Australian Politics
Wednesday, July 06, 2022
Religious group members arrested over eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs' death
This is a recurring problem. There are always some people who are so confident in their religious beliefs that they are prepared to risk the well-being of their children over it. On this occasion the fanatics discontinued the girl's diabetes medication in the belief that prayer alone would cure her
This is not a problem of religion. 99% of Christians don't go to such lengths. It is a problem of egotism -- of being certain despite all contrary evidence that you are right in your judgements. Inflated views of yourself too often lead to great evils.
The four men and eight women, aged 19 to 64, are expected to be charged with murder later today.
Elizabeth's parents, 50-year-old Jason Struhs and 46-year-old Kerrie Struhs, have already been charged over the girl's death.
Police said the group was aware of the eight-year-old's medical condition and did not seek medical assistance.
More than 30 officers conducted a search at a residence in Homestead Avenue, in Harristown, where 12 residents were arrested.
Detective Acting Superintendent Garry Watts said the investigation was unprecedented. "In my 40 years of policing, I've never faced a matter like this," he said. "And I'm not aware of a similar event in Queensland, let alone Australia."
Detective Watts said the group were expected to be charged tonight and appear in the Toowoomba Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
Sources have told the ABC the religious group is a small and tight-knit group with no ties to any established church in Toowoomba.
Jason and Kerrie Struhs, who are facing charges including murder, torture, and failing to provide necessities of life, were last before the Toowoomba Magistrates Court in late June.
Appearing via video link the pair again chose to represent themselves. They were remanded in custody and will return to court later in July.
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Aussies could be first in world to get Omicron booster
Australia is set to be one of the first countries in the world to get access to an Omicron booster jab.
Moderna’s new Covid vaccine designed to fight the original Wuhan strain of the virus, as well as the Omicron variant, is currently being assessed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
“If approved, the company will be able to supply this new Omicron-containing bivalent booster vaccine within weeks- putting Australia among the first countries in the world to have access to this new COVID-19 vaccine,” Moderna’s managing director in Australia Michael Azrak told News Corp.
Health Minister Mark Butler told News Corp he wanted to be on “the front foot” in accessing the most up to date vaccines.
“I’ve had encouraging discussions with Moderna and Pfizer about the challenges of the new sub-variants and the positive developments in vaccine technology,” Mr Butler said.
“My department is in negotiations about future supply arrangements, including for under 5-year-olds and the variant vaccines,” he said.
Epidemiologists and other experts have been calling for more Australians to get a fourth jab as hospitals and health services buckle under massive pressure from both Covid and the flu.
The government’s expert advisory group on vaccines the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) was meeting on Wednesday to decide whether more Australians should get access to a fourth Covid booster.
There are more than 16 million unused doses of the existing Covid vaccines siting in warehouses and doctors clinics.
Currently a fourth dose is only available to the elderly and those who are immunocompromised or suffering certain chronic conditions.
The existing Covid vaccines were designed to work against the original Wuhan variant.
A fourth dose of these vaccines has been shown in Israel to provide a 10-30 per cent increase in resistance to infection but this protection wanes within five to eight weeks.
However, this could be enough to get Australia through the worst of the winter outbreak.
But there is concern about whether the original jab provides much protection against the new BA. 4 and BA. 5 variants sweeping the nation.
These variants appear resistant to the existing vaccine and the antibodies produced by people who were infected with the original Omicron variant.
Mr Butler has appointed former Health Department chief Jane Halton to review Australia’s vaccine purchasing arrangements. She is expected to report within weeks.
Moderna said it “continues to have constructive discussions with the Australian Government regarding the supply of Moderna’s next generation Omicron containing bivalent vaccine booster for people 18 years and older”.
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The Key climate drivers behind record rainfall in New South Wales
The heavy rainfall along the eastern New South Wales coast that has led to major flooding in some catchments over the past week can be linked to changes to several climate drivers.
While the Bureau of Meteorology's latest climate driver update confirms the 2021-22 La Niña has ended, there are several other climate influences associated with above-average rainfall in eastern Australia.
The Bureau's 2022 winter outlook showed above average rainfall over the coming months, particularly for most of eastern and northern Australia, due to warmer than usual waters around the continent and more moisture-filled air being directed into eastern Australia.
The July rainfall event was influenced by the Indian Ocean Dipole, likely to become negative in the coming months, and the positive Southern Annular Mode (SAM).
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) refers to the difference in sea surface temperatures between the western and eastern Indian Ocean. In the negative phase, warmer waters concentrate near Australia, leading to above average winter–spring rainfall as more moisture is available to weather systems crossing the continent.
The SAM refers to the non-seasonal, north-south movement of the strong westerly winds that blow almost continuously in the mid- to high-latitudes of the southern hemisphere. In the positive phase, the SAM directs more moisture-filled air than usual into eastern Australia, driving above average rainfall and more east coast lows in winter.
During this recent rainfall event, very warm waters off the Australian coast (21-23°C) provided extra energy and moisture contributing to the deep trough and east coast low, leading to the relative concentration of the heavy rainfall to one 24-hour period.
The Campbelltown gauge, with more than 30 years of data, recorded its highest ever daily total rainfall amount for any month, while six gauges with more than 100 years of observations have set a record 4-day total for July.
Dozens of gauges from Nowra on the South Coast to Newcastle and the Hunter Valley have set daily rainfall records for July.
Media Release from Bureau of Meteorology [media@bom.gov.au] Issued: Tuesday, 5 July 2022
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Powering ahead on renewables, and damn the high costs
As Europe turns towards coal-fired power in response to scarce and expensive natural gas – think Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and Britain – it’s all systems go here for even more investment in renewable energy to generate electricity. This is notwithstanding the inherent intermittency of renewable energy and the problems of firming electricity to meet our 24/7 demand.
Last week’s release of the final version of the Integrated System Plan of the Australian Energy Market Operator is the latest example of well-intentioned aspiration trumping the grim realities of engineering and economics.
Against the backdrop of the closures of coal-fired plants that already have occurred, AEMO anticipates a further reduction of 8000 megawatts by decade’s end but concedes it may be 14,000MW – a big difference.
Look at what happened when the 1600MW brown coal-fired Hazelwood plant closed unexpectedly in 2017, in part because Victoria’s Labor government raised the royalty rate on coal. Wholesale prices shot up, notwithstanding the Premier’s assurances any price impact of the closure would be negligible.
Owners of power plants are now required to give at least three years’ notice of plans to close them. Origin Energy announced it would close its 2800MW Eraring coal-fired plant in NSW in 2025, bringing its exit forward by seven years. This case illustrates the potential strains the national electricity market will face.
AEMO’s response is to place great store by accelerated investment in renewable energy – AEMO’s chief executive describes the required expenditure as “staggering” – and to “urgently sanction $10bn of transmission projects”. The hope is that additional storage will enable the NEM to provide reliable electricity while meeting decarbonising objectives. What happens to price is another matter.
There is a chart in AEMO’s 100-page blockbuster which, by the way, is replete with dubious assumptions. There we learn about the rapid exit of dispatchable power, particularly brown and black coal. (They currently account for about 60 per cent of all power generated, on average.)
But since there are no realistic options for affordable, long-duration storage beyond pumped hydro (itself limited), the picture that emerges is a substantial fall in the proportion of dispatchable power that will be available. What occurred in the NEM recently – supply falling short of demand, rapidly rising prices and AEMO suspending the market – could become a regular occurrence.
Given the intermittent nature of renewables, it is necessary to have enough dispatchable power to cover close to the total amount of demand, despite the fact there will be times when renewable energy can meet more than 80 per cent of total demand. The degree of redundancy in the system is high and it’s one reason the cost of electricity is likely to skyrocket – it already has increased substantially – under AEMO’s scenarios.
It is worth querying AEMO’s call to arms on transmissions investment. The immediate projects cited are in the works but are unlikely to proceed at the pace AEMO regards as necessary.
There are significant problems securing planning approvals; locals understandably are not keen to have large pylons in their backyards. There are also shortages of necessary supplies and workers.
Bear in mind regulatory approval of new transmission lines guarantees a rate of return to the owner, which also drives up the price of electricity to consumers. A network of new transmission lines crisscrossing rural Australia, some of which will be lightly used, will help renewable energy get to market but will contribute to a further loss of affordability. (Transmission/infrastructure costs make up about 40 per cent of electricity prices.)
AEMO’s report was not the only one released recently that has a bearing on the NEM. The Energy Security Board issued a high-level design paper on a capacity mechanism. According to this report, “we could get the timing (of the transformation of the NEM) wrong (too little, too late) or the mix wrong (not enough dispatchable capacity, including long-duration storage, to firm variable renewable energy). The results would mean high prices (driven by scarcity and uncertainty-inflated costs of capital).”
One solution is to pay “providers of capacity to have their capacity available during certain periods, which will help reduce the risk of a disorderly transition”.
While the design features are important, the key is to ensure 24/7 power at the least cost by getting providers to bid in to auctions to meet specified capacity needs.
Such a mechanism is important to deal with low probability events with serious consequences. A prolonged windless period that occurred in Europe last year is a case in point. Solar power also can be disrupted for days at a time.
