Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports reveals Great Barrier Reef could be destroyed

This is a thoroughly dishonest piece of reporting. It takes scenarios that the IPCC deems highly unlikely (3C+ warming) and treats it as if it were probable. It's just blatant propaganda from a fanatic below

The Great Barrier Reef could be destroyed and Queensland could endure extreme weather conditions if the planet warms more than 3C, a new report has revealed.

A United Nations report by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change warned that time may be running out for the world to only warm by 1.5C, saying it was already at 1.1C.

The report details what changes a rising temperatures would bring to Australia.

If they increaee by 4C globally, Australi’s temperaturs could possibly surge by 6C, meaning the potential for 50C days.

Director of Griffith University Climate Action Beacon Professor Brendan Mackey said to make sure the dire effects of global warming won’t happen we need to transition away from fossil fuels and accelerate to clean energy.

“Each government has made a pledge of policies and programs to achieve mitigation which is what the current government propose,” Prof Mackey said.

“If you add all the commitments it would limit global warming.

“A global warming of three would mean the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it,” he said.

“Every increment of warming, that makes it hard for everyone. For Queensland it would mean much heavier impacts for agriculture, huge impacts for Great Barrier Reef.

“If you have a temperature of 40C, it’s life threatening and the doctor would send you to hospital, when we talk about levels of warming a healthy temperature would be 0 above pre-industrial levels.”

Prof Mackey said the Reef couldn’t handle the amount of choral bleaching that would occur.

Prof Mackey said things were heating up fast. “That means we are going to see a big increase in climate impact, an increase of severity of extreme weather events,” he said.

“For Queensland this is interesting, as it is highly exposed to extreme weather events.”

“It would mean more heavy flooding, we will have more of everything that’s bad when it comes to weather.

“Every increment of warming, that makes it hard for everyone.”

But Prof Mackey said the report also revealed there was still opportunity to cap the amount of climate change and limit it at 1.5C.

“It’s really Queensland’s interest to prevent further climate change, while Queensland has a lot of fossil fuels, it also has the minerals that it needed for clean energy, there’s a huge opportunity to become a clean energy powerhouse,” he said.

“What the report is saying for Queensland is that climate change is going to get worse than its better. That’s going to be more climate risk for Queensland.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-reports-reveals-great-barrier-reef-could-be-destroyed/news-story/a84013275ac983b1e53e37845f33e721

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Big tech will back flawed Voice

In the push to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia’s Constitution, censorship is the greatest weapon – and Big Tech has received the green light to use it.

The Albanese government has confirmed that there will be no changes to how digital platforms monitor freedom of expression and ‘disinformation’ relating to the upcoming referendum on the Voice. This has fuelled concerns over just how fair the debate will be, and rightly so. Given their record of political interference, unhinged bias, and censorship, platforms such as Facebook and Google do not deserve the trust of the Australian people. To ensure that foreign-owned media companies cannot hijack the conversation around one of Australia’s most sensitive domestic matters, the Albanese government should adopt the Institute of Public Affairs’ proposal to legislate against such platforms censoring political viewpoints regarding the referendum.

In explaining why no changes will be made, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland places great trust in Big Tech’s ability to self-regulate. She states that they have policies which ‘protect the integrity of democratic processes and facilitate freedom of expression while addressing misinformation/disinformation’.

Far from protecting democratic ideals, existing social media policies are consistently used to undermine free dialogue in the pursuit of one narrative. Whether it is relying on fact-checkers to flag so-called ‘misinformation’ or arbitrarily declaring that certain content ‘advertisements’ cannot be promoted, digital platforms overwhelmingly silence perspectives that remotely question the logistics or scope of the Voice proposal.

Since September 2022, Google and Facebook have censored three videos produced by the Institute of Public Affairs. In one of these videos, an IPA research fellow details reports regarding the nature of and desire for a traditional information pamphlet surrounding the Voice Proposal. In taking the clip down, Google painted the video as an ‘Australian election ad’ featuring politicians, thereby attracting some technical obligations with which the IPA did not comply. Facebook claimed that another video questioning the extent to which racial equality would be secured by the Voice was an ‘ad’ that violated Facebook’s social and political policies – offering no explanation as to how this was the case. Similarly, conservative lobby group Advance Australia ran advertisements urging Australians to oppose the Voice, claiming that it would create ‘special rights’ for Indigenous Australians. True to form, Facebook cited the increasingly meaningless term ‘misinformation’ to justify pulling the ads in January.

Regardless of whether the Voice affords Indigenous Australians advisory rights and privileges that are not available to any other race – or ‘special rights’ as some say – Facebook’s censorship is a gross intrusion into sensitive domestic affairs. With one of the most significant changes to Australia’s Constitution set to be decided on in coming months, it is vital that any and all interested parties be afforded freedom of speech and expression. To this end, the IPA proposes amending the Broadcasting Services Act to ensure a free and fair debate. By compelling broadcasters – including digital platforms – to offer all referendum participants the opportunity to broadcast referendum material, as IPA Executive Director Daniel Wild argues, the Act can give Australians ‘an equal say over the big issues facing our nation’s future’.

It is for Australians – not foreign-owned tech companies – to debate and decide the country’s constitutional future. Why should Big Tech retain the ability to control the dialogue of our nuanced, domestic affairs when they are not the ones who deal with the consequences? For them to do so is nothing short of foreign interference that attacks the heart of Australia’s democracy. It is odd that Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil denounces foreign interference as it ‘fundamentally undermines our democracy’, just as the Albanese government refuses to address it by way of legislative change.

By hindering the fully informed debate necessary for Australia’s referendum, Big Tech is impeding Australia’s democratic standards. With the referendum fast approaching, it is high time to reign in digital platforms, reminding them that Australia’s course should be steered by Australians.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/big-tech-only-wants-to-hear-one-voice/

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Voice question ‘far worse’ than feared: constitutional law expert Greg Craven

Prominent constitutional law expert Greg Craven has warned that the proposed question on the Indigenous voice to parliament is “far worse than I had contemplated the worst position being”.

Professor Craven, a member of the government’s constitutional law working group, said the wording for the referendum released by Anthony Albanese “takes the problems that people have identified with the preceding drafting and multiplies it”.

“The criticism of the preceding draft was the all embracing proposition that the Indigenous voice could make representations to executive government. The question was whether that would simply wrap-up every decision of government in legal challenges by the voice or by people on behalf of the voice,” Professor Craven told 3AW.

“It was widely expected that would be wound back and Attorney-General (Mark) Dreyfus tried to do that, he was defeated. Those words are still there in all their glory. “That in a sense is a defeat of hopes for some sort of compromise.”

The former Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor, who has always been a supporter of the principle of a voice and backs the referendum, criticised the “incredibly vague ‘design principles’ that have been endorsed by Cabinet”.

“They will be the substitute for actual detail. So the position is significantly worse,” he said.

Professor Craven said the problem with including executive government is it captures the “whole of the decision making of the Commonwealth government” and could potentially impact decision-making on national security, defence and foreign affairs.

“If you get into a situation, for example the voice hasn’t yet made a representation on some important view and the Commonwealth hasn’t told the voice and given it that chance then legally it is entirely practical for someone to take a challenge to court to stop that action until the voice has made a representation.”

“In theory, you could actually challenge the substance of the decision by saying there hasn’t been natural justice or you haven’t taken into account the right considerations. Basically, what executive government does is it judicialises the whole of the voice. It invites the High Court to be active.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/voice-question-far-worse-than-feared-constitutional-law-expert-greg-craven/news-story/2d31d19b604d39b68fd1f13687df1b2c

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Labor’s safeguard mechanism to cut emissions from big polluters

Australia’s largest greenhouse gas emitters could be forced to keep their net pollution below a set limit, if a controversial bill being debated by federal parliament gets up.

Known as the “safeguard mechanism”, proponents claim it would have the environmental effect of taking two thirds of the cars off Australia’s roads.

But that could mean higher prices for consumers, right in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

Here’s everything you need to know about the legislation and how it could affect you.

Why is parliament debating the ‘safeguard mechanism’ and what is it?

The “safeguard mechanism” was first proposed by the Abbott Liberal government in 2014, as a means to ensure Australia’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters did not go over certain pollution baselines. But the measure lacked teeth; since it was introduced in 2016, emissions have actually increased.

Labor wants to introduce a new arrangement whereby the emissions baselines will come down by 4.9 per cent each year between 2023 and 2030 – meaning polluters will have to continually develop new processes to reduce their emissions, or else buy carbon offsets if they fail to do so.

