Australian Politics
Friday, January 20, 2023
A racist medical regulator?
Rubbish! It is easy to cry "racism" when a minority person suffers harm but the facts in the case below mainly suggest a communication breakdown and the doctor concerned was unfairly treated.
The authorities in the matter of Aboriginal Miss Dhu were not negligent. Seeing that she was ill, they took her to hospital several times. The doctors however had difficulty finding what was wrong, not because of ill-will but because of the characteristic difficulty Aborigines have in communicating with whites.
For instance, it is a reflexive custom for Aborigines to say what they think their questioner wants to hear. So a question such as "Are you OK now?" would get a Yes reply even if such a reply were inaccurate.
And it does appear that her repeated unsuccessful visits to hospital had made the guards impatient and suspicious, which is why they were a bit rough with her towards the end but which is also an understandable response in the circumstances.
Clearly, nobody was aware of the difficulties that communication with Aborigines can pose. So if there are any lessons to be learned it is to improve that understanding, either by employing experienced Aboriginal intermediaries or by having all staff trained by people who really know Aborigines and their culture well. It really is an art.
I note that the doctor who saw her was from India. That could well have amplified the communication difficulties. One often hears of problems arising from a "communication breakdown" but this would appear to be a particularly unfortunate example of it
The doctor who declared a young Indigenous woman fit for police custody shortly before her death was almost cleared of professional misconduct by the national healthcare regulator, in what insiders say is one example of systemic racism within the organisation.
Noongar woman Hannah McGlade, a former board member at the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), is one of those concerned about the case and said she was speaking out to draw attention to “double standards” in the way Indigenous patients and practitioners were treated.
Former AHPRA board member Hannah McGlade has accused the national healthcare regulator of racism.
Former AHPRA board member Hannah McGlade has accused the national healthcare regulator of racism. Credit:Tony McDonough
McGlade resigned from AHPRA about five months ago after an unsatisfactory response when she raised concerns internally. She is now calling for reform, including the implementation of a separate investigation process for medical complaints involving Indigenous people.
“Aboriginal people are dying in this country because of racism in healthcare,” McGlade said. “AHPRA has a long way to go in addressing its own culture of racism.”
The allegations come after The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed this week that AHPRA is grappling with ongoing claims of bullying, a “toxic” workplace culture and pressure to work through a backlog of complaints that investigators fear is putting the public at risk.
AHPRA chiefs declined an interview on Tuesday, but a spokesman said the organisation was half-way through implementing a strategy to improve the system for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
McGlade was the only Indigenous representative on AHPRA’s national medical board during the regulator’s investigation into the medical treatment of Dhu, a 22-year-old Indigenous woman who died in police custody in South Hedland, Western Australia, in 2014.
The death of Dhu, whose first name has been withheld for cultural reasons, triggered national protests and debate around institutionalised racism.
After being arrested and detained for unpaid fines, Dhu complained about pain and was taken to the hospital where her symptoms were dismissed as exaggerated or faked.
One treating doctor involved in assessing her, Vafa Naderi, failed to check her vitals or order an X-ray but instead noted “behavioural issues” and declared her fit for police custody.
The 2016 coronial inquiry would later find an early prescription of antibiotics to treat her broken rib, which had become infected, could have saved her life, and the doctors had made judgments based on preconceived ideas about Indigenous people.
However, when AHPRA conducted its own investigation into Naderi, an independent expert found while his conduct was unprofessional, it did not constitute professional misconduct, according to McGlade. There was disagreement between AHPRA boards about how to proceed. A legal firm was prepared to accept the expert’s advice, and pursue lighter disciplinary action, until McGlade intervened.
“I was the only member of the medical board who said: ‘This is not right. His conduct was so serious, it contributed to the death of a young woman. This is professional misconduct’,” McGlade said in rare public comments on AHPRA’s board deliberations.
McGlade had challenged the board and AHPRA’s commitment to reconciliation and had been asked to leave the room, accused of having a conflict of interest because she was Aboriginal, she said. But McGlade persisted and eventually persuaded the board to push for harsher action.
“It took the only Aboriginal person with a backbone to say – is that fair? Is that the right decision?” she said.
AHPRA ultimately referred Naderi to the WA State Administrative Tribunal and in June last year, Naderi was fined $30,000 – the highest penalty available under the law.
But he was not deregistered, nor were the nurses involved in Dhu’s treatment, who similarly failed to take her concerns seriously.
“That doctor got a slap on the wrist and he was still working,” said Dhu’s grandmother, Carol Roe, who gave permission for Dhu’s image to be used.
“My granddaughter was in agony. They should have looked after her, treated her with respect.”
A spokesman for AHPRA did not respond to questions about McGlade’s comments or penalties for the nurses who treated Dhu, but said her death “demonstrates the serious and tragic consequences of racism in our health and justice system”, and highlighted the regulator’s work to penalise Naderi.
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‘Queensland is so big, daylight saving just doesn’t work’
I don't want anybody messing around with my clocks nor do most Queenslanders. We have already voted on it
Daylight saving. Introduce these two words into conversation and, just like that, you have a lively spar of opinion. It’s the great Queensland debate. Are you for daylight saving or are you not?
Long a vexed issue, those for and against are mostly divided between the state’s more populated southeast corner and the state’s vast west and north.
An incredible array of pros and cons come into play – from annual time zone anarchy at the Coolangatta-Tweed Heads border and the reported billions of dollars in lost business revenue, to health and lifestyle factors.
Depending what research you are looking at, or who you are talking to, daylight saving gets people out playing with their kids, away from the TV and spending money at local businesses; or it isolates farmers who work until dark regardless of the time on the clock.
It is good for energy consumption because we turn our indoor lights on later but does this mean we use air conditioners more?
It has been attributed to an increase in heart attacks and sleep disturbances and causes anarchy when putting young children to bed. Conversely, it may also lower obesity rates, result in fewer car crashes and animal strikes and less crime.
It is also a simple matter of geography. Young children (and consequently their parents) are up with the birds that start chirping and squawking at a sunrise that hits Brisbane in December from 4.44am (with an uncivilised pre-dawn glow from 4.18am); while Mount Isa in the state’s north west corner doesn’t see sunrise at the same time of year until almost 6am.
Simply, daylight saving gives us a better quality of life or a worse one. It is to be welcomed; or avoided at all costs.
Whatever your view, this contentious and ongoing debate rears its head almost every summer when the rest of Australia’s east coast winds forward their clocks by one hour. Can the Sunshine State ever find its way to a resolution?
Daylight saving was first used in Australia in 1917 during World War I as an energy-saving measure, and again during World War II.
Tasmania introduced daylight saving in 1967, and in the Australian Capital Territory and all states (except Western and South Australia), it was trialled from October 1971 to February 1972.
All states – except Queensland, WA and the Northern Territory – then adopted it, with three time zones becoming five from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April.
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Ashamed of Australia Day? Then don’t take the extra day off
Federal Labor has joined academia and enlightened corporates to tell bureaucrats they can opt to “work” Australia Day if the occasion triggers them, and claim a day in lieu when airfares are on sale.
While Albo claims it’s “fine to have some flexibility”, Australia Day has now been cheapened to an extra day off for academics, corporates and bureaucrats, guilt-tripped into a mythical misnomer of what the day represents, righteous about an erroneous view completely out of historical context.
We should acknowledge a terrible, suppressed history, but should not commit the counter-crime of forgetting the truth of the man behind it, whose remarkable tenacity birthed a free nation.
Thursday is not, as some activists will tell you, the day when Captain Cook invaded Botany Bay, but the anniversary of Governor Arthur Phillip’s landing, who, enlightened beyond his contemporaries, actively sought Indigenous advisers, trade and enforced law for convicts and Indigenous people to live harmoniously.
Australia Day is not, as some activists claim, a day that has been only celebrated since 1994 but has been marked every year since Phillip arrived with convicts and a garrison to guard them, woefully under-resourced.
As far back as 1818, government labourers were given a day off and “one pound of fresh meat” “as a “just tribute to the memory of that highly respected and meritorious officer”.
For an “invader,” Phillip chose Indigenous confidantes to translate and dine with, named land after them — including Manly and Bennelong — and even as the slave trade boomed globally, ensured the local population here did not meet the same fate.
When a man speared him through the shoulder at Manly, his order was: “No reprisals; it was due to misunderstanding”.
He was dismayed when his convict entourage at Parramatta were “so unthinking, or so depraved, as wantonly to destroy a canoe belonging to a fine young man”, noting it ended any chance of commerce between them.
He hung his countrymen for the crime — which seems counterintuitive if he was an invader. Phillip believed the Indigenous to be British citizens protected by law — in stark contrast to colonists enslaving native populations across the rest of the world.
Most surprising is that the colony survived famine in such dire straits that convicts were hung from trees for stealing when the alternative was starving.