The possibility of a capacity mechanism is raising alarm bells with some green activists and renewables investors. Victoria’s Energy Minister unconvincingly declared that the building of offshore turbines in the state – at four times the cost of onshore ones – obviated the need for such a mechanism. There is some opposition to the inclusion of gas as a source of energy, while coal is close to a no-go.
The idea of each participating state and the ACT being able to specify their energy sources within a capacity mechanism could potentially sound the death knell for the NEM. After all, an electron is an electron however sourced and there are interconnectors between participants. In other words, this idea makes no sense at all. The only conclusion to draw is that the NEM is a complete mess and there is a strong likelihood that its performance may decline even further. The idea that we require even more renewables investment – a sevenfold increase, in fact – has to be assessed against the highly subsidised investment that has already occurred.
As the ESB notes, “since 2012, more than 90 per cent of investment in electricity generation in the eastern states has been in wind and solar. And, in per capita terms, Australia has the highest rate of renewable grid-scale generation in the world. It’s about 10 times the world average.”
Without dispatchable power, we are heading in the direction of possible blackouts and load-shedding and even higher electricity prices. The Europeans have woken up this fact; we are just late on the scene. By the time it is fully recognised that we have taken the wrong turn, it will be a long, painful and expensive process to rectify the problems.
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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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Tuesday, July 05, 2022
The big reason you can’t afford a home: Immigrants
There is nothing wrong with the government bringing in selected imigrants who will pull their weight economically but bringing in immigrants at twice the rate that new homes are being built is asking for trouble and very unfair to our young first-home buyers. They pay the penalty for irresponsible government
Apartment towers are springing up like mushrooms where I live in Brisbane but even they are not enough to house the huge numbers of imigrants received in recent years. The pandemic slowed down the rate of immigration for a while but there are no plans to make that permanent
Why are houses so ridiculously expensive in Australia? This, and other expletive-laden questions, I shouted at my screen while scrolling through realestate.com recently.
Is it because of our high wages? Maybe it’s because of Baby Boomers? Or is this just the way the world works, so stop asking questions?
Alan Kohler of the ABC puts it down to interest rates. Writers at The Guardian blame a lack of social housing. And politicians mutter something about supply chain issues, then quickly change the subject. Insightful as always.
As with most things, the simplest answer is often the first one overlooked.
Dr Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Economics and Chief Economist of AMP Capital writes:
‘Starting in the mid-2000’s annual population growth surged by around 150,000 people per annum and this was not matched by a commensurate increase in the supply of dwellings
‘The supply shortfall relative to population-driven underlying demand is likely the major factor in explaining why Australian housing is expensive compared to many other countries that have low or even lower interest rates.’
In non-economist speak, it’s supply and demand, stupid. Thanks largely to net-overseas migration, our population is growing faster than housing supply can ever keep up with.
Leith van Onselen, Chief Economist at Macro Business, echoes a similar sentiment, saying that though interest rates have had a major impact on recent rises, immigration is the longer-term driver of higher house prices in Australia.
‘Overseas migration rose from an average of 90,500 between 1991 and 2004, to 219,000 between 2005 and 2019… that’s 140 per cent annual average increase.’
Using data from the ABS, van Onselen finds a correlation between migrants overwhelmingly choosing to settle in Sydney and Melbourne, with an above-average rise in house prices in those areas.
Essentially, what van Onselen and Oliver have done is confirm a lot of people’s suspicions that growing our population without proper planning is dumb as nails and making people’s lives worse. Even monkeys could make better strategists.
Some might say that owning a house is a pretty integral part of, oh, let’s say civilisation. We know that upward pressure on housing prices puts downward pressure on wages, living standards, birth rates, and eventually, quality of life.
Why, then, is the topic utterly trivialised with shrugged shoulders and phoney solutions by our experts and leaders?
To paraphrase recent government policies: ‘Ha! Housing? Who cares! That’s the next generation’s problem. Up yours, kids.’
Indeed, the government either completely ignores the effects of migration on house prices, or they mindlessly promote it, citing the benefits of increasing consumer demand in an economy.
Yet presumably this ‘increased demand’ extends also to houses and rentals, not just things like chocolate bars and televisions. Oh, and not to mention the overbearing demand on infrastructure, roads, and health services. Is the air thinner in Canberra?
(Sardonically, they also state ‘improved social cohesion’ as one of the reasons for current migration levels, conveniently ignoring the fact that most Australians want less migration.)
Big business finds the government’s positive tone towards migration numbers highly agreeable. Of course they would, they’re the ones benefiting from it. To understand how, one simply needs to listen to their frequent and vocal calls for an even higher migration intake to do things like ‘boost productivity’ and, bizarrely, ‘increase wages’.
For years, Australians have asked for a reduction in migration so that housing, wages, and infrastructure can all have a much-needed breather. Yet time and again the government has blatantly ignored these calls, instead upping the numbers. If they’re not listening to us, maybe they’re listening to the people who benefit most from migration. You’ll find them on the donor list.
Money talks.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/the-big-reason-you-cant-afford-a-home/
***********************************************Quick jobs fix: import more skills, Skills Minister says
Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor supports bringing in more overseas workers to help fill immediate job vacancies in key parts of the economy, ahead of a longer-term fix of training Australians in growth industries, including blue-collar trades, IT and healthcare.
Mr O’Connor said a short-term solution to worker shortages would need to include full restoration of the temporary and permanent migration schemes.
In comments that will buoy business, he said he did not believe there was a binary choice between training Australians and supporting migrant workers, and both were needed to help the economy grow.
Mr O’Connor said a lack of skilled workers was one of the biggest economic challenges facing Australia, with the government, unions and employers poised to come up with a comprehensive plan to tackle the issue at a jobs summit in September.
“I believe that there’s a combination of investing in skills in the labour market, and also relying on the restoration of the skilled migration streams,” Mr O’Connor told The Australian.
“I’ll be very supportive if we’re attending … to the things we need to attend to quickly and can be attended to quickly, in part, only through the restoration of the skilled migration stream.
“But it never should be, and never will be under a Labor government, at the expense of investing in skills in our existing labour market. “It is never one or the other; it never should be one or the other.
“I think the previous government got a bit lazy and too reliant on those temporary skilled visas.”
Mr O’Connor said it was a mistake for the former government to allow droves of skilled migrant workers to leave Australia during the pandemic, arguing that they should have been considered for government support programs such as JobKeeper.
The push for more migrant workers comes as Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil on Sunday announced that international visitors no longer had to prove their Covid-19 vaccination status to be allowed in Australia.
“Removing these requirements will not only reduce delays in our airports but will encourage more visitors and skilled workers to choose Australia as a destination,” Ms O’Neil said.
The number of job vacancies reached a record 480,000 in May, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released last week.
This was a jump of 14 per cent since February and more than double pre-pandemic levels of about 225,000, with vacancies high across the economy including in construction, mining, healthcare, IT and retail.
There are 548,000 people who declare themselves as jobless.
With more than 40 per cent of blue collar trades suffering from worker shortages, Mr O’Connor said Australians were increasingly realising that a university degree was not the only way to obtain a fulfilling career.
“I think as a country we failed to properly appreciate and elevate and advocate the real benefits of taking the vocational, technical pathway to employment,” he said.
“The mindset has changed, not completely, but I think it’s getting a lot better. “There is some great, well-remunerated work in the traditional trades.”
Net migration in the 2021 financial year led to a population loss of 89,000, with the Coalition’s March budget “planning” on hitting the permanent net migration cap of 160,000.
On top of low permanent migration, business leaders complained that processing times for temporary skilled migration visas had blown out from an average of eight days before the pandemic to more than 70 days.
The Business Council of Australia in February called for the 160,000-a-year cap on permanent migration to be lifted to 220,000 for the next two years, before reverting to the pre-2019 cap of 190,000.
On Sunday, BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said addressing worker shortages was “not a choice between migration and domestic skills”.
“We have to do both,” Ms Westacott said.
“Realistically, there aren’t enough workers here today to fill the critical worker shortfall hamstringing businesses across the economy, from the local cafe to global investors employing thousands of Australians.”
Ms Westacott said the government needed to reform the migration system to ensure local firms could “outcompete others in the fierce global battle to attract the best talent and skills”.
“That means keeping (labour market testing) safeguards in place but speeding up visa processing, removing the friction that makes it difficult for prospective migrants to get to Australia and giving them access to four-year visas to make uprooting their families and moving across the globe more attractive,” she said.
ACTU president Michele O’Neil said she would support higher permanent migration levels if there was strenuous labour market testing.
“The ACTU supports increased permanent migration and independent verification of labour and skill shortages,” Ms O’Neil said. “After a decade of running down our TAFE and higher education systems, there is an urgent need to improve skills and training for local workers and increase women’s workforce participation.”
In an interview with The Australian in June, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said his priority was to address the blowout in processing times for Temporary Skill Shortage visas. He said he would also consider a broader overhaul of the immigration system to ensure it was compatible with the government’s skills agenda, flagging plans to have a stronger focus on permanent migrants more than short-term workers.
“We are worried about the drift away from the permanent model of migration that’s been a cornerstone for Australia as a very successful multicultural society,” Mr Giles said. “We’ve really got to focus on the national interest in terms of the economy, but also in terms of how our society functions … a society built principally on pathways to permanency.