So will the safeguard mechanism increase prices?

According to Liberal leader Peter Dutton, yes. Businesses will have to invest more to reduce their emissions, or buy carbon credits – and either way, those costs will be passed on to the consumer, he has said.

The Business Council of Australia, which supports the government’s plan, has been a bit more circumspect, with CEO Jennifer Westacott telling a Senate committee the “fate of the Safeguard Mechanism has flow on consequences for the entire economy”.

Clean Energy Finance director Tim Buckley said any price increases arising from the safeguard mechanism would be “immaterial”.

“The impact of the safeguard mechanism on the Australian consumer is almost immaterial in terms of the overall impact of energy prices and the resulting wider inflation,” he said.

Extreme weather events had a much greater impact on an Australian business’s bottom line than any costs they would incur under the safeguard mechanism legislation, Mr Buckley said, citing the $8.5 billion in losses caused by flooding in 2022 alone as an example.

So what sorts of costs could go up as a result of the safeguard mechanism, and when?

Unless you buy your coal or iron ore by the ton, rest easy. The safeguard mechanism does not cover agricultural enterprises, transport, services or light manufacturing, so it’s not as though these everyday things will suddenly shoot up in price.

But as the Productivity Commission recently noted in its five-yearly productivity inquiry, abatement measures “increase the direct costs of production” and we can expect those costs to be passed on to the consumer.

But they also noted that “higher production costs can be viewed as the price of reducing the chance of even greater climate-related productivity costs in the future”. In other words: some higher costs now could prevent even higher costs down the track.

When those costs are incurred by big businesses (and then passed on to consumers) will vary from industry to industry, though it should be noted most facilities have already started the work of trying to reduce their emissions.

Interestingly, the Productivity Commission has called for the Safeguard Mechanism to be expanded into other sectors, including liquid fuel wholesalers, when the policy settings for the legislation are reviewed in 2026-27. That would certainly have a cost impact on motorists, but it should be stressed that’s a proposal only at this stage.

Who will the safeguard mechanism apply to?

The mechanism applies to 215 of Australia’s biggest emitting facilities – things like coal mines, natural gas plants, and heavy industrial factories.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/technology/environment/safeguard-mechanism-the-basics-explained/news-story/e7bd6c28f57df3cb6feec3810b4c4e32

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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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Anthony Albanese announced wording of the question
The Voice to Parliament will be voted on by Aussies

One word makes this very disturbing. The parliament will be able to give "powers" to the new body, WITH NO RESTRICTIONS. They could even give it veto power over all legislation. Australia would have the most racist parliament since Apartheid South Africa

In the referendum, due to be held between October and December, the public will be asked to consider: 'A proposed law: to alter the constitution to recognise the First People's of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?'

In an emotional press conference, Mr Albanese said: 'This moment has been a very long time in the making. It's a simple matter from the heart.

'Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in our Constitution is the best chance this country has had to address the injustices of the past and move Australia forward for everyone, the best way to do this is to give people a voice.'

For 122 years, the Constitution has made no reference to Indigenous Australians, who, the PM pointed out, have had 'more than 65,000 years of continuous connection to this vast land'.

If a majority of Australians vote in favour of the Voice, the Constitution would be amended as follows:

1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice; 2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

3. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions powers and procedures.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11892353/The-Voice-referendum-Anthony-Albanese-chokes-reveals-wording-question.html

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Premier firms on yearly limit to rent increases in property reform

To get more housing available, you need to ENCOURAGE landlords to provide it. Creating difficulties for landlords is a moron act that ony a Leftist would do. If these caps are enacted many landlords would see it as writing on the wall and would get out of the rental market while they could, thus further REDUCING the availability of properties to let.

Landlords would be limited to a single price increase each year in a rent cap move canvassed by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk — a policy one economist warned could encourage investors to lift rents by more severe amounts.

In another sign the Queensland government is winding back its controversial proposal following heated backlash from industry groups and economists, Ms Palaszczuk volunteered the option as a possible solution to assist tenants bearing the brunt of the housing crisis.

“People are reporting to me they are seeing rents going up $200 a week, $400 a week, and people are finding it so hard to make ends meet, especially with the higher cost of living,” she told Nine’s Today show on Wednesday morning.

“So one example that’s on the table is limiting those increases to once a year, rather than twice a year, to put a bit of downward pressure.”

Leading independent economist Saul Eslake was critical of the rent cap pitch earlier in the week, but said the updated proposal to limit the number of increases as opposed to a ceiling on the amount was a more reasonable approach.

But he warned landlords might err on the side of safety by imposing bigger increases.

The industry peak body responded furiously to the initial announcement of a rent cap but said it was open to a conversation about further tightening the frequency of rent increases.

Real Estate Institute of Queensland chief executive Antonia Mercorella described it as the best of the worst proposed controls on landlords. “There are already statutory caps around how frequently rent can be increased,” she said.

“It would be our preference not to continue further rent control but we would be open to having a discussion.”

UNSW housing researcher Hal Pawson, who authored a landmark report on housing in Queensland that led to Ms Palaszczuk proposing the reforms, said the option floated was on the “extreme low end of ambition”.

He described the reform as a first small step along the way to governments having some influence on the rents tenants are paying, but insisted it should also be paired with a benchmark limit such as the Consumer Price Index — similar to the ACT.

“It doesn’t go to the heart of the problem (controlling huge increases in rent) — it’s touching the edges of the problem,” Professor Pawson said.

Queensland Council of Social Service chief executive Aimee McVeigh said rental reform consisting of a single yearly lift was a “light touch intervention” that would be insufficient in providing a meaningful solution. “We need some consumer protections,” she said.

“Almost 40 per cent of Queenslanders rent and those people deserve a fair rental market where they can be have some certainty about what the price of that basic human need for shelter will be.”

Mr Eslake stressed the tinkering of moderate rental reform was a poor substitute for alleviating the crisis by providing homes for those in need, citing a Productivity Commission report earlier this year that revealed Queensland social housing stock had only marginally increased in a decade.

“A more effective response to the undoubted upward pressure on rents and the insecurity that tenants are feeling as a result of that would be to do more to boost the supply of housing,” he said.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/premier-firms-on-yearly-limit-to-rent-increases-in-property-reform/news-story/2e4533772584aeb83ce87d6c326c8a11

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Australia recorded relatively more ‘excess deaths’ during the Covid-19 pandemic than Sweden

Australia recorded relatively more “excess deaths” during the Covid-19 pandemic than Sweden, which chose not to lock down its populations, new analysis from the OECD reveals.

As the world approaches the three-year anniversary of the start of lockdowns this week, top academics say data showing Sweden’s success in keeping mortality rates down brings years of civil liberty restrictions and billions of dollars in government spending in other nations into question.

New OECD analysis comparing excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 – the two worst years of the pandemic – for 36 developed nations reveals Australia had the fifth lowest increase in excess deaths, but came in behind Sweden, which attracted global scorn for resisting closing businesses, schools and ordering citizens to stay at home.

Including excess deaths – defined as those over and above what was expected – for 2022 as well puts Australia even further behind Sweden with an 8.2 per cent increase over the three-year period compared with Sweden’s 3.1 per cent.

Stefano Scarpetta, the director of employment, labour and social affairs at the OECD, said: “If you control for population growth (higher in Australia), Australia’s excess deaths rate over the three-year period as a whole was 2.1 per cent and in Sweden it was -0.6 per cent, that is no excess mortality. The reason why we use excess mortality (instead of Covid-19 deaths) is because in practice counting the number of deaths because of Covid is very difficult.”

Dr Scarpetta said there were variations in classification and testing across countries, and it was difficult to determine whether elderly victims had died with or from Covid-19.

The OECD report, Ready for the Next Crisis? Investing in Health Care Resilience, found half of all Covid-19 deaths occurred among people aged 80 across 22 OECD countries with comparable data, and one third occurred in nursing homes.

Mexico and Colombia, which did impose lockdowns, endured the greatest increases in excess deaths of about 50 per cent. Japan and Sweden, the only two OECD nations to resist them, prompting international condemnation at the time, had among the lowest increases, ranking 4th and 8th, respectively.

Two US public health experts who in 2020 recommended the Swedish approach – Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya and Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff – said they felt vindicated but ­despaired at the lack of appreciation of the findings and feared the same policies would be followed again.

