Labor party already feeling heat over its emissions-reduction strategy

To meet the climate change promise that Labor took to the federal election, the Albanese government must boost renewable energy to 82 per cent of supply by 2030, put a carbon-trading scheme on big business and spend billions on infrastructure and new technologies.

But before the final numbers are even counted, the ALP is under pressure to do more.

The Greens have demanded tougher action to win their support in the Senate, and conservation and investor groups have been quick to insist that Labor lifts its target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.

Labor’s policy for the election would cost $75bn by 2030, equal to 3 per cent of GDP. Billions of dollars will be spent upgrading electricity networks, electric vehicles will be given special tax ­advantages, and a new $15bn ­National Reconstruction Fund will provide finance and investment for renewables and other low-emissions technologies.

The centrepiece of Labor’s plan is a revised safeguards mechanism which would become a cap-and-trade carbon market for the nation’s biggest emissions industries. A new body would decide which major companies were forced to cut their emissions, with the total amount of emissions ­allowed across the economy to be reduced each year.

Offsetting emissions is expected to spawn a range of new industries in the agriculture and land care sectors.

Modelling for Labor before the election estimated its climate change policies would result in lower electricity prices for consumers and thousands of new jobs. But it did not calculate the inflationary impact of forcing businesses outside of the electricity sector to act.

Labor’s plan was more ambitious than the Coalition policy of cuts of 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 but below the demands of the teal independents for a 60 per cent cut and the Greens demand of net zero by 2035.

Mr Albanese has said his government would legislate the new target. But to get the changes through parliament it must win support in the Senate from either the Greens or Coalition senators.

“Labor’s goal to have 82 per cent of our electricity generated by renewables by 2030 is a step in the right direction, but the new government must reconsider its position on new coal and gas projects”, Ms O’Shanassy added.

The Investor Group on Climate Change said the election outcome offered an opportunity to reset and align Australia’s economic policies with climate goals.

The group said stronger Paris-aligned 2030 targets were needed to unlock $131bn in investment in clean industries and new jobs across the economy by the end of the decade.

Mr Albanese has made climate change a defining policy for his government. He has pledged to raise it with the leaders of the US, Japan and India at the Quad meeting in Tokyo this week.

To signal its new approach, Labor will seek to host a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

This year’s meeting will be held in Egypt where a decision will be made on the venue for 2023.

Labor’s commitment to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 is broadly in line with the pledges of other major countries.

To meet the target, emissions will need to fall to 351 million metric tonnes, or “Mt”, in 2030 in Paris budget accounting terms.

The ALP policy is projected to set Australia on a net-zero pathway by 2030, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 in line with the Paris Agreement.

For this to happen, renewable energy penetration will need to grow to 82 per cent by 2030 compared to 68 per cent under business as usual.

The worst thing for the Liberal and National parties going forward would be to engage in another round of climate…
The Labor government has signalled $24bn in public investment to be matched by $51bn in private sector investment. During the election campaign, Labor said annual average electricity bills were projected to be $275 lower by 2025 and $378 lower by 2030.

The safeguards mechanism carbon trading scheme will be applied to facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2e per year across a range of sectors, including mining, oil and gas extraction, manufacturing, transport, and waste.

Labor modelled its policy on recommendations by the Business Council of Australia for emission baselines to be reduced gradually over time. Peak business groups have argued this would be in line with commitments already made by corporations to be carbon neutral by 2050. Businesses will be able to offset their emissions through internal abatement or external offsets from Australia’s carbon farming sector.

Industry will be given flexibility to discover low-cost abatement opportunities and invest in long-term emissions reduction technologies.

According to modelling published by the ALP, emissions covered by the safeguard mechanism have grown 7 per cent since its commencement in July 2016, rising to 140 Mt of CO2e in 2020-21 to be 17 per cent above 2005 levels, or just over one-quarter (28 per cent) of national emissions.

Without action, big companies were projected to overtake the electricity sector as Australia’s largest emitting policy segment in the early 2020s.

Labor said improvements to the Safeguard Mechanism were projected to deliver 213 Mt of GHG emissions reductions by 2030.

It said investment in industry abatement was estimated to create 1600 jobs by 2030, with five out of six of these jobs to be created in regional areas.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/labor-already-feeling-heat-over-its-emissionsreduction-strategy/news-story/73e76b920fa180d5f935c45adfecec31

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Incoming Indigenous Labor MP calls Greens a bigger threat to a Voice to parliament than Coalition

The incoming Indigenous MP for Australia’s red centre says the Greens are a bigger threat to the voice to parliament than the ­Coalition, as the left-wing party pushes a treaty between the government and Aboriginal people before any ­national Indigenous body.

Greens leader Adam Bandt on Monday dug in on the party’s ­official position that a $250m truth commission and a treaty process were higher priorities than Labor’s promised referendum on an Indigenous voice.

Tiwi woman Marion Scrymgour, Labor’s likely victor in the knife-edge count for the seat of Lingiari, said she believed the greatest threat to constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians did not come from the right but from the hard left.

“I’m not so much worried about the Liberals; it’s more the Greens,” she said. “While they say they are friends of Indigenous people, they’re not really because they just want to run their outrageous agendas all the time.”

The Greens were the first party to fully endorse the Uluru statement and its call for a voice in 2017 but they changed their policy after Uluru detractor Lidia Thorpe joined their ranks as a senator in 2020. Senator Thorpe was among activists at the time of the summit who walked out over the voice proposal, arguing a treaty should be top priority.

While Mr Bandt has previously said the Greens would not block a referendum, he has confirmed the party wants progress on a truth commission and a treaty in this term of parliament. “They are important things that we think we can get done during this parliament,” he said.

Incoming Alice Springs Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said the Greens were hopelessly out of touch with ­Indigenous issues in regional Australia.

“The extremism, the radicalism of the Greens, it’s very concerning,” she said. “The Greens might want to look back with truth hearings but there are things happening right now that are far more urgent like the safety of women and children in regional communities.”

Incoming Indigenous Australians minister Linda Burney said on Monday that the new government supported a treaty but it would take time. “Treaties are complex. We need to look at the states and ­territories that already have ­treaty processes under way and look at the structures in place, the architecture,” she said. Competing priorities in Indigenous ­affairs in the new parliament have emerged as a record number of Indigenous Australians prepare to become MPs.

Counting from Saturday’s election continued on Monday but Australians have voted nine and possibly 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people into federal parliament.

Ms Nampijinpa Price described the new Albanese government’s proposed referendum on the Indigenous voice as “a distraction” from the pressing issues ­facing Aboriginal people in ­remote communities.

The outspoken Warlpiri-Celtic woman said she would lobby Labor to keep the cashless debit card – a measure she sees as “a protective blanket for marginalised people” – and to block the reintroduction of alcohol into Northern Territory homelands.

Ms Nampijinpa Price said she hoped that Labor’s Indigenous MP in the NT, Malindirri McCarthy, and Ms Scrymgour – if she was elected – could work together on the issues affecting Indigenous women and children in the Territory, such as domestic violence.

Existing Indigenous senators include Pat Dodson from Labor, and independent Jacqui Lambie from Tasmania. The Greens’ two Indigenous senators – Ms Thorpe and Dorinda Cox – were also returned.

Ms Burney did not comment ­directly on the Greens’ urgent ­demand for progress towards truth-telling and treaty. However, she confirmed the truth-telling process that she planned would involve local governments and would not take the form of court-style hearings.

Ms Burney’s priority was to consult all Australians about the Indigenous voice, its role and the question they would be asked in the referendum. She said it was important ­people knew the Uluru statement called for an advisory body to the parliament on issues directly ­affecting Indigenous ­people.

“People need to be clear what they are voting for and need to be clear on the role of the voice,” Ms Burney said. “Uluru was absolutely clear … the voice is modest, it is generous and it does not have veto rights that would usurp parliament.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/incoming-indigenous-labor-mp-calls-greens-a-bigger-threat-to-a-voice-to-parliament-than-coalition/news-story/6028697104d58c490253d2295a0cb881

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Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn, who posted anti-abortion comments, expelled from party

The Victorian Liberals have voted to expel controversial MP Bernie Finn from the party.

The upper house MP has been a Liberal politician for nearly four decades, but has caused outrage within the party after a series of inflammatory social media posts.

Victorian Liberal Party leader Matthew Guy said the vote was not about the party "naval gazing from the federal election" but "being a sensible alternative government".

"It is disappointing that it has come to this, but I expect discipline from all members of the parliamentary party and I expect people to uphold respectful discourse," he said.

Speaking outside Victoria's Parliament House after the motion, Mr Finn said he originally joined the Liberal Party because "it was the party of freedom".

"What we have seen today is a statement from the leader of our party that the party I joined over 41 years ago is dead," he said. "The party of Menzies and Howard is no more — not in Victoria. "I will continue to fight, not just in this parliament, but in the next parliament as well."

Earlier this month, Mr Finn posted on Facebook that he was "praying" for abortion to be banned in Victoria, including for rape victims.

"So excited the US is on the verge of a major breakthrough to civilisation. Praying it will come here soon. Killing babies is criminal," he posted.

Mr Finn was referring to a leaked draft opinion from the United States Supreme Court that indicated the Roe v Wade decision, which makes abortion a constitutional right, could be overturned.

