Horrifying video shows the moment a 15-year-old girl viciously attacks a pregnant mum from behind and tries to rip her handbag away

Once again something important to an understanding of the story is not mentioned. But the skinny brown legs of the assailant identify her as Aboriginal. Relations between Aborigines and the rest of the comunity are notoriously bad in W.A.

Horrifying footage shows the moment a teenage girl violently attacks a pregnant mother from behind as the woman took her two children for a stroll.

The 37-year-old mum was walking with her two children down a Perth laneway in Smallman Place, Ashfield, at about 12.40pm on Monday when the young girl approached from behind.

CCTV captures the teenager violently pulling the mother along the concrete footpath by her hair after sneaking up in her in the laneway.

The desperate mother tried to hold onto her pram, which then toppled over as she was slammed onto the ground - leaving the children screaming in fear.

Police arrested the 15-year-old a short time later and alleged she was the teenager in the footage and had been attempting to steal the woman's handbag.

Footage of her arrest shows her swearing at officers while other household members cry out he background.

The mother escaped the attack with minor cuts and bruises but police held concerns for her pregnancy as she fell onto her stomach.

The girl was charged with one count of robbery and is set to appear in Geraldton Magistrates Court on September 13.

Police released the CCTV footage of the attack to help piece together what happened.

Anyone with relevant information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.

Footage before the attack showed a teenager riding a scooter down the laneway behind another young girl.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11184045/Perth-teen-tries-steal-handbag-drags-mum-hair-Smallman-Place-Ashfield-Perth.html

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Catholics’ gender warning for schools

Catholic schools have been strongly advised not to assist in ­efforts to affirm gender transitions in students through the use of drugs or surgical interventions and that “a human being’s sex is a physical, biological reality”.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference will advise schools that, for the vast majority of children and adolescents, gender ­incongruence is a psychological condition through which they will pass safely and naturally with supportive psychological care.

The guidance, to be issued on Tuesday, urges Catholic schools to avoid assisting in the issue of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgery to limit possible infertility, “unnecessary damage” and “future possibilities for healthy human growth”.

The nation has more than 1700 Catholic schools educating about 780,000 students.

The guidance voices grave concerns over an affirmation-based approach to students experiencing gender ­dysphoria and instead steers educators to a “biopsychosocial model” based on research showing a high correlation between “childhood gender incongruence and family dynamics”.

“In this model, practitioners promote ongoing psychological support for the child or young person through engaging with families,” the guidance says. “By discovering the child’s and family’s stories, practitioners are able to understand the gender variance felt by the child or young person within the context of family and their domestic environment.”

Pastoral care initiatives that are “in conflict with the generosity of the Christian vision” are also to be “respectfully avoided”, including concepts that say gender is arbitrarily assigned at birth, gender is fluid and that gender is separate from biological sex.

“Research data strongly suggests that, for the vast majority of children and adolescents, gender incongruence is a psychological condition through which they will pass safely and naturally with supportive psychological care,” the guidance states. “Studies quote between 80 to 90 per cent of pre-pubescent children who do not seem to fit social gender expectations are not gender-incongruent in the long term.”

Catholic school leaders are told to recognise that society has “widely adopted the belief that each person’s innermost concept of themselves determines their gender identity”. But they are warned these recent changes were “in conflict with the Catholic understanding of creation, in which every person is created good and is loved unconditionally as they are”.

Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli, the chair of the Bishops Commission for Life, Family and Public Engagement, said the guidance document elevated the dignity of every person rather than “defining that person by any single characteristic”.

He said Catholic schools ­adhered to the “foundational principle that each person is created in the image and likeness of god, and is loved by god”.

“That principle guides this document, which we offer to our schools to support them in walking compassionately alongside each student we are invited to educate,” he said.

The document is aimed at ­providing support and care to students. It makes no recommendations that would result in students being expelled because of their gender identity.

Catholic schools are encouraged to cater to the needs of students experiencing gender incongruence, a term recommended for use by educators over the term “transgender”.

The document recommends that schools provide unisex toilets or a change room area not aligned to biological sex to increase safety and options for vulnerable students. It also proposes to offer “flexibility with uniform expectations” to cater to the diversity of the student body.

However, all school documentation is to record students’ biological sex at enrolment. The guidance notes that “it may be lawful” to exclude a student from single-sex competition if they are over the age of 12 where the “strength, stamina or physique of competitors is relevant.”

It advises educators to refer to commonwealth guidelines when developing school policies, and ­argues it is “paramount” for all sporting environments to be inclusive and safe.

The guidance comes amid public debate surrounding the ability of transgender students to participate in school sports, a discussion that was stoked during the election campaign after Scott Morrison’s hand-picked candidate for the seat of Warringah, Katherine Deves, ran on a platform to ban transgender competitors from participating in female sports. Ms Deves said a ban would ensure the safety of female competitors, but faced a backlash for a number of tweets she wrote arguing that transgender girls had been “mutilated and sterilised”.

In the new guidance, Catholic school are encouraged to be diligent in “resisting the incursion of political lobbying, ideological postures” and various organisations which may be “at odds” with the school’s mission. It also gives licence to principals who may feel the need to decline the involvement of politically motivated organisations.

National Catholic Education Commission executive director Jacinta Collins said the guide would be discussed at the National Catholic Education Conference underway in Melbourne. “Recent comments by eminent psychologist Professor Ian Hickie highlight the increasing number of medical professionals who are challenging the gender-affirmative approach and are supporting the biopsychosocial approach, which is less invasive, holistic and more closely aligned with a Catholic world view,” she said. “It remains critical that our Catholic schools can speak about the Church’s teachings on these matters in an informed way, underpinned by the principles of respect and human dignity.”

The guidance recommended that schools review of a number of subjects in the curriculum to ensure schools were well placed to deal with “most matters that may surface if a student is undergoing psychological and/ or medical intervention”.

The federal government provided $8.24bn in funding to Catholic schools in 2020, which is close to the $8.67bn spent on government schools, while the states and territories contributed $2.2bn.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/catholics-gender-warning-for-schools/news-story/a2cce209f2dbf79c8a32d4f6b6ab4b74

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Unisex toilet rollout recommended for Queensland Catholic schools

Queensland Catholic schools have been recommended to install controversial unisex toilets or change room areas to support students in gender transitions, according to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

The conference has released a guide on gender and identity to support Catholic schools in responding to the individual social and pastoral needs of students in a “sensitive” way.

Queensland has more than 300 Catholic primary and secondary schools and more than 150,000 students.

The guide, Created and Loved, said a review was being undertaken in several areas with schools well placed to deal with most matters that may surface is a student is undergoing physiological and/or medical intervention.

Unisex toilets have been the subject of controversy in Queensland schools in the past.

The state government was forced to backflip on a gender neutral toilet block that was set to be installed at the $80m Fortitude Valley State Secondary College following parent and expert outcry.

St Eugene College at Burpengary also installed unisex toilets without consulting parents to trial a gender-neutral approach to “match what happens in family homes”.

Chair of the commission Archbishop Peter Comensoli said the guide offers principles that can

be used by Catholic education authorities for their own contexts.

The guide recommended schools provide a unisex toilet and change room area or create a private bathroom space not aligned to biological sex to increase the access and safety options of vulnerable students and potentially alleviate anxieties.

Appropriate bathroom and sleeping arrangements would be required to ensure students felt safe and supported on school camps and events.

Further, it recommended schools offer flexibility with uniform expectations that cater to the diversity of the student body.

It also recommended schools ensure any school policy states that all documentation is to record a student’s biological sex when they’re enrolled.

“Catholic schools are well placed to handle the above practical matters sensitively and thoughtfully, keeping in mind that the majority of students experiencing gender variance may not desire or seek out a medical intervention for transition,” the guide read.

Education specialists including principals and teachers were consulted by the bishops and advice was sought from parents with children facing gender questions.

It also heard from bioethicists and experts in the field and from the international church community.

“The Catholic Church and our schools begin from the foundational principle that each person is created in the image and likeness of God, and is loved by God,” Archbishop Comensoli said.

“That principle guides this document, which we offer to our schools to support them in walking compassionately alongside each student we are invited to educate.”

A Queensland Catholic Education Commission spokeswoman said the guide reinforced the work being done and support being provided to Queensland Catholic school students.

The spokeswoman said schools, school leaders and staff would be able to reference the guide to establish a safe and trusting relationship with students where issues of identity can be discussed openly.

“Catholic schools are communities of faith, and that faith is lived out through the care, respect and love shown by staff to all those in their care, within strong, supportive and respectful school environments,” she said.

“The guide provides schools with a framework for making decisions in the local context to support the wellbeing of all students. “The primary aim of Catholic schools is to provide nurturing and supportive environments for all students.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/queensland-education/unisex-toilet-rollout-recommended-for-queensland-catholic-schools/news-story/cf4061f9c532b58742254c693bb571f3

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Anonymity for men falsely accused of rape

Bettina Arndt

‘No man should have to go what I went through,’ said the teary John Jarratt, after a jury took 15 minutes to decide he was not guilty of an alleged rape forty years earlier. He’d been through twenty months of what he called ‘media death row’, with the worldwide press coverage traumatic for his entire family.

The accusation came from a former flatmate – Jarratt admitted he had sex with the woman, but said it was consensual. She said she’d been inspired by #MeToo and took action when the well-known Australian actor was at the peak of his career, starring in Wolf Creek II. Even after the jury tossed the case out and Jarratt successfully sued The Telegraph for reporting he had ‘got away with rape’, the incident will always be part of his history.

‘The woman who perpetrated the evil lie against me walked away scot-free,’ said Jarratt, calling for laws to be changed so that neither party is identified unless someone is convicted.

Last week I spoke to Daniel Janner, QC, a UK barrister who has set up an organisation called FAIR, (Falsely Accused Individuals for Reform), pushing for legislation to give anonymity to those accused of sexual offences.