“The thing to emphasise is that Sweden has had one of the lowest excess mortalities in all Europe during the pandemic no matter how you cut the data,” Professor Bhattacharya said. “If lockdowns were necessary to prevent death it should have had one of the worst. Sweden served as a control group for the world in ethical pandemic management and it was a rousing success.”

He said the success Australia had in having “little Covid on the island for a full year came at tremendously high cost: 270 days of lockdown in Melbourne, ­essential imprisonment of the population”.

The underlying health of a country’s population (including rates of obesity), vaccination levels against Covid-19, and the capacity and quality of the available health care system best explained the widely different rates of excess deaths across countries, the OECD found.

Former US president Donald Trump in April 2020 said Sweden was “suffering badly” from its decision to follow its pandemic plan, but the US, where lockdowns pushed the jobless rate above 15 per cent in 2020, ended up with five times as many excess deaths as Sweden and the sixth worst outcome, according to the OECD data.

“Extended quarantining of healthy populations, the closing of schools, and massive violation of civil rights: these were never part of any pandemic plan that I’m aware of for respiratory viruses,” Professor Bhattacharya said.

Epidemiologists at the UK’s Imperial College, whose dire forecasts early in the pandemic convinced the UK and US to impose lockdowns in March 2020, forecast Sweden would endure 96,000 Covid-19 deaths by July 2020 if it didn’t follow China and then Italy in imposing lockdowns. After three years, Sweden has experienced 23,777 deaths from or with Covid-19, compared with Australia’s 19,477, according to the World Health Organisation.

Sweden’s population is older than Australia’s, with a median age of 41, compared with Australia’s 38.

“The principle of public health is that you can’t just focus on one disease; you have to look at cancer, cardiovascular disease and mental health,” Professor Kulldorff said.

He said Australia’s lockdowns had caused “huge collateral damage in public health, even if you ignore the impact on the economy and government finances”.

According to the IMF, Australia’s gross public debt as a share of GDP surged from 47 per cent to 59 per cent between 2019 and 2022, mainly as a result of federal and state stimulus programs that accompanied lockdowns, while Sweden’s public debt declined from 39 per cent to 31 per cent.

The OECD report found the number of in-person doctor consultations fell by an average of 17 per cent across OECD countries in 2020, and more than one in five people reported having forgone a needed medical examination.

Japan, whose then prime minster, the late Shinzo Abe, was also criticised for resisting a European-style lockdown of the densely populated island nation, had the lowest level of reported population sadness in 2020 (11 per cent), according to the OECD report, while Mexico and Colombia reported the highest, each above 30 per cent.

This new OECD analysis reflected the findings of the UK statistical agency, which found Sweden had the second lowest excess death rate in Europe.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/australia-recorded-relatively-more-excess-deaths-during-the-covid19-pandemic-than-sweden/news-story/0fdf8df15b4ef00f3534e6ba9626e3b2

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Health minister warns further restrictions to come for the distribution of vapes

These things can be quite poisonous

New statistics have emerged detailing the rising number of children found ingesting nicotine as a result of vapes, causing health ministers across the country to action new regulations to the distribution of these harmful devices.

Despite the lack of evidence as to the long-term effects of vaping on human health, the smoking alternative has quickly become a major health concern across Australia.

Most recently, it’s been taking over school kids, with vaping now the biggest behavioural issue in primary schools.

Victorian health minister, Mark Butler has announced that a state-wide action plan will soon be enforced to put a stop to the harmful effects of vaping in children, after 50 kids under the age of four were found to have ingested nicotine as a result of the vaporised cigarettes.

“The Victorian poisons hotline has reported that in the last 12 months, more than 50 children under the age of four have had to be reported to the hotline because of the dangerous ingestion of nicotine,” Butler told ABC Radio.

“Four. This is now the biggest behavioural issue in primary schools.”

It comes after changes to the distribution legalities last year which saw all consumers required to obtain a prescription in order to purchase nicotine vaping devices.

A quick trip down to the local Cignall or TSG shop would confirm that this new policy has rarely been enforced. On top of this, a black market for e-cigarette distribution has emerged, largely targeting underage children.

Mr Butler says the emerging avenues for the retail of vapes and e-cigarettes has already singlehandedly began to undo the decades of work and effort to lower the rate of smoking in Australia, as well as cause a new, “very real harm to our children.”

“This is an industry that is trying to create a new generation of nicotine addicts so they get around all of the hard work our country and other countries have done over recent decades to stamp out smoking.”

Earlier this month, a video posted online saw an adult force an 11-month-old baby to suck on a vape, proving further that there is a severe lack of education as to the damaging effects vaping has on our health.

Adding to the insane discoveries of vaping in children, Mr Butler cited that a young child was found to be hiding a vape in her pencil case at school, disguising it as a highlighter so she could use it between classes.

According to the Lung Foundation Australia, there is a widespread misconception surrounding vaping, denoting it as a harmless water vapour product, where in fact, it is a product of “toxic particles”.

Vapes are known to emit a number of harmful compounds, including: formaldehyde and acrolein, “which can cause irreversible lung damage,” as well as propylene glycol, “which is toxic to human cells”.

As vapes are still relatively new, the long-term effects are yet to be measured, though if they are to hold similar health concerns as smoking, it’s likely that cancer and early death are two very likely consequences.

Mr Butler said “all options were on the table” when it comes to addressing the rising health concern, including a greater crackdown on down on import controls and stricter regulations on sales.

Nationals party leader David Littleproud also made a stern claim that attractive packaging made to lure children to the products should be banned. “We have to get ahead of this because children are the ones that are the victims of this,” Mr Littleproud said on Tuesday.

One thing that Mr Butler is sure about is that normalisation of vaping will not be on the cards.

“We can’t just say oh, well, it’s all too hard, let’s just normalise it because we know why these products exist,” he said. “These products are pushed so hard by the tobacco industry is because they want to create a pathway back to cigarettes.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/lifestyle/health-minister-warns-further-restrictions-to-come-for-the-distribution-of-vapes/news-story/f3f63fafa286876a947a4b0e13c3c5e7

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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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How can Australia pay $368 billion for new submarines? Some of the money will be created from thin air

A good explanation of how deficit budgeting works below. But the bottom line remains that we will all have to spend less to cover the purchase of these pointless submarines

Australia's decision to buy three nuclear-powered submarines and build another eight is so expensive that, for the $268 billion to $368 billion price tag, we could give a million dollars to every resident of Geelong, or Hobart, or Wollongong.

Those are the sort of examples used by former NSW treasury secretary Percy Allan on the Pearls and Irritations blog, "in case you can't get your head around a billion dollars".

Such multi-billion megaprojects almost always go over budget.

For instance, when then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the Snowy Hydro 2.0 pumped hydroelectricity project in 2017, it was supposed to take four years and cost $2 billion. The latest guess is it'll actually take 10 years and cost $10 billion.

So to pay for those two megaprojects alone, there's an awful lot of money we will need to find from somewhere. Or will we?

'No simple budget constraint'

In the first year of the pandemic, Australians were given a glimpse of a truth so unnerving that economists and politicians normally keep to themselves.

It's that, for a country like Australia, there is "no simple budget constraint" — meaning no hard limit on what we can spend.

"No simple budget constraint" is the phrase used by Financial Times' chief economics commentator Martin Wolf, but he doesn't want it said loudly.

The problem is, he says, "it will prove impossible to manage an economy sensibly once politicians believe there is no budget constraint".

A quick look at history shows he is correct about there being no simple budget constraint, despite all the talk about the need to pay for spending.

As you can see below, Australia's Commonwealth government has been in deficit (spent more than it earned) in all but 17 of the past 50 years. The US government has been in deficit for all but four of the past 50.

There is no hard limit on how the Commonwealth can spend over and above what it earns, just as there's no hard limit on how much you and I can spend. But whereas you or I have to eventually pay back what we have borrowed, governments face no such constraint.

Because the Commonwealth lives forever, it can keep borrowing forever, even borrowing to pay interest on borrowing. And unlike private corporations, it can borrow from itself — borrowing money it has itself created.

Governments create money

That's what the Morrison government did in 2020 and 2021, in the early days of COVID.

To raise the money it needed for programs such as JobKeeper, the Government sold bonds (which are promises to repay and pay interest) to traders, which its wholly-owned Reserve Bank then bought, using money it had created.

The Government could have just as easily cut out the traders and borrowed directly from its wholly-owned Reserve Bank, using money the bank had created — effectively borrowing from itself. But the Reserve Bank preferred the appearance of arms-length transactions.