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Did mass-migration topple Australia's Christian culture?
The first tranche of results from the 2021 Census, released last week, confirmed that Australia is experiencing a revolution in its demographic and cultural character.
For the first time in Australia’s history, those identifying as Christian are now a minority. Whereas 86.2 per cent of Australians listed a form of Christianity as their religion in 1971, by 2016, that was down to 52 per cent. In 2021, it had plummeted to 44 per cent, a decline of over 15 per cent in a mere five years.
Christianity arrived on these shores with the first British settlers and profoundly influenced the development of Australian society. It has been argued that Christian churches did ‘more than any other institution, public or private, to civilise Australians’.
For previous generations of Australians, Christianity was not simply a matter of private faith but a major ingredient in Australian public life, shaping our laws, politics, and culture. The unfashionable truth is that Christian tenets helped furnish us with a common moral and ethical framework.
But that common framework is disappearing. As The Australian’s Paul Kelly observed:
‘Churches have moved from the centre of our public life, religious figures are accorded diminished attention and the Christian faith is challenged in the public square… The consequence is apparent: Australia is more divided on the pivotal moral issues, once seen as the bedrock for a stable cultural order.’
The decline of Christianity in Australia is not the only epochal change captured in the 2021 Census. The Census also found that nearly half of the population (48.2 per cent) had at least one overseas-born parent and 27.6 per cent of the population was born outside of Australia – a record high. Almost a quarter of the population (24.8 per cent) spoke a language other than English at home. Of the over 5.5 million who spoke a different language at home, 852,706 reported that they did not speak English well or at all.
These shifts are in large part the result of decisions by successive federal governments since the mid-2000s to massively increase immigration levels. The numbers were ramped up during the final years of the Howard government, with an effective doubling of the intake. Immigration increased even further under Rudd and remained at extraordinarily high levels – around 240,000 a year in net terms – until Covid forced the closure of Australia’s borders. Despite the majority of Australians wanting lower immigration, the recently-ousted Morrison government was planning a return to ‘Big Australia’ immigration levels.
Australia, it has been remarked, is in the midst of an unprecedented mass immigration experiment the likes of which the developed world has never seen. No other major Western country has such a high proportion of foreign-born residents and recent migrants. Our 27.6 per cent of residents born elsewhere compares to 13.7 per cent in the United States and 14 per cent in the United Kingdom and Sweden. Even Woke-left, ‘post-national’ Canada doesn’t have such a high proportion of migrants.
In short, Australia is doing something very different from nearly every other country on the planet, and this has far-reaching ramifications. The millions of migrants who have come to Australia since the start of the century obviously include high-achieving people who add to this country. But they change it, too.
Migrants helped build this country, of course, but the successive waves of European immigration brought together people who were not as dissimilar as those arriving now. The bulk of new migrants to Australia now come from the non-Western world. While we call them minorities here, they are from countries that are vastly larger than Australia in terms of population. They also have strongly-defined cultures and belief systems, which are in some cases very different to the Western tradition.
In the past, new migrants were encouraged to assimilate into the Australian mainstream and become unhyphenated Australians (periodic slowdowns in immigration assisted with this process). But now, under the policy of multiculturalism, migrants are encouraged to retain their ancestral cultures, identities and, indeed, loyalties. At the same, Australia has seemingly lost all confidence in itself and its heritage. Whereas Australians were once proud of their achievements, nowadays schools, universities, the media, and politicians declare that Australia is an illegitimate project built on stolen land and guilty of all manner of sins. One is left with the distinct impression that nothing has been achieved in the last several centuries worth preserving and passing on.
Three decades ago, Geoffrey Blainey identified an emerging intellectual trend to view Australia not as a nation in its own right but as ‘a subsidised rooming house for the peoples of the world – a rooming house without any of the safeguards which a nation needs for its preservation’. As Australia’s population becomes more diverse and more international, some difficult questions arise: what will unite this disparate conglomeration of peoples? Without shared history, culture, belief systems, traditions, or even language, what will be the glue to hold our society together? How will Australia engender a sufficient sense of fellow feeling, solidarity, and shared purpose among a multicultural mass of peoples with little in common?
To these existential questions, I suspect our ruling class has no real answers. Call me a pessimist, but it appears inevitable that Australia faces an increasingly fragmented, discordant future. The worst thing we could do is exacerbate the situation by doubling down on reckless immigration policy, cultural self-loathing, and divisive, Woke identity politics
https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/did-mass-migration-topple-australias-christian-culture/
************************************************Too late for mask mandates as Omicron continues to drive high case numbers
Omicron’s measles-like infectiousness, five times higher than any other Covid strain, is driving the continued high number of cases across the nation, but experts say Australia has done relatively well in terms of controlling case numbers.
They also say it is now too late for governments to impose restrictive rules and mask mandates, with the path out of Covid reliant instead on better public health messaging, better vaccines and earlier access to antivirals.
The reach of Omicron is clear in the numbers as the nation reached a grim milestone on Sunday, surpassing 10,000 Covid-related deaths since the virus landed here in January 2020.
Of those deaths, almost 8000 were in the first half of this year when Omicron has been the dominant strain.
The majority of mortalities occurred in Victoria and NSW, with the states recording 3934 and 3590 deaths, respectively.
The 2022 death toll is nearly four times the previous two years’ mortality rate combined, with 905 reported in 2020 and 1323 in 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
While increased movement and relaxed rules following lockdowns caused transmission to increase, Deakin University chair in epidemiology Catherine Bennett blamed the arrival of Omicron and sub variants “first and foremost” for skyrocketing cases.
“It’s the most infectious variant we’ve had. It’s more equivalent to measles than the first strain and more than five times more infectious,” Professor Bennett said.
“It’s because we’ve got these sub variants. Every time the numbers start to drop a little bit, the next sub variant comes along with not even a brief respite between.”
Ms Bennett said while masks had been proven to reduce transmission, the debate over reintroducing mandates was too late.
“This is the long haul now. You have to move from rules to something else and that something else is really good public health communication and really good education … what I think we have missed is converting to a new way of managing this disease.”
Griffith University Infectious Diseases and Immunology director Nigel McMillan said targeted vaccines were the clear next step in combating the Omicron strain.
“What we’re really holding out for, of course, is that the next vaccine to come on to the market will be a multicomponent vaccine,” he said. “It’ll have the ancestral strain, plus Omicron, and that vaccine will be much, much better in terms of preventing infection, and even much, much better at preventing hospitalisation and serious illness.”
Professor McMillan said we should be making antivirals more accessible during earlier stages of infection. “Antivirals reduce the ability of the virus to grow inside you and therefore give your body a chance to recover better to limit the infection and for your immune system to kick in and really give you full recovery. “However, they have to be used early on in infection.”
Currently, antiviral drugs are limited to people who are moderately to severely immunocompromised or those aged over 65 with some sort of comorbidity, such as diabetes.
Professor McMillan has called on them to be made more widely available if supply allows.
Professor Bennett said while the growing winter death toll was “shocking”, Australia had still done a better job of controlling the virus than the northern hemisphere during their colder months. “In January, places like France had a death rate of four people per million and the US had seven per million. Australia is sitting on under two people per million and that’s in the middle of our winter, our Omicron winter. So actually we’re still controlling it reasonably well,” she said.
“The death rate per infection has gone so far down. You just can’t compare it to what we would have experienced if we’d gone through community transmission back in 2020. We had a taste of it in Victoria, but nothing to compare us to the kinds of infection rates we have with Omicron.”
Of the 28,408 infections recorded in 2020, 3.1 per cent of all cases resulted in death. More than 7.8 million people have been infected with the virus this year, with 7786 people – or 0.10 per cent of cases – dying with Covid.
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EVs may soon threaten the security of the power grid
If Australians start buying electric vehicles in big numbers, the power grid will come under enormous stress, with EVs potentially increasing demand by between 30 and 100 per cent, according to recent trials conducted by Origin Energy.
If thousands of EVs are being plugged in during peak evening periods, the effects could be disastrous, unless Australian households start using smart-charging devices, the research found.
The trials, conducted by Origin Energy and independent Federal Government Agency the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), studied the charging patterns of 150 EV drivers with smart chargers installed in their homes to better understand how behaviours may impact the grid.
Smart chargers, which currently cost between $2,000 and $3,000, allow EV owners to automatically charge their vehicles when electricity prices are lower, or when solar power is being generated, reducing household costs and taking pressure off the grid during peak periods.
Chau Le, general manager of e-mobility at Origin, believes smart chargers will be an essential tool in reducing the risk of blackouts once EVs enter a phase of mass adoption.
“At the moment, our electricity grid is not coping at all. If we were to add another 30 per cent of peak load to the grid during those periods of high prices and constraints on the network, this would require significant investment to increase capacity,” Ms Le said.
The research found that 30 per cent of EV charging was done in the peak period between 3pm and 9pm.
In one trial, participants were given a 10-cent-per-kilowatt-hour credit on their electricity bill for charging off-peak, which reduced charging during the peak times by 10 per cent.
A second trial was run where charging was limited to mostly off-peak periods, which saw evening peak usage for charging those EVs reduced to just six per cent.
