits are to do with status, you have a certain status when you're a recognised Aboriginal person,' Dr Grieve-Williams said. 'But the main benefit is material.
'People get promoted very quickly. The interesting thing is box-tickers, or those committing identity fraud, seem to get the big jobs.
'They're promoted over other Aboriginal people. We joke and we say they're better at being Aboriginal people than we are.'
Until recently, the focus in Australia on box-tickers has been on outing individuals - in what some see as a witch hunt - but race-shifting is now recognised to be an international phenomenon.
Dr Grieve-Williams, a historian, spoke on the topic in May at a conference held by the Canadian Anthropology Society at the University of Guelph, Ontario.
She and fellow conference contributors were concerned the willingness to adopt a fake Aboriginal persona was causing real harm to genuine Indigenous people.
'I just thought this needs to be viable new area for research the way that it is in the United States and Canada,' Dr Grieve-Williams said. 'We need to be able to research this without a lot of opprobrium.
'The voices in Australia in defence of Indigenous identity fraud are very shrill, they're very damaging. You can be absolutely cancelled out because a lot of people have something to protect.
'One of the things that's been established in the United States and Canada is that the Pretendians support each other and it's the same thing in Australia.
'They will give each other jobs, they will give each other references, and they will often be quite aggressive and ostracising of real Aboriginal people.'
Dr Grieve-Williams said non-Aboriginal people taking public service jobs meant for Aboriginal applicants were known as 'nine-to-five blacks' and caused resentment.
'If you've got a person who comes in who calls themselves Aboriginal but who actually doesn't know anything about being Aboriginal then they rely on other people to inform them,' she said.
'They call them nine-to-five blacks because they're only black when they're in the office and then they go home to their white lives.'
Another term, 'black cladding', refers to a non-Indigenous business masquerading as an Indigenous business by deceptive marketing which invents or exaggerates Aboriginal involvement in the enterprise.
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt - who is Indigenous - said there were government guidelines to reduce such fraud.
'Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander identity is something that is personal and can be extremely complex,' the spokeswoman said.
'Where concerns around a person's Indigeneity are raised, it is important that these concerns are considered on a case-by-case basis in an appropriate and sensitive manner.'
A spokesman for the Department of Education, Skills and Employment said: 'Verifying student and staff identities are matters for individual universities.'
Dr Grieve-Williams was frustrated the box-ticking problem was not taken more seriously by governments.
She said any debate was stifled by those with vested interests and that the fakes protested personal offence when their Aboriginality was challenged.
'The people who are committing this identify fraud, they cry lateral violence. They say, "Are you questioning my Aboriginality? I'm getting traumatised by this".'
It is indisputable the number of Australians who say they are Aboriginal has been increasing for decades at a rate far faster than the broader population, or that can be explained by births.
The last Census, conducted in 2016, estimated there were 798,400 Indigenous Australians - Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or both - making up 3.3 per cent of the citizenry.
That number was an increase of 19 per cent - or 128,500 people - on the estimate of 669,900 from the previous 2011 Census.
During the same period the whole Australian population grew by just 8.4 per cent to 24,210,800.
Since the introduction of a Standard Indigenous Question in 1996 - 'Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin?' - the Census count of Indigenous Australians had increased by 83.9 per cent.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics cites several factors in this increase, including higher fertility rates among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.
But it also recognises some respondents change whether or not they identify as Indigenous between Censuses, the next of which will be taken on August 10.
Part of the increase can be attributed to Australians discovering a previously unknown forebear, or a late acceptance of a once-shunned Aboriginal ancestry.
But at least some of these box-tickers are likely to be moved by a belief that to be white in modern Australia is to accept being part of a dark colonial history deeply associated with guilt.
Anecdotes suggest there is a mindset that identifying as Aboriginal seems more exotic, or might somehow afford claimants some spiritual connection with the land that doesn't exist.
Censuses record Australians in age brackets and there are not enough 'new' Indigenous individuals in the 0-4 years range each five years to account for the rise.