And there's no doubt the Reserve Bank created the money it spent, out of thin air. Asked in 2021 whether it was right to say he was printing money, Governor Philip Lowe said it was, although the money was "created", rather than printed.

People think of it as printing money, because once upon a time if the central bank bought an asset, it might pay for that asset by giving you notes, you know, bank notes. I'd have to run my printing presses to do it. We don't operate that way anymore.

These days the Reserve Bank creates money electronically. It credits the accounts of the banks that bank with it.

One way to think about it (the way so-called modern monetary theorists think about it) is that none of the money the Government spends comes from tax.

The Government creates money every time it gets the Reserve Bank to credit the account of a private bank (perhaps in order to pay a pension), and destroys money every time someone pays tax and the Reserve Bank debits the account.

If it creates more money than it destroys, it's called a budget deficit. If it destroys more than it creates, it's called a budget surplus.

Too much spending creates problems

Can the Government create more money than it destroys without limit? No, but where it should stop is a matter for judgement.

If it spends too much money on things for which there is plenty of demand and a limited supply, it'll push up prices, creating inflation.

Where to stop will depend on how much others are spending.

If there's little demand (say for builders, as there was during the global financial crisis) the Government can safely spend without much pushing up prices (as it did on builders during the global financial crisis).

If it wants to spend really big (say on building submarines), it might have to restrain the spending of others, which it can do by raising taxes.

But it's not a mechanical relationship. The main function of tax is not to pay for government spending, but to keep other spenders out of the way.

If the economy is weak in the decades when the subs are being built, the burst of government spending will be welcome, and needed to create jobs. There will be no economic need to offset it by raising tax.

But if the economy is strong, so strong the Government would have to bid up prices to get the subs built, it might have to push up tax to wind other spending back.

This truth means there's no simple answer to the question "how they are going to pay for subs?" — just as there was no simple answer to questions about how to pay for a much-needed increase in the JobSeeker, or anything else.

The deeply unsatisfying answer is that, from an economic perspective, it depends on who else is spending what at the time

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-22/australia-aukus-submarines-368-billion-some-money-thin-air/102124540

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Pauline Hanson shuts down proposals for rent to be paid to Aboriginals because their land was stolen and issues a very blunt message to Indigenous leaders

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has blasted a movement calling for Australians to pay a weekly rent to Indigenous groups based on their ancestral claims to the land.

She branded the movement - backed by First Nations senator Lidia Thorpe - as an 'outrageous' money grab based on greed and 'racist identity victim politics'.

In a blistering attack in Parliament, senator Hanson savaged the 'Pay The Rent' movement supported by senator Thorpe and feminist writer Clementine Ford.

'The idea that Australians should pay rent for living in their own country is offensive,' she said in a speech to the Senate on Monday.

'It's based on the idea that only Aborigines own Australia. They don't. Australia belongs to all Australians.'

She insisted that anyone born in Australia has equal claim to the ownership of the country, regardless of any Indigenous heritage.

'We have all contributed to this country and we all share in its achievements, failures, resources, disasters, virtues, values and shortcomings,' she said.

'The only good thing about the race-based rent idea is that the activists who want it reveal their true motivation. It’s not about ‘justice’ or ‘redress’. It’s just about money – other people’s money. It’s just about their greed.

'If this mob succeed in their bid for a race-based Voice to Parliament, it’s only a matter of time before this idea is on the political agenda. 'It’s only a matter of time before non-aboriginal Australians are forced to pay yet more tax – a race-based rent tax.'

She claimed that system would be abused and the money diverted away from those most in need. 'As usual, the Aboriginal industry will keep all the money and truly disadvantaged Aborigines in remote communities will continue to suffer poverty, unemployment and crime,' she said.

'One Nation calls on all sensible Australians to reject this discrimination. 'We urge the government to audit the Aboriginal industry, and to finally act to fix the real problems in Aboriginal communities.'

The 'Pay the Rent' model movement allows homeowners to pay a percentage of their income to a body led by Aboriginal elders without any government oversight.

One per cent of weekly wages is the level suggested by Robbie Thorpe, a veteran Aboriginal rights activist from Melbourne who ran a similar scheme in Fitzroy in the 1990s.

Under the suggested one per cent - with the median Australian employee's earnings of $1,250 per week - it would cost each Aussie around $12.50 a week, or around $650 a week.

Mr Thorpe aaid the rent scheme is 'a rational, reasonable, responsible means of reconciling 200 years of unchecked genocide, as far as I'm concerned'.

Proponents say it could then be extended to all users of the land, with people holding weddings or organising concerts also encouraged to hand over money.

On the eve of Australia Day, senator Thorpe said: 'It assists sovereign grassroots fight the many campaigns and struggles we face everyday. 'Pay the rent from grassroots for grassroots. No strings attached to government agenda. '

Author Clementine Ford added: 'We need to stop paying lip service to decolonisation and start paying the rent to the First Nations people.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11887963/One-Nations-Pauline-Hanson-slams-pay-rent-Aboriginal-people-proposal.html

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Coalition won’t block Voice referendum machinery bill

The Coalition will not stand in the way of a bill establishing the architecture for the Voice referendum after spending weeks threatening to block it.

Labor’s referendum machinery bill will pass the parliament imminently after the Coalition dropped its demand to provide equal funding to the Yes and No campaigns in the referendum to be held between October and December.

The bill proposes to modernise how referendums are conducted by replicating the features of a federal election, including establishing a new financial disclosure regime for private fundraising by the Yes and No camps

Winning the support of the Coalition, whose leadership argued in favour of doing a deal in a partyroom meeting yesterday, means the government will not need to deal with the Greens to pass the law.

Senior Coalition frontbencher Simon Birmingham said the opposition did not get everything it wanted, but was satisfied the referendum would be conducted with integrity.

Country Liberal Party senator Jacinta Price, a leading opponent of the proposed Voice advisory body, announced today that she may cross the floor and vote against the bill.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-us-president-to-address-parliament-in-may-aukus-deal-questioned-by-labor-mps-20230321-p5cu2y.html?post=p54onc#p54onc

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Let’s stop pretending we are going to recycle all this plastic

The report in this newspaper that Australia stands no chance of reaching its goal of recycling 70 per cent of its plastic waste by 2025 is at once depressing and predictable.

Most of our single-use plastics cannot be recycled into a useful product at a reasonable cost. As voters and consumers we keep pretending it can, because we like plastic. It is cheap and useful.

So governments and industry go along with the charade, providing us with pantomime recycling efforts.

In turn, petrochemical companies, facing the end of the fossil fuel era, happily increase production.

You need only compare the economics of recycling streams to get a sense of how useless most of our waste plastic is.

Most metals and glass can be recycled endlessly, exhibiting the same quality in each of its new lives. That’s why people pay for scrap metal, while we had to pay China to take our waste plastic.

In 2017, China finally tired of taking the world’s plastic waste and banned new imports, leaving the rest of us to scramble to find something to do with our growing stockpiles.

In Australia, we have seen the collapse of REDcycle, the nation’s largest waste recycling scheme, with admissions that thousands of tonnes of warehoused plastic is bound for landfill.

In Europe, much of it is burned for energy in machines that might not release particulate pollution but do release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – burning plastic is after all burning oil.

In other parts of the world, plastic simply chokes rivers and seas and the creatures that live in them.

The New South Wales environment watchdog has issued ‘clean-up’ orders to the supermarket giants for 15 warehouses and storage depots around the state where soft plastics have been stockpiled.

Whether plastic is dumped under the ground or into the ocean, or burnt for energy, all plastic will eventually end up as a greenhouse gas.

In fact, according to analysis published in February by the Minderoo Foundation in conjunction with the global energy analysis firm Wood McKenzie, the climate consultancy Carbon Trust and KPMG, single-use plastics now generate as much greenhouse gas emissions as the United Kingdom.

Minderoo’s second Plastic Waste Makers Index found growth in single-use plastics made from fossil fuels was 15 times that of recycled plastics, and that between 2019 and 2021 global use of them surged from 133 million tonnes per year to 139 million tonnes, or about 1 kilogram per person on earth.

ExxonMobil remains the largest producer of polymers bound for single-use plastics – responsible for six million tonnes in 2021 – followed by China’s Sinopec, which produced 5.8 million tonnes, and US-based Dow third.