A third trial is now underway. It will see Origin work with several power distributors to investigate whether or not upgrades to the grid are required based on the findings of the first two trials.
Darren Miller, chief executive of ARENA, says the agency funded $840,000 of the $2.9 million trial, due to concerns about what may happen to Australia’s power grid once EVs become the dominant mode of transport.
“If we all end up having EVs and charging them at exactly the same time, say 6pm to 9pm on weeknights, then no doubt the distribution system won‘t be able to cope with that,” said Mr Miller.
“Extra investment will have to be made, and that will cost all of us on our electricity bill, too, ultimately.
“We can make sure we don‘t have to invest an extraordinary amount in the distribution system, the poles and wires outside our homes and businesses, to accommodate that extra load.”
While current EV sales are hovering around 2 per cent of the Australian car market overall, the Labor Government has previously stated that its climate and energy policy aims to have nine out of 10 new cars sales being EVs by 2030.
Recent research from the Reliable Affordable Clean Energy for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre (RACE 2030) claims that even if that number reaches eight in 10 by 2030, it will still double the current demand on the grid.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has also weighed into the debate via a new report that states that “all actionable projects should progress as urgently as possible”, including $12 billion of investment in new transmission lines, if the grid is to remain secure over the next decade and reach net zero emissions by 2050.
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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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Monday, July 04, 2022
Time’s up: Labor can no longer have it both ways on coal
The Queensland Government is trapped between contempt for coalmining and the massive royalties it brings, writes Peter Gleeson.
One of the great ironies of the Queensland Labor Government is its disdain and contempt for the coal industry, the one fiscal sector that is propping up the Budget.
Because cabinet and caucus is dominated by the dopey Left faction, they are wedded to phasing out coalmining.
Unfortunately for Queensland, they haven’t quite worked out how they will fill the fiscal gap in unemployment and coal royalties, but hey, they’re not worried about the $100 billion debt, so who cares about jobs and revenue?
This financial year, coal royalties will account for about $8 billion, up $1.4 billion off the back of a new tax imposed by Treasurer Cameron Dick.
This is the same bloke who said 26 times before the last election there’d be no new taxes.
That’s a lot of hospitals and schools. The new coal royalties tax is the highest in the world, and it represents a danger to regional communities as coal companies cut their cloth.
It is also a risk to foreign investors, many of whom now see Queensland as a risky place to do business, as governments change the goalposts without warning.
Coal companies now pay 7 per cent of revenue for prices up to $100 per tonne and 15 per cent for prices above $150 per tonne.
Three new progressive royalty tiers will now come into effect on top of the existing royalty. The new tiers are 20 per cent for prices above $175 per tonne, 30 per cent for prices above $225 per tonne and 40 per cent for prices above $300 per tonne.
Coal companies argue that this large hike in royalties will negatively affect investment appetite for future mining projects in Queensland.
Executive chairman of the Bowen Coking Coal company, known as Ballymore Resources, Nick Jorss said: “We are extremely disappointed in the way this massive royalty hike has been implemented without any consultation upon an industry that already pays billions of dollars annually in taxes and royalties to fund schools, hospitals and services for all Queenslanders.
“Bowen is a local Queensland business built from scratch, not an international mining house.
“We are creating over 500 Central Queensland jobs as we open three metallurgical coal mines this year to supply the global steel industry.
“This proposed tax grab would permanently bake in Queensland as the regime with the highest royalties in the world, ostensibly to solve a near term Government funding issue.
“This raises substantial risks to further investment in Queensland mining and regional Queensland jobs.’’
This massive tax sting is par for the course for a Government addicted to royalties but keen to shut down the industry.
Let’s not forget the black-throated finch would have stopped the Adani coalmine in 2019 had Bill Shortenwon the federal election.
Now the State Government is using another weapon to derail a project that will create hundreds of jobs on the Darling Downs. It’s called silence.
Despite saying it will abide by the court process, there is little sign that the Government intends to approve the third stage of the New Acland mine.
Last week we saw the granting of the environmental approval for the third stage of the project, yet another court hurdle overcome.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has always maintained that once the court and environmental regulations are satisfied the mine would proceed.
Ms Palaszczuk must now honour her word and grant the necessary approvals, including the mining lease and the associated water licence, so hundreds of workers who were stood down in December can get back to work.
They have simply run out of excuses. The jobs and livelihoods of hundreds of workers are at stake.
The mine’s closure six months ago due to the State Government’s years of inaction was a devastating blow for the workers, their families and the communities of the Darling Downs.
Ms Palaszczuk and he Mines Minister Scott Stewart have blamed their inaction on the court process. But the time is now up.
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Political "advisers"
What an extraordinary turn of events. After years of Liberal party waste and profligacy in government spending, we might just have stumbled on the ALP as a government that will genuinely cut waste and extravagance – if it carries through on its surprisingly good start. Anthony Albanese is absolutely right to cut the number of so-called advisers for independent and crossbench MPs and senators from four to one. Their present entitlement is four electorate officers to help them with the crushing burden of handing out flags and writing to ministers on immigration and pension cases for constituents. On top of that, they have these four policy advisers – each! The whole package, provided of course by the big spenders and big failures, Turnbull, Morrison and Frydenberg, is grossly extravagant, obscenely expensive, produces no return on investment and is little more than a powerhouse for empire building. If there were ever an area of government spending that cried out to be decimated, this is it.
The whole notion that these bottom-feeders are qualified by knowledge or experience to ‘advise’ MPs is ludicrous. Your average adviser is wet behind the ears with not the slightest experience of the real world. If they land a job as an adviser, it will probably be the first job they have had since leaving school. They will have a diploma in smoking ceremonies, transgender activism or the evils of logging in old-growth forests from some third-rate college that takes anyone they can find to keep their student numbers up. As an alternative qualification, they will have had a stellar twelve months’ career as a community organiser in stakeholder relations at the local refugee centre. So, they have little if any qualification for advising anyone on anything and certainly not if they are doing it at our expense. Yet, here they are, with an all-expenses-paid job and the lofty title of ‘adviser’ as if they were up there with the Delphic Oracle. It is ludicrous.
And what exactly is it that advisers do, once ensconced in the hallowed office of a member or senator and acquainted with how to order a government car and fudge the overtime chit and the expense allowance? It is easier to note what they do not do. First, they do not advise at all, as MP soon learn that the last thing they should do is follow the advice of an adviser, unless they want to ruin their careers and make themselves the laughing stock of the press gallery. Roman senators asked ‘Who will guard us from our guardians?’ Australian politicians ask, ‘Who will advise us how to ignore advice from our advisers?’
But if they are not advising, what do they actually do? Well, they spend most of their time scheming, schmoozing up to the tee-shirt-and-sneakers brigade in the business world, leaking, doing hatchet jobs on their rivals and enemies, more leaking, promoting their lacklustre masters to the media and still more leaking. If they have any time left from these weighty tasks, they spend it on advancing themselves, with one eye on future pre-selections or cushy jobs with a government relations consultant or investment banker and the other on showing they are at the centre of power and decision-making. Even dropping the word ‘adviser’ at the pub or a party implies they are privy to inside knowledge on every imminent government decision from invading China to stopping the sea from rising. Then, of course, they trade on the myth that is being promoted in independent, teal, reform and progressive quarters, namely that new MPs need advisers to explain legislation to them. As to this, you might well ask: can’t they read? Can’t they use a computer like everyone else?
There is, of course, a lot of labyrinthine gobbledegook in legislation, and the seasoned adviser is likely to pick up the jargon quickly. But the result of an adviser advising what a law means, does no more than replace one set of mumbo-jumbo incantations with another. (I became an expert myself on the meaning of the word ‘leer’ in sexual harassment complaints and that was a great contribution to human wisdom, I assure you). But if advisers spend any time on legislation, it is on drawing amendments to expand dubious government schemes like the carpark and sports club rorts. And this shows, I think, the real genius of what Albanese has done. He knows that advisers, like royal commissions and government inquiries, need new causes to promote if they are to survive and justify their otherwise useless existence. Like nature, they abhor a vacuum and cannot leave well alone.
They will discover previously unknown pits of human misery, urgent needs for handouts and grants for everyone from failed companies to unpublished poets and will always go for the tear-jerking expansion of anything on the government teat. Their bosses pick up the cry and make the same demands for more government spending. But Albo knows: cut the advisers and you cut the pressure on government to spend more money. Cut the empire builders and you will cut the empire.
But he should not stop there. Next target should be the electorate staff of all MPs and senators which, if possible, are deeper pig-troughs than the advisers’ ones. Some of them are relatives of the MP or simply party hacks. Now, I do not want to harp on the good old days, but when I was there, and electorates were bigger, we had one electorate secretary and that was enough. Today, our lawmakers have computers and every invention of technology known to mankind. That is enough of a burden for the long-suffering taxpayer to bear. Giving four extra electorate staff to MPs and senators, as well, is unprincipled extravagance.
So, surprisingly, Albanese is off to a good start and he should not give in. Winning this one, with the entire woke establishment against him, will make future cuts so much easier to achieve.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/brown-study-200/
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Europe looks to Australia for green hydrogen amid energy crisis
The global warming belief seems set to be with us for some time yet so Australia might as well profit from it. I had a shower in hydrogen this morning. The hydrogen was linked with oxygen. We call it water. So hydrogen is all around us. Why do we put it in ships and cart it about?
