'How can you say that?' Economics professor is slammed as 'heartless' for arguing Australia would be 'better off' if it had NOT gone into coronavirus lockdown

An economics professor has been slammed as 'cold' and 'heartless' for suggesting  Australia prioritised health over the economy by going into coronavirus lockdown.

University of New South Wales Professor Gigi Foster sparked outrage from fellow panellists and other economic professors while answering questions about the  impacts of shutdown measures on Q&A on Monday.

Professor Foster suggested Australia hadn't properly weighed up the economic consequences of tough restrictions introduced to reduce the death toll, and argued the 'economy is about lives' too.

'What frustrates me is when people talk about the economic costs of the lockdown they often don't think in detail in terms of counting lives,' Professor Foster said.

'Has anyone thought about how would you get a measure of the traded lives when we lock an economy down? What are we sacrificing in terms of lives?

'Economists have tried to do that and we try to do that in currencies like the value of a statistical life.

'If you do that kind of calculus you realise very quickly that even with a very, very extreme epidemic, in Australia, we are still potentially better off not having an economic lockdown in the first place because of the incredible effects that you see.  'Not just in a short-run way but in many years to come.'

Her views prompted a shocked response from fellow panellists on the ABC program. 'How can you say that?' ACTU secretary Sally McManus fired back. 

'We're avoiding what's happened in the UK, what's happening in the US, the idea of having our ICUs overrun, our healthcare workers dying as well is just the most horrible thought.'

'It's horrible either way,' Professor Foster replied. 'The coronavirus has made the world awful. There's absolutely no doubt about that.

'In order to have a proper discussion about trade-offs, you need to think in terms of lives you're giving up.

'I know it's invisible lives and difficult to imagine when we aggregate, for example, all of the health effects and the mental health effects and the effects of people right now who have illnesses other than COVID-19.' 

Earlier in the program, Professor Foster said human welfare costs should be considered more broadly. 'I reject the idea it's lives versus the economy. It's lives versus lives. The economy is about lives,' Professor Foster said. 'It's about protection of lives and human welfare and livelihood.'

Simon Longstaff, executive director of The Ethics Centre disagreed with Professor Foster's argument.

'There's so many things we can do to address the economic consequences on people's lives. It's not just the economy. Incidents of mental health. There's many things which are human fact beyond those,' he said.

Professor Foster later proposed Australia could implement a herd immunity strategy until a coronavirus vaccine was found.

Her comments on the program sparked division on social media, with some accusing her of being 'harmful and arrogant' and others praising her for her 'rational' response.

'She lacks capacity to appreciate that a mass outbreak would lead to same shutdown within a short time frame. A broad and orderly controlled shutdown is preferable to chaos of humans and companies dropping like flies,' one viewer tweeted.

Another added: 'Has Gigi considered the economic cost of post traumatic stress on a population like Italy? Is there a model for the way the economy and people behave after that?'

'What a disgraceful and cold thought process this woman has,' a third said. 'Has no respect for humanity, is all about the economy and the money.' 

Professor Foster was also criticised by some in her own profession. 'Hundreds of us warned today against the views like Gigi Foster's,' University of Melbourne economics Professor Chris Edmond tweeted.

'I’m an economics professor, and Gigi does not speak for me,' Steven Hamilton, a U.S-based professor tweeted.   

But not everyone was critical. 'Gigi Foster makes some excellent points and should not be trolled,' one supporter tweeted. 

'Gigi Foster is very much sharing a holistic rational view on coronavirus, not an emotional one that clearly doesn’t appeal to the everyday Australian,' added another.

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A harsher lockdown? If you’re under 60, and in good health, crossing the road is more dangerous than COVID-19


And even if you’re over 60, you may not even want to see the economy trashed while you are isolated from your children and grandchildren for months. Maybe you’d prefer to take the risk

A bizarre “open letter” to the Australian government, signed by more than 100 economists, calls the trade-off between health and economic outcomes a “false distinction”, urging hard lockdowns until the coronavirus can be “comprehensively addressed”.

What might the 3.6 million Australians who may soon be out of work as a direct result of government regulations, according to a new report by the Grattan Institute, make of the “false distinction”? The lockdown might be considerably shorter if those calling for it, including the professors, had to take a large pay cut until it was lifted.

As Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, said on Monday, governments were doing “enormous damage” and must acknowledge restrictions would have to be lifted even in the face of potentially higher death rates. Trade-offs are Economics 101. To stay locked down until a vaccine emerges, or until we “eradicate” the virus, was farcical, King suggested.

Charles Goodhart, one of the world’s top monetary economists of his generation, said late last month that from a strictly income-maximising point of view “let it rip” made sense.

“Given the age and frailty of those likely to die, this increased death toll in 2020 would have been almost entirely offset by sharply lower death tolls over the subsequent decade,” said Goodhart, himself in his 80s. “While one should keep such an analysis in mind, such a cold-hearted policy would have been morally wrong, and socially and politically entirely unacceptable,” he added.

Indeed, cautious easing of restric­tions — which is happening in Europe — is all anyone could advocate in the circumstances. COVID-19 can prompt many deaths and overwhelm health systems.

“The measures put in place in Australia, at the border and within the states and territories, have reduced the number of new infections,” the open letter said, with no evidence. Some probably have, but we don’t know yet which social-distancing measures are effective.

Simply because A follows B doesn’t mean A caused B. Australia’s weather, relative population density or island geography may play a role in our relative success too. We don’t know. The passage of the virus in Sweden, Japan and Taiwan, which haven’t locked down, is markedly better than in Italy and Spain, which did.

Certainly, the benefits of shutting down schools is debatable, unlike the terrific inconvenience it has caused millions of families.

Banning individuals sitting on a park bench, playing golf or meeting any more than one other person may well be seen in time as excessive once considered studies emerge. Certainly, governments didn’t go this far a century ago when dealing with a far worse disease.

If you’re under 60, and in good health, crossing the road is more dangerous than COVID-19. And even if you’re over 60, you may not even want to see the economy trashed while you are isolated from your children and grandchildren for months. Maybe you’d prefer to take the risk.

The death of a 93-year-old in a nursing home has become a daily national news story. Every death is a tragedy, but government policy should be guided by evidence, not emotion.

“Could the images of people dying on stretchers in tents in hospital parking lots be blinding us to the greater harm we may be causing across society through our efforts to avoid those awful deaths?” asked one of our top philosophers, Peter Singer.

It’s looking less like we’re facing the once-in-a-century Spanish flu-type virus we all feared, which justified draconian measures in the first place. And studies in California and Germany are finding more people have the virus without symptoms than first thought.

About 60 million people die each year and coronavirus has claimed 165,000, many of whom were elderly and unwell and might have died soon in any case.

India and Indonesia remain the big unknowns. These two poor countries endured the brunt of the Spanish flu, losing respectively 5 per cent and 3 per cent of their total populations, the equivalent of more than 70 million people today. As of Monday it is estimated COVID-19 had killed about 1200 people across both countries, which is tentatively reassuring.

In defiance of the professors, Sydney’s Randwick council on Monday reopened its beaches for exercise. The impact on gender equality is yet to be determined, but surely it is a sideshow.

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Cardinal Pell and the Ladies of the Left

The next time you hear some strident feminist sounding off about glass ceilings and the supposed exclusion of women from decision-making, think of the case of George Pell. No connection? Oh yes there is. Gender quotas were not only filled but arguably exceeded by the volume of female participation in the long and sorry saga of Pell’s persecution.

All that blather you still hear on places like Radio National about men being in charge of everything and women chained to the sink is no longer true, if ever it was. Very powerful, high-achieving women had a big say in cooking up the case against Pell and in putting him away. Their involvement shows that the notion of male domination in the professions is a straw – I suppose we should say – person, set up by feminists to foster the myth that women are “oppressed” (by white conservatives males like Pell, presumably; as paid-up members of the Left, feminists would naturally believe that).

Let’s see, who shall we start with? Well, Louise Milligan of the ABC hurled herself into the fray very early on. As a reporter, she has more opportunity than most people to air her views, courtesy of your tax dollars. But not content with that, she wrote a book as well (on the taxpayer’s time?) telling the world how guilty Pell was, or more accurately, how guilty she had decided he was, since her literary effort appeared some time before any accusations against Pell had been made in court.

Then there was the woman who published the book, Louise Adler. She used the once respected imprint of Melbourne University Press to disseminate Louise’s anthology of vicious tittle-tattle, which conceivably did its bit to prejudice the minds of any potential jurors who read it. It might be noted that Adler’s other name is Mrs Max Gillies. She is married to the comedian emeritus of the elderly Dismissal-fixated Left, once a virtual fixture on the ABC – where else? – for his unflattering impersonations of Sir John Kerr and John Howard, two of the most noir of the elderly Left’s bêtes noires. Perhaps he has added George Pell to his repertoire, using Louise’s book as a source, if Mrs Gillies brought him home a copy.

Next in line chronologically is Belinda Wallington. She is the magistrate (indeed, the Supervising Magistrate for Sexual Offences at the Magistrates Court of Victoria) who sorted out the original charges against Pell, chucking out the flimsiest and sending him for trial on the others, which it now turns out were not much less flimsy. There is a photograph (below) of Belinda and Louise together in May 2017, when they took part in a cosy ABC natter-in called The Conversation Hour, with the topic “George Pell allegations and Law Week”. There is, of course, no known photograph of the Wallington with Pell.

As we know, the first trial was a washout and a second trial was held, which led to Pell’s conviction. This gave another of our ABC ladies, Leigh Sales, a thrill of joy. Introducing her programme she announced in ringing tones, categorically and as though she was the bearer of great good news (which indeed it was to people like her), “George Pell is a convicted paedophile.” Leigh was clearly untroubled by any of the doubts as to the justice of the conviction, doubts that more than a year later would lead the High Court to overturn it.