Daniel’s father, Lord Janner of Braunstone, was twice the target of false sexual abuse allegations resulting in a well-publicised police raid on his home and parliamentary offices. None of the accusations against him were tested in court before his death in 2015. Daniel is clear that he believes the motivation for the allegations was possible lucrative victims’ compensation claims.

Daniel’s group was launched in 2019, with a demonstration outside Parliament led by Sir Cliff Richards, who had faced his own nightmare through being accused of historic sexual abuse. Sir Cliff described his four-year ordeal which turned him into a ‘zombie’, stopping him sleeping for years: ‘I don’t think I will ever get over it.’

FAIR’s first petition attracted over 27,000 signatures but that initial momentum was derailed for two years by Covid lockdowns. Now the group is actively pushing for an amendment to the next criminal justice bill to make it an offence to identify or publish information about someone accused of a sexual offence unless they have been charged. An exception would be made in special circumstances, like a historic institutional rape case where there’s abundant evidence of wrongdoing and a high likelihood of other victims.

At one time teachers and other professionals had legal protection from being named prior to conviction but then the UK system was captured by the feminists and became victim-centred, with accusers being given anonymity and the accused allowed to be publicly named. Every time there’s an attempt at reform, feminists claim alleged perpetrators must be named because publicity is essential to encourage other ‘victims’ to come forward to ensure prosecution.

This argument may hold up in some historic institutional rape cases, but it is absolute nonsense in the majority of sexual assault cases. For a start a lot of the perpetrators are kids – in Australia, the largest group of sexual assault perpetrators are aged between 15-19. Most of these are date rape or hook-up cases involving young people struggling with the issues of consent.

It’s nonsense to suggest there’s always a bunch of other victims who could come forward. Yet the sisterhood controlling our justice system gets away with this monstrous lie, ensuring even students can be named and shamed. The argument that victims deserve special protection due to the unique opprobrium associated with sexual crimes also applies to the falsely accused. Yet that obvious fact is totally ignored.

While it’s great to see people trying to get laws changed to protect the anonymity of accused men, it also makes sense to try to ensure false accusers face the music for what they have done.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/anonymity-for-men-falsely-accused-of-rape/

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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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Judge admits a plague of domestic violence towards Indigenous women

Aboriginal men are hard on their women and children. I have seen it myself

In a speech to a group of female lawyers this week, Justice Judith Kelly said false claims of individual and systemic racism detracted from the search for solutions to the far higher rates of domestic violence in Indigenous communities. “Talking honestly about the problems that exist and encouraging honest and open public debate would have to be a good start,” Justice Kelly said.

“And by speaking honestly about the problem, I mean not self-censoring for fear of being branded a racist by the ideologues of the new ‘anti-racism’ religion.”

Justice Kelly said people and institutions, including the legal system, were casually and inaccurately labelled as racist without any evidence.

“The underlying assumption of this ideology appears to be that Aboriginal people must exist in a permanent state of victimhood, an assumption that is in fact deeply racist,” she said.

“Further, among those in thrall to this ideology, labelling someone or something ‘racist’ seems in many cases to be an end in itself – not a prelude to remedial action, but a substitute for it.”

Justice Kelly earlier this year spoke to The Australian about an “epidemic of violence” plaguing Aboriginal women in the NT at the hands of their partners.

Those comments drew criticism from the NT’s Australian of the Year, Leanne Liddle, at the Garma Festival. Justice Kelly said while Ms Liddle, as director of the Aboriginal Justice Unit, had said many useful and positive things, her comments at Garma were not among them.

“Ms Liddle invited the audience to reflect on what might be meant by ‘people’ and she was quoted as saying: ‘I feel strongly that such language reflects an undercurrent of racism – an othering of Aboriginal people that exists within our society’. I am sorry Leanne feels that way so let me make my meaning clear,” she said.

“By ‘people’, I meant ‘people’ – not ‘people other than Aboriginal people’. I want all the people of Australia in cities, towns, the bush and bush communities to know what is happening so that, just maybe, something might be done about this terrible scourge.”

Justice Kelly noted that in the past 22 years, two Aboriginal men had been shot by police. In the same period, some 65 Aboriginal women were killed by their partners. The police shootings received massive media coverage, but the deaths of those women were barely noted.

She described two instances where Aboriginal women were killed by their partners in front of numerous witnesses who did nothing. Other victims, she said, were actively discouraged from reporting violence and may be punished for doing so.

“Everyone is willing to talk about the over-representation of Aboriginal men in prison. It has been called Australia’s shame and so it is,” she said. “But … the stream of Aboriginal men going to prison is matched by a steady stream – a river – of Aboriginal women going to the hospital and to the morgue.”

She said false claims of individual and systemic racism detracted from the search for solutions.

“The causes of this epidemic of violent abuse are multiple and complex … unemployment and passive welfare dependency; lack of access to adequate education, health and mental health services; lack of adequate housing and consequent overcrowding; substance abuse; dispossession and loss of culture,” she said. “And one that deserves a stand-alone mention – the ‘rivers of grog’ that run through our communities.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/nt-justice-judith-kelly-says-cult-of-antiracism-enabling-violence-against-indigenous-women/news-story/cc7827cd51a4a52585ac4c4a1bd145a6

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Fascist Victoria

Fascism was Leftist from its inception

In late August 2020, pregnant mum, Zoe Buhler, was charged and handcuffed in her own home by Victoria Police, accused of inciting a protest in breach of public health orders.

Her great ‘crime’ was to put a message on Facebook promoting a ‘peaceful protest’ – with social distancing measures and masks – to ‘end lock downs’ and ‘stand for human rights’.

The Assistant Police Commissioner, Luke Cornelius, alleged Ms Buhler had ‘engaged in serious criminal behaviour’. He referred to those objecting to lockdowns as ‘batshit crazy’.

How serious was this charge, given it has been dropped weeks away from a state election? Surely a serious charge should be pursued fully through the courts?

‘Clearing the political decks’ is how some cynics might view it.

Many Australians, and others across the world, are familiar with the vision of Zoe Buhler being handcuffed by police in her kitchen. It is the unfortunate stuff of Covid legend.

On Tuesday, police withdrew the charge. It took police two years to do the right thing. Many questioned the validity of such so-called crimes that turned ordinary citizens into criminals for things like … walking outside.

During this time, Victorians experienced things they never thought they would in a free country, one in which democracy and respect are fundamental tenets of our peaceful way of life.

Other than Black Lives Matter gatherings, Victorians observed their right to protest being annulled with pepper bullets and tear gas. Citizens were filmed running from police officers who used batons and a bravado in clips that went viral worldwide.

Had these crowds been assembling in the streets to riot, to burn buildings, to loot, to murder, to wreck, or to create mayhem, then Victorians would have understood such aggression by the police.

But these crowds had gathered for freedom.

They gathered for the right to go to work, the right not to be forced to take vaccines, and the right for their children to go to school or playgrounds.

They rallied for democracy, for the return of the Parliament to make decisions, and against the absolute authority of emergency power contained in the Premier.

It was under Labor’s watch that the police chased protesters, hurried on grandmothers from park benches, handcuffed a pregnant mother, held elderly men on the ground, and kept Melbournians locked down for 23 hours a day unable to travel – or even walk – further than 5 kilometres from their homes.

The Premier offended many Victorians during this time, locking them out of their state. They were stopped from being with their dying parents or attending their funerals. One of his most offensive statements was, ‘We had no choice.’

Let me be very clear: the police had a choice about whether to charge Zoe Buhler.

It is why Labor must apologise to Ms Buhler for their contempt of individual rights and why their government must explain to the Victorian people why police were instructed to act so aggressively.

An explanation as to why it took two years for the charge to be withdrawn would also be welcome.

The Police Minister should now consider sacking the Police Commissioner and his Assistant, Luke Cornelius, the same officer who sympathised with Black Lives Matter protesters and their right to gather.

It seems apparent that, like much of the Victorian bureaucracy, Victoria Police has been politicised and the law has been used to hush citizens who disagree with the government.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/apologies-are-not-enough/

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Million Australian ‘teen robots’ on path to illiteracy, OECD warns

A global education leader has criticised Australia’s shallow school curriculum for producing “second-class robots’’, as damning new data reveals a million teenagers are on a track to illiteracy over the next five years.

Andreas Schleicher, education and skills ­director with the ­Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has warned that Australia has “made learning often a mile wide, but just an inch deep’’.

“I would say that is one of the real challenges in Australia,’’ he says in a speech prepared for the National Catholic Education Conference next week.

“The challenge is to teach fewer things at greater depths.

“If you look at the top-­performing education systems, that’s what they do. They often focus more on deep conceptual understanding rather than just surface content.’’

Mr Schleicher called for more rigour in the curriculum to teach children to think for themselves and collaborate, instead of educating “second-class robots, people who are good at repeating what we’ve told them’’.

“We have made students passive consumers of a lot of learning content,’’ he said.

Mr Schleicher oversees the world’s biggest comparative school test, the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has revealed a startling slide in achievement among Australian 15-year-olds compared to students from 75 other industrialised countries over the past decade. Since 2003, Australian students have dropped from 11th place in maths to 29th, from eighth place in science to 15th, and from fourth to 16th in literacy.

Criticism of the national curriculum – which was simplified and “decluttered” in April following a two-year review – coincides with warnings of alarmingly low literacy levels among students.

The most recent PISA test, involving 14,000 Australian students in 2018, found one in five teens reads at the lowest of seven levels of proficiency – a level the OECD regards as “too low to ­enable them to participate effectively and productively in life”. Only 60 per cent read at a “proficient standard’’ of level three.