Between 2011 and 2016 almost every five-year Indigenous age cohort under 70 increased in size. And where the increases occur shows box-tickers don't live in the bush.
'The growth in counts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons between 2011 and 2016 is not consistent across the country, with growth primarily occurring in major cities and on the eastern coast of Australia,' the Australian Bureau of Statistics states.
Dr Grieve-Williams has a store of tales about white people suddenly - or conveniently - deciding they were black.
'A friend of mine was running an ATSIC office in Tasmania in the 1990s and the Aboriginal population in Tasmania had just suddenly boomed by 13,000 people. She said people were just able to do it.'
'I'll never forget at one student meeting at a university in Brisbane this young man said that he was Aboriginal because he supported Aboriginal people's aims.
'He actually thought that was all he had to do to be Aboriginal. Then somebody said is your family Aboriginal and he said no.'
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'Sick and tired of sport being ruined by politics': Pauline Hanson unleashes on the Matildas for posing with the Aboriginal flag at the Olympics
Pauline Hanson has unleashed on Olypmic athletes the Matildas after they posed with the Aboriginal flag at the Tokyo Olympics.
The Australian women's soccer side posed with the flag ahead of their Olympic Games opener against New Zealand in Tokyo on Wednesday night.
Ms Hanson claimed the moment was 'a slap in the face to all Australians' and accused the team of 'hijacking' the sporting competition.
The One Nation leader claimed the gesture was a 'token' effort to be politically correct.
'Australians are sick and tired of their favourite sports being ruined by politics,' Ms Hanson wrote in her press release on Friday.
'Indigenous flags don't represent all Australians. There's only one flag which truly represents all of us.'
After they posed with the flag, The Matildas then stood arm-in-arm on the halfway line as their Kiwi opponents dropped to one knee in a show of support against racism prior to the kick off.
But Ms Hanson said the gesture was designed to 'inflame division' rather than promote solidarity.
'Taxpayers don't shell out millions of dollars to send Olympic teams to represent two nations. We're one nation, Australia, indigenous and non-indigenous alike,' she said.
'Australians supporting their Olympic team deserve an explanation from the Australian Olympic Committee, and I'm sure they want to know what the Prime Minister has to say about it too.'
The Aboriginal flag was declared by law as the of the official flags of the nation in 1995.
The design of the flag includes three colours - black representing First Nations people, yellow representing the sun, and red the earth.
Viewers watching back home appreciated the inclusive gesture, but some also questioned why the team chose not to pose with the Australian flag.
'Hey Matildas.. you represent Australia. The Aboriginal flag is not the Australian flag,' one fan wrote.
Another added: 'I absolutely love watching the Matildas play but why the hell did they display the Aboriginal flag and not the Australian flag? It is such a strange, divisive situation for a country to have two flags in my opinion.
Others accused the Matildas of making a political statement.
'When will sport just be about getting on and playing sport, yes I agree statements need to be made about political issues but there is a place for that to happen surely,' one viewer commented.
Another questioned why the Matildas also didn't take a knee prior to kick-off.
'Lots of questions about the Matildas at the Olympics. Strong choice in not holding the Australian flag only the Aboriginal flag, but then not taking a knee like their NZ counterparts. Anyone know why or did I miss it?,' one woman tweeted.
But many viewers were pleased to see the Aboriginal flag on display.
'Well done Matildas for standing arm in arm in a show of unity and togetherness for all Australian cultures , if only those who kneel new the true value of equality,' one fan wrote.
Matildas captain Sam Kerr defended the gesture after the match and said decided on consultation with fellow indigenous members in the squad.
'We are really proud of it,' the star striker said following the 2-1 win against the New Zealanders.
'It's something we spoke about a lot as a team. 'We let the Indigenous girls drive it.'
'We didn't want to do something that goes along with the grain, we wanted to do something that was relevant for our country.'
Australia takes on world number five ranked Sweden in their next clash on Saturday who caused a massive upset on Wednesday night by defeating gold medal favourites USA 3-0.