Growth in single-use plastics production was driven by demand for flexible packaging such as films and sachets, which grew from a 55 per share of all single-use plastics in 2019, to 57 per cent in 2021.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/let-s-just-stop-pretending-we-are-going-to-recycle-all-this-plastic-20230321-p5ctvq.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Deputy Premier Steven Miles says the state government is unlikely to implement a rental freeze

Fronting the media 24 hours after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the government was “very seriously” considering a cap on rental prices, Mr Miles said there needed to be a “conversation” on whether a limit should be placed on the size and frequency of rent increases.

He accepted the investors needed to “see a return on their investment”.

“In an environment where inflation is very high, where property prices have increased and where interest rates are increasing, that investors will need to see an increased return,” Mr Miles said.

“But whether there should be limits placed on that increase, or whether there should be limits on how often and how they can be increased, they are all the sorts of things we want to discuss”.

Ms Palaszczuk on Monday revealed the state government was “very seriously” considering how to put a rental cap in place, prompting economists to warn the move would make the state’s housing crisis worse.

A Labor-controlled committee, in reviewing a private members bill by the Greens on a rent freeze in 2022, noted rent controls generally were “not effective in improving housing affordability for renters and can lead to distortions in the rental market”.

Mr Miles was adamant the state government was not attempting to rehash Greens’ policy, saying it was “highly unlikely” that Labor would adopt a rent freeze approach.

Ms Palaszczuk’s comments came after a report commissioned by the Queensland Council of Social Service revealed 300,000 people across the state were experiencing housing insecurity amid soaring rental prices and inadequate social housing supply.

The Blueprint to Tackle Queensland’s Housing Crisis report revealed the rate of homelessness surged 22 per cent since 2017 – nearly triple the national rate.

New data from PropTrack also recently revealed tenants in more than 1140 Queensland suburbs were paying up to $430 a week more than they were a year ago, with strong interstate migration and the return of international students adding to pressures.

But economists, including the Grattan Institute’s Brendan Coates, said interfering in the market by putting a cap on rents was bad policy and would make the “race for space even worse” by discouraging investment in rental housing and reducing supply.

“You could potentially make things better in the short term for existing renters, but the very act of making it easy for existing renters will make it worse for those that need housing,” he said.

“A better policy in our view would be boosting the incomes of those struggling to keep a roof over their heads, by raising rent assistance by at least 40 per cent.

“That should be the No. 1 priority right now.”

A Labor-controlled committee, in reviewing a private member’s Bill by the Greens on a rent freeze last year, noted rent controls generally were “not effective in improving housing affordability for renters and can lead to distortions in the rental market”.

Details on what the state government is proposing on rent caps is being finalised, with Deputy Premier Steven Miles signalling a “range of options” would be put forward at a housing roundtable next week.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-govt-urged-to-rule-out-illconsidered-rental-caps-plan/news-story/65f17007b9a0f06d523fa3315a01faf1

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Attempts to bring NDIS under control will trigger outrage from Greens, lobby groups

Over the next four weeks, the federal government will hand out almost $3bn in National Disability Insurance Scheme payments and a further 6000 Australians will join the scheme.

Next month, this figure will be significantly higher, and the month after that it will be higher again because the cost of the scheme is increasing by an average of $75m a month, and in the year to January it increased by $900m.

The NDIS, meant to provide assistance for people suffering from a significant disability, has become a financial sinkhole.

Are an additional 1500 people every week being found to be genuinely suffering from such a disability? You could be excused for wondering.

To suggest that is has become the National Rort The Taxpayer Scheme is to risk being labelled as uncaring and cynical.

But the reality is that successive governments have allowed the scheme to spiral out of control, fearful of the electoral backlash that could attend any attempt to cap the funding and tighten eligibility rules.

Admittance to the scheme has now become yet another entitlement.

Even supporters of the NDIS such as Sylvana Mahmic, one of the country’s leading autism advocates, are voicing their concerns at what would appear to be systemic abuse of the system.

According to Ms Mahmic, private diagnostic services are charging parents $5000 and more to provide a diagnosis of autism for their child, telling them that their money will buy them, courtesy of the government, “a guarantee of funding for life”.

This might account for a sharp increase in the number of children with what are described as “developmental delays” joining the scheme, with about 42 per cent of NDIS participants now under 14.

The scheme is virtually open-ended.

Something has to give but who is going to blow the full-time whistle on the rorters?

Bill Shorten, the person to whom Prime Minister Anthony Albanese handed the poisoned chalice that is ministerial oversight of the NDIS, is doing what governments do when faced with an odious issue, which is to hold an inquiry which is scheduled to report in October.

The government doesn’t need an inquiry.

It knows the depth of the problem and if it wants some forensic detail, it only has to ask the chief of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission Michael Phelan.

He went public in The Age newspaper and on 60 Minutes last year, saying that ACIC’s investigations had revealed that the NDIS was easy to exploit and was the subject of widespread fraud that could be siphoning off as much as 20 per cent of its total expenditure, which at current rates it is exploding and could exceed $60bn by 2030.

This would represent the annual theft of $12bn of public funds.

Commissioner Phelan didn’t pull his punches. “You’ve got to wonder how far down the scumbag scale you get before you start ripping off our most vulnerable people,” he said.

He claimed the rip-offs had been happening since the scheme began in 2013 and said that ACIC believed criminal syndicates were threatening and extorting people on the scheme and stealing their NDIS entitlements.

He said others were in league with doctors, pharmacists and accountants who they used to bill phantom clients, inflating invoices and charging for non-existent services. Due to the poor auditing procedures within the NDIS, these fraudulent practices are not detected.

Shorten has conceded he is “very concerned” at the reports of widespread overcharging and false invoicing and that the original concept of the scheme, which was to give people who have significant functional impairment assistance so that they can live an ordinary life, had become lost.

Queensland and other states are also guilty here, Shorten accusing them of folding their mental-health programs into the NDIS, saying that it was never meant to cover everyone with a psychosocial illness or to be for every Australian with a disability.

He’s right, but we don’t need to endure a lengthy inquiry, another voluminous report and its attendant lengthy debate to take action.

Any attempt to bring the scheme under control will inevitably trigger shrieks of outrage from the Greens and lobby groups, but so be it.

The Albanese government has a big-spending agenda and no particular idea of just how it’s going to fund it. It could start by reining in the NDIS, which has become a $100m-a-day money pit.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/mike-oconnor/mike-oconnor-attempts-to-bring-ndis-under-control-will-trigger-outrage-from-greens-lobby-groups/news-story/272ee3e224f7948636233d3986eb1a6f

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Transgender laws critic Kellie-Jay Keen cleared to speak at Hobart rally

A Hobart rally led by British transgender rights critic Kellie-Jay Keen will go ahead, after state parliament rejected demands it ban the gathering in the wake of Melbourne’s neo-Nazi protest.

Presiding officers of the Tasmanian parliament on Monday ruled that the rally on the parliamentary lawns planned for Tuesday could proceed, rejecting demands by transgender activists and the Greens to ban the event.

Greens leader Cassy O’Connor accused the group behind the rally, Let Women Speak, of being “fake feminists who play footsies with fascists”.

However, LWS and its supporters said the neo-Nazis at its rally in Melbourne on Saturday were gatecrashes and that the group ­opposed Nazis as much as anyone.

LWS called for its own ban – on a counter rally being organised by transgender rights activists for about the same time and the same location.

House of Assembly Speaker Mark Shelton, a Liberal, and Legislative Council president Craig Farrell, of Labor, rejected both demands on the grounds of protecting free speech.

“The lawns at parliament have always been a gathering place for democratic activity, including protests of all persuasions,” they said in a joint statement.

“While there may at times be opposing views to the protests ­occurring, censoring free speech is not in the interests of a democratic society. All protests are ­expected to be conducted peacefully and lawfully.”

LWS said its rally was about saying “no to men in women’s changerooms, toilets, refuges and prisons”, opposing “sex self-identification laws”, and defending the rights of lesbians to “meet in women-only spaces”.

In a letter to Mr Shelton, Anna Sharman of Women Speak Tasmania said the only “risks and ­occasions of violence and harm” at Melbourne’s rally “came from the trans rights activists”.

“The neo-Nazi men in black were not there to support LWS and have publicly stated their ­opposition to LWS,” Ms Sharman said. “The women attending LWS denounce their presence and ­actions and considered them an equal threat to our society as the trans rights activists.”

But Ms O’Connor accused the group of “standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with Nazis” and “sharing an ideology of ­demonising a minority – transgender people”.

Equality Tasmania said free speech “comes with a responsibility not to harm others”. “Parliament House, the home of Tasmanian democracy, should not be giving a platform to speakers who attract Nazi sympathisers,” spokesperson Rose Boccalatte said.

