Australian Politics
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Australia 1.47°C warmer than it was when national records began in 1910, State of the Climate Report reveals
Let's try a little logic here. If the Australian temperature is .37 of a degree above the global temperature of 1.1 degree then a significant part of the Australian warming is NOT due to global influences. That being so, how do we know that ANY of it is due to global influences? Both the global and Australian temperatures could be random fluctuations and probably are. Fluctuations are common in the long-term global record. Temperatures over the last 100 years or so are just a recent uptick from the Little Ice Age
Australia is 1.47°C hotter today than it was just over 100 years ago, putting it ahead of the global trend of 1.1°C of warming, the biennial State of the Climate report released on Wednesday reveals.
The report, from the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, revealed Australia as a whole is 1.47°C warmer than it was when national records began in 1910, although there is a margin of error of 0.24°C.
Most of that increase in warming has taken place since 1950, and every decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the one preceding it, the report stated.
Australia’s warming trend was seen across all months of the year, in both day time and night time temperatures, with a marked increase in the number of extremely hot days.
In 2019 – Australia’s hottest year – there were 41 extremely warm days, which the report said were “about triple the highest number in any year prior to 2000”.
While the temperature trend for the country has been uniform, with regards to rainfall the results are more mixed
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Rising energy bills may derail green transition, cautions Origin Energy
Rising household energy bills this decade could spark a backlash against the move to renewables, Origin Energy said, while warning the exit of coal power plants may need to be delayed to safeguard the power grid.
Treasury has warned of a 56 per cent jump in power prices in the next two years, while Labor will intervene in Australia’s domestic gas market before Christmas to calm soaring prices.
The industry needs to invest $76bn by 2030 to achieve the energy transition under Labor’s Powering Australia policy, but Origin argues companies face a challenge meeting that goal while also keeping a lid on high energy costs.
“Delivering the energy transition, given the scale of investment required, will undoubtedly create upwards pressure on energy bills,” Origin chief executive Frank Calabria told a CEDA forum on Tuesday.
“I fear rising energy prices could erode community support for the transition – a task that can only be delivered with co-ordination and commitment across governments, the private sector, market operators, regulators and communities.”
Origin, juggling a $18.4bn takeover bid from Brookfield and EIG, said the industry must be upfront with consumers over the cost of the move to green energy.
“We must be honest about the likely impact on bills over the short- to-medium-term to reduce bill shock,” Mr Calabria said.
“We must consider what levers are available to ease cost inputs right across energy bills, while implementing additional support for those in our community least able to pay.”
Gas consumers also face a big financial hit, with tariffs expected to increase by 20 per cent this year and in 2023-24 due to an ongoing supply crunch on the nation’s east coast and near-record LNG prices filtering through to the local market following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Origin raised concerns over a planned intervention in gas markets by the Albanese government, warning it was worried about the “unintended consequences” of a price cap being introduced.
“We want to be a good international player. We want to make sure supply is available. And I think we don‘t want to have unintended consequences,” Mr Calabria told reporters on Tuesday.
It also weighed in on the vexed issue of coal plant retirements noting coal closure time frames had accelerated this year with some 17GW of supply expected to exit the market by 2035.
Origin itself brought forward the closure of the nation’s largest coal power station, NSW’s Eraring, by up to seven years to August 2025 to meet green goals and focus on clean energy generation. A decision on whether to keep the plant open would be made several years in advance, according to the Origin chief, suggesting a mid to late 2023 deadline.
Mr Calabria said the scale of coal exits out through 2035 may require a reversal of some retirements should not enough replacement supplies be in place.
Consideration “must be given to the cumulative impact of these closures on the market alongside the prospect of delays to new infrastructure coming online,” Mr Calabria said.
“There may be a requirement to delay the exit of some of these coal units, and only for as long as needed, to maintain the security and reliability of the national electricity market.
“These policies will need to be flexible, with consideration given to commercial factors like compensation for costs incurred in running uneconomic plants, as well as the need to retain coal plant workers, secure coal supply contracts, and many other related matters,” Mr Calabria said.
Origin said it was worried about the nation failing to achieve its renewable supply targets against a backdrop of having to triple capacity by 2030.
“We must execute projects with greater urgency,” Mr Calabria told the forum. “I’d argue that we’re still not moving with enough urgency to build the replacement infrastructure needed within the next seven years to manage coal closures and achieve the nation’s objective of 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
“As each day passes, not only does the urgency and complexity of the challenge increase, so too does the cost.
“We need to deliver utility scale renewables faster than we’ve ever done before. The national electricity market currently has 3 gigawatts of renewable capacity slated to come online. This is good, but we’ll need much more – an expected 28GW by 2030.”
Brookfield has pledged an extra $20bn of spending on renewables should it prevail with its joint bid for Origin. Mr Calabria said the company would be able to fund its way through the transition if it remained as a public company, but said the Canadian’s cash injection may speed up the process.
“What I feel Brookfield has been clear about is that feel they have an opportunity to accelerate it even faster. So I don’t feel constrained but they’ve presented an opportunity which is obviously material.”
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Insane moment charming Muslim driver leans out of the window and lashes another car with a chain - as road rage victims reveal 'we thought we were going to die'
The victim of a road rage attack thought she was going to die when another driver leant out of his window and started striking their car with a chain.
Kirsty, 27, and her partner Lawrence were almost run off the road on Thursday by an aggressive Toyota Corolla Seca driver as they drove from Roxborough Park to Somerton in Melbourne's north.
The bizarre and terrifying ordeal lasted more than 15 minutes with the man tailgating, brake-testing and swerving towards the couple's car to try and get them off the road.
'Don't f****** come here,' the man in the early 1990s Corolla shouted out his open car window at the couple who were on their way to a gym.
He then lashed the chain at Kirsty's car, with the clanging sound being heard on the video filmed by Lawrence.
Kirsty can be heard asking her partner, 'Is he serious? Is he serious right now?'
She told 9News: 'He started actually swinging a chain at my car and damaged my passenger side.
'He was yelling at me, threatening to kill me and my partner.'
Lawrence said the man in the Toyota 'was driving so erratically that he ended up on the other side of the road and was continuing to pursue us'.
In part of the clip Kirsty is heard telling Lawrence that she does not want to pull in.
'I'd rather go in the gym and f****** get them to f*** him up,' she said.
As both cars pulled into the Somerton gym car park, CCTV captured the Corolla closing in on Kirsty.
When they parked, Lawrence immediately ran into the gym's reception area and summoned help from other customers and the owner who went outside with him.
Gym owner Maythan Sheriffi said he was shocked. 'The guy literally had a chain in his hand and it looked like... a long chain. 'He threatened us with the chain,' he said.
Kirsty has been so traumatised by her horrific ordeal she has had difficulty sleeping and was forced to take time off work to recover from the stress.
'I've just been terrified that it happened so locally, close to where I live and close to where I work,' she said.
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Labor has an election mandate to boost wages but multi-employer bargaining is a stretch
A new and curious argument crept into the industrial relations debate recently
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke both sought to justify their push to introduce multi-employer bargaining by the end of the year on the grounds they have an election mandate.
"The fact is that the government that I lead was elected with a mandate to increase people's wages," Albanese told parliament. "We went to an election and can't have been clearer. We can't have been clearer either in a speech I gave to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Sydney during the election campaign."
Workplace legislation change
The federal government makes concessions to its contentious industrial relations legislation in a bid to pass the workplace bill before Christmas.
Burke cited the same speech, when Radio National's Patricia Karvelas reasonably asked, "You didn't take multi-employer bargaining to the election, did you?"
"Hang on," the minister protested. "The Prime Minister squarely put bargaining on the table and said that to get wages — it was at a speech at an Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry meeting in Sydney during the election campaign — and he said we need to get wages moving."
So, the references during the campaign to "increasing wages" and "bargaining" apparently amount to a mandate for the legislation Labor is now trying to push through parliament in a matter of weeks. Legislation which would allow unions to negotiate deals across multiple employers.
Not everyone agrees Labor has a mandate
Business groups certainly don't think Australians voted for this. Nor do the independent MPs and crossbench senators demanding more time to properly scrutinise a complex reform.
There may be strong arguments for multi-employer bargaining, particularly to help workers in low-paid sectors like childcare. Few deny they deserve a better deal. But the argument that Labor has an election mandate to apply such a change in any sector, let alone economy-wide, deserves some scrutiny.
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Gay marriage has given our society little to celebrate
This week marked the fifth anniversary of Australia supporting same-sex marriage in a postal vote. Now we are being reassured by same-sex marriage advocates that “society has not fallen apart”.
Think again. If the punitive coercion suffered by people who did not support gay marriage during the period preceding the vote didn’t convince you that this was not just about marriage, but about the gradual imposition of a radical agenda on the whole of society, then look what has happened since.