Learning First chief executive Ben Jensen has extrapolated the data to calculate that 800,000 Australian students have substandard literacy levels. He predicts that will soar to a million by 2028, unless they are given help to catch up with reading and writing.

“Translated across the school system, that means a million students, out of just over four million, who cannot read well enough to have a productive career and a full life,’’ he writes in Inquirer on Saturday. “The evidence shows that when students who are behind are taught clearly identified and sequenced knowledge appropriate to their grade level, using high-quality instructional materials, they can accelerate … learning and make up huge ground.’’

Dr Jensen also criticised the new national curriculum, which the Australian Primary Principals Association has declared “impossible to teach”. He said Australia’s curriculum is “not high-quality and knowledge-rich’’.

“It does nothing to guarantee the knowledge students are supposed to learn,’’ he said.

“It fails to provide teachers with comprehensive, high-quality instructional materials.’’

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which released the new curriculum in April, has withheld the 2022 NAPLAN results until year’s end. Last year’s testing of a million children found one in five teenage boys is semiliterate, with one in 10 girls and one in five boys failing to reach the minimum standard for writing in Year 9.

Mr Schleicher, a physicist and statistician who studied in Australia for his masters in science from Deakin University, is special adviser on education policy to OECD secretary-general ­Mathias Cormann, Australia’s former finance minister and special minister of state. He said that in PISA’s reading literacy tests, “Australia has gone backwards’’.

“I’m not saying that Australian students learn less necessarily but when it comes to those advanced knowledge management skills, this is where they increasingly struggle,’’ he said.

Mr Schleicher said the curriculum must teach children to out-think robots, and “think for themselves and collaborate with others’’. He said top-performing education systems “look at the realm of human knowledge, the realm of ethics and judgment, the realm of political and civic life, the realm of creativity, aesthetics, ­design, of physical health, natural health, economic life’’.

“(They teach) those fundamental concepts that make us different from the artificial intelligence that we have created in our computers. Teaching fewer things at greater depths is really one of the key challenges.’’

Mr Schleicher said the most successful countries in education used “rigour, making sure that students are challenged in every moment of their learning’’.

“It’s about focus, teaching fewer things at greater depths.

“Success is about remaining true to the disciplines, helping students understand the ideas, the foundations of a discipline.’’

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/million-teen-robots-on-path-to-illiteracy-oecd-warns/news-story/32fba9e931210b8c094d08dca2b8ad54

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Dispelling myths about water in Australia

Ron Pike

The myths about water are many. They range from Australia being the driest continent on earth, to all of our rivers dying from overuse, right up to the government being required to return water to the environment.

Most of these myths are rooted in ‘environmentalism’, a political movement which has become a form of religious belief that fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer but does not burden him with adherence to scrutiny or veracity.

These particular environmentalists arrogantly believe their cause is so important that they should not be questioned or challenged in scientific debate. Have you ever heard an environmentalist explain what the environment is, or where it resides?

For many years now I have used municipal flood records to refute the oft falsely repeated claim that since we invested in water conservation and irrigation, we have had fewer over-the-bank flows (floods) than in the century previous.

In reality, we have had many more, and you do not need a degree in anything other than common sense to work out why.

Environmental bureaucrats continue to argue against these truths, and other indisputable facts, and use their error to justify the iniquitous Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

But here are some not-so-well-known facts that should be shouted out in the present flood of misinformation about our water resources.

Australia has more precipitation per head of population than most other countries on Earth.

Some examples; expressed in megalitres per person: Australia: 140, Brazil 130, USA 33, Japan 6, United Kingdom 4.

Of our precipitation, about 13 per cent runs to the sea and this amounts to about 290 million Megalitres per year from the mainland and 50 million megalitres from Tasmania.

While the amount we use for all mankind’s purposes varies from year to year, it rarely exceeds 5 per cent of this huge volume.

How then is it possible for anyone and most of all Politicians, to argue that our rivers are over-committed?

How can the federal government justify overriding Section 100 of the Constitution to return water to ‘the environment’ when the people of Australia only use 0.4 per cent of the precipitation that falls from the heavens?

Surely federal action via the MDB Plan is an act of extreme incompetence and a depravity against the Australian people?

Politicians, if they are to regain any credibility, must recognise that the bulk of our runoff is between Adelaide and Cairns, which is right where we need it. All we must do is conserve these huge flows in times of excess and where necessary divert westward.

Mankind has yet to develop a better water conservation system than the building of dams. Doing so will massively grow our economy, generate a huge growth in jobs, and if practically managed, stop most of our flood damage.

But flowing from this revelation of where our water resources are, is a much bigger and more important truth that has been buried by those not saddled with a commitment to truth.

The Australian river with the largest run-off by a very large margin is the Murray River. As Sturt rather boldly stated when he progressed from the Murrumbidgee to a river he called the Hume, ‘I have found Australia’s Mississippi.’

This is not surprising when we consider that the Mighty Murray has a catchment of one million square kilometres which includes most of Australia’s snow country, a fact overlooked by our dishonest environmentalists.

The outflow from the Murray most years is more than double our next biggest river, which is the Clarence.

Now consider this before we look at some historical Murray outflows. The total storage capacity for all dams in the MDB including the Snowy Scheme is 29 million megalitres. Measured at Euston these are some of the historical flows in the Murray River.

1956 120,000,000 megalitres
1957 2,400,000 megalitres ( a very dry year)
1962 36,000,000 megalitres
1963 35,000,000 megalitres
1964 36,000,000 megalitres
1969 24,000,000 megalitres
1974 60,000,000 megalitres
1975 72,000,000 megalitres
1984 36,000,000 megalitres
2022 estimation 70,000,000 megalitres

During the dry years of the Millennium Drought, the flow past Euston only dropped below 2,400,000 megalitres. in one year.

The flow past this point in 2010 and 2011 which ended this drought is believed to be over 30,000,000 megalitres. each year and outflows have remained around this and above every year since.

So why is the Murray-Darling Basin Authority releasing around 2,400,000 megalitres of stored water every year into an already swollen river? It is an absurd waste of a needed resource. The lower Murray is always awash with more water than we can possibly use and this is why we can never successfully manage this resource until we build Chowilla Dam.

While reliable details for all years are not available, I believe the picture painted by the facts we have, clearly show a system not overburdened by irrigation extractions and a system that would hugely benefit from more storage.

What should be screamed is that the system is over-regulated by multiple bureaucracies; from Canberra, the states, and local government and is not over-committed for irrigation.

Recent debate about our water resources has been appalling to watch, and any rational arguments have been drowned out by the politics of perception. Truth as expressed above has been washed away by media-generated emotion of ‘dying rivers’, a water-starved environment, and dead fish.

How is it possible to argue that we, the people, are depriving ‘the environment’ of water when the people are only using 0.4 per cent of the total precipitation and around 5 per cent of runoff?

The lack of truth in public discourse relating to our water resources has not only killed off rational debate, but has undermined our human decency that flows from acceptance of that truth and unpins our respect for one another.

As a result, previously thriving communities built on the abundance of our water resources and a respect for one another’s ambition and enterprise are regressing.

The management of our largest water resource, the Murray-Darling system, is a sin against the people of Australia and if Prime Minister Albanese is serious about job and wage growth he must take the breaks off the peoples ‘Tools of Trade’, which are Water, Power, and Fuel.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/dispelling-myths-about-water/

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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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Father’s Day is worth celebrating


I had a good fathers' day

Father’s Day is too often written off as a Hallmark Holiday. Yes, it is a recent social construct, but when it comes down to it all of our festivals are social constructs.

This one has its roots in various feasts, festivals, commercial, and religious days around the world that have since been formalised.

Today, Father’s Day forms part of a collection of days that honour family roles. They are not compulsory. They are not public holidays. If they offend you or you’re determined to wallow in negative feelings – as is the case with The New York Times – you’re free to ignore it.

What matters to the rest of us is the spirit of a day. Saying, ‘Thanks dad!’ once a year is a healthy thing for society, especially in the current ideological environment that seeks to label men as ‘toxic’ and dangerous by their very nature.

When little boys are born, they are separated out as ‘future rapists’ or the heirs of ‘white supremacy’ and ‘colonisation’ by the same cult that makes doctors feel guilty about ‘assigning’ gender at birth. Our culture too often seeks to destroy the bonds of fatherhood at infancy and paint fathers as something to be watered down, made more palatable, and – if possible – replaced entirely by a second mother.

If the men of Western Civilisation lean into their biological instincts to be strong providers and protectors, they are charged with crimes against groupthink. If they complain about advertising campaigns that attack them for existing, they are decried as insensitive.

God forbid men present themselves as tall, slightly wild-looking, masculine, and un-manscaped creatures capable of killing a Huntsman spider or fixing stuff around the house.

Modern men, as a species, are getting weaker. They are being coaxed into effeminate behaviour as the cult of womanhood pushes itself into the public sphere – a public sphere, mind you, that can’t seem to define what a woman is. In some arenas of Woke, the best woman is a man.

Such is the Age of Confusion we find ourselves in.

Here’s a tip, women like strong men. Women look for masculine creatures to balance their femininity. Maybe the reason that so many young women are single is not, as suggested by some, the ‘culture of Tinder’ but the far more problematic lack of manly-men who make good prospective fathers.

Masculinity is something worth defending, as is the vital role of men when it comes to leading the family.

This Sunday, we simply say thank you to the fathers that are looking after the next generation.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/fathers-day-2/

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Top doctor Luke McLindon sacked, shunned for divisive Covid research

Gynaecologist and obstetrician Luke McLindon has proved to be a headache, even an embarrassment, to the bosses at Brisbane’s Mater Hospital.

In June, the leading health facility terminated his job as the head of fertility services for not having the Covid-19 vaccine – against Queensland Health’s mandate.

And now the controversial doctor has stirred up a storm over data he says makes a preliminary link between the Covid-19 vaccine and miscarriages.