As the rhetoric builds each Australia Day, we risk forgetting why we have it at all.
As far back as 1818, it was to celebrate a man who navigated uncharted seas with a fleet of prison ships of poor convicts into an unfamiliar land, afforded little help from Britain to build a penal colony that has evolved into the free nation we have today.
He built houses and roads, raised crops and stock, all with unskilled convict labour who didn’t know how to farm or want to be here, and soldiers who endlessly complained about the temperature (42C in the shade), sun, mosquitoes and lack of food, fought with each other and allowed convicts to abscond.
We don’t execute hungry flour thieves as we did in 1798 any more, but judging Phillip’s executions then with the eyes of today would be like judging Indigenous men documented in the same period for killing their wives with blunt force trauma, treating them as possessions, not people, under the tribal conditions of the same time.
It would be an outrage to say that their descendants today are in line with the culture of then. So why do that to Governor Phillip and the unfortunate souls on the First Fleet?
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Labor’s new tax on those that wear hi-vis to work
In the past week Greta Thunberg was “arrested” for trying to stop the expansion of a coal mine that would bulldoze the abandoned German town of Luetzerath. While a German Greens Government is desperately trying to increase the supply of reliable energy, even against the wishes of St Greta, our Labor-Greens government announced a $15 billion tax hit on our energy producing and consuming businesses.
The Labor Party does not call it a tax, instead preferring the Orwellian moniker of a “safeguard mechanism”. The safeguard mechanism would make 215 Australian businesses reduce their carbon emissions by 5 per cent a year. They will have to pay a capped price of $75 per tonne to do this.
Over the next 7 years until 2030 these businesses will have to reduce their emissions by 205 million tonnes. At $75 a tonne, which is three times the cost of Gillard’s carbon tax, this amounts to a $15 billion new tax to do business in Australia. (The $75 capped price will probably prevail because in Europe carbon credits trade at over $100 per tonne and in New Zealand the price is already at $70 a tonne.)
Former Labor MP, Joel Fitzgibbon, admitted that Labor’s policy was a carbon tax. Like all carbon taxes it will increase the cost of living. Airlines will be made to pay the tax. You will be made to tick the green box on your plane ticket under Labor.
But this new carbon tax will be paid mostly by the mines and factories in regional Australia. The tax will hit 63 coal mines, 22 iron ore mines, 35 gas production facilities and what is left of our manufacturing of steel, aluminium and fertilisers. It is not a good idea to tax the industries that make our nation prosperous.
Over 84 per cent of the carbon emissions covered by Labor’s carbon tax come from businesses in the regions even though only 30 per cent of Australians live in the regions.
Labor’s new carbon tax is a tax on those that wear hi-vis to work.
Queensland is hit hard by Labor’s new carbon tax. A third of the 215 businesses are in Queensland despite the fact we only have 20 per cent of Australia’s population. Queensland businesses are set to pay an extra $4 billion in tax, a much higher burden than the just $700 million that will be paid by Victorian businesses.
It is Queensland’s mining industry that is keeping our nation afloat. Coal is once again Australia’s largest export but the thanks it gets is to pay more tax to prop up a bloated Canberra bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, Labor’s policy lets the banks off scot-free. Banks are large emitters themselves due to the energy use of their data centres.
However, under Labor’s policy, emissions from the use of electricity is inexplicably ignored. If Labor had included emissions from electricity use, three of the four big banks would have carbon emissions over the 100,000-tonne threshold and have to pay the tax.
So Labor’s climate policy taxes the jobs in the hi-vis industries of mining and manufacturing, while turning a blind eye to the emissions created by jobs in suits.
And those hi-vis industries, guess who they will have to buy the carbon credits from? That’s right, the banks. No wonder the banking industry is one of the loudest supporters of Labor’s climate plan.
Labor has tried to claim that this new tax will not hurt business or jobs because other countries want us to reduce carbon emissions and if we do not we will lose their custom. However, this argument is completely undermined by Labor’s own suggestion that we will now need to introduce carbon tariffs on imported products to offset the costs of their carbon tax on Australian businesses.
If Labor’s new carbon tax actually helps Australian businesses sell products to climate conscious customers, why would we need a tariff to provide them protection against low cost goods from countries that do not impose a carbon tax?
This just proves that this new tax is another blow to Australia’s manufacturing industries. The biggest winner of Labor’s carbon tax will be China, who will take more of our manufacturing jobs as they continue to build coal fired power plants like they are going out of fashion.
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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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Thursday, January 19, 2023
Australian Police News
Yes. I do run a blog under the title above. See it here
It is just a separate place where I gather together posts from this blog that concern the police. There is a search box at the top of the blog which enables you to search for any name you may be interested in. It is at present up to date as of the end of last year.
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Low-rent behaviour by greedy landlords is feeding the rental crisis
I guess I am wasting my time commenting on the screed by the Leftist Jenna Price below but I would like to point out a few things anyhow. The key to her plaint is in the very title of her article: "Low rent".
It is absolutely true that low rent properties are often of a poor standard. Landlords who keep their propetties at a high standard CANNOT AFFORD to charge low rents.
Let me give an example: In my days when I had 6 properties to rent out, I kept them all at a standard that I would myself be happy to live with. And I always brought them up to a high standard before I put them into the hands of agents
My reward for that? In one YEAR my income from one 5 bedroom house after all repairs and maintenance had been paid for was $500. And I had many thousands invested in that house. I sold it. It was an impossible investment.
It's an extreme example but costs are a big problem for a landlord and emptyheads like Jenna Price have no idea of them. So the idea that landlording is a lucrative racket is way off. Do I sound "greedy"? It's just Leftist hate-speech below.
So "you pays your money and you takes your choice". If you are ready or able to pay only low rent, you will get a property that the landlord cannot afford to keep up to a high standard. He would do his dough if he did. The rent is low BECAUSE the property is undesirable
"Forcing" the landlord to upgrade the property would almost certainly lead him to increase the rent he asks -- so he can get a return on his investment -- and that might be exactly what poor people do NOT want. It would REDUCE their options. Government "protection" can easily worsen rather than help the situation. But in her Leftist mental straitjacket, Jenna Price has not thought of that
My mother’s advice was that I should buy a house. That was 1983. That advice is no longer fine or even possible for most, Bank of Mum and Dad notwithstanding. Many mums and dads are now still paying off their own mortgages.
We were desperate to avoid increasingly rapacious landlords or their proxies, otherwise known as real estate agents. Toilets only flushed by bucket. Floorboards on the verge of perishing. Terrifyingly unpredictable electrical faults. Forty years on, stories from some renters are the same as my own.
I’ve watched generations deal with some rentals barely fit for human habitation. How long will it be before a renter sues a landlord for the harms caused by black mould or because the ceiling has fallen in because of unrelenting rain? Many landlords and agents have no interest in spending money to maintain the properties which generate their wealth. There is hardship for those who inhabit these cash castles and too many distressing cases for our collective good conscience.
Landlordism has gone wild in this country, enabled by real estate agents. The state government ignores the problem. It’s been in power since, what, 2011 and finally “outlawed” unsolicited rental bidding in November. That stops the agent from explicitly soliciting but doesn’t prevent accepting higher bids from prospective tenants.
What governments should do is ban “no grounds” evictions (code for we are getting rid of you because you can’t afford our rent increase). That’s at least a NSW Labor election promise (and one Victorian Labor has – more or less – legislated). Is the NSW government planning on anything at all after a decade? It’s like pulling teeth trying to get a commitment.
“These laws are currently under review and an announcement is expected shortly,” a spokesperson for Fair Trading tells me. Every time governments introduce the prospect of reform, vested interests go ballistic. “It will force landlords out of the market,” they may cry. “It will discourage property investors.” None of that’s happened.
We have a terrible rental crisis in this country, worsened by the slow rate of construction completions during COVID. But the real problem is this – owning investment property is a sure way to turn a profit. Landlords don’t recognise their responsibility in providing a basic human right – the right to have somewhere safe to live. Here’s the bigger problem. Most tenants only have relationships with real estate agents who rarely act in the tenants’ best interests. Their responsibility is to the landlord. No one has the best interests of tenants at heart.
An exaggeration? In August last year, one real estate agency bragged about its biggest rent increase of the week. It later apologised because it was sprung for bad behaviour. In October, another agency urged landlords to consider raising rents by more than 20 per cent.
Ask around for rental stories: homes which can’t be locked, gas leaks, water leaks from baths, showers, toilets, broken windows, mould, faulty wiring, ovens which never work, not even on day one, no insulation. Comedian Mark Humphries tweeted he was in his second-straight rental property where the owner refused to bear the cost of connecting to the NBN. A reminder that improvements to the property remain with the property, owned by the landlord.