It is because extracting hydrogen from water takes energy, electricity. And where that electriciity comes from matters to Greenies and their followers. It must come from "renewable" sources.
And electricity from solar panels fills that bill. And Australia has vast open spaces that are almost always sunny, ideal for solar panels. So Australia can in theory produce almost any amount of renewable electricity -- which can be used in various ways. And one way is to crack open water and store the resulting hydrogen.
So what we are shipping around the world is actually Australian sunlight -- in the form of a product from it.
Rotterdam: Europe’s biggest hydrogen project is stepping up its search for Australian imports to help quadruple supplies of clean energy and cut the continent’s reliance on natural gas in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Seeking millions of tonnes of hydrogen imports, the Port of Rotterdam wants to scale up the supply of Australian hydrogen in one of the world’s biggest projects to import and generate the clean and transportable fuel.
But Australia is in a race with other countries to generate hydrogen from solar and wind at enough scale to export energy in vast quantities to meet a European Union goal of using 20 million tonnes of hydrogen each year by 2030, up from a target of only 5 million before the energy crisis.
Shell will commit to the biggest hydrogen generation scheme in Europe on Wednesday when Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte announces the project with the energy giant’s executives at the Port of Rotterdam, aiming to provide stored energy from wind power in the North Sea.
The Port of Rotterdam runs the hydrogen project, and its president Allard Castelein said his team had looked at more than a dozen countries and concluded Australia could produce hydrogen at a competitive price due to the cost profile of its renewable energy sources, even after adding the cost of shipping to the Netherlands.
“If you look at the energy demands in north-west Europe, it’s inconceivable that we will be self-sufficient in energy,” he said.
“We could put all the windmills offshore, they could become bigger and more powerful than they currently are, but still we would run out of space. So we will always need to be a net importer.
“And from our assessments, it appears that Australia is in a very strong position to be one of the supply sources. Not the only supply source, to be honest. But there is a lot of confirmation that Australia is a very efficient area to produce green hydrogen.”
In a test of the model, Australia supplied liquid hydrogen by ship to Japan in January from Victoria’s Port of Hastings under a $500 million scheme using brown coal to produce the gas.
A cheaper way to ship the fuel could be by using hydrogen to create liquid ammonia, which has a much higher energy density by volume when stored at minus 33 degrees. The Rotterdam project involves ammonia as well as hydrogen import terminals.
Castelein said Australia was in a “good and strong position” to supply the fuel at a time when the war in Ukraine highlighted Europe’s dependence on Russian gas and the need for renewable alternatives.
“Europe will have a very, very hard time dealing with an abrupt supply disruption, which is not unlikely to materialise,” he said.
“Europe as a continent will not be able to replace gas for gas.”
The Rotterdam LNG import terminal is running at full capacity and the only other terminals nearby are at Zeebrugge and Dunkirk, while Germany is leasing floating import terminals. The International Energy Agency says the European Union imported 155 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia last year and that alternative suppliers might only provide 30 billion cubic metres within a year.
“The magnitude of the challenge is enormous, not in the least because 2030 is around the corner,” Castelein said of the targets for commercial hydrogen.
“That’s why those countries that have assertive development plans, which are conducive to allowing new businesses to start up and having the materials and the people and the permits readily available, will be able to become a major supply source.”
The Port of Rotterdam is the transfer point for 13 per cent of Europe’s fossil fuel imports – oil, coal and LNG – but is moving rapidly to clean energy with a mix of hydrogen imports and domestic generation.
It wants to achieve commercial production and imports of hydrogen from 2025 so it can scale this up to 4.6 million tonnes each year from 2030, about one-quarter of the forecast for the EU.
The EU plan assumes half the hydrogen will come from imports, highlighting the opportunity for Australia when countries such as Chile, Uruguay and Iceland are also planning hydrogen projects and Saudi Arabia wants to become a major hydrogen producer after decades of dominance in oil.
The Port of Rotterdam has early agreements with Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania but the most advanced appears to be with South Australia, where Premier Peter Malinauskas has plans for a $593m hydrogen plant, triggering warnings about the financial risk.
Castelein said one advantage for Australia was its history in fuel exports while the other was its ability to produce hydrogen at about one-third of the cost of north-west Europe, the result of better solar and wind power, given the differences in climate.
Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis when water is split into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from renewable sources, creating a clean fuel that can be transported and stored.
Most hydrogen produced in the world is “grey” hydrogen created by combining high-pressure steam with natural gas, a process that creates 0.8 million tonnes of hydrogen in the Netherlands but generates 12.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions, according to the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, the TNO.
Burying the emissions would create “blue” hydrogen, which the TNO says could be done using carbon capture and storage in the North Sea in the biggest project of its kind in the world.
“We believe there’s a clear case for blue hydrogen,” said Castelein, who has run the world’s tenth-biggest port since 2014 and was previously vice-president for environment at Shell.
“But green is clearly the aspirational goal. We see blue as only having a role as a temporary source and not necessarily in the lead of the transition. Green shall lead the transition, blue will be part of the equation but phase out over time.”
The port authority, which is owned by the city of Rotterdam and the Netherlands government, runs the hydrogen project by signing deals with companies to build each part of the production chain. Shell and Air Liquide will produce hydrogen on site, while Air Products and Gunvor are planning a hydrogen import terminal. With fossil fuels expected to be part of the transition, the plan also forecasts the use of carbon capture and storage in depleted oil fields in the North Sea.
The Rotterdam terminals and hydrogen production facilities are expected to cost several hundred million euros each, while the pipeline being considered from Rotterdam to the industrial zone of the Rhine could cost 2.5 billion euros.
The wind farm in the North Sea is forecast to generate 7.4 GW. The biggest single wind farm in Australia, being built by Spanish company Acciona at Macintyre in Queensland, is forecast to generate 1 GW.
“These are tremendously aspirational timelines but, having said that, we will need a mindset that says it is necessary and thus makes it feasible.”
Shameful star chambers ruin men's lives
Bettina Arndt
In a recent judgment about a sexual misconduct case at Cornell University, the judge compared the campus disciplinary committees to the infamous English Star Chambers. He warned, ‘These threats to due process and academic freedom are matters of life and death for our great universities.’
We too should be regarding what’s happening at our universities with utmost seriousness.
Our universities have wrongly taken it upon themselves to set aside our criminal law system and put in its place their own star chambers where administrators make life-changing decisions about accused young men, derailing their education and publicly shaming them.
This is happening every week in Australia simply because our lily-livered universities are too afraid to stand up to the feminist bullies demanding action in response to the fake campaign claiming a rape culture on campus.
For two years now I have been helping a young man being persecuted by a New South Wales regional university. I’ll call him ‘Andrew’ to protect his privacy – critical now that he has finally received his degree and with great relief left the university to start a new job and a new life. He’s made a podcast with me, bravely deciding to tell his story as a cautionary tale to male students, warning of dangers awaiting them at our universities.
Note: Having witnessed the ruthless behaviour of our universities, I regretfully decided to delete the name of this institution from the podcast rather than hold back on my commentary for fear of legal attack.
For Andrew, it all started one night in March 2020, when he was a 22-year-old final year pharmacy student.
He was at a typical student gathering that involved a bunch of kids, including other pharmacy students, happily drinking together. But one female student, whom I will call ‘Fran’, went overboard and ended up vomiting and needing help to get back to her room at the college. A few students went with her, got her settled in bed, and then asked Andrew to keep an eye on her.
Andrew’s version of events, accepted by the court, was that when they were left alone, Fran suddenly became amorous, kissing Andrew, taking her pants off, and trying to undress him. He protested, telling her he had a girlfriend, but she persisted in pulling his pants down. That’s when the other students walked in on them. Fran’s friends quickly took control, demanding Andrew leave, despite Fran’s protest that he hadn’t done anything wrong and there was no need for him to go.
Despite this abrupt end to the evening initially, there seemed no negative repercussions, with Andrew having friendly social media exchanges with Fran where she showed no sign of any concern. What Andrew didn’t know was that Fran’s friends were at work, rewriting the history of the evening, and persuading Fran to make a complaint to the head of the college.
That happened, and the university leapt into action and started conducting its own investigation. Think about that. Here we have administration people – who not legally trained – blundering around, encouraging the young women to come up with their versions of events that evening. Suddenly there was the suggestion that Fran’s drink might have been spiked and that she was in and out of consciousness. Unsurprisingly, the whole scandal took on a life of its own and by the time the police were involved and sworn witness statements were taken, these colourful additions were part of the story.
It doesn’t take a lawyer to understand how that compromises the basic principles of police investigation. But that was just the beginning.
Andrew knew nothing about what was going on until two months later when he suddenly received a call from the university administration telling him he was excluded from the college and university campus until what was now a criminal matter was determined.
Andrew was no ordinary student. He was a hard-working kid on a scholarship doing honours in the final year of his pharmacy course. He was a resident fellow at the college, elected to the SRC, and a shining sports star. He was captain of various sporting teams, and had numerous leadership roles… All positions which he had to abandon when charged with a criminal offence.