If the dissolution of society as we know it was an exaggeration, a furious expression of frustrated Christians angry at seeing the social verities of the past falling away, people might start looking at their local school and see what sorts of things are being taught to their children. The notion that our sexual identity is fluid and not fixed is now accepted in most government schools, and challenging that view is impossible.
It has already been raised as a problem if a religious anti-discrimination bill is ever passed, and activists are now fixated on making it harder to challenge the trans agenda even in private and systemic Catholic schools. In Canada, despite assurances and a preamble to the law, Catholic schools are having a very difficult time teaching Catholic precepts on marriage and sexuality, and in the US many individuals and groups are being punished for what amounts to thought crime, prompting a conservative backlash.
The real problem with the Marriage Equality fight was the fight itself. It was never a civilised discussion in a civilised environment. It was bare-knuckle and nasty from the Yes side, from daubing vile slogans on church walls to ridiculing and denouncing people on social media. I know, I went through it. And it goes on.
It has spread beyond marriage, to the trans agenda. I recently wrote a column about a woman who started an app for women and girls called Giggle. This woman was threatened with a human rights action over the very nature of the people for whom her app was intended, women, by a transsexual person who thought they should not be discriminated against because they identified as a woman. These are the two great mantras of the new society” “Discrimination” and “Identity”. It will only get worse.
Go back to the case of Israel Folau. Freedom of expression was not available to Folau who as a believing Mormon did not support same-sex marriage. Not only did he lose his job as Australia’s star rugby player but other players who supported him and did not support SSM were told not to say anything. Meanwhile, those who supported the Yes vote were allowed to speak out. Rugby Australia undermined their freedom of expression about conscientiously held views, becoming, in effect, the arbiters of their conscience.
An even graver case was Archbishop Julian Porteous who, as a preliminary salvo to the same-sex marriage vote, was dragged before the Human Rights board in Tasmania for disseminating a booklet outlining Catholic teaching on marriage to Catholic students. The complainant was not protesting about the church’s ban on remarriage after divorce or any of the teachings about marriage and fertility tied to the vows which married Catholics must make. No, this was an opener in the battle for same-sex marriage. The agenda of the Equality movement was not about equality at all: it was about trying to muzzle the view that the family, based on a generative relationship, is the bedrock of society which has been common to all societies of all religious persuasions since time immemorial.
Meanwhile, the trans agenda has inserted itself into the centre of right think. Who says society as we know it hasn’t declined?
Consequently, the number of cases of well-meaning ordinary people being denounced on social media, or to the human rights apparatuses and even pushed out of positions for stating quite ordinary views on marriage, the family and sexual identity is increasing, and freedom of expression – and particularly of religious expression – is being undermined.
Andrew Thorburn is an ordinary man who happened to be at a church nine years before when his minister expressed moral views not in line with the Equality mantra. Thorburn is chair of the City on a Hill church, which Essendon football club pronounced has views in “direct contradiction to our values as a club”. So, a football club, assuming a prior moral authority to the church, forced his resignation as the club’s CEO.
Not surprisingly, it was this case that has awakened the general public to the danger that now awaits anyone. Not only could someone dig up a sermon a pastor gave nine years before and still hold you to account, but how long before, Torquemada-like, you are taken to the inquisitors of the board of the company for which you work, or the school where you teach, or any governing body?
It is well known that in most echelons of the public service various topics of conversation, especially those dealing with sex and family issues, are off the table. The endorsement of Thorburn’s removal by the AFL and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews highlights the frightening seriousness of this. It has made a mockery of the idea that we have equality of expression, and the real fault line is freedom of religion.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, November 22, 2022
New plan to take gas out of Aussie kitchens
At a time when the electricity grid is under great strain from Greenie meddling, this is insane. I personally remember occasions when my gas stove allowed life to go on unimpeded during an electricity blackout. These days I have multiple oil lamps in addition to my gas stove. I did use them during a late-night blackout recently
I have also noted that most chefs seem to prefer gas stoves. They give immediate and visible temperature control
They’ve been a staple of our kitchens for generations, and it seems Aussies will not give up their gas appliances without a fight.
On Tuesday, property firms Lendlease and GPT Group will come together to help launch the Global Cooksafe Coalition, with plans to phase out gas ovens and stovetops, citing health and environmental concerns.
The property giants have plans to stop installing gas kitchen appliances in new builds in all OECD countries by the end of the decade, and to only do all-electric retrofits in existing properties by 2040.
The campaign has the support of high-profile chefs including Neil Perry, Darren Robertson, Palisa Anderson, Rob Roy Cameron, William Gleave and James Edward Henry. At least one other major Australian property developer is expected to join the Coalition in the next few months, sources said.
But readers have rejected the idea, with a masive majority saying people have the right to use natural gas in their own home.
With more than 1900 readers voting in our online poll by 11.30am AEDT, more than four in five (83 per cent) said they opposed the plan to phase out gas kitchens.
Just 11 per cent said they were in favour of the campaign, while 6 per cent of readers said they were undecided on the issue.
Readers also expressed their opposition to the gas plan in comments, with some labelling it “insane” and “idiotic”.
One reader commented that gas “has been the saviour of many people duting the floods when power was out”, and that “we demonise everything these days”.
Some 76 per cent of poll respondents said they cooked with gas at home - slightly higher than the estimated 65-70 per cent of Australians who use gas domestically.
Chef Neil Perry said electric was “definitely the future of cooking” in both homes and commercial kitchens.
“It’s just cleaner, it’s more efficient and it’s definitely more beneficial for the environment. Everything tends to be neater and cleaner without gas,” he said.
Lendlease Global Head of Sustainability Cate Harris said electrification across operations was “essential” for the company to hit its goal of absolute zero carbon emissions by 2040.
“While the transition to electric cooking powered by renewables will take time, it’s already underway at our new commercial development Victoria Cross Tower in Sydney, and we’re looking forward to working alongside our Coalition partners to drive and accelerate industry change,” she said.
Dale O’Toole from GPT said all-electric kitchens “potentially present financial savings in new developments” and suggested moving away from gas would protect owners from having outdated appliances as the transition to renewable energy picks up momentum.
While the Global Cooksafe Coalition targets appliances in the kitchen only – so gas hot water or heating in the home would still be possible – several Australian jurisdictions are aggressively pursuing plans to electrify homes completely.
From next year, ACT infill developments will not be connected to the network, while Victoria has plans to take gas out of schools and hospitals, and from 2023 it will drop incentives for gas home appliances.
Why the moves against gas
The moves have been prompted by concerns over the health impacts of gas in the home, as well as the greenhouse emissions caused by natural gas.
Dr Kate Charlesworth from the Climate Council said cooking with gas was estimated to be responsible for up to 12 per cent of the childhood asthma burden in Australia, and a recent California study showed home gas stoves were associated with elevated levels of benzene, a known carcinogen.
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Seriously harmful vaccines and negligent medical advice
Julie Sladden
I was recently accused of lying. This was a little hard to swallow as it was over a directly referenced quote. At the same time, I found the accusation understandable. So much has happened over the past two and a half years, it’s difficult to know who to trust anymore.
Take this example: Pfizer recently admitted they didn’t test for transmission because they were too busy moving at the ‘speed of science’ (to be honest, they really didn’t need to admit it – just ask any double, triple, quadruple jabbed person whether they’ve had the virus yet). Yet we were repeatedly told by authorities the vaccine would stop the virus in its tracks. Trustworthy?
Or this example: The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) revealed it did not know the myocarditis risks of the Pfizer and Moderna products until five months after provisionally approving them for use. Five months! Trustworthy?
Meanwhile, adverse event reporting systems around the world indicate more adverse events in Covid vaccines than all previous vaccines developed over the past 50 years, combined. Yet we were subject to months of multimedia messaging that claimed the vaccines were both ‘safe and effective’. Trustworthy?
It turns out that for a small (but significant) number of people, the vaccines are neither safe nor effective.
People like Tyson Illingworth (known to his millions of fans as ‘tyDi’). He is an acclaimed composer, songwriter, and DJ with a swag of awards. Like so many others trying to ‘do the right thing’ he stepped up for his first dose with ‘complete faith and trust in (Australia’s) leadership and medical system’.
What happened next was alarming. He writes, ‘Within days I started to feel severe and unbearable shooting pain and paralysis in my hands and feet.’
Soon afterward, Tyson was rushed to hospital. ‘I couldn’t believe the vaccine could do this to me, especially when we were all told it was safe and effective and if there was a reaction it would be minor.’
But there was worse to come. Before release from hospital, Tyson was strongly advised to get the second vaccine by the neurologist. ‘I acted on the neurologist’s advice and ended up taking the second vaccine… in hindsight I cannot believe I listened to her as I have always thought of myself as a critical thinker, and instead I took advice from a doctor who had no regard for my personal situation.’