Then we’ve got the behaviour of the agents. Readers have supplied horrific examples of rudeness, of refusal to respond to urgent requests and, creepily, of agents wandering around the rental property taking photos willy-nilly. Contracts professor at the University of Melbourne Katy Barnett says renters have a right to be worried.
“I doubt agents are even considering privacy concerns,” she says. Sure, you can ask how the photos are stored and how long they’ll be kept for but if someone can’t get back to you about your broken toilet, doubt you’ll be getting a response on privacy breaches.
One in three Australians rent. The rules which surround renting are wafty as. It should be a scandal but states and territories are clearly beholden to Big Landlord (and federal governments are sadly cowed by the “negative gearing is my wealth right” crew).
Michael Fotheringham, managing director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, says rental vacancies are the lowest they’ve been in 20 years. A three per cent vacancy rate is healthy. Right now, it’s about one and a bit. Queues at opens are right out the door.
Complaints to the NSW Tenants Union have doubled in 12 months. Complaints to Fair Trading have increased by 10 per cent in 12 months. But complaint numbers mean little – most tenants are too terrified to complain in case they get booted. As NSW Tenants Union CEO Leo Patterson Ross says, consumers can’t do the enforcement themselves. That should be an independent third party (also promised by NSW Labor but let’s see if it can stand up to Big Landlord).
Landlords are addicted to profits and not to a sustainable housing model. OK, #notalllandlords but too many to mention. They don’t get to face the heartbreak of the people who make their money for them. Landlords didn’t get into the business to provide a basic human right, they did it to make money. And that’s our problem right there.
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NSW loves coal
NSW will introduce a domestic coal reservation policy to keep the lights on and ease an energy crisis gripping the east coast, in a move expected to open a new battle with major coal miners.
The Australian understands NSW Treasurer Matt Kean will issue orders requiring the majority of the state’s thermal coal miners to reserve up to 10 per cent of their output for NSW power stations by the end of the month, under a new clampdown designed to head off potential supply shortfalls this year.
The orders represent an expansion of rules introduced in December requiring only some coal miners to reserve production for the domestic market, included alongside a $125-a-tonne cap on the price of coal sold to local power providers. They could draw in major producers such as BHP, Whitehaven Coal and Yancoal.
The reservation scheme will aim to dodge a gas strike by energy producers and retailers, frustrated by a lack of clarity after the Prime Minister imposed a price cap and code of conduct on the industry. However, the move could split the NSW coal industry, with those companies already subject to domestic reservation orders likely to welcome the move. Those not affected by current orders are likely to be outraged by the decision.
“This coal cap scheme will see NSW doing our part at the request of the Albanese government to contribute to the national solution of this national problem,” Mr Kean said.
“I know those currently providing coal for the local market will appreciate that companies enjoying super profits on the back of the war in Ukraine will now do their part for the domestic market. Of course they should provide Australian production for Australian consumers.
“These new arrangements will help even the playing field among coal producers.”
The NSW government is consulting with the additional companies. The new orders are likely to require them to contribute about 7-10 per cent of their production to the domestic market. Coal still provides up to 60 per cent of generation needs in the state even as NSW looks to phase out the fossil fuel and replace it with renewable energy supplies.
The Australian understands NSW estimates its generators will need about 22 million tonnes of coal to keep operating through 2023. About 18 million tonnes of that total is already contracted in long-term supply contracts with a small group of miners, including Glencore, Peabody, New Hope Corporation and Centennial.
Under orders issued in late December those producers were required to offer at least 18.6 million tonnes of coal into the domestic market at a maximum price of $125 a tonne for coal with a calorific value of 5500 a kilogram. That is the equivalent of $136.40 for high-grade coal exported to international markets from NSW mines, which generally grades 6000 calories per kilogram.
Mr Kean, who is also the Energy Minister, has decided to widen the domestic reservation policy to meet a potential supply shortfall, after complaints the December orders put an unfair burden on a small group of producers.
The Australian understands Mr Kean now intends to require all NSW thermal coal producers to supply into the domestic market – effectively establishing a domestic coal reservation policy for the state.
The move is likely to draw in major producers such as BHP, Whitehaven Coal and Yancoal, who are not currently required to supply NSW power stations beyond any existing contracts.
Mr Kean’s move is not necessarily a permanent impost on the state’s coal industry, as coal-supply requirements will slowly diminish over the next decade as the state phases out its reliance on coal-fired generation.
It is believed sections of the coal industry have argued that coal is ultimately a state-owned resource, and the burden of supplying NSW power stations should be shared more evenly among the state’s miners.
Most of the mines supplying into long-term contracts with NSW power stations do so as a requirement of deals to privatise state-owned operations in the 1980s and 2000s. Private companies that invested in greenfield operations did so with export markets in mind, and are unlikely to welcome any impost on the price they could receive on international markets.
BHP’s Mt Arthur mine is expected to produce 13 million to 15 million tonnes of coal in the current financial year. Yancoal’s NSW mines produced about 23 million tonnes of coal in 2021.
The Australian understands the new orders will not require miners to break existing export agreements if their mine production is fully contracted, and coking coal mines such as South32’s Illawarra operations and Sanjeev Gupta’s Tahmoor mine are not affected by the new rules. AGL Energy’s Liddell coal plant is due to close in April, with Origin Energy’s Eraring station to shut as early as August 2025.
The final NSW coal power plant will be shut by 2040 at the latest after EnergyAustralia’s decision to bring forward the closure date of its Mt Piper facility by at least two years in a bid to hit new green climate targets.
Coal facilities are increasingly having to switch off during daytime hours when high solar supplies undercut them on price.
Mr Kean has been warning the state’s coal plants will exit early as the fossil fuel struggles to compete.
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Fears as crackdown on regional alcohol sales rejected
"Regional" my foot! It's a ban on sales of booze to Aborigines that they are talking about. Bans have been tried before but simply lead to "sly grogging", which reduces money for food
A plea for severe alcohol restrictions across Australia’s northwest has been rejected by the West Australian liquor umpire, allowing the McGowan Labor government to persevere with a banned drinkers register that was independently assessed as a failure in September last year.
Former WA police commissioner Chris Dawson, who is now the state’s Governor, began pushing for an unprecedented crackdown on alcohol sales in the north in 2019.
To support his case, he supplied evidence about alcohol-fuelled violence and testimonials from frontline workers and an opinion from the state’s chief medical officer, Andy Robertson, who recommended the government consider either barring or restricting the sale of mid- and full-strength alcohol across the state’s north.
The decision by the new WA director of liquor licensing, Lanie Chopping, to allow bottle shops to continue to sell full-strength takeaway alcohol in far north Kimberley and Pilbara towns follows an almost four-year dispute over the best response to alarming rates of alcohol-related violence and dysfunction in those regions.
WA Liquor Minister Reece Whitby said Ms Chopping was independent and made her decision after “a very thorough process and consultation”.
“There is no easy fix. This is a longstanding, complex issue and the banned drinkers register trial is one of a number of initiatives the McGowan government is using to address alcohol abuse,” Mr Whitby said.
“We’ve listened to the feedback from all stakeholders – including licensees, police and community services – to help strike the right balance that will be accepted by the broader community.”
The McGowan government is now attempting to fix the banned drinkers register which it began trialling in 2020, possibly by making it more closely resemble the one in place in the Northern Territory.
In the NT, there is also a floor price on alcohol.
According to an interim assessment of the banned drinkers register by the University of WA published in September last year, there had been no discernible reduction in crime almost two years after the rollout began in the Pilbara. The report found there were too few people on the register. By last week, there were still just 90 people banned in the Kimberley, which has a population of 38,000, and just 92 people banned in the Pilbara, which has a population of 63,000.
The report found those who were banned could easily get friends to buy for them or go to a bottle shop that did not participate in the trial. Another problem was that bottle shops could decide if they wished to even check whether a customer was banned before serving them.
Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mayor John Bowler backed the banned drinkers register when the McGowan government began trialling it in the WA goldfields in March last year, but he has been disappointed with the outcome.
“In its current form, it is totally ineffective,” he told The Australian on Tuesday. “The one thing that was working – the cashless debit card – they took away.”
In the Kimberley, Ms Chopping has endorsed pandemic-era purchase limits for all towns.
For example, a person can buy a maximum of three bottles of wine, one carton of full-strength beer or a bottle of spirits per day, or a combination such as a bottle of wine and half a carton of beer.
Police can still impose temporary bottle shop bans in response to a particular event or crisis, as they have done in the Kimberley.
Aboriginal elder Ian Trust, who runs the Wunan Foundation in Kununurra, said he initially backed blanket bottle shop bans in the Kimberley. “The biggest losers in towns and communities where alcohol is a problem are children and old people who come from families who are caught up in a cycle which they cannot get out of,” Mr Trust said.