His unfinished research – which is heavily disputed by the Mater and counter to multiple studies that have found the vaccine is safe for pregnant women – was leaked and promoted by anti-vaxxers online.

Dr McLindon wants his early research to be investigated further, but his personal stance against vaccine mandates is not helping his fight for serious consideration of his findings.

“I’ve been shunned and isolated and in a very difficult place both personally and professionally,” he told The Sunday Mail. “I am not an anti-vaxxer, I’m just against mandates, and as a GP I delivered the scheduled immunisations to patients for years.

“As an obstetrician my patients were mostly all vaccinated. “I have never encouraged anyone not to be vaccinated.”

Dr McLindon, a long-time clinical researcher in infertility and recurrent miscarriage, told peers in a closed meeting that he had discovered a rise in the number of early pregnancies lost to women following the Covid-19 vaccine.

“I told the group that the rates looked too high but needed further investigation and made it clear the findings must not be spread,” he said.

“I was horrified by what I saw online. “It was used as anti-vax fodder and my actual data was not yet complete. “Those numbers were very early and they were worst possible scenario. “They needed to be moderated and adjusted as more time passed.

“News travelled fast in the medical world in Queensland and I have been distanced and frozen out.”

The doctor said at 51 he will likely have to start life again in a different career.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommends all people trying to conceive to have the Covid vaccine. Several studies have found the vaccine to be safe for pregnant women.

As he fights for his reputation, Supreme Court documents show the doctor lost his position at the Mater as he failed to adhere to the vaccine mandate for medical professionals.

Dr McLindon is one of a group of Queensland doctors who launched a legal challenge to the chief health officer’s vaccine mandates for hospital and healthcare workers.

“That is my personal decision due to a heart condition,” he said.

A Mater spokesman confirmed that the doctor no longer practised at the Mater but would not clarify the reason. Dr McLindon said he too was not at liberty to comment on the reason for his termination.

But court documents show that Mater chief executive Dr Peter Steer terminated his employment on June 9 as he had not complied to the vaccine mandate and did not provide an exemption.

“I wish to have peers review my findings before formally releasing,” Dr McLindon said. “The aim is to find a reputable international journal who sees the importance of this work to add to the scientific literature in this space.

“I have an intimate knowledge of these women’s menstrual cycles, time of conception, bloods, ultrasounds, vaccination status and timings.”

Colleagues say the controversial gynaecologist is a respected doctor and a “decent human being”. “Research needs to start somewhere,” one doctor said. “As experts in a field we have an obligation to be intellectually honest. “This includes being absolutely sure of your data and allowing others in the field to crosscheck your findings.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/coronavirus/top-doctor-luke-mclindon-sacked-shunned-for-divisive-research/news-story/5623e5f2575271b589082cf39777771c

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Border closures ‘ruined people’s lives’, says mum of stranded boy

It’s been a whole year since a Queensland mother was reunited with her young son after an agonising two-month separation because of border closures – and the family is convinced it was all for nothing.

The tear-jerking moment – when little Memphis ran into mother Dominique Facer’s arms at a Brisbane airport – resonated with thousands of Queenslanders grappling with “inhumane” border restrictions during Covid.

Memphis, who was three at the time, had been visiting his grandparents in regional NSW when the borders slammed shut in July 2021, stopping him from returning to his home at Howard in the Fraser Coast region.

It took until September 3 for the little boy to be brought home after a big fight from his Queensland mum.

Ms Facer still questions the necessity of the harsh lockout laws and the motives of an unbudging Queensland Premier reluctant to grant exemptions.

When she learned Annastacia Palaszczuk was planning to reopen the border between NSW and Queensland on October 18, just six weeks after winning her long battle to see her son again, it was a “slap in the face”.

“I still have a hard time grasping the event and just the whole timeline of it,” she said.

“It feels like we went through all that sh-- because they were just clutching at straws, but they were ruining people’s lives and businesses in the process, so what was it all for?”

“When you look back on it now, you think to yourself, they put people through that crap for nothing and was a shock to the system and kind of a slap in the face when I found out the borders were opening because they could have just done that from the start.

“Palaszczuk has never reached out or said anything to us, which would have showed she had remorse or a bit of decorum but she never once reached out, nor did (chief health officer) Dr (Jeanette) Young.”

Looking back, Ms Facer still feels sorry for the people who missed out on saying goodbye to their loved ones and those who died completely alone.

She said she was “one of the lucky ones,” who, with the help of Opposition Leader David Crisafulli, the “awesome” staff at Angel Flight and the media crusade that campaigned for her, was finally able to reunite with her son. “I still can’t believe it that many people cared,” Ms Facer said.

“You think, oh yeah, this sucks for me, all my friends and family understand but when you get thousands of different people all rallying together for you, and siding with you, understanding your pain, it’s pretty next level.

“I remember being at Archerfield and seeing all the media but not realising they were there for me because I saw a big plane come in and thought someone political or important was also landing there.

“When I walked out to the tarmac, I saw the news chopper and someone said ‘yeah, you’re on live television’ and then all the journalists started lining up ready to come at me for an interview, I was like, ‘hooly dooley’.

“Even now, you still get the looks. This woman came up to me in a shop and she heard me say Memphis’s name and she said, oh my God, is that the little boy that was stuck in NSW?’

“And I laughed and said, ‘yeah this is Memphis’ and she was like, ‘OMG, I cried my eyes out watching him run to you’.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/border-closures-ruined-peoples-lives-says-mum-of-stranded-memphis/news-story/c71879c390e008157bb7f361ec460fa7

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For this teacher weighing up a return to the classroom, there are bigger issues than pay

Including ineffective discipline options

Paige Rundle is on long service leave from the profession she loves, but admits it's unlikely she will return to teaching full time.

Ms Rundle is one of thousands of registered Australian teachers opting not to step back into the classroom, as the teacher shortage worsens.

But she says it's not a question of pay. "The money's not that bad — it's that they've taken teaching out of our hands," she said. "They've got to give teachers the freedom to actually teach."

There were 1,050 teacher vacancies in Queensland as of the end of May this year. This compares to 760 vacancies in a similar timeframe last year

Teacher shortages are not a problem unique to Queensland, with modelling showing the demand for secondary school teachers across Australia will outstrip graduates by more than 4,100 teachers over the next three years.

A national action plan is expected to be endorsed by December to recruit and retain more teachers, with talk of better pay for more experienced staff.

Ms Rundle said she hoped any national action plan would address common concerns among teachers about the curriculum, workload and discipline.

"At the moment it's a rotating wheel where the same kids get suspended; they come back, and it's a 'reward' to be sent home again. And the kids know we can't do anything about it. "All the while, it is disruptive to the whole class."

Ms Rundle said, in addition, teachers were now expected to do a lot of parenting – making the classroom an unappealing environment to work in.

Queensland's Education Minister Grace Grace has sought to reassure parents that teacher shortages are not affecting students' NAPLAN results.

"The Grattan Institute has given Queensland a gold star for growth in student outcomes so we're very proud of that," Ms Grace said.

"We are providing added incentives for teachers to teach in regional and remote Queensland, so hopefully that will really give us a boost along in terms of teacher numbers."

Parents are worried about the long-term consequences of the shortage and the impact of their children's education and future.

"Parents are concerned in … making sure that kids have appropriate supervision at school," P&C's Queensland chief executive Scott Wiseman said.

'Linchpin role'

Queensland Teachers Union vice president Leah Olsson said there needed to be a "discussion at the dinner table" about the value of teachers to society.

"We need resourcing for our state schooling, and we need respect for the linchpin role that they play in our community," she said.

Ms Olsson said better incentives were also needed, such as paid-for flights, to attract teachers to regional and rural areas of Queensland.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-05/what-will-entice-teachers-back-to-the-classroom/101396046

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A major Central Queensland coal mine expansion approved

A major Central Queensland steelmaking mine will undergo a massive expansion after getting the green light from the State Government.

More than 700 jobs will be supported during the expansion of Carborough Downs near Moranbah, increasing the metallurgical coal mine’s lifespan by another 11 years.

The underground mine, which is owned and operated by Fitzroy Australia, currently employs about 700 people, with almost 70 per cent of its workforce being local or drive-in, drive-out workers.

Coal production from the expansion is expected to begin in the next 12 months.

Resources Minister Scott Stewart said Carborough Downs was a “significant” employer and economic contributor to the Isaac region, with the extension ensuring the future stability of jobs.

“This investment is a strong vote of confidence in Queensland resources sector, including our state’s large deposits of high-quality steelmaking coal,” he said.

“Importantly, this extension will create flow on economic benefits for the entire Isaac region, from tools, safety and workwear suppliers right through to our pubs, café’s and accommodation providers.

“Queensland offers a great lifestyle and having good jobs available in the regions is an important way to sustain this.”

Mr Stewart said the resources sector in Queensland supported about 77,000 jobs, with regional areas accounting for two-thirds of all mining jobs.

“Queensland is naturally blessed with the world’s highest quality metallurgical coal, which the world needs to make steel,” he said. “Even as the world transitions to renewables, metallurgical coal for steel will remain an essential, and valuable, international export commodity for Queensland.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/rockhampton/business/carborough-downs-mine-near-moranbah-to-undergo-major-expansion/news-story/0d2de06a78651f80b1c9d90a9606899b

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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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Jacinta Price LOSES IT at Anthony Albanese and says he has a 'tiny little mind' that can't tell the difference between a multi-millionaire African American basketballer and Aboriginal Australians living in the desert

Senator Jacinta Price has blasted the Prime Minister for his 'petty political stunt' after he met basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal to discuss the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with O'Neal after the NBA legend requested a meeting in Sydney to learn more about the referendum.