When the shattered Andrew first contacted me, he was facing the frightening prospect of a criminal trial and the humiliation of finding excuses to withdraw from his numerous university positions, against the backdrop of malicious rumours about the allegations he was facing.
It was a tough year as we found local lawyers willing to represent him in the criminal case and brought in others to jump through the ludicrous hoops being erected by the university administrators. Boy, were these bureaucrats relishing in their power to torment this young man.
Although Andrew could study online in the early months of 2020 during Covid lockdowns, he needed to get back on campus for a few days in October to attend an intensive practical course to complete his degree. Naturally, the university’s petty tyrants said no.
Lawyers’ letters flew back and forth and then we had a breakthrough. A friend at the university dug out a regulation stating that the, ‘University must take steps to ensure students are not academically disadvantaged while a matter is being determined.’ Whoopee! That was inserted into the next lawyer’s letter and finally did the trick. Andrew was allowed to complete his course work – but the university still decided to withhold his degree, awaiting the decision from the magistrate’s court.
Convicted felons are allowed to study at our universities. What gives any university the right to steal a student’s degree – an asset towards which he has devoted years of effort and spent tens of thousands of dollars? Our laws say nothing about withholding degrees as punishment for sex crimes. The universities have made this stuff up with no proper authority.
So here we have the university telling this hard-working student that they were withholding his degree, refusing to allow him to take his rightful place as a qualified pharmacist, derailing his pharmacy internship, and costing him between $30-60,000 in earnings that year. This situation left him in limbo for half a year until a local magistrate could make a decision, and then another eight months while their star chamber swung into action.
In June 2021, the case was heard and the magistrate very quickly dismissed the single charge of ‘sexual touching’ that Andrew was facing, saying Andrew’s version of events ‘may well be true’. Fran repeated in court that she did not feel Andrew had done anything wrong at the time and confirmed that she had objected to her friends making Andrew go, asking, ‘Why does he have to leave?’
So that was it. Smooth sailing after that, you might imagine. Not with this university in charge…
We had an amusing moment late last year when Andrew received an email congratulating him on his degree and inviting him to apply to have his degree sent to him. He quickly filled in the right form and hoped for the best. Sadly, no degree arrived through the post. The invitation turned out to be a mistake. The bumbling administration then announced there was still a misconduct charge to be determined and the university planned its own investigation.
Here we have our justice system deciding a young man was innocent, but that’s not good enough for this great university. They chose to have another go, conducting their investigation and decision-making process. The reason? This university, as is true of all similar institutions, have decided they are entitled to their own star chamber determining these matters using a lower standard of proof. So, if he gets off in the criminal system there remains another, easier way to nail him.
Sure enough, after months of delay whilst everyone awaited the transcript of the magistrate’s written judgment, the university set up its investigation and re-examined all the evidence that the magistrate had used to determine Andrew was completely innocent. They then grilled Andrew – denying him any legal support in the process.
Eventually, they found him guilty of ‘behavioural misconduct’ because he should have somehow resisted any contact with the drunk girl. That’s very different from the original ‘sexual touching’ charge where he was wrongly alleged to have done something wrong, behaving inappropriately towards the girl. The university decided he was guilty of not doing something, failing to resist or retreat quickly enough from a girl’s amorous advances.
Not only are males now to be held responsible for taking advantage of drunk women, they are in trouble for letting such a woman near them.
Andrew was officially reprimanded and told he wasn’t allowed back on campus for three years. The decision was issued by a brand-new Vice Chancellor, who was no doubt keen to throw a bone to the feminists that control the university, as they do in all such institutions. Andrew was naturally upset by this decision, but the punishment hardly mattered. He has no intention of going near this dastardly institution ever again.
This week Joe Biden’s government announced new regulations to wind back the meagre reforms to the American campus star chambers which the Trump administration had managed to push through. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that Biden’s new regulations will eliminate or weaken basic procedural protections for students accused of sexual misconduct:
‘The right to a live hearing? Erased. Cross-examination? Unrecognisable. The standard of proof to determine guilt? Weakened,’ sums up the correspondent, adding that this sets the Education Department on a collision course with the courts. As he explains, over the past decade in America, judges nationwide have issued more than 200 rulings favourable to students accused of sexual misconduct, chastising universities for ‘rushing to judgment in rigged proceedings designed to appease the federal government’.
Our Aussie rigged proceedings were designed by our universities not to appease the government, but to kowtow to the feminist mob. That’s why they attract absolutely no scrutiny from our legacy media which serves precisely the same master. How else can we explain why journalists happily bang on about trans athletes – an issue which impacts tiny numbers in our community – whilst ignoring the huge population of families whose sons are at risk of injustice at our universities?
Our society’s indifference to what’s happening here is a national disgrace.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/shameful-star-chambers-ruin-mens-lives/
************************************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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Sunday, July 03, 2022
People would be allowed to change their gender every 12 months, while the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ would be optional, under a proposed radical shake-up of birth certificates
Bureaucrats in Queensland outlined details of what their state’s new birth certificate could look like to two women’s groups earlier this month, in a meeting described as a “high level overview of current thinking”.
A Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General spokesman confirmed they were looking at making changes to “improve recognition for trans and gender diverse people”.
The women who attended the meeting said they understood the government was considering removing sex from the document.
Instead, people would be able to choose any descriptor for their gender as long as it was not obscene, contained offensive language, symbols, numbers, or was too long or “contrary to the public interest”.
While current legislation in Queensland requires people to have undergone surgery to change gender, the women said they were told that might be scrapped.
NSW is the only other state that requires gender-affirming surgery in order to change gender on a birth certificate.
The women said the Queensland proposals would also allow anyone over the age of 16 to self-identify as another gender if they had a supporting statement from someone who had known them for at least 12 months stating the application was being made in good faith.
There would also be opportunities for those aged 12 to 16 to change their gender identity, if they had support from one or both parents. Depending on the case they may need evidence from a child development practitioner and backing from the courts.
Under 12s would need the support of at least both parents to be able to start the process.
“It was really shocking to hear what they want to do,” International Women’s Day Brisbane Meanjin representative Kelly Carr said.
“As a mother, when I heard that using mother on the birth certificate was optional, I nearly fell off my chair.”
She said as far as they understood it, the proposed new certificate would list birthing parent and parent, or parent one and parent two, and the answer could be multiple choice with applicants writing mother, father or parent next to those boxes.
Fellow IWD member Helen Waite, a retired professor, said the fact that there was no lifetime limit to the number of times a person could change their identity made a mockery of the idea that people could be born into the wrong gender.
“We got a shock when we were told you’d be able to change your birth certificate once every 12 months because gender is fluid,” she said.
“This is a core identity document. “How can you be able to continually change it?”
The women said the June 15 meeting included officers from Strategic Policy, the Office for Women and Violence Prevention and the Attorney-General, as part of a consultation process for the Births, Deaths And Marriages Registration Act Legislative Review.
As well as the IWD members, two representatives from Fair Go For Women Queensland were invited.
Biological Reality Founder Stassja Frei said “trans lobbyists have perfected what they wanted” if the Birth, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act Legislative Review passes.
She said other states had already made changes to their birth certificates.
“Tasmania and Victoria are first attempts and (the trans lobbyists) got most of what they wanted,” Ms Frei said. “It seems in Queensland they’ve gone one step further.
“The public service all across Australia is completely captured by this ideology. “It’s a belief system that people can change sex. “It’s a really dangerous belief system for girls and women because it compromises safety.”
A Department of Justice and Attorney-General spokesman said while there was no proposal being considered which would see the removal of the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from the birth certificate, there would be “additional options”.
“Consideration is being given to additional options to allow same sex couples to register as mother/mother or father/father, if they choose to,” the spokesman said.
“If this change was adopted, it would align Queensland with other jurisdictions.”
He said the review aimed to “ensure registration services in Queensland remain relevant, responsive and contemporary”.
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DNA lab’s flaws ignored 17 years ago
Problems with forensic services at Queensland’s DNA laboratory were raised as early as 2005, a full seven years before it failed to detect evidence from Shandee Blackburn’s brutal murder, but calls for an investigation appear to have been ignored by the state government.
Retired Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo discovered the significant government oversight in a major women’s safety report that was handed to government on Friday, which also delivered a scathing assessment of the way rape victims access forensic services.
The report detailed how in 2005, Peter Beattie’s government was warned about problems with Queensland’s forensic services in a ministerial review and appears to have failed to implement 65 recommendations, including an independent review into the laboratory system AusLab.
Annastacia Palaszczuk was forced to order a royal commission-style inquiry into the same lab last month, after The Australian’s investigative podcast series Shandee’s Story uncovered evidence of disturbing practices at the state-run DNA lab.
Ms McMurdo’s taskforce, which ran a 16-month review into the criminal justice system, was unable to find a government response to the 2005 report, and “its recommendations do not appear to have been delivered”.
She said the ministerial review “called for a further independent review due to serious concerns over the quality of forensic services”.
“This included questions regarding the suitability of AusLab – now Queensland Health Forensic and Science Services – to undertake forensic and public health science,” Ms McMurdo wrote.
“It concluded that there was a need for substantially enhanced governance arrangements for research and innovation, and a competency-based professional development program.”
