Are private school fees worth it?

The discussion below is fairly reasonable but omits a lot and is too generalized.

What it omits are the SOCIAL as distinct from the educational advantages of a private schooling. Pupils tend to form lasting friendships from their school days and the friends from private school are often VERY advantageous.

And while private schooling may not greatly help every pupil it can be very advantageous as an escape hatch from a bad government school. The latter point is mentioned but needs emphasis

The experience of overseas travel, a new family car or 12 months’ tuition at a top Sydney school?

Private school fees breaking through the $45,000 a year barrier, as reported by this masthead last week, will leave some parents weighing up what is the tangible value of an elite education if it means trade-offs in other areas.

University of New England lecturer in education Sally Larsen said the difference in academic performance of students at public and private schools was negligible.

“There’s no difference in primary school, and it’s just a segregation effect in high school, where kids from more wealthy families are being funnelled into private schools,” she said.

Glenn Fahey, director of the education program at the Centre for Independent Studies, said there was little overall value added from a non-government education once students’ backgrounds, including socioeconomic status, were accounted for.

“What the data tells us is that students’ backgrounds, largely parental education and employment status, make a big difference,” he said.

But Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research associate professor Greg Marks said there were some tangible benefits in terms of ATAR scores for students who attend a private school.

“There is an incremental benefit, beyond that of socioeconomic status, of going to a private school, to an independent school, followed by Catholic schools, followed by government schools,” he said. “Top ATAR students often come from private schools, and they tend to get into university more, which makes a big difference to employment and lifetime income.”

Marks’ research in Victoria found that students who went to a private school achieved an ATAR rank five or six points higher than those who went to a public school.

He attributed this discrepancy to standards of teaching, discipline and a subculture of strong academic performance.

“I think in private schools, they teach at a higher standard and pitch the lessons at a higher standard so that kids are expected to reach them and therefore do,” he said. “There’s probably more of a subculture of doing well at school, and if kids are causing problems, they can get expelled.”

Marks said while the data was sparse, private school students tended to experience less unemployment, earn higher incomes and hold higher status jobs. But he also said it largely stemmed from the benefits of getting a university degree, and that paying a premium for a private school education would not benefit students of different abilities in the same way.

“Ability is quite stable, so if your kid is a top performer or isn’t going to do very well, sending them to a private school won’t make much of a difference and probably will not be worth $45,000,” he said. “For kids in the middle to top of the class, it might give them a bit of a boost to their ATAR to go to a private or selective school, which would make a difference getting into a prestigious course at university.”

While there are some international studies that show private schools can also benefit students in terms of a “peer effect”, Larsen said that impact was probably “smaller than people think,” and that the cost of private school wasn’t worth its benefits.

“The school sector that kids go into is one factor among many that help to explain where they get academically and socially,” she said. “Personally, I don’t think the benefits justify the costs.”

Marks said that eschewing a private school education and investing the money elsewhere could be better for some people, but rejected the idea of spending it on things such as overseas trips.

“There’s a reasonable argument to put the money that you would have used in the bank and get a return on that,” he said. “But taking them on trips overseas to give them ‘life training’ doesn’t make sense.”

In a Centre for Independent Studies survey of more than 1000 parents, those who chose a government school were more likely to indicate that they would have made a different choice (43 per cent) if it weren’t for the cost than parents who chose a Catholic school (30 per cent).

Redfern resident Maria Vlezko saw an immediate improvement when she moved her daughter from a public school to the International Grammar School in Glebe two years ago.

“I was highly dissatisfied with her old school,” she said. “Kids weren’t receiving as much attention in class, they got teased by other children if they did well and my daughter became very uninterested in school.”

Vlezko said the extracurricular offerings and multicultural component of Anastasia’s school were important factors in her decision to move towards private schooling.

“There’s music, drama, chess, coding, and there are kids from lots of different backgrounds, which aligns with my values and how I want my kids to grow up,” she said. “It’s an investment in our children’s future, and we only have one chance.”

Despite cost of living pressures, Vlezko said the fees of nearly $30,000 a year were worth it for 11-year-old Anastasia.

“There was massive progress straight away,” she said. “Teachers were easy to reach, they identified Anastasia’s strengths and areas for improvement straight away, and she made lots of friends with the same interests who help each other with lessons. It’s worth the sacrifice for us.”

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/are-private-school-fees-worth-it-20230111-p5cbuc.html

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Democratic follies

Recent years have seen a strengthening dominance of politics over individual and commercial decision-making. This is readily evident in the growth of regulations and government spending increasing from under 20 per cent of the economy a century ago to around (and over) 50 per cent today.

Within democracies, these developments are due to electorates demanding income redistributions and tolerating increased national debt – oblivious to the adverse effects on their own future living standards. There are very few political leaders of stature like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, Margaret Thatcher, or Donald Trump who seek to persuade voters of the folly of such demands. Most opt for policies that reflect popular opinion.

Hence, established political parties increasingly promise ‘free’ goods and services, while new parties have emerged, normally offering even more favours than the established parties.

Preventing what many people have been led to accept as catastrophic climate change from burning fossil fuels has become a leading proffered favour. The popularity of these policies derives from the weight of misleading information on the dangers of human-induced climate change together with soothing claims that weather-dependent renewables are cheaper than fossil (and nuclear) fuels. Those claims fail the test of, ‘Why then do wind and solar need subsidies?’ And, ‘Why has their growth coincided with price rises?’ In Australia, two decades of subsidies to wind and solar have resulted in their share of electricity supply rising from zero to 20 per cent and electricity prices rising more than twice as fast as overall prices.

Popular acceptance of impending climate disaster and of the tolerable costs of avoiding it by a forced replacement of fossil fuel energy has radically re-centred the political pendulum. Over the past 20 years, Australia’s Coalition parties and the ALP have shifted from a policy that first sought impartiality in energy supply, to one requiring ‘2 per cent of additional’ electricity supply to be derived from wind and solar, to a ‘Net Zero’ target that expunges coal and gas from energy supply.

Yesterday the government announced it will require the nation’s 215 largest facilities to cut their emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. According to Minister Chris Bowen, this new imposition on Australia’s largest firms was ‘carefully calibrated to deliver the policy certainty and support Australian industry needs through decarbonisation’.

The latest announcement is a substantiation that popular sentiment favours an even faster purging of fossil fuels, a sentiment that has turbocharged support for the Greens and their supposedly conservative counterparts, the Teals. In the latest Commonwealth election, six affluent and stylish middle-aged Teals sirens won formerly safe Liberal Party seats. Indeed, only 12 per cent of the electorate supported the ‘freedom parties’ like One Nation that opposed further measures to force the ‘transition to renewables’.

‘Dark Money’ from politicised foundations and renewable supply vested interests has played a role in this. But more significant is the thousands of foot soldiers supporting the campaigns of Greens and Teals and the favourable reception these campaigns have on the electorate – both in directly garnering votes and in indirectly forcing established political parties to modify their programs.

In any event, it is very rare that success of policies like that of products and services is attributable to successful marketing – overwhelmingly, particular products and services prevail in open markets because they best meet the needs of consumers.

John Howard had a great faith in democracy, maintaining that ‘the voters generally get it right’ (even when not electing his party). Yet in Australia and other Western democracies, voters are pressing for policies that take their nations to the edge of the economic precipice.

Rather than clever marketing, this is due to the general success of Woke themes with the leftish ‘march through the institutions’ of learning, media, and government.

In former times, the radical objection to market capitalism was that it has passed its use-by date and socialism would offer greater efficiency and fairness. Despite the Fall of the Wall puncturing that ideal, we have seen a broader objection to current societal outcomes and a jettisoning of time-honoured views. These have ranged beyond disparaging market capitalism’s role in creating present living standards to include a rejection of physical definitions of men and women, and concocting race and sex discrimination even to the degree that this is claimed to invalidate some long-authenticated scientific laws.

Joel Kotkin makes a persuasive case that the multitudinous forms of Wokeness in media and culture are now being rejected by the movie-goers and TV watchers. Perhaps, but if so, it has been a long time coming and it’s hard to see political, educational, and governmental structures imploding.

The problem we face is in the arrogation of roles to political leaders that they are incapable of fulfilling. The gold standard of governance is the American Constitution. Far from envisaging an active role for government, this focussed on protections of individual liberty and property and restraining the powers of government to prevent tyranny (including tyranny of the majority). Democracy was not even mentioned by the US founders who were well-educated on the role of a surfeit of populism in undermining ancient Greek city-states.

Politics forces voters to think ‘holistically’ and while thousands of individual decisions of the same voters as consumers operating in commercial markets have driven modern prosperity, they cannot do so in political markets. That would require assessing complex information on unknowable costs against supposedly shared benefits that are highly uncertain. Moreover, to effect it, would entail selecting political representatives as commercial actors. This is as unworkable in energy as it would be in food supply, housing, or health care.

Our problem is how to disengage government from its increasingly activist commercial role.

https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/dark-money

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Australia's very recent descent into Fascism

It is sometimes said the past is another country. The attitudes, mores and dress conventions accepted in former times seem awkward, offensive or ugly in what we assume is a more enlightened present day.