Tyson’s symptoms were further exacerbated by the second dose, and he was rushed to hospital once again. ‘I was unable to move, my hands felt like they were on fire, and I struggled to get through the day… I thought my life was over…’
A couple of months later he contracted the virus, sending him to hospital yet again.
Tyson’s life has changed immeasurably. Where there should be touring, performing and interviews, instead is terrible pain, medications and doctor’s appointments, and a new understanding of the state of medicine in Australia.
Vaccine claims and censorship
The COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme was established to help people receive financial support if they’ve experienced harm because of a Covid vaccine. The application process could be described as complicated, at best. Many patients find they are ineligible to claim due to the limited list of recognised adverse effects. In addition, submitting a claim requires a doctor to complete a 10-page report documenting their medical opinion and link to vaccination – something many doctors are unwilling to put their name to.
Tyson experienced this also, ‘I had 5 different doctors confirm that my condition was caused by the vaccine, and they all said they cannot go on record.’
Thank you AHPRA position statement…
(The position statement makes clear that any health advice which undermines the national immunisation campaign may result in investigation and regulatory action. Result? Many doctors are too scared to report an adverse event for fear they might be investigated.)
Despite these limitations, the claims scheme budget is set to blow out to almost $77 million by July 2023. That’s a lot of claims.
Un-informed consent
Tyson rightly questions the advice he was given recommending he take the second dose of the vaccine. ‘One would think that when a patient presents with severe neurological issues in hospital a specialist would think first, “I will do no harm and disclose the risk”… The information about neurological side effects was available to every clinician at the time, a simple Google search would have revealed this.’
A formal complaint from Tyson to the QLD health ombudsman returned a letter acknowledging that although the doctor advised him to get a second vaccine, despite being injured by the first, the practitioner was (conveniently) indemnified.
However, an April 2021 letter from Greg Hunt to both the AMA and the RACGP released under freedom of information outlines the parameters of this ‘indemnity’ and confirms ‘as with all vaccines, informed consent is required before the administration of each vaccine dose’.
The Australian government’s six-page consent form lists only a handful of potential and ‘rare or very rare’ side effects including blood clotting and heart inflammation. No mention of neuropathy or potential for other serious side effects emerging or not yet known due to incomplete safety data of these provisionally approved injectables.
So, what exactly is informed consent?
Every health practitioner should know ‘consent is a process, not a form’, says medical professional insurer Avant. ‘Gaining consent from your patient means more than just going through a checklist of risks… you need to understand the risks that are material to your patient.’
Medical professional insurer MIPS agrees that it is important that professionals ‘identify the risks that the patient is most concerned about.’
Given the nature and severity of Tyson’s reaction to the first dose it would be reasonable to be concerned about the risk of a reaction to the second.
This ‘un-informed consent’ story is all too common and one I have heard repeated time and again. Being simply handed a form to read and sign does not equate to informed consent. It never has. Especially when administering a provisionally approved medical product.
If the government’s indemnity scheme is dependent on informed consent, and informed consent didn’t happen, what happens when the patient suffers a vaccine injury? Where does the buck stop?
It stops with the patient, the person at the receiving end of this bureaucratic mess. In this case that person was Tyson who now suffers debilitating symptoms.
How bureaucracy undermines trust
The recently amended National Law, which regulates medical practitioners, is set to give AHPRA even more power to silence doctors if they are deemed to be undermining ‘public confidence’. This means if doctors disagree with public health messaging, like a ‘safe and effective’ mantra, they risk disciplinary action.
How then will patients be able to trust they are receiving the best health advice for their individual circumstances alongside up to date evidence, and not the government-endorsed public health message of the day?
They won’t.
For someone who used to trust our medical system, like Tyson, I’m not sure that trust can be earned back. And with the way things are heading, I wouldn’t trust it either.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/dont-trust-me-im-a-doctor/
*************************************************Brainless politics
Getting the nation moronically into debt to placate Covid panic merchants may be the best thing the Liberals have done in decades…
They have left behind such a flat purse that, for the first time in almost thirty years, the federal government has piddling discretionary funding with which to buy support (or silence) from interest groups.
Labor will have to stand or fall on how its policies affect the majority of Australians’ day-to-day lives.
It is no wonder that parliamentarians are spending their waking hours trying to cover up what a vulnerable position the sparse kitty puts them in. Their endless summits, roundtables, working groups, and ‘listening’ exercises get tarted up as inclusiveness. These ego-fests are actually about trying to ‘duchess’ as many interests as possible until the day when cash giveaways can return.
It is also a desperate attempt to come up with ideas for cheap (and popular) policies that can be flogged to the masses.
Labor’s long-time playbook is of zero help on that count. It reads: capitulate to the most maniacally unhinged of activists and promise whatever it takes to keep them feeling the love.
Not at all coincidentally, this usually involves profligate spending.
Labor’s brains trust is not helping either, as it is dominated by self-aggrandising journalists, pompous academics, and overly-entitled brats who think that spouting trite undergraduate garbage about gender politics places them on par with the great thinkers of the Enlightenment.
Such hubris has Labor scuttling about, struggling to hide that without handouts it has little of real substance to offer the public.
The idea that most Australians spend their days fretting about an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, working conditions for highly paid women, or any of the other elite froth that Labor has adopted to bolster its inner-city credentials, is laughable. For a government to attempt to pass off such fringe distractions as if they are central concerns of the nation should give a resounding free kick to any credible opposition.
On that front though, there is only tepid humming and hawing rather than any serious alternatives.
The Liberals are not only letting Labor choose the battlegrounds, but are also too scared to say when one of Albanese’s policies is just window-dressing. If they were fit to lead the country, Dutton’s opposition would expose Labor’s shallow rhetoric and then calmly move on to talk about practical ways to make the majority of lives better. Their failure to do so reveals a complete lack of intellect, gumption, and spine.
The real problem is that both major parties suffer from the exact same rot at their core. Over decades of unimaginable prosperity, both parties have fallen into lazyiness and expedient policy-making that relies on largesse rather than merit to get over the line. Neither has had any incentive or need to do serious thinking because they have been able to simply spend taxpayer’s money instead (or promise to).
Both parties have encouraged the view that government exists chiefly to serve the whims of the loudest groups of whingers and ‘I’m a victim’ rent-seekers. It is no wonder that identity politics has risen swiftly and with such toxicity: it is the quickest way to get rewarded, and it plays to the divide and conquer mentality that lies at the foundation of payment-based politics.
Throwing money around is nothing new, but adopting that tactic at the expense of far-sightedness and real direction – qualities both Labor and Liberal willingly surrendered during Australia’s run of good economic times – is no way to govern for the common good. All it does is popularise the notion that there is no truly shared interest, only a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction and payoff that cunning grifters disguise as ‘reflecting modern values’.
Both parties have lost the courage to say that constant government charity is unacceptable, because it has been advantageous for them to pretend otherwise.
Both parties have ceded the ability to develop – let alone deliver – tangible, practical measures that go to the heart of what the majority of Australians really care about.
This is not rocket science. Humanity’s basic desires have changed little over millennia: shelter, food, meaningful work, and the ability to raise a family while living in relative peace and privacy.
The secret to Labor becoming a government in the true sense of that word, and the Liberals earning a way back from opposition, is identical for both parties. It will not be found in the ‘progressive’ obsessions of Labor’s loony left or the return to Christianity favoured by the Liberals’ bible-thumping faction. Instead, it lies in re-learning how to develop policies from a position of austerity, maturity, and broad relevance.
Sadly, with Labor already dropping come-hither hints about being able to spend more if they win a second term and the Liberals happy to ride along, it looks like rewarding a patchwork of petty gripes is a future that suits both of them just fine.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/cashed-up-come-hither-politics/
******************************************************'Accidental' homeschoolers are rising as some parents feel they have no choice but to withdraw their children
Gemma didn't set out to homeschool her daughter, Bonnie. Bonnie had loved kindergarten and Gemma assumed that, the following year, school would go just as smoothly.
"We entered prep very excited and full of wonder, ready to start the mainstream [school] experience," Gemma says.
But it was 2020, and Bonnie's start in school coincided with the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schoolyard conversations, and restrictions like social distancing and mask-wearing, had Bonnie concerned.
"She came home full of questions and then full of worry," Gemma says. "And that's where the anxiety started to build."
It was the beginning of Gemma's journey to becoming an "accidental homeschooler".
That's the term used by Rebecca English, a Queensland University of Technology researcher and lecturer specialising in non-mainstream education.
The term describes a cohort of home educators that Dr English says is growing. Accidental homeschoolers are those people who have tried one or several different schools that haven't worked for their child, "so they have found themselves home educating or distance educating", she says. "They just felt they had no choice."