Our fifth influential female is Chief Justice of Victoria Anne Ferguson. She it was who presided over the Appeal Court that turned down Pell’s appeal against his conviction, an action for which the Victorian court was reproached by the High Court in no uncertain terms. Ferguson and a male judge were two-to-one in this against a third judge (male) whose dissenting judgment anticipated much that the High Court had to say.

Ferguson was appointed to her post as Chief Justice of Victoria by the Labor government of Daniel Andrews, which seems to have decided that substantial experience of the criminal law was not necessary for the post and that a former commercial solicitor would do as well. Andrews, one imagines, is not been best pleased by Pell’s acquittal, given that he thought it was “shameful” for Tony Abbott even to visit Pell in prison. Has he never read Matthew 25:36?

Andrews issued a statement after the acquittal that pointedly ignored the judgment and assured all “victims” of child abuse, and by implication Pell’s accuser, that he “believed” them. Apart from the fact that you can’t believe Pell, as the High Court does, and believe his accuser at the same time, Andrews hasn’t heard, and probably never will, what most of those other “survivors” have to say, so how can he “believe” it?

It is this perverse willingness to accept any and every abuse allegation made by anyone, anywhere, whether motivated by truth, vindictiveness or vengeance, that has led not only to the legal shambles deplored by the High Court, but to the growth, aided and abetted by sinister lawyers posing as compassionate champions of the “hurt” and the “damaged”, of a bloated child-abuse industry which has yielded a harvest of destroyed careers among the wrongfully accused to set against the numbers of genuinely abused for whom it has obtained justice and compensation.

Although supposedly a Roman Catholic, Andrews comes across as viscerally anti-Pell – the two positions seem not to be irreconcilable, such is the power of Pell’s conservatism, religious and secular, to excite hysteria and loathing in the ranks of the Left. Only Tony Abbott seems to possess this weird, almost shamanic, capacity to the same degree.

Back to our catalogue of inquisitorial females, so let’s not overlook eminent jurist Kerri Judd, Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions and another Andrews appointment. Kerri was resolutely opposed to Pell’s appeal being upheld by the High Court and informed the bench that the best thing to do was to send him back to Victoria for another of those trials they do so well there. The court declined to accept this sage advice, which it described as “specious”.

Our national broadcaster seemed to delude itself that it constituted an alternative branch of the law vis-à-vis Pell, one that could influence the mind of the High Court through one of its mendacious “investigations” of the sort it made a fool of itself with when it tried to convict President Trump of colluding with Russia. The reporter behind that, Sarah Ferguson (“I’ve spent my professional life understanding power and trying to give succour to the weak when abused by power,” as she sanctimoniously informed an ABC in-house puff) presented three programs on child abuse by Catholic clergy, full of recycled “revelations”. It is perfectly possible that the ABC calculated that this would persuade the court to weigh very carefully the consequences in adverse public opinion, whipped up partly by itself, of any decision to acquit Pell. If so, it would only show how hubristic the ABC is. Certainly, Sarah’s programs were timed to coincide with the High Court’s deliberations, and either rain on the parade if Pell were cleared or give one last slam to the prison door if he were not.

The ABC is always crying poor but spent vast sums sending Sarah around the world to put her nasty snipes together, a vindictive squandering of taxpayers’ money that makes reform of the ABC even more urgent.

I haven’t touched on the female lawyers and “victims’ advocates” who gathered around the scaffold in the hope of seeing Pell’s head roll. Consider instead some of the many women who took his part – three female justices among the unanimous seven-to-zero of the High Court bench, the nuns who gave him hospitality on his first night of freedom, the female journalists such as Rita Panahi, Janet Albrechtsen and Miranda Devine who stood up for him and maintained his innocence when the pack was baying for his blood. It’s non-feminists who’ll be proud of them.

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A dozen students per classroom, disinfection after every lesson, no stationery or canteen: How pupils' school life will change forever after COVID-19

Children will be returning to school in Queensland for the first day of term two

Those few teachers and students who do go to school for term two will encounter a very different classroom to the ones they knew before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some children returned to school in Queensland for the first day of term two on Monday after five weeks of learning from home during state-wide lockdowns.

Queensland's policy was largely the same as New South Wales - that distance learning was preferred and schools were only for the children of those who must work outside the home during the lockdown.

Pupils in Queensland now have to bring their own stationery to school and use hand sanitisers as they walk between classrooms that will allow no more than 12 people per 52 sq/m room.

Schools have had to rearrange furniture in classrooms to maintain those social distancing protocols by keeping people at least 1.5m away from each other.

Frequent cleaning has also been recommended by state authorities with special attention placed on light switches, door handles, desks, toilets, taps and sinks.

The Gap State High School in Brisbane sent letters to parents with a full list of changes, The Courier Mail reported.

It had employed cleaners during the school day to disinfect classrooms, furniture and bathrooms during breaks.

At that school, a maximum of ten students will be assigned per classroom for all lessons throughout the day.

Students must bring their own food, as the canteen will be closed and pupils will not be allowed to leave school grounds to buy lunch.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stressed that schools are only open for vulnerable children and children of essential workers who are unable to learn remotely.

As a result, The Gap State High School will send attendance surveys to parents each fortnight so school authorities can decide how many teachers they need on site and how to ensure social distancing policies are being met.

'If you are working from home and incapable of supervising to ensure your child is getting online resource work happening then contact your principal,' Ms Palaszczuk said. 'But now is not the time to be sending your child to school if you don't meet those categories.'

Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said sending the children of non-frontline workers to school would make social distancing protocols impossible to meet, jeopardising the safety of students and teachers.

'We want to make sure we can exercise social distancing, we want schools to be a safe environment because remember if there is an outbreak at a school, it will immediately be shut down and parents will have to cope with that.'

The new procedures are expected to run for five weeks and will be reevaluated on May 22.

It comes after Ms Palaszczuk announced that 5,254 laptops would be distributed to students across the state to ensure all pupils could continue their education from home.

Telstra donated 5,000 simcards and 4,000 dongles and hotspot devices to make sure all children had access to internet learning portals.

Up to 15 per cent of the state's students are expected to show up at school on Monday.

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

ABC ‘saw’ the future — but it still hasn’t arrived

Extraordinarily false prophecies

Computer modellers, like the ABC’s Dr Norman Swan, have been found wanting by the coronavirus pandemic

To be fair to Norman Swan, he wasn’t the only one to caution that unless we sat motionless in a corner and wrapped ourselves in Glad Wrap we’d be heading down the Italian route before we knew it.

Computer modellers, like the ABC, have been found wanting in this pandemic. The reasons are not dissimilar; both are prone to selection bias, both are inclined towards omniscience and neither is afraid to go where Albert Einstein feared to tread.

Einstein once wrote that some things “were beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation”. That was in 1930, however, before the invention of the Excel spreadsheet, a tool that allows us to forecast with unwarranted certainty on subjects we barely understand.

Swan was right to encourage his Twitter followers to “believe in maths not magic”. The difficulty with computer modelling, however, is that it’s hard say which it is.

Four weeks ago the Grattan Institute fuelled the rising anxiety about the spread of the coronavirus with a forecast that the pandemic would be out of control in Australia by mid-April. Grattan’s modelling was widely reported on the ABC and in Nine’s newspapers where no number is too scary to warrant a headline.

“Australia prepares for 50,000 to 150,000 coronavirus deaths,” reported the Sydney Morning Herald on March 16.

Eight days later it gave prominence to Grattan’s claim that the rate of new confirmed cases would overwhelm the capacity of intensive care units by mid-April.

Not for the first time, the apocalypse was less earth-shattering than forecast.

Last weekend there were 55 COVID-19 patients in acute care hospital beds, about 2 per cent of ICU capacity at the start of the crisis and less than 1 per cent of its expanded capacity.

The national death toll stood at 68, which is tragic enough, but considerably short of the SMH’s expectations. Exaggerated claims matter a lot when dealing with threats like pandemics or climate change. They can lead to expensive mistakes.

Australia was on the verge of one of these four weekends ago when the number of confirmed cases was a sixth of today’s figure, but rising too fast for comfort.

State premiers felt the pressure of public opinion, animated by excitable headlines, that was pushing them to take draconian steps towards closing down the economy. Fortunately, calm heads prevailed. Calls from the business community, a voice largely absent from the debate at that point, warned of the consequences of the hard lockdown for which some were calling.

The mining, construction and manufacturing sectors felt the threat. Hardware stores feared being classified as a “non-essential” part of the economy.

The closure of cafes, restaurants and bars under social-distancing rules has been serious enough. So has the closure of our borders.

In the light of what has happened since, however, these were not unreasonable steps to stop the exponential growth in infection. Neither should they be lightly abandoned so long as the threat of a second wave remains.

Yet the disproportionate measures Grattan and others were demanding, many of which have been adopted in New Zealand, would have been a catastrophic error of judgment.

We must remind ourselves that the public policy aim was not human immortality, nor the protection of the population from contagious disease. It was to maintain the integrity of our health system, a goal the federal government has achieved by taking practical steps to increase the supply of acute-care beds and reduce demand, without tightening the noose around the economy.

The role of Health Minister Greg Hunt, rightly praised in the memoirs of a former prime minister for calm management of his portfolio, will one day be recognised as critical to our ability to rise to the challenge.

One might have hoped that the calls for Australia to commit economic self-harm would have subsided by now. Sadly they have not. Last week the Grattan Institute was at it again, urging that the present restrictions remain in place for at least three more months.

It would, Grattan admitted, carry big short-term economic costs, shaving six percentage points off Australia’s annual GDP. But that’s OK, two of the centre’s researchers wrote last Thursday, because businesses and individuals could be kept afloat with the government support.

Modelling our economic future is no less difficult than modelling the spread of the virus. No offence to the OECD, which came up with the much-quoted figure of a 2 per cent hit to GDP for every month of restrictions, but it amounts to little more than an educated guess.

The atomised supply chains in today’s globalised economy make its interdependencies far harder to map than they were in 1958, when Leonard E. Read wrote his famous essay tracking how pieces of cedar wood, zinc, copper and graphite miraculously combined to produce a pencil.