In response to a comment saying abortion should be available for those who have experienced sexual assault, Mr Finn commented that "babies should not be killed for the crime of his or her parent".

The comments caused fury within the Victorian Liberals, and Mr Finn resigned as party whip following the posts.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-24/controversial-mp-bernie-finn-expelled-from-victorian-liberals/101093478

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Voluntary assisted dying legalised in NSW

Terminally ill people in NSW will now be able to choose the timing of their death after a historic vote in state parliament legalised voluntary assisted dying.

Five years after it was first debated in parliament, NSW on Thursday became the final state in Australia to introduce assisted dying laws.

Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich introduced the bill to parliament late last year, with Coalition and Labor MPs granted a free vote.

Greenwich told parliament that the “entire diversity” of the parliament were involved in passing the bill, with 28 co-sponsors from across all parties - the highest number of any bill in Australian parliamentary history.

However, an opponent of the bill, Finance Minister Damien Tudehope, told the upper house that it was a “dark day” for NSW as it joined the rest of the country in accepting assisted dying laws. “It was a sad day because it was an opportunity for NSW to say ‘we can be better than this’,” Tudehope said.

Tudehope said the decision of the NSW parliament would be judged by history as a “dreadful mistake”.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/voluntary-assisted-dying-legalised-in-nsw-20220519-p5amo0.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Some refreshing realism from Jim Chalmers

He has in fact inherited a poison chalice. Unwinding inflation is always painful. Unless he is very lucky he will fail so badly that it will detonate the already shaky support (32.8 per cent of the primary vote) for the ALP government and return the conservatives to power after just one term

Australia’s next Treasurer Jim Chalmers said he felt a sense of responsibility with the nation facing “dire economic challenges”.

“This will be the trickiest conditions an incoming treasury has inherited since World War II,” Mr Chalmers said from his Logan home.

“Inflation is skyrocketing, real wages are falling and there’s substantial pressure on the budget with $1 trillion in debt.

“We intend to implement our commitments, we intend to start with these challenges straight away, but we’re realistic about how long it will take to turn these challenges around.”

Mr Chalmers, Labor’s most senior federal MP in Queensland, said he would bring a perspective to the Cabinet table and Treasury from outside the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra triangle.

“I’m a Queenslander born and bred, but I want to be a Treasurer for the whole country,” he said.

“Being from the suburbs in general and being from Logan particularly means that I have an understanding of the realities of life in communities like ours.

“For me personally, there’s a real sense of responsibility for the hard task ahead.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/federal-election/labor-unhappy-with-butler-brisbane-seat-on-knife-edge/news-story/ead468f37b3dd00362fe309ce88670dc

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Labor can't ignore low primary vote: Shorten

Incoming NDIS Minister Bill Shorten says while the Morrison government had “run out of puff, Labor can’t “walk away” from their historically low primary vote.

After losing the “unloseable” 2019 federal election, Mr Shorten said the qualitative difference between the two polls was that Scott Morrison’s promise to “just be a daggy dad who wouldn’t cause much harm” had proven to be a lie.

“But more importantly, it feels like a national sigh of relief. The Morison government had run out of puff arguably like this to happen three years ago,” he told Sky News on Monday.

With less than one in three Australians voting for Labor as their first preference, Mr Shorten said he wasn’t going to “walk away” from the challenge of improving Labor’s primary vote, but rejected the narrative Labor's low primary meant the party had not “won the election”.

“When you look at where people put their second preferences, more Australians wanted Labor to be in charge than Liberal. But I don't walk away from the challenge of wanting to improve Labor’s primary vote,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/politicsnow-survivor-dutton-in-box-seat-to-lead-libs/live-coverage/ce067d10e53c1c1dabbf135d6c0950e2

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Coal, gas sticking point in Senate: Bandt

Bandt is a nasty old Trotskyite but seems to have conned the Greens into thinking he is one of them

Greens leader Adam Bandt says Labor’s support for new coal and gas mines will be a sticking point between the parties in the Senate, saying it will be a “very critical question” in the next parliament.

Riding high behind the Greens' shock victories in the Brisbane seats of the Labor-held Griffith and Liberal-held Ryan, Mr Bandt asserted the party could end up with six seats in the lower house if voting in Macnamara and Richmond broke their way.

But with Labor likely to gain a majority in the lower house, attention has turned to the Senate, where Anthony Albanese will need to negotiate with the crossbench to ensure his legislative agenda can be passed.

“But on the question of climate, the big issue is coal and gas. And we were clear about that during the course of the election and we said to tackle the climate crisis, we can't open up more coal and gas mines now,” Mr Bandt told Radio National on Monday morning.

“And Labor went to the election saying they back the Liberals in opening more coal and gas mines. That is going to be something we were going to need to talk about in this Parliament. We can't put the fire out while we're pouring petrol on it.”

The Greens' demands for their support could put a raft of energy projects in jeopardy, including the Northern Territory's Beetaloo gas basin and mega-mines mooted for Queensland's Galilee Basin.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/politicsnow-survivor-dutton-in-box-seat-to-lead-libs/live-coverage/ce067d10e53c1c1dabbf135d6c0950e2

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Australia set to sign Geneva’s Global Pandemic Treaty

The ‘New Normal’ of medical fascism is coming regardless of how Australians vote at the federal election.

Having acquired a taste for globalised control during the Covid pandemic, the World Health Organisation has teamed up with vaccine manufacturers, philanthropic billionaires, and power-crazed world leaders to create a ‘Global Pandemic Treaty’ in Geneva.

It is set to form part of the ‘one health’ approach proposed by the WHO and has been pitched by its creators as a way to overcome the inconvenient battle between – as they put it – globalism and statism.

According to International Affairs who were reviewing the treaty, the globalist approach ‘shares many overlapping values with that of a transnational cosmopolitan, medical humanitarianism or moral egalitarian world-view, rooted in the Kantian logic of universal community’ while the statist approach is a nationalist one that might ‘undermine’ global efforts.

In June of 2021, Scott Morrison commented on the proposed treaty, saying:

‘It’s essential that we strengthen global (disease) surveillance and provide the World Health Organisation with the authority and the capacity to do this important job for all the peoples of the world. If we are to deliver on this ambitious reform agenda, then we must work together and put other issues aside.’

Yes, the same Prime Minister who attempted to escape criticism by saying ‘there’s no such thing as vaccine mandates’ is champing at the bit to grant the WHO absolute control over the health choices of Australian citizens. It amounts to extending similar emergency powers to the WHO that Daniel Andrews gifted himself in Victoria – except Australians can’t vote the WHO out of power. As for Labor, they have laid down at the feet of the WHO, tummies up and paws in the air like dogs waiting for a rub.

The advertised pretext for a global health treaty is that countries were wrongly allowed to take bespoke approaches to Covid – in particular, their vaccine roll-outs. According to the WHO, this endangered the health of the whole planet.

A more accurate reading of the situation comes from discussions had at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations launched at the World Economic Forum in 2017, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and a consortium of nations that include Australia. The Liberal government pledged a further $100 million to CEPI in March, 2022 to add to the $1.5 billion it has raised from other governments.

As explained in a previous Spectator Australia article, CEPI’s mission is to create ‘equitable access to vaccines’ because they do not like the volatility (and competition) of the free market. This is the same organisation that poured a fortune into RNA and mRNA vaccines for the WHO’s DiseaseX scenario which – less than a year later – was put into emergency production to combat Covid as a ‘proof of concept’ exercise. Their stated objective from the beginning, long before Covid, has been to find a way to force Western governments to purchase vaccines in bulk for the Third World under the banner of ‘equity’.

The handling of the Covid pandemic is being used as an excuse to justify what was already designed and publicised. In this light, the proposed Global Pandemic Treaty is – first and foremost – a trillion-dollar business deal.

Being discussed is a $10 billion per year ‘preparedness fund’ along with an additional $100 billion emergency fund – that you pay for. Who knows what else is coming…

The World Health Organisation often complains about free will when it comes to national pandemic responses. We now know that nations like Sweden were able to provide real-world data that contradicted much of the ‘approved’ health advice issued by the WHO. We also know that the WHO ‘leaned on’ European nations that tried to go their own way with health directives.

If anything, one of the great weaknesses of the Covid pandemic response was the uniform approach enacted by world leaders that copied Communist China in their locking down of nations, unethical medical coercion of citizens, and widespread police brutality. How much worse would the behaviour of state premiers, prime ministers, and presidents have been if their actions were ‘legalised’ by an international treaty with no possible recourse for citizens? There is certainly no confirmation that the WHO took the correct approach, considering some of the countries who deviated from the norm did better than the average of obedient nations.

Worse, the nation that caused the pandemic – China – is one of the notable absences from the treaty. What is the point of enacting the treaty if Patient Zero refuses to come to the table? It’s a bit like the United Nations’ Climate Change promises that don’t include the world’s largest polluter.

Further difficulty is being created by the reputation of the WHO. Historically, the WHO has hardly been a reliable or independent body worthy of wielding absolute power over the global health decisions. Its leader, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was controversially backed by Xi Jinping’s government in a nasty election process. Tedros, in turn, was criticised for shielding China from investigation over the outbreak of Covid that (almost certainly) escaped from a Level 4 Viral Lab in Wuhan. On repeated occasions, advice issued by the WHO was found to be inconsistent or simply wrong, while they issued eye-brow raising changes to long-held dictionary definitions of fundamental concepts like ‘herd immunity’ and ‘vaccines’, let alone the near comical back-flipping on mask advice.

