Australian Politics
Thursday, February 08, 2024
Classroom chaos linked to Aussie teaching styles
Teachers should instruct rowdy students in good behaviour and use back-to-basic teaching methods, a senate inquiry into chaotic classrooms will recommend on Wednesday.
Schools need closer ties with health services to give students faster access to psychologists, social workers and behaviour specialists, the Senate Standing Committee on Education has concluded after a 15-month inquiry into the issue of increasing disruption in classrooms.
The committee will recommend that the Senate begin a follow-up inquiry, to investigate Australia’s declining academic standards, focusing on literacy and numeracy.
Its final report contains fresh data from student surveys in the latest global testing of 15-year-old students in maths and science, the 2021 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment).
A startling 83 per cent of students responded that “students do not listen to what the teacher said’’ in mathematics lessons.
Ten per cent said students failed to listen in “every lesson’’, one in four said classmates did not listen to the teacher “most lessons’’, and half said students failed to listen during “some lessons’’.
In contrast, just 1 per cent of students in Japan – one of the highest-performing countries – said students failed to listen in every lesson. Only one in 20 Japanese students said classmates ignored the teacher in most lessons, and one-third said students failed to listen in some lessons.
An analysis prepared for the senate committee found that the “disciplinary climate’’ in Australian schools was the fifth-lowest among 37 nations in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development).
The senate inquiry, chaired by Liberal Party Senator Matt O’Sullivan, will recommend the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (ACARA) devise a “behaviour curriculum’’ to teach students how to behave in class.
It calls on teachers to use evidence-based teaching methods, including “explicit instruction’’ with step-by-step explanations, and practice and testing to ensure all children mastered each lesson.
The committee has called for an end to open-plan classrooms, which can be noisy and distracting for teachers and students.
Teachers told the inquiry that out-of-control students had sexually assaulted and threatened to kill them, punched classmates, and dealt drugs in the playground.
The National Catholic Education Commission said principals were the victims of physical violence at 11 times the rate of average Australians. The Australian Psychological Society said disruptive behaviour could be linked to low levels of literacy.
Children and Media Australia said violent videos and games were a risk factor for aggression among children and teenager.
Vaping was singled out by the NSW Primary Principals’ Association.
The Australian Secondary Principals’ Association said many teachers were at “breaking point and the addition of disruptive youth adds to this load’’.
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Olympic supremo John Coates calls for $2.7bn Gabba rebuild to be axed
A plan to demolish and redevelop the Gabba as Brisbane’s main Olympics venue is being probed by an infrastructure review led by former Liberal National lord mayor Graham Quirk.
Mr Coates, vice-president of the International Olympic Committee and who has been involved in every summer games since 1976, met with Mr Quirk this week and recommended the Gabba rebuild be scrapped.
Costs to rebuild the Gabba – which was set to hold the athletics as well as the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2032 Games – have already blown out by 170 per cent on preliminary costings to $2.7bn.
Mr Coates has suggested the opening and closing ceremonies for the Games instead be held at Suncorp Stadium and the athletics moved to the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre, formerly known as QEII Stadium.
“We’ve put it to the review committee we should abandon the Gabba and we should look for another site for the athletics,” Mr Coates told The Courier-Mail.
“The Olympic movement … was something that did have community support and was going to leave a great legacy for community and sport … now suddenly we’re on the nose in Brisbane.”
Mr Coates acknowledged his recommendation to dump the Gabba rebuild meant the project was almost certainly dead.
“I’m sure it is, it just does not stack up,” he told The Courier Mail.
Earlier this week Premier Steven Miles who championed the redevelopment as Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Olympics infrastructure minister, said he had believed the Gabba was the best option with legacy benefits for Brisbane, but acknowledged he had failed to sell the plan to taxpayers.
“I don’t think I’d succeeded at convincing Queenslanders,” Mr Miles said.
“Queenslanders were saying to me everywhere I went that they thought there should be an alternative, they didn’t think that was a good use of money in the context of housing shortages, cost of living, all of the other challenges.
“I think in the face of changed circumstances and feedback from the community, it’s entirely appropriate for a leader to change their mind.”
Mr Miles said that as Olympics infrastructure minister he had asked his department to provide alternatives to the Gabba rebuild but “none were very good”.
“So it’s entirely possible this review comes back and says that we have to go with that original plan, and if that is the outcome, I hope that puts the division and bitterness and politics to one side and we can get on with building,” he said.
“But if there is an alternative, well, that’s great news too.”
Mr Quirk, Brisbane lord mayor from 2011-19 and central to the city’s original Olympics push, will deliver the findings of his review to the government on March 18.
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Labor’s House of Lords: ALP’s super-sized power grab
By PETA CREDLIN
Have you ever wondered why big business was so totally behind the failed voice campaign and, before that, in favour of same-sex marriage? Has it ever puzzled you that the green-left now consistently outspends the conservative side of politics in election campaigns, even though it’s the Coalition that was always thought to represent the “big end of town”?
There are a number of factors at work here: the sustained leftist indoctrination of the bright students (once just at uni but now in schools too) who eventually go on to dominate the commanding heights of our society and economy; plus the “long march of the left” more generally through our institutions.
But a key element in the radicalisation of big business and in the avalanche of money to support leftist causes has been the mobilisation of our savings into union-dominated superannuation funds that are staffed by Labor activists and largely run by former Labor politicians.
Arguably, thanks to the union-dominated super funds which now manage well over a trillion dollars of retirement savings for about 10 million Australian workers, there’s a giant green-left octopus with tentacles into every corner of the economy that’s reorienting big business towards social, rather than market, objectives.
Maybe socialising capitalism wasn’t the explicit objective when Paul Keating and then ACTU secretary Bill Kelty (and Garry Weaven) set up the compulsory super system, more than three decades back, but that’s been the outcome; especially as the savings taken out of workers’ pockets and given to the union-dominated funds have multiplied, with compulsory contributions climbing from an initial 3 per cent of wages to over 10 per cent now, and legislated for 12 per cent, with Labor wanting 15 per cent as its goal.
It was dressed up as helping people have a better retirement, but the main purpose was always to revive declining union influence (now less than 10 per cent of the private sector workforce) and, in the process, to turn big businesses into social enterprises.
Now, the move towards a green-leftist corporatist state is set to be turbocharged with the Albanese government’s recent announcement that former ACTU boss and Labor minister Greg Combet would succeed Peter Costello as chair of the Future Fund. Since leaving parliament in 2013, Combet has been chair of Industry Super Australia, an umbrella organisation owned by a number of large industry super funds, that in turn provided services back to them, such as investment advice, wealth management, government relations and campaigning.
As part of the closed shop operating in this sector, he’s also been deputy chair of the largest single union-dominated fund, AustralianSuper. More recently, he’s been the head of the Net Zero Economy Agency.
In that capacity, he has called for the mobilisation of workers’ savings towards “nation-building” projects such as welfare housing and green energy, that would not attract investment on a normal cost-return basis.
As Future Fund chair, he’ll now have the chance to redirect the $200-plus billion that’s been accumulated to help fund the pensions of public servants and military personnel, and that under Costello had generated returns of 9 per cent a year, into less prospective ventures that better accord with the left’s agenda.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the Labor Inc that Keating and Kelty set up and that successive Coalition governments have largely failed to rein in. The biggest of the union-dominated super entities, AustralianSuper, is chaired by Don Russell, a former Keating staffer.
Other large industry funds include HESTA, chaired by former Labor health minister Nicola Roxon; Cbus, chaired by former Labor Treasurer and current Labor national president Wayne Swan (before that, Steve Bracks); TWU Super, chaired by former Labor minister Nick Sherry; and Industry Super Holdings (the latest umbrella entity for the bodies providing services to many of the union-dominated funds), chaired by former Labor candidate and ACTU official Cath Bowtell.
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John Howard has described the governance of these super entities as “almost like a House of Lords for Labor politicians”. And these are the funds that are growing strongly because they’re mostly the default superannuation choices for workers who fail to nominate a fund when they join a business and because the alternative for workers who don’t want to self-manage their superannuation – the retail funds that were generally owned by banks – have been discredited by the banking royal commission which Labor pressured the Coalition into setting up.
To put the economic clout of these funds into perspective, with nearly $300bn under management, the wealth controlled by AustralianSuper is twice the market capitalisation of BHP, our biggest public company.
What’s more, these union-dominated funds are starting to throw their weight around: whether that’s insisting that the public companies, where they have a large shareholding, disinvest in fossil fuels as part of the “ESG” (environmental, social, governance) push; or by taking direct control of important national assets.
For instance, an industry super fund consortium has bid to own Sydney Airport; super funds have lobbied against the reappointment of public company directors that don’t share their goals; and AustralianSuper has reportedly blocked a Canadian takeover of Origin Energy, partly on environmental grounds.
Meanwhile, unions have demanded super funds review their investments in CSL after Australia’s third-largest company (by market capitalisation) supposedly had a strategy to scale back highly paid workers’ conditions.
Then there’s the issue of super funds channelling money into unions that can then be recycled into the Labor Party.
In 2022, while unions gave some $17m to the ALP, super funds gave some $9m to unions. And if you want to know why sporting organisations were so quick to line up behind the voice, part of the explanation is another one of the big union funds, Hostplus, that reportedly gave nearly $2m in sponsorship to the AFL plus further large sponsorships to other big sports bodies.
Then there’s the issue of the training bodies which super funds sometimes sponsor and that unions often run.