The Tasmanian government said the rallies were a matter for the presiding officers, but Liberal cabinet minister Guy Barnett ­appeared to endorse their decision. “We support free speech in Australia including in Tasmania but it needs to be respectful,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/transgender-laws-critic-kelliejay-keen-cleared-to-speak-at-hobart-rally/news-story/c97029fcf61f9428a3367c21d8dbfe9e

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Let Women Speak event hijacked: clowns to the left of Moira, Nazis to the right

John Pesutto advised Moira Deeming on Sunday night that her position in the Victorian Parliamentary Party was untenable after she attended the Let Women Speak event in Melbourne on Saturday organised by Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull.

Moira deeming was recently elected to the Victorian Upper House, and is a former local councillor and school teacher. In her maiden speech, Deeming presented a clear platform for women’s rights and talked about her broad association with more left-leaning woman in solidarity against gender identity ideology.

The women’s rights rally has since been skirmished by neo-Nazis who proceeded to do a Sieg Heil salute on the parliamentary steps where the women were speaking.

Speaking after the rally, Moira Deeming said she was frightened when she first saw the men dressed in black wearing masks because she assumed they were trans activist that were about to attack women. She was however confused that the police appeared calm and didn’t approach the men or initially attempt to remove them.

Deeming said until the men did the Sieg Heil salute there was no outward indication that the men were Nazis, even though they were clearly not associated with the women’s group.

It is interesting to note that Antifa were present to protest the women’s event but at no point objected to the neo-Nazis. The neo-Nazis were dressed in very basic black shorts and T-shirts and black masks and carried a sign that said ‘destroy paedo freaks’ (which is a sign the women’s campaigners would not have carried, obviously).

Many women at the rally, including Māori woman Michelle Uriarau, Co-Founder of women’s group Mana Wāhine Kòreo, said the salute was ‘chilling’. Moira Deeming is also a Māori woman and was reading out a letter from a Muslim migrant at the rally, she seems an unlikely person to be targeted as a white supremacist by her own party.

The Australian Jewish Association have made comments that the women’s event was ‘crashed’ by far-right extremists, accepting that the women’s event had no association with the unwelcome intruders. The Jewish Association also raised questions as to why the police were unable to keep the men out of the event appearing to have deliberately let them in.

Far-right website XYZ reported that the group of 20 men dressed in black were led by a well-known neo-Nazi. The report called Keen an ‘atheist radical feminist’. She is not a radical feminist, but right-wing men’s group are often too stupid to understand the difference between a grassroots women’s movement and more structured and academic-based radical feminism.

Women’s right’s campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has been no stranger to controversy, cancellation, and police attention since she first commissioned a billboard with the dictionary definition of a woman; ‘Adult Human Female’ in the UK in 2018. The billboard was removed because it was offensive to the transgender community.

Keen and her organisation, Standing for Women, have since become famous for holding outdoor ‘speakers corner’ free speech events for women, that are regularly protested by trans activists. The events are often littered with Keen’s trademark merchandise, her rallies always start with her in brightly coloured outfits singing a short tune, and making bold and now controversial statements like ‘women don’t have penises’, ‘no man has a vagina’, women are ‘adult human females’, and ‘transitioning children is child abuse’.

Keen is a single-issue campaigner and takes a deliberate non-partisan stance, having previously been a supporter of the Labour Party in the UK. Trans activists and some radical feminists have made accusations the Keen is ‘far right adjacent’, in that her events are sometimes attended by far-right groups of men that are never invited to speak and are clearly separate from the, mostly left-leaning women.

Nonetheless Keen has come under criticism within the gender-critical community for not dealing with the right-wing groups with repeated ‘denouncement’. There is no indication that Keen has any far-right sympathies, but she knows enough about social media politics to see that these groups turn up to her events for their own purposes, and as a free speech absolutist she can’t stop them attending.

However, the event on Saturday was long planned and co-ordinated with the Victorian Police, event organisers made public warnings that far-right groups were expected and not welcome. The motivation of the far-right groups can only be speculated, but for my money they attend for their own social media optics, for the clashes with the trans activists, and for the flashpoints that feed the new social media political landscape. It is also extremely convenient for the Andrews government, which has taken gender identity policies to draconian levels, to associate all resistance with Nazis.

I met Keen last week when she was in Brisbane as part of her Australian Let Women Speak tour, she is a tiny, intelligent, and very savvy woman. Keen is friendly and personable, while being understandably guarded. While we chatted, I noticed her glancing at my phone that was sitting on my lap to check if it was recording. She is cautious without being paranoid, political without being partisan, and in possession of sharp operational instincts.

I am absolutely astounded at the stupidity of the Victorian Liberals. As if allowing a dictator like Daniel Andrews take over the state unopposed is not humiliating enough, they seem to be determined to lose at every point. Conservatives around the world who are adopting gender-critical feminist points are seeing some success against the onslaught of gender identity ideology in institutions. In the UK, women have at least maintained sex as a protected category in law, fought off self ID, and secured the right to speak about their issues in public, in their workplace, and in the media. This is more than Australian women currently enjoy.

It is only a matter of time that the self ID laws in Victoria will breed a scandal that we have seen in Scotland, that has seen the downfall of Sturgeon. Trans-identified male rapists are already in women’s prisons in Victoria but the media has so far managed to ignore it in exactly the way the police ignored the fascists entering the rally. This situation can’t be sustained, even with a virtual media blackout on these stories.

A woman wearing an Adult Human Female shirt was attacked in Melbourne by a trans-identified man last year, leaving her disabled. The attack appeared to be motivated by political prejudice and misogyny but doesn’t register as a hate crime in any Victorian law that protects only identity and not sex. The incident was only recently reported in an international feminist publication. Australian media are not fit for purpose.

The systemic corruption in Victoria currently hides the crimes against women of the Andrews government, but when these atrocities come to light, there will be no high ground for the Victorian Liberals to take after they have refused a publicly elected woman of colour the right to political assembly, free association and have smeared her as a Nazi.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/let-women-speak-event-hijacked-clowns-to-the-left-of-moira-nazis-to-the-right

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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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Neo-Nazis performed Hitler salute in front of protestors

What a laugh! These were almost certainly Leftists pretending to be Nazis in order to discredit the genuine protesters. The Left have a history of faking hate crimes. If there is not enough hate around for them, they invent some

The shocking moment a gang of far-right thugs marched down a busy Melbourne street performing Hitler salutes has been caught on camera in an ugly weekend for the Victorian capital.

The ugly scenes happened on Saturday when rival protestors clashed in front of Victoria's State Parliament during a 'Let Women Speak' rally in the city.

The footage showed mounted police officers corralling the crowds as they hurled abuse at one another, while cops on the ground formed a human chain to prevent the opposing protestors clashing.

A group of around a dozen black-clad men wearing balaclavas stood in formation while ring-leader Thomas Sewell shouted: ‘Come here you communist f***ots!’

The group, who were flanked by two individuals carrying Australian flags, brandished a sign that said ‘destroy paedo freaks’.

The men stood is silence with their arms raised in a Heil Hitler salute while the far larger opposition crowd chanted over and over: ‘Unite, unite to fight the right!’

The thugs then walked towards the crowds of protestors who were being held back by police and taunted them while throwing Hitler salutes.

One man, who was wearing a black cap and had his balaclava down around his neck, could be seen smiling and laughing.

Victoria Police were slammed for failing to stop the neo-Nazis from brazenly performing their Heil Hitler salutes.

Police Association of Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt said officers prevented a fight between rival groups but were powerless to stop the actions of the neo-Nazis.

In response, Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes announced on Monday that the state would strengthen its anti-vilification laws to ban the Nazi salute.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11879737/Neo-Nazis-throw-Hitler-salutes-trans-protest-outside-Parliament-House-Melbourne-Victoria.html

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Rental crisis Qld: Premier ‘seriously considering’ introducing rental price cap

A price cap is another word for rent control and rent control always leads to a REDUCTION in housing availability. Is that what the government wants? Queensland had rent control decades back but had to abandon it to ease the shortages it created. That reducing the price reduces the supply is one of the iron laws of economics. No goverment can repeal it. It does however lead to abuses, such as large bonds, "key money" and shorter term rentals. And it is the poor who will suffer from such abuses

Annastacia Palaszczuk revealed the state government is “very seriously” considering introducing a price cap on private rentals after a new report laid bare the scale of Queensland’s housing crisis.