What we do know, thanks to modelling somewhat more robust than that others have relied upon, is that the path out of the anticipated recession grows steeper and longer every day the restrictions stay in place. We know that $150bn in government support will not be enough to save every business, let alone every job.

Few of those who argue that normal business activity can resume only when COVID-19 infections have been eliminated altogether are dependent on the productive economy, the part that must survive on its wits rather than handouts. That distance encourages the heedless attitude to economic outcomes with which we have become familiar in the climate debate, where dire predictions, each one more catastrophic than the last, are used to silence dissenting voices.

Fortunately, the immediacy of the COVID-19 pandemic allows us to apply the truth test to alarmism even as it is occurring. The experience will not be wasted if we emerge from this crisis appreciating the virtues of a proportionate and incremental response.

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More insane Coronavirus policy

On 31 March, Australians in New South Wales awoke to the discovery that, overnight, they had been put under house arrest. For some at least, the shock could not have been greater if, like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, they had found themselves transformed into an enormous insect. For the last fortnight, Australians have discovered that almost everything other than sitting at home has been criminalised, with neighbourhood snitches just waiting to dob them in.

It reached a nadir at Easter when Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein announced that police would use helicopters to spot ‘unnecessary’ travel. ‘Today the gloves come off’, he snarled. ‘We are going to police this. The period of education is over.’ Tasmanian police questioned the occupants of 89 vehicles about why they had the temerity to be on the road. It brought to mind Captain Yossarian in Catch-22. ‘Morale was deteriorating, and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril and here he was jeopardising his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.’

Meanwhile, an ‘explosion’, at least by Tasmanian standards, of 66 new coronavirus infections was traced not to people reading books on park benches, or jogging on the beach, or even driving their cars, but to two hospitals in northwest Tasmania, which inexplicably proved to be incapable of undertaking basic infection control while treating a passenger from the ill-fated Ruby Princess, and may or may not have had an ‘illegal’ dinner party.

General Gutwein is only the latest officer in the army of clowns running Australia to come a cropper. His woes directly stem from the mess made by his mess mate, the NSW minister for health, the aptly named Mr Hazzard, who, if he were a packet of cigarettes, would have a sign across his forehead warning: ‘This minister is a health hazard.’ Alas, Australia’s medical authorities match the minister when it comes to incompetence.

Hazzard and his hapless officials learned nothing from the fiasco of the Diamond Princess, in which 712 of 3,711 passengers and crew were infected by Covid-19 during a month-long onboard quarantine and 12 people died, including our first virus victim. When the passengers and crew finally disembarked, US health officials allowed their nationals to fly back even though it was clear that many were probably infected, jeopardising the health of everyone on the plane.

When its sister, the Ruby Princess, sailed into Circular Quay, NSW health officials made exactly the same mistake, allowing the ship’s 2,647 passengers to disembark because they assessed them as ‘low risk’, even though the ship’s physician had requested an ambulance for two patients and said that 15 others were sick and had tested negative for influenza. Was Hazzard apologetic? Of course not. He angrily defended his advisers who consulted ‘to the WHO in communicable diseases,’ no less. Someone needs to tell him Taiwan are the experts.

If that weren’t bad enough, on 14 April it was revealed that the company overseeing the management of the Ruby Princess had allowed meals for its 1,000 crew members to be prepared in the ship’s galley until last weekend, despite warning signs it was the epicentre of the vessel’s infections just as had happened on the Diamond Princess a month earlier.

It’s as if The Three Stooges were running the country, and it might be funny if people weren’t dying as a result. Three-quarters of all deaths in Australia are linked to just three sources of infection – the Ruby Princess and three other returning cruise ships in NSW, NSW aged-care facilities, and the cancer treatment ward of a major public hospital in Melbourne.

Instead of putting the entire population of Australia under house arrest, state health departments should be putting in place stringent measures to protect vulnerable people – older Australians, particularly those in aged-care facilities, and Australians with underlying health problems. The government did warn Australians not to take cruises on 10 March, but it did nothing to assist elderly people trying to self-isolate at home.

One of the saddest coronavirus deaths was that of Labor MP Ged Kearney’s father-in-law, an 82-year-old who caught the disease just shopping for groceries. That shouldn’t have happened. When supermarkets stopped providing online shopping, the government should have funded shopping services. Likewise, staff in aged-care facilities should all be regularly tested for the virus, as should anyone else providing services to the vulnerable.

The state governments locked down the country, justifying their actions by referring to headlines that warned, ‘We’re going to run out of ICU beds’. On 18 March it was claimed Australia would need 650,000 ICU beds over the course of a year. On 31 March, the day NSW went into lockdown, there were 2,378 beds in 191 ICUs across the country and there was the capacity to surge to 4,261 if necessary. Even that was deemed insufficient, with a government taskforce ‘working around the clock’ to procure ventilators to increase capacity to 7,500.

Did the tidal wave of deaths arrive? At the time of writing there are 79 people in ICU beds around the country and there have been only 63 deaths – two deaths per million. Even so, this week we were urged by the Grattan Institute to join New Zealand and shoot for zero infections before unlocking the economy. This is absurd. We don’t aim for zero road or flu deaths. The cost is not just economic; as unemployment rises so do suicides.

Rather than relying on rubbery figures, our model should be the real-world success of Taiwan. They had no lockdown, like Wuhan. Cafés, restaurants, businesses, museums and schools have to put in place social distancing, people use face masks, there is quarantine for overseas arrivals, and testing, treating and isolating for the infected while tracing their contacts. The result? Only 395 cases and six deaths. Yet the Australian PM Scott Morrison shows no signs of doing this.

On Wednesday, GetUp!’s national director sent an email to his troops praising the PM delivering beyond their wildest dreams, spending $320 billion in a few weeks. It makes the Rudd Labor government look almost modest in comparison. While some businesses go broke, others can’t find workers, who’d rather get the JobKeeper subsidy. More than 80,000 businesses have registered for the $130 billion payment, which is so poorly designed that everyone from barristers to baristas is in on the lurk, attempting to qualify.

Tenants, too, have been incentivised to stop paying their rent to the chagrin of mum and dad investors. When one reads on the front page of the Australian that the PM has won plaudits from the Australia Institute, a progressive think-tank, one thinks not of Kafka but the sci-fi horror flick, The Fly, and its memorable tagline: ‘Be afraid. Be very afraid.’

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Digital giants Google and Facebook will be forced to pay for news content generated by the Australian media in historic move

Digital giants Google and Facebook will be forced to pay for news content generated by the Australian media in a lifeline for the struggling industry.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher will on Monday announce a mandatory code on digital platforms to be finalised by July, bringing forward a November deadline.

The decision to fast track the code follows a collapse in advertising revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to many newsrooms, especially in regional areas, closing or scaling back their operations.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last December handed down its report following an inquiry into Facebook, Google and the impact other internet giants are having on the media industry.

The ACCC was negotiating with big tech and media companies on a voluntary code of conduct that would have been made mandatory in November if no agreement was made before then.

The new code will include enforcement, penalties and ways to deal with disagreements between the global platforms and local media companies.

'The groundbreaking report prepared by the ACCC into digital platforms was world-leading and now paves the way for a mandatory code of conduct requiring payment for content,' Mr Frydenberg said. 'This will help to create a level playing field.'

Prices for content or the nature of commercial agreements would need to be negotiated but remedies would be put in place to force tech companies to accede.

Facebook and Google have a stranglehold over the digital advertising market and benefit greatly from the content of news publishers on their platforms, social media, search queries and digital video.

News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller said Google and Facebook had built trillion-dollar businesses by using other people's content and refusing to pay for it.

'The decisive move by the government to go directly to a mandatory code of conduct between the international tech giants and Australian news media companies is a vital step that can help secure the future of Australian journalism,' he told News Corp.

Nine chief executive Hugh Marks also welcomed the move.

News Corp and Nine have cited the impact of digital platforms on their bottom lines as part of their move to close down AAP, the national newswire.

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Green Snouts Sniff Around For A Pandemic Windfall

The Pope, deprived of the counsel of Cardinal Pell, the Church’s most astute voice, foolishly called coronavirus “nature’s response” for failures to act on climate change.

It was, therefore, hardly surprising that coronavirus would be recruited to push for additional renewable energy subsidies to reinforce those that have already created today’s high cost, low quality electricity.

Coal Wire, an anti-fossil fuel publication, was quick to swoop on a Harvard study that said the pollutant PM2.5 exacerbated coronavirus and that coal power stations were an important source of the pollutant.

Actually less than 5 percent of PM2.5 particulate emissions come from energy production.

Also, fast out of the blocks was the anti-fossil fuel head of the Paris based International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol.

In the ‘never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste’ style, Birol argued that boosting “clean energy technologies, such as solar, wind, hydrogen, batteries and carbon capture should be a central part of governments’ (stimulus) plans”.

This is echoed by a petition signed by 180 EU politicians and activists. The IEA expects new renewable energy installations to fall this year, largely because of supply disruptions.

The Australian branch of global network Climateworks followed this with a revised Decarbonisation Futures Report and its head, Anna Skarbek, explained to The Guardian’s Adam Morton how the virus could be used to accelerate the subsidized renewables push.

Given the high cost and low reliability of wind/solar, that would be a huge call even if enforced demand reductions had not brought a halving of last year’s $90 per MWh spot price.

Sure enough, the market response differs from that hoped for by the subsidy-seekers and alarmists. Coal use remains on an upward trajectory.

According to GlobalData, “Over the next four years, the production of thermal coal is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 1.9 percent to reach 7.6 billion tonnes by 2023, due to increasing demand from India and China.”

Goldman Sachs has halved its EU carbon price forecast, and Bloomberg notes a collapse of demand for rooftop installations.

Matthew Warren, a former lobbyist for the renewable industry, now calls for a managed “deceleration” in its support by governments.

But, taking its cue from the IEA, Australia continues to pursue the mirage of renewable energy cost innovations.