It's a decision that carries implications beyond a child's education. Overwhelmingly, it's women who take on the homeschooling responsibility in a family, Dr English says.
"The short-term impact is the loss of possibly a woman's full-time wage," she says. In the medium-to-long term, it might equate to lower superannuation, and a drop in how much money a family can spend in their local community.
Rising figures mean these are issues that need addressing, Dr English says.
In Queensland, where she is based, there were 900 homeschooled students a decade ago. Today there are about 8,500. In the past year alone, Queensland homeschool registrations have jumped 69 per cent.
Dr English believes the figures reveal a system in need of change. "There are reasons that all of this is falling down. And we need to have a broader conversation about this as a country."
After Bonnie's anxiety about school "started to dial up to 10", and she was diagnosed with anxiety and autism, Gemma says she tried to make the school experience work. She sought external specialists as well as extra in-school support.
None of it was enough. "[Bonnie] was so worried and she was so scared that she wanted to be around us and she didn't like the separation from us. "For us, it just became a point where we had to try something different," Gemma says.
Bonnie's school was nurturing and well-intentioned, but Gemma says teachers were under-resourced and over-worked. They didn't have the specific skills needed to help her daughter feel safe and comfortable at school.
The family finally made the decision after term one this year to withdraw Bonnie and homeschool her. "It wasn't the [fault of the] school and another school wasn't going to be the answer. It was the system as a whole. And we had to make a change," Gemma says.
She argues that schools need more flexibility — and more time — to be able to focus on the individual needs of students.
Dr English agrees. She argues that schools need better support to be able to manage issues such as bullying, as this is one of the main reasons parents choose to home educate, according to her research.
Her research also highlighted the indirect factors leading some parents to choose to homeschool. Some of these include social and emotional issues a child might face, such as anxiety or depression, or because they identify as being on the autism spectrum and find classroom noise difficult or overwhelming. "And so they're much happier at home," she says.
Dr English argues that an uptick in homeschooled children is something that "can't be disconnected from the teacher crisis" — that is, the widespread shortage of Australian teachers.
"Realistically, schools are really pressed. The institution of schooling really needs to be looked at more deeply … There just isn't the time to do that support work," Dr English says.
She argues that teachers are too stretched and that too much of their working days are consumed by "data-driven" work demanded of them by education departments, leaving them insufficient time to devote to individual students.
"If teachers were better supported, more people would join the profession [and] less parents would feel disaffected and would be resorting to home education," she says.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Monday, November 21, 2022
More Covid-19 alarmism from Leftist "doctor"
For someone who calls himself “Australia’s most trusted doctor”, Norman Swan sure gets a lot wrong. His multiple misdiagnoses during the pandemic at least provide a public service by reinforcing the virtue of seeking a second opinion.
Just over a year ago, I highlighted Swan’s many erroneous predictions as the ABC’s medical reporter and pandemic analyst. Predictably enough his mistakes are always to the alarmist side, exaggerating the threat of Covid-19 and forecasting disastrous outcomes that never occur.
Swan has defended the harshest and most futile pandemic crackdowns in Labor states, such as repeated lockdowns in Victoria, while criticising the less draconian responses of the NSW Liberal government. It is hard to fathom how partisan preferences might infect something like pandemic commentary that should involve only rational and practical considerations – but there you go.
Yet Swan has outdone himself this week with a frightful intervention that broke all the standard rules about personal intrusion, public fearmongering and basic fact-checking. It is a potent example of how some people are desperately seeking to prolong the period of crisis, for whatever political, professional, or personal motivations, consciously or not.
Speaking on ABC breakfast television, Swan was eager to warn the public that even after they had been infected with the virus, and recovered, Covid might still kill them. He cited a study based on 2020 cases – before vaccines, antiviral treatments, the arrival of what are now the most common variants, when we knew much less about the virus – and he illustrated his point with a couple of prominent and tragic deaths from earlier this year, Shane Warne and Senator Kimberley Kitching, both just 52 years old.
“My view is that it’s too much of a coincidence that Shane Warne and the Labor senator in Victoria died not long after a Covid infection,” Swan told viewers, “And people are reporting sudden death after Covid infection. It’s not benign.” Talk about telehealth, this TV doctor was happy to fly blind and stoke anxiety.
If Swan had bothered to check, he would have discovered that Kitching had, in fact, never been infected with Covid. Warne, on the other hand, had seen off the virus twice, but was exposed to other, well-documented heart disease risk factors, including smoking, drinking and poor diet.
Yet Swan was happy to use these deaths to put the fear of God into anyone who wanted to listen. Official figures show at least 10.5 million Australians have been infected with Covid, and scientific studies suggest it might be closer to 16 million, or two thirds of us.
All those people who have survived the virus at least once, the vast bulk with mild symptoms, were being told they were not in the clear. Rather, Swan wanted them to consider that they might suddenly drop dead.
In the furore that followed, the ABC had no choice but to concede their medical reporter had breached editorial standards. The national broadcaster had a breakfast television host read an apology on Swan’s behalf: “Dr Norman Swan has issued an apology after suggesting there may be a Covid link to the deaths of Labor senator Kimberley Kitching and cricket great Shane Warne. He made those comments during his interview on our program yesterday. Dr Swan says he’s personally apologised to Senator Kitching’s husband yesterday and that he made an error he regrets.”
Hang on, where was the apology to the public? Did the ABC and Swan not understand the substance of this transgression or were they just playing dumb?
Sure, Swan needed to apologise to the Kitching and Warne families. But the far greater infraction was the spreading of baseless fear among ABC audiences.
Swan continues to register himself as a doctor, even though his original medical training occurred almost half a century ago and he no longer practises. All the same, he surely would be aware of the dictum, courtesy of the Hippocrates work Of the Epidemics, which urges medics “to do good or to do no harm” – often simplified as the crucial rule, “first, do no harm”.
Warning people, unnecessarily, that they might drop dead anytime because of a virus that is now endemic in our population is not doing good. It is doing harm.
The hysterical response by some to the pandemic is still evident in people wandering around outdoors in masks, elderly people still isolating at home, bureaucrats considering a return to compulsory masks, and some employers still insisting on redundant vaccine mandates. The ABC should get Swan to pull his head in.
It could invite real experts on to ABC programs more often; people who practise medicine and are sensible and articulate. The infectious diseases experts Professor Peter Collignon, Professor Catherine Bennett, Associate Professor Nick Coatsworth and Dr Clay Golledge have all been generous with their time for media during the pandemic, as well as accurate in their predictions, and sober in their advice.
But the ABC has preferred the gloomy, sensationalist, interventionist, and often erroneous analysis from Swan. I guess it makes for a better story.
Shane Warne’s manager said it best, telling The Australian it was “totally disrespectful” for the ABC to air Swan’s “asinine” post-mortems. “Why would anyone take any notice of what this guy has to say? What on earth would he know about Shane’s health?”
Fair call, and then the kicker: “Maybe he (Swan) could tell us who really killed JFK.”
But Swan alone is not to blame. As is typical at the national broadcaster, the lack of restraint, lack of editorship, and lack of perspective has been evident as the organisation has encouraged and followed Swan along the catastrophist path.
When the history of the pandemic is written, the constant stream of alarmist misinformation from the ABC (and most other media) will be central. The symbiotic relationship between hysterical journalists and power-stuck politicians sucked the lifeblood out of a normally vibrant society.
Instead of comparing responses around the world and coming to the obvious conclusion that we inflicted greater social and economic costs on ourselves for no greater benefit, some commentators and politicians want to continue the paranoia. They would prefer we still behaved like communist China, where major city lockdowns are provoking violent street protests – even in a totalitarian country – which could lead to all sorts of unintended consequences in coming weeks and months.
The pandemic panic merchants have a lot of explaining to do. Having supported lockdowns, curfews, rings of steel, border closures, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and having warned we cannot live with the coronavirus, they are left with all the evidence of overreach, with so much of the tumult and trauma exposed as unnecessary, as we proceed to live with the virus. Only the communist regime in China continues to pursue the impossible Covid-zero goal that many aspired to in this country.
Perhaps we will never see an appropriate reckoning because the main culprits dominate our media, politics, and bureaucracies. We need a national royal commission to investigate our pandemic response but there is precious little impetus for it because this would amount to the media/political/bureaucratic elite calling an inquiry into themselves.
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Up to 33,000 jobs at risk due to Labor's new taxes, bargaining changes, mining companies say
Mining companies have warned that up to 33,000 jobs are at-risk from new taxes and multi-employer bargaining changes, with critical minerals, lithium, copper and other resources projects valued up to $77bn imperilled by increasing investment uncertainty and contagion.
Resources giants have told the Albanese government that projects underpinning its Powering Australia energy transformation plan will come under threat if miners are hit with new taxes, industrial relations rules, emissions and environmental restrictions.