It is not the sort of behaviour that instils confidence. This is before addressing the recorded failures and subsequent investigations into WHO practices in the Third World. If anything, what the world desperately needs is independent thought in pandemic responses – a free market of ideas where merit, not compliance, is given the opportunity to advance health.

If Anthony Albanese signs this treaty, it represents a seismic shift in everything we thought we knew about democracy.

It is likely the treaty will make it possible for a foreign bureaucracy with unacceptably close ties to China to call the shots – literally – on global public health. Universal healthcare was meant to be a voluntary safety net – not a stepping stone to international socialism or the dissolution of body autonomy. That said, the wheels are already falling off, with questions being raised about whether it will be a ‘treaty’ in the legal sense after parts of the WHO Constitution were re-worded.

The vote for this dangerous Pandemic Treaty will be held in Geneva on May 22-28. The Prime Minister of Australia will be there will bells on, ready to sign and absolve himself of the ‘bother’ of responsibility. It is a dream come true for weak leaders who would love nothing better than to let the blame for the next pandemic and the accompanying citizen outrage rest safely offshore.

Among the horrors facing Australia if the treaty were to proceed are the advertised promises of global tracking (most likely through the World Economic Forum’s Digital Identity policy linked to health passes), mandatory vaccination of all citizens, and the ability for the WHO to declare and sustain a pandemic along with its emergency powers.

Lately, international treaties have been used to undemocratically circumnavigate the sovereign will of nations. A treaty is a powerful legal document that leaders use to defy public opinion. While the United Nations cannot force a country to honour its ink-mark (as we saw with China’s shredding of the Sino-British Joint Declaration), Western leaders frequently brandish these treaties as security blankets to justify unpopular policy.

‘The ongoing chaos of this pandemic only underlines why the world needs an ironclad global agreement to set the rule of the game for pandemic preparedness and response,’ said WHO Director General, Dr Tedros.

Or – stay with me on this one – the WHO could do its actual job and properly investigate China and its medical partners for dangerous and experimental gain of function research in dodgy labs.

Will Australia vote for freedom?

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/05/australia-set-to-sign-genevas-global-pandemic-treaty/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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As Monday dawns on a new era

Anthony Albanese will be sworn in as prime minister today, pledging to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full and take tougher action on climate change as Labor takes power for the first time in nine years.

Mr Albanese, who will fly to Tokyo with Penny Wong today for the Quad leaders’ summit with US, Indian and Japanese leaders, promised to “get down to business’’ on Labor’s policy agenda when he returned on Wednesday. Labor was on Sunday confident of forming majority government despite the ALP primary vote plunging to 32.8 per cent and the shock losses of frontbenchers Kristina Keneally and Terri ­Butler.

Simon Benson writes: This is a watershed moment for Australian politics. The depth of disillusionment in the two-party system is unmistakeable and the tipping point that people have talked about for years has finally arrived. The size of the crossbench will more than double, with up to 15 independents and minor party MPs. Such an outcome is without precedent for the Australian parliament.

Peter Dutton is the frontrunner to replace Scott Morrison un­opposed as Liberal leader following the election bloodbath and loss of rising stars in the partyroom. The loss of up to 10 moderate Liberal MPs is expected to hand Mr Dutton and the conservative faction greater power in deciding the leadership line-up at the next partyroom meeting. Keep up with the latest in our live blog, PoliticsNow.

The Liberal Party has been cleaved in two and faces ­divisions in how to respond to the election defeat, including which direction to take in the next parliamentary term, after its moderate faction was “eviscerated”.

According to Jamie Walker, the Liberals’ centre of gravity has collapsed into the outer suburbs and regions, far removed from the leafy inner-city heartland seats that turned teal or Green to pose an existential threat to the party of Menzies and Howard.

The Coalition has been weakened by Anthony Albanese’s election victory, with senior Liberal and Nationals frontbenchers acknowledging growing differences between urban and regional communities as well as ongoing conflicts over climate change.

While the Liberals were on track to lose 19 seats on Sunday, with a further three in danger, the Nationals were holding all of their 16 lower house seats. Barnaby Joyce says his future as leader of the Nationals will be a “decision for the party room”.  Mr Joyce said: “With three retiring members, the Nats held every seat and picked up another senator. I am proud that, with our team, I have never gone to an election as leader or deputy and not held all the seats as well as winning one, and that is with the tide coming in or against us.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/anthony-albanese-vows-to-get-down-to-business/news-story/2fdfa5058bb48f938cc0a5abeb95810f

In Good Leftist style Albo starts with a promise he cannot deliver

He promises contitutional change in favour of Aborigines but constitutional change can only be delivered by way of a referendum. And Australia has a long history of referenda. And what has emerged is that referenda only get up if there is no significant opposition to them. And both the the National Party and the One Nation party are highly likely to oppose this one. I think I can already hear the articulate David Flint on the matter.

And referenda have to deliver in the States as well as nationally. And there are known high levels of anti-Aborigine sentiment in both Queensland and Western Australia.

Australia's next Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised to serve Australia after Labor won the election and Scott Morrison stood down as the Liberal leader after conceding defeat.

It follows huge surges to the teal independents and Greens that claimed the scalp of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

But Labor's result was far from a landslide with star candidate - former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally - somehow losing the safe seat of Fowler.

Addressing an excitable crowd, Mr Albanese promised to establish a First Nations voice to Parliament, enshrined in the constitution.

After walking onto the stage with his partner Jodie Haydon at the Hurlstone Park RSL to the Australian classic GANGgajang's Sounds Of Then, the Labor leader was greeted by cheers of "Albo, Albo, Albo".

"On behalf of the Australian Labor Party, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full," Mr Albanese told the crowd.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/federal-election/federal-election-2022-live-polls-set-to-close-as-nation-holds-its-breath/live-coverage/3d69e553c2fcaf1d4ea217b48bb2d230

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The Leftist response to troubled children is to mutilate them

On this page last election eve I wrote, ‘Mums and dads across the country look set to elect a Labor party that has vowed to impose the kooky notion of gender fluidity on all of our children, even those seeking refuge in religious schools.’ We were spared in 2019, but after a term of flaccid failure by the Liberals to fight this culture battle, it looks like the party that introduced the breast-binding, penis-tucking ‘Safe Schools’ programme will now be given a free hand with your kids.

Governments and schools must not mess with the minds of children. That means they must not mess with archetypal realities like male and female as if they were cultural fads instead of facts of nature. For those who have forgotten these facts – like Australia’s former chief medical officer who couldn’t say what a woman was – just remember that a woman is an adult human female, where ‘female’ is defined by a reproductive system organised for gestation. Therefore, a transwoman is not a woman but a male who feels a deep need to present in feminine stereotypes.

But perhaps it’s niceness, not facts, that matters to you? Niceness compels you to affirm a confused boy who says he’s a girl and affirm a male athlete who says he’s a woman? Yes, that’s nice, but it’s untrue, and collaborating with confusion has un-nice consequences.

Keira Bell was a confused child of fifteen who thought she was a boy. The Tavistock Clinic in London affirmed her confusion and set her on the path of hormones that sterilised her and surgery that removed her breasts. Keira was not a boy; she was a troubled girl who has now sued Tavistock for failing to address the source of her confusion and leaving her sterile and scarred.

Tammika Brents was a mixed-martial arts athlete whose skull was smashed by a burly transwoman. Aspiring female swimmers have been metaphorically smashed by transwoman Lia Thomas. Transwomen preserve the male advantage in muscle bulk, limb-length, heart and lung capacity, so allowing biological males to compete in women’s sport not only breaks records and bones but denies a fair go to females. In this timid and trivial election campaign we have watched one brave woman, Katherine Deves, founder of Save Women’s Sports and Liberal candidate for Warringah, get hammered for telling this truth. Because everyone from blind Freddy to the drover’s dog agrees with Deves’ central argument – that women’s sport should be for women – the nice woke Left dredged social media for something smellier to hang around her neck. They found a picture of a young woman with surgical scars where her breasts had been removed. This woman now identified as a man and tweeted satisfaction with the surgery. Deves put the opposing view: that young people are being ‘surgically mutilated and sterilised’. That language fails the niceness test, even if said out of compassion for young people like Keira, but the language is arguably correct.

The term ‘mutilating surgery’ does not imply any lack of good will or skill; it simply describes the radical nature of a procedure. In the days when radical mastectomy was the recommended treatment for breast cancer, no doctor disputed that this was mutilating surgery; the only dispute was whether it was necessary – over time, we realised it was not. In Testing Treatments, the medical authors write, ‘The surgical excesses were eventually challenged, both by surgeons who were unwilling to continue in the face of questionable benefits for their patients, and by outspoken women who were unwilling to undergo mutilating operations.’