Captured by his bureaucrats, Energy Minister Angus Taylor is not only allocating $70 million in search of a fanciful breakthrough in converting hydrogen to energy but he is insisting – wait for it! – on grant applicants using renewable energy to power the trials.

I have a piece in the Spectator reviewing the disaster wrought by governments bending to green alarmism and subsidy-seekers.

Subsidies and regulations requiring the use of wind/solar for electricity generation currently cost Australian households and businesses over $4 billion a year.

Moreover, this has caused the closure of low-cost reliable coal plants and, as a result, brought a $55 per MWh increase in the wholesale electricity price between 2015 and 2019.

With a market of 230,000 GWh, the 2015-19 price increase has brought a cost of almost $13 billion per year.

Hence, we are paying $17 billion a year to harm ourselves! Abandoning the electricity subsidies and regulations offers us a benefit of $170 billion – that alone would recoup over half the $320 billion spent on coronavirus-driven stimuli/consumption support.

Regulations like those on energy have for decades led Australia to forfeit what should have been the world’s highest living standards.

Unraveling them offers an opportunity to minimize the impact of the coronavirus measures.  But have we got the caliber of politician that understands this and can push through the necessary reforms?

SOURCE 

 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Coronavirus Australia: Where is the stimulus money coming from?

Australia is following the UK and the USA into a money-printing binge

After dropping $18 billion in its first stimulus package, and $66 billion in its second package, it’s suddenly put the foot to the floor and announced an extra $130 billion in the third package. Then that’s been topped up with another billion for childcare.

As they say, “A few hundred billion here, a few hundred billion there, soon you’re talking real money!”

All this spending is designed to keep the current recession from being too sharp or going on too long. Nevertheless, it has some people nervous. Are we spending too much?

Permit me to reassure you. We can afford this. If needed, we can spend even more.

As the next chart of historic data shows, Australia’s public debt has been very high in the past – peaking in the Second World War, before falling to be far lower before the Global Financial Crisis. (Note, this chart stops in 2008.)

Our net national debt looks modest compared to other countries. It is just 18 per cent – far lower than in the USA, where the comparable figure is around 100 per cent; or Japan, where net debt is 150 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Australia has a $1.9 trillion economy. That’s nearly two trillion dollars, and it doesn’t just happen once. That sum flows through Australian hands every year. (GDP is like a river, not a dam. It measures a flow of money and things, not a pile of money.)

Our GDP is worth equivalent to $75,000 per person (this is what we call GDP per capita). Again, this is how much economic activity there is every year.

So when the Government spends an extra $130 billion in one shot in the middle of a desperate crisis, it’s not even that much, in terms of our economy.

Total coronavirus stimulus spending of $276 billion would represent 15 per cent of our economy. We don’t have to pay that off all in one shot. We can let the debt sit for ages, just paying the interest, if we so choose. That might be a good choice, because at the moment, interest rates are extremely low. This is a cost-effective point in history to go into debt.

As the next chart shows, our current net government debt has been rising, but it is just 18 per cent of GDP. The Government can spend many billions more and still keep net government debt well below 100 per cent of GDP.

HOW DO WE PAY IT BACK?

There are two main ways you can make your debt go away, and a sneaky third way.

The main way we make debt go away is by paying tax. The Government taxes us more and spends less so it can have a surplus, and it uses that surplus to pay back the people we borrowed from.

You can see an example of this in the chart above – in the early 2000s, then-treasurer Peter Costello ran a bunch of surpluses and finally got the net debt to GDP ratio back below zero, just before the GFC.

At the last budget, you will remember, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was expecting a surplus. Running lots of surpluses was going to let us slowly pay off our debt, and the forecast looked like this:

This chart is now ancient history, of course. If we ever get to zero net debt it will be much later than 2029-30. And it will require a lot more surpluses.

This is the main argument against spending too much – today’s young people will pay higher taxes for the rest of their lives to fund the expansion in debt caused by extra government spending.

The second trick for making debt disappear is inflation. While $200 billion might seem like a lot now, if we get some inflation over the next 30 years, it will shrink before our eyes.

Anyone who has a mortgage or a HECS debt knows what this is like. On the day you graduate or the day you buy your house, it seems massive. Twenty years later, the sums involved seem a lot smaller. If Australia’s GDP goes to $10 trillion in 30 years time, (which it would if we had 3 per cent growth and 2.5 per cent inflation every year), the debt we took on to survive this recession will seem much less significant.

This raises a key point about the ratio of net debt to GDP: You can make it get smaller by growing the GDP side of the ratio. And you can make GDP bigger using either economic growth or inflation. One reason Japan has such high debt ratios is its GDP hasn’t grown much since 1990. It has had both low growth and low inflation.

The sneaky third way to pay back debt is just printing money and giving it to your lenders. Governments can do that, but historically they have chosen not to, because it tends to cause hyperinflation. However, a variation of this idea is coming back into fashion, with a new name – Modern Monetary Theory.

One reason for the resurgence of Modern Monetary Theory is that the rich world has seen very little inflation recently – Australian inflation has been below the 2 per cent to 3 per cent target range for years. Why worry about inflation when we haven’t seen it for so long?

According to a recent note from Oaktree investment co-chairman Howard Marks, this crisis could shove Modern Monetary Theory into the mainstream.

“Possibly without serious vetting and a conscious decision to adopt it, Modern Monetary Theory is here,” Mr Marks said in a recent note to clients. Of course, the people who like this idea say it has the risks of inflation covered off. Expect to hear more and more about this the higher the national debt goes.

SOURCE  





New Queensland rental law changes to protect 'mum and dad' investors

New rules to heavily protect tenants during the COVID-19 crisis will be altered to protect "mum and dad investors" after the original draft was heavily criticised by the real estate sector.

Queensland Housing Minister Mick de Brenni said revised guidelines would be published in the coming days although the prime objective was still to protect financially troubled tenants from eviction.

Despite the Prime Minister claiming lockdown may ease by mid-May, the Queensland Premier is cautious of interstate transmission and may introduce tougher border controls.

"We know for many of those mum and dad investors they are not rich, they are not wealthy, they have simply invested in a property for the family's future," he told reporters on Friday.

"Our guidelines protect that investment and ensure that there is a process for landlords and tenants to come together to reach a result where tenants simply can't pay the rent."

He said tenants could not simply say "I am not going to pay the rent" and that the JobKeeper and JobSeeker packages should provide enough income for tenants to meet their rental obligations.

A framework would be set up for landlords to reach an amicable solution in instances where tenants could not pay. "There will be compulsory conciliation ... which will include full disclosure of the financial situation of the tenant," Mr de Brenni said.

The Minister said there would be a moratorium on evictions and that virtual inspections would be available for landlords wanting to sell a property.

There was a fear the initial guidelines were too heavily weighted in a favour of tenants and could have led to a fire sale of investment properties, according to leading academics.

Under the initially proposed measures, tenants would have been able to ask for rent reductions without proving financial hardship, deny entry to properties and gain automatic six-month extensions on leases.

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland said the financial burden placed on landlords could stretch out to a year.

Griffith University Business School lecturer Dr Sacha Reid believes current and prospective housing market investors may look elsewhere to park their investment funds if tenants have too much power.

"(It) may force people into the stock market and out of property because there's more security in the stock market than the property market if all the rights are with the tenants," she added.

"If a tenant can demand a rent reduction with no capacity to repay that reduction, then why would you subsidise someone else's lifestyle when you can put it in the stock market and ride out the variations in that?"

University of Queensland Professor Shaun Bond said many households had investment properties to build retirement savings and any legislation that adversely impacted landlords had repercussions.

Yet, even if a landlord could evict a tenant struggling to make ends meet, they were still likely to struggle themselves to find a replacement tenant. "If you did have a tenant you wanted to evict, you are probably not going to be able to quickly find a new tenant anyway," Mr Bond said.

"People have to work out, do they sell or how much can they get through the next few months?

SOURCE  






Loss of international students set to blow $30b-$60b hole in economy

The Australian economy faces a projected hit of up to $60 billion within the next three years while international students are blocked from coming here due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The blow from each six-month intake of foreign students lost could equate to the hit the economy took when Australia lost its entire car manufacturing industry.

The country’s eight most prestigious universities face the largest loss of revenue, because of their greater intake of international students, but smaller and regional universities are also likely to suffer severe financial consequences that could force them to shed staff and cut back on courses.

Modelling by Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute projects that Australia’s university sector will lose between $10 billion and $19 billion between 2020 and 2023, depending on how quickly the nation’s borders are reopened to students.

A further $20 billion to $38 billion in wider benefits to the national economy would also be lost.

The overall projection could result in a hole in the economy of between $30 billion and $60 billion.

Mitchell Institute policy fellow Peter Hurley said each six-monthly intake of students missed due to travel restrictions would deliver an estimated economic blow equivalent to when Australia lost its entire car manufacturing industry.

“International university students are a pipeline, so if you miss a six-month intake it is revenue that is not going to be in the system for two to three years,” Mr Hurley said.

“It really is a worst-case scenario for universities.”

The revenue universities have drawn from international students increased by 137 per cent between 2008 and 2018, the institute’s report, Australian Investment in Education: Higher Education, states.

International university students spent $3.72 billion on fees in 2008 and $8.83 billion in 2018.

International student numbers grew 58 per cent in that time, meaning universities also increased their fees to international students.

“There are more of them and [universities] are charging them more,” Mr Hurley said of the sector's increasing reliance on international students.

Meanwhile, revenue from domestic students increased 43.2 per cent as student numbers grew 37.5 per cent, but without a comparable hike in tuition fees.

Victoria and NSW combined draw slightly more than two-thirds of total Australian revenue from international students, claiming $5.99 billion out of a sector-wide $8.76 billion in 2018.

Six universities made more than half of their student revenue from international students, including the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the University of Sydney, the University of NSW, the University of Queensland and Federation University in Ballarat.

Mr Hurley said the larger universities were in a healthy financial position before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and had resources to draw on during lean times.