In the past, housebound women wore corsets, men thought only they could do science, and dragons ruled uncharted waters. People made comedy about Hitler as damaged generations used humour to process World War II trauma and stamp on the evil dictator. Through the inverted telescope of time, all these things become immensely far away and unfamiliar.

But it is not just the distant past we struggle to remember and understand. Our ragged attention spans are poorly equipped to grapple with very recent history.

Think about this: it is only a year since tennis player Novak Djokovic was expelled from Australia for arriving unvaccinated. Not a decade, though COVID years surely deserve a special measure, but a year. Just 52 weeks since our world was so very different.

In January 2022, the Omicron variant was dominating Australian news. We still had daily case number reports. More than 92 per cent of Australians over the age of 16 had received two doses of COVID vaccine, but the high incidence of mild infections kept a population still scarred by lockdown in a state of high anxiety.

For a couple of years people had been banned from popping in to Australia for fun. In fact, Australians weren’t even sure we did “fun” any more – it seemed risky. Then some people dropped by for something as frivolous as a game and the Australian Open became a focal point of COVID dread.

Djokovic, a 34-year-old athlete fit enough to contest an international tennis tournament, was among them. The player had chosen not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. He had an exemption, based on having recently contracted and recovered from the virus, although there was controversy over the timing of the beginning and end of his illness. But it wasn’t his health that was at issue. Australians had adopted a zealous vaccination stance to get to where we were, and the real question was whether we were ready to let go.

Other tennis players participating in the Open were angry that he might be granted a way around the jab rules when they had complied – worrying, that it made “fools” of the vaccinated.

But that was nothing compared with the concerns of the Australian public, whose collective self-concept hung in the balance. In the race to get everyone vaccinated, vaccination had been turned into a moral issue: something you did for the common good.

And when something has become a matter of morality, heresy quickly becomes grounds for hate.

The fury at Djokovic’s heresy was immense, with seven in 10 Australians saying he should be expelled from the country. And from anger at the Serbian tennis player’s medical decision emerged a desire to find everything about the man fundamentally flawed.

The Serbian Council of Australia reports that this included his race. In a report on the matter, it says that during this time there was an increase in comments that were derogatory towards Australians of Serbian heritage. A survey it conducted of Serbian community members found that more than 85 per cent of respondents believed “anti-Serb sentiment has risen in Australia directly as a result of the Novak Djokovic saga”. Respondents reported being told to “pack up your bags and go”, being labelled as “arrogant”, and being told that “everyone hates Serbian people”.

An anonymous letter received by one member of the community said “all you serbians who are here should also be ashamed, embarrassed and feel guilty of yourselves”. It is an astonishing case study of the taboos people will break to smear someone who has broken a new taboo.

As it became one of the most internationally Googled affairs of 2022 – before January was even over – I wrote about the civil liberties implications of governments making and breaking rules on the run. I quipped that the last time a Serbian had triggered this much international angst was in 1914, and for a nation of less than seven million, “Serbs have an outsized knack for causing international strife”. To my regret, Serbs in Australia took my careless generalisation as an attack on them. In fact, I was trying to illustrate the way we as a culture say we celebrate rebels – but only really do so when they conform (very rebelliously) to the prevailing fashion. The famous Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla may have known something of this, as would the creator of a company called Tesla, who now owns Twitter. Non-conformist rebels of all kinds attract hate.

Today the coverage of Djokovic and the Australian Open makes it seem like none of this ever happened, or as though it happened a long time ago to different people. But it didn’t: all of this was us. We are only one year older, possibly no wiser. And the hurt and division created is not yet healed.

While Djokovic remains unvaccinated and has been allowed to enter Australia and play without controversy, many people are mourning friendships lost in the febrile atmosphere.

Neighbours reported on neighbours perceived to be breaching COVID rules; heavy-handed policing of protesters was cheered on by masked (online) mobs. Some people fell out over whether to vaccinate or not to vaccinate, and regret it now they can see both sides were driven by fear. And in the context of a tennis game, one man’s vaccination status became a reason to be hateful towards strangers.

As we embark on other discussions which are necessary to our country, including the one about the form of words with which to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to parliament, it is vital that the attempt to remedy racial division doesn’t result in entrenching hate. The past may seem like another country, but we should still be able to recognise ourselves.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/can-we-recognise-ourselves-only-a-year-ago-we-persecuted-djokovic-20230112-p5cc8c.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

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A big backlash against political correcness

Prize money for greyhound racing in NSW has close to doubled in the five years since the state government tried to ban the industry, as online gambling markets drive record income from punters who have never watched a race.

Betting agency fees – known as “race field information use fees” – paid to Greyhound Racing NSW increased from $24.5 million in the 2017-18 financial year to $68.8 million in 2021-22, the organisation’s annual reports show, while its sponsorship and rights income increased from zero to $10 million.

Ads for online betting services, such as Ladbrokes and Sportsbet, blanket Greyhound Racing NSW’s livestreaming website, thedogs.com.au.

The presence of the gambling industry extends to dogs in each race wearing “rugs” colour-coded to match eight gambling websites, following a sponsorship deal brokered last year.

Greyhound Racing NSW’s overall income increased from $67 million to $121.5 million during the same period, in a financial performance described by CEO Robert Macaulay as its best on record. The sport’s prize money rose from $26.4 million to $46.3 million in a third successive year of record profits.

“The sport of greyhound racing is thriving in NSW and this has filtered through as an economic benefit to the regional and rural communities of NSW,” Macaulay said, noting 75 per cent of participants lived outside metropolitan areas.

“The reality is that greyhound racing would not exist without the massive amounts of money wagered by punters online.”

Joanne Lee, Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds
But greyhound welfare advocates told The Sun-Herald it was shameful that the local industry was thriving off gambling cash when countries abroad had shunned the sport.

Australian races are already attracting gamblers in overseas markets such as in the US and Asia, where the practice has been largely outlawed, with Sydney fixtures featured on betting websites abroad.

Joanne Lee from the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds said arguments that greyhound racing was a community sport seemed weak when so much of its income came from people who only viewed races as lists of odds on betting websites.

“The reality is that greyhound racing would not exist without the massive amounts of money wagered by punters online who will never attend a race. Given the dramatic reduction in racetrack attendance, there is virtually no money made through community engagement,” she said.

NSW recorded its first greyhound racing fatality of 2023 last week: a dog racing at Wentworth Park, in Glebe, was euthanised after colliding with other animals on the track on Thursday. Eight dogs died at the track in 2022, in addition to two at Richmond and one at Potts Park, in Yagoona.

“The rest of the world has seen the writing on the wall and is rapidly moving away from greyhound racing — the grubby greyhound gambling industry in NSW is lapping up the profits as a result,” said state Greens member Abigail Boyd.

“In recent years, we have seen the NSW greyhound racing industry change race times to suit people betting in real time overseas, regardless of the inconvenience caused to participants and race officials and the additional risks it adds from an animal welfare perspective.”

Asked if running races earlier in the morning was influenced by international markets, Macaulay said the organisation was “considering its options” to engage viewers overseas but the bulk of its revenue was from Australia.

Greyhound racing was set to be outlawed in NSW from July 1, 2017 due to animal welfare concerns, but former Liberal premier Mike Baird overturned the decision just three months after it was passed, instead promising to clean up the industry.

However, critics say state government interventions to improve safety and regulation, as well as taxes on gambling, have contributed to greyhound racing’s wealth.

The state government invested $30 million into track safety upgrades in 2021, a cost which opponents say saved expenses for the racing industry.

In 2018, NSW established an independent regulator, the Greyhounds Welfare Integrity Commission (GWIC). Before the 2021-22 financial year, the regulator was funded by Greyhounds Racing NSW, which critics said compromised its independence. It is now funded mostly by the state government’s 10 per cent point of consumption tax on online wagering (while racing’s share of money gathered from that tax has also increased).

“The greyhound racing industry is funded by the gambling industry and state governments. Without these two revenue streams, the industry would be unviable,” said Lee.

In a statement, NSW Minister for Hospitality and Racing Kevin Anderson said “animal welfare is at the heart of the NSW government’s support for the greyhound industry”, declining to answer questions about whether it had facilitated an increase in Greyhound Racing NSW’s income.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/nsw/greyhound-racing-turns-record-profit-from-punters-who-have-never-watched-a-race-20230110-p5cbk8.html

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Attempt to censor vaccine skeptic

Dr Peter McCullough, a widely recognised and prominent commentator regarding the danger of Covid vaccines, has been invited to speak in Australia alongside United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet and the former member for Hughes Craig Kelly.

‘Activists’ are campaigning against his entrance into Australia, petitioning the Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles. They want him to deny McCullough’s visa on the grounds that McCullough is ‘spreading misinformation’.

Interestingly, these activists have no interest in addressing the misinformation dished out by the government, vaccine manufacturers, the TGA, or the AMA.

Their insecurity about the safety of the vaccine, which they have no doubt taken, is being expressed in some rabid desire to silence scientific inquiry.