In one recent notorious case, the electrical trades union tried to include in an award a provision that, in order to access pay increases, workers had to undertake a training course. This course was free to union members but cost twice the union fee to non-members. And the only entity reportedly running this course was the union itself.
None of this is going to improve while the Albanese government is in office. The question, though, is whether this giant union-corporate conglomerate is now too powerful for any Coalition government to touch. A reason for the then-Morrison government delaying its signature “super for homes” policy till the last week of the 2022 campaign was fear of the union-super response.
These days, opposition Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor keeps stressing that super balances belong to individuals, not to the funds or to the government. But if it really is our money, and not a government piggy bank, why not make compulsory super contributions optional? Because it’s still tax-advantaged, many would keep paying in.
But especially during a cost of living crisis, why wouldn’t the Coalition consider letting people take the nearly 12 per cent of wages that their employers put into super on their behalf as a pay rise instead?
It’s not as if compulsory super has reduced pension dependency for retirees, which is down just 2 per cent over three decades.
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Business leaders slam IR reform move as an `overkill’
Business leaders have slammed potential changes to industrial relations laws including making it simpler to convert casual employees to permanent and enshrining the right for staff to “disconnect” if they feel work is creeping into their home life.
Harvey Norman Holdings executive chairman Gerry Harvey said he “can’t see the logic” in the IR changes
Taking aim at the push to make is easier for casual workers to become permanent, he said Australia was currently at or near full employment
“We don’t have an unemployment problem and businesses are looking for people but they can’t find them,” Mr Harvey said. “I don’t know why it’s an issue. I don’t get it.
“I think if you’re a business you should be able to employ permanent people and you should be able to employ casual people. But I don’t see how you can make a ruling that because you employed a casual person that after a certain period of time they have to become permanent. You may not have a position for them.”
Mr Harvey labelled the complexity of the labour laws “a joke”.
“There are too many labour laws and so many different categories. You need an army of people to go through it and try and make sense of it,” he said.
Looking at the disconnect issue Flight Centre chief executive Graham Turner described it as “overkill”.
“From our point of view I can’t see why people can’t disconnect if they want to anyway. All they have to do is switch your phone off or switch your laptop off,” he said.
“It’s overkill from what I see. I can’t see the rationale behind this.
“I suppose it depends on what your position is. If you’re a senior executive you have to accept calls and you certainly would not get a promotion to that sort of level if you didn’t.
“My gut feeling is that it’s a total over-reaction on something that’s not an issue.”
Mr Turner said most people who work casually do so because they want to.
“I can’t see the rationale of making casuals who want to be casual, permanent,” he said.
“Most employers who have a good casual would want to make the permanent if they could. They seem to want to solve problems that don’t exists.
Right-wing think tank the HR Nicholls Society described the proposed amendments as “absurd” which seek to add further confusion and anxiety by altering definitions of what is a casual employee.
“It will be medium and small employers and their employees that will most suffer. Squeezing out small business in the market, will only lead to less competition and accountability for larger businesses. It will also impact upon opportunities for employment whether casual or not.,” it said.
The Society said the federal government has taking on board the “right to disconnect” to secure the Greens support, with little to no consultation with business leaders.
“In going down this path there has been little consideration how these changes affect employers and damaging effects it will have on interstate business.
“The amendments are victim of political back dealings that does not put the Australian economy and productivity at the forefront.”
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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, February 07, 2024
Delenda est Australia
The two law academics writing below do slightly misuse the Latin. It is true that "Delenda est Cartago" literally means that "Carthage is destroyed" but it was used with imperative force -- meaning that Carthage MUST BE destroyed. One hopes that the writers below did not mean that Australia MUST BE destroyed. Though perhps they were summaizing the attitudes of our elites
Gabriël A Moens AM and Augusto Zimmermann
Cato the Elder’s rhetorical phrase comes to mind when reflecting on the present sorry state of Australia. The left’s propaganda against our country seems to proceed relentlessly according to their schedule. Every day more and more Australians are feeling embarrassed to celebrate their own history and achievements. We are becoming a nation with no practical sense of patriotism and pride in our history.
Australians have become a people with only a distorted memory of the past. Arguably, a people without a clear understanding of the past can be much more easily manipulated. The indoctrination of our children by the illiberal ‘elites’ serves this purpose of not only erasing our history, but also vilifying and degrading it.
In fact, the intention of the ruling classes is precisely to turn everyone into haters of their nation and haters of their neighbours, as well as into complacent and submissive slaves of the oppressive ruling classes.
In this context, the week leading up to Australia Day has become a distasteful concoction of constant whining, recriminations, and accusations. It results in the excoriation of those who want to proudly express their Australian nationality.
This year, we have again witnessed the protracted and unrelenting denunciation of Australia Day – a day which supposedly should bring Australians together to celebrate our democratic system of government, the ‘fair go’ attitude of Australia’s people, and the personal freedom enjoyed by its citizens. However, this idyllic view of Australia Day has been brutally disrupted by those who regard Australia’s national day as ‘Invasion Day’, a day of mourning to lament the arrival, on January 26, 1788, of Captain Arthur Phillip in Sydney Cove.
Considering the unabated racial hectoring it is not so surprising that big corporations have waded into the political debate by shadow-banning Australia Day as if it were a toxic product. In unashamedly promoting the politics of the Indigenous lobby, these corporations disregard the real function for which they were established and misuse the financial resources of their shareholders.
For example, supermarkets decided not to stock Australia Day products ahead of January 26, ostensibly for commercial reasons, but also because the celebration of our national day was deemed insensitive to the Aboriginal industry.
Likewise, just a few weeks ago, Australia’s High Commissioner in London cancelled the traditional Australia Day celebration because it was too ‘sensitive’. Surely, this cancellation is as imprudent as it is unhelpful because it effectively prevents people from celebrating Australia Day with pride and enthusiasm…
Last week, it was also rumoured, if not argued openly, that the next Governor-General should be Aboriginal. If the rumours are correct, then they would further provide evidence that ‘race’ – a characteristic over which people have no control – largely decides what opportunities are available to Australians.
These racial considerations represent a retrograde step that makes the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 – a federal law aimed at making ‘race’ irrelevant in the distribution of burdens and benefits – an embarrassing remnant of a saner past. The intrepid Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jacinta Price, commenting on this rumour, has already said that race should not be considered in the selection of the next Governor-General.
Of course, the nation’s ruling classes have a vested interest in fomenting a divisive racialist agenda that seriously undermines political equality. Their primary goal is not social amelioration but, as Senator Price puts it, to divide Australia along ethnic and cultural lines by entrenching racial separatism and legally enshrining ‘the idea that Aboriginal people are perpetual victims forever in the need of special measures’.
Consequently, as the protests on Australia Day indicated, Australia has gradually become a racist county, where a person’s opportunities no longer depend on merit, but on the colour of their skin. Talking about race all the time is itself a sign of cataleptic racism and indicates that Australia is inexorably becoming a racist country. The racialist bureaucracy needs to promote racial hatred and discord as a Machiavellian mechanism for gaining more power and control over society.
However, if you dare to criticise the ubiquitous Welcome to Country ceremonies, you are likely to be labelled a racist. There are professional people who refuse to take the top job in their organisations because they do not want to demean themselves by repeating these meaningless references to ‘past and present (and sometimes even emerging) leaders’ because, in addition to compromising free speech, it would entrench the policies and philosophy of victimisation in the Australian psyche, and make all Indigenous Australians into perpetual victims of discrimination.
In continuing the victimisation narrative, reconciliation becomes impossible because there will always be new reasons for maintaining, even nurturing, the victimisation story. The stranglehold that Aboriginal politics is exerting on Australian society has caused these Woke actions, so prominent in the week leading up to Australia Day.
An analogy is helpful here to elucidate this point. There was a time, not so long ago, when females, simply on the basis of their sex, were effectively denied an opportunity to serve in the Parliament. David Furse-Roberts’s book Menzies: The Forgotten Speeches has an entire chapter on the ‘Status and Role of Women’. The first section in the chapter, entitled ‘Women for Canberra’, is based on a broadcast delivered by Menzies on 20 January 1943. There, Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister said:
Of course, women are at least the equals of men. Of course, there is no reason why a qualified woman should not sit in Parliament, or on the bench, or in a professional chair, or preach from the pulpit, or, if you like, command an army in the field. No educated man today denies a place or a career to a woman because she is a woman.
But there is a converse proposition which I state with all respect but with proper firmness. No woman can demand a place or a career just because she is a woman. If it is outmoded and absurd to treat a woman’s sex as a political disqualification; it seems to me equally absurd to claim it as a qualification in itself…
Menzies’ argument could equally be applied to the current ‘race’ debate. Indeed, following his argument, people should not be preferred simply because they are Indigenous, or because of the colour of their skin.
It appears that the overwhelming majority of Australians support Menzies’ view. The lobby group, ADVANCE, recently released the results of an exclusive national polling that shows 69.5 per cent of Australians support laws that would stop politicians from changing the date of Australia Day. It noted that this is: ‘…a massive majority of Australians who support enshrining January 26 in law, and guaranteeing it can only be changed after a vote of the Australian people.’
Subject to the correctness of the poll’s results, Australians may well be interested in ensuring that Australia remains (or rather ‘becomes’) a colour-blind society. Such a result might be achieved if Australia were to repeal section 51(xxvi) of the Constitution, which confers legislative power on the Parliament to make laws for the ‘people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’.
In this context, the proposal of Liberal Senator, James Paterson, to amend the Constitution to remove the race power altogether is a sensible, even a most urgent task, to make this country colour-blind and unite all Australians. But the implementation of his proposal would require a referendum – not precisely the most exciting prospect right now.