In a newsletter on Friday, Country Liberals Senator Jacinta Price slammed Albanese for 'trotting out an African American multi-millionaire' instead of listening to the Indigenous voices already in Parliament.

'Albo couldn't resist the opportunity to do a presser with a celebrity like O'Neal,' Ms Price wrote. 'In his tiny little mind he probably couldn't see the difference between a multi-millionaire African American basketballer and Aboriginal Australians living in remote and rural Australia.

Ms Price urged the Prime Minister to listen to Indigenous Australians already in parliament, lobby groups and head to remote communities to hear directly from them.

'There are REAL Aussies facing REAL problems that need REAL solutions, they don't need such shallowness with no substantive plans when they're being faced with such serious issues,' Ms Price added.

'They don't need an Indigenous Voice handpicked by the government, and they don't need an American celebrity's voice.

'Indigenous Australians have their own voices, they are many and varied and you should start listening to them.'

The Indigenous Senator labelled Albanese as a 'pathetic, attention-seeking, virtue-signalling PM' and noted he was missing from Shaq's Australian highlight's clip.

The newsletter ended with a postscript followed by the famous 'surprised Shaq' meme.

'P.S. When you realise you were just used to implement racial division in another country's constitution,' Ms Price wrote.

MS Price, the former deputy mayor of Alice Springs, was elected at the May 21 poll for the Northern Territory as a member of the Country Liberal Party and has openly criticised the government's Indigenous policies.

The Aboriginal senator donned a traditional headdress and rallied against what she called 'handouts' and 'symbolic recognition' for Indigenous Australians in her first speech to Parliament on July 27.

On August 24, O'Neil burst into the PM's press conference with his imposing 216cm frame dwarfing Mr Albanese, who stands at 173cm.

The towering basketball greeted the PM before gently pulling the hand of Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney to touch his forehead in a strange exchange.

'Hello Australia, nice to see you,' he told the press, before telling the PM and Senator Burney: Congratulations to you guys and I want you to know Shaq loves Australia, all right?'

The former NBA star was supposed to pledge his support for the referendum but instead delivered a couple of vague platitudes and quickly left.

He turned and left the room within 10 seconds of arriving, pausing only to remind the PM he would need him to 'give him that clearance too' to take home the boomerangs he had earlier been presented with.

The PM insisted the meeting with the basketball star had been a huge success, telling media later: 'It was a very positive conversation. He is interested in this country, his second visit to Australia.

'He knows that we are a warm and generous people, and he wanted to inform himself about what this [Voice] debate was about... by engaging directly with the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and myself as the Prime Minister.

'It is a really positive discussion about the way that Australia is seen in the world.'

Albanese said he hoped the NBA legend will lend his profile to promoting a campaign to support the referendum.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11172493/Jacinta-Price-slams-Anthony-Albanese-Shaquille-ONeal-stunt.html

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The Labor party is obsessed with brown skin

Not since Gulliver’s Travels has there been such an absurd visual image: a giant of a man towering over a land of pipsqueaks and midgets, as they grovel and fawn at his feet. The giant was of course a real one, the seven-foot-tall African American basketball player and occasional rap artist Shaquille ‘The Shaq’ O’Neal. The pygmies were of course metaphorical ones; the leading lights of the Albanese government; Labor’s Lilliputians.

As our editor pointed out on this page a week shy of the last federal election, in his warning to voters, an Albanese Labor government would comprise of ‘possibly the lowest calibre of intellects and individuals ever to assemble in a single federal parliamentary party room (other than the Greens, but that should go without saying)…’. Indeed, the events of the past week prove the accuracy of that prediction.

Only a moron would fail to see that there is no possible connection between this particular African American celebrity and those who are supposedly crying out for a ‘Voice’ to represent them in our parliament other than… the colour of his skin. There is literally nothing whatsoever that qualifies Mr ‘Shaq’ to speak on behalf of a single dispossessed or aggrieved indigenous Australian other than… the colour of his skin. There is no linkage, no matter how remote or tenuous or contrived, between a wealthy retired basketball player and the complexities involved in changing our constitution other than… the colour of his skin. There is no line that can be drawn in any credible way between alleged past atrocities committed against aborigines that can only be addressed through an entire new apparatus of government and a man who has made millions of dollars out of throwing a basketball around than… the colour of his skin.

Which leads to the inescapable conclusion – denied repeatedly by anxious commentators and politicians alike – that the Voice is about race, it is wholly about race, and it is about nothing but race.

But the stupidity does not stop there. As has been pointed out by numerous astonished commentators, Mr O’Neal is in Australia to promote an American gambling enterprise. In other words, The Shaq and his overseas sponsors make money out of a perfectly legal but – to many on the wowser Left – morally dubious activity that causes significant unhappiness (and worse) to many long-suffering individuals within the indigenous community.

Yet this inconvenient fact appeared to not bother Labor’s cheer squad one whit. Indeed, the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas, as woke as they come, tweeted – in response to the negative commentary that followed hard on the heels of the Prime Minister’s ridiculous stunt – ‘If you think Shaq doesn’t matter you haven’t lived in the multicultural suburbs of melb where I come from. He is a god.’

A god no less! A god who, it appears to have escaped Ms Karvelas’s attention, is happy with uber-misogynistic lyrics in his songs (yes, he’s a rapper as well) such as, ‘Taxiderm your bitch head, mount it on a wall’ and ‘We want the exotic, erotic ladies, not them toxic ladies that burn a lot’. So it can’t have been his songwriting skills that canonised Mr O’Neal in Ms Karvelas’s eyes.

What’s more, Shaquille O’Neal has gone on record praising Donald Trump. So it can’t have been his politics that conferred divine status upon him, either. What on earth could it have been?

Oh, that’s right… the colour of his skin.

Tanya Plibersek, another of Mr Albanese’s short-in-moral-stature ministers, decided that what qualified The Shaq for such a privileged role in promoting the Voice is his support for Black Lives Matter. Except, Mr O’Neal has been just as vocal in supporting the police against the supporters of BLM. So, no, it can’t be that. Which takes us back to her undoubted appreciation of… the colour of his skin.

Mr O’Neal is here to make a buck and we wish him well in that endeavour. That he was canny enough to use the preening, patronising racism of our left-leaning politicians and media to his own advantage is no indictment on him but a savage indictment of them. What this episode – savagely condemned by both Jacinta Price and Lidia Thorpe alike – demonstrates is that the Labor leadership team are as gullible and foolish as star-struck teenage girls.

Worse, much like Joe Biden – who famously proclaimed, ‘If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black’ – this mob are racist to their very core, unable to see anything beyond the black skin of an African American. Shame on them.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/labors-lilliputians

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"Voice": Part of the relentless push of the modern Left to foment racial hatred and instil grievances

Our beloved country under Labor’s proposed ‘Voice’ will become one gigantic apartheid state. Australia will boast apartheid and racial segregation from Broome to Ballina, from Cape York to Cockle Creek.

Racism, rather than mateship, is to be our overriding creed.

As former Fraser minister Neil Brown suggests, when the qualification for being part of a body such as the ‘Voice’ can be reached only by members of one race, the Aboriginal race, all other races are excluded. That is racism.

Ramesh Thakur reminds us, ‘It will be impossible to put the genie of racialised identity back in the bottle, ever.’ He goes on to quote US Chief Justice John Roberts, who said: ‘The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.’

It is a sentiment that was beautifully articulated by actor Morgan Freeman back in 2005 – before the Left decided to weaponise America’s dormant racial animosity as a modern political tool. Freeman silenced 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace who said, ‘Black history month you find…?’

‘Ridiculous,’ replied Freeman.

When asked why, Freeman added, ‘You’re going to relegate my history to a month? What do you do with yours? Which month is “white history month”? Well, come on, tell me?’

After Wallace clarifies that he is Jewish, Freedman continues, ‘Okay, which month is “Jewish history month”?’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘Oh… Do you want one? I don’t either. I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.’

Perplexed, Wallace asks, ‘How are we going to get rid of racism?’

‘Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.’

Morgan Freeman was right. Racism only exists if people say racist things and keep obsessing about race in every aspect of their lives. There is only one American history and there is only one Australian Constitution. Unfortunately, the prism of race has become a default setting thanks to the relentless push of the modern Left to foment racial hatred and instil grievances in order to garner votes.

Remember Joe Biden’s, ‘if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black’ sneer?

We are at the point where the conversation about race has gone beyond parody and descended into outright lunacy. Time keeping is racist. Maths is racist. Golf balls are a product of colonial exploitation. It’s a miracle teachers are still allowed to write on blackboards with white chalk.

This absurdity has a darker side, such as white students being restricted in common spaces of some American colleges to avoid something called ‘white violence’. In Nigeria, white models have been banned from advertisements. And when it comes to the downright terrifying, groups in South Africa are walking around openly shouting, ‘Kill the Boer, kill the farmers!’ This is a call to murder based on race.

In Australia, we are blessed to have largely escaped racial violence and extreme racial tensions, but for how much longer? This is what concerns me.

The last few years have seen increasing agitation about race in this country. Under Labor, these racial differences could soon be enshrined in our Constitution. We are doing the very opposite of what Morgan Freeman and John Roberts advised.

Instead of ceasing our conversation about race, we have made it the number one national priority. It is all we talk about. Indeed, we are being forced to talk about it and everyone will have to keep talking about it in the lead-up to, during, and after the referendum – whatever the result.

Australia will end up talking about race forever.

This is not the path to reconciliation. I fear it is the beginning of a new Australia. An Australia that judges its citizens by the sins of their ancestors and colour of their skin. An Australia redefined through race and underpinned by a re-writing of history, malicious myth, untruths, propaganda, and parasitic activism that helps no one except itself. Even the ABC fact checkers had to admit that the often cited claim that Indigenous Australians were covered by the flora and fauna act – which did not classify them as human beings, and only changed when the Constitution was amended following the 1976 referendum – was a myth.