Senior industry sources said a “slow down” in critical minerals, lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper projects would put the government’s 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by mid-century targets in jeopardy.
Facing a re-run of the 2010 mining tax campaign and calls from coal, gas and iron ore producers to rule-out new levies and multi-employer bargaining, Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Sunday said it wasn’t the government’s “preference” to impose a temporary tax on thermal coal and gas.
Anthony Albanese, who returned from overseas on Sunday, will convene Cabinet meetings this week in Canberra to finalise the government’s pre-Christmas plan to support manufacturers and households facing massive hikes in power bills.
“Our priority is on the regulation side rather than on the taxation side. But at this stage of the process, it makes no sense to take options off the table until or unless we can make progress on the regulatory side
Dr Chalmers said the government was pursuing a regulatory solution, anchored by a mandatory gas market code of conduct that includes pricing considerations. The Prime Minister also left the door open to a cap on gas prices.
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable, backed by member companies including BHP, Rio Tinto, Whitehaven and Glencore, said a mining tax would “slow down Australia’s energy transformation”.
The mining sector has identified 140 projects subject to pre-final investment decisions which could be at-risk from tax and IR changes, including 46 critical minerals projects.
Across the country, there are about 200 major minerals projects currently in the pipeline over the next five years, with an estimated value of between $73 and $95bn. The MCA warns that 22,000 construction jobs and more than 11,000 ongoing jobs could be at-risk.
Mr Constable said “to build the amount of renewable energy technology required to meet our emissions targets, Australia needs more critical minerals out of the ground”.
“More lithium for batteries, more copper for solar panels, and more cobalt for electric vehicles. Not more uncertainty and risk that will simply chase away investment from our shores, at such a crucial hour,” Ms Constable said.
“By targeting the mining industry, the federal government risks undermining its own climate ambitions.
“Combined with a rushed industrial relations policy that will lead to more strike action, this dual attack on mining will put countless mine developments at risk of cancellation or delay, at a time when we need more investment in our economy, and more jobs.”
The lack of clarity over taxes, multi-employer bargaining, environmental planning changes and a crackdown on heavy emitters has sparked a national campaign by cashed-up miners and exporters concerned about investment and sovereign risk impacts.
The campaign was launched after The Australian revealed the government was considering a proposal for a new temporary tax on thermal coal and gas to help subsidise skyrocketing electricity bills.
Dr Chalmers on Sunday said “we are conscious of our international relationships, we are conscious of investment in the industry” after mining companies and Japan – one of the nation’s biggest LNG and coal export markets – raised concerns about regulatory and tax changes.
Greens leader Adam Bandt will this week ramp-up pressure on the government to impose a windfall profits tax on energy companies and continue his push to end subsidies for oil, gas and coal.
Mr Bandt and resources spokeswoman Dorinda Cox will on Monday move a disallowance motion in the Senate to block federal money for a new Victorian gas project.
The motion targets a $32m commercial loan provided by the Morrison government to GB Energy to accelerate the Golden Beach gas production and storage project.
Mr Bandt said “Labor can’t keep backing new coal and gas projects”.
“The big gas corporations are making giant profits and the public shouldn’t be on the hook for a new gas project that will make the climate crisis worse,” Mr Bandt told The Australian.
Ms Constable said resources companies need “certainty to make long-term investment decisions”.
“Why would companies risk investing in Australia if the rules keep changing, long after investment decisions have been made?”
The MCA, NSW Minerals Council and Queensland Resources Council last week launched an advertising blitz based on the $22m mining tax campaign, which led to the demise of Kevin Rudd.
“The decision to emulate the opening salvo of the 2010 mining tax campaign was deliberate and calculated,” a senior NSW mining source told The Australian.
“Preparations are well underway to escalate things if necessary in the weeks ahead. It’s hoped the government learns from past mistakes and rules out a tax, which will do nothing to bring down power prices but would significantly hurt the Australian economy.”
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Canada’s nuclear power turns heat up on energy ignorance
Late last month, energy company AGL lodged an application to blow up its Liddell coal-fired power station in NSW. It’s a shame it can’t be dismantled and packed into shipping containers because the Germans would take it in a flash.
At Garzweiler, near Cologne, the demolition crews are chopping down wind turbines to get to the coal beneath the ground. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced the reopening of five power plants burning low-grade lignite. The life of three nuclear generators is being extended.
Yet Australia, apparently, has so much energy to spare that it can close its fourth-largest coal generator in five months’ time and the lights won’t even flicker. We’ll see.
In June we witnessed a dress rehearsal of Liddell’s closure. A series of outages by coal generators coinciding with rising winter demand brought the National Energy Market to the brink of collapse. The situation was so dire that NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean went on the radio to plead with customers to avoid using their dishwashers until after the evening peak.
At 6.55pm on June 12, the Australian Energy Market Operator ordered Queensland coal generators to turn up the throttle. By 6.30 the next morning, the interconnector from Queensland to NSW was running red hot. At 7am electricity was flowing at three times the safe capacity.
As the sun rose, solar panels offered some relief, but the emergency was far from over. At 6.30pm on June 13, desperate for every megawatt of dispatchable power it could muster, the AEMO ordered Snowy Hydro to crank up its turbines at Colongra on the NSW Central Coast. In normal circumstances, Colongra runs on natural gas. Since the price of gas had gone through the roof, however, the turbines were running on diesel.
READ MORE:State’s coal export bonanza to thrive until at least 2050|‘Don’t go there’: PM warned on new tax|Gas crisis forces Germany to flatten wind farm for coal mine
So much for a smooth transition from hydrocarbons to clean energy. NSW avoided blackouts last winter by turning to one of the dirtiest forms of fuel available. What happened on June 13 was far from an isolated incident. At the peak of the grid crisis in the second week of August, diesel was generating 2 per cent of dispatchable power in the NEM.
If any grounds remain by which the federal and NSW governments can prevent AGL committing this act of industrial vandalism then it must use them, because even if Liddell stays open, the grid will be stretched to the limit. Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen should insist demolition is postponed until AGL replaces like with like. Instead, we’re being fobbed off with puffery about AGL’s investment in wind and solar and its plans for green hydrogen.
AGL scrapped its plan to install gas generators on the site some years ago but it isn’t abandoning Liddell completely. The company has promised to install a 500MW lithium-ion battery in partnership with Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries.
Even if it were up and running by the time Liddell closes, which it won’t be, it will be virtually useless in the kind of emergency that came close to blacking out NSW in June. A 500MW battery stores the equivalent of 0.01 per cent of NSW’s weekly energy consumption.
Blowing up Liddell will be just the start of our woes. In August 2025 the country’s largest generator at Eraring will be replaced with another fizzer of a battery. Others must follow if the AEMO is to stay on track with its plan of retiring 60 per cent of coal capacity by the end of the decade.
For a moment, let us put scepticism aside and assume Bowen’s plan to install 64 million solar panels, erect 3800 wind turbines and string up 28,000km of transmission lines is the solution. But unless he can get them up and running by April, Bowen must abandon wishful thinking and face facts. The laws of physics and the challenges of engineering mean the near-instant shift to zero emissions many expect simply cannot occur. The modern world was built to run on hydrocarbons and transition will take much longer than we have so far imagined, if it can be achieved at all.
Not every Western country is making such a hash of things. The government of Ontario announced the closure of its coal-fired power plants in 2003. The Thunder Bay Generating Station, the final coal plant in Ontario, stopped burning in 2014. Today the province remains the powerhouse of the Canadian economy and a centre for manufacturing.
Ontario seized the advantage by investing in nuclear power and a relatively light touch with wind and solar. The province is home to five of six Canadian nuclear reactors including the largest nuclear power station in the world.
Ontario has become an early adopter of small modular reactors, the first of which is under construction at Darlington Point, adjacent to an existing nuclear reactor. The first SMR could be in operation by 2028 and will have a life of 60 years. Australia’s wind and solar infrastructure will need to be replaced three or four times in that period, if we were foolish enough to persist on that path.
SMRs would be the best possible replacement baseload generators for Australia’s remaining coal-fired power plants if we had a government bold enough to rise to the challenge. Four SMRs, stacked in sequence at Liddell covering as little as 18ha, would comfortably cover the gap left by the withdrawal of coal.
Bowen claims the adoption of nuclear would push up power prices and crowd out cheaper and cleaner technologies, insisting that firmed renewables are quicker to build and cheaper to operate. “Those who say otherwise are either dangerously ignorant or simply seeking to perpetuate the climate wars,” he says.
In fact, the retail electricity price in Canada was about the same as the price in Australia in 2005 before the renewable energy investment boom began. Today, Canadians are paying half as much as Australians and enjoy the third-lowest prices in the OECD. Energy ignorance runs deep.
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Another false claim of Aboriginality?