Disgraced Labor politician Gordon Nuttall – who was found guilty of corruption in 2009 – was the Beattie government‘s health minister in March 2005, when the review was commissioned. However, by the time it reported in October, Stephen Robertson had replaced Mr Nuttall as minister.
Less than eight years after the Beattie government was advised to review forensic services, Shandee was savagely stabbed to death as she walked home from work in Mackay.
Shandee’s mother Vicki Blackburn said it was “extremely upsetting” to hear the findings from the 2005 review appear to have been ignored.
“I am absolutely shocked. They didn’t do anything, and no government since then has done anything about it,” she told The Weekend Australian on Friday.
“I think it is appalling they have put people through so much trauma and been so callous with how they run that laboratory with no regard for victims at all it seems.
“Everybody knows how vital DNA is in investigations. They have undermined the public’s faith in the justice system.”
Renowned forensic scientist Kirsty Wright discovered the lab failed to generate DNA profiles in Shandee’s case from crime-scene evidence where it would normally be expected, such as from blood and skin samples.
Other problems in the lab, including its unusually high testing thresholds, were also uncovered by Dr Wright in Shandee’s Story.
Rather than Shandee’s being an isolated case, Dr Wright has for months believed the lab concealed systemic issues with its testing methods and procedures, putting the public at risk from serious and violent offenders who were not being identified and brought to justice.
Dr Wright has made a complaint to Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission and gave evidence to Ms McMurdo’s review.
Queensland police began to audit results from the lab in late 2021, after problems were exposed by national correspondent Hedley Thomas in Shandee’s Story.
The police audit found DNA profiles could be generated in up to 66 per cent of samples the lab initially claimed had “insufficient DNA for further processing”.
Last month, Queensland police told The Australian it has reopened hundreds of rape cases dating back to 2018 as a result.
Days later, Ms Palaszczuk ordered a commission of inquiry into the lab.
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Vanishing vaccine mandates
This week, with hardly a whisper from its chief public health officers, Australia largely abandoned its vaccine mandates. For the most part, they remain in force only for those working in health and aged care or with those with disabilities. There has been no explanation given as to why unvaccinated workers can now be ‘welcomed back’ into workplaces. There has been no apology to those who lost their jobs for refusing to be jabbed, or who lost their lives, or their good health, following vaccination. So far, 889 deaths have been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) which may have been caused by vaccination and almost 133,000 people have reported a vaccine injury including more than 140 heart attacks, 360 myocardial infarctions, 500 strokes, 1,400 cases of deep vein thrombosis and 1,500 pulmonary embolisms.
So, why the sudden change in policy? Here’s one possibility. An Israeli study of 5.7 million people, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in June, shows that unvaccinated people who gained immunity through infection, were far better protected from Covid than people who were double vaccinated. And while the study did not have enough cases of severe Covid to be definitive, it showed that unvaccinated people with natural immunity were also better protected from severe Covid.
Thus, after more than two years of advising premiers to abandon their pandemic plans and paralyse the entire country until everyone was immunised with experimental vaccines, it seems that our public health officers were wrong. Oops. Not only has Australia wasted billions of dollars on lockdowns, it has damaged the health of the vast majority of Australians by making them more vulnerable to infection with Covid.
Increased vulnerability to infection might explain why, in NSW, teachers who were forced to be double vaccinated to retain their jobs were off sick for a combined 430,351 days in the first six months of this year, an increase of 145,491 days compared to pre-pandemic levels.
It might also explain why excess mortality continues to run at a record high. Excess deaths in March were still almost 10 per cent above the historical baseline and deaths for the first three months of the year were 17.5 per cent higher than the historical average.
This spectacular public health failure was undoubtedly exacerbated by the failure to heed the lessons of early treatment of Covid-19. This time last year, on 26 June, NSW entered its long Delta lockdown. At that time, India was just emerging from its Delta spike. On 26 June 2021, Covid deaths in India were 284 per million, while in Australia they were only 35 per million. A year later on 26 June, deaths per million in Australia and India are identical – 376 per million. What happened?
A year ago, health officials in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, with 240 million inhabitants, advised that they were using a multi-drug cocktail of repurposed medications including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid with astonishing success. From a peak of 34,455 on 29 April, cases plunged to 178 on 26 June. A year later there is an average of one death per day.
The contrast with Australia could not be more stark. Australia’s public health officers weren’t content simply to disregard the evidence of Uttar Pradesh’s success with a multi-drug therapy that included ivermectin, the TGA went further than any other country in the world and on 10 September 2021 banned the use of ivermectin for the treatment of Covid.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not ban ivermectin, but it is now being sued by three eminent physicians over ‘its unlawful attempts to interfere with the practice of medicine’, specifically its ‘crusade to halt the use of Ivermectin to treat Covid-19’. The case is being prosecuted by former Ambassador Boyden Gray, who was White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush and who is representing Drs. Mary Talley Bowden, Paul E. Marik, and Robert L. Apter. They maintain that the FDA had no right to mount a campaign against a drug that had been approved and attempts to do so amounted to unlawful interference in the practice of medicine, a right reserved to the states in the US. As a result of the FDA’s actions, the doctors were referred to medical boards for disciplinary proceedings and were forced to resign from positions in hospitals.
Unfortunately, public health officials in Australia pursued the same policy of persecuting doctors who dared to criticise official public health policy. For example, Dr Paul Oosterhuis, a NSW anaesthetist with over thirty years experience in critical care and resuscitation, had his registration as a medical practitioner suspended on 3 September because of four anonymous complaints made to the Medical Council of NSW about his Facebook posts, which encouraged people to take vitamin D, zinc and seek early treatment with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine if they became infected with Covid. In May, Dr Oosterhuis turned the tables on the Medical Council by taking them to the Supreme Court of NSW for failing to refer the complaints about him to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Two days before the case was to be heard on 12 May, the NSW Medical Council revoked his suspension. Perhaps they were stung by a judgement in the Supreme Court of NSW in April which characterised their conduct in relation to another doctor as ‘irrational’ and lacking any ‘evidentiary foundation’.
Dr Oosterhuis was not the only doctor to be punished in this way. Dr Robert Brennan, a general practitioner in NSW had his medical registration suspended for signing a newsletter from the Covid Medical Network, now the Australian Medical Network, which advocated early treatment and challenged the evidence base for lockdowns, and for mask and vaccine mandates. After conferring with the Medical Council of NSW, the Health Care Commission revoked his suspension on 17 May but warned they might take action against him again if he promoted messages ‘not in accordance with public health orders’.
In Victoria, Dr Mark Hobart is still fighting to have his medical registration restored after it was suspended for the ‘crime’ of issuing temporary exemptions to people who were concerned about the safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccines. Considering public health officials have now quietly abandoned most of their mandates, and the vaccines have been shown to be ineffective in preventing the spread of Covid, one wonders on what grounds they can possibly justify his suspension. Presumably, like their counterparts in NSW, they will abandon the case days before it comes to court but, if the NSW Medical Council is any guide, an apology, and compensation, will take a lot longer.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/vanishing-vaccine-mandates/
*********************************************Australian teachers expose how much they REALLY earn and the reasons why they're striking: 'Pay isn't even the problem'
Teachers in New South Wales have explained the reasons why they're striking after marching on NSW Parliament demanding better wages and working conditions.
Dressed in red shirts emblazoned with the text 'More than Thanks', fired up teachers called on the government to offer them more than a three per cent pay rise on Thursday.
The NSW Teachers Federation is asking for a pay rise of between five and seven per cent to keep up with the cost of living.
Aussie teachers on Reddit and social media have cited work load as their main concern.
'I earn $110K. My problem isn't really how much I'm paid,' one teacher wrote.
'It's the ridiculous amount of work that has nothing to directly do with teaching and learning. It's the changes in policies that require teachers to support a wider array of students in the same class.'
The same teacher added that schools have 'no idea how to measure workload' and teachers often have to 'parent students'.
Another posted: 'Pay isn't even the problem though - it's workload.'
'My contract says 30 hours a week, but I've easily cleared that by Wednesday because of admin. What I wouldn't give for a PA, just so I could do my job.'
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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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Friday, July 01, 2022
Young clubber tells The Project it's her 'human right' to have traditional face tattoos after staff refused to let her into a bar because of her ink: 'This is our culture'
What a lot of nonsense! She is about as Melanesian as I am. And I have known real Melanesians since my childhood -- and none that I knew wore any tattoos at all. She is just a white attention-seeker. Melanesians have dark skin, sometimes very dark. She looks nothing like a Melanesian
Moale James, 23, who has Papua New Guinean heritage, was celebrating her partner's birthday by heading out to Brisbane's nightclub precinct in Fortitude Valley on Sunday morning.
But she soon found herself turned away from popular Latin American club Hey Chica! after security guards took issue with her traditional tattoos.
Ms James later took to Facebook to slam the 'racist and discriminatory' treatment she received.
Now, speaking to The Project, she explained why her markings are so important to her.
'There are so many groups of diverse people here that I live with and a very big Pacific Islander population in Queensland, and there's a lot of us that are wanting to practice culture, including marking our skin.
'We need to be reviewing policies and legislation that are not reflective of our community. We shouldn't have to assimilate, this is our culture and we should be allowed to practice it freely.