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Gas a critical interim energy source in move to renewables
When much of Queensland was blacked out by a power station explosion, it wasn’t renewables that came to the rescue, writes Des Houghton.
You could be forgiven for thinking there would have been a soaring demand for lovely green renewable power after the catastrophic explosion and fire that disrupted the Callide power station causing widespread blackouts in May.
Alas, it was not wind or solar power that came to the rescue, it was gas.
“The figures don’t lie. In Queensland’s hour of need it was gas that came to the rescue,” Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association CEO Andrew McConville said.
In fact the use of gas to generate power doubled to more than 20 per cent. Solar was hovering around 5 per cent and wind power much less.
“Gas has once again shown its versatility and reliability, literally keeping the lights on,” he said.
“Gas can do things that renewables simply can’t, including providing feedstock to manufacturing plants and helping create everyday products such as clothes, computers, phones, fertilisers and vital medical equipment such as heart valves.’’
The association’s Queensland chief Matt Paull said gas was worth $11.1 billion to the Queensland economy each year, and directly and indirectly employed more than 47,000 Queenslanders.
That is something for Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to ponder as she continues to demonise hydrocarbons and criticise federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese for visiting a mine.
Paull said the sector has also invested more than $70 billion in Queensland’s economy to develop the natural gas and LNG industries.
Government estimates Australia’s LNG has the potential to lower emissions in LNG importing countries by around 170 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year by providing an alternative to higher emissions fuels – the equivalent of almost one-third of Australia’s total annual emissions.
Renewables will have their day, but not yet.
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Australia's education crisis laid bare with shocking data showing one in five adults are unable to read or do math - as experts warn it will only get WORSE
Australia needs a national plan on reading, writing and numeracy for adults because learning at school is no longer enough, educators have told a federal inquiry.
The inquiry heard shame and embarrassment were also barriers to learning and people need to be reassured they are not alone.
One in five Australians, or around three million adults, have low literacy and/or numeracy scores, federal parliament's employment, education and training committee heard on Monday.
The educators and community workers called for a national plan to stop Australia from falling behind the rest of the developed world.
Language and literacy education expert Joseph Lo Bianco called for co-ordination, standard-setting and innovation from the Commonwealth.
'Adult literacy is no longer a welfare activity by good-hearted people,' Professor Bianco said.
'That's not enough.'
He said Australia was facing a historic moment as other nations adjusted to technology.
'We have to keep in mind artificial intelligence which, combined with cyber systems, is going to require much higher levels of comprehension and functioning than we've ever had.'
People who are adequate on reading and writing often nosedive in performance when numbers and charts are added, the committee heard.
Rapid change means learning on the job is becoming too risky.
Adult educators said farmers were coming forward to seek help in understanding the use of toxic chemicals and making critical decisions.
Australian Council for Educational Research spokeswoman Louise Wignall said aged care was another area needing strong digital literacy, for clinical notes and online learning for qualifications.
People need to know what words mean when applied in the real world.
'In real estate, it's location, location, location. In literacy, it's context, context, context,' Ms Wignall said.
Numerous reviews over the years have highlighted the need to target and support the improvement of adult and youth language, literacy, numeracy and digital literacy across Australia.
Lowitja Institute chair Pat Anderson slammed mainstream models for First Nations peoples.
'These models in the past have just not worked,' she said.
Ms Anderson said it was public policy when her mother was young to not teach her to read and write.
'This is the perennial issue for the nation, that we still haven't really dealt with,' she said.
First Nations educators said bilingual learning would help young ones.
Australian Education Union boss Susan Hopgood said one quarter of Australian children arrive at school without the skills they need to learn, and never catch up.
'The intergenerational impacts of low literacy demonstrate exactly why the Commonwealth should prioritise resourcing for all levels of education,' she said.
The committee was keen on Victoria's state-funded 'learn local' model that offers a safe, non-stigmatised environment for adults.