Why not call the week in which Australia Day falls ‘Australia Woke Week’? During that week, Australia’s Wokerati ‘elites’ would then be able to celebrate and propagate their race-based policies. Provided they restrain themselves for the remainder of the year, the recognition of Woke Week would be a welcome development, which might free Australia from the racialist bureaucracy for the rest of the year!
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/02/delenda-est-australia
**********************************************************Australian Surf Brand’s Wipeout Over Transgender Surfer Shows Fed-Up Americans Are Winning
It’s been a week to forget for surf company Rip Curl, the latest brand to risk consumers’ wrath with a pro-transgender marketing campaign.
Its January post urging people to meet “waterwoman” Sasha Lowerson, a biological man in a bikini, lit a literal fire under fans, who took to the internet to burn everything from surf booties to boards. Days after deleting the reel, with international outrage at a peak, headquarters decided to do something that Bud Light still hasn’t: apologize.
In a revealing move, management issued a mea culpa late Wednesday night, just five days into the dust-up. “Our recent post has landed us in the divisive space around transgender participation in competitive sport,” a spokesman told Shop-Eat-Surf late Wednesday night. “We want to promote surfing for everyone in a respectful way, but recognize we upset a lot of people with our post and for that, we are sorry. To clarify, the surfer featured has not replaced anyone on the Rip Curl team and is not a sponsored athlete.”
If Americans want to know who’s winning the war with corporate bullies, look no further.
A reversal like this is majorly significant—not only because of how intense the backlash was, but how quickly executives responded. If anything, the wave of corporate pushback that was sparked by Bud Light has only intensified over time. In fact, it’s so powerful that even the media is starting to admit that the grassroots may actually be winning this fight. “Big corporates may finally be learning that ‘Go woke, go broke’ is real,” commentator Nicolle Flint pointed out.
“ … [T]he once iconic Australian surf brand is living proof that women are finally fighting back against companies using transgender women to promote products for women and girls,” she wrote. “What is most significant about the Rip Curl campaign featuring Sasha Lowerson that was removed from Instagram just five days after being posted, is that this is the first time a major brand has responded to female backlash. … Whether the company ‘woke up’ soon enough to the fact that the backlash from women was serious and potentially financially damaging remains to be seen.”
That’s a blow to the company’s relatively new CEO, who, pre-Bud Light, told The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia when she was hired in 2021 that her goal was to drift left. “You still want to be cool enough to recruit that next generation,” Brooke Farris said, “but I think by approaching it from a place of inclusivity, people will be attracted to that.”
Turns out, people were not attracted to that—and willing to sink her brand to prove it.
Meanwhile, Bethany Hamilton, the courageous face of Rip Curl from 1999 to 2023, is surely looking on with satisfaction. A year into her renewed contract with the company, the two sides abruptly parted ways last year, almost certainly because of Hamilton’s opposition to the new rules allowing biological men to compete in women’s surfing. The devoted Christian and shark-attack survivor, whose comeback story inspired the world, reiterated her stand at the height of the Rip Curl controversy, posting, “Male bodied athletes should not be competing in women’s sports. Period.”
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Workplace law changes allow union ‘thugs and criminals’ on to job sites
Labor has been accused of sneaking in a loophole to its controversial workplace laws that would allow “thugs and criminals” on to job sites under the guise of health and safety.
Under a last-minute change to the proposed laws made on the final sitting day of parliament last year, the government “disapplied” a rule that required union officials to have an “entry permit” to enter work sites to assist workplace health and safety representatives.
Entry permits, granted under the Fair Work Act, are normally required of union officials to ensure they meet various tests including that of being a “fit and proper person”.
However, these are often revoked by courts in the wake of bad behaviour.
In 2022, a former CFMMEU official was fined and had his permit revoked after saying words to the effect of “shut up” and “f--k off” to two managers at a WestConnex project site before blowing cigarette smoke in a third manager’s face.
That same year, another CFMMEU official had his entry permit stripped after blocking concrete trucks and abusing and intimidating workers at a Gold Coast building site.
Current laws allow health and safety representatives, who are workers on a site chosen by fellow union members, to request an “assistant” from the union provided they hold a permit.
Industry leaders worry that, without the requirement for an entry permit, “thugs” could be sent on to work sites to intimidate managers and staff.
Minerals Council of Australia CEO Tania Constable said: “Under these changes, there will be nothing stopping union officials with criminal records or history of abuse, harassment or intimidation, from being given access to a worksite, despite not holding a right of entry permit.
“This loophole, snuck into the government’s legislation under the cover of Christmas, will put both employers and workers in danger, given the history of union thuggery and intimidation in certain industries.”
Master Builders Association CEO Denita Wawn said: “These changes are simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing, opening the door even further for unions to exploit safety as grounds to circumvent the normal right of entry obligations.
“Exploiting safety to pursue other industrial purposes has been commonplace in the sector, and this is only going to make that worse.”
Opposition workplace relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said: “The fact this government has implemented a law that will potentially allow union thugs and convicted criminals into workplaces is an absolute disgrace.”
A spokesman for Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke said the change had been recommended by a review commissioned by the Coalition.
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Why I’m tempted to stop building in Sydney amid building woes
HARRY TRIGUBOFF
Councils and planning authorities must listen to developers in order to address the housing crisis, as prices will keep increasing unless they act to fix problems plaguing NSW.
I am the state’s largest apartment builder but if I have to waste years building in Sydney, and not in other places, I will not build here except to finish on my empty blocks of land.
The problem is that there is not enough action to back up the official sentiments on housing. I see that our authorities in NSW are promising that production of units will increase, but for this to happen blocks of land for many hundreds of units must be sold.
At the moment, developers don’t have enough money to buy sites, so I believe that governments can rezone whatever they like, but there won’t be action. When authorities rezone land, they must ensure that profit can be made. The basic problem is that they don’t know how to do it, nor do they care. They think they know the answer. That is why we have too many offices and not enough apartments.
Authorities must stop being arrogant and must understand the market. If developers come with problems, they must be helped – not told what the law says. Laws have to be changed very often because conditions change. When making rules and deciding on density, profits must be protected.
Our developers are going broke more than anyone else. They can’t all be dumb. So I believe authorities must consult with developers, otherwise, we will never catch up with demand.
And investors are still quiet. At present, the income for an investor if he buys a unit is 2.5 per cent net. And this is not exciting. We sell very few units to investors – they are only about 25 per cent of the market.
For units to be taken by investors, council costs have to be brought down. But the councils have no intention to do that either. So, there will not be much sold for rent. Besides, the banks are refusing to provide finance for builders.
So, nobody cares about all these added costs. Everyone wants units to be built, but few will be. Thus, rents will keep going up. The price of units will also go up because there is no supply.
What of the big solution?
We’ve all heard of build-to-rent, but we can’t see it. And we won’t until everyone concerned ensures that costs will be reduced. Unfortunately, both political parties are very happy with this situation. Their advisers give them the same advice. So, people are struggling and employment and spending are down.
This apathy has to stop. I am building more than 2000 a year and could build 4000. But councils fabricate problems for which I would gladly take them to court, but our present rules don’t allow me to do so.
And the planning department is not at all helpful. I have almost stopped buying in Sydney, and I am just using up my empty land.
Of course, we have some councils that are better, but many rules applied to them are awful.
Because I can’t get approvals, I now provide finance to people who are not accepted by the banks, even though I may not be the builder. The result now is that the banks don’t earn much, and neither can the government earn much from housing.
In the last quarter, I completed three blocks of serviced apartments, and I am active in Brisbane and Surfers Paradise. But we need more approvals.
It is most interesting to try and understand how much longer they will allow production to drop and for supply to fall further and further behind in NSW.
And prices are rising and rents are going up.
All the planners here (in Sydney) have to do is act normally and I will be back.
But I don’t like my chances.
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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, February 06, 2024
Cadbury boss defends supermarkets against price gouging allegations
What people overlook is that the cost of putting fruit and vegetables on shelves is influenced by many costs other than what the farmer is paid: Broadly, distribution costs, including transport costs. And the supermarket staff have to be paid
The local boss of one of the world’s largest supermarket suppliers, Cadbury owner Mondelez, has dismissed claims Woolworths and Coles are price gouging shoppers, arguing much of the negative commentary engulfing the chains was based on “emotion” with no evidence of an uncompetitive or dysfunctional supermarket sector in Australia.
Amid a growing political firestorm that has seen six separate inquiries launched to inspect the supermarket industry, including a Senate inquiry pushed by the Greens into pricing and market power, Mondelez Australia chief executive Darren O’Brien said competition was as intense as it has been for a decade, and shoppers were treated to a wealth of choice.
“I don’t see evidence of what I would consider (price) gouging. I don’t know how you measure gouging,” Mr O’Brien told The Weekend Australian.
“Comments around there not being competition, comments around things needing to be broken up, I think these are comments that are made without people putting forward evidence.
“What is the evidence of dysfunction? I’ve seen a lot of emotion. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence presented. I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that there is a dysfunction in the market.”
The comments from the Mondelez CEO are all the more powerful given he is also chair of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, the peak body for the nation’s $150bn food manufacturing sector.
Supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles have faced a political pile-on over the last few months as the cost-of-living crisis and the Albanese government’s unpopularity – driven by a sense the government was not focused enough on household financial stress – has seen the chains and perceptions of their misuse of market power put under the spotlight.