A relative of a Victorian Labor candidate who has described herself as a "proud Yorta Yorta woman" has said their family has no Indigenous ancestry and has never identified as Aboriginal.
Lauren O'Dwyer is running for election in the battleground seat of Richmond in Melbourne's inner north at this weekend's state election.
The ABC understands Ms O'Dwyer said her Indigenous heritage comes from her great-grandfather, Graham Berry.
However Mr Berry's daughter, Joan Keele, has told the ABC her father was not Aboriginal and never identified as Indigenous.
"My father was not … Aboriginal. His father was born in Swan Hill and his mother was born in Richmond," Ms Keele said. "So he's nowhere near Yorta Yorta country. "We had a good relationship. We could chat about anything and everything, but [he] never, ever mentioned that."
Yorta Yorta country is concentrated at the centre of the Victorian-NSW border, taking in towns including Echuca and Shepparton. Swan Hill lies 100 kilometres from its westernmost boundary of Cohuna.
Ms Keele said she found out Ms O'Dwyer had described herself as Indigenous after seeing campaign advertisements on Facebook. "I was really surprised when I read that on Facebook that she was … a proud Yorta Yorta woman," Ms Keele said. "I can't understand her. I really don't."
In a statement provided to the ABC, Ms O'Dwyer disputed the allegations. "I know who I am and am proud of my heritage," Ms O'Dwyer said.
Growing concerns and questions about Ms O'Dwyer's heritage have continued to build in the lead-up to Saturday's election, with the local Aboriginal corporation saying she has failed to follow cultural protocol and consult with elders. "She cannot say she's Yorta Yorta until she actually comes to the Yorta Yorta," Ms Morgan said.
"I'm not against this woman per se, but it is very clear that she has no right to procure an identity as a Yorta Yorta without going through the proper channels and going to their elders."
The YYNC has clear guidelines about who can identify as descendants of the 16 families who moved to the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Mission, near the Victorian-New South Wales border, when it first opened, making up the Yorta Yorta Nation today.
Ms Morgan said neither Ms O'Dwyer nor Mr Berry were found anywhere along the line.
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Fascism: We're well down the path to it in Australia
In recent years Australians have been exposed to a succession of natural disasters and a global pandemic. These episodes have seen government powers greatly increased and state dependence become a substitute for personal responsibility.
Perhaps because it all seemed so innocent the people’s reaction to this growing interference in their lives has been muted. They reasoned desperate times call for desperate measures. They tolerated poorly administered disaster relief and obediently observed harsh Covid lockdowns because, ‘they kept us safe’. Official scaremongering, based on uninformed or withheld medical advice, was sufficient to excuse multiple affronts to our Constitution and values.
Our constitutional guardians, from former prime minister Scott Morrison down, watched our liberties being abused with cold indifference. Not even the abridgement of free movement between the states, the arrest of a young pregnant mother for protesting against draconian lockdowns on Facebook, the death of an unborn child because ‘Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders’ or police firing rubber bullets at fleeing demonstrators, could stir the people’s representatives into protecting our Constitution and way of life. And while the emergencies have receded, emboldened governments remain.
This development is eerily reminiscent of 1930s Germany when journalist Sebastian Haffner wrote in his secret journal, ‘There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and, those like me, watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theatre’. Like Australians today, Germans believed talk of authoritarian rule was alarmist until it wasn’t.
Australian sceptics should note how the Racial Discrimination Act is being increasingly used to silence free speech. And how, in the public square, critics of the incessant wave of woke orthodoxies face demonisation as right-wing extremists, racists, climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers. Fear of being socially ostracised intimidates most. A tentative, ‘I probably shouldn’t be saying this’, is as far as most will go, even in private.
It’s the same in the corporate world. As Haffner observed, when an organisation’s future is inexorably linked to being on one ideological side, close attention is paid to the new doctrine.
So as guilt for past sins sees the NSW government commit $25 million for a token Aboriginal flag to fly permanently on Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, retailer, Coles Group ‘gets the vibe’ by acknowledging on its shopping dockets, ‘the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia’.
Similarly, big-business executives demonstrate their Green credentials by demanding limousine companies drive them to the airport in electric vehicles so they can take their umpteenth CO2-emitting flight.
It doesn’t take jackboots anymore. Spooked by social media and ‘ethical’ investors and wooed by government incentives, most boards and management have embraced ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ with alacrity. It includes the notion of a ‘social licence to operate’, a term invented by the political class to advance the goals of environmental sustainability in business practices. After all, serving ‘the people’s community’ sounds more noble than the maximisation of financial return.
But don’t be fooled. Going Green is a trillion-dollar industry and a way in which virtue and profit can nicely intersect. Like moths to a flame, rent-seekers have quickly appeared and become part of a new privileged, self-reinforcing elite.
Indeed, having access to the political class is today’s pathway to fame and fortune. It requires a different skill set to the economic risk-takers of the past. It is a system which demands obedience, entrenches privilege and restricts social mobility. Bureaucracies may claim intellectual superiority, but their record demonstrates that intellect and competence are, too often, inversely correlated.
For example, no profit-seeking enterprise would have invested in unnecessary desalination plants, an obsolete NBN, or a poorly conceived Snowy Hydro 2.0, and inland rail, let alone waste $240 million on a now mothballed Queensland quarantine facility. Indeed it’s only because we still have a capitalist system that we recognise bureaucratic ineptitude parading as public interest. Capitalism ends waste. Governments perpetuate it.
We have reached the stage where big government now enjoys a life of its own. It continues to attract a growing army of self-interested, unaccountable, group-thinking bureaucrats. They are inward looking and process driven. They are difficult to fire or demote. Those who actively seek power over others do well. They are essentially anti-liberal and anti-market and pursue regulatory powers wherever possible. The more they intervene the bigger and more powerful they become.
Looking to the future, education bureaucracies are preparing today’s children to become state dependent. Schools are transmission belts for self-loathing propaganda. Students are indoctrinated through required-reading textbooks, anti-capitalist teachings, critical race theory and the vilification of Western society. As our international proficiency rankings in literacy and mathematics tumble, the emphasis is on ‘well-being’. In primary school everyone gets a gold star wherever they place and, in team sports, there are no winners or losers lest self-esteem should suffer. When adults, these children will hardly know disappointment and will lack the necessary resilience to deal with it. They will turn to Big Government for support.
Yet the bigger governments become the more disappointments there are. Prosperity and equity for all are ever-receding horizons. Indeed, a Productivity Commission report reveals economic growth and income per person over the past decade has slipped to its slowest rate in sixty years. Moreover, the wealth of the top 20 per cent of Australians has grown 68 per cent in the past fifteen years compared to six per cent for the bottom 20 per cent.
But like Haffner, we watch silently as high-minded, highly educated bureaucrats, arbitrarily drive the economic and social agenda, leaving politicians to market illusory fantasies with empty catchwords. We are assailed internationally and domestically with promises that big government is the solution, when even a cursory glance at the evidence reveals the opposite.
So we face a stark choice. Coercion and compulsion or freedom and self-determination. There is no third way. A revolution is taking place here and now and it’s not a stage play.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/it-couldnt-happen-here-could-it/
***************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Sunday, November 20, 2022
Conservative principles should have prevented vaccine Fascism
Instead our elites followed the Chinese Communist example, with predictably destructive results
In July 2021, when ‘vaccine passports’ were still a crazy conspiracy theory, I wrote an article for The Spectator Australia arguing that Australia must not become a checkpoint society based on proof of Covid vaccination. To allow such tyranny would be illiberal and draconian, and contradict everything that the Liberal Party, as conceptualised by Sir Robert Menzies, stood for.
Not long after that article was written, many unvaccinated Australians were barred from public places, doctors’ clinics, hospitals, and even from working because they turned down the jab. Our health bureaucracies and state premiers told us that this was essential for our safety to ‘stop the spread’.
Contrary to the current claims of these backpedalling authorities, following the admission of a top Pfizer representative that their product was never tested for its impact on viral transmission, the assumption of our health departments was that the so-called vaccines would prevent the transmission of Covid.
South Australia’s Chief Health Officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, told parents that, ‘Vaccination is the best way to protect you, your family, and your friends from getting sick, and reduce the risk of outbreaks and school closures.’ As recently as January of this year, Premier Daniel Andrews told Victorians, ‘At the moment two doses are protecting the vast majority of people from serious illness, but it’s only with three doses that you’ll be prevented not just from serious illness but from getting this virus, this Omicron variant, and therefore giving it to others.’
State governments made Australia a checkpoint society, but when the Covid cases continued to mount on the daily media tallies, it became obvious that the injections did not prevent transmission. Many so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ already knew that would happen. Yet it didn’t prevent the establishment media, politicians, and health departments from pushing the lie that the injections were necessary to stop the spread. To this very day, many workplaces still have private injection mandates in place.