The Premier also confirmed the government is in discussions to buy thousands of homes that will lose funding from the winding back of a federal support scheme.

Ms Palaszczuk said she was “very concerned” about the crisis in Queensland after it was revealed 150,000 households were in critical housing stress and the rate of homelessness soared 22 per cent since 2017.

She said sharp increases in rents had squeezed Queensland families, leading to the government considering reforms to cap rental prices which she said will be discussed at the Housing Summit roundtable meeting next week.

“This is a big issue for families,” Ms Palaszczuk said. “They are constantly being faced with huge increases in rent and this is putting a lot of pressure on families.

“We’re looking very seriously at how a rental cap can be put in place.”

Before leaving office, the Morrison government began to wind back the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) but Ms Palaszczuk said she was in discussions with Treasurer Cameron Dick and Deputy Premier Steven Miles about acquiring those homes to continue support.

“There are over 5000 properties as part of that scheme – Queensland stands ready to purchase those houses,” Ms Palaszczuk said on Monday morning.

“What we do know is that we do need additional support from the federal government and where the federal government is stepping out, we are stepping up.”

Mr Miles said NRAS was a time-limited plan to subsidise rent for 5000 properties with the looming end of the support approaching in the next couple of years.

“So they will go into the general rental market – the only way to avoid that is by stepping in with support of social housing providers and purchasing them, ensuring that they remain within the social housing stock,” the Deputy Premier said.

“We are, as the premier said, discussing with those social housing providers exactly how we can do that.”

St Vincent de Paul Society Queensland chief executive Kevin Mercer said they had resorted to paying people’s car registrations.

“Sometimes the best response we can provide is to pay someone’s car registration so they can live and sleep in it ... to get them through as a temporary solution,” he said.

Mr Mercer said homeless services had been full for a long time.

“The designated specialist homeless services are designed to be short-term accommodation,” he said.

“We’ve got people that have been in our services for 18 months, almost two years, because there’s nowhere for them to go. And we’re not going to put them out on the street.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/rental-crisis-qld-premier-seriously-considering-introducing-rental-price-cap/news-story/da003b64b6ef1a92f2771e98963413e7

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Greenie's advice to tenants ahead of open homes

This is fine in principle. People should be told in advance of problems. But the response it produces might not be so favourable. The outgoing tenant may find himself/herself unacceptable as a future tenant elsewhere, for starters. Landlords normally require a reference from the previous landord

A Brisbane councillor has encouraged renters to post notes around a property ahead of open homes warning prospective tenants of its problems.

Greens councillor for the Woolloongabba ward Jonathan Sriranganathan shared one Brisbane tenant’s example originally posted in the Brisbane Renters Alliance Facebook group started by Mr Sriranganathan.

“If you‘re moving out of a rental and your landlord/agent is showing the property to new prospective tenants, consider leaving some notes or posters like this in a few prominent locations around the home,” he wrote.

Attached was a photo of notes detailing the tenant’s issues during their lease such as mould, rats and excessive dust posted as ­soaring rental prices leave at least 150,000 households in critical housing stress.

“Re-occurring (sic) MOULD in Air-con main room & Lounge room,” said one. “CONSTRUCTION SITE Excessive noise from 6am daily (and) RATS,” and “House has excessive DUST from construction site/Train,” said others.

It was intended to alert potential tenants of issues relevant to deciding fair rent for the property that may not be clear during a short inspection.

Mr Sriranganathan argued it was illegal for an agent or landlord to interfere with the signs as they were considered tenant property.

“A landlord‘s right to enter a property to show it to prospective tenants does not give them any rights to interfere with the tenants’ property.”

“It‘s a pretty straightforward legal position and widely accepted that when you rent a property from someone, your landlord doesn’t have the right to come into your house and move stuff around,” he said.

The post had close to 900 comments on Monday morning with some applauding the move as renter solidarity in a housing crisis that favours landlords.

“For far too long Landlords have had free rein to abuse their power with no sort of recording or accountability of their behaviour. I’ve had some wonderful ones and some horrendous ones,” commented Kate Coxall.

“Gotta (sic) love all the cranky landlords in the thread, some quality comments here from the terrible ones just being leeches of society,” said Shannon Felini.

The landlords Ms Felini referred to said Mr Sriranganathan promoted sabotage and warned that this kind of action could face repercussions. “Stop trashing our investment property and moving on to the next house to trash,” said Julie Hands.

“As a Woolloongabba voter, I think it is disgraceful for an elected member to promote sabotage,” commented another.

“If you poke the bear you’re not going to get a new place,” said Glenn Maymann.

Mr Sriranganathan replied to Mr Maymann’s comment to clarify if he was implying he would take revenge on tenants.

“Sounds like you‘re admitting that you would take revenge on tenants by giving them a bad reference simply because they drew attention to legitimate maintenance issues?” queried Mr Sriranganathan.

“What crap Jonno,” responded Mr Maymann. “I’m saying that encouraging your readers to do this will give them little chance of getting another place.”

One landlord threw her support behind the tenant’s notes saying she was “horrified” at what she had seen other landlords doing. “I don‘t blame these tenants at all if this is what they have been putting up with. That said, agents could easily remove and replace these signs,” said Delma Clifton

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/jonathan-sriranganathans-advice-to-tenants-ahead-of-open-homes/news-story/93bd269bf066f881d9fd338d23c8adcf

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Arms race: UQ vax version 2.0 ‘puts Brisbane tech up against one of the best’

One of the lead scientists behind the University of Queensland’s molecular clamp vaccine technology says it could be as good or better than mRNA vaccines, as it heads into phase I clinical trials.

The vaccine platform uses a small molecule to “clamp” a protein into the same shape as the protein on the surface of a virus, triggering the same immune response from the body.

The first version of the clamp was considered a frontrunner to produce a viable vaccine for COVID-19, but had to be halted when it was found it gave off positive HIV markers in blood tests.

There was no risk of HIV infection to people who had the vaccine, but the potential impact on national screening programs was too great.

Now, after rejigging the clamp, version 2.0 is ready to be put through its paces after doing well in pre-clinical testing.

Project leader, Associate Professor Keith Chappell, said the early results suggested their clamp 2.0 vaccine was just as good as version 1.0 and had advantages over mRNA vaccines.

“Firstly, safety – in our first clinical trial [for version 1.0] we didn’t see any incidences of headaches or fevers or those sorts of responses associated with mRNA vaccines.

“Also transport – it requires simple refrigeration rather than the minus 80 degrees required for some mRNA vaccines.”

Clamp 2.0 will be put through its paces against the TGA-approved Novovax vaccine, which is not an mRNA vaccine, but which Chappell said would provide a good comparison.

“We are recruiting 70 individuals for the trial – half will receive our vaccine and the other half will get the Novovax,” he said.

UQ’s clamp technology has been supported from an early stage by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), which provided $8.5 million for the current round of development. The Queensland and federal governments also contributed funding.

The clinical trial will be run by Nucleus Network, with the company’s chief medical officer Jason Lickliter saying they were also excited by the vaccine’s potential. “It is a great opportunity for Queenslanders to participate in a study of a vaccine that was developed in Queensland,” he said.

“Should there be a future global disease outbreak, this will potentially allow us to respond faster.”

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/arms-race-uq-vax-version-2-0-puts-brisbane-tech-up-against-one-of-the-best-20230317-p5ct0b.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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‘Porn’ comic book off Logan library shelves after conservative lobbyist Bernard Gaynor lodges complaint with police, classification board

Logan City Council will review its library policy after complaints were lodged about an allegedly inappropriate comic book which refers to masturbation, gay porn, blow jobs while driving and vagina slime.

Gender Queer: A Memoir, a book which details sexual topics that may affect young people, is aimed at helping them understand their sexuality.

It was taken off Logan City Council library shelves this month following a complaint from conservative political activist Bernard Gaynor.

According to the book’s author Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer: A Memoir, came about after their own experiences searching for answers to questions about nonbinary identities.

“I started questioning these topics when I was like 12, 13 years old, and then didn’t come out as nonbinary until I was 25,” Kobabe said on a podcast with US-based group GLAAD last year.

“Having a book like this, or any book that explored nonbinary identity, would have probably taken 10 years of confusion and uncertainty out of my life,” Kobabe said.

After Mr Gaynor alerted police, QPS referred the book to the Australian Classification Board, which will review the matter and determine what action to take.

Mr Gaynor, who wants the book permanently removed from library shelves, launched a protest outside the council’s Wembley Rd offices.

It is unknown whether all copies have been removed while the council investigation is under way.