Reignite Democracy Australia tweeted:

‘Andrew Giles, let Peter McCullough in. He’s a world-renowned doctor who is simply sharing studies that are reputable and rational. Don’t let Australia become the type of country that denies visas to law-abiding people! In the name of free speech, don’t set a dangerous precedent.’

Craig Kelly from the United Australia Party also tweeted:

‘What a bunch of nut job, lefty hypocrites. Crazy Lefties trash Free Speech and tarnish Australia’s international standing by trying to block Dr Peter McCullough’s visit. Free speech saves lives. Censorship kills. True Aussies value free speech.’

And:

‘He’s been invited by an Australian Senator, but anti-free speech leftists, neo-fascists, and Big Pharma shills are attempting to block De Peter McCullough’s visit to Australia.’

Whether Dr Peter McCullough is right or wrong is irrelevant. The idea that Covid vaccines are so flimsy that his presence in Australia would be considered ‘dangerous’ is beyond laughable, especially with this invention called ‘the internet’ allowing Australians to listen to his point of view whenever they want.

In what way could these activists make the argument for ‘danger’? It is not as though McCullough is encouraging people to inject themselves multiple times with a rushed drug that has a history of causing heart failure and strokes.

Andrew Giles would have a difficult time justifying any denial of visa, given our former ‘dangerous anti-vaxxer number one’ Novak is not only back in the country winning tournaments, Tennis Australia has confirmed that Covid-positive players (never mind their vaccination status) are allowed to compete.

If the virus isn’t dangerous enough to stop people playing, it’s pretty hard to mount a campaign against McCullough.

Below is the email penned by Reignite Democracy sent to Andrew Giles.

Hi Andrew.

I don’t know you personally but I hope you care about this country and that’s why you became a Member of Parliament in the first place.

Even if you disagree with Dr. Peter McCullough’s data findings and talking points, please don’t make Australia the type of country that blocks visas just because you, or others, don’t agree with that person. I disagree with a LOT of people who come here to host events, but I would NEVER advocate for you to block their entry…it’s really just basic freedom of speech principles.

It will set a dangerous precedent. One that I’m sure you don’t want your children and grandchildren to have to live with in the future.

You have an opportunity to uphold freedom of speech by simply allowing a law-abiding foreigner into the country because that should be his right. Deep down, you know that to be true.

Just to clarify, Dr. Peter McCullough isn’t even ‘anti-vax’ by the way. He advocated for the COVID vaccines when the rollout began and has advocated for vaccines in the past. However, after the data started coming out about the MRNA COVID vaccines, he was brave enough to speak out against the mainstream narrative. He’s been vilified and demonised enough for simply sharing data, don’t let Australia be another bully to a man who doesn’t deserve it.

https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/dr-peter-mccullough-the-next-djokovic/

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Fossil fuel energy the foundation for thriving human life

Five children died from heatstroke after being admitted to the Adelaide Children’s Hospital at the height of the January 1939 heatwave. Staff draped wet sheets over beds to relieve the suffering of 19 more children, seven of whom were in a serious condition.

Hydrocarbons came to the rescue. The hospital took up an offer from Kelvinator Australia Ltd to install an electric airconditioner for free. Five hours later, cool air was pumping through Rose Ward. “The authorities reported that the machine noticeably benefited the children when it began to operate at 11.50pm,” The Advertiser reported.

This snatch of history serves as a corrective to the catastrophist narrative that frames most of our discussion about climate and energy. The consequences of burning fossil fuel are not all bad. Thanks to its benefits, we can spend less time worrying about the fickleness of nature and more time enjoying fulfilling lives. Before airconditioning, deaths from prostration or sunstroke were common. In the sweaty, un-airconditioned first four decades of the last century, the death rate from extreme heat was 1.3 per 100,000. From 1940-99 it was 0.2. We are safer from the extremities of climate than we ever were.

Far from making the world “unliveable”, as the eco-pessimists fear, ultra-cost-effective fossil fuel energy has transformed a harsh, unyielding and sometimes dangerous continent into an unnaturally liveable place. No other source of energy, with the exception of nuclear, is anywhere close to competing with low-cost, on-demand versatile scalable hydrocarbons. Energy from fossil fuels has empowered humans to heat and cool their homes. Industrial processes and free trade have made warm clothes so cheap our ancestors would be astounded. They would look with envy at our food.

That’s the argument put by US philosopher Alex Epstein in Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas –Not Less. He argues the surest path to human catastrophe would be to follow the advice of climate catastrophists by switching suddenly to renewable energy. No one has come close to finding a cost-effective way of powering a modern economy using sunlight, wind and biomass alone. Not only are they inherently dilute and intermittent, but it is difficult to locate them at any scale close to centres of population and industry. Renewable energy infrastructure requires enormous amounts of mining and takes up vast amounts of space that could otherwise be farmed or dedicated to wildlife. To state wind and solar are at a competitive disadvantage to fossil fuels is to put it mildly. Despite two decades of generous subsidies and mandates, renewable energy only provides 3 per cent of global energy; fossil fuels deliver 80 per cent and use is growing faster than renewables in absolute terms.

In Epstein’s view, “a total ‘green’ replacement of fossil fuels should be viewed as a total crackpot idea until definitively proved otherwise”. He confronts the engineering challenge of eliminating fossil fuels from modern life and concludes it is impossible to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050 without a catastrophic loss of life and a sharp decline in prosperity. We have nothing in our kitbag to replace the energy-dense, transportable, available and reliable resource of solid, liquid and gaseous carbon upon which modernity was built.

In the unlikely event we succeed in creating an emission-free electricity network in that time frame, we will have solved only a small part of the problem. Transport and agriculture are more challenging still. There is no viable replacement source of energy for the production of industrial fertiliser, without which we would lose our capacity to produce half the world’s food. Nuclear technology is the only other source of naturally stored, concentrated and abundant energy capable of generating relatively low-cost, extremely reliable electricity. What’s more, it emits no air pollution or CO2 and has the best safety track record of any form of energy. The outright hostility to nuclear of influential eco-advocates leads Epstein to question their true motives. He concludes today’s ecological movement is no longer content to reduce waste and pollution but is opposed to human flourishing full stop. It is opposed not just to human activity that damages the environment but any human activity. Influential US climate advocate Bill McKibben, for example, advocates a “humbler world, one where we have less impact on our environment and human happiness would be of secondary importance”.

A liveable planet in their thinking in not one that is safer and kinder to human beings but an un-impacted planet closer to the natural paradise they wrongly imagine existed before humans came along. The myth has become so deeply embedded in modern thinking that the threat to the existence of an obscure earthworm or insect can be enough to block a new mine or industrial plant that would empower and enrich human beings.

Such thinking is at odds with our history. Indigenous Australians unempowered by almost any form of energy beyond human muscle were forced to devote much of their time to protecting themselves from the dangerous forces of nature and procuring mediocre nourishment. The timing of European settlement coincided with the transition from the era of organic energy to mineral energy, which led to rapid human flourishing in Australia as it has almost everywhere in the world. The laborious, unpredictable and low-yielding farming of the early days of settlement evolved into the high-yield, efficient agriculture of the modern era using the power unleashed by fossil fuels. Czech-Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil calculates the amount of human labour needed to produce a kilogram of grain has been reduced from 10 minutes to less than two seconds in the last 200 years.

Epstein concludes: “Without fossil fuels or their equivalent, food production would collapse and today’s ‘unnaturally’ large population could not possibly survive. With more fossil fuels or their equivalent, billions more people can have the opportunity to acquire the nourishment they need in small amounts of time instead of devoting huge portions of their lives to procuring mediocre nourishment.”

Wise decisions about energy, like any other area of policy, are impossible without a proper understanding of benefits as well as costs.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/fossil-fuel-energy-the-foundation-for-thriving-human-life/news-story/1c0f6512ae99627b07fd662313085a17

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Neo-Nazi junk mail in some affluent suburbs

I did a study of neo-Nazis many years ago and at that time they got off by shocking people. But it was all bluff. It seems that they are still succeeding

Residents in two of Australia’s most affluent suburbs got a shock when checking their letterboxes recently, as a nasty Nazi flyer made the rounds.

The flyer, which notifies residents that their homes have been visited by members of the National Socialist Network (NSN), has been left in letterboxes over the last two days.

The Anti-Defamation Commission has shared its disappointment in the a pro-Nazi flyer circulating around Paddington in NSW and Auchenflower in Queensland.

According to the Commission, the NSN is led by convicted criminal Thomas Sewell, who recently made news for punching a Channel 9 security guard.

The “terrified” residents reported receiving the flyers, which feature the Nazi swastika, to the commission.

NSW Police are aware of the flyers and are investigating. Queensland Police is also looking into the incident.

In a statement, Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich said the “unthinkable” act showed neo-Nazis were openly threatening and intimidating residents.

“This can’t stand,” Dr Abramovich said.

“Who could have imagined that in 2023, hardcore white supremacists would be walking our streets, without fear of consequence, actively promoting their genocidal world view in NSW and Queensland through this well-orchestrated blitz of hate that has invaded people’s homes.

“Imagine the immense pain a Holocaust survivor or his children would feel upon seeing such vile flyers.”

Dr Abramovich said this was a wake-up call that anti-Semitism was on the rise and disaffected young people were being recruited.