'Learn local is really reducing a lot of barriers,' Victorian Council of Social Service policy officer Deb Fewster said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
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Monday, July 05, 2021
Calls for the return of the one-year teaching qualification
The head of Catholic Schools NSW says a one-year graduate diploma of education should be reintroduced to make it easier for people who hold other degrees - particularly in maths and science - to become teachers.
A teacher shortage is already biting in NSW, particularly in regional and disadvantaged areas, and will get worse as a large group of older teachers retire and fewer young people elect to begin teaching degrees.
As the Herald reported last week, the number of students beginning education degrees in NSW dropped by almost a third between 2014 and 2019, and a national study found about half of students that do begin don’t finish.
A NSW Education Standards Authority study last year also found about 10 per cent of teachers leave the profession within six years of graduating.
Aspiring teachers can either study a four-year undergraduate degree, a five-year combined degree, or a master’s degree, which takes roughly two years. They must also pass literacy and numeracy tests.
They used to be able to do a one-year graduate diploma, but that was cut under a new, national approach to the accreditation of education degrees, phased in from 2013, which required all postgraduate programs be two years’ long.
“The trend in postgraduate completions since 2014 has seen a greater decline in ITE [Initial Teacher Education] completions relative to all fields (which have increased),” said a recent Commonwealth discussion paper, issued as part of a federal review of teaching degrees.
Catholic Schools chief executive, Dallas McInerney, said the teaching profession should be a standards-based one, and NESA and the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership were already responsible for establishing and monitoring those standards.
But with standards in place, there should be flexibility in how potential teachers reached them. “If the standard is fixed, then the time meeting it or the way you meet those standards can be variable,” he said. “The variable could be the two-year master’s, a one-year dip ed, or recognition for past learning.
“I don’t think we should get rid of the two-year master’s. There’s a place for it, and those who want a more fulsome experience should have it. But we need to contemplate that the one-year dip ed is the right thing for some people … particularly in secondary settings.”
Many within the profession argue that a one-year course would be too short for primary school teachers, as they have to teach across the curriculum and understand child development. But it could suit secondary teachers who already have a degree in the subject they intend to teach.
However, Professor Mary Ryan, the president of the NSW Council of Education Deans, said governments should “be very careful” about reducing the time for a degree as much work has been done on quality preparation, “particularly in light of the increasing diversity of student cohorts and contexts”.
“We need teachers to understand how to gather, interpret and use multiple forms of evidence to improve teaching and student outcomes, including wellbeing outcomes,” she said.
“We can certainly look at flexible approaches that get teacher education students into paid positions a bit sooner while they continue their degree.”
But Professor Ryan said there were other reasons the profession was struggling to attract recruits, such as pay and lack of career progression, as it only takes six to eight years to earn the maximum salary.
Geoff Newcombe, the head of the Association of Independent Schools NSW, also opposed the re-introduction of the one-year qualification, saying teaching was more complex than ever and required a wide range of skills.
“We certainly need more teachers, but we need them with a new skill set,” he said. “Our teaching institutions have to graduate teachers as close to classroom ready, and our schools have to support them. Our focus has to be on quality.”
He said systems should look at alternatives such as a “sophisticated apprenticeship model”, and having more professional, non-teaching roles within schools, in areas such as wellbeing and mental health.
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Weaponizing our criminal justice system against men
Bettina Arndt
I have a revelation for you – a tribute to the awe-inspiring success of the feminist juggernaut using our justice system to destroy men. Last week there was an important presentation by prominent Sydney barrister Margaret Cunneen. She was speaking at The Presumption of Guilt Conference run by the Rule of Law Education Centre.
As many Australians know, Cunneen is a woman with impeccable credentials to comment on the criminal justice system. She has spent well over 30 years at the coalface, decades as a crown prosecutor convicting some of our most prominent rapists and other villains and then, as a commissioner in charge of a large child abuse investigation. Now she’s back at the bar, successfully defending an endless queue of accused men, including many alleged rapists.