“If blanket alcohol bans are not imposed, it makes sense to make sure the banned drinkers register does work – especially in cases where the safety of children is involved or the individual has been found guilty of multiple cases of domestic violence.
“If we want to get serious about addressing the social issues … alcohol management will need to be front and centre of our strategies along with housing and employment opportunities.”
Broome shire president Harold Tracey said a broader banned drinkers register and scanning to stop individuals from purchasing their daily limit at multiple bottle shops would help address the region’s alcohol issues. “The next thing is about getting funding into rehabilitation centres and sober-up centres,” he said.
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Bankstown MP Tania Mihailuk moves from Labor to One Nation
A NSW politician has blamed “woke” Labor for her decision to defect to One Nation just weeks out from the state election.
Former renegade NSW Labor MP Tania Mihailuk has announced she will defect to One Nation just weeks out from the NSW election.
Ms Mihailuk, the member for Bankstown, says the Labor Party has “lost its way to the left wing extremists and property developer mafia”.
“Chris Minns as Premier and a Labor Government will see NSW go both woke and broke,” Ms Mihailuk said.
“I know the true agenda of the people sitting currently sitting on Chris Minns’ front bench - they are from the extreme left. We simply cannot afford to have Labor controlling both Chambers of parliament.”
Ms Mihailuk has been sitting as an independent in parliament since quitting the Labor Party in last October.
On Tuesday, she announced she is seeking preselection in Mark Latham’s party for an upper house seat.
In a statement, former the Bankstown Mayor highlighted NSW Labor’s stance on a number of issues as the reason behind her shock move, including claims that some Labor MPs “want drug legalisation and gender fluidity teaching in schools”.
“I totally oppose these policies and will do everything that I can to stop their agenda from passing the Upper House,” she said.
In a speech in parliament when she resigned from the party, Ms Mihailuk accused the party of corruption, claiming Canterbury-Bankstown Mayor Khal Asfour was linked to corrupt former Minister Eddie Obeid.
A report by Canterbury-Bankstown Council found that Mr Asfour had no relevant relationship with Eddie Obeid or his son Paul.
Ms Mihailuk also said One Nation was the “only party” focused on the cost of living crisis and energy bills, claiming the major parties were creating an “unnecessary scare campaign against coal and nuclear energy”.
“NSW is rich in natural resources, but Labor wants to ban coal and forestry and this will send electricity prices and the cost of building materials to record highs.”
The self-described “proud Christian” said freedom of religion was another reason for her move to One Nation.
“South West Sydney communities like those in Bankstown have the highest observance in faith, be it Christianity, Buddhism or Islam, but freedom of religion is a toxic notion to the inner-west left wing hipsters that set Labor Party agenda on social policy.”
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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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Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Youth crime crisis has led to soaring crime rates in Alice Springs
Alice springs has a large Aboriginal settlement nearby and young Aborigines often show little respect for the law. Crime for them is often a form of entertainment. Under Leftist pressure, police are required to go easy on them
A local in Alice Springs has penned a heartbreaking letter begging authorities to 'fix all this criminality' as a youth-led crime crisis sees local jails hit breaking point.
In a letter to the outback town's paper, Alex Morelli wrote that he believes the time has come for locals to fight for their safety after crime rates exploded.
'When will someone do something to fix all this criminality?' he pleaded.
'Last night, I called the police, because a woman was screaming, shouting and throwing rocks in the Eastside.
'Tonight, while I was driving along the main road (McDonald Street) a bunch of kids threw rocks at my car.'
He told Daily Mail Australia the intention of people throwing rocks was 'not like fun'.
'The way they do it, it intends to injure someone.'
Mr Morelli said Australians from other cities have no idea how dangerous Alice Springs feels.
'I lived in Brisbane, then on the Sunshine Coast, and then moved to Alice Springs. I always found Australia such a safe country, but here I am not feeling safe at all.
'When I tell people in other parts of Australia what's happening here they don't believe me.'
Alice Springs is the only Australian town in the 20 most crime-affected locations on earth, coming 17th according to surveys collected by Numbeo.
The other towns to make the top 100 were Rockhampton at 36th, Cairns at 69th, Darwin at 79th and Townsville at 96th.
In 2022 government statistics showed Alice Springs has triple the national average for recorded assaults, 2556 per 100,000 people, compared to 790 for the whole of Australia.
Alice Spring's rates of assault represented a 36 per cent jump on the previous year.
Domestic violence assaults went up 45 per cent, alcohol-related assaults up 46 per cent, property damage was up 54 per cent, car thefts 37 per cent and house break-ins up 24 per cent.
Leader of the Northern Territory opposition, Lia Finocchiaro said in a speech last month that Alice Springs businesses are closing with staff too afraid to go to work.
'Behind the eye-watering crime statistics are families living in fear and business owners are being pushed to the brink.'
'They are 'at breaking point because the financial, physical and emotional costs are just too much to bear.'
As of January 2023 the outback town's only prison is stretched beyond capacity and police are forced to house convicted criminals in police stations.
The Alice Springs Correctional Centre, which has reached its capacity of 650 inmates, is being expanded to add another 80 beds by the end of 2023.
'It is now evident that with the annual trend, more and more prisoners are being held within the watch house,' the jail's general manager Bill Carroll wrote in an email to staff.
Last month the ABC reported a youth crime crisis was engulfing Alice Springs.
Some of the shocking behaviour included youths driving 'head first' at police patrols in order to coax them into high-speed pursuits, the ABC reported.
Some of the young offenders were treating police interaction as a good social media content by livestreaming pursuits for their social media accounts.
In late 2020, NT Police Assistant Commissioner Martin Dole, compared the cat-and-mouse antics of Alice Spring teens to a the classic violent game Grand Theft Auto.
'It’s one-upmanship type behaviour, it’s very much a dangerous game,' he said.
'It needs to be stopped, and it needs to be stamped out.'
Mr Morelli believes it's time for Alice Springs locals to hit the streets to make a point publicly about the safety issues they face.
'It's time to protest and demonstrate against this current situation!' Mr Morelli said.
'Lots of people are leaving for that reason, and the town is become even more unliveable.'
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Mainstream media now totally woke
We are living through arguably one of the greatest divides the Western world has ever experienced and on the night of December 2, 2022, this divide went nuclear, courtesy of Elon Musk. It’s the great Mainstream Media (MSM) divide and it consists of a disconnect between those who consume news from MSM exclusively and those who consume news from both mainstream and so-called ‘alternative’ news sources.
Those who consume MSM exclusively remain oblivious to a plethora of important news stories; at the tip of the iceberg are the Hunter Biden Laptop scandal in America and the Rotherham grooming scandal in the UK. This lack of knowledge of these two stories alone is appalling and indeed unprecedented in living memory.
Speak to an average Australian who consumes only MSM news and they will not have heard of Rotherham. Nor would they be remotely aware that Hunter Biden has a long history of business dealings in Ukraine. Rotherham and Hunter Biden are vital news stories Australians have a right to be made aware of as they navigate child safety and the cost-of-living crises – the latter being widely attributed to the war in Ukraine.
Knowledge is power; if your only source of information is from MSM in 2022, you are disempowering yourself and your family, essentially voting in an information void. A revolution is currently taking place in the Fourth Estate and to their detriment, the majority of people are unaware of it.
In his address at the Claremont Institute on October 13, 2020, Tom Klingenstein argued that the Democratic Party had been taken over by its radical wing and that ‘Republicans are not doing a good job explaining the stakes’.
Given MSM openly flaunts its left-wing bias and Woke ideology, it is impossible for Republicans (or any similar Conservative party) to explain anything at all to the public through that source. Klingenstein’s speech itself was not widely heard by Republicans, let alone swing voters or the many Democrat party members who had become frustrated with the current radical left trend of their party. One had to be on the ever-moving Twitter, following the right accounts at specific moments in time, to catch a glimpse of a speech that deserved a worldwide audience. This is virtually impossible for the average person to do.
Klingenstein and others of that year created political and cultural waves – but these waves could only be felt online. The real world and MSM remained untouched. What should have been a tsunami petered out in the MSM world of ‘do not amplify’.
Investigative journalism, meaning the facts, has been erased Soviet-style by MSM, resulting in Westerners living in a society of haves-and-have-nots regarding what is happening in the world. This divide can be seen between party members, family members, and friends alike, throwing people into parallel world views, dictated by whether or not they consume news via MSM exclusively. At least when they built the Berlin wall we had the physical evidence in front of our eyes that we were divided. Nowadays, it would be Photoshopped out.
Traditionally in the West, we have placed an almost sacred trust in the Fourth Estate – that it will unbiasedly report to the public news they need to know in order to hold their governments accountable. Due to this long-held trust in the Fourth Estate and reliance on MSM, large portions of the public don’t even have the advantage Donald Rumsfeld described in 2002 of being aware that there are ‘… unknown unknowns-the ones we don’t know we don’t know’.