But Mr O’Brien, whose portfolio of brands includes Cadbury, Toblerone, Ritz crackers and Philadelphia cream cheese, warned against intervention, such as breaking up Woolworths and Coles, saying the competitive landscape was bolstered by their efficient operations.
He said the inquiries in train, ranging from a Senate probe into pricing, an inquiry called by the government to be run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and another inquiry commissioned by the ACTU, needed to be accompanied by balance and the facts.
But they would also probably come up with the same conclusions other inquiries had found, that the Australian supermarket sector was highly competitive.
“There seems to be a lot of inquiries going on,” Mr O’Brien said. “We will have to see what those findings are. From what I’ve read, some of these inquiries have been held in the past and the outcomes of those found similar to what I’ve said, that we have a well functioning and competitive retail environment in this country.
“Having inquiries per se is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do think the commentary around them needs to be balanced. And I certainly have not agreed with a number of things that I’ve read because I think they’re factually incorrect. Perhaps an inquiry will help to put some factual information on the table that people can look at with a balanced view.”
Mr O’Brien conceded that the supermarket industry could be viewed as concentrated, and that at times Mondelez has had “robust” interactions with the major chains, but competition between Woolworths, Coles, the independents and new entrants like Aldi and Costco ensured a highly competitive market for shoppers.
“We have enjoyed a constructive and at times quite robust relationship or interactions with our retail partners, but they are a critical part of our ability to get products that people want to enjoy in locations that they want to be able to get them from,” he said.
“There’s some 2500 or more supermarkets out there spread right across Australia. They are critical partners to us. And at times, we may have robust commercial negotiations, but overall our ability to work with them … is strong.
“Even though it is a concentrated retail market in Australia, it’s a very competitive one. And consumers have choice. And if they don’t like particular prices or promotions at one supermarket, they have significant choices to go to others, whether they be discounters or direct competitors of one or the other supermarkets or an independent. That is proven to be a dynamic environment for consumers. And it’s one that I think works quite well.”
Some of the criticisms over the supermarkets first emerged late last year, when farmgate prices for key products such as lamb and beef began to fall sharply but there was no proportionate fall in meat prices on the shelves.
Mr O’Brien said those criticising the supermarkets needed to be mindful of the complexities of supply deals, contracts and the costs involved in getting products from the farmgate to the shelves.
“If you have a look over the last 10 years or so, consumers have certainly seen the benefit of that intense competition between the various retailers,” he said. “And I certainly haven’t had a sense that competition has changed in any way in the last 10 years.”
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Why some Australians still need convincing the future lies in renewable energy
Last year, the Energy Minister asked the Energy Infrastructure Commissioner to investigate regional pockets of stubborn resistance and recommend ways of getting the doubters onside.
Andrew Dyer’s Community Engagement Review Report makes the bold assumption that Chris Bowen’s renewable energy plan can be put back on track, that his target of installing a 7MW wind turbine every 18 hours and 22,000 solar panels a day until 2030 is not as fanciful as it sounds. Opposition in the regions can be overcome by “ongoing excellence in community engagement and, more broadly, excellence in the execution of the energy transition”.
Engagement is a weasel word much loved by technocrats. It implies a two-way conversation, an exercise in exchanging information on the assumption that those in charge don’t possess the perfect knowledge needed to make perfect decisions.
In the minds of those who write these kinds of reports, however, engagement means no such thing. Engagement is the dissemination of a top-down plan, designed by people in the know.
Dyer says the government should develop a narrative “articulating why there is an urgent need for new renewable energy and transmission infrastructure”. He says opposition is often driven by “misinformation” and recommends the government establish one-stop information shops to help opponents get their facts straight.
He cites previous campaigns for efficient water use, cancer awareness and drink-driving as models of what could be achieved by appointing “an eminent, respected and independent spokesperson to engage the nation and be the ongoing champion of the energy transition”. Wisely, he steers clear of putting names to his proposal. The authority of most of those once considered national living treasures has been eroded by their endorsement of the voice referendum.
Dyer reflects on the role played by Sir John Monash in championing Victoria’s energy transition in the 1920s. This begs the question: Would Monash, the engineer who developed Victoria’s brown coal as a source of cheap and abundant energy, be prepared to champion wind and solar power today? Will wind and solar be powering the nation in a century’s time, the lifespan Monash anticipated for lignite?
The transition to renewable energy will reverse the progress made by Australia between the wars. Cheap energy attracted productive capital from Britain and the US. The increase in domestic manufacturing was driven by the perceived need for power and industrial self-sufficiency after the experience of WWI. Expensive and unreliable energy is driving companies offshore. It is barely 10 months since the Albanese government announced a $15bn scheme to attract manufacturing jobs and avoid a repeat of the shortages of essential goods experienced during the Covid-19 panic. The fund has yet to accept a single application, and Australia has fallen to 93rd in the Harvard Growth Lab’s rankings for economic complexity, sandwiched between Uganda and Pakistan.
Nowhere is the cost of the renewable energy transition more keenly felt than in the regions. They know first-hand the pressures on small and medium businesses from rising energy prices. They have discovered the dirty secrets the inner city prefers to ignore. They have experienced the rapacious demand for land required to generate a moderately respectable amount of power from wind and solar. They have seen and heard the scale of the civil engineering works required to build endless access roads and level platforms for turbines and cranes, often in remote and rugged terrain. They have been disturbed by the aviation warning lights on top of the turbines that compete with the natural beauty of a night sky away from the city lights.
Their roads have been churned by hundreds of truck movements transporting blades, steel and concrete. They know what it is like to be patronised by know-nothing community relations agents with newly minted degrees in strategic communication from UTS.
A community survey conducted for the commissioner’s review shows the extent of their unease. Nine out of 10 (92 per cent) were dissatisfied with the standard of community engagement by developers. Explanations in response to questions were considered unsatisfactory by 85 per cent. Only 11 per cent considered explanations relevant to their questions, and 85 per cent thought their explanations were not addressed promptly.
The conclusion the commissioner painfully avoids presenting to the Energy Minister is that any chance of gaining the social licence he desires has long since been lost. The haughtiness, equivocation and condescension of some developers have trashed the industry’s reputation. Governments that are supposed to control the excesses of the free market have instead acted as their facilitators. MPs, supposed to stand up for their constituents, have been nervous about taking up their concerns, fearing being labelled as climate deniers.
The idea an official information campaign will put these people straight is fanciful. The arrival of broadband means rural Australians have abundant information about the limits of renewable energy. They can follow the news from the US and Europe, where appetite and investment for wind and solar are diminishing and governments are reaching for other ways to reduce emissions, such as nuclear.
The internet has brought together communities blighted by renewable development from Tasmania to the edge of Cape York. In the past year, individuals overwhelmed by fighting their own lonely battle against cashed-up corporations have coalesced into a fledging national movement, Reckless Renewables; remarkably, without professional support or funding.
On Tuesday, the protest goes to Canberra with a rally at Parliament House. The renewable energy lobby has already fired warning shots. GetUp, which received $80,000 in donations last year from Mike Cannon-Brookes, is promising to pepper Canberra with posters. Renew Economy, the renewable sector’s version of Pravda, has tried to belittle the participants, mocking the support they have received from MPs Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson.
Bowen is unlikely to break his habit of entering parliament through the basement ministerial carpark and instead turn up at the front door. Put that down as a lost opportunity. His reception would have told him more about the country’s mood than any number of engagement reviews.
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Antisemites fall out
Anti-Israel activists have fallen out bitterly over claims there are too many white people advocating for Gaza in a peak lobby group and that the use of a former Israeli soldier to back the Palestinian cause is wrong.
Block the Dock Melbourne, which targets Israeli shipping interests, has savaged Free Palestine Melbourne, claiming the umbrella campaigning group has been overrun by white people who do not speak for the people directly affected by the Middle East conflict.
The groups are two of the highest profile pro-Palestinian groups in Australia, often campaigning together to highlight their opposition to Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel last October.
But the groups are at odds, with Block the Dock declaring publicly it was opposed to the lack of Palestinian people involved in FPM’s campaigning and against using a former Israeli soldier to promote their cause on behalf of those opposed to the Jewish state.
“What an embarrassment to the Palestinian community,’’ Block the Dock posted on social media. “We don’t need Palestinian killers in our community.
“90% of FPM is run by white people. White people do not speak for all Palestinians.’’
The weekend post by Block the Dock provoked a strong response across the anti-Israel lobbying sector, with some calling for it to be taken down and others stridently backing it.
The division came as Greens leader Adam Bandt declared at a Melbourne rally that the Albanese government should change course on its position on Israel, flagging his party would move a motion for such a change.
He said it was beyond doubt that the “far right-wing cabinet of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s is intent on slaughter and dispossession’’.
“And it is time for Labor to change course,’’ he said.
Block the Dock is a radical left-wing group that has been camped at the Melbourne port, an engine room of the national economy, to try to disrupt Israeli-owned boats.
Israel’s ZIM is a global shipping line that activists accuse of helping the pro-Israel military cause.
The group has had only scattered success, but has received favourable coverage in some foreign media backing Gazans.
The entry to the dock has been defaced with anti-Semitic stickers, one declaring a picture of a Jew saying: “If I don’t steal it someone else will.’’
It was printed by the anti-Israel group @freepalestineprinting, which also has played a key role in the campaign against Israel and Jewish interests in Australia.
The anti-Israel groups have relied heavily on social media to further their cause, with Sunday’s rally in Melbourne live-streamed.
The Block the Dock post provoked a mixed reaction, with one woman saying the campaigns should be run by Palestinians.