“Where extremists gather, promising a racial war, physical violence is usually not far behind, and each one of us is a potential target,” he said.

“We do not need a Christchurch massacre in Sydney or Brisbane to take this ticking bomb issue seriously.

“I have no doubt that the people of NSW and Queensland share our revulsion at this kind of disturbing activity, and the worst thing we can do is to downplay the clear and present danger these groups pose to our collective way of life and safety.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/unthinkable-neonazi-act-in-ritzy-nsw-qld-suburbs/news-story/d79e552d8177182ba024cced1e8c5ab5 ?

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Australia does better on economic mobility than many other countries

Australians are still more likely than people in many other developed nations to be able move upwards from the position they were born into

Treasury researchers looked at the income data of 1 million people born in the late 1970s to the early 80s and found Australians born into the lowest fifth of family incomes were much more likely to reach the top fifth of incomes than people in other developed economies, such as the United States.

Of the Australians born into the bottom fifth of incomes, 12.3 per cent end up in the top fifth of incomes, compared to 7.5 per cent in the US.

But who your parents are is still a major determinant of where you are likely to end up. More than 90 per cent of the Australians counted in the research lived in the same state they grew up in, and 70 per cent in the same local labour market as their parents.

And researchers found there was a clear persistence in wealth across generations — and that trend was more entrenched among the nation's richest and poorest.

But compared to parents born in Australia, the children of migrants to Australia were more likely to be able to improve their economic standing, which researchers said reflected their strong educational aspirations.

Researchers also found who a person's friends were also had an influence on their likely economic outcomes, being about a fifth as influential in determining future wealth as a person's parents.

The report said one of the best predictors of upward mobility was whether people had more high- or low-income connections among their Facebook friends — an indicator of where they might have grown up, or the people they were exposed to during school, for example.

Warnings of economic mobility being dampened in future
The report also warned of economic headwinds denting Australia's relative economic mobility.

It noted that Treasury researchers only assessed the data of Australians born within a small window, but data over longer periods of time showed the percentage of Australians earning more than their parents was falling.

How housing has impacted wealth inequality

High home prices are boosting inheritances, meaning your position in society increasingly owes more to which family you're born into than to talent or hard work. But there are solutions.

Two-thirds of Australians in their early 30s earn more in real terms than their parents at the same age, but that figure has fallen from 80 per cent for baby boomers.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the research was an opportunity to see how Australia was faring, and where it needed to improve.

"Every parent wants a better future for their kids and we all want to pass on a better deal for the next generation," Mr Chalmers said.

"We don't want Australians' prospects determined solely by where they're born or who their parents are. That's why mobility is important — for more life chances in our communities and more dynamism in our economy. "We're doing well but we can do better."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-13/australia-economic-mobility-good-but-weakening/101849820

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Education Department pushing for number of schools teaching First Nations languages to exceed 100

What a waste of effort! What does it achieve? Very undesirable if it derails students from learning a European language such as German, French and Italian. That would cut them off from vast cultural heritage. I have gained hugely from my studies of German and Italian

The Department of Education is pushing to increase the number of Queensland state schools teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and more than a hundred state schools are primed to jump on-board in the coming years.

According to the most recent department data, current as of February 2022, only five state schools teach First Nations languages – Mabel Park State High School in Logan, Mossman State School in the Far North, and Tagai State College’s three campuses in the Torres Strait.

However, in early 2022, the Department of Education launched a dedicated program to help schools with extra resourcing in co-designing and delivering First Nations languages.

“In 2022, 44 state schools have reported that they are working collaboratively with Language Owners to teach 26 different Aboriginal language or Torres Strait Islander language in their schools,” a Department of Education spokesman said.

“Demand for teaching an Aboriginal language or Torres Strait Islander language is increasing. Currently, a further 113 state schools are in the early stages of developing a program to teach an Aboriginal language or Torres Strait Islander language.”

University of Queensland Associate Professor Marnee Shay has done extensive research on Indigenous education in her role as an academic. She is an Aboriginal woman with connections to Wagiman Country in the Northern Territory and Indigenous communities in South East Queensland.

“Many Indigenous leaders and education advocates have been championing the inclusion of Indigenous language and culture in the curriculum for many years now. It has been slow, but we finally see change and commitment at a policy level,” she said.

“As an Aboriginal person who was denied the opportunity to speak my language, I think it is excellent that the Department has made a policy commitment to increasing the number of schools teaching First Nations languages.

“Having Indigenous language as part of the curriculum at their school is identity-affirming for Indigenous students. “For non-indigenous students, it is an opportunity to learn not only the language, but the history and culture of the people who have been here for tens of thousands of years.”

However, Professor Shay said there are not enough First Nations language teachers. “We have Elders and community people that might have the knowledge and skills to teach language, but this is not always recognised by the system, which often requires people to hold university degrees,” she said.

“Indigenous people must be involved in the teaching of our own languages. You can’t teach language without culture – Indigenous people are the best people to be teaching this.

“Expanding the number [of schools teaching First Nations languages] is important, but not at the expense of process and cultural protocol – which can take time.”

All state schools are required to teach a language from at least Years 5 to 8. The four dominant languages in state schools are Japanese, French, Chinese and German.

The Department of Education spokesman said schools looking to teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are advised to gain permission from local community elders first, and work closely with them in designing the program.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/queensland-education/education-department-pushing-for-number-of-schools-teaching-first-nations-languages-to-exceed-100/news-story/d0e3f28c2c38d72fb9e1a451d55aebba

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My last phone call with George Pell

Andrew Bolt

I sure won’t forget the last time Cardinal George Pell rang me. Not now that I’ll never speak again to this holy man. He called me one night from Rome with an anxious question: Had I finally answered Christ’s call?

He’d even sent me an unimpressive book by Antony Flew to hasten the conversion he felt was imminent, so I was embarrassed to disappoint him and admit I was still agnostic.

Here’s why his call will stay with me now that he’s died in hospital of a heart attack, just as he was chatting to an anaesthetist about his hip operation.

It underlined something Pell’s critics never understood about him. To them, Pell was a schemer. A cold politician who rose to be the Vatican’s treasurer, third in line from the Pope, by putting his church above people. And, they wickedly added near the end of his life, he was a paedophile.

For decades, the media pumped out this hatred of Australia’s most senior Catholic, a conservative who opposed their global warming religion.

Just last Friday, browsing in a second-hand bookshop I found a copy of The Prince, a purported portrait of Pell by one of his nastiest critics, former ABC presenter David Marr.

The publisher’s blurb sums up the ABC gospel on Pell that did so much to destroy his reputation. Marr’s book was “a portrait of hypocrisy and ambition” of “a cleric at ease with power”.

But the Pell I knew was a man of God, who couldn’t even in his last days shake his concern for my soul. That real Pell is also there in his inspiring Prison Journal, written while in jail for 404 days for a crime he couldn’t possibly have committed.

The last paragraph says it all, with Pell, the son of a Ballarat publican, writing of the “man-God, whom I love and serve, whom I have followed for all my life”.

Oops. Sorry about all this God talk. It puts a lot of people off these days, and that was the problem with George Pell. No churchman here was firmer in defending his faith, and for that he was crucified.

Where did it all go so wrong? Many critics will point to May 1993, when Pell accompanied Australia’s worst paedophile priest, Father Gerald Ridsdale, to a court hearing. The media went berserk. Myths grew that Pell defended Ridsdale in court and tried to hide his crimes (both false). Even Pell was badgered years later into admitting he’d made a “mistake”.

It was a mistake only because few people now understand Christianity. Pell was trying again to follow Christ, who preached to prostitutes, tax collectors and the despised, telling them even the worst sinner need only repent to be forgiven.

But who understands that message today, when the woke forgive no one? Look at the jeering on Twitter at Pell’s death – “rot in hell”, “mongrel”, and “need to know if George Pell felt any pain before he died like a cockroach”.

Pell, a Christian, would never have been so pitiless. This is the great moral chasm – Christians vs barbarians – into which he fell.

But you’ll want me to say something bad about Pell, even if just to show he wasn’t perfect and I haven’t guzzled the altar wine. Well, Pell didn’t help himself by seeming aloof, cool and a little arrogant.

I once castigated him for using the birth of the beloved daughter of a friend of mine to preach against the IVF techniques which conceived her. Pell sometimes lacked a sensitivity that could have spared him.

Yet what was done to him was more damning than anything he did. For instance, Pell was accused by the witch-hunting Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse of helping the Bishop of Ballarat move Ridsdale from parish to parish, knowing he was raping boys.

Pell denied it, and the commission had no evidence he was lying. In fact, it bizarrely claimed Pell was at a meeting of consulters where the bishop said Ridsdale was a paedophile, yet it accepted another consulter there didn’t know this until a decade later.

No, Pell had to be the fall guy for his guilty church, and Victoria’s police made sure of it.

Pell had long been hated by the Left, even since he became Archbishop of Melbourne and insisted priests and Catholic schools follow the church’s teachings and not their Left-wing own.

He also set up the first compensation scheme anywhere for victims of child-sex abuse, and put in reforms – almost entirely successful – to guard against paedophile priests, but that didn’t save him.