People’s lives have been shipwrecked, sometimes ended, because of these mandates, which have turned out to be based on a lie just as the ‘conspiracy theorists’ had warned. This is the greatest political and public health scandal of our time. If Pfizer had no data on viral transmission, on what basis were the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the Department of Health, and state Chief Health Officers making this claim from the moment the rollout began?
I am disturbed by the fact that this has taken place in this country, and by the hostility with which those who were cast aside as ‘anti-vaxxers’ were treated. The reason I am a member of the Liberal Party is because I believe in its foundational principles. Namely, ‘In the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples … a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative… In those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy – the freedom of thought, worship, speech, and association.’ There is no way that mandatory injections to keep one’s job, even if the mRNA injections were the safest and most effective vaccines ever developed (which they clearly aren’t), would be justifiable to anyone who believes in these principles.
Sadly, many found this too difficult to understand, or were not brave enough to speak out, lest their reputation suffer. Sometimes doing the right thing requires being called a fool.
In November 2021, after many Australians had either lost their jobs for not getting jabbed or had been coerced into doing so, I took the view that what was happening in our community was so serious, that I could leave no stone unturned to try to help and along with my Queensland colleague Senator Gerrard Rennick I advised the Prime Minister that I would be withholding my vote in the Senate until such time as the federal government intervened. This was not a position I took lightly but it was a hill I was prepared to die on.
Mandates were state driven, but there were many actions that the federal government could have taken to assist such as, legislating against discrimination in the manner proposed by Senator Pauline Hanson (a Bill I supported), withdrawing the states’ funding, or removing their access to the Australian Immunity Register to name but a few.
I also gave a speech in the Senate calling for an end to the mandates, in which I quoted Sir Robert Menzies:
‘The rarest form of courage, I think, in the world, is moral courage. The courage that a man has when he is prepared to form his view of the truth and to pursue it, when he is not running around the corner every five minutes to say, ‘Is this going to be popular?’
I took courage from Sir Robert’s words but sadly, there was no appetite to change course.
The reason I drew a line in the sand was simply that it was the right thing to do, and the only course of action consistent with the values of the Liberal Party. Those of us who didn’t allow ourselves to be bullied into silence and compliance have been vindicated. Others have woken up to the fact that they were lied to as the bureaucratic tyranny expanded.
Courage is contagious, as they say. The quiet Australians are speaking out. The pushback against Covid authoritarianism has been, in many ways, tremendous. The protests in Victoria, Sydney, and Canberra were the largest I remember seeing in Australia, and drew many people from all walks of life, despite the legacy media’s best efforts to smear the peaceful protesters as dangerous weirdos.
The Covid narrative has been exposed. Conservatives who grasp the concept of liberty know that the mandates were both medically and morally wrong. Australians are ready for leadership that is unconcerned with the banal criticism of the craven establishment and courageously pursues the truth. Let’s give it to them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/a-hill-to-die-on/
**************************************************Scholars shed light on Bruce Pascoe’s claims about Aborigines in "Dark Emu"
It took seven years for Australia’s anthropologists and archaeologists to test the claims in one of the most popular books ever published about First Nations people – the best-selling Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture, by Bruce Pascoe.
And it’s telling that Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, who somewhat reluctantly took on the task of challenging Pascoe’s thesis that pre-colonial Aboriginal people were agriculturalists who built stone houses and cultivated the land, are freelancers who work outside the academy.
Their book, Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, published last year, has been short-listed for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, in the running for the $80,000 top prize in the history section when winners are announced on December 13.
They were late to the fray, partly because they didn’t take Pascoe’s 2014 book very seriously and were busy with other work, but Sutton thinks the silence from the universities stemmed from fear.
“You can lose a job (if you challenge an Indigenous issue),” Sutton tells Inquirer from his home in South Australia. “You can be vilified in public or in social media. It’s notable that both (of us) are retired. Most people didn’t have the stomach for the fight because you are cancelled if you have a view that’s not liked by certain people, you are cancelled simply on the basis of being white.”
He says if the “relevant scholarly professionals” had reviewed Dark Emu – said to have sold more than 250,000 copies, generated a children’s edition, and on school curriculums – they would not have had much of a future.
Instead, says Sutton: “What happened was that Bruce developed more and more of a public image. In fact, he became someone with instant brand recognition among the middle classes.
“(As) part of the genre of anti-racist literature in this country, (Dark Emu) appealed to people who were concerned about the wellbeing of Indigenous people.
“There were lots of stories of gaps that wouldn’t close and other depressing things about children not attending school. So here’s something that comes along with a positive message. It’s anti-British, anti-colonial.”
Sutton says Pascoe’s identification as Indigenous didn’t hurt either: “No one would have bought a book … written by a white fella from Mallacoota.”
At 76, Sutton is one of the nation’s most significant social anthropologists and linguists who has worked in the bush for more than 50 years – recording and learning Indigenous languages, mapping Aboriginal cultural landscapes, and working on a total of 87 land claims.
He has written or co-written 15 books on Indigenous issues, including his controversial 2009 challenge to public policy, The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the End of the Liberal Consensus.
Born to working-class parents in Melbourne in 1946, he went to “the only school for Christian Scientists’ children in Australia”. He became “devoted” to the metaphysics of the religion and as a young adult spent two years as a Christian Science practitioner, or healer, someone others seek out for “assistance and wisdom and things to read and also for healing”.
Later, armed with his degree in literature and linguistics, he did bush fieldwork, recording – and learning – endangered Indigenous languages in Queensland. He is still in touch with the great great grandchildren of the Old People he sat with 50 years ago.
“There are many (descendants) who don’t speak the language but want to know more about the very big movement in Australia and Canada and the US for language revitalisation,” he says.
In 1970, he made an extensive field trip across the eastern Gulf country of Queensland to Palm Island, working there with Indigenous man Johnny Flinders – one of the last speakers of the Wurriima or Flinders Island language. Johnny is dead and Sutton says that he is now the only person alive who can speak the language.
Back in the city, Sutton spent a couple of years in the sound section at the then Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra before heading bush again in 1974 on a long ethnographic mapping trip. It was a “much more muscular activity (than the language trips) involving some fairly strenuous fieldwork” and Sutton loved it.
The next year, he was out again, mapping hundreds of sites across 300km from the Lockhart River settlement south to Port Stewart. He spent three years from 1976 on field work with the Wik people in Cape York, first for a PhD in anthropology then anchoring the anthropology for the Wik native title case. In 1979, he went to work exclusively on land claims for the Northern Land Council before moving with his young family to settle in South Australia.
Since then he has been largely self-employed, working continuously on land claims, publishing widely, and attending professional conferences. He spent six years as head of anthropology at the South Australian Museum and holds an honorary position with the University of Adelaide. He has done casual teaching, but has never had a permanent university job.
You get the sense he could have done without writing the Dark Emu critique but felt it important to refute an author he accuses of “cherry picking” evidence to suit his thesis. He says: “Scholars have extensive libraries and it took me a few seconds each time to go to my library and pick up most of the sources … and check whether they were correctly used.”
Sutton has written most of the forensic examination of Pascoe’s claims but asked Walshe, who worked at Flinders University and the South Australian Museum before leaving to pursue her own research, to add her archaeological expertise to the book.
Walshe had found Dark Emu impossible to read. “I couldn’t actually get through it … I just began seeing so many problems with it,” she says. “But I could see the pace of the narrative was exciting to some readers and it almost had the thrill of an adventure. I could understand people getting captivated by it.
“But in the end, I was confounded because (the excitement around the book) suggested the average reader, even a well-informed one, doesn’t actually have a good grounding in Australian Aboriginal culture. That was really quite alarming. People seem to be so taken with it … seeing it as a truer history, or perhaps the only history they have ever absorbed.”
Walshe anticipated being caught in the culture wars – “that the Andrew Bolts of the world would latch on to it” – but says it’s not been as bad as she thought. She has been disconcerted, however, when meeting Indigenous people who are unhappy with Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers but who confess they haven’t read it. In the main, those who approach her have felt uneasy about Pascoe’s work and are “deeply grateful” for a cautious, science-based critique.
Did the academy, who know so much about pre-colonial Indigenous life, fail to explain this to Australians? Says Walshe: “In Australia we struggle to popularise academic work. There’s a real gap in the publication market. I don’t think it’s the fault of academics because they’re under enormous pressure to keep up their own profiles via research and they don’t have time to write a popular book.”
Sutton is more direct: “There were heroic efforts to penetrate the wider society for the past 60 years. If people say that we weren’t told about this, they are just showing that they are ignorant … Unfortunately, Pascoe was not aware that many of these issues had been gone into.”
Walshe contributed two chapters that include a refutation of Pascoe’s claims that Aboriginal people have been present on the continent well beyond the generally accepted span of more than 60,000 years.