The ABC’s Stan Grant even managed to turn our most famous historical poem into a story of race, ‘I love a sunburned country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges. It reminds me that my people were killed on those plains. We were shot on those plains, disease ravaged us on those plains.’

This hyper-racialised future that pits Australia’s children against each other from the earliest age based on their skin colour, will be a scar on our politics.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/giving-racism-an-aussie-voice/

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The jackboot trampling Australians

George Orwell once wrote: ‘All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.’

He was someone who knew intimately the danger he was warning against, and also rightly said – even more ominously – via 1984:

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always – do not forget this, Winston – always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

Sadly this is no longer just the stuff of fiction and dystopian novels. Our Orwellian overlords have done extremely well in keeping the masses under their jackboots by hyping up fear, panic, and paranoia over a virus. Two years of lockdown hell – especially here in Melbourne – has taken its toll. Many broken lives, and many lost lives – due to suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, business collapse, and so on – have been the ugly result.

I never want to go through all that again, as would be the case with all freedom-loving citizens who have had a gut-full of the Big State doing its best to emulate Big Brother. Thankfully, it is more or less over – or so it seems. But just as a rapacious carnivore wants ever more, after having gotten a taste for blood, so too our statists have loved the power and control they so easily were able to get over the past few years.

They do not want to give it up. Indeed, they want more.

A whole new era has been ushered in, and it is not just most politicians who love it so. Plenty of folks at the top of the food chain have been rubbing their hands with glee as they see their new world order so nicely coming about. It has been a dream run.

Here down under our power-hungry premiers are still intoxicated by their newfound powers. They not only want to stay in complete control over the masses but they want to punish any and all recalcitrants who have dared to not bow down and worship them and their draconian edicts.

Consider two recent examples of this. This is what the tyrants in Queensland are now up to:

Queensland’s Education Department is docking the pay of 900 school staff who did not get the Covid vaccine, saying that ignoring the mandate put others at risk. Staff members including teachers, teacher aides, administration staff, cleaners and school officers will have a ‘small-scale temporary reduction of one increment of pay’ for 18 weeks, the department said.

‘Approximately $25-$90 per week gross, proportionate to the normal pay that a staff member receives,’ a spokesperson from the department said. ‘The disciplinary penalty imposed on staff are individualised to each person’s circumstances.’ The staff received a letter this week informing them about the decision, however a 20-week period had been flagged with them.

The letter stated the action was ‘appropriate’ for the severity of the matter and hoped staff would follow future directions. A direction from the state’s Chief Health Officer required school staff to be vaccinated against Covid from November last year, but the decision was revoked in June and staff have since returned to the workplace.

Talk about dictatorship in action: ‘You will be punished for refusing our orders. You will be made an example of. You will suffer for this.’ As if they have not suffered already. Thankfully, there has been a little bit of pushback to this.

The article also says this:

Teachers Professional Association of Queensland secretary Tracy Tully said impacted teachers had been informed earlier this year they would face disciplinary action for not complying. ‘Whilst they were on suspended leave without pay, they received a letter saying that they are advising that there would be some disciplinary action, but they weren’t sure what it would be,’ she said.

‘By doing that, it actually puts people into a high state of alert and fear.’ Ms Tully said the teachers had already been penalised financially. ‘The teachers have already been disciplined by being stood down without pay,’ she said. Ms Tully said some teachers would appeal the decision with the Industrial Relations Commission.

University of Sydney social scientist specialising in vaccines Professor Julie Leask said the reduced pay policy was from a time when high vaccination coverage was crucial to reduce transmission but was now ‘outdated’. ‘It is unlikely to achieve what these policies should be trying to achieve, which is either to encourage vaccination or to ensure that others are protected from transmission,’ she said. Professor Leak said these policies only ‘alienate and drive mistrust’. ‘This policy appears to be more of an anger-based policy than an evidence-based,’ she said.

But another state is also getting in on the persecution, making life even more difficult for all those rebellious lepers there. As one news item reports:

WA Police say more than 50 officers are facing disciplinary action over their refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19 – as a legal challenge against the state’s vaccine mandates by one of their own was comprehensively rejected by a WA Supreme Court judge. Ben Falconer has spent almost nine months fighting against the mandates issued by WA Police to all its workers late last year – a battle that took so long that the mandates were lifted in the meantime.

That battle was lost on three fronts on Tuesday, when Justice Jeremy Allanson methodically picked apart arguments around irrationality, proportionality and bodily integrity. ‘It was not, in the words of counsel for the applicant, a maelstrom in a petri dish. The measures that were taken are undoubtedly extraordinary, but that does not establish that they lacked rationality so as, for that reason, to be beyond power,’ Justice Allanson said.

More Statist thuggery in action. As one social media mate of mine said:

Now that Ben Falconer lost his case, they want to punish everyone who didn’t agree to be force vaccinated. Disgraceful to ever mandate a vaccine, let alone a total blunder that doesn’t even prevent transmission, let alone everything we’ve learned since even then, but to go after them at this stage is just shameful. Let’s just keep making the wound bigger even after the threat has passed, and make sure our law enforcement officers know that their value is 0. Total shambles.

Quite right. All dictators thrive on fear, intimidation, and bullying. These Labor premiers – and others like them – have become experts in this. And the really scary thing is what we are seeing down under is no different from what we see in Communist China with its social credit system: good behaviour and good thought (as determined by the State) will be rewarded; bad behaviour and bad thought will be punished.

China and Australia are much closer than we thought – and in more ways than one.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/08/where-the-jackboot-never-fades/

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The incorrectness of coal

He spoke too soon. It’s always a gamble going out on a limb. But when Richard Marles, then a Labor shadow minister, spoke in 2019 about the (temporary) collapse of the world market for thermal coal he didn’t have to add that ‘at one level that’s a good thing’.

Shane Wright, the economics writer who pops up in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald, also opted for a florid description: ‘coal is like candlesticks’. According to him, ‘the Candle Makers’ Union of old was wont to say 150 years ago: the light bulbs, they’ll never catch on’. So droll (and inaccurate) of him to predict the demise of coal in this way.

Now you could argue that Wright doesn’t count and Marles only a little bit, but Treasury also has it in for coal. Take the assumption from this year’s Budget delivered at the end of March – less than six months ago – that the price of thermal coal (used to generate electricity) would decline from $US320 per tonne to $US60 per tonne by the end of the September quarter 2022. (It’s currently trading close to $US400.)

You might think I have made a mistake typing these numbers. But no, in the span of just over a half a year, the Treasury expected the global price of thermal coal to fall by nearly three-quarters notwithstanding other predictions contained in the Budget that the outlook for the global economy was fairly rosy. (Precipitous declines in other commodity prices, apart from oil, were also anticipated.)

This was despite the fact that the war in the Ukraine was in full swing, the price of natural gas in Europe was skyrocketing (it had actually risen sharply before the war) and Europe was being forced to turn back to coal to maintain its output of electricity. Don’t Treasury officials read the international press? Or maybe they stopped reading after the glorious victory of the Glasgow Cop 26 and its faux commitments from some countries to get out of coal, including Germany.

There is surely an irony that Germany is now ramping up its coal-fired electricity generation – using brown coal, indeed – after it became clear that the flow of cheap natural gas from Russia could no longer be assured. The government has even reluctantly agreed to extend the lives of the last three remaining nuclear plants. That’s right, renewable energy doesn’t really cut it when a crisis emerges. Other countries to turn back to coal include Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and the UK.

Actually, it seems a lifetime ago when the climate-fest was held in Glasgow. It was only last November and Boris was still at the helm. He was flitting back and forwards to convince some uncertain world leaders of the need to sign up for the net-zero journey – sadly, including our own prime minister, Scott Morrison. (It’s not clear how many other ministerial positions he also held at the time.)

As it turned out, it was probably the peak of climate fear-mongering, with all the likely urgers there to make themselves look important and/or to snaffle more government largesse. Our own Twiggy Forrest had his own stand providing free bumf about green hydrogen to anyone who walked by. Even Greta turned up after a long train ride, although her impact is clearly waning.

One of the biggest points of contention at the conference was the call to phase out coal, which the ‘greenest’ countries supported, or phase down, a position supported by Australia, India and even the US. Rather than go away without any ‘consensus’, the final decision was unanimous agreement that (unabated) coal should be phased down and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies should be removed.

What a joke those days of verbal wrangling turned out to be! Thermal coal is now at historically high prices; metallurgical coal is even being used to generate electricity with its price sometimes lower than that of thermal coal – unheard of; and global demand for thermal coal is expected to be higher next year than this year. Demand is particularly strong in China and India.

The International Energy Agency, well-known for its lop-sided bias towards anything renewable and away from coal, has had to admit that its predictions of the early demise of coal as a source of energy have been completely wrong. The term ‘stranded asset’ is unsurprisingly absent from its more recent reports.

We have also seen the predictions of the ESG crowd go pear-shaped as coal companies announce record profits and dividends. When mining giant Anglo American decided to peel off its thermal coal division into a separate company, Thungela Resources, there were green-tinged market analysts who estimated the value of the new company at zero and firmly told shareholders to sell. The price of Thungela Resources has risen by close to 600 per cent since listing and its dividend yield is 25 per cent!

Then there’s the story of BHP exiting thermal coal – that company is particularly in thrall to the ESG crowd – only to be outwitted by the cunning executives at Glencore. By taking the price risk during the period during which the transaction was being completed, Glencore as the buyer was able to fully pay for the purchase!