In 2015, Victoria Police advertised for complaints against Pell, asking “victims” to come forward. They then charged him with 26 complaints of child sex abuse against nine “victims”.

The charges were so far-fetched that all collapsed, but not before Pell spent more than a year in jail after being convicted of somehow raping two teenage boys at once in the open sacristy of his Cathedral, in the bustle just after Mass.

In fact, the evidence was clear: Pell was at the front of the Cathedral, talking to worshippers, at the only time the sacristy was free, and his accuser must have been outside, walking back with the choir. Neither the raped nor the alleged rapist could have been at the scene of the crime.

One of the two “victims” even told his parents there was no rape, and the High Court decided, seven judges to nil, Pell was innocent.

Pell always suspected senior Vatican clerics planted or supported these bizarre allegation to stop him investigating them for corruption. One of his enemies is now on trial.

Yet to this day, thousands of Australians still prefer this lie of Pell the paedophile, and the ABC has never apologised for pushing it. Like Nero, they’d rather crucify an innocent Christian than hear the truth.

In that respect, Pell follows the Christ he adored. Let Catholics remember him as a man, flawed but holy, martyred by pagans to pay for their sins.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/andrew-bolt-my-last-phone-call-with-george-pell/news-story/34b826313c2a9bccbe2ad505dc67d795

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Solar project gobbling up cash at a fatal rate

Another Greenie fantasy

A fall out between two of the nation’s richest men has led to the abrupt implosion of the $30bn Sun Cable project, one of the world’s biggest solar and battery projects which had aimed to turbocharge Australia into a major international clean energy exporter.

Sun Cable was placed into administration on Wednesday after a dramatic scrap between its two high-profile backers – Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest.

It sets the scene for the businessmen to compete for control of the development, known as the Australia-Asia PowerLink.

The two billionaires clashed over different views on the optimal funding package and strategic vision for the project based in the Northern Territory, which would have sent power from Darwin to Singapore with a 4200km cable.

FTI Consulting were formally appointed as voluntary administrators on Wednesday.

“The appointment followed the absence of alignment with the objectives of all shareholders. Whilst funding proposals were provided, consensus on the future direction and funding structure of the company could not be achieved,” a statement from Sun Cable said.

The fallout threatens to sink one of Australia’s biggest energy projects, pitched as a vision for how the nation could move away from fossil fuels and become a major renewable energy exporter.

Sun Cable in March 2022 raised $210m of new funding to push ahead with its signature clean energy scheme – the $30bn Australia-Asia PowerLink development – with fresh funds ploughed in by the Atlassian co-founder, also the chairman of Sun Cable, and the Fortescue Metals chairman.

However, Dr Forrest’s Squadron Energy recently raised concern that Sun Cable failed to meet its Series B funding milestones and was spending cash at unsustainable rates. The project is running up to 12 months behind schedule, partly due to delays with Indonesian environmental approvals.

Squadron also raised issues with Sun Cable’s management team and may have ultimately wanted to install its own executives in place to run the huge renewable project, sources said.

Documents filed with the corporate regulator show that John Hartman, the chief executive of Dr Forrest’s private Tattarang investment group, quit the Sun Cable board in late November.

As part of ongoing funding needs for the development, Mr Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures was planning to invest an extra $60m into Sun Cable, but that proposal was not agreed to by Squadron, sources said. Squadron, for its part, held concerns over a clause within Grok’s funding proposal that would have seen the company sold or put on the market if there were further failures to meet its funding milestones.

Squadron put forward a funding proposal for a similar amount prior to Christmas but it was not accepted by the rest of the board. Both Grok and Squadron held veto rights which effectively cancelled each other’s funding deals.

It had widespread backing from the federal government and received support from Scott Morrison with Indonesia approving the route of the power project through its territorial waters.

Grok said there was little other choice for the company than the move into administration, while underlining its ongoing interest in the scheme. “In the circumstances, including where all but one shareholder agreed with the company’s funding strategy – the Board was left with no other option, but to enter into voluntary administration,” it said in a statement. “Grok remains a strong supporter of Sun Cable delivering the world’s largest solar energy infrastructure network and the Australia-Asia Power Link. We are confident Sun Cable will be an attractive investment proposition and remain at the forefront of Australia’s energy transition.”

“Voluntary administration provides the best opportunity for the company to access appropriate funding sources.”

Documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on Monday show that Sun Cable received a $28m cash injection on December 24. Both Squadron and Mr Cannon-Brookes’ private investment company CBC Co were involved, along with Xero founder Craig Winkler, Craig Scroggie – the chief executive of NextDC – and Eytan Lenko, the chief executive of Beyond Zero Emissions.

The same group kicked in another $26m in mid-September, the documents show, with Squadron and CBC also paying $6.2m for new shares in late October.

All of the share issues are believed to be cash calls from the $210m capital raising announced by Sun Cable in March 2022.

The solar project in the NT, which is estimated to deliver carbon emissions abatement of 8.6 million tonnes per year, will help power Darwin and Singapore.

It includes the world’s largest battery and a 4200km high-voltage cable from Darwin to Singapore, the longest in the world.

Sun Cable still needs to raise more than $30bn in debt and equity by the end of 2023 to back its plans, with the company last year appointing Macquarie, Moelis & Company and MA Financial Group as its financial advisers for the massive task.

The Australia-Asia PowerLink project will create more than 1500 jobs during construction, 350 operational jobs and 12,000 indirect jobs. It will start supplying energy to Darwin in 2026. The venture aims to send 20 gigawatts of power from the world’s largest solar farm near Tennant Creek to Darwin and would also feature a giant battery as part of the project.

Sun Cable chief executive David Griffin said the project remains “well placed” for completion. “As we have progressed our work, the demand for delivering reliable, dispatchable 24/7 renewable energy in the Northern Territory and the region has risen materially,” Mr Griffin said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

“Sun Cable looks forward to developing and operating the projects to meet this demand.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/forrest-cannonbrookesbacked-sun-cable-collapses-into-administration/news-story/a8a93093cbbdd0074a1b01029d738040

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Climate lockdowns: a never-ending story of misery and control

Here is a harsh truth we must be cognisant of: the same power-hungry control freaks who wanted to lock down the whole world to keep us ‘safe’ from Covid are also wanting to lock down the whole world to keep us safe from ‘climate change’.

And they have told us this. A conspiracy theory is an unsubstantiated and unlikely claim. A conspiracy truth is when the folks involved tell us openly and plainly what they want to do. The Great Reset mob have made it perfectly clear what they have in mind in relation to climate lockdowns after Covid lockdowns were so easily and quickly implemented with the approval of the masses.

The World Economic Forum has published plenty of articles and run a variety of talkfests promoting Covid as a means to enshrine globalisation as a form of centralised government. This would mean the end of a free West. They have switched to promoting climate change fear as an extension to this program. A simple look at their website is all you need to confirm which way Klaus Schwab wishes to drag the world.

Consider one recent article titled, From Davos 2022 to Davos 2023: The six themes then that have set the agenda now. Here is a short part of it:

Theme #2: Three interconnected crises – climate, food, energy.

The climate crisis has long been a key component of the Davos agenda. But with rising emissions, rising energy prices and rising food prices – inextricably linked and exacerbated by the geopolitical crisis in Ukraine – climate conversations took a graver tone at Davos 2022 as world leaders discussed the need for immediate action…

Countries must drastically scale up efforts: ‘It isn’t just about words anymore – it is about action,’ said Xie Zhenhua, China’s Special Envoy for Climate Change. ‘Climate action, now, is critical.’

Hmm, ‘climate, food, energy’. Don’t we already see that being ‘dealt with’ by our elites? Whether it is Bill Gates buying up huge amounts of arable farmland in America, Holland confiscating 3,000 farms to meet the climate dictates of the EU, or energy crises throughout Europe caused by alarmist climate action policies, we know where this story is headed.

Also note how China is called upon as a sort of spiritual leader! For a large amount of critical data and detail on why we do not want to follow China, please get a hold of Michael Senger’s vital 2021 volume, Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World.

It seems that there is never a shortage of fools and/or power-hungry tyrants waiting to get in on the action. For example, UK activists are moving full steam ahead with this:

Oxford, England will be enforcing six ‘traffic filter’ locations restricting car travel in 2024 as part of an effort to ‘help tackle climate change’. During a trial run of at least six months, only buses, taxis, cyclists, pedestrians, and workers with special exemptions will be able to pass through the ‘filter’ access points at all times without being fined, the Oxfordshire County Council and Oxford City Council explained.

Residents of Oxford and ‘some surrounding villages’ can apply for a permit to drive through the filters for up to 100 days a year, and residents of Oxfordshire County may apply for a permit to pass through the filters up to 25 days a year.

As another site puts it:

Apparently, not enough people are catching buses or riding bikes. But instead of making that more appealing, the totalitarians will force it through tracking and fines. Oxfordshire has just approved on November 29, the ‘traffic filters’ trial which will turn the city into a ‘fifteen-minute city’. The Trial will start in Jan 2024.