Deves is an outspoken woman. She objects to mutilating operations with questionable benefit being performed on young women. The youngest known gender-confused girls to have bilateral mastectomy in Australia were aged 15. The question is not whether the removal of a girl’s healthy breasts is mutilating surgery – arguably it is – but whether it is necessary. The question is not whether cross-sex hormone treatment sterilises the young patient – typically it does – but whether it is justified. Some doctors conclude, in good faith, that it is justified. Others disagree – indeed, hundreds of us (including nine child psychiatrists) wrote to federal health minister Greg Hunt in 2019 (see genderinquiry.org) asking for a parliamentary inquiry into ‘the rapid rise of childhood gender dysphoria in Australia and the lack of scientific basis for current medical treatment.’

Why should we usher children down a path of radical hormonal and surgical treatment when we know about 80 per cent of these children would get over their gender confusion around puberty? A supportive, watchful approach seems wiser. Former cutting-edge countries like Sweden and Finland have now reviewed the evidence and halted hormonal and surgical treatment for gender-dysphoric youth, prioritising psychological treatment. Here in Australia, however, hormonal transition remains the dominant paradigm while Labor’s evil laws in Queensland and Victoria prosecute GPs who dare suggest that treatment should address the child’s troubled mind, not her body.

Deves spoke as truthfully as she could on youth sterilisation and mutilating surgery, on British data that found half their transgender prisoners were sex offenders, on the high incidence of autism and mental health disorders among gender-confused children, and on how unsafe and unfair it is to let transwomen compete with real women. But it’s niceness that matters, not truth. So Deves’ opponent in Warringah, Climate 200’s Zali Steggall, took the nice approach of slurring mothers as ‘transphobic’ if they worry about their daughters playing sport against biological males. That is a safe insult: Steggall will not have to get police protection, but Deves has had to, saying, ‘We are in a time when it is dangerous to speak your mind.’

We are in a time when it is dangerous to leave our kids in school, their minds subject to cult-like indoctrination by gender whisperers on the one hand and peddlers of climate doom on the other. At what point does the imposition of such psychological confusion and superstitious terror become notifiable abuse? Educational mutilation? Parents, maintain the rage.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/05/australian-notes-317/

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Erasing mothers is not ‘progress’

In the name of inclusion and diversity:

* Barnardos has cancelled its ‘Mother of the Year’ award

* Volunteers from the Australian Breastfeeding Association have been investigated for their use of the word ‘mother’ on social media

* The Labor Party has removed the word ‘mother’ from its policy documents

The reasoning goes: some families don’t have a mother and some mothers identify as ‘fathers’, so we should stop using sexed language for parents altogether. In the modern family, ‘mother’ and ‘father’ have been replaced by Parent 1 and (if you’re lucky) Parent 2.

Sadly, mothers are also being erased, not just from our speech, but from children’s lives. There have been some recent high-profile cases of men ‘creating’ children through surrogacy, with the intention of raising them without a mother. Depending on the arrangement, a baby can have – and lose – up to three different ‘mothers’: a genetic mother, a birth mother, and a social mother. And we are supposed to applaud.

I understand how normalising ‘diverse’ families can help the children of those families to feel less stigmatised, but deliberately removing mothers cannot possibly be called progress. This forced political correctness – telling children that mothers are optional and interchangeable – is a denial of biological reality and human need.

It diminishes a mother’s unique role

Every child has a mother: the woman who was ‘home’ for nine months, delivered them into this world, and (in most cases) fed them from her own body. A mother and her baby share an intimate and irreplaceable bond – even before the child is born.

Beyond birth and breastfeeding, mothers continue to relate to their children in a unique way. Compared to fathers, mothers have higher levels and more receptors of the hormone oxytocin, which is responsible for human bonding. As a result:

‘Fathers tend to play with, and mothers tend to care for, children … Fathers encourage competition; mothers encourage equity. One style encourages independence, while the other encourages security.’ (Glenn Stanton, Why children need a male and female parent).

Katy Faust and Stacy Manning summarise the science of motherhood like this:

‘Mum tends to focus on feelings, regardless of the facts. She’s wired to nurture and connect, an especially important ability when an infant is completely dependent on her to survive. Mothers set the emotional tone at home and intuitively respond to the physical and emotional needs of her family. In her uniquely feminine way, Mum embodies “the home” to her children.’

(Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement, Post Hill Press, 2021 Chapter 3, Part 4, Loc 1546)

A man cannot simply decide to call himself a mother; a woman cannot call herself a genderless ‘parent’ or a ‘father’. The word ‘mother’ has a biological referent in the real world and so we must insist on using it.

It diminishes children’s needs

When we delete mothers from our vocabulary and from children’s lives, we are sending the message that there’s nothing special about mothers – any adult will do. But the reality is that every human being needs and longs not just for a generic parent, but for their genetic mother. Babies spend nine months preparing to meet the mother they already know and share a relationship with. After birth, mother-infant bonding is of the utmost importance for a child’s healthy development.

All of this was deemed to be common sense until reproductive technologies began opening up new possibilities. Now, a man’s desire to be a father can override a child’s right to have a mother.

Earlier this year, a Victorian man made headlines by becoming the first single man to become a father through surrogacy in that state. Predictably, this was celebrated as a win for equality. But having children is not a ‘right’ that can be asserted regardless of biology or the best interests of the child. It’s often asserted that ‘love makes a family’, but children need more than love: they have a deep need to know, and ideally be raised by, both their biological mother and father.

The advocacy organisation Them Before Us exists to give children a voice in the debate over family structure. They have collected hundreds of stories from people who were born through donor conception and surrogacy. Those people commonly experience genealogical bewilderment, a sense of commodification and trauma from the loss of a biological mother or father.

A donor-conceived woman describes her struggle:

‘I cannot put into words the pain of not knowing who my biological mother is and not being able to have/have had a relationship with her. I really do think about this at least once a day, and it is deeply mentally, emotionally, and psychologically troubling.’ (Them Before Us, Chapter 7, Loc 3015)

One young woman conceived through commercial surrogacy (in America – only altruistic surrogacy is legal in Australia) explains:

‘To be loved by the two who created you and not from the strangers who bought you, is natural and beautiful. But I was denied this primal family structure to support a business and [an unfamiliar] infertile couple.’ (Them Before Us, Chapter 8, Loc 3627)

Of course, in an imperfect world, children do lose mothers through death, divorce, abuse, or abandonment. Those children deserve all the love and support we can give them. We applaud the single fathers who raise their children alone. We applaud the selfless women who step in to mother children they didn’t give birth to: grandmothers, step-mothers, foster and adoptive mothers.

But the ‘modern family’, where mothers (or fathers) are treated as optional, is a deliberate denial of what children need and naturally long for. Motherlessness is always something to be mourned, not celebrated.

The primal word

It’s telling that ‘mama’ is, universally, the first word that babies say. It’s a sound that’s easy to make and mimics the movement of the baby’s lips as they feed. For better or worse, it’s still the first word that my younger children call out in the middle of the night.

That’s why we cannot allow ‘mother’ to become a dirty word. It symbolises the deep and irreplaceable bond between a woman and her children. Banning this primal word will cause a primal wound that will take generations to heal.

Mothers matter. Our wombs, breasts, and hormones make us unique and indispensable. Every baby looks for ‘Mama’ from the moment of its birth. We are not parents! We are mothers – and no good will come from erasing us.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/erasing-mothers-is-not-progress/

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Asylum vessel intercepted on way to Australia

I am a bit sympathetic to these people. Sri Lanka is an economic disaster area at the moment and these people are much more likely to be Sinhalese than Tamil Tiger sympathizers. And Non-Muslim South Asians generally make good citizens

A vessel carrying Asylum seekers has been intercepted off Australia's coast.

The Prime Minister used his final media conference of the campaign to announce the boat had been intercepted on Saturday morning after making its way from Sri Lanka.

It is understood about 15 people were on board the vessel that was stopped by Australian authorities off the west coast of Christmas Island after almost making it to the mainland.

Those people were on Saturday afternoon on board an Operation Sovereign Borders vessel having their credentials verified.

As reported in The Weekend Australian today, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the Sri Lankan navy had intercepted a fishing vessel and two dinghies carrying dozens of people on Wednesday before Saturday’s development.

“This is not scaremongering, this is a reality and it has been demonstrated by the two attempts that we are aware of,” she told reporters at a press conference on Saturday.

“We don’t know if there are any other attempts that have been made over the last few days and we don’t know if there have been any deaths at sea.

“I’ve said very clearly on my watch that I wanted no people to be attempting to travel to Australia illegally by boat and I didn’t want any deaths at sea.

She said that the Labor government posed a risk to Australia’s borders because of its opposition to temporary protection visas, which are aimed at denying permanent resettlement.

Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Kristina Keneally said Labor supported Operation Sovereign Borders, calling people smuggling a “vile trade”.

“Labor supports Operation Sovereign Borders – offshore processing, regional resettlement, and boat turn-backs where safe to do so,” she said on Saturday.

“Labor thanks the Operation Sovereign Borders Joint Agency Task Force for their continued work at keeping our borders secure.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/people-smugglers-back-in-business-karen-andrews-says-as-liberals-send-out-warning-texts/news-story/9fd76709b77901b492bef2b7344014f6

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People dying of COVID while life-saving drugs go unused, doctors say

Top doctors have warned that vulnerable patients who test positive to COVID-19 are missing out on potentially life-saving antiviral treatments, with just a fraction of those at risk of serious disease having accessed the new drugs.