Most smaller universities had less reliance on foreign students but also had less in reserve and would likely be forced to make tough decisions.

“They’re not going to go bust but they will have to cut costs – they will cut staff, they will cut courses,” Mr Hurley said.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Morrison government has guaranteed $18 billion in funding for universities' domestic education in 2020, pegging the support at expected student numbers before the hit to enrolments from the pandemic. Ordinarily, it would be revised down throughout the year if student numbers were lower than anticipated.

Universities have welcomed the government support but warned it does not address the "big hole" in revenue from the loss of international students.

International education providers have also been alarmed about long-term damage to Australia’s reputation after Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently said it was “time to go home” for foreign students and workers who couldn’t support themselves.

Education consultant Claire Field said the lack of support being shown to international students by the Australian government right now could also do lasting reputational damage to the university sector.

"Our approach is in sharp contrast to the UK, NZ and Canadian governments, all of whom are extending to international students the same support they’re providing their citizens," Ms Field said.

Ms Field said international student enrolments plummeted by 20 per cent 10 years ago following a spate of attacks on Indian students, which attracted overseas media focus.

"If Australia doesn’t provide financial assistance to international students who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus crisis I expect the damage to the sector to be far greater this time," she said.

SOURCE  






Fines and freedoms

When a learner driver is fined more than $1,650 for ‘non-essential travel’ by going for a driving lesson despite the general coronavirus lockdown, what lesson should we learn?

That the most important thing is not preventing the spread of coronavirus, it’s following the rules.

Eventually common sense prevailed, and the fine was dropped, but only after media pressure. After all, the driver was enclosed in a car with her mother: the chance of either contracting coronavirus or infecting others is indistinguishable from zero.

And the number of counter-common sense instances of police enforcement is growing.

The level of government intrusion into the lives of ordinary Australians that has occurred in the past three weeks would have been unbelievable just three weeks before that.

At a minimum, this situation should have required three things from government: serious and credible evidence that the limitations were necessary; extraordinary care in drafting legislation and police implementation to avoid overreach (ie not leaving it to individuals discretion); and clear and unambiguous signposts for when the restrictions will be lifted.

Arguably, not a single one of these things have been done. The second and third were clearly ignored in the rush to give power to police. The rate of new infections has now fallen below the level on 18 March, when the restrictions on large gatherings were announced — yet no end is in sight.

Obviously, this is a constantly evolving situation — and government may have more information than they are letting on — but how can we possibly accept a lack of transparency and detail in the face of such extreme measures?

The concern is that such measures are not actually justified at all medically, only politically. The fear, so potent a motivator at times like this, is not the enduring imposition of a police-state (as some seem to be claiming), but the permanent, partial, erosion of the expectation of individual liberty.

In the next crisis, which is unlikely to be a severe pandemic, people will be less resistant to the imposition of serious restrictions on their freedoms. History tells us such powers, once successfully asserted, will be used again.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

New coronavirus laws give police too much power

Laws restricting our movement introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have given police the opportunity to flex their muscles over the Easter holidays. They have fined hundreds of people so far for leaving their homes without "a reasonable excuse".

Public order legislation like this has long been criticised for the discriminatory way in which it is used against marginalised members of society - the indigent, the homeless, the young, and Indigenous Australians. These new laws are no exception, although normally law-abiding citizens are now also finding themselves under the police glare.

A key problem is that public order legislation like this often uses open-ended and vague terms to describe behaviour which creates an offence and allows police to act. That gives police broad and discretionary powers to decide what is against the law and what isn't.

Under the new public health directions in NSW, some activities are expressly defined to provide a “reasonable excuse” for leaving your house. But whether other activities provide a “reasonable excuse” is a matter left for the exercise of police discretion.

This is where the difficulty begins. The day after these restrictions were enacted, the authorities in NSW and Victoria publicly expressed contradictory views on whether they allowed a person to leave home to visit their boyfriend or girlfriend. (Victoria, quite properly, amended their restrictions to make it clear that this was allowed.) Whether a person commits an offence by visiting a loved one should not be left to the discretion of the Police Commissioner.

Indeed, the prominence given to the NSW Police Commissioner in relation to what is at heart a public health crisis is also perplexing.

His recent comments about the attempts by the NRL to restart competition surely stepped over the line between policing and policy. So did his strident condemnation of activity which is not, in fact, prohibited.

If golf is an allowable form of exercise then so too, surely, is surfing. There is no prohibition on walking through bushland, or swimming at a beach, or sitting on the grass in a park. Each of these activities can be undertaken consistently with leaving one’s place of residence for the permissible purpose of exercising, yet each of these activities has been the subject of public shaming and policing action.

The public shaming has undoubtedly inspired an element of “self-help”. One MP, Labor’s Liesl Tesch, took it upon herself to knock on a stranger’s door and inspect their licence to confirm they were a “local”. Others have used the new restrictions as a basis for more readily obtaining police attendance at what would otherwise be a mere complaint about noise.

That self-help may have also claimed a political scalp - it is far from obvious that former NSW Arts Minister Don Harwin breached any law by driving between one place of residence and another.

NSW Police have taken to providing regular updates about people who have been charged with offences or issued with penalty infringement notices. Interestingly, these are often accompanied by move-on directions. The descriptions of the offending behaviour provided by police do not establish a clear basis for the exercise of these powers.

It is too early to assess whether COVID-19-related penalty infringement notices are being issued disproportionately in socioeconomically disadvantaged parts of Sydney (despite the publicly-shamed behaviour occurring in more wealthy parts). But the descriptions provided by police forces throughout Australia already suggest that these new regulations have been frequently enforced against the homeless, the mentally unwell, and youth.

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic presents a challenge for public health regulation. Police enforcement necessarily accompanies that regulation. But for the public to have confidence in these restrictive measures, they need to be clearly defined.

Further, these measures need to be enforced in a way which is clearly directed towards protecting public health - and not as a proxy for public order. Public confidence in the justice system demands the same.

SOURCE  








When a mother accused parents of having “blood on their hands”, Samantha Maiden knew things had reached a new level of weird

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that the debate on schools, kids, and COVID-19 in Australia descended into complete hysteria.

One minute the kids in my suburb were enjoying a few weeks of sunshine after smoke blanketed the city and closed the highway out to the beach.

The next, the coronavirus appeared on the horizon and parents seemed to divide into warring camps of those who wanted kids to stay at school and those calling for shutdowns.

Personally, it was only when I read a Facebook post from a mother accusing parents who wanted to send kids to school of having “blood on their hands” that it was clear things had got pretty weird.

Parents all over Australia are dealing with home schooling kids, and not all are loving it. Picture: Jake Nowakowski
Parents all over Australia are dealing with home schooling kids, and not all are loving it. Picture: Jake NowakowskiSource:News Corp Australia

Another highlight - my 10-year-old son getting bailed up by a woman pushing a pram down at the local park and asked if he was in a “family group” with the other 10-year-old child at the basketball court. Unhappy with the answer, she started photographing them.

Like most Australians, my family supports the measures to introduce social distancing and close state and international borders. The border closures are vital and need to stay in place.

The debate over when to reduce restrictions around schools, however, is a minefield.

Many parents still believe that children are silent carriers of COVID-19 and schools are “petri dishes” with students infecting teachers.

Some parents and teachers are happy to keep schools closed indefinitely if it “saves lives”. But does it?

Some of the nation’s top scientific minds advising Australia’s COVID-19 response concede we simply don’t know yet if school closures have had a big impact at all.

But the early evidence here in Australia and China is that students are not big spreaders to adult teachers in school.

That’s why the argument “why can I teach a classroom of 30 kids but not go to a pub with adults?” is not a particularly good argument. It is different, according to the scientists who study the coronavirus.

For years politicians have been urged to listen to the science on climate change, but teachers and parents who don’t want to return to classrooms won’t listen to the experts on COVID-19 and schools.

The official medical advice has never changed: schools remain safe to stay open.

What changed is some states buckled under the pressure of parents and teachers’ unions to close schools.

Many parents took that as a message that schools are unsafe. They promptly voted with their feet and kept kids at home.

In some states, education ministers have proposed to re-open schools “when the health advice changes”, despite the fact it never advised to shut schools in the first place.

Around about the same time my son was getting bailed up by the basketball police in mid-March, the deputy chief medical officer Paul Kelly gave a very simple explanation about what we know about COVID-19 and kids.

“We know from where the virus has broken out, very few kids get the illness,’’ he said.

“Those that get the illness are mainly mild, they don’t appear to be transmitted between children – in fact, it’s more likely that children will get it from their own parents and other people in their households. And closing schools, we know, does cause a major disruption to society and to families.”

Just four days later, schools around the country started to effectively shut down.

The idea of a sensible middle way, where you allow at-risk teachers to work from home and extend the same choice to families, was sacrificed on the altar of panic and fear.

So, don’t be fooled by the soothing tones of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s love letter to the nation’s teachers this week in his Facebook video.

The message was blunt: If supermarket workers, truck drivers and hospital cleaners can fight COVID-19 for the minimum wage by simply doing their day jobs, why are teachers still working from home?

The Prime Minister’s message was designed to get parents to ask more questions about why schools are closed.

Respecting teachers’ amazing work educating children and making the switch to distance learning should not preclude parents from questioning politicians’ decision to close schools.

Despite claims essential workers can send children to school if necessary, many parents I have spoken to say teachers actively discourage this. Certainly, this was also my experience.

But the real risk of the current arrangements is not inconvenience for parents but lifelong consequences for disadvantaged teenagers.

On the eve of a recession, some will leave school without even finishing high school and never return.

Others will be trapped at home with parents who may be struggling with unemployment, depression and substance abuse. These kids have a right to an education. They are safer at school.

As feared, many grandparents are being called on to help with homeschooling, just as authorities feared.

Just like the brawls over toilet paper in supermarket aisles, this is a debate that has sometimes seemed more driven by fear, emotion, and anxiety than science.