It’s a crowded area, Oxfordshire, and no one likes traffic congestion, but in a free world the problem is self-limiting as drivers get fed up with delays and exorbitant parking costs, and they car-pool or choose to catch the bus or ride a bike. But in Big Nanny State the local rulers start making rules about who can and can’t visit and how often, and they want your car registered on their own special list with cameras to track you and fines to punish you. They offer exemptions of course, but then you have to apply for them and get permission.

The WEF have printed plenty of articles telling us what a great idea this is. A brief quote from one of them reads: ‘As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.’

If you think this is moon-battery from far, far away, please reconsider. Here in Melbourne the powers that be are looking into exactly the same thing:

Plan Melbourne is guided by the principle of 20-minute neighbourhoods.

The 20-minute neighbourhood is all about ‘living locally’ – giving people the ability to meet most of their daily needs within a 20-minute walk from home, with safe cycling and local transport options. The current Municipal Strategic Planning Project is a joint DELWP and local government project to create better planning for Neighbourhood Activity Centres to deliver 20-minute neighbourhoods.

Banyule, Darebin, Maroondah, Moonee Valley and Whittlesea City Councils are testing draft guidance to support activity centre network planning based on their local needs and priorities. The outcomes of the project will inform future guidance developed to ensure it is robust and fit-for-purpose.

Oh dear – Melbourne, one of the most locked down cities on the planet, just can’t get enough of this stuff. We can look forward to more lockdowns – this time to save the planet. Yeah, right… Can’t wait for that. How about first looking carefully at our Covid lockdowns and determining if they actually did any good, or if they caused far more harm instead, before signing up to more?

I have featured numerous experts on this site over the past three years documenting the massive harms of lockdown mania. Yet our elites and ‘experts’ think they were just peachy and we need to have even more of them. In addition to all the evidence we have about the harms caused by lockdowns, let me finish by noting a new article by the author I mentioned above.

In Fifty Questions to Which We Demand Answers, Michael Senger gives us plenty to think about. He looks at government responses to Covid, including the lockdowns. Let me offer his final 20 questions – all of which deserve immediate and thorough answers:

How many people were killed by the WHO’s initial guidance on mechanical ventilators based on Chinese journal articles advising ventilators as the ‘first choice’ for those hospitalised with Covid?

The initial guidance from the WHO advised using mechanical ventilators not necessarily for the patient’s benefit, but to control the spread of the virus. Why was the WHO advising doctors to violate the Hippocratic Oath?

Why were numerous, credible predictions regarding famine, human rights disasters, and economic collapse as a result of lockdowns ignored?

Why was natural immunity ignored?

Why were initial seroprevalence studies downplayed?

Why were beaches and other outdoor spaces closed?

Why was the public kept in the dark about low early estimates of Covid’s actual infection fatality rate?

What was the source of the guidance to move patients who were still sick into nursing homes?

Why has there been so little public discussion of China’s influence on the global response to Covid, despite FBI Director Christopher Wray’s disclosure that Chinese officials were ‘aggressively urging support for China’s handling of the Covid crisis?’

Why was the UK government so deferential to Neil Ferguson and Imperial College London during the response to Covid despite Imperial’s close relationship with China?

Why has the editor-in-chief of the Lancet been publicly deferential to China?

Why did Bill Gates express admiration for China’s response to Covid?

Why did the German government privately disseminate a list of authoritarian measures provided in part by China lobbyists?

How did a 40-year member of the British Communist Party with no background in epidemiology become a leading advisor to the UK government, and why was she recently promoted to lead the WHO’s nudge unit?

Why did leading economists assume that a short, sharp lockdown would ‘eliminate the resurgence risk’ when the policy had no precedent?

Why did the Federal Reserve and its international counterparts disregard inflation?

Why did the Supreme Court and its international counterparts step aside while lockdowns were being implemented?

Why did the judiciary acquiesce to an indefinite state of legal emergency?

Why did Western politicians and public health officials demonstrate so little concern for following their own Covid rules?

If the virus was deadly enough to kill millions and justify an indefinite state of emergency, why has so little effort been expended to hold China accountable for its initial coverup of that virus?

Good questions indeed. But don’t expect any answers to be forthcoming from our global leaders – they are much too busy planning our next lockdowns.

https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/climate-lockdowns-a-never-ending-story-of-misery-and-control/

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Migration increase should be directly tied to population growth, business says

Immigration is in principle beneficial but both the quality of the immmigrant and the readiness of the economy to receive him/her is a big question in deciding if there is in fact a net benefit from it.

Allowing immigration of parasitical Muslim "refugees" is a clear mistake and failing to build sufficient housing for the new arrivals is also limiting. The proposals below glide over such issues

Permanent migration into Australia should automatically rise each year as a percentage of the nation’s population, with the current cap boosted from 195,000 to 220,000 for the next two years, business argues.

The Business Council of Australia is also calling for employers to be allowed to bring in any skilled worker from overseas for jobs with an annual salary above the average wage, currently $92,000 a year, and to make it easier for temporary visa holders to gain permanent residency.

In its submission to the federal government’s migration review, the BCA is urging a post-pandemic “reset” to migration policy, warning that without major reform Australia risks missing out in the global fight for talent.

“Australia should aim for a reset on migration that not only attracts migrants back to our shores and tackles workforce shortages, but also helps set the country up as a high productivity, high-skill and high-wage frontier economy,” the submission says.

“The system as it stands is highly complex and has become increasingly unattractive for skilled migrants and their employers.

“Short-term two-year temporary skills shortage visas with no pathway to permanent residency do not encourage experienced workers and their families,” it says. “And eligibility for skilled migration is restricted by outdated and inflexible occupational lists.”

The BCA highlights the significant impact migration can have on the economic fortunes of the country, saying the net loss of around 450,000 temporary and permanent immigrants to Australia during the pandemic is projected to cost the economy $55bn a year in economic output and $17bn in government revenues.

It proposes a significant increase in migration, arguing more new migrants will be a social and economic boon as they help fill the current significant skills gap, offset the ageing population and bring in expertise in industries of the future.

“To give certainty for long-term planning, the government should consider setting Australia’s permanent migration intake at a percentage of the total population over the long term,” the submission says. “This government should also provide a four-year ‘look ahead’ for permanent migration numbers, in line with typical government budget cycles.”

The BCA also reiterates its call at Anthony Albanese’s jobs and skills summit last September for an uplift to permanent migration in the next two financial years to 220,000 from the current 195,000, recommending that 70 per cent of the places be allocated to the skilled migrant stream. The submission notes Canada’s migration policy aims to take just over one per cent of its population across the next three years. Australia’s current 195,000 a year is about 0.75 per cent.

“Australia faces stiff competition as a migrant destination from other advanced economies that are also experiencing severe skills and labour shortages,” it says.

The size of the permanent migration program is determined by the federal government each year. It was reduced by the previous Coalition government from around 190,000 in the years prior to 2016-17 to 160,000, citing population pressures in the big cities, and hit a record low in the first pandemic year when 140,000 permanent migrants were accepted.

The Albanese government bolstered the 2022-23 intake to 195,000 to alleviate skills shortages in areas like healthcare and technology.

“Migration is an easy scapegoat for lack of infrastructure delivery and poor planning, but it is too important for us to continue down this path,” the BCA says.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced the review of the migration system in November, saying it would “focus on enhancing Australia’s productivity and providing businesses with the skilled workers they need, while assisting migrants to build new and prosperous lives in Australia”.

“The review will also address some of the challenges facing Australia, including our ageing population, climate change and emerging technology,” she said.

After the release of the federal government’s population statement last week, which found Australia’s is likely to be around one million fewer than expected by 2030 as a result of the pandemic, Jim Chalmers said increased migration was just one of a number of tools available to fix the nation’s significant workforce shortages.

“Migration has been a secret to our success as a country, making us more dynamic and more lively, strengthening our society and economy,” the Treasurer said.

“(But) lifting the migration cap alone won’t fix the challenges we face in the long term. We need to invest in our people and the productive capacity of our economy.”

BCA chief executive officer Jennifer Westacott told The Australian reforming the skills and migration systems in Australia had “never been more important”.

“A properly functioning migration system will be critical to attracting the skills we need to build new industries, develop new ideas, innovate across the economy and deliver a new wave of prosperity for Australians,” he said. “The right workers with the right skills get key projects and investments off the ground. You can’t employ hundreds of Australians on a construction job if you don’t have a surveyor and you can’t deliver an infrastructure pipeline without engineers.”

The BCA submission calls for the current requirement for both temporary and permanent employer-sponsored visas to match a skilled occupation list to be removed and replaced with open eligibility for jobs with a salary above average earnings, currently $92,000 a year.

It also proposes “streamlining” the current labour market testing that is required of employers before they sponsor a skilled migrant, saying there should still be “an onus on businesses that benefits from skilled migrants to demonstrate they are giving the first opportunity to suitably qualified Australian workers”.

“Skilled migration must remain a complement, not a substitute, for training and hiring Australians,” it says.