Figures from the federal health department show 1379 patients received antiviral medication Paxlovid through their GP in the first weeks in May, after the drug was listed on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

“We are still getting quite a number of deaths – and making sure people know antivirals are available is one way of trying to address this,” infectious disease physician Professor Allen Cheng said. “We don’t have many levers left to pull [to protect those at risk of severe illness]. It is easy for people to fall through the cracks”.

With tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases recorded each week, experts say a major awareness campaign is needed to make sure at-risk people know that highly effective treatments can help prevent severe disease if they are taken within five days of symptom onset.

There were more than 680,000 coronavirus cases recorded nationally in the first two weeks in May and 563 deaths.

Fourth ‘winter’ COVID vaccine recommended for people over 65

“Clearly not everyone eligible or those that would benefit are getting access to the treatments,” Cheng said. A major push is needed to make sure older patients with other risk factors, those with co-morbidities, people who are immunosuppressed and unvaccinated are aware treatments are available, he said.

Evidence from trials show that for every 10 to 20 patients treated with Paxlovid one person will be prevented from being hospitalised, Cheng said.

Paxlovid, a combination of the drugs nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, was listed on the PBS last month. Eligible adults who test positive to COVID-19 through a PCR or rapid antigen test can access the treatment from their local pharmacy with a GP prescription.

Paxlovid is available to people aged 65 or older, with two other risk factors for severe disease, or one factor for those aged 75 and over. It is subsidised for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander patients aged 50 or over with two other risk factors and patients who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.

Another antiviral drug, Lagevrio – the trade name for molnupiravir – was also listed on the PBS in March and has since been used to treat more than 15,000 patients, including about 7000 in NSW.

“Clearly not everyone eligible or those that would benefit are getting access to the treatments.”

President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Karen Price said doctors need to tell “eligible patients proactively that if they contract COVID-19 they should contact their GP”.

“A lot of people are sitting at home with a positive rapid test. We must make sure they know about the medication they can access which could stop them ending up in hospital.”

Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid said an awareness campaign was needed for vulnerable people, especially because treatments were previously only available from hospital.

“If you get a positive test, and you’re at risk, a telehealth appointment is all that is needed to be assessed for treatment”.

“Paxlovid has many drug interactions, so it does take time for GPs to have a good grasp of who should be having antivirals. There are definitely barriers in accessing medication”.

Last month Health Minister Greg Hunt said the antiviral PBS listings would support the national plan to transition Australia’s COVID-19 response, which outlines steps to remove all remaining coronavirus restrictions in the community.

“This medicine will help reduce the need for hospital admission,” Mr Hunt said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/people-dying-of-covid-while-life-saving-drugs-go-unused-doctors-say-20220519-p5amvs.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Massive changes to plastic shopping bags in Australia with NSW set to BAN lightweight bags in days, while Woolworths has stopped selling its 15c reusable bags

And what good will this do? The claim is that it will keep plastic out of the oceans. It won't -- for the excellent reason that plastic bags used in Australia don't go there anyway. Most plastic in the oceans comes from Asia. Such waste in Australia is normally disposed of properly. All those garbage trucks running around our suburbs are actually doing something

If you really wanted to stop plastic going into the oceans, you would put a barrage across the mouth of the Yangtse. That would stop about a third of the plastic that presently goes into the Pacific

Australian consumers face a plastic bag revolution in just days with major changes coming into effect in NSW and Western Australia in the coming weeks.

NSW will ban lightweight plastic bags from June 1, while Woolworths supermarket will stop selling its 15c reusable plastic bags across all stores in WA from July.

The supermarket giant will only be offering its paper, green fabric and Bag for Good alternatives when a statewide ban on plastic bags comes into effect from July.

'Over the next month, we'll be gradually phasing out plastic shopping bags from our stores and online orders across WA, as we move to support the WA Government's upcoming plastic bag ban,' Woolworths state general manager Karl Weber said.

'This change will see more than 30 million plastic bags removed from circulation in WA every year — which is a big win for the health of our oceans and waterways.

'While our paper bags will continue to be available, the most sustainable bag you can use is the reusable one you bring from home.'

More than 80 per cent of shoppers are bringing their own bags into the supermarkets - meaning the latest change will have an impact on a small number of customers.

'The vast majority of our customers already bring their own reusable bags to shop, which is the very best outcome for the environment, and we encourage customers to keep up the great work,' Mr Weber said.

'We know the change brought about by this new WA legislation may be an adjustment for some customers and we thank them in advance for their support as we all work together to grow greener.'

Customers will be reminded of the looming change by in-store advertisements.

Environment minister Reece Whitby said the state was leading the way on banning single-use plastics across Australia.

'Western Australia has a strong track record on reducing single-use plastics in the environment, and was named the top jurisdiction in the country two years in a row by WWF Australia, for the work that is being done,' he said.

'The WA community has shown overwhelming support for this — and I would like to thank everyone, including Woolworths, who have embraced these important changes.'

The paper bag will cost 20c and will be able to carry up to 6kgs of groceries.

Woolworths was the first supermarket to ditch single-use plastic bags in 2018. The reusable plastic bag was introduced for 15 cents and was sold as a cheaper alternative to its 99c fabric bags.

Plastic items will be banned in two stages across Western Australia.

The first stage includes banning thick plastic bags, plates, bowls, cups, cutlery, stirrers, straws, takeaway polystyrene food containers and helium balloon releases.

The second stage will ban thin plastic produce bags, cotton buds with plastic shafts, polystyrene packaging, microbeads, oxo‑degradable plastics, takeaway coffee cups and lids, and polystyrene cups.

This change will come into effect by the end of 2022.

Businesses disregarding the ban risk heavy fines of up to $5,000.

Meanwhile, the NSW Environment Protection Authority outlined more detail on other products facing the state's upcoming ban.

Items in the firing line include single-use plastic cutlery, straws, stirrers, plates, bowls, chopsticks and sporks.

Other products being phased out are cotton buds and expanded polystyrene (EPS) food service items.

Plastic microbeads found in rinse-off personal care products - used for exfoliating and scrubbing - will also face a ban.

The supply of all these materials will be phased out by November 1 2022.

The NSW parliament passed the 'ground-breaking' legislation in November last year which will gradually halt the supply of problematic single-use plastic items.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10823817/Woolworths-stop-selling-15cent-reusable-bags-month.html

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Do Leftists rely on ill-informed women to gain power?

On extremely rare occasions, news stories about political focus groups reveal something interesting.

Last Friday, Newscorp reported on a group of swinging voters who will (apparently) decide the Prime Minister’s fate. The group was mainly comprised of women because most male voters said they had already made up their minds.

What did these crucial women voters – who we are told time and time again have a near-mystical understanding of what is best for Australia – have to say?

Did they fume about the Liberal Party’s supposed ‘woman problem’ and demand to smash the patriarchy?

No.

They compared Scott Morrison to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, finding the latter quite the hottie in his T-shirt and battle fatigues. That is what they ‘want our Prime Minister to be’ on the campaign trail – not shaking hands with people in a suit.

Did they give detailed rundowns on how Morrison has performed and follow up with a careful analysis of his failings?

No.

He ‘knows his finances and stuff’ but ‘comes across as obnoxious’ so they ‘don’t really listen to anything to do with [him]’ – according to the focus group.

Did they rage about ScoMo’s views on climate change, transgender rights, or any of the things that supposedly damn him forever? Did they show an interest in the economy, or security, or long-term nation-building goals?

No.

Even when prompted about their main policy issue, they could not identify anything in particular. They wanted to get rid of Morrison, but didn’t ‘know the best way to go about that … don’t know enough about it’.

Did they show even the most basic knowledge about or interest in the democratic process?

No.

They ‘don’t follow it closely’ but also definitely don’t want someone ‘arrogant’.

Thank goodness these women have vague ‘feelings’ about Prime Ministerial dress codes. Their position on fashion policy will see their votes used judiciously for the common good of the nation.

There is nothing astounding about their quotes. Political scholars have repeatedly found that women – although often more partisan than men and quicker to take up ‘causes’ – are less likely than men to show interest in macro-level political issues and more likely to preference narrow topics that they believe directly affect them (think sexual harassment or paid period leave).

What is new to the political field is this demographic being elevated to holy status in Australia by so-called ‘progressives’ in both major parties.

They want us to believe that women will guide us into a Utopian future – well, a future that involves getting politicians elected without requiring policy detail.

The same ‘progressives’ who are quickest to jump on a platform about how ‘women need to be heard more in politics’ are silent about how little average women know. Female political ignorance suits ‘progressives’, so long as those women stick to criticising anybody who ‘progressives’ disagree with.

‘Progressives’ go dewy-eyed about equality while encouraging women to stay focused on soft, highly gendered issues. By refusing to call any of this out, the same ‘progressives’ who wax lyrical about girl power are complicit in women remaining wilfully ignorant on significant political issues.

Ignorance makes people far easier to control, but is pandering to it for short-term gain really going to take our country in the right direction?

And why do many women choose to remain ignorant in a society where they have so much opportunity to be otherwise?

For years, this was blamed on useful scapegoats like gendered socialisation. Anybody who still invokes such excuses is trying to skirt the far more likely prospect that there are fundamental differences between how women and men think, and one of those seems to be that – even after decades of feminism – women still prefer babies, husbands, and domesticity. Women are not turned off politics because of misogyny in Parliament House. They never switched on to politics because they simply do not have a burning interest in the big picture.