‘’I think it’s only a problem if whites are running the organisations, we can be involved as allies,’’ she wrote.
“Palestinians should be the main people running the cause, with other groups as allies – especially First Nations as they’ve suffered similar.’’
Another respondent defended FPM: “They do have Palestinians in their organisation. I know them. And like all good and decent organisations in Australia it is an inclusive and multicultural space for activist who support Palestine. It is not closed to anyone.’’
Melbourne’s pro-Palestinian rallies are heavily backing First Nations causes, with Aboriginal activist Robbie Thorpe a lead speaker at the Melbourne rally.
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New vehicle efficiency standard set to be introduced next year
Too bad if somebody would liketo spend their money on a large and powerful car. NO! say our authoritarian Leftists. You only have the choices that WE allow. You must want the RIGHT things
The federal government will introduce laws that will set fuel efficiency standards on new cars being sold in Australia.
Under new vehicle efficiency standards, car companies will be required to supply more fuel efficient vehicles to consumers by targets set on the average emissions per kilometre for new cars sold.
Australia has been dubbed a dumping ground for inefficient vehicles because it hasn't had fuel standards like China, the United States, New Zealand and the European Union.
The standard only applies to new passenger vehicles and light commercial vehicles.
The Albanese government said it would consult on its preferred model for a month, but was looking to introduce the legislation in the first half of 2024.
The new standard was expected to come into effect on January 1, 2025.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said consumers were currently spending more on petrol than they should and the standard would lead to savings.
"It means Australians are paying more at the bowser than they should compared to people in other countries because they’re using more petrol and diesel," he told a press conference in Melbourne today.
Mr Bowen said the standard was a "win-win" for consumers as it offered more choice of vehicles to buy. Modelling predicted that by 2028, drivers would save up to $1000 per vehicle on fuel.
"It's a win for cost of living and a win for consumers," he said.
Mr Bowen said the standard wouldn't dictate which cars Australians could buy and he expected car manufacturers to comply with the legislation, which would include fines for those unable to meet the standard.
Transport Minister Catherine King said she anticipated consumers would hear “all sorts of nonsense” about the standard from the federal opposition and "a range of stakeholders".
“We’re going to hear that utes are banned – that is not true. We’re going to hear that somehow second-hand vehicles (are) affected – that is not true. It is about new vehicles,” Ms King said.
“We’re going to hear about price (of a new vehicle) – none of the evidence, there is just no evidence to say that it will affect price at all of SUVs, or utes or any other vehicle."
Vehicle efficiency standard 'should start this year'
Independent Senator David Pocock welcomed the announcement, but said it needs to be more ambitious.
"I want to see these new standards implemented as soon as possible and call on the government to bring forward the slated commencement date of 1 January 2025 to 1 July 2024, with a six month test period during which penalties do not apply," he said in a statement.
“Anything less ambitious than what is being proposed will increase the cost of transport and do further damage to our climate."
The Electric Vehicle Council of Australia has welcomed the move and said it would stop the country being a dumping ground for inefficient cars.
"Australia has always been at the back of the queue when it comes to the best and cheapest electric vehicles, because car makers have been incentivised to offer them elsewhere first," the council said in a statement.
"That should end now with this policy, and Australian car buyers should notice the change very quickly."
Climate Council chief executive officer Amanda McKenzie said the move would assist Australians struggling with cost of living pressures.
"Many Australians are doing it tough right now, with petrol one of the expenses causing the most financial stress for households," Ms McKenzie said in statement.
"At the same time, pollution from inefficient petrol-guzzling cars is fuelling harmful climate change.
"By giving Australians better choice of cleaner, cheaper-to-run cars, a strong fuel efficiency standard will cut household costs and clean up our air."
Targets are 'ambitious and will be a challenge'
Last year 1,216,780 new vehicles were sold in Australia, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.
FCAI chief executive officer Tony Weber said it would take time to study the impact on consumers and the industry, but the targets were ambitious.
“On the surface, the targets seeking a 60 per cent improvement in emissions are very ambitious, and it will be a challenge to see if they are achievable taking into account the total cost of ownership," Mr Weber said.
“The preferred option suggests that Australia considers adopting the type of targets that are currently in place in the United States. The targets in that country are supported by significant financial incentives yet the discussion paper makes no reference to any additional incentives to support the uptake of low emission vehicles."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-04/new-vehicle-efficiency-standard-for-new-cars/103425022
************************************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, February 05, 2024
State government announces $160m Renters Relief Package to help battling tenants
This is a fantasy. Landlords already distrust bonds provided by the government rather than the tenant. So this "relief" will be no relief at all
The Miles government will provide bridging loans for rental bonds as part of a $160m package to help battling tenants amid the state’s housing crisis.
Bonds will also be able to be transferred between rental properties and the government will crack down on dodgy practices such as rent bidding under the initiative to be announced on Sunday.
The Sunday Mail has obtained exclusive details of the “Renters Relief Package” which Mr Miles said would help ease the burden on Queensland’s 1.8 million renters.
Bonds for rentals in Queensland are typically four weeks and often amount to thousands of dollars. The Department of Housing already provides bond loans and rental grants to struggling renters.
Under the relief package, the government will establish a portable bond scheme allowing tenants to transfer bonds when relocating from one rental property to another.
“While this scheme is being established, a Bridging Bond Loan product will be introduced to assist households to afford the upfront cost of a new bond, pending release of their old bond,” a government spokesperson said.
“A new rental sector Code of Conduct will be explored with all parties to crack down on dodgy and unprofessional practices and ensure better protections for renters.
“Rent bidding (where prospective tenants are encouraged to outbid each other for properties) will be banned and penalties will be enforced against agents who engage or encourage these practices.”
The package will also involve additional funding for the government’s more than 20 private rental products and services, with eligibility criteria for renters to be widened.
The government will also double the number of specialist customer service staff in the state’s 21 Housing Service Centres by hiring an additional 42 RentConnect officers.
“These vital frontline workers will help connect renters with the support and services they need to get and keep a rental home,” the spokesperson said.
Mr Miles said the scheme – part of the government’s much-vaunted Homes for Queenslanders initiative to tackle the housing crisis – would help the more than one in three Queenslanders who rented their homes.
“Our plan makes sure Queensland renters get a fair go and have the supports they need to ease the cost of keeping a roof over their head,” he said.
“Through this package, we hope to ease the cost of getting into a home and help renters to save the money they need for a house deposit.
“And, we are putting tough new laws in place to stop rent bidding and crackdown on dodgy practices.
“Queenslanders can trust that my government will be behind them at every step of their housing journey.”
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Australian Employer Ordered to Pay Compensation for Vaccine Injured in ‘Significant Precedent’
An Australian court has ordered an employer to pay weekly compensation and medical expenses to an employee after ruling that a vaccine injury that occurred from a workplace directive is compensable under the law.
Daniel Shepherd, 44, worked as a child and youth support worker with South Australia’s Department of Child Protection when he developed pericarditis after receiving his third Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in February 2022.
Pericarditis is inflammation of the pericardium, a thin sac that surrounds the heart. The condition is reported to be more common in males aged 18 to 49, with an estimated 27 cases per 100,000 doses.
Mr. Shepherd was told by his employer that his employment would be terminated if he did not receive the third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The directions for the mandate were made under Section 25 of South Australia’s Emergency Management Act in January 2022, which required support and healthcare workers to receive a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to continue working.
Mr. Shepherd received two COVID-19 vaccinations on Aug. 19, 2021, and Sept. 9, 2021, respectively, according to documents submitted to the South Australian Employment Tribunal.
On the first dose, Mr. Shepherd experienced aching joints, cold, and flu symptoms, and minor chest pain for one to two weeks. He experienced similar symptoms on his second dose.
Mr. Shepherd then received his third booster dose on Feb. 24, 2022, after receiving a message from his employer saying that employees needed to have a third dose of vaccine within four months of having a second vaccine.
The following day, Mr. Shepherd experienced severe chest pain, which worsened over the next two weeks.
On March 11, 2022, the chest pain was so unbearable that he felt “like someone was kneeling on his chest.” Having thought he was experiencing a heart attack, Mr. Shepherd was taken by ambulance to the Ashford Hospital, where cardiologists diagnosed him with pericarditis.
The 44-year-old husband and father of a 5-year-old boy noted some improvement four to five months after the chest pain; however, further episodes of severe chest pain followed and symptoms returned.
Mr. Shepherd has not worked since March 2022, except for two months when he worked part-time in an administrative role.
Vaccine-Injured Files Claim Against the State
Mr. Shepherd filed a claim for compensation against his employer, the State of South Australia, which was initially rejected.
The state had initially contested the connection between the vaccine and the injury but later acknowledged that the third dose caused Mr. Shepherd’s pericarditis and subsequent incapacity to work.
Despite that, the state argued that the injury didn’t arise from his employment under the Return to Work Act, and that the injury was linked to the Emergency Management Act.
The state argued that if criteria under the Return to Work Act are met, they are exempt from liability in relation to the broader management of the pandemic under the Emergency Management Act.
But Tribunal deputy president Judge Mark Calligeros rejected those arguments.
“The injury was a direct consequence of an Emergency Management Act vaccination direction and of Mr. Shepherd’s employment,” Judge Calligeros said.
“The connection between employment and the injury is a strong one, given I have found that Mr. Shepherd would not have had a third dose of the vaccine if he had not been required to in order to continue working.
“The state required Mr. Shepherd to be vaccinated to continue working in a healthcare setting because it sought to protect and reduce the risk of infection to the public and general and those members of the public receiving healthcare services in particular.