If you don’t want to send your kids to school, you remain free not to. But families who want their kids to return to classrooms should be offered the same choice.

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Australia’s kangaroo courts

Bettina Arndt

Whilst here too public attention is also firmly on the pandemic, our own unfair system of adjudicating rape on campus remains firmly in place, despite the Queensland Supreme Court decision last November determining that universities have no jurisdiction to adjudicate sexual assault. At the time Education Minister Dan Tehan told the universities, through TEQSA, to leave such matters to the criminal courts.

As I am sure most of you know, I spent last year speaking on university campus drawing attention to these illegal courts – clearly with considerable success, given the ferocious orchestrated attack on me by End Rape on Campus activists following the award of my Australia Day honour.

Earlier in January I had recruited people to send a draft letter to universities across Australia asking a series of questions compiled by lawyers who are helping with this project, to try to ascertain each university’s status regarding regulations adjudicating sexual assault. See the draft letter here.

The answers from the universities ranged from arrogant, dismissive one-liners, to pages of long, obtuse gobbledegook. Our lawyers are working on compiling an overview document to sum up how the university sector is dealing with this issue.

With all our courts closed down at the moment, there’s no news yet on University of Queensland’s appeal of the Supreme Court decision. I’ll let you know when we hear more about that.

Bettina Arndt:  bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au






Calls for pointless lockdown restrictions to be lifted

The first lockdown restrictions that should be relaxed are the ones that “don’t make biological sense, Australian National University infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon says.

“Sitting on a bench by yourself, fishing by yourself, walking on a beach if it’s not crowded. Why do they matter?” he told news.com.au.

“These things protect people’s sanity when there are going to be restrictions for a long time.”

Australians are living under strict lockdown rules in some states but the Morrison Government has flagged restrictions could be eased in four weeks, once three things are in place.

Prof Collignon believes pubs will still be closed for a while but other activities that were low risk could be looked at.

“A lot of things we are doing are panic reactions from seeing on television what’s happening in New York or London, where they have lost control of the infection, rather than doing what they are doing in Korea, which is a similar nation to us” he said.

Once nonsensical restrictions were lifted, Prof Collignon believes the next step would be looking at restrictions in places like South Australia, which were less strict compared to states like Victoria.

If South Australia’s restrictions are working to control the virus, then other more strict controls may not be necessary.

South Australia doesn’t have a two-person limit on gatherings, and instead allows groups of up to 10 people to meet. It also doesn’t force people to stay home unless they have a good reason, such as exercising.

Despite this, it has managed to get its new infections down to very low numbers, or even zero new cases on some days.

Prof Collignon said the basic advice to keep 1.5 to 2 metres away from others, and for people to wash their hands regularly, seemed to make a lot of difference. “We know this works and people will keep doing this intuitively over time,” he said.

But others, such as allowing people to go to supermarkets but not let them go outside even if they were two metres apart, did not.

He said it was important that the rules made sense if people were expected to maintain social distancing measures for six months to two years.

“A lot of people will go stir crazy if they are locked inside their houses,” he said.

“We’ve got to work out what to do based on a nuanced approach rather than imposing what works in a place like Bondi Beach across the entire state.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked what restrictions could be eased first during an interview on 7.30 on Thursday night.

He said they would want to move on things like construction and manufacturing and those types of activity.

“Today we talked at National Cabinet in particular about things like infrastructure and how we can get some of those works moving,” he said.

He said there would also be opportunities in retail.

“I think what you’ll see is more people being able to work at work, that might be on a roster type basis. I mean, some of that is happening now already,” he said.

“But what we are looking to do, and schools also come into that ultimately, and what we’re looking to do is get the pace, get the churn, the activity in the economy moving back up.
“Because when that happens, then people’s jobs come back into play. Their incomes come back more strongly. And their reliance on the welfare system and the JobKeeper program will diminish over time.

“The way out of this is to get on top of the virus and to get people back into work and in their incomes. When we do that, we’re winning.”

SOURCE  





Property industry figures are questioning the NSW Government’s $440 million rental package that offers little help to one group of renters and some believe unfairly puts the burden onto landlords

Major property industry figures have raised questions about the NSW Government’s $440 million rent relief package announced this week.

While welcoming the clarity after weeks of speculation, some industry leaders believe the package does not solve the crisis.

The plan announced this week includes allocating $220 million to residential renters and landlords as well as an interim two-month moratorium that leads into a six-month ban on all evictions because of COVID-19.

The CEO of peak industry body REINSW, Tim McKibbin, said while the measures are a start, it fails to address many concerns such as passing the financial burden from tenants to landlords.

House for rent. Real estate sign. Front yard. No people.
An interim two-month moratorium on evictions is in place across the state. “The plan continues to expect a great deal of landlords to shoulder a significant amount of the burden,” he said.

Mr McKibbin said while the government was absolutely right to offer assistance to tenants, there is little protection for landlords, 80 per cent of whom are mum and dad investors with one investment property.

“What if the landlord loses their job or faces difficulties? These are questions that are not being asked at the moment,” he said.

“While they can take a mortgage holiday, in the end they are still going to be stuck with higher repayments once this is all over.”

Mr McKibbin said one of the biggest grey areas not addressed is the eligibility of share houses for assistance if only one party is affected.

“The policy does not state whether the whole household needs to meet the threshold or if only the individual needs to,” he said.

“There is also no clarity on if assistance would cover the entire household, even to those not affected by COVID-19, or if the one who lost their job is the only beneficiary.”

The Tenant’s Union of NSW welcomed a temporary stop on evictions, a requirement for landlords to engage in meaningful negotiations and greater advocacy support for tenants.

“This is an important announcement which gives people greater certainty about their living situation and their ability to stay home during the COVID-19 period,” said Leo Patterson Ross, CEO of the Tenants’ Union.

Mr Patterson Ross said it was important the proposal provides a comprehensive moratorium and rent relief package that does not open up loopholes.

Ray White managing director Dan White said there needs to be a clear and efficient process for both tenant and landlord to prove hardship from COVID-19.

“As an industry we think we can play a role in helping all parties achieve this,” he said.

Mr White said a concern surrounding vulnerable tenancies was that insurers were yet to clarify if landlord insurance covers epidemics such as COVID-19.

“Landlord insurance providers are all currently advising that a termination process should be stringently followed by managing agents to ensure a future rent default claim will be upheld in the landlord’s favour,” he said.

The Ray White managing director said it was their position that tenants who do not have the ability to meet the financial commitment of their rent because of COVID-19 should have the right to terminate their lease without penalty.

SOURCE
  
 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Coronavirus Australia: Infection rate continues to decline as Australia ponders ‘exit strategy’

Australia now has 6,449 coronavirus cases.

That’s an increase of only 39 in the past 24 hours - with four states or territories registering no new cases.

The only state to register double-digit instances of new infections was New South Wales.

However, there was a 63rd death - another Ruby Princess passenger who died in Canberra.

In the past 24 hours, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory all registered no new cases.

Victoria recorded only eight, Tasmania registered only four and Queensland and Western Australia reported five apiece.

New South Wales was the only state with a double-digit number of new cases with 16.

It comes amid a testing blitz, with several states softening the criteria to ensure more people are tested.

In Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, anyone showing symptoms can request a coronavirus test from their GP.

A woman in her 60s died, becoming the 19th fatality linked to the Ruby Princess debacle.

National Cabinet will meet again on Thursday. It’s expected they will discuss Australia’s exit strategy from the pandemic as the number of cases continues to drop.

State and territory health officials have indicated it would take prolonged proof that the curve was flattening before restrictions would lift.

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Western Australia considering lifting its coronavirus restrictions within weeks

An Australian state is considering lifting its coronavirus restrictions within weeks and allow social gatherings, schools and businesses to go back to normal.

There are 532 COVID-19 cases in Western Australia -  the second lowest out of the mainland states - and the number of infections grew by only five cases on Wednesday.

Premier Mark McGowan said the state had not just flattened the curve of coronavirus cases but 'driven it down to being nearly non-existent'. 

'We've got to work out how we get our economy back up,' Mr McGowan said.

Despite the low number of cases in the state compared with more populous parts of the country, WA has some of the most draconian laws in Australia - including heavy fines for going between nine designated regions without an essential reason.

Mr McGowan said the state's infection rate was extremely low by world standards, reiterating any potential plans to tweak restrictions should not be expected until May.

'It is like playing a game of chess,' he said. 'You're just constantly looking at what the angles are, what the options are, what the potential pitfalls are.' 'But it's a very serious game of chess because people's health is at risk.'

A series of legislative measures have been put before state parliament to support the economy and community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr McGowan told parliament efforts were already underway to manage WA's economic recovery, with Public Sector Commissioner Sharyn O'Neill appointed state recovery controller. 

Curtin University epidemiologist and pro-vice chancellor of health sciences Archie Clements believes WA is well-placed to begin loosening restrictions.

'Most of the cases can be directly traced to a known source so it doesn't look like there's much going on by the way of undetected community transmission,' Professor Clements said.

'All in all, we've probably avoided the worst of the epidemic and I think with the current numbers it's likely that the epidemic will peter out in WA.'

The government wants a sustained period of low transmission and has made clear the hard border closures will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Professor Clements predicts a phased approach where the lowest-risk activities are relaxed first.

'That will be things like rather than having businesses closed, they might reopen things like restaurants but with a lower density of patrons,' he said.

'They might allow small community events to take place. And then I think it will be allowing things like schools to go back, and I'm hoping that will be sooner rather than later.

Teachers are still concerned though about how schools will function safely in term two.

There are 33 patients in Perth hospitals, including 11 in intensive care.

A decision on education will be made after the national cabinet meeting on Thursday, with WA public schools scheduled to begin term two on April 29.

But State School Teachers Union of WA president Pat Byrne said members remained concerned they did not have access to personal protective equipment like health workers.

'There's no question that the best form of learning is in the classroom,' she told reporters on Wednesday. 'What the dilemma for us is, is how to put that consideration against the consideration of safety and health for both the students and the adults who work in a school.