For all their protests otherwise, ‘progressives’ want the status quo to remain because they need women to have feelings about small targets, rather than thinking deeply about difficult problems. They rely on this for their pathway to power.

If ‘progressives’ admitted that they can only get ahead by manipulating women’s ongoing obliviousness, this would undo years of carefully constructed narratives about the wisdom of women. It would also raise some uncomfortable questions about things like quota systems.

Suddenly, questions might start to come up about whether, when women do engage with politics, it is because they are truly interested in the broad issues that do affect everybody, or because they think their own small issues should concern everybody and damn the rest. Unfortunately, when you consider what is happening in Australia today, it looks a great deal like the latter.

‘Progressives’ validating ignorance and encouraging women to turn a blind eye to anything but the low-hanging fruit of gendered politics is going to end badly in the long term. However, I will not hold my breath on anyone having the guts to stand up against it. Such a step would be too much like real progress. And that might not go over very well in focus groups.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/progressives-prefer-to-keep-their-women-ignorant/

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Energy security fears spark oil and gas supply pledge

Australia’s biggest energy companies say they will ignore calls not to open up new oil and gas fields, describing a “frightening” scarcity of new developments as Russia’s Ukraine invasion sparks the worst global energy security crisis since the 1970s oil embargo.

While the International Energy Agency warned last year that no new oil or gas fields or coal mines should be opened up if the world is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Australia’s largest producers say it is vital to develop new sources of supply, with Santos concerned it has already missed opportunities.

“We are watching an energy crisis play out in Europe right now, but we have on our doorstop a prime example of what happens if the energy transition is focused only on stopping new oil and gas projects,” Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher will tell the APPEA industry conference on Wednesday.

“We’ve had a decade of moratoriums, shutdowns and lockouts in resource-rich states and territories. And, as I have said for a number of years, the resulting scarcity of new developments today is frightening, with forecasts of tight supply over coming years.”

LNG has shot to all-time highs this year, while oil has surged 40 per cent after supplies were effectively shut off from Russia, sparking a battle across Europe and Asia to secure replacement ­volumes.

Woodside Petroleum said a crunch on supplies around the world had elevated energy security into a major issue for both the industry and consumers.

READ MORE:Ditch the ideology on energy policy: Santos chief|Open up new oil and gas fields: APPEA
“I think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine really has catalysed the energy security conversation in a way that it’s not been done since the 1970s with the Arab oil embargo,” Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill said.

“Nations and political leaders first and foremost think about their home patch before thinking about their role in the global world. And the short-term implication is that there are challenges on reliability and challenges on affordability.”

The scramble for supplies has reignited a debate over energy security and emboldened producers to agitate for opening up new oil and gas fields, despite rising pressure from investors to set more ambitious climate change goals.

A push by activists to exclude fossil fuels was misguided and would simply push supply to rival nations with less stringent pollution goals, said the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the industry body that counts Woodside, Shell, Santos, BP and BHP among its members.

“The focus of our opponents on stopping fossil fuel projects has had no effect on consumer demand, and no effect on emissions reduction. What it has done is to push fossil fuel developments to places such as the Middle East and Russia,” APPEA chairman Ian Davies said.

“This has created a supply crunch and has raised prices, hurting people and economies around the globe.”

Chevron, which operates the giant Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects in Western Australia, tipped ongoing price and supply volatility.

“There are going to be ­disruptive forces that move the markets around and energy supply around. Given these types of challenges, we can help to solve the types of problems that we‘re seeing, but there will still be some bumpiness as we make the twists and turns,” Chevron Australia director of operations Kory Judd said.

ExxonMobil Australia said the industry was used to geopolitical ructions and the best way for it to respond was by ensuring sufficient supply in the market.

“We’re putting a lot of focus now on Russia but in the past it could have been Venezuela, it could have been Iran, it could have been Libya. So there are always geopolitical events affecting overall supply and demand dynamics. In many instances we see those reflected in price and supply issues,” ExxonMobil Australia chairman Dylan Pugh said. “It goes back to some of those fundamental principles about continuing to bring on investments and making sure that you have a market that’s not so fragile.”

Chevron also took a swipe at iron ore producer Fortescue Metals after its chairman Andrew Forrest attacked the oil and gas industry for relying on carbon capture schemes to cut emissions.

Dr Forrest slammed carbon capture as unreliable and questioned whether a mass rollout of the technology was going to solve the industry’s pollution problems.

Chevron said its $2.5bn Gorgon carbon capture and storage project under WA’s Barrow Island, which is still only operating at half capacity, was storing the equivalent of Fortescue’s annual pollution each year.

“We’ve injected 6 million ­tonnes of carbon dioxide since 2019 and 2.1 million tonnes last year, and that’s about equivalent to the emissions a company like FMG emits in a year,” Mr Judd told the conference.

“I read all of the negativity around it but I see it happening reliably every day.”

Santos, which is developing several major carbon capture projects, was also set to criticise negativity around the technology.

“The new focus on stopping oil and gas projects in environmentally responsible jurisdictions such as Australia is centred around discrediting a proven technology for low-cost, large-scale emissions reduction – carbon capture and storage,” Mr Gallagher is expected to tell the conference on Wednesday.

“Yet CCS has been done before. We are doing it now in 27 commercial projects around the world. And it works.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/energy-security-fears-spark-oil-and-gas-supply-pledge/news-story/8bb9f61f0ba431724748631e87086c67

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Cost benefit analysis of Australia's Covid response shows low benefit and big costs

Australia’s Covid policy response has been driven entirely by primal fear and hysteria, with reason playing no role. Until today, no Australian state or federal governments have commissioned a CBA.

In mid-2020, Professor Gigi Foster of the University of New South Wales, had prepared on her own CBA for Victoria. Last year, she decided to update it and broaden it to cover the whole of Australia. I have assisted her over the past 8-9 months on this project. She has published a PDF of the Executive Summary of the CBA.

Its highlights are:

The government has lied about the magnitude of the Covid pandemic, which is 50-500 times less lethal than the Spanish flu. Once we consider the fact that Covid kills mainly the elderly, its effective lethality is even less.
Lockdowns have prevented a maximum of around 10,000 Covid deaths during 2020-21 in Australia, not the 40,000 lives Mr Morrison claims to have saved.

There were at least 7,940 additional non-Covid deaths from lockdowns in the first two years of the pandemic (in fact, there were more: ABS data shows over 3,000 excess cancer deaths just in 2021 of people so terrorised by the lockdowns and hysteria in 2020 that they did not get their cancer identified and treated in time).

Every policy-driven harm that reduces our lifespan or earning power, every harm to our children, and every harm through reduced capacity of the government to buy wellbeing is added up in the CBA. Gigi Foster estimates that the harms from lockdowns exceed any benefits by at least thirty-six times.
This CBA’s estimate is not an outlier. It is consistent with innumerable CBAs that have by now been published across the world which show similar (or even greater) orders of magnitude of harm from lockdowns.

While the full CBA will perhaps be published later in a book form, its Executive Summary is sufficient to destroy the innumerable falsehoods we have been told over the past two years.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/lockdowns-did-more-harm-than-good/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Why the PM’s first homebuyers plan gets a big tick

I am normally the last person to disagree with Terry McCrann but I am surprised by his judgment below.  He does recognize that the government proposal will put more buyers into the property market and hence increase prices -- but seems to discount the importance of that.  

His judgment seems to be that the effect on prices will be small.  I suppose it depends on how many take up Morrison's offer.  So some modelling of the effect would be interesting.

My fear is that the price effect might nullify the increased ability to spend.  If the superannunt frees up $20,000 to spend and the price of a desired property goes up by $20,000 we surely have an exercise in futility.  And a price rise of $20,000 would not be a big move


The Government’s proposal to let first homebuyers use some of their super to buy their first house makes unequivocal good sense.

The major criticism is that it’s taken so long. Many people in their 30s and 40s, who are still renting, would be entitled to be a tad pissed.

Why is it now only happening when that first house is probably going to cost me a million, at least in Melbourne and Sydney?

Why wasn’t it around when I could have got my first house for, say, $500k? And then spent the last ten or more years building a tax-free capital gain – and by the bye shared in the Reserve Bank mandated free money for home loans for a few years – instead of all that rent money?

It is important to understand two big points.

First, the Morrison scheme has the same roots as the Albanese proposal for the government to fund up to 40 per cent of that first home buy.

Head-to-head, Morrison’s proposal is, in my view, superior. But I would also argue there is clearly both room for and a need for both. Let the buyer choose.

Albanese’s proposal has a homebuyer going ‘partners’ with the government to buy the property.

In contrast Morrison’s has the homebuyer going ‘partners’ with their own super fund; and in a more limited way.

Albanese’s would have the government providing up to 40 per cent of the total home cost; and so also would get up to 40 per cent of the – of any – capital gain.

Morrison’s would indirectly limit the super fund’s effective equity in the home to a much smaller percentage; and so both the super fund’s exposure to the property, to the ‘risk’ of profit or loss.

But critically, there’s no real ‘leakage’ to a third party. The super fund’s likely gain still is also the homebuyer’s.