“It would be ironic and unjust if Mr. Shepherd was denied financial and medical support by complying with the state’s desire to preserve public health.
“The rejection of Mr. Shepherd’s claim should be set aside, and it should be ordered instead that he receive weekly payments of income support and payment of medical expenses.”
Ongoing Pain
Currently, Mr. Shepherd tires easily, and becomes tired after walking his son to school, some 400 metres (437 yards) from his home. Prior to the injury, he was able to hike up and down Mount Lofty, walk, and do Chinese boxing, which he is now unable to do.
In an interview with 9News, Mr. Shepherd said he now has the heart of a 90-year-old. “Even today with just mild exertion [I get] chest pains and then it’s followed by fatigue, like severe fatigue,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to have to say, ‘Sorry buddy, daddy’s tired’.”
In a social media post, Senator Gerard Rennick said the ruling is a “significant precedent.”
“[E]mployers are now going to think twice about forcing people to get a vaccine if they have to fork out for potentially significant medical costs if the employee then incurs a vaccine injury,” Mr. Rennick said.
“This is only one case, and I suspect it will be appealed.
“I hope the decision is upheld because it will then open up the option of employers suing governments who mandate vaccines or pharmaceutical companies for unsafe or ineffective vaccines.”
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The real Stolen Generation: Give us back our kids
The people who wail about Australian government agents maliciously stealing kids from their parents as part of a program of ‘cultural genocide’ are half right.
They are just wrong about which kids were actually stolen, and by whom.
Let’s start with the so-called ‘Stolen Generations’, which were the subject of a comprehensive report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, published in 1997.
The report, deliberately or not, misinterpreted a historically rare dilemma: what to do with kids trapped between the hunter-gatherer culture of their often drunk parents and the liberal democracy into which they’d been born as citizens. It claimed ‘many thousands’ were forcibly removed from their parents and placed in institutions or, if they were lucky, a loving foster home.
In truth, few were forcibly removed, and the number of kids totalled, according to historian Keith Windschuttle, about 8,250 – all of them in desperate in need of rescuing.
Most people with part-Aboriginal ancestry are now happily part of modern Australia. It is those who, for whatever reason, never escaped their remote ‘communities’ who continue to suffer misery and deprivation.
Nevertheless, leftists have been able to twist the Stolen Generations report into proof of the genocidal intent of ‘colonialism’. Politicians across the nation have ever since been cowed into avoiding policies that could in any way be construed as a repeat of last century’s ideas.
Which is ironic because, despite widespread fervent opposition to the idea of stealing kids from their parents, the practice has only since increased on an industrial scale. Only now the victims are mostly white, and they number in their millions.
Ask any parent or grandparent aged over, say, 50 and you will hear the same story –they have all lost at least one child to the state. I’m only mildly exaggerating here; almost every parent I know in this cohort has been affected by this.
The story never varies: a beloved child of devoted parents diverted from a happy, conventional life towards a future defined by victimhood, intersectionality, gender fluidity, nihilism, contempt for tradition, state dependency and (spoiler alert) depression.
The story is invariably delivered with the same mix of profound sadness and bewilderment that a child could turn his or her back on loving parents and a bright future.
But, as anybody who has passed even a cursory glance over our education system, this shouldn’t be bewildering at all. While we parents were at work earning money to pay for the state-designed education of our kids, that education system was busily stealing our kids away from us.
For most of us older parents, this happened when the child was sent off to university.
What should have been a rite of passage into a world of intellectual wonder and opportunity turned out to be an indoctrination into useless knowledge about environmental catastrophism and colonial guilt.
But now it’s worse. Not only are secondary and primary teachers stealing kids (by encouraging kids to change gender without telling their parents, for example), pre-school teachers are also getting in on the act.
‘Meaningful engagement with philosophies and pedagogies for social justice… opens up space to explore issues of profound importance, such as gender equity, LGBTQI+ rights, trauma and its impacts, and the climate crisis,’ says a report about education of 0 to 5-year-olds by the New South Wales government from last year.
‘While these are key examples, there are many other issues and ideas to explore, and a multitude of perspectives that children can bring to these important conversations as we continue working to honour children’s rights and social justice in early childhood education.’
And you thought pre-school was about playing in the sandpit followed by an afternoon nap.
Every time you hear a politician boast about increasing subsidies for childcare, remember this: they aren’t doing it to ‘help working families’, they are doing it to enable their apparatchiks in the education industry to convert children into brain-dead, pliable cogs to be fed into the government’s increasingly ubiquitous ideology-machine.
There is now no part of the entire education system where it is safe to send children. How the parents of toddlers today will cope is beyond me.
My generation of parents (late boomer/Gen X) are partly to blame.
I remember hearing the term ‘Participation Award’ for the first time, twenty years ago. My kids were playing Auskick at the time, where end-of-season participation awards were obligatory for even the least physically gifted child.
Some newspaper commentators said this was wrong because it shielded kids from a harsh reality, that not everyone gets a trophy in life, and that merely turning up and performing badly is not a cause for celebration.
Perhaps, I thought. But can you really dismiss the joy these kids felt from being part of something?
I now realise I was wrong. Those ridiculous participation awards encouraged kids to celebrate failure in a field to which they were never suited. I imagine that if some of them had been harshly but fairly discouraged from playing football, they might instead be playing violin in a symphony orchestra by now.
My generation was also mostly preoccupied with raising kids with love, and not much else.
In hindsight, a bit of discipline, not to mention religious spirituality, might not have gone astray. It was a bit presumptuous of us to think we could dispense with these ancient parental traits without consequences.
Our shortcomings as parents have made our kids sitting ducks for the faceless generals who are now recruiting them as woke foot soldiers in the culture wars.
This has happened before. Mao taught his young Red Guards to dob in their parents if they showed signs of being counter-revolutionary. Some did, sending their parents to the firing squad.
In his history of the Third Reich, Michael Burleigh says the Hitler Youth of the 1930s ‘became strangers’ to their parents, ‘perpetually barking and shouting like pint-sized Prussian sergeant-majors’.
In both these cases, things did not end well.
Australian parents who feel victims of a similarly malign and overwhelming force are loath to imagine things panning out quite so badly. They just want their kids back.
Perhaps the Human Rights Commission could hold a similar inquiry to the one it held in 1997. After all, this Stolen Generation is infinitely bigger, and the people doing the stealing are far more sinister. Worse, this time cultural genocide is a distinct possibility. I’m not holding my breath for it, though.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/02/the-real-stolen-generation/
****************************************************Go woke, go broke
The furore over certain organisations trying to ignore Australia Day is just part of a major trend in developed countries where time and again very smart, driven executives of major companies have fallen for the trap of thinking that the vast bulk of consumers of their company’s products share the concerns of tiny but extremely noisy groups with woke agendas.
Perhaps the least costly of these many errors is that of senior executives at bodies as diverse as Woolworths, Cricket Australia and the Australian Open trying to avoid mentioning Australia Day or acknowledge the national holiday celebrations, only to be forcefully reminded that the vast bulk of consumers and sports-watchers are quite happy with the day as it is. They do not want it ignored or re-labelled ‘invasion day’ or ‘oppression day’ as activists have demanded.
After receiving three thousand emails and having opposition leader Peter Dutton call for a boycott against his supermarket chain, Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci admitted he had misread the political climate over his decision to drop Australia Day merchandise. He also insisted that his decision was due only to last year’s poor sales of such merchandise and that he would celebrate the day himself.
The Australia Day furore, however, is just a bad day at the barbecue compared to the errors costing billions committed by executives of major companies overseas, including those in charge of the iconic US magazine Sports Illustrated. Like all magazines, Sports Illustrated has been struggling to find its place in the digital age, with online sites eating into its core readership, but attempts to reverse this by applying woke obsessions made things far worse.
Sports Illustrated featured articles on subjects such as the lack of ethnic diversity in major sports – an issue in which the vast bulk of its readers had no interest – and even attempted to block advertisers who did not demonstrate a commitment to female equality. But most ludicrous of all was a woke revamp of the magazine’s annual swimsuit issue, a major seller with the publication’s overwhelmingly hetero, male readership.
Instead of using the mainstays of previous years such as a busty Kate Upton, svelte Canadian model Kate Bock or the full-figured girl-next-door-type Myla Dalbesio with a strategically cut t-shirt, the magazine featured transgender men in bikinis and fat women. To the surprise of no one but hard core activists this did not work and the company producing the magazine has all but closed the title, laying off the bulk of the staff. As the magazine rights are owned by another company, Sport Illustrated may yet reappear in another form but at the time of writing nothing has been announced.
The layoffs at Sports Illustrated are, in turn, part of a string of mass sackings at other iconic publications. In January the Los Angeles Times newsrooms announced that it would layoff at least 115 people or about one-quarter of its journalist staff less than a year after a round of major redundancies. Billionaire owner Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong declared that the paper could not continue to lose $US30-40 million ($A46-61 million) a year without increasing revenue and readership. The New York Times and the Washington Post have also announced major lay-offs.
All sorts of reasons can be found for the shake-out at these major newspapers, with the Covid pandemic and the long-running actors strike undoubtedly affecting the LA Times. But online media commentators, openly gloating over the problems of their print competitors, also pointed to the apparent obsession the traditional media has with subjects such as gender and identity politics and climate, as well as its marked cheer-leading for the left. The journalists on those publications, commentators say, have completely lost touch with the concerns of the bulk of their readers.