'We've already seen some teachers walking off the job. Very small numbers, but we have seen it.'

Health minister Roger Cook said he was 'fairly comfortable' with schools opening for term two.

'I think there's a lot of anxiety in the community and obviously we're very cognisant of that,' he told reporters.

Premier Mark McGowan agreed face-to-face schooling was best and he did not want to see children educated from home for the rest of the year, but refused to pre-empt the outcome of the cabinet meeting.

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Coronavirus Australia: Mass exodus of older teachers and pregnant women likely to be enforced

A mass exodus of older teachers aged over 60 and pregnant women from the nation’s schools is likely to be enforced for the next six months under a back-to-school plan being considered by political leaders.

As the national cabinet meets today to consider a battle plan to make schools safer for teachers, the Prime Minister has ramped up his call for teachers to return to the classroom.

But the push will come with some conditions, including guarantees that at-risk teachers can work from home, free COVID-19 tests for educators, more soap and hand sanitiser and a phased return to classes.

The ban on at-risk teachers may include pregnant women, over 60s and even teachers aged over 50 with asthma and heart disease, who will be encouraged to work from home.

But it could also spark teacher shortages with up to one in five teachers likely to be in an at-risk category.

Federal and state officials have told news.com.au mandatory temperature checks had not been proposed in official health advice to national cabinet.

Futuristic handheld scanners were deployed across Singapore in recent months allowing for contact-free temperature checks in schools and for classes to remain open.

That prompted calls for similar checks in Australia. But officials don’t believe it’s an option here. One reason is that young children’s temperature can often spike when dropped off by parents and childcare and preschool.

“It is fraught. Only non-contact laser type thermometers would even be considered from a health perspective and finding more than 2000 for every school in Queensland would be a challenge,’’ Queensland Teachers Union president Kevin Bates said.

“Singapore was checking every child and have still had to move to close schools as infection rates got out of control. Many of our members would like it but we would probably prefer to rely on parents monitoring their children’s health and not sending their children to school if unwell.”

After cases spiked again this month, Singapore has now joined Australia in effectively closing schools.

Mr Bates said teachers remained frustrated with the mixed messages that large gatherings were safe for schools but not for adults who were banned from eating in restaurants and pubs.

“What we have heard over and over again is that kids don’t give it to other kids and that’s great. But what about teachers?’’ he said.

“Our concern is that schools could become hot spots for the spread of the disease.”

When school returns on Monday in Queensland, COVID-19 safety rules will require a ratio of just 12 students to each teacher to allow for social distancing.

But Victoria is standing firm that it will not consider any return to classes until at least July 12.

“My advice to the Victorian Government was and continues to be that to slow the spread of coronavirus, schools should undertake remote learning for term two,’’ Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said.

“This is because having around a million children and their parents in closer contact with each other, teachers and other support staff has the potential to increase cases of coronavirus not just in schools but across the community.

“Schools are not ‘dangerous places’ and parents should feel comfortable sending their kids to school – if they need to. But the mix of onsite and off-site learning supports better physical distancing overall, reducing risk as we drive new cases down. As risk changes, we’ll reassess.”

Teachers and parents remain sharply divided over whether it is safe to return children to classrooms.

According to a news.com.au survey with more than 40,000 respondents, 44 per cent of parents believed it was safe to return to school while 56 per cent disagreed.

Scott Morrison revealed this week he would send his two daughters Abigail and Lily back to school in a “heartbeat” if they were going to be taught by teachers, complaining the distance learning model was “childminding”, not education.

The Prime Minister’s daughters have relocated with his wife Jenny to live the Lodge in Canberra during the COVID-19 crisis so he can attend daily briefings with heath officials and staff.

But the PM said he would not send his kids back to their Sydney private school until it went beyond “looking at a screen”.

“I kept my kids in school till the last week because they weren’t getting taught in school in that last week, they were looking at a screen. That’s not teaching; that’s child minding,” he told 6PR radio.

“It isn’t just about that kids can go along and sit in a hall and be minded; we want them to get educated.

“We’re on school holidays in NSW so the kids are at home but I’d have them back in a heartbeat if they were getting taught at school. At the moment we’re lucky they can have a learning environment at home.”

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Beyond the church: How Australia's sacred spaces are evolving

Whatever ties we have to faith, churches remain a part of Australian life and community.

Religion historian and University of Sydney professor Carole Cusack, said it was in the 19th century that churches began popping up everywhere.

"Once the transportation of convicts became less and people came as free settlers to a land of opportunity, there was a massive burst of church building," Dr Cusack said.

Fast-forward to the era of the Beatles and some started to disappear.

"There has been considerable decline in church attendance since about 1960 and a lot of churches have become redundant," Dr Cusack said.

"They get deconsecrated. They're made into different things."

While the decision to buy and reinvent a church space might be a no-brainer to some, Dr Cusack said others were less sure.

"People have mixed feelings about that sort of thing. They think that that's kind of a profane destiny for a building that was intended as sacred."

So how do investors and business owners feel about occupying these spaces without putting on a Sunday service?

Cafes, studios and dance practice

When real-estate photographer Adrian Gale photographed Naracoorte's Church of Christ he had no idea he would buy it a year later. While in love with its natural lighting and ancient walls, something more urged his interest. "I just love the story of it," Mr Gale said

The church was built in 1906. When the congregation outgrew the small hall, they built a kids' ministry and supper hall on the back. When they outgrew that, they moved.

The building has been a practice room for the town band, a Seventh Day Adventist Church and a funeral business.

"Most Naracoorte people have probably been to a funeral there in the past 20 years," Mr Gale said.

As well as his photography base, Mr Gale lends the space to other community events like yoga, baby showers and wedding ceremonies — something he feels is his responsibility.

"Churches themselves in history have been so involved in supporting communities and being a part of communities," he said.

"We're able to keep a space in the community in a whole different way."  It is a feeling that is also felt 50 kilometres down the road at Erica Bowen's restaurant in Penola.   For Ms Bowen and her husband, the Methodist church they made into a home for their business had "a good feel about it".

Like Mr Gale, she has familiarised herself with the church's history — information that has not gone to waste.  She said the couple were often asked about the building's origins. Then there are the people that know the space well, like the Irish dancers that used to practise there.

"People come with their own stories on top of what we are … which is pretty cool," Ms Bowen said. "Breathing life into something that's old to make it new again always has a good story to it."

Mr Gale explained the opportunity as one of stewardship, not ownership. "When a building's 110 years old ,you don't really own a building like that, you're more a steward of it for the season that you own it," Mr Gale said.

SOURCE 



 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here

Pell injustice shows why we need to restore fairness to the law

The unanimous decision of the High Court quashing George Pell’s convictions was the end of the matter for Australia’s most ­famous Catholic priest. But to understand the dreadful state of justice inside our courts, you need to go back to where this courtroom drama started.

The decision by the primary judge preventing Pell’s legal team from using psychological evidence about the credibility of the complainant points to a much deeper dilemma about how the accused can defend themselves from allegations of sexual assault in 2020.

Pell had the wherewithal and the resources to pursue his wrongful conviction to the country’s highest court. But spare a thought for others in jail today who may have faced what Pell did, and are not so well-equipped to appeal to the High Court. It is likely Pell is the tip of the iceberg.

My colleague, Chris Merritt, ­deserves praise for exposing this ­little-known and devastating weakness at the heart of the Pell prosecution. Last September, Merritt revealed for the first time that Pell’s accuser had suffered long periods of psychological problems requiring treatment. But Victoria’s Evidence Act meant that not only were Pell’s lawyers unable to access details of those psychological issues and treatment, but the jury could not be made aware of them, or even the fact Pell’s lawyers asked for them. The public was also in the dark about this until Merritt’s careful reading of Pell’s application for special leave to the High Court.

It is high time that more of us understand how the legal system, not just in Victoria, has become dangerously skewed against defendants in sexual assault cases. It stems from well-intentioned but ill-considered amendments to evidence laws in 2006. In an attempt to ease the undoubted stress and pain caused to complainants of sexual assault from being cross-examined on their past psychological history, section 32D of the Victorian Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act makes it almost impossible for a defendant to gain access to a complainant’s psychological records or bring evidence of those issues to a jury.

The section sets up an impossible circular threshold: without having access to the relevant evidence, defendants must convince a judge that they cannot properly defend themselves without putting the psychological evidence to the jury.

There is, undoubtedly, a need for sensible, measured steps to ­address the fact sexual assault is under-reported, and the court process is traumatic for its victims. But when these cases are often contests of credibility, it is neither ­sensible nor measured to strip a defendant of the ability to adduce relevant psychological evidence in that contest.

Pell’s legal team had one hand tied behind its back from the start. This was compounded by the flawed judicial method adopted by Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Court of Appeal president Chris Maxwell. Without the benefit of seeing and listening to the complainant give evidence at trial, the majority decided that he was a truthful witness, that he was not a liar or a fantasist.

The majority’s reliance solely on the complainant’s credibility to uphold the jury’s verdict against Pell delivered a double whammy — it meant Pell faced a reverse onus to prove to the jury that the complainant was lying, but Pell could not satisfy that reverse onus by tendering psychological evidence about the complainant that may have helped to prove that.

The majority’s arrogance was breathtaking because they knew about the complainant’s history of psychological treatment but didn’t mention it in their decision to ­uphold Pell’s conviction. Indeed, their approach was so simplistic as to be reckless: by relying exclusively on the credibility of the ­complainant, they effectively discharged themselves from having to carefully consider all of the other evidence that raised reasonable doubts as to whether the ­alleged sexual assaults could have occurred.

Human nature is fallible. Alleged victims do lie. In the ACT last year, Sarah-Jane Parkinson was sentenced to more than three years’ jail on charges of making a false allegation of rape against her former husband. Studies show that witnesses can also unconsciously lie, genuinely believing something to be true even if it is not. Alleged victims might also be co-opted by others for a cause. Some or all of that may have happened in the Pell case.