The submission proposes smoother pathways to permanent residency for temporary migrants on work visas, such as cutting the time period for sponsored employment.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/migration-increase-should-be-directly-tied-to-population-growth-business-says/news-story/88ad1d2f611d256c8b70c9c2a728e209

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Cardinal Pell has passed away

An intellectual and a most distinguished Austalian churchman. His passing is a real loss

After his ordination in St Peter’s Basilica on Friday, December 16 1966 Pell completed another year of study in Rome to earn his Licentiate, coming 5th in a class of 50 students from across the world. After spending the summer of 1967 working in a parish in Baltimore in the US where he made friends with George Weigel, who decades later became the definitive biographer of Saint John Paul II, Pell moved to the Jesuit-run Campion Hall, Oxford. There he wrote his doctorate in church history on early church fathers including Clement, Cyprian, Irenaeus, Origen and Tertullian. From rugby and rowing to listening to and occasionally debating visiting speakers, Pell relished Oxford life. The college masters were struck by his dedication to parish work, above and beyond the call of duty.

After 11 years at the helm of the Aquinas college in Ballarat and five years editing Light, the Ballarat diocesan newspaper, Pell left his home city in 1984 to take up the post of rector of Corpus Christi seminary in Melbourne – the training ground for the future priests of not only Melbourne but of regional Victoria and Tasmania. It was there, for the first time, that he ran into ecclesial controversy. His efforts to instil greater discipline, including attendance at morning Mass and better study habits, drew hostility from students and staff who preferred a less structured, less formal regime. A couple of the senior students, however, later became some of his closest lifelong friends.

The ever-increasing chasm between the traditional and liberal factions in the Catholic Church was becoming evident. Pell had the toughness and determination to prevail in what he called “a few small changes’’. It was clear to him, however, that more extensive seminary reform could only come from the bishops who had ultimate responsibility for priests’ training. That opportunity was later to come his way.

After three years running the seminary, Pell was consecrated a bishop, at the young age of 45, in St Patrick’s Cathedral on May 21 1987, a promotion that took his career, literally, out into the world, in unforeseen directions. Shortly after his consecration, Pell was elected by his fellow bishops to chair Australian Catholic Relief – the church’s overseas aid agency. For nine years, that position took up at least a day a week. It also involved frequent trips to the world’s trouble spots and poorest areas. His diaries from those trips made compelling reading, covering three visits to India, including one after the 1993 earthquake 400km southeast of Mumbai in which as many as 60,000 people perished. He wrote in his diary: “Wondered how God allowed earthquakes (perhaps God not all powerful, even cosmologically) … May God help victims and my weak faith’’.

As archbishop, Pell emerged as an outspoken, controversial figure in the national conversation. A “political agnostic’’ – in his time he voted Liberal, National and Labor – he waded into debate on issues relevant to the church. He was an outspoken critic of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which he condemned in 1998 for “racist policies’’ that “are a recipe for strife and misery’’ and for setting “groups of Australians against one another’’. He was a forceful critic of the Kennett government’s encouragement of gambling in Victoria. Recognising the sharp delineation between church and state, however, he infuriated the Left in 1998 arguing that John Howard’s proposed Goods and Services Tax was not an issue on which the Church could or should present a single viewpoint. Pell’s support for an Australian republic was a personal rather than a Catholic view.

Pell was also the main target of the contentious “Rainbow Sash’’ protests, refusing to distribute holy communion in his Cathedral to homosexual activists and their families and supporters wearing rainbow sashes. The issue attracted widespread adverse publicity, and defined Pell, in many minds, as an ultraconservative. But the issue was less divisive in Catholic ranks. Other church leaders of the time attested they would and did take the same stand.

In October 2003, Pell was promoted to cardinal by John Paul II. He celebrated the honour with 50 friends and family who travelled to Rome from Australia, the US, Canada, England and Ireland. It was, he recalled afterwards in his weekly Sunday Telegraph column, an exceptionally happy week of partying, perhaps “a slight taste of Heaven’’. Pell was a prodigious writer, of journal articles, columns and sermons; his works were collated into several books including “Be Not Afraid”, “Test Everything” and “God and Caesar”.

Despite the cardinal’s long history of heart disease, for which he received a pacemaker in Rome more than a decade ago, his death, from a cardiac arrest after a hip replacement operation in the Salvator Mundi hospital, was a shock. He had recently been working in Rome, meeting groups of students from Australia and seminarians from the US, and only days before had attended the funeral of his treasured friend Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. In the lead up to the late Pope’s funeral he was also in demand for interviews from US, British and Australian media and was busy networking with brother cardinals who travelled to Rome for Benedict’s funeral. He was the author of the obituary for Benedict published in this newspaper.

Close friends said he was in the best fom they had seen him for years, after he emerged from 13 months imprisonment, mainly in solitary confinement, in Victorian jails, on historic sex abuse charges dating back to his first few months as Archbishop of Melbourne, in 1996.

The Cardinal was released from jail in the lead-up to Easter in 2020 after the High Court, by a 7-nil margin, quashed the five convictions, which were made, originally, on the testimony of a single complainant. The full story of what was behind the charges, and others that were subsequently dropped by the Victorian legal system, is yet to emerge. His three, candid prison diaries, written during his ordeal, are a testament to his sense of justice, his strength and his faith. Throughout the ordeal, he never lost heart but worked with his legal teams to clear his name

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/george-pell-a-life-lived-for-the-church-and-its-founder/news-story/6bfe0fdd0805ef411fd878f7239178e3

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Religious intolerance is alive and well

As the festive season goodwill fades, we can but hope that 2023 will be a better year for Christianity after a bad 2022… A recent court case involving Wanslea, a West Australian foster care agency, has once more brought the problem of anti-Christian discrimination to light when a married couple, members of the Free Reform Christian Church, were allegedly denied an adoption because of their religion. At least the WA Administrative Tribunal confirmed the complaint and awarded compensation to the couple.

As reported by the ABC:

A Western Australian tribunal has found a Christian couple were discriminated against when their application to foster a child was rejected over their view that homosexuality is a sin.

The experience of Andrew Thorburn at Essendon Football Club confirmed how much attitudes in general, and to religion in particular, have changed over 50 years. Having seen Prime Minister Morrison abused in the press for his Christianity and Andrew Thorburn ejected from his role, this change has gone too far to the point that it is undermining our society.

Even more disturbing is the commentary from the Victorian Premier and the state’s Human Rights Commissioner. Being sacked for having certain views, views unrelated to the job, is no longer considered unacceptable in the eyes of our leaders.

Another disturbing intrusion in Victoria came from the Liberal Party, where an election candidate was banned from the party room because of her ‘extreme’ Christian views on gender and abortion; no mention has been made of equivalent views held by Muslim candidates. This was another self-inflicted injury to the party’s election prospects, adding to the predictable resulting loss.

As a young boy, I grew up in post-war London, a place both physically and psychologically recovering from the onslaught. The war had taken its toll, with morale maintained by Winston Churchill, Christian belief, and copious cups of tea. There were bomb sites, some containing unexploded ordinance, being used as playgrounds. Despite this adversity, people were happy to still be alive, as many weren’t. The church provided succour and there was little need for counselling.

All boys in this era were required to go to Sunday School and sing in the choir; I achieved a brief moment of success as a chorister in Westminster Abbey, then adolescence struck and my voice permanently changed. My subsequent religious exposure was minimal; I had, by this stage, become a medical student and found the non-evidence-based leap of faith difficult to achieve.

There is no doubt that the Christian ethos has provided the basis of our Western society, but this source of good is steadily being undermined by modernity. The 2021 Australian census statistics showed a rapid decline in those who identify as Christian falling from 68 per cent in 2003, to 52 per cent in 2016, and 44 per cent in 2021. 30 per cent now identify as having no religion. Christian faith is seemingly replaced by alternative pseudo-religions such as Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter. Taking the knee has been given a new meaning; I was taught that there were only three reasons to take the knee – to pray in church, to propose marriage, and when being knighted by the Monarch! It now seems an obligatory gesture for many sporting events, the most recent being on the cricket pitch.

Although not religious, I find the increasing intolerance of those who are difficult to fathom. We are reminded that, in past centuries, wars were regularly fought under the Christian banner – although producing nothing like the loss of life that ensued in more recent times from communism, fascism, or the numerous Islamic caliphates.

The vicious nature of social media commentary fails to recognise the good Christianity has done; it has fed the poor, supported women, abolished slavery, and provided the moral backbone of our society. To condemn it for the past sins of a few paedophiles is disproportionate; Cardinal Pell was, fortunately only temporarily, convicted for the sins of others, rather than his own.

Other religions do not stack up well in their treatment of the oppressed. In countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India, having a religion, the wrong religion, or leaving a religion, can result in a death sentence either by the law or from the mob. The fact that many of these countries sit on the committee of the United Nations Human Rights Commission adds to hypocrisy at the highest levels. The egregious example of the UN, refusing to even debate its own report on China’s persecution of Uighur Muslim ethnic minorities, demonstrated a new low.

Activists in Australia country continue to persecute Christianity whilst ignoring the attitudes of Islam to women’s rights and homosexuality. Why the discrepancy of criticising one religion and not the other?