“Some of his claims were pretty wild, getting up to 100,000 to 120,000 years, for which there’s absolutely no evidence at all,” Walshe says.
She also challenges Pascoe’s claims that western Victoria and the area around Lake Condah was a region of complex eel farming where permanent populations built stone houses and preserved food.
Walshe says western Victoria is “a fabulous place, and archaeologically it’s really interesting, there’s no disputing that, but the claims for the processing of eels I have always felt were exaggerated and unfounded. Certainly, people were trapping eels and catching eels. It was a seasonal activity that people flocked to and really enjoyed. It was a chance for high protein and plenty of food. So I could imagine that a lot of people would have gathered at that time of year. But they did not preserve yields, there is no evidence for this whatsoever. They did not smoke eels in trees, and then store them somewhere for the rest of the season so they could be sedentary in that area.”
And the stone houses? She says rocks were used as a base for scaffolding of tree branches and foliage to create a “warm, snug, cozy little hut” but there is no evidence of more significant dwellings. Nor does there need to be: “(The area) deserves the World Heritage nomination and status. We don’t need to exaggerate it, it is already incredibly impressive.”
Pre-colonial Aboriginal people were great conservers, she says. “People took what they needed for the purposes of not just feeding yourself but for that communal living. To come together as hunter-gatherers was so important, to be able to share food, because in sharing food, of course, you share story, you share culture, and you create cohesive groups, but there wasn’t any excess … there’s no concept of long-term storage.”
Sutton and Walshe reject Dark Emu’s implication that agricultural society is more developed and “better” than that of hunter-gatherers. “I don’t go with the hierarchies,” says Walshe. “I don’t think it’s a linear progression: we don’t start off as hunter-gatherers anywhere in the world and then finally find our way into agriculture. I think that’s a complete fallacy. There is never any need for a group of people who are living a highly successful and sustainable life to suddenly become agriculturalists.
“It’s certainly not racist to say that hunter-gatherers who were living here were among the best, if not the most supreme, hunter-gatherers in the whole world. Most hunter-gatherers on other continents have had to cease undertaking their way of life or compromised and taken on bits of agriculture and so on, but it was here in Australia right up until almost 1800 that they were living as complete complex hunter-gatherers. That’s remarkable.”
For his part, Sutton is scathing about the idea that “people were actually closer to being British farmers” and thus more advanced. Such thinking, he says, “is the road to hell, because it’s going back to social evolutionism. It’s also a bit insulting to kind of (say) who’s the clever boy now, or they’re so clever. That’s demeaning.”
He concedes Dark Emu has reached a whole new audience and encouraged people to think about Indigenous issues. But he says: “The trouble is there is so much misinformation and disinformation in Dark Emu that someone has now created a body of people whose ignorance or blankness has been replaced by a mixture of fact, fantasy and untruth. That’s an awfully big job to get that undone.”
*******************************************************
Religious leaders in the NT urge government to revise proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws
Leaders of several religious groups in the Northern Territory have joined forces to raise concerns over proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws, warning the NT government of a voter backlash if the changes are legislated.
The Territory's Labor government is expected to pass the reforms when parliament sits this week, with LGBTQI+ groups saying the legislation includes important protections.
But speaking on Saturday out the front of St Mary's Cathedral in Darwin, NT Bishop Charles Gauci and Christian Schools NT chief executive Phoebe Van Bentum said the proposed changes could end up removing faith from religious schools.
"We are not about discriminating against people ... but when they come to our schools, the teaching they uphold in the public stance needs to be in line and respectful," Bishop Gauci said.
Ms van Bentum said the changes would "completely remove the protections for religious schools to employ people of the same belief".
Among those backing the comments were members of the Islamic, Sikh, Hindu and Buddhist community.
Chief among the religious groups' concerns is the repealing of existing laws which allows churches and schools to impose a religious requirement for teaching jobs.
"[The changes] are completely contrary to the longstanding tradition we have had in Australia. That tradition is for religious schools being able to operate schools in their own ethos and religious principles."
Bishop Gauci said the proposed reforms risked imposing a form of "reverse discrimination" in which schools would be unable to hire teachers and executives based on their adherence to the religious beliefs.
"No other jurisdiction has proposed or enacted laws as strict as this present law is enacting," he said.
Bishop Gauci said looming elections would allow religious groups to present the facts to voters, warning there were thousands of Territorians who attended church.
"I am not involved in party politics and I want to stay above party politics, and I'm not about supporting one party versus another.
"I'm about speaking the truth as it is and letting people decide for themselves."
Pride group praises changes
While religious groups are expressing their concerns, the reforms are being praised by the Territory's LGBTQ+ community.
Top End Pride Committee member Paige Horrigan said protecting against discrimination based on sexuality would create more-inclusive learning environments.
"It's going to greatly impact the community and provide more opportunities for LGBTQ+ people in the education system, that in the religious education system … haven't previously existed, which is going to be really great to see and create a lot more acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community," they said.
They also added the harm for students at religious schools — to see gender or sexuality diverse people rejected for employment — could have a negative impact on their wellbeing.
"A young person seeing that someone like them being rejected from a job that they are so often around, it can be quite disheartening and [they can] think, 'Oh, will I not be able to get a job when I'm older just because of who I am?'"
In response to questions from the ABC, the Northern Territory's Attorney-General, Chansey Paech, held firm on the the proposed legislation, saying it had been "extensively consulted since 2017".
Bishop Gauci rejected this, and said the government had done "very, very little" consultation over the changes.
Mr Paech pointed to exemptions within the existing legislation that would allow religious schools and all employers to select candidates for roles based on "genuine occupational qualification".
"This [legislation] is not about eroding religious freedoms, it's about enhancing protections against discrimination so that staff at faith-based schools have the same protections against discrimination as staff at non-faith based schools, and workers generally," he said.
"The reforms ensure our anti-discrimination legislation is reflective of contemporary needs, and builds upon the objects of the legislation which includes equality of opportunity."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-19/nt-religious-discrimination-reforms/101674820
************************************************************Demand for Queensland metallurgical coal set to increase despite global trend
Metallurgical coal is coal that is used to convert iron into steel -- in a blast furnace
Despite global demand for coal continuing to plummet by 2050, the need for Queensland metallurgical coal is expected to increase during that time, state government analysis shows.
Queensland Treasury has painted a picture of what future international demand for the state's thermal and metallurgical coal could look like in a new report based on the International Energy Agency's (IEA) World Energy Outlook, released this year.
The IEA's report looked at three different scenarios for future coal demand to 2050.
One was based on current policies international governments had in place, the second factored in governments achieving climate-related policy commitments, and the third modelled the outcome of global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 being achieved.
Under all scenarios demand for coal by 2030 was predicted to fall — ranging from 10 per cent to 45 per cent depending on the scenario — and between 2030 and 2050 demand was expected to decline a further 25 to 82 per cent.
Despite this the IEA expects Australian coal exports to increase 10 per cent by 2050, largely driven by metallurgical coal which is used for steel making.
Queensland Deputy Under-Treasurer for Economics and Fiscal Dennis Molloy said the government expected demand for metallurgical to remain strong, but the need for thermal coal – used in electricity production — would suffer.
"We know from analysis that's been done by organisations such as the International Energy Agency that with the adjustment to a lower-carbon economy, that that will mean that thermal tonnages will come under pressure," he said. "But what Queensland has the advantage of is that we're predominantly metallurgical coal.
"There's still a very bright outlook for metallurgical coal because of the industrialisation in India, which is going to be very important for us.
"The quality of our coal, where we are positioned geographically, our supply chains, our skilled workforce and the incredible resilience of the industry, really positions us so well to be able to make sure that we've still got very strong volumes of coking coal into the future."
Queensland Treasury's report noted demand for metallurgical — or coking — coal would continue for some time due to the lack of current alternatives to coal in the steelmaking process.
Queensland is the world's largest seaborne exporter of metallurgical coal, and produced 90 per cent of the country's coking coal in 2021-22.
The report highlighted that record hard coking coal and thermal coal prices drove the value of Queensland's coal exports to a record high of $79.7 billion for the year to September 2022.
India picks up export black hole left by China
The Queensland Treasury report also looked at the impact of China's unofficial ban on Australian coal imports which took place in October 2020.
The ABC previously reported Australia exported close to $14 billion of coal to China in 2019 — most of that coking coal.
Mr Molloy said China used to be Queensland's largest export market for coal, but the losses had now been largely filled by India.
"Obviously, when those informal bands came in place in 2020, that required a very significant adjustment by the industry," he said.
"But the industry has been extraordinarily resilient and responsive and has been able to diversify away into other markets including India, and also Japan and Korea.
"What that has allowed the industry to do is replace over 90 per cent of the tonnage that was lost to China."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-19/qld-energy-coal-exports-steel-china-treasury-report/101673222
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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