Yet ill-considered sections in Victoria’s Evidence Act, that prevent the tendering of psychological evidence, have cemented into law the dangerous tenor of our times. When zealots in the #MeToo movement and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews say that they believe all victims, they knowingly chip away at a court system that is based on evidence, the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof and due process. Just straight to conviction and jail, then?

Injustice has been legislated into the NSW legal system too. In a recent case, a trial judge was forced, by NSW evidence laws, to exclude a woman’s proven history of making false sexual assault claims. Despite the trial judge pleading for these brutally unfair laws to be reformed, the NSW ­Berejiklian government has done nothing.

While we wait for the outcome of the defendant’s appeal of the trial judge’s decision, which was heard last week, we are left with the dreadful likelihood that other defendants have been wrongly accused, tried and found guilty where alleged victims have told lies about alleged sexual assaults for revenge or simply because they were suffering from delusions or confusion arising from psychological conditions.

This is what happens when, with the best of intentions, we depart from first principles. In his 1760 Commentaries on the Law in England, the great common law scholar William Blackstone stated the principle that our legal system is founded on: “It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent person suffer.”

Some misguided souls might say that Blackstone’s ratio is a get-out-of-jail card for rapists; that it needs to be reversed or restrained to deliver victims justice. In other words, the Blackstone 2020 Victorian edition should read “it is better that an innocent man be punished than a complainant have his or her credibility challenged”.

The #MeToo advocates tell us that men have been getting away with sexual assault for years. That is correct. Some say it is about time the tables were turned. That is wrong. While the desire for revenge is understandable — particularly among those who have suffered greatly — it surely cannot become a new organising principle on which society, and our legal system, is based.

Even for those whose motivating principle is more noble, wanting to bring an end to sexual assault, unbalanced and unfair rules of evidence are not the right way to get there. Substituting one form of injustice for another is not justice, and it is not noble. Once you allow systematic injustice in sexual assault cases, on the ground that Blackstone’s maxim is outdated, where do you stop? Which group of defendants will next be deprived of the means of defending themselves because their alleged crime is under-reported and needs to be reined in?

Who will next be deemed unworthy of basic principles that underpin our legal system? As ­Pell’s case shows, there, but for the grace of God, go I.

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Coronavirus school closures: Scott Morrison issues direct plea to teachers to return to classroom

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has issued a direct plea to teachers to return to the classroom and join the “great heroes” of Australia including cleaners, supermarket workers, nurses and paramedics who are fighting COVID-19 simply by doing their jobs.

Warning parents the education of the nation’s children was “hanging in the balance”, he urged principals and teachers’ unions to hold talks on how classrooms could be made safe.

But he could be picking a major fight with unions despite his message of admiration for teachers, because many educators insist it is not fair to put them on the frontline of the COVID-19 crisis.

In a televised message to parents and teachers, the Prime Minister has urged schools to work towards a return to face-to-face classes.

“As we confront these crises our nation currently faces, the health crisis of the virus, the economic crisis of the impact it is having on people’s livelihoods, there are people doing just amazing jobs, great heroes,’’ he said.

“Of course, in our health care system, our nurses and our doctors, our pathologists, the paramedics, right across the board, the cleaners in our hospitals all doing incredible work and we thank them for it.

“But there’s another group I want to talk about today, and that is our teachers. I want teachers to know from me, both as a parent and as a prime minister, just how appreciated you are and how important the job is that you’re doing right now and how much you are needed.”

But Mr Morrison added it was vital children did not become the silent victims of the COVID-19 crisis because they were denied an education.

“And at this time, as our nation fights this coronavirus, your role has become even more important. Your students and their families are relying on you more than ever. The education of our children hangs in the balance,’’ he said.

“During these times, many students will continue distance learning. It’s a choice that they may have, some more than others. But we know for some families and students this won’t be possible. And their education, what they learn, is at great risk of suffering this year. This will particularly be the case for families who are disadvantaged and on lower incomes.”

This week, infectious disease expert Professor Peter Collignon told news.com.au that teachers faced a greater COVID-19 risk from a supermarket than classrooms and urged teachers to return to classrooms with conditions, including excluding teachers over the age of 60 and pregnant women.

But a patchwork of arrangements has emerged with some states returning to school faster than other jurisdictions.

Political leaders in NSW and Victoria privately concede fears teachers would strike if they kept schools open were a major trigger for the decision to defy the medical advice that schools should remain open.

Despite a majority of states including NSW, Victoria and Queensland moving to distance learning, the Prime Minister has never wavered in his insistence that the medical advice maintains it is safe for schools to remain open.

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Australia's private health funds could reap windfall from coronavirus – report

Private health insurance funds stand to reap a windfall of between $3.5bn and $5.5bn due to a dramatic fall in elective surgery and other medical procedures during the coronavirus crisis, according to new research from the Australia Institute thinktank.

Health expert Roy Harvey said if the funds failed to pass on the dramatic fall in costs to customers, more people will flee a private health insurance system that is already in a death spiral.

Harvey, who worked with Australia Institute research director Rod Campbell on the report, said that if premiums were cut in line with services the federal government would also save $1bn to $1.5bn a year in subsidies.

The Australia Institute paper, “Private eyes ..., hips, etc”, models the effect on the funds if benefits paid to members drop by between 30% and 50% during a six-month period.

Factors taken into account include health minister Greg Hunt’s decision last week to pay at least $1.3bn to private hospitals to take over beds potentially needed to accommodate Covid-19 victims, and sweeping bans on dental services introduced by dentists.

Harvey said that many funds have abandoned premium hikes that were planned for this month, but this was not enough.

“They’ve been saying we won’t put through the 4% increase that they’re allowed to do in April, but if they say, ‘Oh, we’ll give you a 40% discount’, people might stay.

“If they keep their rates unchanged, people will leave in droves.”

The coronavirus pandemic has hit a private health industry that experts say was already in a “death spiral” because young people, who get relatively little from the product, have quit paying premiums.

This has left the funds with a membership increasingly weighted towards older people, who typically require more expensive medical procedures.

The escalating financial instability of the industry led the regulator to warn in February that only three will be viable in two years unless urgent action is taken.

“It sounds as if you’re not talking about a viable system or a product people want to buy,” Harvey said.

“The thing is unsustainable, it’s undermining the public hospital principle of equity and allowing doctors to charge fees that take people out of the public hospitals.”

He said it was hard to estimate the impact of the pandemic on private health using publicly available figures, but the $3.5bn to $5.5bn range was a good starting point.

“I think any detailed study would come up with figures that are in the range,” he said.

“Other people can say, ‘Oh, I think it’s this or that’, but it’s really to get a discussion started.

“The Productivity Commission could sort this out in less than a week in terms of getting good estimates.”

He said the funds should be held accountable for their windfall and money saved by the government could be used to fund other things, such as domestic violence services, that are needed during the pandemic.

“The savings to the commonwealth alone could be one to one and a half billion [dollars] – one and a half billion used to be a lot of money once,” he said.

Campbell said the insurers looked set to trouser their windfall billions.

“Insurers claim to be supporting their members through the crisis by delaying premium increases, but they should be passing on these significant savings to households,” he said.

“If the commonwealth does not ensure savings are passed on to customers, it will be one of the most egregious subsidies ever given to an industry already infamous for receiving handouts.”

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Palliative care

There is suddenly a lot of panic over the number of ventilators available in Australia. Likely provoked by headlines around the world proclaiming there are not enough. But is this really the only thing we need to be worrying about?

It may be that people who ‘miss out’ on a ventilator would not have benefited from it — or may not have wanted it in the first place.

The overwhelming focus on the number of ventilators provokes fear as it conjures images of the frail and elderly being forgotten and forced to die alone.

But it doesn’t have to be like this if we ensure national availability of palliative care and advance care planning.

Last week the median age of the Australians who died from COVID-19 was 81 years. A Chinese study has shown that older age is the greatest risk factor for developing respiratory failure and death. Nearly half of the patients who died in Italy had three or more comorbidities, such as hypertension and diabetes. Generally speaking, those who are most effected by COVID-19 also seem to be those who would be the least likely to survive an ICU admission for any reason.

Facing an extraordinary humanitarian and resource crisis, Italian doctors spoke out about rejecting people from ICU based on “potential survival”. Another has said “[Who lives and who dies] is decided by age and by the [patient’s] health conditions. This is how it is in a war.”

These solemn declarations give the impression that those deemed ‘unworthy’ will be left uncared for. It implies that we cannot do everything for everyone and so must do nothing for others.

But this is wrong. Too often doctors speak of there being “nothing left to do” but there is always the opportunity to relieve suffering. We must ensure that palliative care is available for those Australians who would not benefit from a ventilator or who do not wish to be ventilated. Palliative care is well equipped to treat these patients.

Nonetheless, in the best of times, let along during a pandemic, palliative medicine is easily overlooked. Unbelievably, Australians over 80 years of age, dying from non-malignant disease, such as respiratory failure, are currently the least likely to receive palliative care — partly due to a lack of referral.

But it is not just the medical fraternity who need reminding about palliative care.

There has never been a more pertinent time for all Australians to consider what type of medical care they are — and are not — willing to endure.

Many self-actualised 80-year-olds view pneumonia as “an old friend” and upon its arrival entrust me to ensure their dignity and not send them to the cold clinical ICU to suffer a drawn out death. This is an advance care directive.

In an Australian audit of 2,285 patients over 65 years of age, across six states and territories, less than 30% had an advance care directive indicating a person’s preference for care. Even in aged care facilities, less than 50% of residents have a care directive indicating whether, for example — they want to be transferred to the emergency department, be resuscitated or what consequences of medical treatment they would consider unbearable. This is despite evidence demonstrating that advance care directives promote autonomy.

If we don’t ask, we won’t know how people wish to be cared for if their lives are threatened.

The current lack of integrated access to palliative care and responsible advance care planning is something we need to be worrying about. Many older Australians will forgo a ventilator but we will only know this if we ask and if we reassure them that they will always be cared for — ventilated or not.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here