Their attempts at undermining Christmas traditions exemplify their agenda. As seen in 2022, it is increasingly problematic to allow nativity scenes and the singing of carols without individuals or local councils worrying about offence being taken. Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, remains under a fatwa (threat of death). He tellingly stated, ‘Freedom of speech is freedom to offend.’ His attempted assassination revealed the less than benign aspect of that religion.

As a now retired doctor, I have lived and worked in many countries and have witnessed all the main religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. I have even dealt with medical problems caused by Animism and Voodoo. Outside the Western-orientated countries, I found an oasis (pardon the pun) of religious tolerance in the United Arab Emirates. Having lived in several countries in Arabia, I found that Dubai and Sharjah had Christian churches tolerated, although hidden away. That accommodation between two monotheistic religions was even more apparent in the Lebanon of yesteryear, until the Sunni/Shia Islamic fundamentalism divided the country with civil war. It is not that long ago that the ‘people of the book’ recognised their common ground, that view has been undermined in recent years by the attempts of an extreme form of Islam to establish dominance.

At Christmas, when Australian activists berate those who follow their faith, it is difficult to retain the spirit of goodwill the Bible eschews; local councils, such as Mosman, ban nativity scenes, and attempt to turn the holiday, (holy day) into a multicultural event. In the UK, even the definition of the holiday has been changed by some institutions; phrases such as ‘happy winter closure’ and ‘joyful holiday break’, have been substituted. In December, a British woman was arrested by police for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham, the charge being ‘protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users’; this in clear contravention of European freedom of speech and freedom of assembly legislation.
Goodwill is far more evident in Dubai, with the shopkeepers happy to supply presents for the Christmas festival and carols playing in the shopping malls. In one year, the fixed festivals of Hindu Diwali in October/November and Christmas in December, were neatly intersected by the moving date of Ramadan, which, in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, was in November that year; all the gifts were pragmatically repurposed if not sold! Conversely, other countries, such as Pakistan and Nigeria actively threaten Christians.

When I lived in Germany the giving of presents, Christmas trees, decorations, and lighting all followed the customs of the past. The non-Christian influx in many European countries has produced an opportunity for the extreme Left to undermine that tradition based on its potential to offend immigrants; Germany’s Islamic population has exploded to over 5 million, with nearly 3,000 mosques. Mono-cultural Scandinavian countries have the highest level of happiness in the world because their traditions have been retained rather than cancelled. Even the mention of the word Christmas has come under increasing threat; in the interest of inclusion, (as opposed to exclusion), the European Union banned its use in its official documents (later forced to withdraw from the position after complaints).

The 2021 census confirmed the dramatic decline in religious observance, with an associated decline in church weddings, from a historical 95 per cent, to now 20 per cent. As marriage is in decline and divorce increasing, 16 per cent of families are now, to their children’s detriment, single parents. Many children have little knowledge of the significance of Christmas, looking on the event solely as a time for family gatherings and presents. To even claim to be a Christian often encourages abuse. How can it be that we have a Human Rights Commission, but no action is taken when, as with Andrew Thorburn, a job is lost because of religious belief?

During nine years of Coalition government, religious freedom legislation was one of the many ‘too difficult’ challenges it failed to promote. Initially raised by Phillip Ruddock’s expert panel in 2018, it took until February 2022 before attempts were made to address the issue, with religious protection legislation possible in 2023. Western society is abrogating its history, Christianity is being persecuted and is bizarrely seen as some sort of moral turpitude, and marriage is under siege; what will be left to keep our society together, will climate change or some other high moral activist agenda become a poor substitute? Unless changes are made, the days of traditional celebration of Christmas may be soon gone.

https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/religious-intolerance-is-alive-and-well/

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Chasing our tails on wages is a real risk under Labor’s plan

When the Secure Jobs, Better Pay bill passed parliament late last year, Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke declared that “today we get wages moving”. It’s an easy political sell, particularly as cost-of-living pressures are affecting many households. But achieving this outcome is very different from simply announcing it.

Let’s be clear on what the aim is or at least should be: sustainable real wage increases that don’t lead to inflationary pressures or loss of jobs. There’s no point in achieving high nominal wage rises if the outcome is simply higher inflation – the classic dog chasing its tail – or workers lose their jobs.

Anthony Albanese’s assertion that anyone who opposed the rushed bill is against higher real wages is complete nonsense. The real issue is whether the new laws will actually achieve sustainable real wage increases. And if they do not, what will be the costs relative to the benefits of some workers (and the trade unions) doing well out of the new deal?

During the course of the year, various official indicators of wage growth will be released. We will need to watch out for the potentially misleading conflation of these figures with the impact of the legislation, something Burke may attempt to do. It was already evident last year that wages had started to move, at least in the private sector. A tight labour market has this effect, even if it was a long time coming.

By the same token, it’s also clear that ongoing government pay caps are affecting wage growth in the public sector. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher regards wage rises of 3 per cent a year as acceptable for federal public servants even though this will likely lead to quite steep falls in real wages for the affected workers. It’s also telling that the federal government is seeking to delay the pay rises for aged-care workers awarded by the Fair Work Commission last year.

Fiscal pressures on all levels of government will mean that wage growth in the public sector is likely to remain relatively subdued notwithstanding the occasional concession made to particular groups of workers.

What are the mechanisms that Burke is relying on to ensure that wages get moving? They are mainly focused on enterprise bargaining, although the government will be assuming that the Fair Work Commission will award a relatively generous increase in the national minimum wage and aligned wages in keeping with its practice last year. This will be assisted by the strong support of the government in its formal submission.

Recall here that last year the FWC granted increases of between 4.6 per cent and 5.2 per cent to those on award rates of pay. Given that about one-quarter of workers are paid award wages, increases of this magnitude can shift the dial when it comes to measured wage growth.

Across the past decade or so, there was a noticeable decline in the uptake of enterprise bargaining as the approach of the Fair Work Commission made the certification of agreements increasingly difficult. Think here the complex and convoluted interpretation of the better-off-overall test as well as pernickety procedural requirements.

It is estimated only 15 per cent of workers are now employed under current enterprise agreements. Indeed, most workers covered by enterprise agreements are now on expired agreements. It’s clearly a system on its knees.

But also bear in mind that enterprise agreements are essentially the domain of trade unions. Nearly three-quarters of all enterprise agreements are union-related, with these agreements covering 93 per cent of all employees on a current agreement. In other words, only union agreements with relatively large employers have lasted.

One principal aim of Labor’s legislation is to kickstart enterprise bargaining across a much wider spectrum of firms and industries, both single enterprise and multi-employer. The government’s expectation is that the vast majority of these agreements will be union-related and will contain wage increases and improvements to working conditions that have not been achievable.

A central feature of the legislative amendments is the incentive it gives for employers to quickly conclude enterprise agreements lest they be dragged into multi-employer bargaining. Both the minister and ACTU secretary Sally McManus have said as much. The scope for multi-employer bargaining doesn’t come into effect until the middle of this year.

Some unions already are taking advantage of a wrinkle in the new laws to restart enterprise bargaining where agreements have lapsed. There is no need to seek the permission of workers and unions will use the backdrop of end-point arbitration to push for large wage increases. A recent example is the unions requesting that Coles enter into bargaining given that the current agreement lapsed three years ago.

In other cases, unions will wait for multi-employer bargaining to begin and use the easy device of roping in employers who meet the comparability test. This will avoid the resource-intensive slog of bargaining on an enterprise-by-enterprise basis.

Burke’s confidence that wages will get moving, at least in a sustainable sense, incorporates an implicit assumption that there are currently “economic rents” within firms that can be costlessly reallocated to workers in the form of higher wages. That is, higher wages are possible without adverse effects on employment and absent any productivity trade-offs.

Whether there really are these economic rents in competitive industries that can be redistributed to workers is a moot point. Are there really large numbers of private sector firms currently earning supernormal profits, leaving aside mining where wages are already very high? Do the profit margins in retail or hospitality indicate that the owners of these firms are so flush with funds, particularly in the context of rising energy bills, that paying higher wages without any productivity or efficiency offsets can occur without any adverse commercial effects?

It is obvious why the unions are so keen on multi-employer bargaining because it will be much easier for wage increases to be passed on to higher prices as competitor firms are roped into the same pay and conditions for their workers. Technically speaking, the demand for labour is less elastic (responsive to changes in wages) at the industry level relative to the firm level.

The danger is that some firms will be forced out of business and inflation will accelerate.

For those who understand how labour markets work and the role that business plays, claiming better wage outcomes are possible without some trade-offs is simply naive. Until there is a focus on productivity, sustainable real wage gains will continue to elude us.

While it is possible that enterprise agreements can foster productivity growth, there are many examples of the reverse – restrictions on the right of managers to manage, the use of certain types of workers and compulsory consultation with unions. The recent NSW rail dispute is a perfect example of the potentially chilling impact of bargaining on the introduction of new technology.

In the meantime, the Reserve Bank will be watching carefully what happens to wages. Any signs that nominal wages are growing at a pace inconsistent with the bank’s inflation target will likely be met with tighter monetary policy.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/chasing-our-tails-on-wages-is-a-real-risk-under-labors-plan/news-story/d50eb2f50b78017d8f72bf1b168a419e

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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)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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