'It's a human right to do that so the laws that we live in should also reflect that, and they should reflect the community.'
Ms James says she 'wants to make some noise' for people who want to represent their cultural heritage.
'We went across the road to a different venue and the security guard there, all my friends said, are you going to let her in? Like look at her license, look at her.
'She looked at me and she said, "why wouldn't I let you in? We actually aren't allowed to discriminate and categorize you based on obviously what our cultural marks".
'And so we went and we spent the rest of the night in that venue.
'Now we're here trying to make some noise for anyone else that might proudly wear the marks of their ancestors too, change the legislation and liquor acts that might try to prevent us from practicing our culture.'
On the Hey Chica! website, its outline strict dress regulations.
'Dress to impress, smart casual is best, closed in shoes are a must. No face, neck or hand tattoos. Entry is at the discretion of the door host or management, dress code may vary for special events. For more information on dress regulations please contact us before your visit,' it reads.
Ms James has taken a stand saying she will be speaking with her local member about the 'rule' dictating that face tattoos are affiliated with gangs, and how this must be changed to reflect the diverse community.
She also said she expects a written apology from the venue.
In a private message to Ms James, which she shared on Facebook, the club apologised for the 'unintended distress' it caused but stood by its policy.
'Thank you for sharing your experience and for your understanding that the staff at Hey Chica! were following procedure,' the message said.
'While we appreciate that our rule has caused you unintended distress, we do enforce a blanket policy that prohibits head and face tattoos at Hey Chica! alongside other conditions of entry. While we understand this is a strict policy, we will continue to enforce this under the Liquor Act.'
Under Queensland's liquor laws, venues face penalties if they don't take reasonable steps to refuse people wearing items associated with criminal organisations including bikie gangs.
Talking to the ABC, Ms James said the tattoos are marks handed down through generations and were from her great-grandmother dating back to when her village was established.
She went onto say the chief of the village asked his daughters to carry the marks and their stories on their skin, a request which has echoed through generations.
'They hold great spiritual and ancestral value to me and my community,' she said.
After being turned away from the club, Ms James said she went to members of her community who are lawyers, and found out the club can refuse entry and service to people - but as long as it is not discriminatory.
'The fact that I was clumped into a group of people that are thugs, gang members, dangerous criminals, that is not my story,' Ms James said.
'I went back and I said, "these are cultural and what are you going to do about that?" And no response.'
Ms James says she just people to hear her story and change their point of view on facial tattoos.
She also hopes the venue reviews its policy, but at the very least educates those who made the rules to change the way they think about people who wear their marks with pride.
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Six-month-old babies could soon be vaccinated for Covid-19 in Australia as Pfizer jumps key hurdle
This is alarming. An immature immune system might not cope well with what is often a harmful vaccine
Australia is a step closer to having Covid-19 vaccinations for children aged six months to five years, with Pfizer approved to submit an application to the medical regulator.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has granted a provisional determination to Pfizer, which would allow the pharmaceutical giant to apply to extend vaccine use to the younger cohort.
Currently, the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for those aged five and over but there has been talk of extending its use to younger children, after US regulators recently approved a similar move.
A spokesman for the TGA said the provisional determination was the first step.
'The TGA considered all eligibility criteria, including evidence of a plan to submit comprehensive clinical data and the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic,' he said.
'Approval and potential supply in Australia would only commence should the vaccine be approved as safe and effective by the TGA and recommended for administration to this age group by ATAGI.'
The Moderna vaccine for children under five is already being considered for approval by the administration.
Health Minister Mark Butler did not want to put an exact timeframe on when a rollout of the pediatric vaccine would be approved.
'The TGA will take the time it needs to take, that's always been our approach, it was the former government's approach,' he told reporters in Canberra. 'I'm happy with however long they take to do the job properly.'
Mr Butler said discussions had taken place with Moderna and Pfizer to make sure vaccines were ready to be distributed once they were formally approved.
However, the health minister said it was too early to predict what the take-up rate might be.
'We have a great track record in this country of up-to-five immunisations generally,' he said.
'What the take up will be by parents of under fives is a little unknown, we'll be considering what support and information we provide to parents about this.'
The TGA said the determination did not mean Pfizer had yet submitted an application, or that it had been approved; only that it had been allowed to apply for expanded use.
Australia is on track to record its 10,000th death from the virus within days.
NSW, Victoria and Queensland together recorded 50 fatalities in the latest 24-hour reporting period, as the national toll rose to 9897.
NSW Health is warning of a rise in cases this winter as new sub-variants take over, making people vulnerable to a second dose.
The BA.2 sub-lineage remains the dominant variant. However, it is expected BA.4 and BA.5 will soon become so and are likely to be associated with an increase in infections.
Meanwhile, vaccinations are no longer mandatory in Queensland for visitors to hospitals, aged care facilities, disability accommodation and jails.
Workers in high-risk settings such as early childhood, primary and secondary education, prisons, youth detention centres, and airports are also exempt, unless required by employers to be vaccinated.
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Replacing coal: A very tongue in cheek report below
The feasibility is absent and the cost would be astronomical
Coal generators are likely to shut sooner and Queensland will need big-scale pumped hydro equivalent to 30 times what is available at Wivenhoe power station before they do, the energy regulator is warning.
It is revealed in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 30-year road map to be released today, which predicted the last coal generators could shut as early as 2040.
Currently the last coal-fired power station, Queensland’s Millmeran, is scheduled to wind up in 2051.
Just one Queensland coal-fired power station is currently scheduled to close before 2030 – Callide B in 2028 – while Gladstone and Tarong are forecast to shut down in 2035-36 and Stanwell, Kogan Creek and Yabulu are not due to close until the 2040s.
Under the most likely scenario to reach net zero by 2050 modelled by AEMO “all coal capacity could close as early as 2040”.
“If closures can be co-ordinated with adequate notice, then technical and market challenges may be managed. If they are not, the risk of price and reliability impacts on consumers quickly rises,” the road map warned.
“Deep storage”, like pumped-hydro projects the size of Snowy 2.0, will be needed to keep the lights on reliably once the state’s coal generators are shut down.
“It may be prudent for early investment in deep storage across the (national energy market), to enable improved resilience to earlier coal closures or project commissioning delays,” the AEMO report stated.
It stated that when all Queensland coal capacity retired, another 6GW of deep storage would be needed to complement 10GW of smaller battery storage, the “equivalent to 30 times the existing Wivenhoe power station”.
AEMO chief executive officer Daniel Westerman said the road map was developed to help manage the “complex, rapid and irreversible energy transformation”.
“To maintain a secure, reliable and affordable electricity supply for consumers through this transition to 2050, investment is required for a nine-fold increase in grid-scale wind and solar capacity, triple the firming capacity (dispatchable storage, hydro and gas-fired generation) and a near five-fold increase in distributed solar,” he said.
There will also need to be almost $4.8 billion in investment in power network, supply and transmission upgrades needed from far north to southern Queensland as part of the transition to a renewable electricity market.
This includes $408 million for Gladstone Grid Reinforcement, $1.2 billion for network upgrades between Cairns and Townsville to increase capacity of the Far North Queensland renewable energy zone and $1.16 billion for a network capacity expansion across the Darling Downs renewable energy zone.
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MelbUni security try force Avi Yemini to DELETE video
On April 29, the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) passed an anti-Israel motion declaring the only Jewish state of "ongoing ethnic cleansing and apartheid".
UMSU went as far as to justify and promote acts of terrorism by reclassifying the attacks on civilians as "self-defence".
"UMSU supports the self-determination of the Palestine people and their right to engage in self-defence against their occupiers", the UMSU statement reads.
Through their motion, UMSU urged the University to boycott everything Israeli.
However, the University of Melbourne quickly rejected the UMSU motion in a statement:
"The University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) is a self-governing body and operates as a separate entity to the University.
This anti-Semitic motion, narrowly passed in a vote by 16 members of the UMSU Students' Council, is not the position of the University of Melbourne; nor is it one that is endorsed or supported by the University.
The University of Melbourne is deeply committed to the values of inclusion and respect, and all members of our community must feel welcome and safe from discrimination or racism. Any form of anti-Semitism is antithetical to who we are and what we stand for. Tackling it and its damaging effects is a responsibility of all members of our community.
Jewish students and staff are valued members of our University, along with our Jewish alumni and friends. We are proud of our relationships with the Jewish community in Australia and across the world, and our academic partnerships with Israeli universities and scholars.
Similarly, academic freedom and freedom of speech are core values of the University of Melbourne as outlined in our Freedom of Speech Policy, which applies to students, staff and visitors of the University. We expect all members of our community to exercise these rights respectfully."
Last month, the union was forced to rescind their motion amid legal challenges.
But not before I went to visit the union on campus. I learned three things about the student union while on campus:
* They don't seem to have many members
* Members have no idea what the union is doing in their name
* The student union is abusing their workers by signing them on as contractors to avoid paying worker's taxes and superannuation
None of it's surprising, but it never seems to get enough attention. So it's up to you to share what UMSU is up to.
https://www.rebelnews.com/melbuni_security_try_force_avi_yemini_to_delete_this_video
************************************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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