And so it goes, seemingly forever, an almost pointless void between people on the MSM/alternative news parallels, and like all parallel lines in Euclidean geometry, never the two shall meet. It feels like a big bang, in the same metaphor, with the MSM and alternate news sources growing further apart. Fortunately, it’s the latter that seems to be expanding at a faster rate.
On December 2, 2022, Musk decided to give the voting public a hint of what they don’t know they don’t know, if you follow my drift. Laura Ingraham summarised: ‘Musk had bought Twitter not realising he was in fact buying the largest Democratic Party Super Pac.’ Once he did realise this, he decided to share this revelation with the world, tweeting American journalist Matt Taibbi’s expose of the Democratic Party’s communications with Twitter staff in 2020 regarding censoring the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop. In doing so, Musk exposed the chasm between MSM and alternate news reporting, the former’s sins of omission particularly.
Westerners are accustomed to journalists using MSM as their credentials. However in 2022, the credentials are found in the content of the news itself. Primary sources are king, and indeed king makers amongst the new breed of citizen journalists, Andy Ngo being the perfect example of this.
Edmund Burke first coined the phrase ‘Fourth Estate’ in 1787 to highlight the power journalists and news media held.
Thomas Carlyle quotes Burke in stating there were ‘three estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all’. Power corrupts and as Musk has shown the world, the MSM that has for decades dominated the Fourth Estate has no interest in serving anything but its masters. Journalism, as formerly understood, ceased to be. There is not even the pretence of impartiality anymore in the MSM. As it stands, the Second and Fourth Estates are in collusion to such a degree that authoritarian regimes and their tactics come to mind, actually, throw in the First and Third Estates as well.
Ignorance is currently bliss, but the longer this media exclusion zone with its selective censorship continues, the worse the clean-up will be. If not addressed, this chasm will drive a potentially insurmountable wedge through society and dictate geopolitics for the next decade. It has the potential to be as, if not, more dangerous than Woke ideology
Forget occupying Mars, Musk needs to occupy the Fourth Estate with citizen journalists who will challenge the stranglehold the elites have over the media, by bringing them to a mainstream audience. The digital world can provide a printing press for anyone. Citizen journalists can challenge the status quo, we just need to tune our antennas in their direction and accept that the MSM is gone with the wind.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/msm-gone-with-the-wind/
****************************************************PM is told 'you're losing people' on the Voice to Parliament
He's trying to pull a swifty: Get people to vote on something that can be twisted into extreme policies after the event
Anthony Albanese has compared the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a combative radio interview.
The prime minister was questioned about the details of the proposed advisory body at least six months ahead of a referendum on its creation.
For 21 minutes he tried explain that the gritty detail of how the Voice would function was yet to be determined, and the referendum would ask a simple question.
Opponents of the Voice fear the referendum could become a 'bait-and-switch' in which the public gives approval only to find out later what that means in practice.
Mr Albanese tried to allay those concerns by using the bridge analogy first made by indigenous leader Noel Pearson about the difference between the vote and subsequent detail-laden legislation.
He said the referendum was like deciding whether or not to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge without getting lost in arguments over how many lanes it would have or what the tolls should be.
Radio 2GB host Ben Fordham insisted Australians were entitled to see details of the planned 'bridge' before they made a decision on whether or not to proceed.
Mr Albanese said a detailed report by Professors Marcia Langton and Tom Calma released in July 2021 put forward potential models for the Indigenous Voice.
The report goes into great detail about how it would work, both at a local and national level, and the PM previously said the Voice would be based on it.
'Go have a look at the report, it is 260 pages long. it goes through [detail about] the national and regional Voice,' he told Fordham.
Fordham said Australians should not be required to read 260-page report of proposals in order to know what they were being asked to vote on.
Mr Albanese said he would answer if he could get a word in between the questions. 'It (the report) envisages two people from each state and territory and a group of people specifically representing remote communities,' he said.
When Mr Fordham interrupted to ask how they would be chosen, Mr Albanese accused him of 'not being interested in the answer'.
Eventually Mr Albanese explained that, in NSW as an example, there was already work being done to establish a local Voice with members elected by indigenous people in that state.
Members of the national Voice would be chosen from those representatives, along with those of other states and territories.
The prime minister did not rule out legislating the Voice into existence even if the referendum failed, as the vote was specifically on whether the body should be enshrined in the constitution, not on whether it exists at all. 'If Australians say no, there will be no constitutional change,' he said
The radio host asked several specific questions, including whether Voice members would be paid and if it would have an office in Canberra.
Mr Albanese insisted 'the question before the Australian people is a really simple one'. 'Our constitution doesn't go to whether there is an office somewhere or not, it doesn't even have the office of prime minister in it,' he said.
'He said all of the 'serious detail' will be included in legislation that would be voted on in the House of Representatives and Senate.
The PM accused Mr Fordham of already knowing this but seeking to mislead listeners. 'You could come up with 50 theoretical questions about a whole range of issues to undermine what is a very simple principle,' he said.
'And the second is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people asked us to have a process, and what they wanted that process to come up with is the Uluru Statement of the Heart in 2017... which is asking for a Voice.'
Mr Fordham insisted he was posing the questions that many Australians had about the referendum. 'Please don't tell me what I know and don't know... I'm genuinely asking these questions,' he said.
Mr Albanese also refuted claims members of the Voice or others could take the government to court for not acting on its advice, or if they were not consulted on particular legislation.
The PM in November said the referendum would be held in the second half of this year, with analysts tipping October as the most likely month.
That gives the government nine months to make its case and draw up plans for the Voice that voters could use to make their decision.
Mr Albanese said there would be a parliamentary inquiry into what words would be added to the constitution, which voters could make submissions to.
Parliament would then make a final decision through legislation in the lead-up to the referendum being called.
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The green mining boom is as gritty and dirty as every other boom
Chris Bowen’s ambition to turn Australia into a renewable energy export powerhouse stalled last week when the giant Sun Cable Australia-Asia PowerLink entered voluntary liquidation.
It seems that exporting rays of sunlight to Singapore is as difficult as it sounds. Writing a convincing business plan to install millions of solar panels in the Northern Territory, capturing their intermittent output in giant batteries and sending this through thousands of kilometres of underwater cables is a formidable challenge, even if it’s backed by two renewable energy devotees with very deep pockets.
Australia’s best hope of cashing in on the global clean-energy boom stems not from the thought bubble of a hirsute software entrepreneur, but from the sweat and genius of its mining engineers. Kalgoorlie is at the centre of the so-called green mining boom. It is fast becoming the Dallas of clean energy by doing what it does best: digging up dirt, extracting minerals and sending them to market. The WA outback is to lithium-ion batteries what Texas is to oil. It is rich in deposits of lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements for which global demand is insatiable.
Finding the half tonne of minerals contained in a Tesla battery requires digging up 250 tonnes of dirt, which is good news for a town that makes its money that way. Global car manufacturers have been competing to secure deals with Australian lithium miners. Last July, for example, Ford Motor Co bought up a third of Liontown Resources’ production and threw in a $300m loan facility to expand Kathleen Valley mine, 350km north of Kalgoorlie.
The love for electric vehicles, however, like the love of sausages, is severely tested by seeing how the object of one’s affection is made. The green mining boom is as gritty and dirty as every other boom that has graced the WA goldfields region since the discovery of gold in 1893. Surrounding roads are lined with road trains hauling ore, giant earth movers, chemicals and explosives. Massive new creators are transforming the natural landscape, but this time the wilderness campaigners don’t seem particularly bothered.
The new green job opportunities we have been frequently promised are as dirty and sweaty as the old ones. Ardea Resources plans to employ 500 people over the 25-year life of its Kalgoorlie Nickel Project’s integrated nickel manganese cobalt battery material refinery hub, assisted by $119m in investment by the former federal Coalition government. They will be driving a fleet of 120-tonne excavators and 90-tonne trucks at 13 open-cut sites at Goongarrie Hill, 80km from Kalgoorlie. They will process ore in high-pressure acid-leached autoclaves. The resulting discharge will be filtered and the solids dry-stacked.
This energy-intensive, chemical-thirsty and land-hungry process adds to the substantial carbon debt that is attached to every electric vehicle. If the unrefined ingredients of a single EV battery were to be transported by train to Esperance, they would fill at least four wagons. Figures produced by car manufacturers show an electric vehicle must be driven for approximately 100,000km before its overall emissions are lower than an equivalent diesel or petrol vehicle.
These material realities of the imagined transition to a green economy are discounted by the renewable energy lobby. As US policy analyst Mark P. Mills bluntly points out, no energy system is actually “renewable” since all machines require the continual mining and processing of millions of tonnes of primary materials and the disposal of hardware that inevitably wears out.