Even the Disney Corporation usually closely attuned to what its consumers want has been fooled by woke concerns into making what can only be described as strange decisions, notably over the Star Wars franchise which the corporation acquired along with Lucas Films more than a decade ago. Films in this franchise regularly earn more than $US1 billion in ticket sales. But after producing a series of other films that flopped at the box office, Disney decided to revamp the corny space opera and adventure brand by introducing woke themes such as female empowerment.
However, the corporation’s decision to hire a Canadian-Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy to direct the next Star Wars film, a political activist known for her work in films that highlight gender inequality, resulted in an enormous backlash from fans.
The fans were, in part, reacting to a comment made by Obaid-Chinoy many years ago that she ‘liked to make men feel uncomfortable’ that resurfaced around the beginning of the year. However, online comments indicate those fans see Obaid-Chinoy’s appointment as further evidence of the general decline in the brand since Disney took it over, and that they anticipate that the new film scheduled for release in 2025 will be a ‘woke disaster’. They also point out that Princess Leia was taking on bad guys and fending off Hans Solo back in the 1970s, so why does the brand have to be made more female now?
Another woke disaster was an attempt by fashion brand Victoria’s Secret to atone for past sins, including an unfortunate connection with serial abuser Geoffrey Epstein, by dumping its usual catwalk show of supermodels parading in the brand’s signature Angel’s Wings, including South African Candice Swanepoel and Australia’s own Miranda Kerr, for models who were plus- sized, transgender and disabled.
The result was a £1.1 billion (A$2.13 billion) fall in sales between 2020 and 2023, with the fashion brand announcing at the end of 2023 that it would, as various commentators noted, ‘bring sexy back’.
Fashion is, well, subject to changing fashions, but even hard-headed car industry executives have swallowed woke/climate nonsense, including activist assurances that electric cars will dominate the car market. As noted in this publication (‘EV Speed Bump’, 2 December) car makers such as General Motors and Ford are discovering for themselves after spending billions what non-activist commentators have been telling them all along, that the broad middle class of consumers owning just one cheap car that they need to get to work or take the kids to school have little interest in expensive electric vehicles.
Every week there’s a fresh disaster. This week, Aussie surf brand Rip Curl was forced into damage control after using a transgender surfer to replace a woman. But the real question is why smart, experienced executives let themselves be fooled into spending billions to please perhaps one per cent of the public, who might not even buy their company’s products, while ignoring or alienating almost all their customer base.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/02/model-business
************************************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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Sunday, February 04, 2024
Political activists exploit Indigenous Australians for their own ends
JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE
There may have been some people surprised to hear a Federal Court judge describe a “cultural mapping” exercise and other key components of the Environmental Defenders Office case against the Santos Barossa gas project as “so lacking in integrity that no weight can be placed on them” and tainted by “confection” and “construction” of evidence. But I wasn’t one of them. Using Indigenous Australians and our history to push a particular agenda is nothing new; indeed, the whole country witnessed the practice on its biggest scale yet during the 2023 voice referendum.
The euphemistically named Environmental Defenders Office, which has received more than $8m from the Albanese government, knew exactly what it was doing when it was, in the words of Federal Court judge Natalie Charlesworth, “distorting and misrepresenting” the words of traditional owners. The “subtle coaching” of Indigenous Australians, and the attempts to “encourage and hint” to come to particular conclusions, are common examples of activists trying to manipulate and use Indigenous Australians to pursue their own agendas, regardless of the best interests of those they are using.
This is all too common in Indigenous Australia: activists, academics and bureaucrats, with good education, opportunity and financial security, pursuing their own agendas, with complete disregard for and indifference to the genuine challenges being faced by Indigenous Australians in remote and rural Australia. Organisations such as the EDO, and the individuals who run them, are only too happy to use the plight of some of our most marginalised Australians to further their own ideological or political agenda.
It’s difficult to say what the most damaging part of this sort of behaviour is: the legal damage, the economic deprivation or the division and hurt it causes among all Australians. In the case of the EDO against Santos, distortion and misrepresentation were used, as Tasmanian senator Jonno Duniam put it, as a form of “environmental lawfare’’ that frustrates the courts, brings important projects to a standstill, and puts vital industries – and the thousands of Aussie jobs they create – at real risk. As even a former Labor MP, Joel Fitzgibbon, said following the Santos decision: “Hopefully the broader community is beginning to see activist lawfare for what it is, ideological and a threat to our living standard.”
The absurdity of the Albanese government funding an organisation hellbent on undermining government processes beggars belief and points to a government that is both out of touch and out of its depth. The claims that these activists are working for Indigenous communities while pushing their radical environmental agenda is likewise absurd. We know the quickest and most effective way to permanently improve the lives of our most marginalised is to encourage and facilitate economic advancement. However, as West Australian Labor Premier Roger Cook said: “We now see environmental groups undertaking that same strategy that we all condemned in the early 2000s, where they pull people away from the group and use that to undermine their own self-determination in relation to projects.”
The Northern Territory government will review its funding of the Environmental Defenders Office over its conduct… during a Federal Court challenge to the Barossa gas project. Santos won the case, and work has now resumed on laying the pipeline from the Barossa field to Darwin, with the first gas More
Indeed, far from wanting to help, activists attacking mining and energy companies – attempting to stymie new development and trying to revisit and change past decisions – are actually hurting investment and depriving Indigenous Australians of those economic opportunities. We now find ourselves in the incredible situation where the federal government is actually funding organisations pursuing the deprivation of Indigenous economic participation, while simultaneously spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to implement ill-conceived, silver-bullet policy solutions to Indigenous disadvantage.
Is it any wonder Indigenous disadvantage is so entrenched, when the rich and powerful see something like the Barossa gas project as a greater environmental threat than an opportunity for Indigenous economic advancement. I believe we must also consider the damage these acts do to the goodwill of so many Australians towards Indigenous issues. A recurring theme of the 2023 referendum was the amount of taxpayer money being spent, both directly and indirectly, on Indigenous issues, and its efficacy.
At a time when Australians are struggling with a cost-of-living crisis, finding out millions of dollars in taxpayer money is going to an organisation filled with radical environmentalists, which seeks to obstruct progress and opportunity, and exploits Indigenous Australians to do it, only damages that goodwill and stokes more division.
The Coalition has repeatedly called for an audit into spending to understand what’s working, what isn’t, and where the waste is – calls routinely rejected by the Albanese government. That Anthony Albanese and Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek would continue to allow taxpayer money to be wasted like this is simply astonishing. It begs the question: is this all just a thinly veiled attempt to, as Queensland senator Susan McDonald puts it, “secure votes in inner-city seats under threat from the Greens”? This was on display on Wednesday when Solomon MP Luke Gosling fell into line, saying he “still sees a role for the EDO”.
The truth is that what was uncovered by the Federal Court is not uncommon. Instances such as Santos’ Barossa gas project and the “white hands on black art” exercise are just the tip of the iceberg. The EDO needs to be defunded not just because it is a proven bad actor, but also to send a clear message that the age of exploiting Indigenous Australians to achieve political goals is at an end. This is what Peter Dutton and the LNP are ready to do, and what Albanese and the Labor government are incapable of doing.
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Steal from the rich. Steal from the poor. Steal from them all!
What does our Prime Minister really think about money? Does he see himself as the ‘Robin Hood’ of Australian democracy?
Absent any systematic treatise, it seems we have to guess how his thinking works based on his words and actions. Over the last week, his words have changed. The Prime Minister’s reasoning for this change, as reported by him, is because he was driven by a sense of ‘fairness’ to deliver more tax relief to more people.
But is our Prime Minister’s ‘fairness’ actually ‘just’? That depends on our view on the role of taxation. For example, if taxation is primarily about providing minimum care for those who cannot provide for themselves, that is very different to if we view taxation as a means of ensuring everyone receives the same benefits regardless of individual context.
It seems that our Prime Minister has confirmed that he is in the latter camp. He has demonstrated a tone deafness to the nuances of taxation changes and changed his mind, dramatically, under the cover of his plaintiff cry, ‘But this is fairer!’
The irony is that his drastic turn-around is purported to fix a problem of his own government’s making. The ‘cost of living crisis’ is driven, amongst other things, by the rising price of energy. The unnecessary and ineffective rush to so-called renewables, and the banning of alternatives, is central to the difficulties being experienced by families and businesses.
Does it make sense to give more money to those with less, regardless of the cause? Drs Laffer and Domitrovic have suggested that this is not necessarily helpful. Indeed, they have identified that beyond a certain point (perhaps 20 per cent of GDP), more taxation is counter-productive, regardless of the distribution pattern. According to their ‘transfer theorem’, when you take money from those who are involved in increasing goods and services, they have less to invest in their productivity. And when you give that money to those who have a little less, this alternative source of income detracts from their incentive to be productive (and earn more on their own).
As Dr Laffer explained in an interview: ‘Whenever you transfer resources you always reduce total production in the system. Always. You take from those who have a little bit more, reduce their incentives to produce, and they’ll produce less. You give to those who have a little bit less, provide them with an alternative source of income, and they, too, will produce a little bit less. Whenever you redistribute income you always reduce total income, period.’
Here is why our Prime Minister’s Robin Hood act of fairness is more than a broken promise. He is, long term, aggravating the very dynamic he pretends he is fixing! He claims this is good economics. He is wrong. Why? Because he is, again, creating options that decrease productivity. It is unjust. It is against the principles of respect for individuals within a community. It is against the principles of choice within the community itself. We can call it ‘big government’ or ‘socialism writ large’, but at a deeper level, it is an attack on our humanity.