Her online presentation focussed on the impact of the new sexual consent laws that Attorney General Mark Speakman aims to ram through NSW parliament. Speakman appointed the NSW Law Reform Commission to examine proposed changes to these laws but then ignored their warnings about the injustice that could result and proudly announced he is giving the feminists what they want
Feminist academics have been lobbying for years for a yes means yes affirmative consent model where enthusiastic consent must be given at every stage throughout the sexual encounter. Under the new laws an accused must now prove to have taken active steps to ascertain consent throughout the sexual proceedings. And as Cunneen pointed out, this renders most of the sex most of us have as potentially illegal.
A perfect system
But the main game here is to provide more cannon fodder – a new supply of accused men to face a justice system already weaponised against them.
That was the real bombshell in the Cunneen presentation – her expose of the extent to which the feminists have already succeeded in stacking the system by removing the filtering system which once ensured that only rape cases with sufficient evidence went through to trial. Now almost all cases are pushed through into court, where many get thrown out by juries.
That means conviction rates go down, inspiring more rage from the feminists, more politicians frothing at the mouth demanding more be done to ensure the safety of women and ever more legal measures to ensure rapists get their comeuppance.
It’s just perfect, a carefully calibrated system to ensure the feminist project just keeps gaining more momentum - very like the ever-expanding definition of domestic violence, soon to include “coercive control”, which ensures an unending supply of victims and an expanding cash cow as governments pour in funds to address the problem.
Have a look at the small video I’ve made highlighting some of Cunneen’s key points. I do hope you will really help this gain public attention. This is the first time a major player has blown the whistle on the dire state of one of our key institutions.
What Cunneen says really matters.
The zeal to convict
What’s very telling is Cunneen talks about how much things have changed since she worked as a crown prosecutor. “Even before things used to hit the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, police had a filtering process. They are no longer permitted to do that.” No longer permitted to determine on the basis of evidence whether the case had legs. No longer permitted to do proper investigations to see where the truth lies.
Police are now required to refer in their “facts sheets” to complainants as “victims” and treat them accordingly, says Cunneen, adding police have very little discretion or often, none at all, about proceeding to charge.
As Cunneen explains, “with ownership of the case the police then want the case to succeed.” After the complainant has been declared a ‘victim,’ the system then takes hold. “There's not much more investigation that goes on, there's just a zeal to get to the end and to convict the charged person.”
How frightening is that? I’ve seen how this works in cases that I regularly encounter through Mothers of Sons and supporting accused students on campus. The police are hiding evidence that might weaken the case against the accused, they coach complainants to try to trick the accused into confessing in taped phone calls, they refuse to interview witnesses or examine social media evidence that could help the accused. The zeal works just one way.
Margaret Cunneen spells out the fact that we are now seeing lower rates of conviction because so many weak cases are no longer being filtered out by the police and Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The result is more cases failing, complainants feeling let down by the system.
But wonderful data providing fodder for the feminists to feed to our captured media to make the case for more to be done about our failed justice system.
The international cabal
Perhaps this seems a little far-fetched, suggesting that there is a deliberate effort to drive down conviction rates to promote more measures to convict men of rape?
Well, have a look at what’s happening overseas as feminist lawyers play the same blame game. Look at the news from the UK last week where the Justice Secretary Robert Buckland came under pressure to resign if he can’t reverse the plunging rape conviction rates. Within days he was on the BBC apologising to victims and promising to "do a lot better".
Similarly, over the ditch activists in New Zealand are in the news complaining the rate of successful rape convictions in 2020 was the lowest for more than 10 years.
Diana Davison is co-founder of The Lighthouse Project, a Canadian non-profit that helps the falsely accused. She reported this week that Canada now has “an automatic charge policy on sexual assault complaints. The police have no discretion and must lay charges if the complainant describes a sexual assault. Investigation is discouraged. Of course, this results in fewer convictions.”
In Canada too there are media headlines despairing that despite more rape victims coming forward these are resulting in fewer convictions. There’s a big push on for affirmative consent laws as well as specialized courts for sexual assault accusations. How’s that for a great idea to do away with pesky juries that mighty let rapists off the hook? The feminist inventiveness holds no bounds.
A criminal law is not a social work convention.