Mills estimates that compared with hydrocarbons, the machines to produce renewable energy require a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy.
Mills calculates that by 2050 the quantity of worn-out solar panels will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste together with more than three million tonnes a year of un-recyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tonnes per year of batteries will become garbage.
The failure to offset the costs against the supposed environmental benefits of renewable energy is part of the dodgy accounting clean-energy advocates would like us to ignore. They turn a blind eye to the 8000 tonnes of steel required to generate a terawatt of electricity with solar panels. They look the other way while 8000 tonnes of concrete are delivered by a conga-line of trucks and poured into the ground to support wind turbines with the same capacity. Coal, gas and nuclear require something less than a tenth of those basic raw materials to generate the same amount of power.
The truth seldom acknowledged by advocates of renewable energy is that reducing dependence on hydrocarbons by shifting to wind, solar and batteries alone will dramatically increase our dependence on minerals. The assumed benefits of decarbonising the electricity grid must be offset against corresponding increases in mining and processing.
In 2005, the mining sector produced 9 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020 it was 20 per cent. While the sector has been making considerable strides in reducing emissions, there is no scalable technology available to achieve the massive gains a target of net zero by 2050 requires.
The task will be even harder if we want to bring more of the processing onshore, as we must if we are to avoid increasing our energy dependence on China, currently by far the world’s biggest processor of lithium and other critical minerals.
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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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Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Immigration is not the answer to our troubles
Immigration has been in the news lately as various submissions are released to the government-commissioned review, A Migration System for Australia’s Future. Unsurprisingly, most of them simply talk the book of the sponsoring body.
The submission of the Business Council of Australia, for example, calls for an even higher migrant intake (from 195,000 to 220,000) with future intakes set as a percentage of the population.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry wants streamlined pathways for temporary migrants to secure permanent residency.
The most depressing aspect of the submissions is the narrow perspective they take. In particular, there is a glaring failure to acknowledge that there are both costs and benefits associated with immigration and that not all the costs and benefits are economic or calculable.
It’s worth returning to first principles when thinking about an optimal immigration policy. The first is to recognise that a higher migrant intake will make the economy bigger but will not necessarily result in higher per capita income. In other words, being bigger is no guarantee of being wealthier. There is no convincing evidence that migration has boosted productivity.
The second important principle is that there are winners and losers when it comes to immigration. The biggest winners are the migrants themselves, a point demonstrated by the Productivity Commission. But owners of capital and workers with skills that are complementary to migrants are also beneficiaries. Workers whose skills are substitutes with migrant workers will often lose out.
Third, the supposed effect of immigration on the demographic profile of the population is very marginal, in part because migrants age themselves.
Those who advocate for higher migrant intakes because migration slows the ageing of the population also overlook the visa categories that permit the entry of older migrants such as the Parent and Investor Visa programs.
Fourth, it is only skilled migrants who generate estimated positive fiscal impacts, with family and humanitarian entrants associated with large budgetary drains. The idea that more migrants are needed so we can pay less tax is highly misleading because this depends critically on the migrants who are approved and what they do. The reality is that it is simply not possible to run a skilled migration program without a family stream; permanent migrants will always seek to be reunited with their family.
We also have to be careful about the definition of skill. Just because an applicant has a university qualification, even one obtained from an Australian institution, does not make that person skilled. Indeed, there is evidence, including from the work of demographer Bob Birrell, indicating that many independent skilled migrants do not work in skilled occupations.
Finally, many of the benefits and costs of migration are not captured by normal economic data. This is particularly the case with costs, which include congestion, crowded schools and hospitals and loss of cultural cohesion and urban amenity.
The notion that these costs can be completely offset by better infrastructure planning and implementation is naive and unrealistic. There is also the issue of the current spate of extreme cost overruns and the delayed completions of many infrastructure projects that would not have been required had the population been allowed to grow more slowly.
It’s worth outlining what has happened to immigration over the past several years. Needless to say, the pandemic significantly impacted both inflows and outflows of migrants for a period of time. Prior to that, net overseas migration (the difference between long-term inflows and outflows, both permanent and temporary) had been running at around 250,000 per year, making up some two-thirds of population growth. Most migrants headed to Melbourne, Sydney and the southeast corner of Queensland.
It is estimated that Australia’s population could be lower by close to one million because of the interruption of the pandemic. But here’s the thing: survey after survey has demonstrated that the majority of people do not support high migrant intakes and would be very happy with slower population growth. Neither the Coalition or Labor has shown any tendency to take into account public opinion on this matter.
Now the border restrictions have all been lifted, the surge in migration is gathering pace. There is a possibility that net overseas migration could reach 300,000 this year. The number of student visas being issued is at record levels, with students from India dominating the intake.
We know from research that a clear majority of students from India intend to stay in Australia. (Students from China are less likely to stay although the duration of their residence in Australia can often be close to a decade.)
In the meantime, international students form a significant part of the unskilled and semi-skilled workforce, particularly given the lifting of restrictions on their work rights. There is no doubt that the hospitality and retail sectors, in particular, welcome the return of this source of labour, easing the pressures many employers were under to lift wages.
More generally, the tight labour market, with unemployment at about 3.5 per cent, appears to support the case for a higher migrant intake, at least in the short term. Bear in mind that unemployment is a lagging indicator and it’s likely that the labour market will soften in the coming months as the impact of higher interest rates is felt. Note also the cripplingly tight rental housing market that underscores the poor timing of allowing in more migrants.
There is no doubt the current configuration of visa categories and the attached conditions is difficult to understand and carries high compliance costs, for applicants and employers. There have been unacceptable delays in the processing of visa applications, although this situation is improving.
The lists of skilled occupations that qualify should be ditched, in part because individual commissions and omissions make no sense but also because of the scope for gaming. The requirement for labour market testing – employers are required to see whether a position can be filled by a local – is also gamed. A cleaner approach is to insist on a minimum pay for temporary skilled migrants, in particular. Care needs to be taken, however, that employers don’t simply deduct inflated accommodation costs and other expenses to get around this requirement.
The bottom line is that the government should not lock in the current higher migrant intake, let alone increase it further. There is actually a strong case for returning to a lower figure – it was 160,000 under the Coalition – given the public’s preferences and the clear costs of immigration, including the current poor timing. Agreeing to the demands of employers and other beneficiaries (think universities and property developers, in particular) while ignoring the broader population who bear the external costs is not governing in the national interest.
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Lawyers warn of ‘unintended consequences’ in birth certificate reforms
A Queensland plan making it easier for people to change sex on their birth certificates, or list none at all, could cause problems for courts and government departments, lawyers warn.
Transgender rights reforms from the Palaszczuck Labor government – certain to pass on the anticipated votes of ALP and Greens MPs – will drop reassignment surgery requirements for adults and children wanting to change the sex recorded on their birth certificates.
Parents will also have the option not to list any gender on their newborn’s documentation.
The Queensland Law Society broadly supports the policy, but has called for an audit of all state legislation and policies referring to “sex” or “gender”, to clarify rules.
In her submission to the bill, law society president Kara Thompson said people with no gender on their birth certificates could pose identification problems for courts and government departments.
“We seek further clarification on how verification of identity processes are to be managed in the absence of a sex descriptor appearing on a person’s birth certificate, where current procedures refer to ‘gender’,” she wrote.
Ms Thomson said police would also need clear guidance on rules requiring body searches, in cases where a person being searched has changed their birth certificate but “retains the anatomical capacity of a male”.
“Without further consideration of the distinction between the two concepts (sex and gender), especially as applied across the current Queensland statute book, there may be unintended consequences that flow from the implementation of the bill in its current form,” she said.
Tasmania became the first state to make gender optional on birth certificates in 2019.
NSW will soon be the only jurisdiction requiring people to undergo reassignment surgery before they can change birth certificates, after Queensland and Western Australia announced changes last month.
NSW Labor has not committed to law changes if it wins the March state election and the Liberal government did not respond to request for comment.
Reassignment surgery is not covered by Medicare, and can cost about $80,000.
In Queensland, children older than 16 will be able to legally self-identify as another sex, without parental consent, as long as they have a supporting statement from an adult who has known them for at least a year.
Those aged 12 to 15 will require their parents’ permission to change their birth certificate, but can apply to the courts if their parents do not support an application.
Queensland will not require a medical statement from a doctor or psychologist, which will be required in Western Australia and is already adopted in South Australia, the ACT and Northern Territory.
Sally Goldner, spokeswoman for LGBTIQ lobby group Just Equal, said reforms would reduce invasion of privacy and stress.
“NSW must introduce similar reforms as a matter of priority not only for the sake of better national consistency, but also for the benefit of many trans and gender-diverse people across NSW who are currently denied access to identity documentation which reflects who they are,” Ms Goldner said.