Why? We humans are choice-makers towards meaning and truth. Existential questions of life are important to us. For example, we recoil against the horror of any war. We should throw ourselves into protecting others from the evil of those who rejoice in the horror of war.
In leadership, our choices should be made in a manner that demonstrates a transparent relationship between responsibility and authority. But when the government takes too much of our money, it is taking authority which is not its to use. This is why allowing taxation bracket creep to flourish is unjust. It separates the responsibility of productivity from the authority to make decisions about our productive efforts. Again, Laffer puts it bluntly:
‘Whenever you redistribute income, you never actually redistribute income. You destroy total income completely. Every revolution on planet Earth has been fought in order to change the distribution of income. Not one of those revolutions has ever succeeded in redistributing income, but all of them have succeeded in destroying the entire quality and quantity of total income. All of these attempts at high tax rates have been attempts to redistribute income, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Robin Hood. And none of them have succeeded. But what they have succeeded in doing is destroying total income and the quality of life in our country.’
That is what the Prime Minister is doing when he claims he is being ‘fairer’. He is continuing to reduce the quality of life in our nation. Is this why he shied away from what he was intending to do (or at least thinking about doing) with blatantly misleading responses to questions about the already legislated Stage 3 tax cuts.
There is an old saying that explains that what comes out of our mouths demonstrates the state of our heart – where our heart is the total of who we are. What does this say of our Prime Minister?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/02/steal-from-the-rich-steal-from-the-poor-steal-from-them-all
***************************************************Stop wasting water
Almost every river in Eastern Australia is pouring surplus water into the sea.
Despite this, only two dams have been built in Queensland in the last 20 years – the Wyaralong Dam (built 13 years ago), and Paradise Dam (built 19 years ago).
Droughts will come again and we will wish for another dam builder like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, whose government built at least eight dams in Queensland – the Burdekin, Wivenhoe, Hinze, Beardmore, Haig, Fairbairn, Bjelke-Petersen, and Eungella dams.
All that dam-building came to a halt in 1988 when the plans to build the Wolffdene Dam were scuttled by the usual suspects.
Taxpayers also spent some $460 million on preliminaries for the Traverston Dam, but then cancelled it when the infamous Peter Garrett rejected the project. And recently it was revealed that the Paradise Dam in the Bundaberg Region had faults in the wall and a new wall would have to be built.
So, while our water storages are stagnant or declining, our politicians support dangerously high levels of immigration as well as promoting tourism, games, and circuses, all of which add to the demand for water. The population clock managed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics tells us that Australia’s population increases by one person every 50 seconds. They all need water.
And some fools want to use more of our precious stored fresh water to produce hydrogen fuels (every tonne of hydrogen produced by electrolysis consumes at least nine tonnes of fresh water). The ‘green hydrogen’ cycle needs lots of water and will always be a net consumer of electricity.
Climate alarmism of the it’ll never rain again variety resulted in the rash approval and construction of artificial desalination plants in Australia about 15 years ago. Recently, Hunter Water announced that it was going to spend $500 million on a desalination plant south of Newcastle. All desalination plants are costly to build and operate, and many stand idle most of the time. And of course, green politicians want the power to be supplied from wind-solar adding greatly to the costs and environmental destruction.
To let surplus fresh water escape to the oceans and then try to recover it using artificial desalination plants is the ultimate water stupidity.
Right now, Cyclone Kirrily is demonstrating nature’s power of desalination – sucking moisture from the Pacific Ocean and dumping it on land. This is free fresh water with no costs to taxpayers.
Sensible people have their water storage facilities ready – new dams and weirs built, silt cleaned out, dam walls and overflows checked, and no leaves clogging the tank strainers etc.
Australia must build more dams for flood mitigation, urban water supply, and irrigation. Most East Coast Rivers have surplus water that races to the sea during floods. It could be conserved.
And it is time to apply our engineering skills to building the Bradfield water scheme – it will certainly provide better returns to Australians than green energy dreams like Snowy 2 or powerlines from the Northern Territory to Singapore.
A sensible society would identify the best dam sites and have a long-term plan for acquiring and preserving the land rights needed for them. We do the reverse. Decisions are postponed until the need is critical. Then landowners with vested interests, green busybodies, and media stirrers manage to scare the politicians, and the water conservation proposal is killed.
Then the ‘No Dams Ever’ Mafia takes over, trying to sterilise the site for all future dams by quietly changing land-use or vegetation classifications. They search for (or manufacture) evidence of native title or endangered species, and declare national parks over critical areas.
Green destroyers have also grossly mismanaged stored water by insisting on excessive and ill-timed ‘environmental’ flows. This is a scheme where you build a dam to catch water and then try to manage the water as if the dam did not exist. It is very slow and expensive to get this lost water back from the sea using desalination plants.
Existing dams have two great enemies – silting which gradually steals their water capacity, and evaporation which continually steals the water itself. Our engineers can manage ‘desilting’ and the CSIRO could divert some resources from climate alarmism to reducing evaporation from water supply dams.
But most of all we need more stored water. The wet La Niña will inevitably be followed by a droughty El Niño.
Let’s find a new Joh who will build more dams.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/stop-wasting-water/ ?
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Death sentence by capital starvation
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones is planning a devastating attack on around 1400 listed Australian companies – around 60 per cent the companies listed on the ASX.
And he is following that up with a similar attack on thousands of smaller high technology private companies delivering equally savage blows to our embryonic venture capital market.
When I understood the pending disasters my first reaction was that Jones was “doing his bit” by joining in the ruthless Anthony Albanese attack on family businesses which I have documented many times.
That initial conclusion might be right, but I now think it more likely that in this case Jones actually had good intentions but consulted the wrong people — the big end of town — who simply didn’t understand what would happen if the nation made it much harder to be classed as a “wholesale” investor.
Jones’ plan that Australia should have the toughest definition of “wholesale” investor in the developed world (outside Hong Kong) will result in the vast majority of the 1450 ASX-listed companies with a market capitalisation under $100m being starved of capital slowly squeezing them to death.
The same death sentence by capital starvation will apply to most small enterprises being backed by Australian venture capitalists.
Very few major stock exchanges provide a market for small enterprises like the ASX and because I am partly responsible for this unique Australian situation I should have realised the pending disaster much earlier.
Back in the early days of the internet (around 1997) I was in charge of BRW Media group. BRW had a unique Australian advantage because our large readership base had a huge number of medium to smaller enterprises and we knew the opportunities the internet would create.
So on a tentative basis, myself and Amanda Gome (congratulations Amanda on your AM on Australia Day along with along with another former colleague David Koch), started exploring whether we could create a “BRW market” for equity in smaller enterprises.
Our early feasibility work had not gone as far as telling the Fairfax top management and board but it reached the ASX who may have thought we were further advanced than we actually were.
They reacted swiftly to cut us off by opening their listing doors to much smaller enterprises. They were rushed and the numbers kept growing as the years passed. We were correct in seeing that there was a national need but there were also a lot of hazards to be explored before BRW entered such a field. We smiled because our objective was achieved.
What made the market so large was the development of a remarkable capital raising industry dominated by wholesale investors.
Non “wholesale” investors are called retail investors and they can buy and sell the small company shares on the ASX market every day, but when it comes to raising capital there are severe restrictions on their ability to subscribe — that’s why the money to keep the 1400 companies alive must come from “wholesale” investors.
It’s crazy that retail investors can buy any quantity of shares on the ASX without restrictions but are restricted in subscribing to essential new raisings. But that’s the way it is and companies are able to finance their activities because the wholesale investor market is strong, led by many enterprises like InvestorHub.
Naturally there have been failures and some of the listed companies are dormant but the ASX rules have protected investors
In the non-listed market, Startmate is one of a number of organisations that mobilise funds to invest in venture capital start-ups.
Startmate chief executive Michael Batko says his group has one pool of 441 investors and he believes 98 per cent of them would be knocked out by Jones’ proposed criteria.
Under the current rules, a person can be a wholesale investor if they have net assets of more than $2.5m including the family home or an income for two years at or above $250,000. That figure has not changed for many years and the rise in the value of the family home has greatly expanded the number of people who are eligible “wholesale” investors.
Accordingly, Jones asked the Financial Services Council, ASIC and Treasury to make recommendations. Clearly none of them had any idea of the extent and sophistication of the role of wholesale investors in capital raising for listed companies with capitalisations under $100m.
Given the absence of major scandals, the investigators were forced to go back six years to find what they thought was a good example where something went wrong.
It was actually a bad example but it illustrated how well this market is operating.
Australia’s corporate failures are currently dominated be the impact of inflation on building and Covid and not the operation of the wholesale investor.
But on the Assistant Treasurer's table is a recommendation to double the required assets, including the family home, to $5m and set up a $2.5m net assets trigger point without the family home. The alterative income test proposal is $450,000 annually for two consecutive years.
That takes us way out of line with the rest of the world. The Londoners recently looked at an appropriate level and decided on $A850,000 as the net assets minimum requirement. Williamson thinks $850,000 excluding the family home is workable but given that the rise in the value of the family home has substantially boosted the numbers of qualified wholesale investors there is no detailed data.
And I would add that it makes no sense to have any limit on a capital raising in a listed security where retail traders can buy the same security on the ASX without a limit on their finances.
I plead with the Assistant Treasurer to hold back and speak with Williamson and Batko and others who are leading this market and confirm for himself that making the proposed changes will cause havoc to an essential part of Australia’s future.
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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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My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