One of the most alarming aspects of these recent developments is the failure of the news to reach so many of our politicians, including those who are actually in power. The state energy ministers (they are right down the political food chain) have decided that coal can have no role in ensuring the stability of the electricity grid in the future. Federal Climate Change Minister, Chris Bowen, simply doles out favours to green rent-seekers without understanding the full implications. But here’s the thing: there is breathless hypocrisy surrounding the behaviour of these politicians. The fact is that coal is propping up both the federal budget and the budgets of Queensland and New South Wales, in particular. In just the few months between this year’s budget and the end of the financial year, the bottom line of the federal budget was better by $25 billion because of higher commodity prices. The Queensland budgetary position would be dire were it not for coal royalties.

Evidently, it’s fine to bite the hand that feeds you if you are an environmentally concerned politician. No one in the mainstream media will pick you up, particularly those journalists who think that coal and candlesticks are the same.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/coal-is-bad

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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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Inner city residents vote for changing date of Australia Day - but the PM slaps down the move

Some moronic political correctness from Albanese below. How is the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of traditional Aborigines "the oldest continuous civilisation on earth". Civilization is when people ABANDON the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. That's its definition. Civilization features CITIES. The Aborigines had none. They did not even have writing

The City of Melbourne is set to push the Federal Government to move the date of Australia Day after a clear majority of locals voted for the date to be changed in a recent survey.

Almost 60 per cent of 1,609 Melbourne residents and businesses said they support celebrating Australia Day on a date other than January 26, That was twice the number of people who don't want a change.

Of those polled, 59.8 per cent supported changing the date of Australia Day, compared with 31.6 per cent who did not.

Even more, 59.9 per cent, said they believe Australia Day would be moved from 26 January within the next 10 years.

The five traditional owner organisations that make up the Eastern Kulin nation also unanimously supported changing the date.

If the council endorses the vote, it would commit to still issuing permits for Australia Day activities by the state government and other organisations.

It would also support activities that acknowledged the First Nations perspectives of January 26, and citizenship ceremonies would continue to be held.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected calls to change Australia Day on Sunrise, saying his focus was on recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution.

'Let's focus on recognising the fact that our nation's birth certificate should proudly recognise that we did not begin in 1788, which is what the 26th of January commemorates, it began at least 60,000 years ago with the oldest continuous civilisation on earth. 'That should be a source of pride.'

Other polls, especially national ones, have been far less enthusiastic about changing the date. A poll by IPSOS in 2021 found only 28 per cent supported the change.

About 90 per cent of the respondents to the Melbourne council's phone survey, done by Redbridge from August 4 to 7, were residents aged over the age of 18. The poll had an even gender split.

The City of Melbourne has just under 170,000 residents and politically is strongly left-leaning.

In the 2022 Federal Election Greens leader won Melbourne in a cakewalk, with 49.6 per cent of the vote.

Changing the date has been a Greens policy for many years but dropped off the party's election policy platform with its First Nations focus instead on the creation of a Treaty.

In 2017 the City of Yarra voted to stop referring to January 26 as Australia Day. It was stripped of the right to hold citizenship ceremonies by the then-Federal government.

Melbourne isn't a Greens-dominated council, with only two if its 11 councillors Greens - Rohan Leppert and Olivia Ball. Its mayor is independent Sally Capp, a former Liberal, who formally asked the council to review its approach to Australia Day in July. She acknowledged January 26 was a 'divisive' date.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11171455/City-Melbourne-residents-vote-changing-date-Australia-Day.html

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Turnbull slams ‘fascism’ after protesters shout him out of university speech

Turnbull gets that one right

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has decried “fascism” and challenged Sydney’s oldest university to protect free speech on campus after he was yelled and sworn at by student protesters during a function and escorted out by police.

Turnbull left the Sydney University Law Society event on Thursday without speaking, following the boycott by members of the Student Representative Council and student body, who called him “ruling class scum” who “wouldn’t listen to anyone below” him.

He said it was a “dreadful state of affairs” and “a very sad day” for his alma mater and argued free speech no longer existed on campus if it was in the hands of protesters with loudspeakers.

“It’s just complete fascism. Just extraordinary,” Turnbull told the Herald. “One of the things they accused me of being was anti-queer, which didn’t seem to match the fact that I legalised same-sex marriage. It was literally a litany of objections.”

In video clips posted online, students can be seen yelling into microphones and loudspeakers as Turnbull stands at the front of the room.

“Can I just ask, how many of you would like me to speak today, or how many of you would like me to leave?” Turnbull asked the room of students.

“How many of you would like to pay $100,000 for university?” retorted a young man who was part of the protest. “F--- back off to Mosman, F--- back off to Wentworth.”

A young woman with a megaphone accused Turnbull and successive federal governments of destroying young people’s ability to access welfare payments, and said the Law Society had invited the former prime minister to speak under the guise of free speech.

“The Law Society, which is a student group, is inviting someone on campus under the guise of free speech, when this man and his party have literally been one of the single most damaging forces to higher education, to climate change, to refugee policy,” one protester said.

Sydney University student newspaper Honi Soit identified some of the protesters as SRC officers.

Turnbull said it was for the university to explain whether it would be run by protesters, whom he described as “a very noisy, aggressive minority of people with loudhailers”.

“There’s no free speech at Sydney University unless the people with the loudhailers allow it to happen,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re paying the Senate and officials at the university for if they’re not in charge of their own campus.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/turnbull-slams-fascism-after-protesters-shout-him-out-of-university-speech-20220901-p5bene.html

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Major Aussie city makes an embarrassing backflip on cycling lanes after motorists erupt in fury: 'This is a victory for common sense'

Brisbane mayor Jim Soorley tried this in Fortitude Valley a few years ago. It was abandoned after causing big traffic jams

An Aussie city has scrapped a controversial bike lane program after huge protests from local motorist who were furious about their commute times blowing out.

The City of Port Philip in Victoria introduced a pop-up bike lane trial, alongside speed humps, bollards, concrete blocks and yellow markings on local streets.

However, residents of suburbs including Port Melbourne and St Kilda blasted the plans as a 'desecration' of roads.

Now, the state government has agreed to change the plans, with one critic branding the change a 'victory for common sense'.

The plans were the latest example of Australia's cities seemingly waging a war on drivers, after Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth all introduced 30km/h speed limits to discourage cars from the inner city.

In Port Phillip, Department of Transport executive director inner, Alan Fedda, said the council had listened to community feedback over the cycle lane.

'The changes we are proposing will help to strike a balance between community needs, and improving bike rider safety in the City of Port Phillip,' he said.

Port Phillip councillor Andrew Bond praised the decision to scale back the cycling lanes.

'This is a victory for common sense,' he said. 'But there are many other areas in our municipality, aside from these ones, that are also of concern to our residents. 'I look forward to these being addressed in the near future.'

A council meeting in July was hit with complaints from residents who said the bike lanes were ill-considered, unsafe and a blight on bayside suburbs.

The program is part of a wider scheme by the government to roll out lanes in inner municipalities.

Now, the changes will see the trial ending in Port Melbourne, with concrete blocks and bollards also set to be removed.

The department has held regular meetings with the council throughout the project, and is working in partnership on the pop-up bike routes.

Last week, a controversial push to reduce speed limits to 30km/h throughout residential areas in Brisbane was met with outrage from workers in outer suburbs, fearing it will see their daily commute to work blow out.

Greens councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan put forward the motion to discourage motorists claiming it will promote 'vibrant public spaces and hubs of social activity'.

Identical schemes have also been trialled across other Australian cities including Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11164115/Melbournes-Port-Philip-St-Kilda-makes-embarrassing-backflip-cycling-lanes.html

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The debt horror that will cripple Australian Federal government spending

A big chunk of tax money will go to pay banks and bond-holders

Although in office for a little more than 100 days, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has already been criticised in some quarters for laying blame for Australia’s economic troubles at the feet of the former Coalition government. He is not entirely wrong to do so.

The period the Coalition was in office, even allowing for pandemic-related spending, could hardly be characterised as the golden years of fiscal restraint. Nor too, could the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years in which Chalmers was Wayne Swan’s chief of staff.

Examples are growing daily of where rising inflation and interest rates are already causing serious stress for mortgage holders throughout the country. Worse still, the pain for households will only be multiplied when energy bills rising rapidly thanks to net zero are also factored in.

But the federal government, which has run up close to $1 trillion debt since the Howard years, is perhaps most exposed. It naturally follows, as rates go up, so too will the borrowing cost on debt, both for new debt accrued and existing debt being rolled over.

Recently, Chalmers correctly identified, ‘when interest rates are rising, it actually costs more and more to service that debt…the fastest-growing area of government spending in the budget is actually servicing the debt that we’ve inherited because as interest rates rise, it becomes more expensive to pay that back.’

With Treasury revising its inflation rate estimate to 7.75 per cent, the RBA cash rate has nowhere to go but up, and fast. As the cash rate has typically followed the inflation rate, Australia faces dramatic rises in our government debt servicing costs.

Recent research released by the Institute of Public Affairs identified the scale of the challenge. Should the cash rate rise to 7 per cent by 2030, a fair assumption given current inflation trajectory, it is estimated that the annual cost of the nation’s interest bill would more than quadruple from $20 billion today to $89 billion by 2030.

This will make the annual cost of debt servicing the third largest spending item in the federal budget behind only welfare and social services, and health.

By way of context, this would see our nation’s debt servicing cost exceed double that of current annual federal government spending on defence and is the equivalent to the cost of purchasing a fleet of six new nuclear submarines. It is also three times more than the current NDIS budget.

Moreover, approximately half of all federal government debt is held overseas, including by the Chinese government, providing potential adversaries with not insignificant financial and economic leverage.

Aside from the Abbott government’s first budget in 2014, which made a strong start on the politically difficult task of budget repair, the former Coalition government oversaw a substantial deterioration to the federal government’s balance sheet.

Under the Coalition, gross federal debt more than doubled from $420 billion in 2015 to $980 billion today, taking debt from 25 per cent of GDP to approximately 45 per cent. This is more than the peak of government debt piled up by Whitlam, which reached just over 20 per cent of GDP in 1975.