“The reform makes life fairer and easier for trans and gender- diverse people and reduces invasion of privacy and stress due not having to constantly ‘tell your story’ to total strangers.”
Critics say self-identification would impede on the right to privacy in female-only spaces such as toilets, change rooms and prisons. The Australian Christian Lobby says the bill is: “out-of-step with community expectations for parental rights and the safety of women”.
“This situation does not pass the ‘pub test’ and is viewed by many in the community as controversial and dangerous,” the lobby’s Queensland political director, Rob Norman, wrote in a submission.
“Queenslanders have every right to question the granting of access for biological males to female-only spaces, this is neither transphobic nor irrational.”
Ms Goldner said trans women accessed female spaces and services every day across Australia and had done so for many years. “I don’t understand why this is suddenly controversial,” she said.
“It has been almost a decade since the first jurisdiction in Australia removed the requirement for trans and gender-diverse people to have surgery to access updated birth certificates, with numerous other protections prior, and the sky hasn’t fallen in.”
Queensland Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman criticised groups who “will try to cloak their transphobia in the guise of women’s safety – making claims about trans women accessing women’s spaces, including change rooms or even domestic violence shelters”. “I want to be clear: there is no evidence, domestically or internationally, to support these outrageous claims,” she said.
“I note the Australian Psychological Society has warned against casting undue suspicion on an individual’s motives for stating a particular sex.”
Reforms were launched in a number of countries – including The Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Ireland – after a 2015 Council of Europe report called for easier procedures for birth certificate and passport changes.
By mid-year New Zealanders will be able to make a statutory declaration to change their birth certificates.
The UK government scrapped its own plans to change gender recognition laws in 2020, but Scotland last month introduced a self-identification model.
Transgender people in Scotland may need to apply to be legally recognised in England and Wales after the UK’s equalities minister announced a review of the list of countries whose gender certificates are recognised.
About half of US states do not require people to have reassignment surgery before amending their birth certificate.
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The date of Australia Day would be protected by law, similar to Anzac Day or the design of the Australian flag, a Queensland MP says
The date of Australia Day would be protected by law, similar to Anzac Day or the design of the Australian flag, under a proposed private member’s Bill to be pushed this year.
First-term Queensland LNP MP Henry Pike has drafted the legislation, which would enshrine January 26 as the date of Australia Day and rule that it could only be changed by a national plebiscite.
Under the proposal, the plebiscite would also have to offer a choice for voters between January 26 and an alternative date.
Debate on Australia Day has heated up in recent years and Mr Pike said he wanted to prevent the date being changed because it was “fashionable”.
Advocates of changing the date say that celebration on January 26 is disrespectful to First Nations’ Australians, for whom the day represents disruption and dispossession of their culture, and call for a date all Australians can support.
The date of Anzac Day is protected in state legislation, the Anzac Day Act of 1995, and the Australian flag via the Flags Act of 1953.
Mr Pike said he was concerned the current or a future government could change the date of the Australia Day public holiday without public consultation because “it’s the fashionable thing to do”.
“Australia’s flag and Anzac Day are both protected in federal legislation, but Australia’s national day can be changed at the whim of the government of the day,” Mr Pike said.
“The current laws guarantee that our flag can’t be changed unless the people of Australia agree. We should have the same protection for our national day.
“It’s unhelpful having the same debate every 12 months.”
He said January 26 was the date “this continent was changed forever”. “We should look at what we’ve achieved since then and assess it for the good, the bad and the ugly,” Mr Pike said.
Anthony Albanese has repeatedly rejected calls to change Australia Day and said his government had no plans to change the date.
The Prime Minister has said the Voice to Parliament would be his big focus this year, with a referendum to be held later this year.
Mr Pike said it should be possible to debate both issues and intends to raise his private member’s Bill with the Coalition partyroom when parliament resumes next month.
He said he intended to introduce his proposed Bill to the House of Representatives later this year, but was realistic about its chance of success.
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Anything but Christianity! (Or mum and dad)
News that ‘Christmas and Easter will not be celebrated in some childcare centres under new inclusion guidelines’ is, quite extraordinary.
While the silly season is all but done, the decision by the Community Child Care Association is in full swing and would be laughable if it wasn’t so ridiculous.
It has been a slow train coming. But it has now arrived.
While it seeks to sideline Christmas, the same Association requests child care centres support other cultural or religious celebrations such as Ramadan, Diwali – and yes – Pride, which has become a religion of its own, it would seem.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and is a holy time of prayer and fasting. Diwali is a five-day festival of light celebrated by Indians and the faiths of Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism.
Pride – well – that’s celebrated every day of the week and ensconced into every aspect of modern society, including favourable employment laws and social inclusion policies.
The Executive Director of Community Child Care Association of Victoria, Julie Price, is quoted in the Herald Sun on December 21, 2022, as saying: ‘If you have families who don’t celebrate Christmas, then maybe focusing on other celebrations is more inclusive.’
How is it that Ramadan is inclusive while Christmas is not? Or Diwali? The Association appears to be inferring that it is okay to celebrate any religious festival except those relating to Christianity.
Easter and Christmas are celebrations of the Christian faith, the faith that has born this modern nation and swaddled it into a first-world country. The cancel culture proponents clearly see Western Civilisation and Christianity as obstacles to their revisionist agenda.
One can only assume then, that staff at these childcare centres will not be taking a ‘Christmas’ break or an ‘Easter’ long weekend. It stands to reason that they will also not accept the double and triple penalty pay arrangements for working these Christian-based holidays, or Christmas gifts from parents.
Similarly, the Australia Day holiday should be disregarded by staff. One wonders why anyone would want to come to this apparently disrespectful country.
The inclusivity gurus at Community Child Care Association go further.
Not satisfied with dismantling and displacing the centrepiece cultural and religious celebrations of our nation, they also want to disrupt the core family structure.
They want communications to parents to be addressed ‘to families’, ‘guardians’, or ‘adults’. It’s in with generic terms – out with mum, dad, mothers, and fathers. In the hustle to disenfranchise the family, the clock must surely be ticking for the terms ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ and ‘grandmothers’ and ‘grandfathers’
The Community Child Care Association wants Father’s and Mother’s Days to be Special Person’s days.
It is all in the name of protecting or embracing the rights and circumstances of those children who may have only one parent, queer parents, non-English speaking parents, or no parents at all.
But even one parent is either a mother or a father. Queer parents are still mums and dads, or mums and mums, or dads and dads. Even a dad one day and a mother the next if their fluidity desires are valid.
And as for parents having to declare a pronoun for their child – is there no end to this nonsense?
In truth, these contortions of titles, language, and gender have nothing to do with the children.
At age two, three, four, or five, children don’t (or should not have to) even think about these things: there are holes to be dug, buckets to fill, and kites to fly. This is the stuff of a carefree childhood and of robust beginnings to life.
Childhoods should not be squashed by the unintelligible babble of adults about non-gendered or non-Christian motivations.
Yet the inversion of reality is in full flight: the noisy few control the mob while the socially silent become the playthings of a political agenda.
The fight against the family structure ignores the role that evolution has forged through the millennia, placing the family unit as a key component of survival and success.
During the Victorian state election, Premier Andrews promised many things, including the construction of 50 government kindergartens. Will these also conform to the anti-Christian and contorted name agenda criteria of the cancel culture Woke brigade?
Such diktats are done in the name of inclusivity. But it is exclusivity that they champion. They divide, not unite. They point out difference instead of saying ‘we’re all in this together’.
Struggle is not a story for one community alone to be used for the purchase of social benefits and manipulation, even the indoctrination of others.
The bulk of Australians are fair. They are caring. They don’t look for division. They value individuals without reference to Woke titles.
The slow woke train has definitely pulled up at the station, all huffy and puffy and horns tooting.
My suggestion is you hop off, change platforms, and catch the next one back home – if we’re allowed to call it that.
Perhaps a communal dwelling site would be a better term!
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/anything-but-christianity-or-mum-and-dad/
************************************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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Monday, January 16, 2023
Push for more male teachers fails to increase numbers
False accusations against male teachers by female students have been badly handled in the past and few potential male teachers would be unaware of that. Being a male teacher is simply risky. Feminist demands to "believe the woman" are a part of that problem.
And it's a pity. My son had male mathematics teachers in his private High School and it inspired him to major in mathematics for his B.Sc.
Indemnifying male teachers against all the costs of false accusations might help
There has been no increase in the number of male teachers in public school classrooms, despite a push by the NSW Department of Education targeting them for recruitment into the profession more than four years ago.
Education experts said boys and girls benefit from more male teachers in schools because they were less likely to have stereotypical views about traditional gender roles, but recruiting men into a female-dominated field where teacher pay tops out after about 10 years is difficult.