The second big point is to accept that, yes, the whole issue of doing ‘something’ to boost the ability of first-home buyers is a vexed issue; there are genuine pluses and minuses.

This was rather neatly captured in a series of successive emails that popped into my inbox in reaction to the prime minister’s announcement.

“Allowing super for home deposits would ignite a new housing price explosion.”

“Super for housing inflationary and contrary to retirement income objective.”

“Access to super a step up for home ownership.”

Yes, all of them have elements of truth; in particular, any scheme which boosts the number of buyers and the amounts they can pay, other things being equal, will add upward pressure to property prices.

But to make that determinative - that there should therefore be no or only very marginal schemes – is really an argument to deny first home buyers both the ability and the right to buy their first home.

To deny them that, critically, in the context where there’s active concerted and persistent action by policy-makers to enrich those already owning property.

It’s not only a social imperative to help people buy their first home; it’s also a critically important finance one and really about fundamental financial equity.

Further, the bit of the third email headline I left out – from the Master Builders I might note – asserts, correctly, the over-arching justification for the Morrison proposal: it “maintains (the) Integrity of (the) super system.”

This is not a proposal to let people take money out of their super to go on a holiday, or fund a business or some other frolic.  It is very directly an investment by the super fund, just like any other investment.

And one that critically enables the single most important investment a person can ever make, given the way owner-occupied home ownership is so significantly and widely tax-enhanced

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/terry-mccrann/why-the-pms-first-homebuyers-plan-gets-a-big-tick/news-story/1f1c3299001d55af520183dc77110de9

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Unemployment drops to lowest rate since 1974

This is not as good as it sounds.  It is basically a "sugar hit" from massive governmemnt spending. But that spending will fuel inflation, which will in turn lead to job losses as people  have to cut back on their spending

The latest unemployment figures show that the unemployment rate has dropped from 4 per cent to 3.9 per cent.

That’s the lowest level in half a century or since mid-1974 and it comes after a small increase in the number of people working through April.

Officially, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) says the unemployment rate held steady at 3.9 per cent that’s because it revised down March’s rate of 4 per cent to 3.9 per cent, the same figure for April.

It is the lowest jobless rate since August 1974 when it was 2.7 per cent.

Total employment increased by only 4000 for the month but there were huge swings involved.

Full-time employment increased by 92,400 but part-time employment dropped by 88,400.

Underemployment dropped by 0.2 percentage points to 6.1 per cent while the hours worked lifted by 23 million across the economy.

“The number of people working fewer hours than usual due to bad weather dropped from its March peak of over 500,000 to around 70,000 people in April,” ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/election-2022-live-updates-anthony-albanese-to-release-labor-s-costings-six-million-australians-voting-early-as-campaign-enters-final-days-20220518-p5amh8.html

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Report: widening price gap between fixer-uppers and hot new homes

Hmmm ... This is good news for investors. At 78, I am too old to get back into the property market but I am pretty sure I would win big in this situation if I were up to my old form.

It is perfectly obvious why fixer-uppers are now avoided. Doing any kind of renovation would be both difficult and costly at the moment.

But if one could afford to buy and hold until renovation services become more available, the investment would be a good one. Fixer-uppers are normally in big demand and that will return


The cost gap between brand new homes and fixer-uppers is expected to widen amid steep price hikes for construction materials and difficulty securing a builder.

Homeowners had shied away from taking on projects of their own, with rising interest rates tipped to add further pressure, a new report has found.

Herron Todd White’s Month in Review report noted a shift among homeowners as the construction industry struggled to balance existing strong demand coupled with supply chain shortages.

“Many are weighing up whether buying an established home might be more prudent given the cost and time blowouts,” HTW CEO Gary Brinkworth said.

“We’ve observed that homeowners and investors alike are being drawn to completed homes rather than those with renovation potential.

“Given costs are predicted to elevate over the coming one to two years, I’d venture that finished homes will not only retain their price premium for some time, but the value spread between renovated and unrenovated properties will, in all likelihood, get wider,” he said.

The HTW report found the cost of building a new home had risen by about 30 per cent over the last 12 months, equating to about $4,000 per square metre for a four-bedroom house with a pool on the southern Gold Coast.

https://www.realestate.com.au/news/report-widening-price-gap-between-fixeruppers-and-hot-new-homes

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Qld Attorney-General to appeal Joshawa Eric Kane’s ‘inadequate’ sentence over sickening attack


What an inadequate thing this is

Joshawa Eric Kane had been hiding in the bushes at the park when he attacked a 22-year-old woman, asking “baby are you single” before grabbing her from her behind, dragging her to a nearby cricket club house and sexually assaulting her.

Kane, 28, walked free at sentencing in the Brisbane District Court last month after serving only 282 days in custody, sparking criticism from experts who slammed the state’s treatment of victims of sexual crime.

Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman has announced she is appealing Kane’s sentence on the grounds it was “manifestly inadequate”.

Harrowing CCTV footage was played to the court at Kane’s sentencing hearing in which the young woman can be seen struggling to break free as he carries her to the sporting club at a Dakabin park in November 2020.

The court heard Kane carried the woman underneath the building, pushed her against the back wall, touched her breasts and put his hands in her underwear while restraining her with a hand around her throat.

The terrifying assault only ended when a bystander heard the woman’s screams for help and came to investigate.

The CCTV showed the woman run to the bystander who rang police as Kane left the scene.

Judge Michael Williamson sentenced Kane to 18 months’ imprisonment, immediately suspended for three years. He had already served nine months in prison for the offending.

“This was a cowardly, disgusting act on a woman who was vulnerable going to catch the train,” Judge Williamson said at the sentencing last month. “It is something about which you should be deeply ashamed.

“Now it would not take much imagination on your part to realise the attack would have been terrifying, distressing on the complainant.”

The “light” sentence sparked criticism from community members and advocates for victims of sexual assault who said the system and the legislation judges were bound by in sentencing was letting down victims of crime.

Both the prosecution and defence in Kane’s case had submitted the 18 month head sentence was appropriate based on the legislation and similar case law.

The prosecutor submitted Kane should be given parole eligibility, meaning it would be up to the parole board to decide whether to release him, at which time he would be under supervision for the remainder of his sentence, while the defence argued in favour of an immediate suspension.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-qld/qld-attorneygeneral-to-appeal-joshawa-eric-kanes-inadequate-sentence-over-sickening-attack/news-story/647f6bca1e58dfb2647d5650146feaa9

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Bob Katter: A Lebanese Aborigine?

Bob is very popular in Far North Queensland -- where I also come from. All four of my grandparents were born up that way, as I was. In my memory, the Far North was a very conservative place. Views that today identify me as very conservative were simply normal during my early life in North Queensland. It is my "spiritual" home.

It is over 30 years since I spent much time back up there, though I did have a couple of holidays there, with the last such being in 2004. So I have often wondered if my old home is still as conservative as it was. My impression is that not much has changed

And Bob's great popularity up that way confirms it. He too is very consrervative. So I am rather pleased with his views and what he does. As a member of Federal parliament he represents the North well

But I don't like his claim to be Aboriginal. He bases that claim on once having been "adopted" into an Aboriginal tribe. And under current Australian law, if he "identifies" as an Aborigine, he IS an Aborigine. I am critical of that rule in general so I deplore Bob using it for political advantage.

In fact he is, if anything, Lebanese, though he fiercely denies it. He grew up in a clothing shop run by his Lebanese grandfather. It is a curiosity of North Queensland that there are or were in many towns a men's clothing shop run by Lebanese immigrants -- with surnames like Mellick and Malouf. I remember them well.

The surname Katter is most common among Americans of German origin. In German, a "Kater" is a tomcat

Bob Katter has declared his people made a 'big mistake' 250 years ago by letting in whitefellas, and that's why Australia should keep borders shut to asylum seekers ahead of Saturday's federal election as he prepares for his 10th win.

A surprising little-known fact about the controversial Queensland MP is that he identifies as Aboriginal, but Mr Katter recently spoke candidly about the subject during a TV appearance when addressing foreign policy and the plight of refugees.

'I come from Cloncurry, and I'm dark - I'm one of the Curry mob, you know?' Mr Katter said on ABC's Q&A.

'We made a hell of a bad mistake 150 years ago, letting you whitefellas in. I don't know that we should make the same mistake again.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10823217/Bob-Katter-says-Aboriginal-people-big-mistake-letting-whitefellas-ABC-Q-QLD-Kennedy.html

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Sergeant Bruno's big speech mistake

A Victorian policeman is under investigation for posting online that there are only two genders.

And so he should be!

Everyone knows there are actually three genders: Males (pronouns he/him), Females (pronouns she/her), and Narcissists (pronouns me!/me!/me!).

The Age newspaper reported this week that 62-year-old Sergeant Bruno Staffieri was interviewed by officers from Professional Standards Command over an online comment he made to an officer working in the Gender Equality and Inclusion Command.

Staffieri reportedly wrote: ‘So you are doing tertiary education studying genders. I’ll make it easy for you to pass … there are 2.’

Someone call triple-zero!

You have to hand it to Victoria Police; they know what constitutes inappropriate behaviour.

* Shoot peaceful protesters with rubber bullets? No consequences.

* Pepper spray law-abiding citizens? No consequences.

* Harass old ladies sitting in a park during Covid lockdown? No consequences.