Yes, it is true that much of this debt was run up as a result of the pandemic. And it is also true that the Morrison government did not choose for the pandemic to happen. But it did choose how to respond to it.

It was forgivable, and perhaps inevitable, that there be a wage subsidy program like JobKeeper. What was not forgivable is how it was administered. The program was based on giving eligible businesses a wage subsidy of $750 per week per employee, regardless of if that employee was working full time or part time. A more fiscally disciplined approach would have been to at least provide a smaller payment for those working part-time, as occurred in New Zealand.

It was also unclear why the Morrison government chose to direct billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money to states that kept locking its citizens down, especially Victoria, other than they thought it would be popular or, at the very least, politically expedient.

At no time did the Morrison government think it was wise to administer the tough love needed to ween states off soul-destroying lockdowns by refusing to subsidise them.

Yet, at no point did any senior federal Coalition figure even attempt to provide leadership through using the considerable resources of government to communicate the significant economic and social costs of lockdowns.

It is an open question as to whether Labor would have done any better, recent history suggests they more than likely would not have.

When John Howard left office in 2007 gross debt was just $55 billion, which was less than five per cent of GDP. By the time Labor left office in 2013, debt had increased six-fold to approximately $300 billion.

Worse still, both the Gillard and Rudd governments left several budget time-bombs by committing to extra spending outside of the budget forward estimates, which meant the true state of the financial situation was hidden from voters until it was too late.

There is no way around it – any government wanting to pay down debt must cut spending.

This great political challenge is exacerbated by the fact that there is never any shortage of sectional interests demanding more government money from Canberra.

And it is always easier for ministers, who these days seem to be there for a good time, not a long time, to appease those interests by giving into their demands. Whether Chalmers will be a Treasurer more like Keating/Costello than Crean/Morrison remains to be seen.

Still, credit where it is due. So far Chalmers is making the right noises on fiscal discipline and has shown he is perhaps willing to take unpopular decisions in the name of strengthening the budget bottom line, which he did by recently ruling out an extension to the petrol excise cut.

Let’s hope his ambition does not run out of fuel.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/running-on-empty-4/

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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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A professor lectures to an empty room as all students work from home

I agree that this is not good. I always took questions from students during and after a lecture and that was a helpful part of the process

A university professor has cried out for help after he gave a lecture to a completely empty hall - as students watch remotely from home rather than come to campus.

Jan Slapeta, a Professor of Veterinary and Molecular Parasitology at Sydney University, posted an image of his deserted lecture theatre on Monday as all students were dialling in.

The work-from-home habits adopted during Covid lockdowns have lingered long after most isolation measures for the virus had been abandoned.

Prof. Slapeta said students as a result are missing out not only on collaborative learning but the social life that had always been a major part of the student experience.

'Should I be shocked again? 1 pm lecture - no one! I lectured empty chairs,' he posted to social media.

Professor Slapeta tagged Sydney University in the post, asking for answers after the only student he encountered was one who turned up early for the next class.

'10 min in a student that was early for 2 pm lecture showed up (completely unrelated subject, different degree).

'We had a great discussion, and I had one keen student learning,' he wrote, before asking the uni: 'Where from now? Help @Sydney Uni'

The veterinary professor told Daily Mail Australia it was an issue that 'required deep thought', as lecture attendance had been 'declining for several years' - even before the pandemic - as the university allowed students to log in remotely.

Peter Black, a senior law lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, revealed he often hosts digital lectures to students with cameras turned off.

'This was almost just as depressing, teaching to unresponsive blank screens on Zoom,' he replied to Professor Slapeta's post.

The response to the image was mixed, with some suggesting universities and lecturers will have to adapt to the results of modern technology, while others lamented the isolating effect.

'As someone who taught for over 25 years (high school and undergrad) I can honestly say I find this really upsetting. Teaching is social, and there is nothing like building knowledge together with students in a room,' another professor at QUT replied.

'We are in a global pandemic. Why is it surprising to anyone that people don't want to risk serious illness to do something that can be done remotely?' astrophysicist Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith said.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson, a Senior Lecturer in Australian History at Sydney University, thought the picture showed the problems with modern learning.

'This shows that the current way of approaching hybrid teaching isn't working. We need a rethink,' she said.

'Lectures are a vital part of university life and can provide transformative moments in students' education. We need to value them. The current model does not.'

A PhD student claimed the lecture dynamic was wrong and the lack of discussion and debate was also a factor causing lack of attendance.

'Lecture theatre design is outdated! Look how the space is arranged. It implies that only you have something worthwhile to say.

'In my opinion, the design of learning spaces impacts on how we view them. Students will show up not to be talked AT but to be in conversation WITH,' she replied.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11162711/Sydney-University-picture-exposes-reality-uni-2022.html

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Eccentric landlord posted a video to his TikTok channel last week claiming a group of women who rented out one of his homes had been racking up electricity bills charging their electric vehicle

'One of them turned up in a new Tesla Model 3. She told me she was saving the planet,' he said.

Tesla say its Model 3 costs between $25 and $30 to fully charge - but Ward maintains it was using more power than a 'small shopping centre'

The notorious money lender however believes the idea electric vehicles are helping the environment is 'bullsh*t'.

'They bullsh*t you telling you you're saving the planet but you're not. You're charging this car at night on fossil fuels,' he shouted on TikTok.

'Now it's okay if you don't work and you can charge it during the day with the solar panels, I have 83 solar panels on my roof, but during the day they were out driving, so the solar panels were absolutely useless.

Ward said Tesla's home battery alternative was no better, costing more than $15,000 to purchase in Australia, and it only holds 13kW of electricity.

'The whole thing is f*cking bullsh*t. They're scamming us. All these politicians have shares in renewables and batteries and lithium,' he lamented.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11158841/Notorious-gangster-nicknamed-Sharky-looks-unrecognisable.html

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Australians, Americans ‘most divided over climate change’

Australians and Americans are more divided over the push to fight climate change than voters in any other developed nation, according to a new Pew Research survey which finds fear of climate change nevertheless tops a list of voter concerns around the world.

The gap between the share of “right” and “left” leaning voters, respectively, who said climate change was a “major threat” was highest in the US, followed by Australia, whose “left-leaning” voters were also more concerned about climate change than those anywhere else.

“In Australia, 91 per cent of those who place themselves on the left side of the political spectrum say climate change is a major threat, compared with only 47 per cent among those on the right,” Pew said, a 44 per centage point gap that turned out to be double that of the UK, and quadruple the gap in France.

In the US, 22 per cent of right leaning voters thought climate change was a major threat, compared to 85 per cent for those inclined to vote Democrat.

Israelis cared the least, overall, given only 52 per cent of those who voted left thought climate change was a major threat, and 37 per cent of those on the right.

“Despite the dire concerns about climate change in Europe, concerns are relatively muted in the US, as they have been for years,” the survey, published on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) in Washington, found.

Women and younger voters were consistently more likely to express concern about climate change across countries, the survey of over 24,500 adults in 19 nations, also revealed.

“In Australia, 85 per cent of those ages 18 to 29 say that climate change is a major threat, compared to 63 per cent of those 50 and older,” the survey, conducted from February to June this year, as a soaring summer heatwave and record energy prices engulfed Europe, concluded.

Pew asked respondents to compare five potential threats: climate change, cyber-attacks, the spread of online false information, the prospect of a recession, and the spread of infectious diseases.

A median of 75 per cent of respondents across the 19 nations said climate change was the biggest threat, followed by the spread of mis and disinformation.

A little over 60 per cent said the threat of disease was a major threat, the lowest among the five, and substantially lower than in 2020, when Covid-19 emerged as a global pandemic.

“Concerns about cyber-attacks, possibly heightened by the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and prominent instances of hacking across the world, are at all-time highs,” the authors said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/australians-americans-most-divided-over-climate-change/news-story/3c6ccd65d84100864b2da49a8df12d51

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Business hails five-day Covid isolation ‘a game changer’

Business has hailed national cabinet’s decision to reduce mandatory Covid isolation requirements from seven days to five for people with no symptoms, declaring it a “game changer” that will help ­alleviate labour shortages.

Anthony Albanese, who labelling the move a “proportionate response at this point in the pan­demic”, also said masks would no longer be mandatory on domestic flights from September 9 – the same day the isolation changes take effect.

However, all workers in high-risk settings, including aged care and disability care, must still self-isolate for seven days.

Government sources confirmed if a person not in those settings has symptoms on day six and onwards, they should follow their state’s health advice.

“There aren’t mandated requirements for the flu or for a range of other illnesses that people suffer from,” the Prime Minister said. “What we want to do is to make sure that government responds to the changed circumstances. Covid is likely going to be around for a considerable period of time. And we need to respond appropriately to it based upon the weight of evidence.

“We had a discussion about people looking after each other, people looking after their own health,” he added.

Mr Albanese did not rule out extending pandemic leave payments worth up to $750, which are now jointly funded by the commonwealth and states. National cabinet is due to make a decision on the payments when it next meets in a fortnight.

The payments will reflect the five-day isolation rule from September 9, meaning they should be worth about $536.

Restaurant and Catering chief executive Belinda Clarke said that with the current staffing crisis, a reduction in isolation days would be a “game changer”.

“As we’ve continued to learn to live with Covid-19, we have to start becoming more flexible,” she told The Australian. “Other countries have had a five-day isolation period for months now, and this goes a long way to helping staff who are asymptomatic return to work and resume their lives.”

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the decision was “overdue and welcome”, stressing it was important for people to get back to work in a more timely manner as the pandemic passes its peak.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/business-hails-fiveday-covid-isolation-a-game-changer/news-story/6a0266944489d7642ec00ab92f7301e5

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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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