The proportion of males employed in the public school system remained stagnant over the past four years, falling slightly from 23 per cent in 2018 to 22 per cent last year, according to the latest Department of Education data.
Numbers were steady despite the department’s diversity and inclusion strategy 2018-2022 which included an “obligation to address the gender imbalance in our teaching population, attracting and retaining more male teachers”.
The department’s latest move to draw more men into the profession was to use male teachers in social media advertisements and deploy them at careers fairs.
“High school careers advisers are also encouraged to promote work experience placements in government schools to male students,” a department spokesman said.
Data from the Universities Admissions Centre shows just 210 graduating year 12 schoolboys put primary school teaching as their first preference for university study this year.
That figure, which does not include students who applied directly to universities, is a 24 per cent decrease on the year before and is the lowest number recorded in the past seven years.
Schools across all sectors are grappling with chronic teacher shortages, with the federal government projecting a shortage of more than 4000 secondary school teachers by 2025. A national plan to address the shortage was released last month.
Independent researcher Dr Kevin McGrath, who has investigated the gender composition of the teaching workforce in Australia, said the pandemic and a workforce shortage had made it harder to attract and retain male teachers.
“Men benefit from a broad range of occupational choice in Australia which provides opportunities to avoid particular types of work and to seek out employment that provides more flexibility,” McGrath said.
Salaries for NSW teachers start at $73,737, and hit a maximum of $117,060 if they are accredited as a “highly accomplished” or “lead” teacher. Pay jumps to $126,528 if they take on more responsibilities and become an assistant principal.
“Male teachers face a greater opportunity cost for choosing a female-dominated profession, compounded by potential negative perceptions or ridicule for doing work performed predominantly by women,” McGrath said.
Research indicated that in schools with fewer male teachers, students tended to hold more stereotypical views of gender than in schools where male and female teachers were equally represented, he said.
University of Tasmania school of education lecturer Dr Vaughan Cruickshank said male teachers worked in a predominantly female environment and could struggle to find common interests with their female peers. He also said salary, low professional status, as well as fear and uncertainty about physical contact put men off becoming teachers.
A breakdown of the proportion of male teachers in primary and secondary schools for 2022 is not yet available, but last year men constituted 18 per cent of primary school teachers and 40 per cent of the teaching workforce in high school.
Private schools fare no better when it comes to attracting men, where male teachers made up 20 per cent of primary school teachers and 40 per cent of secondary school teachers.
“The percentage of male teachers in NSW independent schools has not changed significantly in recent years,” Association of Independent Schools of NSW chief executive Margery Evans said.
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"Humane" jail is a failure: Violent
The Alexander Maconochie Centre is one of Australia's newest major adult jails and was built to accommodate prisoners from the nation's capital who previously went to NSW jails.
It is located next to a highway about 10 minutes drive from Canberra airport with the dozen or so buildings double-fenced beside a highway in an otherwise windswept open-grassed area.
Named after a prominent 19th century prison reformer, the Centre can lay claim to being 'Australia's wokest prison', the sort of jail Scandinavian countries famously design to break cycles of incarceration rather than punish.
The new jail is the brainchild of former Labor ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, who was forced to defend the cost of the $130million facility which didn't accept its first prisoners until 2009 despite being opened six months earlier in 2008.
Mr Stanhope described the Centre as 'the most human rights-compliant, rehabilitation-focused prison in the world'.
The jail is the first in Australia purpose-built to meet human rights obligations and is also environmentally sustainable using recycled water, solar power and energy efficient insulation.
With such noble aims can come a hefty price tag, in early 2010 it was reported the cost of housing an inmate at the centre was $504 per day, which was twice the amount NSW was charging the ACT to take prisoners.
Sadly the days of rosy hope have largely given way to disappointment, especially for Mr Stanhope who has become one of the jail's harshest critics calling it 'an appalling failure' and 'an embarrassment', which he blames on successive governments.
In 2019 Mr Stanhope lamented that the Productivity Commission had found that the over the last two years the Centre had 'established a reputation as the most violent prison in Australia'.
The more recent Health Prisons Report into the Centre found little evidence of improvement.
'We heard several anecdotal reports of sexual coercion and violence in the AMC,' the report said. 'We have been told that sexual coercion and violence happens but is rarely reported.'
Perhaps most galling for a jail that has the express purpose of rehabilitation are the high rates of reoffending, causing some to label it a 'revolving door' prison with the same cohort of inmates repeatedly entering and leaving.
This is especially so for Indigenous prisoners, which the jail was set up to be culturally appropriate for, with 94 per cent of released Aboriginal detainees ending up back in the cells, according to a recent report.
Mr Powsey said the prison reflects what happens in the comparatively small community of Canberra.
'In the ACT, there are relatively low crimes rates but relatively higher recidivism rates. This means that a significant proportion of the offending occurs within a smaller cohort of people,' he said.
A major failing at the jail, according to the Healthy Prisons Report, was boredom with many inmates having largely unstructured days and sometimes not getting out of bed until lunchtime.
The report was also critical of a lack of meaningful employment activities within the prison.
Almost since its beginning, the prison has been plagued by negative stories including earlier this year when a newly admitted prisoner hanged himself in a supposedly safe cell.
Senior Director Accommodation Jim Taylor-Dayus, who has a 37-year career working in UK, New Zealand and Australian prisons, said incidents were to be expected in a jail environment.
'You've potentially got 400 people who don't want to be here and they need the officers to get things, and sometimes the officer can't do it straight away or they may not be entitled to it – so, of course that causes a frustration,' he said.
'As long as you are able to sit down and say there's a reason you can't have this, whatever it is, most people accept that reason - eventually.
Both CO Veal and Mr Taylor-Dayus worked during the riot in November where 27 detainees refused to go back to their cells, leading to standoff where fires were lit and considerable damage was caused. 'It was intense, we were here for 18 hours,' CO Veal said.
Eventually the situation was resolved through negotiation.
The prevalence of drugs and other contraband, such as mobile phones, has also been an issue highlighted by official reports.
Because of the jail's relative approachability, people have been filmed throwing banned substances over the fences and deliveries have been attempted by drones.
The centre staff admitted that the coming ban on smoking inside, which complies with ACT law, would be a particular challenge.
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Dawn Fraser: Dump school swim program, give money to parents
Olympic swimming legend Dawn Fraser has slammed the Queensland Government’s swimming education program, insisting the $3.7 million annual funding should instead be transformed into a subsidy to help parents pay for private lessons for their child.
The four-time Olympic gold medallist is heavily involved in her local school’s swimming program and said if some principals cannot be trusted to use the funding properly, it should go to parents to help them afford lessons through a provider of their choice.
The state government maintains swimming lessons are compulsory in all state primary schools through its Water Safety and Swimming Education program established in 2018, which recommends at least five lessons per child.
However, parents claim the rollout is confusing and inconsistent because it is being left up to individual schools and principals to implement.
Some students are reportedly only getting lessons in certain year levels, while other parents are being asked to pay extra for lessons, and it is becoming an increasingly tougher task for students in rural towns to travel to local pools to teach water safety.
Ms Fraser has seen the difference swimming lessons can make at her local Good Shepherd Lutheran College in Noosaville.
“There are a lot of principals who don’t believe in teaching children to swim,” she said. “I don’t think the state government understands the magnitude of the issue, we must teach children to swim from six months on.
“If principals aren’t going to use the money, then the government must have a good look into it, and give the money to the parents for them to use for their child learning to swim.”
In the past five years, the state government has opened 21 new schools, but none have their own pool. Statewide, only about 200 of the roughly 1200 public schools have their own pool.
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Gladstone Public Hospital’s dire situation has gone on too long
Every state government endures controversies in the health portfolio. Many are largely unavoidable – for instance, the pressure on emergency departments, ambulances and hospital capacity during the pandemic.
But what is happening with Gladstone Hospital is a complete failure to react appropriately to what is a genuine crisis.
Today, The Sunday Mail reveals that healthy, expectant mums from the Gladstone region are so fearful of travelling to Rockhampton to give birth they are demanding elective C-sections.
Because maternity services at the hospital are on bypass, many mothers are being transported to Rockhampton via ambulance to give birth.
This is a town of more than 60,000 people – a town that has pumped millions into the economy over the years as a result of the resources boom.
Yet, women cannot give birth there and instead face a more than one-hour trip to Rockhampton when they go into labour.
It is unacceptable. C-sections come with risks – it is major abdominal surgery, after all.
The situation in Gladstone is now being described as a “national disgrace”, and it is hard to argue against that.
“The time for talking has passed and urgent action is needed to repair what has become a medical emergency and must surely be a source of great embarrassment to the premier and health minister of this state,” Prof Pecoraro said.
We agree. Ms D’Ath must explain how she is going to fix this situation before this crisis gets any worse.
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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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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
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