Since the initial complaint on March 4, four others books have been targeted.

Logan City councillor Karen Murphy said the council review had already started. “This review will be undertaken with reference to council’s Library Collection Development Policy,” Ms Murphy said online. “This policy is consistent with national public library standards and guidelines.

“Council will make no further comment until the review is completed.”

Mr Gaynor said Logan council should not be loaning out the books to children but he was glad it had been removed from library shelves.

However, he said the council was still keeping Gender Queer and would make it available, upon request, even to children.

“As far as I know, it is the first time this book has been challenged successfully anywhere in Australia,” he said.

“There is a reason these books are written and published and placed on shelves ... in public libraries – none of this is an accident. It happens by design.”

Mr Gaynor said he was determined to see the book banned permanently and said Logan City Council staff had refused to meet with him, telling him there was nothing wrong with Gender Queer.

The classification board, which can censor, restrict or ban content, said it was yet to classify Gender Queer and had not had any requests to do so until recently.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/questnews/logan/porn-comic-book-off-logan-library-shelves-after-conservative-lobbyist-bernard-gaynor-lodges-complaint-with-police-classification-board/news-story/8e7dafa221f6752e551ef231697b85b4

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MARK LATHAM'S no-nonsense election manifesto that will make sense to millions of struggling Aussies: Go nuclear, supply cheap electricity - and teach schoolkids what REALLY matters

We need to return to what worked best: coal and gas-fired power and now, with the advent of Australian nuclear submarines, we also need nuclear electricity generation.

Only dependable, 24/7 baseload power can keep the lights on in NSW and ease the cost of living crisis.

In schools policy, Perrottet and Minns have been just as negligent. The Education Minister, Sarah Mitchell, doesn't do anything unless the Education Department tells her to.

She is totally captive to unelected bureaucrats - the same people who have given NSW the fastest-falling school academic results in the world.

The Labor policy, under orders from the Teachers Federation, is to convert 10,000 casual teachers to permanent positions.

This won't add a single teacher to any classroom or school, or address the teacher shortage crisis.

It simply changes the employment classification of existing teachers, many of whom want to stay as casuals because of the workplace flexibility it delivers.

One Nation has a different approach. We would lift the professional standards of teaching plus pay our best teachers more to bring high-achieving school leavers back into the State's classrooms.

We would also return teaching itself to the evidence base.

It's hard to believe the NSW Government doesn't require any classroom to be taught according to the education research.

We know exactly what works and doesn't work in schools. If we know these things, why doesn't the Minister require every classroom to teach to the evidence?

That means Direct Instruction, phonics in literacy, strong behavioural standards, lots of testing and data assessment and individual student learning plans.

This is how you reverse the State's slide down international league tables and lift student results.

It's not hard to see why the major parties are failing. They have become old, complacent and ineffective.

It's time for change. It's time for the 'minor parties' to become major ones and force into government policy real solutions to longstanding problems.

In NSW, we need intent, not imagery; solutions, not spin.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11865995/One-Nations-Mark-Latham-policies-NSW-election-promising-cheap-electricity-better-schools.html

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Subs hypocrisy shows common sense has left the building

Australia will have five nuclear reactors sailing around our coastlines but it will remain illegal to build nuclear reactors on the mainland.

Over the past year, Germany has reopened 24 coal-fired power stations, China is building more than 100 gigawatts of coal-fired power and the Biden administration just approved a massive expansion of oil drilling in Alaska.

But Australia cannot even contemplate building a coal-fired power station to keep the lights on. It does not make any sense.

And, keeping the lights on might be at the lower end of the risks we face. The Albanese government’s purchase of two (and possibly five) nuclear-powered American submarines received widespread approval, except from the Greens and Paul Keating.

Just a few years ago, it would be impossible to contemplate broad support for nuclear submarines. Opinion has shifted rapidly because of the impending risk of conflict in our region. There remains an alarming gap, however, between the risks of war and what we are doing to prepare our broader economy for such a grim eventuality.

The purchase of submarines is one thing, but we cannot defend Australia without a functioning industrial economy.

Last month, the Australian energy regulator, known as the Australian Energy Market Operator, warned that Australia would be 8 gigawatts short of reliable power over the next decade, which is roughly an amount of power equal to four large coal-fired power stations. Wind and solar cannot fill this gap. We need power options that can be on all the time.

So where is our “nuclear submarine” answer to this impending crisis for our industrial economy?

I suppose one option could be that we park the nuclear submarines in Sydney Harbour and run a long extension cord to the mainland to help. That would at least deliver one-eighth of the power gap from the nuclear reactors on board.

While a joke, this underscores the absurdity of our situation. We are going to permit up to five nuclear reactors to sail around our coastlines, and dock in our harbours, but it would remain illegal to build a nuclear reactor on the mainland. Make it make sense!

We do not have the time to protect sacred cows.

Scott Morrison made a courageous decision to overturn decades of perceived political wisdom on nuclear submarines. He was rewarded for his courage with barely a whimper of political opposition. It is time for the courage of politicians to lift to match the level of the crisis we face.

Instead, we continue to pointlessly fight a climate war almost alone even though we have no chance of winning it on our own. How does it make sense to think that we can trust China to act on climate change while we also spend more than $300bn because we are worried they will start a war in our region?

If we cannot trust China on coronavirus, if we cannot trust them to reduce the risks of conflict, we cannot trust them on climate.

And, if China does not act on climate, all our costly climate policies, which are increasing the cost of living, mean nothing.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-subs-hypocrisy-shows-common-sense-has-left-the-building/news-story/ff849e38676f0c9521d2fbc0e79d0a3a

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Super betrayal: it’s not a tax on the rich, it’s a tax on the young

Throughout my twenty years as a financial planner, a frequent objection to my strategies is, ‘I don’t trust super’. The proposed new taxes from the Labor government further erodes trust in the Australian superannuation system. And in politicians.

However, despite what the Australian Labor Party want you to believe, and no matter how much they downplay the changes, this great big new tax isn’t tinkering around the edges. It goes to the very heart of our superannuation system and will prevent many Australians from securing a self-funded retirement.

This is because the socialists deliberately did not index the $3 million level where the tax will kick in. So as inflation occurs, the $3 million will have a reducing present value.

Contrast this with the 1 July 2017 introduction of Morrison’s maximum $1.6 million limit which people could place in pension phase. This limit was indexed and will be moving to $1.9 million in July of this year. That’s 18.75 per cent higher in just 6 years; if the same had applied to $3 million, it would now be $3,562,500.

This illustrates how quickly inflation devalues money.

Let’s say you’re 60 now. If inflation averages 5 per cent over the next 7 years, the $3 million will have a present value of $2,132,044. And if, after the RBA has crushed the economy, the inflation rate then drops to 3.0 per cent, by the time a 50-year-old reaches 67, the $3 million limit will be $1,586,441 today’s dollars. For a 40 year old it’ll be $1,180,461.

Sure, still healthy balances, but not astronomically high.

In fact, it is getting very close to the current asset level where a single non-homeowner can start receiving some aged pension – $846,750. And in twenty years’ time, factoring in increases to the pension eligibility levels, it’ll be lower. The government will be taxing people’s superannuation at 30 per cent, whilst giving them pension payments. Classic socialist Labor.

This bastard move from Anthony Albanese and the ALP is very deliberate. They know full well what they are doing; how could they not? The government’s current proposed legislation on the objective of superannuation gives the game away:

They then define adequacy as ‘to support a minimum standard of living in retirement’.

This is what Labor want the super system to be; something that gives you a minimum standard of living. And as a matter of course, if their new tax is legislated, within a few decades they will have achieved their objective. There won’t be fully self-funded retirees, and everyone will be reliant on at least some payment ‘from’ the government.

Whilst ALP politicians try and make this a class war, the only war going on is between the politicians and the people. Albanese and his pension will not be impacted, many public servants on defined benefits won’t either, but average Australians certainly will.

Unfortunately, the lobby group for most of the actual superannuation funds hasn’t even put out a media release on Labor’s proposed new tax, or worked out what the impacts will be. This could be because the majority of member funds are union funds. But the AFSA show their priority by stating any assessment will factor in ‘importantly, the extent to which the associated tax savings will be used to address the gender retirement gap and to boost super balances for low-income earners’. You can see a list of what I believe to be activist super funds here.

To anyone under 50, your chances of a fully self-funded retirement just got significantly more unlikely.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/super-betrayal-its-not-a-tax-on-the-rich-its-a-tax-on-the-young

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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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