* Slam people into the pavement for not wearing a mask? No consequences.

But if you dare to state a biological fact, everyone – from the Deputy Commissioner down – wets their pants.

Sergeant Staffieri should demand to know how many genders there are so that he can be more accurate in future.

Google doesn’t know, so we’ll wait for the answer.

Oh, and if you’re the victim of an actual offence, you’ll have to wait too. Police are busy attending to thought crimes.

Staffieri, who has been an officer for more than 35 years and is close to retirement, could lose his job because of the online comments.

This is not the first time Staffieri has upset police command with views that, until five minutes ago, were entirely unremarkable.

Staffieri was also investigated over his public criticism of the government’s decision to cancel Australia Day and Anzac Day celebrations last year, but allow the Gay Pride March in St Kilda to proceed.

‘So the next time Australians are sent out to fight a war, maybe we can send out the 8,000 that marched today … and try to stop the enemy by waving feathers and brightly coloured boas at them,’ Staffieri reportedly posted on May 17, 2021.

‘Triple-zero. What’s your emergency?’

‘Sergent Staffieri objected to the Mardi Gras.’

‘Does anyone need help?’

‘Yes. We are all very hurty.’

‘Does Sergeant Staffieri have a weapon?’

‘It’s his words. His words! Words are violence.’

‘Stay in a safe space and practice socially distancing until a squad car full of thought police arrives.’

In June last year, Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Neil Paterson posted on Yammer, the force’s internal communication platform, that…

‘Victoria Police is proud to have been recognised as a silver employer at the 2021 Australian LGBTQ+ inclusion awards.’

Staffieri reportedly responded by posting:

‘Yes, I agree. Great achievement. But if the public knew how much time, effort, and taxpayer dollars went into this, they would also be demanding why we didn’t get a gold.’

That’s pretty funny.

Paterson didn’t think so. According to The Age, he defended the campaign and denied it had received significant public funding.

Staffieri responded: ‘Sir, I totally value and respect your opinion and your rank, I simply ask that you value and respect mine.’

Paterson fired a broadside back at Staffieri… ‘I don’t respect or value your views as they are offensive and there is no place for those views in Victoria Police… Either limit your comments on Yammer to comments that are respectful of everyone or consider your employment options.’

So in Daniel Andrews’ Victoria, it’s an honest police officer who tells the truth who is threatened with the sack for being in possession of what police hierarchy call ‘those views’

Maybe, if Sergeant Staffieri flies the Chinese flag outside his station, all will be forgiven.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/sergeant-brunos-big-mistake/

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The unprecedented use of force to control the population during the pandemic means all previous notions of limited state power belong in the dustbin of history

Any lingering doubts evaporated when Victorian protesters, alarmed by their losses of liberty, were fired on by their own police

When it comes to our freedoms, former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, got it right. He believed that people don’t appreciate what they have until it’s gone. ‘Freedom is like that,’ he said. ‘It’s like air.’

There was a time when we cherished our freedoms. We even fought two world wars to preserve them. But, over the last fifty years, first by stealth, then with determined haste, a growing coalition of anti-democratic elites have colluded to reset society and render those sacrifices in vain. We ignored the warning signs and began taking our freedoms for granted. Now, as we feel the effects of government’s pervasive, suffocating, actions, we are understanding what Yeltsin meant.

Of course, when we struck our bargain with the forces of darkness, we were promised that in exchange for the surrender of a few personal freedoms here and some individual responsibility there, everyone could be better off and live more equitably at the expense of everyone else.

For half a century, that compact was restated, yet only one party kept its side of the bargain. It is the people who naively continued to cede responsibility for themselves and their families to an ever-expanding army of officials who began progressively interfering in every aspect of their daily lives.

The trade-off – the promise of greater prosperity and equity for all – has been an ever-receding horizon. Indeed, according to a recent report released by the Productivity Commission, economic growth per person over the past decade has slipped to its slowest rate in sixty years, both in terms of GDP per capita and income per person. And not only that, but the wealth of the top twenty per cent of Australians has grown sixty-eight per cent in the past fifteen years compared to six per cent for the bottom twenty per cent.

But then, while cloaked in good intentions, the ‘promise’ was always about powerful interests colluding to deliver power, patronage and protection to a chosen privileged few. Even the Reserve Bank played a part by creating a systemic moral hazard, dubbed ‘too big to fail’. By making credit cheap and plentiful, it de-risked the stock and real estate markets underwriting enormous gains for the rich and well-connected.

Central bankers also lent their weight to push economy-destroying, emissions abatement regulations. This peculiarly Western obsession helps transfer wealth from the poor to rich renewable-energy rent-seekers via subsidies and consumer taxes. Soon governments will be able to use an app to monitor household emissions, giving them a seat right at the kitchen table.

Far fetched? Perhaps once. But not any more. The unprecedented use of force to control the population during the pandemic means all previous notions of limited state power belong in the dustbin of history. Any lingering doubts evaporated when Victorian protesters, alarmed by their losses of liberty, were fired on by their own police.

Worst of all, this atrocity was met with a deafening silence. The media behaved like an arm of government. The Prime Minister and the federal and state parliaments were silent. Business leaders were invisible. It was a defining moment in our nation’s history and confirmed that we now live in a society where freedom and the rule of law are at the sole discretion of the state.

This is the ‘great reset’ our children and grandchildren have been prepared for. From primary school on, they have been brainwashed to be ashamed of their heritage, their parents’ values and their traditional institutions. They have been taught how capitalism and markets are evil and that our colonial settlers were nothing more than oppressors, slave owners and environmental vandals.

They learn that fighting for freedom on the battlefields was nothing but the assertion of white supremacy. Their curriculum includes Marxist critical race theory and gender fluidity. Academic assignments lead students down an ideological path which, if they are to pass exams, they must take. This merciless moral scrutiny of the nation’s past and present is intended to cancel the past and confer legitimacy on today’s illiberal new direction.

Unsurprisingly, the most recent report from the OECD Program for International Student Assessment confirms that when measured against eighty countries, Australia has continued its 20-year decline in the quality of schooling in reading, mathematics and science. Indoctrination may not give tomorrow’s leaders the critical edge in a competitive world, but at least they will get their pronouns right.

Who dares speak against this brave new world, where even the word ‘mother’ can cause offence to some? Where to be politically incorrect can be career limiting or socially ostracising. Understandably, intellectual cowardice abounds.

There is certainly no mention of freedom or smaller government in today’s election campaigns. Voters are expected to forget the past’s multiple costly blunders like the NBN, the NDIS and the French submarine project and embrace new, expensive thought-bubbles, none of which will achieve their stated intent.

But, as US economist Herb Stein once quipped, ‘If something can’t go on forever, it will stop’. Massive debt overhangs, growing deficits and economic waste and distortions will soon prove him right in a way that neither the electorate, nor the political establishment, are expecting. Then the incompetence and frivolous nature of today’s political class will be exposed. So too, how centralised power has concentrated risks and robbed society of its resilience. But don’t expect the elites to relinquish their power and privilege. They will use the moment to expand them.

It’s as Mark Twain observed. ‘Every civilisation carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.’

We have been warned. But have we the courage to turn back?

https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/the-seeds-of-our-own-destruction/

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Tradies forced into a quasi-union under Labor

About 43,000 self-employed Queensland tradie independent contractors could be declared “employee-like” and forced on to enterprise bargaining agreements under a Labor policy, Master Builders Australia claims.

More than half the tradies in a survey conducted by the MBA said they were opposed or strongly opposed to being forced into “being covered by union enterprise bargaining agreements”.

But Labor said the building industry group is “peddling false stories” and that genuine small businesses are not “employee-like”.

Under its Secure Australian Jobs plan Labor would extend the powers of the Fair Work Commission to include “employee-like” forms of work and to determine “what rights and obligations” would apply.

Master Builders CEO Denita Wawn said the policy wording was broad and she feared independent contractors and sole traders, working mostly for one or two big building companies, could be taken to the FWC by unions to force them on to EBA agreements and essentially become employees.

“The Rudd-Gillard policy was balanced. This is exceptionally one sided,” Ms Wawn said.

“People want to be able to retain those choices. We want people to maintain choice, as opposed to be forced on to something they don’t want to do.”

She said while there were legitimate issues around sham contracting or some individuals who wanted to be employees rather than contractors, there were other tools in place to deal with them including the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

But a Labor spokesman said the Masters Builders had been “peddling false stories” about Labor during the election campaign.

“I don’t know what part of the phrase ‘employee-like’ they don’t understand. Someone who is genuinely running a small business is not ‘employee-like’,” he said.

“But it’s pretty obvious when we have so many workers being paid below the minimum wage in the gig economy this reform is essential.

“The Master Builders and Scott Morrison might be relaxed about people being paid less than the minimum wage. Labor is not and we will fix it.”

The MBA survey was of 1000 people taken between May 4 and May 11, in electorates with high proportion of construction industry workers.

It found 53 per cent of tradies, and 48 per cent of all respondents, opposed “forcing independent contractors into being covered by Union enterprise bargaining agreements”.

It also found 84 per cent of respondents believed independent contractors should have the right to choose whether they become part of a union or not.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/federal-election/tradies-forced-on-to-eba-under-labor-master-builders-claims/news-story/a7595197c6fc9f6dd6daaff56473cf32

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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