It’s highly significant when the first law officer for the state of NSW announces that his new sexual consent laws “send the message that survivor's calls for reform have been heard.”
Cunneen did a great job explaining that a criminal trial “is not a social work forum or a psychology convention. It's not there to provide the complainant with some kind of solace or affirmation or tremendous triumph. It's not about the complainant.” Cunneen explained that as a defence council, she tells juries that “it is a very nice and a lovely kind thing to believe your child or your neighbour or your friend if he or she says that they've been sexually assaulted. … But a jury has to act judicially.”
That means understanding that the criminal case is not about the victim: “It's the accused whose liberty is at stake in a criminal trial. It is he – generally it’s a ‘he’ - who's been arrested and thrown into custody until bail can be sought, who has had his home raided and searched by police, who's had to pledge his life savings or have his parents mortgage their house to get out for legal fees and whose life is on hold for two or three years.”
The stakes are high, warns Cunneen. “We are really blurring lines here and men, all men and mothers and sisters and friends of men ought to be very concerned because what wasn't rape last year may be rape next year if the purpose of these reforms is simply to increase the numbers of people who are convicted of rape.”
And that is the point. This has nothing to do with promoting justice. It is all to do with punishing men.
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The environmental case that was too confusing even for judge
A major criminal case stalled when a judge said the summary of the essential facts presented by the prosecution was gobbledygook.
District Court judge Leanne Clare SC told a pre-trial hearing she had difficulty understanding the case brought by the Crown against four Linc Energy directors charged with Environmental Protection Act breaches.
She struck out the particulars presented Ralph Devlin QC, instructed by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and asked for a new set to be presented to the court later this month.
Clare said: “I had expected that the Crown would distil its case in a way that was comprehensible by a jury.
“I just can’t leave a case to the jury in terms that you’ve expressed so far. It’s just so broad and so long and I had struggled to understand what is actually being said.
“I have to go through a process of translation for myself, but it’s just gobbledygook.’’
Clare said there needed to be more clarity and told Devlin “the Crown has to tie its colours to the mast, and it has to say what this case is about that can be grasped’’.
The charges relate to allegations of pollution caused at an experimental underground coal gasification plant at Hopeland on the Darling Downs.
In 2007 the venture was hailed by then premier Peter Beattie as a project of state significance using Smart State “clean-coal technology”.
Linc directors Peter Bond, 58, of Razorback, NSW, Donald Schofield, 70, from Texas, USA, Stephen Dumble, 60, of Dalkeith, Western Australia, and Daryl Owen Rattai, 61, of Maribyrnong, Victoria, now stand accused of failing in their duties as directors on various dates between 2007 and 2013.
It was alleged their wilful and unlawful activities contributed to serious environmental harm around the plant near Chinchilla on the western Darling Downs.
Devlin said the case was complex.
He said the prosecution would rely upon its expert evidence in relation to the deleterious impact on environmental values.
Clare said the alleged adverse impacts were not expressed in ordinary language.
She told the court: “It has to be in English and it has to be … something that is capable of being proved.
“You need to set out your core facts in a way that can be understood. And unless you can do that, I can’t send this case to trial.’’
She added: “I cannot direct a jury on these particulars in a way that I am confident they would understand.
“The Crown case needs to be clear; needs to be crystallised.”
The underground coal gasification process involved igniting coal underground and drawing off the gas through a series of wells.
Linc told investors it also wanted to produce gas-to-liquid fuels, including diesel and aviation fuel.
The court heard the trial due to start in December was complicated and would take four months, possible six. There were at least 30 witnesses. It is shaping up to be one of the longest and most expensive in Queensland history.
Divorce, bankruptcy and citizenship issues – these are all matters that might land you in court. But not all courts are created equal.
Crown Law had earlier identified 3000 documents it considered relevant to the case, said Justin Greggery QC, for Bond, a former chief executive at Linc Energy.
However, the defence had not received a crucial document pertaining to G1, or gasifier one, where the initial underground trials began.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE TIED)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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